A Useful Retreat

Never mind that the City of Memphis has just experienced a calendar year in which its most vital interests were put in jeopardy by state government, substantially because – it is now generally agreed – the city had not been making its presence fully felt in Nashville.
That fact, which was at the heart of the prolonged convulsions in Memphis and Shelby County concerning last year’s notorious Chapter 98 bill changing the rules governing annexation and incorporation, did not prevent some usually responsible local politicians from taking what were, in every sense of the term, cheap shots. The occasion was current city-council chairman Myron Lowery’s decision to schedule the annual council retreat for last weekend in Nashville, on the eve of the convening of the 1998 General Assembly.
“A waste of time and money,” blathered councilman Brent Taylor, who decided to stay home and boycott the affair. His colleagues John Bobango and John Vergos went to Nashville but stayed only briefly, and let it be known that they, too, were sober-sided anti-boondoggle types. Then they came home after only one half-day of sessions.
Get real! The city-council retreat in Nashville cost us taxpayers all of $5,262. For purposes of comparison, the legal bills incurred by the city in fighting the blessedly now-defunct Chapter 98 came to well over $250,000. And the additional tax revenues to be had next year because Mayor Herenton’s administration was able, after beating Chapter 98, to annex Wolfchase Galleria will come to some $25.7 million. Talk about penny-wise and pound-foolish! The dissenting council members, as well as some showboat critics in the established local media, should be ashamed of themselves.
Among the benefits of the council’s meeting in Nashville was the opportunity to show the city’s flag in a legislative environment that has, quite frankly, seemed to take Memphis for granted. Potential new bonds were created between the Memphians and their counterparts on the Nashville city council as well as the administration of Nashville Mayor Phil Bredesen. (Bredesen promised to bring his council to Memphis by way of reciprocation; something seems to have gotten started!)
Further, this year’s council retreat served, as preceding ones have, to focus the minds of the participants – on the issue of annexation/incorporation, on the city’s legislative package, and on the once and future prospect of city/county consolidation. Partly through its own discussions and partly through interchanges with Nashville officials, the Memphians learned that the justly much-vaunted Davidson County Metro system, so far from being inapplicable to Shelby County’s predicament, might fit it like a glove. (Davidson County, like Shelby County, has several incorporated cities besides Nashville.) And then there’s the possibility of down-the-line benefits, perhaps as useful as those of the Atlanta retreat of 1993 (also criticized at the time) which saw an accord reached on several previously intractable redistricting issues that had divided the council.
Well done, we say to Chairman Lowery and his colleagues and administration officials and legislative onlookers who took part. And to the complainers on the council and elsewhere, we suggest that there must be any number of real, not make-believe, problems to concern yourselves with. Meanwhile, get back in the boat and pull your oars! n