Memphis Mayor A C Wharton Jr. delivered his first State of the City address Wednesday afternoon to the Kiwanis Club of Memphis at the Peabody Hotel, just 73 days after taking the oath of office.

Mayor A C Wharton Jr.

In his usual folksy style, Wharton painted a picture of the city’s financial problems, but not before touting more than 10 year’s of economic growth: Downtown’s renaissance, a boom in inner-city housing, Memphis City Schools’ $90 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Memphis International Airport’s $30 billion expansion, tourism and entertainment, and enhancements to the medical center.

“These great things cannot and should not mask the very serious challenges that we face,” said Wharton. “At the outset of an exciting new decade, too many of our people feel their feet tangled up in a net as they try to walk forward.”

Noting the worst economic recessions in decades, Wharton added to the mix of challenges the city’s crime problem, poverty, a 62 percent graduation rate, and the dreaded “brain drain” that drives “a generation of men and women out of our city.”

He said the competition among American cities is fiercer than ever and promised the students at Booker T. Washington High School earlier in the day that their plight is not being ignored.

“The City of Memphis is going to solve these problems,” the mayor said. “We are going to win this fight.”

Crime

Acknowledging a 17 percent drop in crime, Wharton said, “My administration will do everything we can to support the Memphis Police Department and their use of data-drive police techniques like Blue CRUSH, because they are proven to work.”

He said community councils, non-profit organizations, churches, code enforcement officers, and the police department’s environmental officers will all play an active part in rooting out areas that are seriously affected by crime.

“Those who are putting deadly weapons in the hands of our children should expect and will receive no mercy,” said Wharton. “We will break the stranglehold that gangs have in our communities, but only if we can stop the flow of lethal weapons into our streets.”  

Successful crime reduction also includes lobbing state legislators, reducing the recidivism rate, and effective tactics such as the Shelby County Drug Court, a new domestic violence court, juvenile intervention, effective job training and placement programs, and faith-based intervention, he said.

Jobs

Wharton said he is committed to doing more than any previous administration to create more jobs.

“The City Council knows how serious I am about developing and refining the tax incentives and other tools we need to aggressively recruit and retain our major employers,” he said.

Consolidation is one way of providing citizens and businesses with the best and most efficient services, said Wharton, the former Shelby County mayor who pushed for a consolidated government despite encountering resistance from the suburban mayors of Shelby County.

“We can eliminate the needless, wasteful bureaucracy that deters good companies and good jobs from making Memphis their home,” he said.

Tourism

“We must make sure that we have the convention facilities and hotels to stay nationally competitive,” said Wharton, who plans to study the industry before committing time, energy and money.

Education

Last week, Wharton urged the City Council to roll back taxes to the 2008 level to meet the court-ordered obligation to fund city schools. To avoid a tax hike, he said he’d make some strategic budget cuts and use the city’s reserves to restore $57 million to city schools.

There are no public schools flourishing without the mayor’s attention, said Wharton, noting his support of Supt. Kriner Cash. “He knows that while he has a friend in the mayor’s office, he will also have a new standard of accountability and interest from me.”

While he was on the campaign trail, Wharton promised open government. He reiterated that point Wednesday and promised as well to streamline government to avoid excessive waste.

“It’s about smart government,” he said. “It’s about honest government. Anything else is…suicide.”

To achieve fiscal solvency in the future, Wharton said changes are forthcoming, which includes the following:

• Mining for new revenue sources;

• Suspending travel expenses and reducing overtime;

• Revising and improving tax collection procedures;

• Looking at existing properties like land holdings, parking garages and other assets that could increase more revenue;

• Altering funding for non-profit organizations and areas of the city that have experienced significant population shifts;

• Reorganizing or merging the city’s 13 divisions with significant changes in leadership, and,

• Enforcing building codes, picking up trash, fixing potholes, and more attention to the homeless.

Wharton said he made promises to some people in the community that their plight wouldn’t be ignored. He also guaranteed opportunities for every Memphian, which includes safety, prosperity and a good education.

“When I spoke about ‘One Memphis’ during the campaign, it was not a slogan, and it was not a promise. It was an aspiration.”

NOTE:

Immediately following Wharton’s State of the City address, the mayor hosted a job’s forum at the Benjamin Hooks Central Library to discuss and exchange ideas about creating jobs.

“Overwhelmingly, the most critical issue facing many families right now is basic employment – finding and keeping a job during a time when cuts and layoffs are abundant,” said Wharton in a prepared statement.

Last year, the state released nearly $11 million it withheld from Memphis for the Workforce Investment Network, a summer jobs program that was mired in controversy after reports of inaccurate recordkeeping and absent time cards for youth workers.

Wharton said the city will evaluate WIN, which is designed to train people for jobs and help employers find good workers, and comply with state regulations.

“The city’s summer jobs program will be completely reinvented to apply more accountability, more educational programming, and more real mentoring experiences to more of our city’s young people,” Wharton told the Kiwanians on Wednesday.