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"An annexation fight pits a growth-minded city against its affluent
satellites."
by Phil Campbell
This time last year, Memphis officials were relaxed and confident
about the future growth of their city. With three quick readings,
the city council approved a new annexation plan that would add
20,000 residents to the city's population, 20 square miles to
the city's territory, and--they believed--millions of dollars to
the city's coffers in the next five years.
Everything had finally come together. The city's planning department
had finished an annexation guide for "orderly growth," a buzzword
meaning piecemeal annexations that created more in property-tax
revenues than they cost in municipal services. The planners had
long ago charted Memphis's intentions to conquer the unincorporated
portions of Shelby County; on their maps, most of the untamed
parts of the county are covered with stripes--land the city would
one day seize. If everything went smoothly, Memphis's borders
would eventually reach all four edges of the county, doubling
its current size. Plagued by two decades of middle-class flight,
Memphis would beat the deserters at their own game, chasing and
enveloping its suburbs.
More important, the politicians had finally reached a consensus.
The city's first majority-black council and its first black mayor
put aside concerns that annexing predominately upper-class white
neighborhoods would dilute the voting power of the local African
American population. The only thing that mattered was the continued
physical growth of the city; since its founding 148 years ago
there have been more than 30 annexations, taking in more than
280 square miles and hundreds of thousands of new residents.
No one could have predicted that these well-laid plans would be
undone this past summer by the state government in Nashville,
the very institution that has always allowed Memphis to expand
anytime it wanted, as much as it wanted. Nor could anyone have
foreseen that the state's action would finally force Mayor Willie
Herenton, who has dreamed for years about Memphis's supremacy
in the form of a city-county consolidation, to rethink the idea
of "orderly growth."
It was a tiny amendment that was slipped into an innocuous bill
on the last day of this year's Tennessee General Assembly that
caused these changes. Passed overwhelmingly, with almost no discussion,
the amendment was written for political reasons by Lieutenant
Governor John Wilder, who was trying to help Hickory Withe, a
small community in neighboring Fayette County, incorporate.
But the new law could be applied anywhere in the state, so Wilder
in effect gutted the laws that protected the hegemony of the larger
cities. Before, no new town could incorporate within five miles
of a large city or within three miles of a smaller city; this
"buffer rule" was repealed. And any community that wanted to incorporate
had to gather 1,500 signatures on a formal petition; that number
was reduced to 225. The bill did contain a Cinderella clause,
however. Petitions have to be turned in by the last day of 1997,
when the bill's provisions expire.
It didn't take long for neighborhoods and subdivisions around
Memphis to grasp the bill's implications. Communities to the east
and southeast of the city suddenly gave themselves names and declared
their intentions to have their own mayor, their own town council,
their own political boundaries, and their own property taxes.
Where once there was sprawling land that Memphians considered
theirs by right there were now nine new towns: Independence, Nashoba,
New Forest Hills, Irene, New Berryhill, New Cordova, New Hillshire,
Nonconnah, and Fisherville.
For many residents of these new cities--which Memphis officials
derisively call "toy towns"--it was like escaping from the grasp
of a giant boa constrictor. They had moved out of Memphis once,
many in a huge wave of school busing--inspired white flight in
the early 1970s, and they had no desire to be within its boundaries
again. Nor did they necessarily want to move further out of town.
The residents cite the usual complaints and fears about living
in a large city. Memphis's property taxes are twice as high, its
schools are inferior, and the city is unsafe. Of these arguments,
only the last one is fallacious; the idea that criminals--read:
black criminals--care about municipal delineations is based more
on historical racism than on geographical or statistical fact.
Gordon Olswing, an attorney who represents several incorporated
towns, contends that the main issue is self-determination. "If
you're in a small community, and if you've got people with the
same interests as you, who are making the decisions for you, you
may not get what you're requesting, but you can feel pretty good
that you were heard," he says
City officials regarded the developments with horror. What they
had assumed to be rightfully theirs was now out of reach, seemingly
forever. They made comparisons to the fates of St. Louis and Detroit,
two cities choked off from additional physical growth and suffering
from decades of uncontrollable middle-class flight that have left
an impoverished, minority population too underemployed to contribute
to the tax base or regional economy.
Mayor Herenton asked the governor to call an emergency legislative
session to repeal the bill, but his request was ignored. Meanwhile,
the city council voted to stop extending sewer lines outside city
limits, breaching a contract with the county government. Since
the principal sewage facilities are in Memphis, sewer lines are
the city's best threat.
The city also filed an injunction and petitioned for the repeal
of the law on constitutional grounds. The argument didn't carry
much weight, though, because much of the time city attorneys tried
to appeal to the chancellor's sense of social responsibility:
if the city stopped growing, its high municipal bond rating would
be ruined, and, because the city would have no way to compensate
for the loss of fleeing middle-class residents, the local economy
would be crushed. The state attorney general's office, along with
attorneys for the newly incorporated towns, made one simple argument
that won the court's approval: The law was constitutional because
it was passed constitutionally. (An appeal is pending.)
The next chapter to this story is still unfolding. According to
Dexter Muller, the city and county's chief planner, Memphis has
always had three options for growth: annexing new territory, raising
taxes, or sharing taxes and financial responsibilities more equitably
with the county government. Since the first option worked for
decades with the fewest problems, there was no reason to resort
to the other two. The second option, in addition to being political
suicide for elected officials, would only push more people out
into the rest of the county, where property taxes are already
far lower.
In early October, Mayor Herenton tried exploring the third option.
Appearing before the Shelby County Commission and the county mayor,
Jim Rout, he offered a comprehensive proposal he called a "formula
for fairness." Under the plan, city property taxes would drop,
while county property taxes would rise, shifting $81 million in
revenues to the county. In return, the county would assume greater
fiscal responsibility for city-county departments, including the
transit authority, the library system, and the health department.
The city would then resume extending sewer lines.
It sounds like a reasonable plan, but the annexation debate, fraught
with both economic and racial tensions, has moved from rational,
institutional policies to personal, often combative politics.
Memphis Mayor Herenton and Shelby County Mayor Rout have sharply
contrasting personalities, which has already influenced the course
of events. Herenton, a former Golden Gloves boxer, would rather
stage an open political fight than appear weak in any way. When
he presented his proposal, he "gave" Rout and the commission two
weeks to agree. Herenton, who has accused Rout of being a weak
leader, may be guided by another motive: He's floated the idea
of running against Rout for county mayor next year.
Rout was raised on the art of striking backroom deals and downplaying
conflicts of any sort, but he has shown remarkable firmness during
this showdown. A financial technocrat at heart, he called Herenton's
fairness-formula "knee-jerk" and "full of holes" and dubbed his
city counterpart an "emperor" (a charge he can't seem to recall
making now). Rout then forced the Memphis mayor to back off his
deadline demand by leaving the country on a business trip. Herenton
has yielded a little; upon Rout's return, he agreed to begin extending
some of the disputed sewer lines.
Cooler heads on the city council and the county commission are
calling Herenton's plan a start, however, and city and county
executives have begun the lengthy process of hammering out a compromise.
Whatever the outcome, the political and economic dynamic in Memphis
and Shelby County has been permanently changed, and there's no
going back.
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