We have repeated one of our favorite quotations often: every system is perfectly designed to produce the results that it does.
So, what exactly were the decisions made here that produced the results that we now face us? Our “system” is characterized by sprawl, declining densities, higher poverty, neighborhood blight, low-wage jobs, and underfunded public services.
The following begins our list of our 10 decisions that produced things as they are today:
Shelby County Encourages Middle Income Families to Leave Memphis
Back when Shelby County Government was restructured in 1974 and the mayor form of government was created, it had a choice: to be Memphis-focused and pursue policies that supported the growth of the city that produced most of its tax revenues or to be suburban-focused and advance policies that supported the small municipalities and grew their political base. Unfortunately, it chose the suburbs, a decision that continues to have ramifications today and defines the prevailing philosophy of the county administration.
It all began in the mid-1970s when the newly structured county government developed preferential programs for the municipalities that were expanded over the ensuring decades. For example, county government agreed to split the costs of major roads 50-50 with the municipalities but refused to consider a similar policy for those within Memphis. County government paid the total cost of schools inside the towns while Memphis contributed tens of millions of dollars to schools within its borders.
Meanwhile, Shelby County Government’s demonstrated additional largesse when it came to paying for things like libraries and ambulances for the towns while refusing to contribute to the same services within Memphis. As a result, county taxpayers – most of whom lived in Memphis – were essentially subsidizing the towns’ lower tax property tax rates.
But there’s little question that all of these pale in comparison to Shelby County’s decision to subsidize influential developers with infrastructure that set in motion the first sprawl in the county and then doubled down with more and more new roads and schools – to the point that county government’s debt skyrocketed to almost $2 billion.
Put simply, Memphis taxpayers were forced through their county taxes to subsidize the decline of their own neighborhoods – and their city’s tax base – as Memphis hollowed out its middle class.
But, it is worth remembering that Memphis City Council could have thrown down a gauntlet by refusing to approve zoning requests within its extraterritorial authority. Under this policy, Memphis City Council had the right to approve any developments within three or five miles of the Memphis city limits. But in those days, the city’s legislative body was no different than county government: it was controlled by developers. As a result, City Council rubber stamped approvals of big projects, and today, there is no better example of what this city-county developer-controlled process produced than Germantown Parkway.
Long forgotten by most is the fact that the Memphis and Shelby County Office of Planning and Development issued a smart plan for Germantown Parkway, but the legislative bodies started approving changes to it before the ink had dried. In fact, they decided that the report was advisory only and immediately and routinely approved strip malls and massive apartment complexes that doomed any attempt to make Germantown Parkways into nodes of mixed-use activity.
Instead, Shelby County pursued policies that were unsustainable, both in terms of land use and wise financial management, as county government’s massive debt moved it to the brink of financial collapse.
And yet, even today, in county government discussions, you’ll hear officials refer to the “growth” in Shelby County, which in their context, means the area outside of Memphis. Of course, the truth is that it’s not growth at all. It’s actually the greatest relocation of population in the history of the region and all made possible because of policy mistakes made by county government.
As a result, it is no surprise that today, we are #6 in a ranking of regions with the most sprawl.
No Commitment to Planning
Planning has always been a low priority for local government, and even when the planning office took a more professional role in producing reports to guide important planning opportunities, it was common for the legislative bodies to hear the presentation, thank the presenters, and put the reports on the shelf.
Unfortunately, the lack of a commitment to planning by the Shelby County Board of Commissioners and Memphis City Council was duplicated in the executive offices of city and county government in the pivotal years when planning could have made a significant difference in the direction of this community.
However, with campaign contributions flowing freely in local races, developers exerted an influence that neighborhoods could only imagine over decisions about policies, funding, and programs. For at least 20 years, developer interests have dominated key boards like the Land Use Control Board and the Board of Adjustment, and even today, when push comes to shove, developers continue to get inordinate consideration in land use decisions.
That influence can be seen even today in the erosion of the Unified Development Code, the form-based code that offered so much promise to create walkable neighborhoods, compact development, better connectivity, and overall smarter planning, and also in the inappropriate use of the Board of Adjustment to sidestep the normal zoning process.
A nationally known planner said recently that he had never seen a major U.S. city the size of Memphis that did not have an ambitious, well-funded planning process. But, we’ve managed to do it. Decimated by budget cuts over the years and now with the number of planners you can count on two hands (much, much fewer than in comparable cities), city planning is largely an afterthought – if it’s thought of at all by city and county elected officials.
It is the culmination of a traditional lack of support for planning in this community, and if nothing else, it suggests that City of Memphis should set up its own planning operations and remove Shelby County Government from its planning decisions altogether.
Ignoring the Need for Equity
The intent behind the creation of joint departments and divisions was noble, but ultimately, they created issues of equity that city and county governments ignored for decades until Memphis City Council took action a few years ago to level the playing field.
While the notion of city and county governments working closely together on areas of shared importance sounds like good governance, it in turn resulted in Memphians paying a disproportionate share of all joint city-county operations. This functional consolidation was often a stand-in for the lack of full city-county consolidation, but with Memphians paying 100% of its half of the costs for joint services and about 70% of the county’s share, it meant that in this 50-50 management arrangement, Memphis taxpayers ended up paying 85% of the total budgets for these operations.
Fortunately, for Memphis taxpayers, Memphis City Council took the matter into its own hands. Two years ago, it voted to end funding for the Memphis and Shelby County Health Department since it was county government that had legal responsibility for health services in this community. A few years before that, the Council eliminated city funding for schools.
It was a sound policy change that was almost 40 years in the making. Until City Council got serious about it, Memphians were paying twice for services that were countywide in nature and rightfully should have been funded solely by county government. The confusion was aggravated because our community never had a clear definition of what was a municipal (city government) service and what was a regional service (county government).
In the aftermath of the “tiny towns” controversy in the late 1990s, city and county staff members met to begin discussions about rationalizing public services. On the table was the idea of shifting libraries, health department, and convention centers and arenas to the larger tax base of Shelby County. Unfortunately, the negotiations broke down before they ever really had a chance to get started.
At the heart of the problem was the lack of coherency in county tax policies. Shelby County’s rationale for service delivery was schizophrenic and confusing to the people who pay its costs. For example, county government delivered some services countywide, such as public health and criminal justice. For some municipalities, it provides fire protection and law enforcement. In others, it provided ambulance service. Outside of Memphis, Shelby County Government paid the total cost of education and the towns paid nothing. Outside of Memphis, Shelby County entered into partnerships with small cities to help fund road projects, but denied the same option for Memphis.
And yet, the inequity of the joint funding arrangement continues to rear its head, most recently with the grumbling in Shelby County Government because City of Memphis wasn’t forthcoming with its half of the budget of EDGE, the umbrella agency in charge of economic growth. The complaint was that Memphis owed half of the funding for the group, which begged the question that Memphis taxpayers are paying 60-65% of the county’s funding.
If Memphis funded EDGE, Memphis would find itself in a altogether familiar position – paying a disproportionate share of a joint city-county agency. In other words, Memphians would be paying 100% of the city share and then about 60-65% of the county share, which means that Memphians would in the end pay about 80% of the total cost of EDGE – and to do it while none of the other county’s cities are putting in anything.
In its way, it’s business as usual: special rules for Memphis, a pass for the municipalities. Shelby County should just fund the total costs of EDGE, so all cities are treated the same.
Next Post: More Decisions That Produce the System We Have Today