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Memphis Sprawl in a Time Lapse
It’s said that a picture is worth a thousand words. The one created by Google is worth $2 billion, which is the amount of debt that Shelby County Government issued to fuel sprawl...
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Top 15 Blog Posts of 2016: Parks, Promise, and Progress
We wrote 153 blog posts in 2016, and we always look back to see which subjects you had the most interest in. Clearly, last year, that was parks, particularly the campaign to protect the...
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Better Public Transit Is A Capitol Idea
Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland is part of a growing coalition of mayors calling for more State of Tennessee funding support for public transportation. It is a promising sign that modern...
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Understanding Reappraisal, Which Shows Home Values Going Up
This post is written by Jimmie Covington, veteran Memphis reporter with lengthy experience covering governmental, school, and demographic issues. He is a contributing writer with The...
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PILOTs Continue To Fly Into Turbulence
EDGE pioneered in the transparency of corporate business incentives, and although it slipped very slightly in the latest ranking, it needs to give some pointers to the Downtown Memphis...
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TDZ Taxes The Understanding Of Its Facts
When The Commercial Appeal can write an article riddled with mistakes about the Tourism Development Zone like it did last week, it seems a good time to separate fact from fiction....
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Memphians Paying Companies To Leave Their City
It is curious how exorcised we can get when Mississippi picks off a Memphis business for its economic benefit but how mute we remain when a Shelby County town like Collierville or...
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Data Points: Memphis and Shelby County Government Expenditures
City of Memphis Government Expenditures – Operating Budget 2018 – $668,680,951 (proposed) 2017 – $674,457,724 (forecast) 2016 – $639,340,543 2015 – $616,556, 191 2014 – $616,419,108...
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Education – Like Health Care – Is Complicated
We don’t want to say we told you so, but… Germantown city officials yesterday admitted that they will be asking for a 23 cent property tax with the bulk of it required to fund schools....
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Gambling That Apartments Are Magnets For Millennials
Build it and they will come. That seemed to be the prevailing attitude at the EDGE meeting where apartment developers were added to the list of beneficiaries for city and county...
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Property Values For Reappraisals Up By Double Digits
By Jimmie Covington Shelby County’s assessed value of property for tax purposes this year – which includes reappraisal figures – is up almost $2.1 billion from last year, certified...
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A Million Here, A Million There, Pretty Soon, We’re Talking About Real Money
It is an article of faith by many that handing out tax freezes conclusively sends a message that Memphis is a pro-business community. We think it does just the opposite. It says to...
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Binghamton and Broad Avenue Reach Their Tiffing Point
It is not possible to think of a place in Memphis that more deserves a Tax Increment Financing (TIF) district than Binghamton. In fact, it’s been 11 years in the making. That’s...
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Can Two Memphis Icons, Graceland and Grizzlies, Find Common Ground?
Graceland officials say that their new proposed 6,000-seat arena will not pull events and concerts away from FedExForum, but that only hints at the biggest question of all: does the...
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Are Your Taxes Going Up Or Down?
This post is written by Jimmie Covington, veteran Memphis reporter with lengthy experience covering governmental, school, and demographic issues. He is a contributing writer with...
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PILOTs: It Wasn’t Supposed To Be This Way
Around 35 years ago, I was involved in creating the first matrix for the Memphis and Shelby County Industrial Development Board – the forerunner to the Economic Development Growth...
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Koch Brothers Get What They Want In Legislature
Just when there was a glimmer of hope that Tennessee Senator Brian Kelsey was growing up, he pushes more anti-government legislation that indicates yet again the pandering that...
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More EDGE Powers Raise More Questions
We have no question about the good intentions that lie behind the push to give EDGE yet more power – this time the power to waive taxes for developers of apartments and hotels – but...
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Getting To The Real Conversation About Our Tax Freeze Entitlements
The recent letter by FedEx executive Richard Smith critiquing the work of the Economic Development Growth Engine (EDGE) will hopefully provoke a long overdue and fact-based conversation...
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City of Memphis Takes Major Step Toward Funding Pre-K
There is no phrase better known in the contemporary history of Memphis politics than Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland’s “brilliant at the basics.” The four words have been extolled...
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