CITY REPORTER continued

Councilman John Bobango wants at least a two-year moratorium to assess the latest developments, especially city-county relations. Brent Taylor, however, thinks the Formula for Fairness should be used until an agreement with the county government can be reached. “I feel that it’s incumbent upon the council to follow the spirit of that agreement,” he says.
Other council members just call the Formula an opening in discussions between city and county governments. Chairman Jerome Rubin is less willing to wait for the Formula’s moratorium to end. “I think this puts us where we were before, prior to Chapter 98, with the exception of the ill sentiments that were raised out [in unincorporated areas]. This would be the time to have some merit-oriented discussions about the city that they like to dislike – Memphis.”
Some council members thinks it’s just a matter of educating the unincorporated residents about why they should accept annexation. “Were I the mayor,” says Rubin, “I would seek to develop some factual information about the benefits people really receive from the city and seek to raise their level of awareness.” In a sense, Herenton has already started doing that. The city inserted a pamphlet in this month’s Memphis Light, Gas & Water bill pitching the mayor’s Formula for Fairness. n

Another Homeless Shelter Is Homeless

by Jacqueline Marino

The building at 236 Madison doesn’t look like much on the outside, but anyone who can read the bold painted letters on the windows can see that Seek for the Old Path’s former home used to be a soup kitchen, a referral agency, and a women’s and children’s shelter, among other things.
In October, agency executive director Barbara Moment learned the building would have to be razed so a new parking lot for the downtown ballpark could be built there.
Two months later, Seek for the Old Path is still looking for a permanent location – and for some money to stay open.
Seek for the Old Path’s lease expired November 30th, as did its $20,000 grant from the city’s Division of Housing and Community Development, which is the shelter’s only funding source. Moment says the agency didn’t apply for a grant renewal from HCD this spring because she was uncertain of the shelter’s future. But because beds for homeless women and children are in critically short supply, the shelter is trying to stay open.
“There is no room in the inn,” Moment says. “Who’s going to take them? Are the pastors going to let them sleep in their pews with their babies?”
It’s not the Salvation Army – the largest homeless shelter for women and children in the city, which also had to move because it was in the way of the new ball park. But Seek for the Old Path does provide crucial services for about 14 homeless women and children each night.
Jacqueline Davis came to Seek for the Old Path three weeks ago after she had to quit her job at a service station to care for her five children, all of whom are between 8 months and 7 years old. Out of all the shelters she called, only Seek for the Old Path had room. The others were either full or didn’t allow children.
On Monday, she stuffed envelopes with fund-raising letters addressed to local churches while a makeshift shelter was being set up in old warehouse space at 265 Exchange, across from Lauderdale Courts. Volunteers set up rows of metal-framed beds covered with bedspreads cut from old curtains and unloaded secondhand furniture from the agency’s van.
By the afternoon, the agency’s phone number hadn’t even been transferred yet, and several homeless-service providers who were contacted Monday assumed Seek for the Old Path had closed its doors for good. Still, First Baptist Church managed to find Moment and asked if the shelter could house a three-person family for a few nights.
Of course, Moment said yes. On the agency’s first night in the temporary facility, she expects a full house. She just doesn’t know how long she’ll be able to keep it running.
“We’re just here by faith,” Moment says. “I don’t know how we’re going to pay the rent bill or the light bill.” n

Auto Sales Top Latest Consumer Complaints List

by Jacqueline Marino

Last year Lynnette Clayborn-Shepard bought what she thought was the perfect car for her – a used 1994 Ford Mustang GT with 14,000 miles – from Sunrise Pontiac-GMC Truck, Inc. on Covington Pike.
But within a week the car started having mechanical problems. Over the next few months, several other car dealers, body shops, and a wholesaler informed her that while the Mustang looked fine, a serious wreck had significantly diminished its value.
In a complaint filed with the Tennessee Division of Consumer Affairs, Shepard says Sunrise neglected to tell her about the car’s history and charged her too much. She paid Sunrise $16,500, which was $6,500 more than an independent appraiser found it to be worth.
After Shepard refused to trade in the car for a cheaper vehicle, as Sunrise offered to do for her, she took the company to court. Kenneth Forbert, Sunrise secretary/treasurer, declined to comment on the case while it’s still pending, except to say that such complaints against the company are unusual.
Shepard, a legal secretary for a corporate law firm, continues to drive the car. Now that its warranty has expired, she worries she may not be able to afford to keep fixing it on her own.
“I, as the average consumer, trusted that this dealership was in the business of doing good business and selling quality cars,” she writes in her consumer complaint. “After viewing Sunrise’s television ads that detailed the great cars they have and how they ‘Make buying a car fun again,’ I didn’t think I should have a reason to be concerned with whether or not they would sell me a car that had mechanical problems and/or that had been wrecked.”
Unfortunately, more and more unwitting consumers are falling prey to scams these days. Complaints about auto sales top the list, according to the results of a consumer complaint survey released last week by two national consumer-protection agencies.
Out of 161,884 complaints from consumer-protection organizations across the country, the breakdown was the following: auto sales, 20 percent; home improvement, 18 percent; auto repair, 17 percent; and retail sales, 11 percent.
Of 58,000 written complaints received by the Tennessee Division of Consumer Affairs in 1996, auto sales and repair also would have composed the largest category of complaints if they were grouped together. The state separates them, so technically debtor/creditor complaints were the most numerous, followed by home improvement and auto repair.
Mark Williams, director of the Division of Consumer Affairs, blames much of the increase in consumer complaints on utility deregulation, especially telephone. In 1997, for example, the agency received 1,400 complaints about one phone-card company in Knoxville.
“As competition increases, we will see an increase in consumer complaints,” he says. “Businesses are cutting costs. We’ll see ‘slamming’ problems – businesses will have your services changed without your knowledge.”
Williams suspects many scams go undetected because people don’t realize they can take action, and maybe even get their money back.
“I really don’t know how many people are out there like me,” Shepard says. “I just knew to look into it and to ask questions. It was just too big a chunk of change to not do anything.” n

Board Plans to Fight Charter Schools

by Tanuja Surpuriya

While discussing the proposed 1998 legislative agenda Monday night, Memphis City Schools board members expressed strong opposition to any bill brought before the state legislature that encourages the establishment of charter schools in Tennessee.
“We have to use every big gun we have and voice our opinion at every opportunity to stop this,” said school board vice president Lora Jobe. “They have been known to fail miserably across the country ... and we will have to pick up the pieces when these schools fold and fail.”
Charter schools are usually operated by parents, teachers, or corporations and are run with no control from the local school board. Because of this freedom, charter schools can try new and sometimes unconventional methods of teaching. The state legislature considered, but did not pass, a bill authorizing such schools earlier this year, keeping Tennessee one of the few states in the country not to have charter schools.
The Tennessee School Board Association is supporting the charter school bill, and that just doesn’t sit well with some board members.
“I don’t get a good feeling that TSBA represents the interest of this school system,” said TaJuan Stout-Mitchell. “We represent about one-third of this state’s children, but on every issue, they just leave us blowing in the wind.”
Board members agreed that if the state passed a bill allowing charter schools to set up, MCS should have ultimate control.
“We could take the philosophical high ground and say it’s never going to happen,” said Jobe, “but if they come, we want to make sure those charters come before us.”
The school board is also opposed to a resolution that would create a special subcommittee to study relationships among administrators, teachers, and students as well as the admission and retention of students. The bill would “limit public school attendance to children who exhibit appropriate social behavior and the proper respect for authority, require parents and guardians to take personal responsibility in their children’s behavior, and require parents and guardians to pay the costs associated with placing and retaining their children in alternative schools....”
While board members are against these bills, they plan to throw full support to an act that would basically give the Shelby County Commission the authority to decide how to apportion local school funding. MCS would prefer that the county fund city schools based on average daily enrollment rather than average daily attendance.
The school board will discuss the agenda again before the state legislature reconvenes in January.
School board members also heard from a parent who was angry that there is still no principal at Colonial Middle School. David Forster, who still lives in Canada, was one of the 11 new principals hired this year. He was expected to begin work by October 1st, but school administrators are unsure when he will arrive. n

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