C’mon Man ! Don’t give a Memphis Tomorrow initiative $3M upfront ! Memphis Tomorrow is down in every category over 20 years while their initiatives use your federal, state and local tax dollars. Recently, Memphis Tomorrow botched the workforce development system over five years. This particular initiative involves the Memphis Riverfront Parks Partnership (MRPP)
This is not an objection of MRPP or even against public funding for riverfront improvements. It is about scrutiny when both Memphis Tomorrow and Pitt Hyde are creeping around. And sadly, the product the Shelby County Commission passed on Monday related to MRPP is legislative slop.
Its legislative slop because there is not even an attempt in the grant contract to define a framework of scheduled deliverables for $3M in taxpayer money ! There are quarterly reporting requirements mentioned but MRPP is getting all of the money upfront and due to lack of defined deliverables there is no performance standard to report against. MRPP is effectively free to report whatever regarding an unmeasurable $3M taxpayer funded appropriation.
In section 1.6 of the passed grant contract, where there seems to be some attempt to define deliverables, verbiage from the University of Memphis Natatorium project is mistakenly used while referring the reader to “Exhibit A”. The mistaken verbiage in 1.6 is no big deal and can be cleaned up but when the reader gets to Exhibit A, there is nothing. It only states in Exhibit A, “Memphis River Shoreline in Tom Lee Park – $3,300,000”. Huh ???
For a $3M public-private partnership award, taxpayers are at least entitled to have a projected schedule of deliverables with completion dates and estimated cost with estimated public and private contributions noted. Thankfully, Commissioner Edmund Ford, I believe, moved a while back to break up the original ask of $10M into 3 annual contributions. This will at least allow for some degree of annual progress monitoring.
At any rate, the TIFNI philosophy to public private measurement would require a measurable set of deliverables. But the philosophy under Memphis Tomorrow is seemingly no measurement when it comes to taxpayer funds. Oh well, maybe next time.
But there is some good news, at least Commissioners in Braford, Mills, Wright and Sawyer voted against the grant contract in its current form. Again, this is not about being against public funding for Riverfront improvements but more about legislative slop that contributes to an unmeasured Memphis Tomorrow public-private complex. C’mon Man ! Sloppy, Sloppy, Sloppy…..