Two firms, two funding sources, two renewal options each. Nobody has ever said on the record what the project is.
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The bank said it sent the response to the trustee's office three days before the meeting. The trustee said it went to all thirteen commissioners by email. She said she did not get it, and voted yes.
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It began as an add-on nobody had seen. Five days later it passed 13 to nothing, and the sponsor list grew by four names in the ninety seconds before the vote.
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Marcy Ingram won 8 to 5. Nine days later, commissioners were arguing about how to replace her as their own counsel.
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They came back on September 14 and again on September 28. The resolution has not been heard.
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Jail East was full. The youth facility was full. The correctional center was ten short. The building holding about 3,000 people was thirty short.
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A commissioner did the arithmetic out loud at the table and asked whether the county had priced non-compliance as a cost of doing business.
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He is not an employee. There is no current contract. He stepped off the vote anyway, and said why on the record.
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The body has thirteen members. The clerk read eleven names and one recusal. The thirteenth does not appear in the tally.
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The same thirteen commissioners, the same two finalists, the same margin, reversed.
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Four names went into nomination. The first ballot split six, four, two and one. Fourteen days after the body was sworn in, it finally had a chair.
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Richardson, who won District 8 with 81 percent of the vote in August, was booked September 9 on two counts of falsifying state revenue records, a grand jury having indicted him August 25. The charges are allegations. He has not been convicted, has posted bond, and is presumed innocent.
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Every item a commissioner files has to pass through administrative review first. Commissioner Mick Wright said that when it does not, the resolution arrives disadvantaged, and the body starts to treat its members unequally.
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The same committee had just advanced an ordinance adding accountability and eligibility requirements to county grants. The truck item followed it, and passed without a question.
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An administrator told the committee the federal standard for a small construction firm is roughly $12 million to $13 million. If commissioners amend the ordinance now, it restarts at first reading under a new Commission.
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Anna Harwell asked for it herself. She told the Commission a son had said it would not happen, and that she told him it certainly would not if she did not try.
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The sponsor was absent from committee, so it advanced without a recommendation. On the floor it was set aside mid-agenda because staff could not find the summary sheet, then picked back up and passed without a word.
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Asked how the local firms compare on capacity, the county's benefits administrator said the county does not know.
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The Building Home Program rewrite passed on its third reading with the fee amount stated aloud for the first time, in answer to a question from the floor.
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Fifteen of the properties sold for less than the taxes owed. Every property that went to an out-of-town buyer sold for less than the taxes owed.
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The fix is a document handed over with every plumbing permit. It came from a resident who noticed the difference.
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The answer came in the final minutes of a routine quarterly report. The Trustee said the company has not been late, and that the current year's bills have only just gone out.
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The Trustee's final quarterly report set records for collections and investment income. Asked what fiscal year 2027 assumes for that income, the Trustee said her office does not forecast it and finance said it did not know the number.
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The swap funds four new criminal court clerks from the general fund and moves the mental health court to the opioid abatement fund. The judge said the switch restricts how she can spend it. Finance said one stream of that fund is unrestricted.
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The item was not on the printed agenda. It took a suspension of the rules to be heard at all. Three commissioners voted to advance it.
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The committee sent the item forward without a recommendation, then reopened it an hour later when staff arrived. The county cut the tenant's rent in half to keep it in the building.
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The full Commission adopted the youth seclusion ordinance on August 24, 2026, by 10 votes, five days after a committee advanced it with no questions and no data on how often seclusion is used.
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The chairwoman called it an administrative cleanup required by state law. A commissioner pulled it off the consent agenda so it could not pass silently.
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The committee advanced it on two votes. Five days later the sponsor moved to suspend the rules so the Commission could hear it, and the chamber went silent.
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A commissioner read the numbers into the record while voting against two $100,000 training contracts. She said she asked for this information at budget hearings in May and never got it.
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The county closed fiscal year 2026 by moving $7,185,588.36 to cover funds that ended the year short. A commissioner asked what that leaves in reserve. The answer was about $80 million, flat to last year.
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County planning staff recommended rejection twice. On the floor, staff produced the detail that mattered: the road-widening plans the applicant cited had expired.
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The resolution started as a ban on spending and ended as a reporting requirement. It passed seven to three after two hours of public comment and a fight over whether it could be heard at all.
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The swearing-in lands on the county's own FY2027 budget deadline day, one week after the outgoing Commission committed contingency money to a jail study and capped its takeover legal bill.
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The outgoing Shelby County Commission closed its four-year term on August 24 by putting a ceiling on the county's contribution to the MSCS takeover litigation, days before eight new commissioners inherit the case, the budget deadline, and everything else.
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The Shelby County Commission approved $500,000 from the opioid settlement special revenue fund for the county drug court on August 10, 2026. The presiding judge said the program exhausted most of its inpatient treatment funds over the past year.
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Shelby County releases capital funding to municipal school districts only after Memphis-Shelby County Schools spends its 85 percent share. The county finance director confirmed on August 10, 2026 that fiscal 2024 funds tied to an East Campus project remain unspent.
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The Shelby County Commission voted ten to one with one abstention on August 10, 2026 to allocate up to $350,000 in contingency funds for a jail study. The sponsor said the figure came from his own consulting experience rather than a formal solicitation.
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The Shelby County Health Department told commissioners on August 5, 2026 that Title V permit fees must fully fund the county air permitting program or the general fund covers the gap. Countywide industrial emissions have fallen from more than 25,000 tons a year in 2004 to roughly 5,800.
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The Shelby County Commission approved a $366,623.26 contract and emergency purchase order with Access DNSI, Inc. on August 10, 2026 for low voltage and information technology construction at the Election Commission operations center. County engineering told the committee the work was completed by April 15.
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A substitute resolution handed out at the August 5, 2026 committee meeting raised the Memphis-Shelby County Schools budget figure from $1,679,759,131 to $1,799,354,177. The Shelby County Commission approved it on August 10 by a vote of seven to four with two recusals.
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The county could not issue its payroll borrowing without an emergency waiver from the Tennessee Comptroller, because its fiscal 2026 budget was never state-approved. The fiscal 2027 budget is due August 31.
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Rockez McDaniel, 33, died in custody in July 2025. His family filed suit on July 28, naming Shelby County, jail officers and supervisors, nurses, and the jail's medical contractors. Every claim in the complaint is an allegation. No court has ruled.
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The school board passed its budget in late May. Nearly two months later the Shelby County Commission, which funds the district, has not acted on it. Four days before that, commissioners borrowed $125 million to cover the county's own payroll.
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"We would like to see more than four commissioners sitting in the gallery to hear it." The ordinance passed first reading 11 to 0, in a meeting where commissioners also learned they have not received the school district's budget, which state law requires 45 days before adoption.
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The chairwoman called for a second, waited, called again, waited longer, and then ruled the item was not properly before the body. It never got a vote. Twelve other commissioners were in the room.
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No commissioner asked a question at committee. No commissioner pulled it from the consent agenda five days later. The money is fiscal 2026 general funds, and fiscal 2026 ended on June 30.
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A commissioner did the arithmetic out loud on Monday. "It's got to be not even 1%." Commissioners approved the contract anyway, 10 to 1, along with a personnel line the city's library director told them is about $75,000 short.
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The vote was 9 to 3. It is the county's second borrowing to fund operations in under a year, and the first with an outside lender. Finance told commissioners cash on hand will be $50 to $60 million against $155 million in payroll over the first five months of the fiscal year.
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The public works director disclosed the documents Monday while laying out four scenarios ranging from $81 million to $110 million. The $92 million already in the capital plan does not begin releasing until 2028.
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A Shelby County committee voted 4 to 0 on Wednesday to ask Mayor Lee Harris to accelerate funding to replace the 96-year-old juvenile court campus. The vote came a day after a consultant delivered a preliminary summary, and before any commissioner had seen the full report.
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Two commissioners have now written the county mayor asking for a formal study of the Criminal Justice Center. The building has disrupted court operations for most of the past month, and the officials being asked to act are both leaving office within weeks.
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Commissioners delayed final votes on the county's operating and capital budgets to June 29, a meeting that will also decide the property tax rate. One commissioner has proposed raising the rate by 6 cents.
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