Memphis supports a pageantry of establishment horror. Just yesterday, Benjamin Orgel, Carol Coletta and Gary Prosterman celebrated real estate development as economic development. And soon, another group of establishment players, that botched the workforce development system on the back of a foreign contract award, will celebrate themselves in a pageantry UpSkill901 event featuring the Brookings Institute. Brookings co-authored the last design for decline economic development plan along with Christine Richards, at the time, Chief Counsel of FedEx.
Real estate development as economic development has resulted in excessive corporate/real estate incentives, a botched workforce development system, stifled small business sector, neighborhood decline, people having to hitchhike to work due to deficient public transit and increasing poverty rates. And those at the state level, with some distance from the horror, in for example Gwyn Fisher and Mark White that could perhaps provide a level of state intervention, are inaccessible. They only know decline for Memphis and are comfy with an establishment that has led ecosystem decline over 20 years.
Governor Bill Lee must have no idea that he is participating in a pageantry of horror by appointing Richards to the Public Charter School Commission. He’s just knowingly or unknowingly furthering elitist SPOONERGATE and the nationally embarrassing FedEx/Memphis Tomorrow complex that has led Memphis decline for 20 yrs.
An Activist 2015 Public UofM Sounds The Alarm
The horror of real estate development as economic development, has not come without warning. About the same time that I began to scratch my head, an activist University of Memphis Planning Department, in 2015, sounded the alarm through a report that seems to indicate they were scratching their head as well.
The report first defines economic development as “an increase in the economic well-being of area residents, usually manifested by positive changes in the level and distribution of area employment and per capita income.” Then the report connects the dots to communicate what economic development means in Memphis based on local practice. The report concludes that economic development in Memphis based on local practice is defined as “real estate development, consumer-oriented development, large publicly funded projects, and tax breaks”.
The report goes on to question the conflict of FedEx and Christine Richards being so prominent in economic development efforts based on the need to diversify away from the logistics industry and a plan that contained no deliverables or timelines while questioning local workforce development efforts. It must be noted, in the past year, that FedEx has been the recipient of some $66M in state and local incentives while only promising 339 new jobs. And to make matters worse, the incentives were awarded without an economic impact study.
Not long after the former activist UofM Planning Department raised concerns, I raised concerns with Richards directly concerning local workforce development efforts. My current approach to questioning local economic workforce development efforts often gets questioned. But as one can see, my approach has not always been rhetorically laced but in fact professional as can be seen in this email to Richards in 2016.
Richards is part of an elitist establishment pageantry of horror in the FedEx/Memphis Tomorrow complex. A nightmare community and economic development scenario where local residents are trapped in a rigged system of decline with the support of state and local officials where elitist feel entitled to feed on a community in need while ripping off the taxpayer, small business and botching the workforce development system.
Rigged System and No Course Correction
The Memphis system does not afford data driven course correction. This comes with the support of a non-investigative press and elected officials that are comfy with establishment supported decline. I have spoke briefly to Representative Mark White in passing and he is always nice. But he is unwilling to do formal data supported intake on the nightmare of the FedEx/Memphis Tomorrow complex as is Gwyn Fisher who is the Memphis representative of the Tennessee Economic and Community Development department.
Local officials are completely comfortable with decline as excessive incentives have roared without fiscal impact analysis over 8 years and floundering workforce development initiatives have gone uninvestigated over the last 4 years. The lack of state level intake systems and rigged local government institutionalize Memphis decline. And the new UofM under the new FedEx/Memphis Tomorrow Board of Trustees is no longer an activist public university where objective economic development measurement has been curtailed and bogus economic outlook studies are published.
Conclusion and Solutions
This blog has documented bogus projection accounting for tax incentives resulting in excessive incentives, establishment led botched workforce development efforts and as of late EDGE misusing $1.7M in EDGE/Depot funds that should come back to the taxpayer. But those events, regardless of how well documented, go ignored by the local press and governmental officials. This provides a foundation for systemic decline without course correction as the same establishment players run the city into the ground.
The solutions are simple and NOT complex and include press and legislative oversight, systems of state level intake, objective measurement and fiscal impact analysis of tax incentives that has not occurred in 8 years. Without the former, the economic and community development nightmare and pageantry of horror of the elitist FedEx/Memphis Tomorrow complex will only continue while furthering ecosystem decline.