The Bass Pro debacle, Amtrak’s uncertainty, closed swimming pools, overgrown parks, and neighborhoods lined with abandoned houses, are only five of the fifty or so serious issues that the Memphis City Council could have addressed before they took aim at the students and schools of Memphis City Schools.

Since they chose not to address these other issues, and then went on to sue the school system and its board, we (or I) can only assume that somewhere along the way, they chose to actively and aggressively declare war (metaphorically speaking, of course) on the children, families, neighborhoods, and youth advocates who support the organization known as MCS.

This short-lived, esoteric ploy by the City Council and its agents may have been fortunately blunted by the reactions of some local advocates, the School Board itself, the Governor of Tennessee, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and “regular Joe’s” such as me. The result is that this Council has finally been exposed and revealed to be sneaky at best, and duplicitous at worst.

This smug band of ambitious newcomers, political hacks, and name-only officials chose to offer animosity to the children and families of Memphis, rather than good will and support. They even dispatched their attorney to dig deeper into an open wound, to “get our money back.” When did it become “ours” and “theirs?” When did it become a situation where (according to the council attorney) “we” have done for “them”, and then “they” have the nerve to sue “us?” This writer had always believed (naively) that “they are we,” and that “we are us”… or something like that.

The current division and legal battle over school funding is at the expense of time and money, and fosters greater uncertainty amongst the children who are absolutely the essence of “the Schools.” I have said before that in the last ten years, I cannot recall any positive offering, civic courtesy, public amenity, or heartfelt initiative that has been proposed by any member of this City Council, for the direct benefit and relief of the city’s children.

Virtually all of the City Council’s actions and proposals for the past decade seem to have been simply routine administrative tasks, or were punitive and paternalistic toward community centers, pools, parks, summer employment for teens, MATA bus rides for student-workers, juvenile curfews, and other areas that could have really helped children and families. The Memphis City Council could have “chosen”, in all of these cases, to take the side of Memphis youth, but instead placed their own political ambitions and careers ahead of some modest relief for one of the most beleaguered youth populations in America… the Memphis-born teenager.

In conclusion, but certainly not for the last time, I can only remind all of you that this latest move by the Memphis City Council – cutting $93 million dollars from the Schools budget just six weeks before the new year begins – is predictable and consistent with what they’ve done before. When adjusted for declining enrollment, the State says the actual figure to “maintain the effort” of local funding is $85 million dollars that must be put back in the School System’s budget. This entire fiasco is clearly rooted in petty politics, egos on the loose, blind ambition, small-town thinking, and ignorance to the mood and desires of a community that is ready to support something positive for its’ students, teachers, families and neighborhoods. The Council members over-reached, and I hope this time, you ask them why.

(Tony Nichelson is the author of “110 Tasks Every Young Man Should Know How to Do… Before Ninth Grade,” and operates the 110 Institute for the development of urban students. He is the host of the Public Affairs programs for the Citadel-Memphis Radio Group.