City Council Committee - Regular Meeting

I think we're live. If we are, we'll read. I'll send it to executive. It is 1.39 p.m. and I hereby call to order the budget committee of the Memphis City Council. Ms. Smith, would you please call the roll?

Yes, sir. Councilwoman Easter Thomas. Councilman Spinoza. Councilman Ford. Councilwoman Walker. Chairwoman Swearengin-Washington. Councilman Canale. Councilwoman White. Councilman Warren. Chair Carlisle.

President, chair, observers, quorum, colleagues, we have one item on today's agenda. It's a resolution to allocate and appropriate $2,388,000 in city council community grant funds to nonprofit agencies for fiscal year 27. All council districts sponsored by the Memphis City Council. There's a request for same night minutes. I heard a second. Who had the first there? Councilman Ford with the first. Councilman Spinoza with the second. Colleagues, any questions? Seeing none, this goes down with a positive. All those in favor, signify by saying aye. Any opposed, same rights and objections? Seeing none, this goes down with a favorable recommendation tonight with same nine minutes. Any other business for this body? I've got one thing as we do get in the data center conversation, just to give everyone a heads up. I know that we're supposed to have it this afternoon. We'll see what happens. I've been on the phone today as a member of the TASR body with the executive director, Cliff Lippard, to see... if and when they could stack in a study and what that's looking like. It's an ongoing dialogue. It's not to train wreck this discussion. I just wanted to disclose that. And then, and hopefully, you know, hopefully they will, you know, it's going all over the state. And then second to that, I've asked Art Davis, I called him about 10 days ago and asked him to begin a financial analysis with the city just to understand that picture. And probably depending on what that looks like, if it's, depending on how robust the analysis is, we'll have some form of a discussion in the next meeting, no matter what happens today, just so that we can have, at least where my area is, I can bring information to help everybody continue to make a more informed decision. We will and we should spend time talking about air pollution and land use and economic developments and all the external factors. To sit here and not talk about the financial impacts of the city and then have it over trodden by the profits over people moniker, is difficult because it just distracts from getting underneath. It's like we acknowledge that, but now we still have a job to go do. We still have to fix roads and pay for that, and we still have to do those things. And I know this body understands that. I'm just saying it from my perspective, and I wanted you guys to know what I'm working on and trying to get done for us so that you guys have more information as this thing progresses. Hopefully we'll have some of that work done. And again, I've asked the city to do it because there are a lot of outside agencies. And so just as a heads up. So that's, I just wanted to let everybody know that that's hopefully coming sooner rather than later. If I get anything before that, we'll send it out. But that's it for me. Anything else from anybody? I'm headed to Nashville tonight. My niece celebrated her 13th birthday. Pretty incredible. Yes, pretty amazing. And then we got, yes, we've got TASER is seated tomorrow. So I'm going to talk with Representative Parkinson and some other members. But we seat tomorrow and members can make a motion from the floor. But it's still like any other body. We've got to have this. TASER is the question was, what's TASER? I love that. It's fair. It's a very fair question. It's a super awesome acronym for awesome people. It is the Tennessee, yeah, I don't know how I got on. It's the Tennessee Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations. Honestly, what they are is a group of doctors and doctorate students and very smart people that on behalf of the state of Tennessee study any issue brought before them by a member of the body or the legislature. So the impacts of broadband, the loss of the fuel tax, and the need to upgrade the electric system. And so, like, a question would come before them like this, like, simply what is the impact of data centers and AI on the state of Tennessee? And it's like, okay, that's the broad question. What are the 10 or 15 things they want to know? What are the external factors? What are the economic impacts? What are the zoning? And they'll come back and say, what's being done in Virginia? What's being done here? I mean, they are, if you've never gotten on Tassar's website, they're the ones that produce the report. When somebody says the school system has a half a billion dollars in deferred maintenance, you're like, I don't believe that report. They produce that report. It's not our school system. And so then they do it for the whole state. When you want to go see, we had to study, I'll be quiet in a second, but it is neat. It's boring and it's neat. It's neat because you're realizing at times how screwed we're getting. When you go look at the trailing five years on population data for the state of Tennessee by county and by municipality, and then you look at that on a per capita basis for grant dollars out of the state, we are getting absolutely hosed. Yeah, absolutely, on dollars per capita in state block grants. So Tassar is the one that is putting that report out. I want to repeat this. The commission has appointed in statutory members, but the Tassar itself, the individuals producing these reports are all PhDs and graduate students that are heavy research, just out there like doing the work, just trying to answer the questions in a fair, on a scientific way. Very, very neat group of people producing a lot of good work. I'm hopeful, and I was surprised when I asked the executive director had anybody called, given what's going on in Metro Nashville, where they took it on as a zoning text amendment, or McMinn County, where it's, I think, an outright moratorium. And the answer was no, not really. I was kind of floored by that. Now, that doesn't mean that a member of the legislature won't come to this next General Assembly and ask for that. I'll be surprised if they don't study it in some way, some form. My biggest fear for us is that in five, 10 years or sooner, eventually tech is going to be treated in this regard like we treated utilities, railroads, and telecoms. And they're going to get eminent domain. And they're going to force their way in. And it's like, OK. How do we beat them to that and massage that situation? And those are like my internal thoughts. I'm not the person to pull all that off. We've got our job to do here. So anyway, I'm going to be quiet, get us on with our day. I'm going to hopefully bring some of that information back. My real hope is that Tassar will take it up and study it on behalf of the state. But we've got things that we probably need to do in the near term that we can deal with. But I want us to make whatever decision is made from this body for the the love of the good of the people of Memphis to be as fully informed as it possibly can be because this is a big one. All right, thank you all. We're adjourned.