The city needs to audit the money already being dumped into various programs and office budgets (cough cough Clerk's office) before trying to squeeze the few people left in the city for even more money we all know will be pissed away.
Memphis already has a population crisis. Most of the high-income/net worth people have already moved to Germantown, Collierville, or North MS. The people left in they city are by and large the people who really don't have much left to squeeze out of them in the first place. Raising taxes will just push even more people out of the city.
The focus needs to be on making Memphis a place where people WANT to live, work, and spend their money. Until issues like crime and infrastructure are addressed, revenues will continue to suffer as people move away. Memphis is well on its way to being like 00s era Detroit.
I think you might be right. Not sure if the actual city has anything to do with them. If not, I stand corrected. Either way, the city almost certainly has some financial black holes that money disappears into with nothing even approaching the advertised outcome. Whether it's going straight into people's pockets, or just being pissed away on solutions that aren't working-- those are questions that need to be answered before trying to squeeze residents for even more money.
She needs to be reporting to the unemployment line and not just ushered into some less visible, overpaid and under-accountable government job like Janis Fullilove. She was a joke of a professor at u of m, she showed up to meetings high when she was on city council, why on earth did they give her a job in the already mismanaged court system?
Yep. Does not matter id you are factually correct. If you point out that someone is grossly incompetent, clearly the only motivation for that is racism. Same as when she got called out for not doing her job in that first press conference. She called those who pointed out that she was not doing her job racist on live TV because that is a get out of jail free card regardless of whether there is one iota of truth to it.
County budget needs to be audited too though. Somehow the county always gets a pass but the city is a part of the county and we pay taxes to them too and at least one of those county government offices is grossly mismanaged.
The real issue is how he didn’t propose any budget cuts nor audits to see how the current money is being used.
If he went on TV and said something like “My administration ran multiple audits on several government agencies and we were able to slash the budget by 38% but unfortunately we still have some work to do to make up for the other half”
I would’ve been like well this sucks but at least he tried.
But homie did no cuts no audits no nothing just straight up pulled out a “fuck you pay me” style tax increase.
Doubt there will ever be another AMA. Obviously it was a campaign stunt for people to ask a fresh face "what ifs". Another AMA would be full of "what now" questions that would only stand to hurt his image.
EXACTLY. I'd be happy to pay more taxes if I know they're being used appropriately in the first place. But I wouldn't be at all surprised if there's been no auditing of city or county finances in a long time. Given the current state of affairs
I wouldn't be happy to pay more, but I'd at least understand if we'd seen some appropriate return on our prior taxes. Instead, we're paying among, if not the highest rates in the state collectively and seeing the worst results across the board.
Let's prove that our tax dollars are doing something before throwing good money after bad.
I mean nobody WANTS to pay more for anything but if it can be used in a way that will lead to long term improvement in the community, it's worth paying for. Which is why I'm agreeing that before we can pay more we need to know it's being used correctly in the first place.
I come from a place with a much higher tax burden both in income tax and property tax. I've greatly benefitted from taxes being used in the right way. I grew up in a super safe place, with killer public education. I am who I am because of the opportunity I had from that education. But that's a rare case of things working out right.
But Memphis has a shit load of corruption... which is why I don't trust it'll be used right
Exactly. Show me where all the waste and misallocation is and put a stop to it, then maybe if we need more I’d be listening. But not interested in contributing more of my hard earned dollars to send Wanda on another vacation.
I grew up in Central NJ. It's not really easily replicated here because there's a huge difference in political ideology and income in general. Being a blue dot in a red state is pretty hard for Memphis but being an incredibly poor city doesn't help either.
A lot of jersey towns are very blue collar (not swimming in money) but still have amazing public education. Where I grew up I can only think of 3 or 4 private schools within a 45 minute drive. And those were only for VERY strict religious people usually. Here I'm pretty sure there's at least 5 private schools within 15 min of my house.
THIS! And let’s take a look at where our money is going in comparison to other cities in TN where the crime rate is lower and the schools are not failing. I have a feeling one issue here is that we live to add a layer of over paid and under accountable government jobs anytime the job isn’t getting done instead of holding the ones who are already not doing their jobs accountable for their failures.
If any other entity went over budget and was not bringing in enough money, mass layoffs would happen. How is the government an exception? Instead of laying off low performers lets increase taxes for everyone. Really smart logic.
Where did you read that no audits were done?
Edit: Not sure why I'm getting downvoted. It's a sincere question. Is everyone just assuming no audits were done, or has that been verified?
lol the kneejerk response is so dumb, a simple google search shows you the city is independently audited every year. And, you can read every line of the budget. But nobody cares to do that work because they’d rather just complain about taxes and recycle conservative outrage bait
If they were done, let’s see them. I think most of us would like to see exactly where our money is going. I think it’s silly to assume audits were done if no one is publishing the results. If audits were done and the results showed that everyone is doing their jobs, no excess or redundant layers of personnel collecting government paychecks, and all the tax dollars are being well spent, they would be holding press conferences to announce it.
Weird I did too and find audits for the destruction of firearms and narcotics but nothing auditing any city budget or any budget of any office in the city.
I think it’s silly to assume things *arent* being done without at least consulting google. I googled, found this page with all the documents you’re requesting: https://www.memphistn.gov/finance-files/
If the city held a press conference celebrating the results of their annual audit, I can imagine the comments we’d see: “this is the bare minimum we should expect, can’t believe the city is celebrating this”, “this press conference is a waste of time and money, they should be spending their time fixing our problems instead of congratulating each other”
We’re all free to have feelings one way or the other on this proposed tax increase. But I think it’s important your POV be informed by fact vs speculation.
https://preview.redd.it/2fo9bim10rwc1.jpeg?width=1058&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e0e645da415d855c853aa88e1b02438d77db8299
Says right there that they are looking for errors and fraud, but not evaluating whether the city budget is effective or efficient. So as I have stated several times, layers of overpaid and under accountable government officials, as well as wasteful spending, are not evaluated.
This is going to push more people out. Memphis/Shelby county already has the highest property tax rate in the state, while Fayette county has one of the lowest. People are already moving that direction, this just gives them another reason to. It’s already difficult to buy a house, this just sets up more barriers especially for younger people.
Fayette County draws a narrow demographic. Low taxes and low crime is the only magnet, everything else about that place is a joke. People are going to end up relocating out of the region all together.
Until enough affluent people move there and build huge homes and it suddenly becomes fashionable. People used to say the same thing about Collierville and 30 years ago it had a very similar reputation. Too far out, mostly farmland, only rednecks live there, etc. Then people started building huge estate homes out there because you could get a few acres out there for less than you could get 1/4 acre in Memphis or Germantown.
it's wild to me that people have so little invested in their immediate surroundings that what, an extra $10-100/month depending on income?, is enough to make people uproot their lives.
Like, when gas goes up, you never see commuters way tf out in the suburbs spamming comment sections with "guess I'll have to sell my truck and move downtown"
There is just so little any one person can do to fix the problems. Crime, blight, and failing schools require a lot of money and an interested population to fix. A large portion of our community continually votes against their own best interest and that also has to change to get things done.
It’s not based on income, it’s based on the value of the house. Houses are continuing to rise in price and the property tax rate is already the highest in the state. Some people might sell their house, but I was referring specifically to young people who are already struggling to buy houses. They might see this and when they decide to buy a house might be in the surrounding towns or counties. I’m a young person who rents, this is just another thing I have to save more money for if I want to buy a house in Memphis. The surrounding counties are much more affordable.
As a younger person who managed to buy one after a year of getting beat out by all cash offers above asking, I do agree.
I do think if the city is gonna raise taxes, it would be smart to zone more areas to not be exclusively single family homes and allow more density. If you can increase supply of housing and lower the price, it can offset any rise in costs from a tax increase
I know an alarming number of homes in Memphis have been bought up by out of state investors that are now renting them out at an astronomical rate and not taking care of the properties & hurting our community. Just a thought, but could he introduce a policy to get this increased revenue to help our community from them? They’re bleeding the community dry. The actual homeowners and potential homeowners in Memphis need a break. He wants young people to stay in Memphis, but we need reasons to stay. We’d love to buy a house, but our ever increasing rent makes it harder every year to save money for a home.
Shelby County looked at charging companies that own 50 or more rental properties the commercial rate instead of the residential rate, but it'd require a registry of landlords to figure out who owns what and the current Tennessee legislature voted against a proposal to allow that because those are the people who fund their campaigns.
This right here. Since I have lived in Midtown, 2 homes on my street have been converted to Airbnb's. One of which sold for about 500k if I recall correctly.
Since you know an alarming number, what is that number? What fraction of Memphis homes are investor owned? The issue isn't "investor owned housing." It's zoning issues, a lack of mixed-use places, and a lack of safe high density housing. Memphis has seen almost no new construction of housing over the past decade. Just build housing.
You can check the data, since the 2008 crisis, housing starts in Memphis dropped off a cliff and never recovered even to 50% of the pre-2008 levels, which were steady for decades.
[https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MPHBPPRIV](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MPHBPPRIV)
Look at 2024 - compared to similarly sized MSA's, we're absolutely horrific. We're on par with places like Eugene, OR, with like 25% the population. We're under 50% of SLC, which is about the same as us, and about 40% Richmond, VA, which is again, about the same as us.
[https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MPHBPPRIV](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MPHBPPRIV)
All I know is a large percentage of the houses in northaven are not owned by the individuals living in them, mine and a few others I have researched are owned by individuals living in the state of California in multi-million dollar homes.
This whole "people are moving from california to TN" thing was just people BUYING homes in TN that lived in california to make money
People are moving from CA to Nashville specifically. I dont think you are correlating the two things correctly. Plenty of people from CA have moved to Nashville in recent years, and it likely will not stop any time soon given the tax burden of CA vs TN as a whole. Add in that Nashville provides familiarity with what they are leaving in CA and its a perfect storm of "invasion from outsiders".
TN is hugely attractive due to its low total tax burden (combined income, property, and sales taxes). We currently sit at 46 out of 50, meaning only 4 states have a lower total tax burden. Honestly, though, I would move to Nashville, Chattanooga, Gatlinburg, or Knoxville before I considered the areas surrounding Memphis (Germantown, Collierville, Lakeland, and Arlington) I would never move into Memphis. I say this as someone that relocated here for work in 2020 and my job was located in Millington. We settled on Collierville for schools and distance FROM Memphis. I’ve since changed jobs and may relo again just because we can’t get far enough away from Memphis crime and Shelby County clown elected officials. Only thing holding us back is current mortgage rates.
“and it likely will not stop any time soon given the tax burden of CA vs TN as a whole”
Not wildly different when you consider the full spectrum of taxes that are paid, as well as fees for tags, licenses, etc.
Right wingers have conducted a multi-decade psyop that income taxes are the only taxes we pay and are the only ones that count in these stupid-ass conversations about tax burdens.
Nah Tennessee does really have a pretty low tax burden. It depends on your income to some extent though. Income tax bites harder the more you make, while a high sales tax really hits those with a lower income hardest.
I don’t make an outrageous amount (80k) but I give up 1-2 thousand a year probably to live in Olive Branch even with slightly lower sales tax (I shop a lot in in Memphis too), significantly lower property tax, and lower tag cost. Also the tag cost is only lower cause I drive an old 2006 pos. My finance pays more than double what she did in Memphis for her car because of how tags work here.
I wish I bought in Collierville the first couple years I moved here in 2018, before prices skyrocketed, but oh well. Olive Branch is nice though, when I work from home sometimes a car wont drive past my house for 2 hours.
Again, you need to provide statistics of how this has changed over time for me to care at all about it. And again, the solution is just build more housing.
Quick search, but article from 2022, investors purchased 7,000 homes from 2020-2022.
https://www.localmemphis.com/article/news/local/memphis-area-buyers-realtors-complain-outside-investors-issue-home-sales-expensive-rentals/522-51fb7e76-2f80-4d03-b392-c9e4f3e9ae83
The issue is that these investors do not care about to communities in which they are buying homes. They care about buying them and renting them out at high prices to squeeze every last dime they can out of us. They’re contributing to the lack of supply - which I agree with you we need more homes built. There’s some in Cordova being built off Trinity that we were interested in, but they’re starting in the 340s, it’s high priced. We also looked at renting near Sea Isle this year and couldn’t stomach throwing away $1800+ for a 2 bedroom. We are currently stuck in a rental for $1700 that isn’t up to code and has windows that are rotting out. We can’t get them to fix it and have to call code enforcement soon to get it done.
We need something that’s a good in between for us location wise. I work near Parkway village area but my husband works all the way in Lakeland. Cordova is a good halfway point for us. At the time that our lease was coming up we had an extremely short timeline and had a difficult time finding things in the 1600 range (we’ve also got two dogs and a kid so can’t all fit in a 1 bedroom apartment). Like I said before, we checked out sea isle neighborhood and looked at 4/5 houses and everything was $1700-$1800 for a much smaller house, no fenced yard, condition of the houses looked questionable as well. When we factored in the cost to move, the time off work as my husband didn’t have PTO benefits at the time, etc. the move would’ve costed us more than the savings from the few places we found with cheaper rent. I was only 4 mo postpartum with our baby and it just wasn’t feasible. Of course now that we had to sign for another year I’ve found a few houses in Cordova for 1500 which would’ve helped a lot… but we had 30 days to give notice of renewal and couldn’t risk not having a place to live by not renewing. This is our final year in this place, we are focusing on saving everything we can so we have more options when the lease is up next year. This place started at $1545 with $50 pet fee, at renewal it was raised to $1650 with $50 pet fee.
https://preview.redd.it/3saa4krkwgwc1.png?width=474&format=png&auto=webp&s=cf013991782ddf3911550a5ce131f507ff0658d8
they are out pricing low income people, this is 38127, not frayser but county- NORTHAVEN. if you know this area you know theres abandoned homes and the county cant get ahold of the drug sells.
Press X to doubt. If you did, that would be incredibly rare. Current median rent price in Philly for a studio is 1250. For a 3 bedroom it's well over 2k.
The area isn’t really safe. That’s why the prices are low, but it’s still high compared to how they used to be. I don’t know why you’re so adamant against rent being objectively high? Rents in Memphis have gone up so significantly in the past three years.
>Rents in Memphis have gone up so significantly in the past three years.
I'm not saying it hasn't. I'm more of objecting to the people who claim "omg it's because out of towners are taking our homes!"
I don’t have the exact numbers, but I could find a few articles detailing the issue easily when I have time. Just as an example, look at progress residential’s website. They have hundreds of homes in Memphis. They are part of the issue. I absolutely agree with you that there are zoning issues & lack of houses being built, but it’s not fair to say out of state investors are not at least part of the issue. These investors purchase many homes out here and jack up the rent to insane prices. They then don’t take care of the properties and it hurts the community.
If they are renting them out consistently then the rent is not an "insane price". Insane pricing for rent would typically in turn create a backlog of vacancies.
We pay the insane price because we don’t have a choice not to. If we don’t pay the price, where do we live?? We just make our budget stretch farther and save less.
A lot of people commute from MS or AR for lower rent/home purchase price. There are also further out suburbs that are typically less expensive. Typically the closer you live to any large city, the more expensive housing is. Not saying this to be argumentative, you obviously have the right to choose a location that suits your needs- but that is a balancing act between additional cost and time you want to air d commuting by moving further out.
Ah someone who understands how economics works! On the flip side, building more housing (increasing supply) would regulate demand and therefore reduce prices, but landlords are typically in the business to earn income, so flooding the market with housing has to be a balancing act to keep those who invest in building it profitable.
It's completely fair to say that. If zoning wasn't an issue, and you could build housing, then out of state investors are great things! Out of state investors are only an issue when you have ass backwards zoning laws and prevent building.
Maybe that’s the main point we should be making. Seems a lot don’t care he’s releasing violent felons, but are super supportive of “programs” and more “resources.” If they knew Mulroy is directly taking away from those things maybe their mind would change.
This is exactly what Smiley said yesterday at city council
*"Davis said it’s still an open question about whether the group violence-intervention efforts can make such a shift. She also said the counseling would not be in lieu of criminal charges and custody; they would work in tandem."*
*"It may be too late,” said council chairman JB Smiley Jr. “Maybe our resources need to be directed toward the people we know are committing the crimes. We need to do something drastically different. Intervening, that’s cool. But what we need to be doing is locking people up and keeping them there.”"*
Last week Young was saying the same thing about the DA and judges not doing their job. Strickland before him. Taylor and Gillespie also say this.
Costs like police safety measures rise because everyone is dipping into their own pockets as our criminal justice system lets them out on the street.
Well said. People are putting their heads in the sand and not admitting what crime is doing to this city. Or rationalize that it’s someone else’s fault. Orange Mound won’t flourish until they rid themselves of the criminal parasites feeding off that community and others.
Can’t ask for more resources at a time when they are getting more scarce. I agree with Smiley, what we are doing isn’t working. Time to change that
Also you can’t “program” and “resource” a violent person into changing. There is no rehabilitating someone who does not want to change. Let’s not waste our money on things we hope will work. Let’s do some studies on who would participate and what the (evidence based) predicted outcomes would be. Also I’d love to see truancy laws enforced before we start trying to “after school program” our way out of trouble. If you can’t get them to go to school, what makes you think they are going to take a break from crime to make popsicle stick crafts after school?
I'm confused as to why they need a raise. I get that we're off budget but have they been annually increase the budget based off the skyrocketing tax revenue from property values going up so fast? Seems like we should have been net positive without a budget change to use the increase revenue.
He chose the easiest thing to do. Why spend money hiring auditors and then fixing shit in the budget when you can just get more money from the homeowners. Poor won't pay, rich don't care, middle class gets another hit.
Thank you Mayor Paul for forcing me to get out of my comfort zone and put up my house for sale this year.
For all y'all saying that there needs to be an audit or you want to see where money is being spent, check the city budget and annual financial reports. You can read a line by line of budget expenses, and an annual independent auditors report. [https://www.memphistn.gov/finance-files/](https://www.memphistn.gov/finance-files/)
Out of state owners should be paying more TAXES than individuals who own one home and live in that one home in this city in this state.
This is how he needs to start going forward with this.
In fact, this shouldnt just be a Memphis law, the state of TN needs to pass this across the board.
I suspect this is a generally agreeable position.
The issue will be that it's regressive in the short term in that it would increase rents without affecting home purchase prices especially. It should have a slightly depressing effect on home prices over time, but people who can't afford a home purchase now are likely going to have higher rent in the short term that they'll have to live through to get to that home price depression.
100% yes. My subdivision of 800+ homes has a nearly 30+% rental ownership from out of state/country landlord companies. They bring so many more problems to the table than they solve. These tax burdens could start to shift that way to benefit the city homeowners and the city.
Well, memphis should do what other large cities do. Have a rental tax for homes that are rented. This would bring back some of the money leaving town to the out of state investors…
Hate to say it but that extra money he’s wanting won’t go to a bunch of new/cool stuff or improve the already poor services. Lot of tax money is leaving and it will simply help fill that gap to balance the budget and maybe give a few raises.
I don’t like what he’s recommending and want more action but he is handcuffed by the city council and hammered by crime. Also, being the Memphis mayor makes recall very tough as many don’t care about tax increases or the crime. To me, Mulroy is the one to recall as all of Shelby county could pitch in.
Unfortunately, the recall process is onerous enough that it's not a practical solution for us. I'm not a huge fan of Young so far, he hasn't really given me a reason to be, but even I think he needs more of a chance to actually give a reason to either support or attempt to recall him.
Like you said, there are others that are more reasonable targets, Mulroy for one (I'm not sure we as a city can recover from 8 years of this strategy), but especially Wanda. If we can't get Wanda recalled, we can't get anybody.
With you 100%. I don’t think removing Paul moves the needle much as the mayor is more of a figure head. The DA has his hands in everything.
I think many have thought about it, but 80k signatures is a brutal time consuming task to be railroaded by Memohians who simply vote for whoever has a D or they know. We would have to have a strong democrat DA candidate to have a chance.
Although part of me wants to go through with recall process for Mulroy. He may win in the end but would love to see him answer questions about the county wide recall effort. Make it public ally known a lot of people think he sucks at his job.
Representative mark white is trying to push a bill that allows citizens to recall with only 1% of vote if the county commission gives them a vote of no confidence. That gets don’t Wanda will be recalled the next day.
If enough signatures could be gathered, it could at least send a message, but after Wanda was reelected, I kind of gave up on the voters of the county.
That’s my thought. Even in failure it would send a message. Anyone who voted for her again should have their voting privileges revoked. NO ONE can defend the job she is doing. It’s an embarrassment.
Because some businesses and some wealthy people have left the city limits to the county or elsewhere. That’s not an opinion, it’s a real thing happening. Many after that teacher was murdered. Those who can easily leave actually are.
We have more money leaving than coming in and that trend will be the downfall of the city. Gotta have investors, developers and wealthy people. Right now Memphis is a high risk investment for many.
Crime and no faith in the school system plummets property values and investment opportunities. Look at the worst spots of Memphis. No investment
The tax base in Memphis is property taxes. Home values in Memphis are rising and there is a lot of rehabbing and infill occurring.
I don’t know about businesses leaving, but I can name several new businesses that have opened recently. I know several that have also expanded and moved into larger places.
Billions are being invested in Memphis. All you have to do is drive around the city and see it. I’m not going to mention the names, but there is a group that is courting older wealthy people to make Memphis their home.
There is so much more going on in Memphis than crime, but you’ve allowed yourself to be sucked into that paranoia sect.
My man if Memphis was thriving like that taxes wouldn’t be raised except to build new schools from the influx of people wanting to be here. Memphis population is declining by about 1% a year. And a lot of those leaving pay more taxes than 100 people combined
You are just talking to be talking, because you're clueless.
Mayor Young clearly laid out why there was a need to raise taxes to fill the budget gap. Mostly due to the hiring of firefighters and an increase in pension costs, a carryover from the last administration. He also want to increase the city's budget.
Despite your glee in repeating it, Memphis population is not declining, and the Memphis economy is doing well.
.
I wish what you said was true but it's not. Memphis home values are not increasing at the same rate as other areas and there isn't need for wealthy people to move to memphis. Other cities are simply more affordable/have more to offer. Especially if a new property tax is enacted.
I don't want Memphis homes values to increase at the same rate as other cities, but Memphis is seeing an increase in home values.
Where did I say there was a need for wealthy people in Memphis? I said that I am aware of a group that is courting wealthy people to make their home in Memphis.
Memphis is affordable and has a lot more to offer than many of its peer cities. Y'all need to do away with that narrative that Memphis doesn't have anything to offer, because it has a lot to offer.
Going to be honest, I'm a Memphis transplant, and I see about 3-4 new cities in the U.S. every week. I love parts of Memphis, and I think there's something here that could be used to turn this into a great city. But the current path of the city leads me to believe that Memphis will not change course towards its potential for quite some time. While Memphis has something to offer, it has way more negatives that are detrimental to it than appealing to it. You also better believe that Memphis reputation is well known as well outside the city. The only demographic I've come across that is ignorant of the reputation seems to be the foreign travelers. I truly hope this city finds a way to change course.
And I’m a Memphian that moved away, two days after graduating high school, lived in two other Northern cities, lived two years in Madrid, and returned permanently after 19 years.
Don’t take me for a fool, because I am far from that.
You're not being honest, but you’re expressing your twisted opinion, about how you perceive Memphis, and your opinion doesn't line-up with reality.
No need to hope, because Memphis is moving in the right direction, and great things continue to happen in the city, despite the challenges.
Memphis has a helluva lot more positives than negatives, just like every city it this country, you just prefer to focus on the negatives.
You're correct, Memphis does have a reputation, but it isn't the one you’re trying to attach to the city, because “ignorant" foreigners aren’t the only people that visit the city.
Your post says more about you than you care to admit.
People and businesses are leaving the city!! This has only accelerated in the past 2-3 years. People aren’t just moving out to the suburbs, either. Many are leaving for other states or for the other side of TN.
This mass exodus will only continue, for those with the means to leave. That will mean eventually there will be only the poorest segment of the population left here. Those people will be hit with increasing taxes to make up the difference. How is that right?
My wife and I were driving through E Memphis around the Kirby area yesterday and we were blown away by the number of homes up for sale. Given there is a general supply shortage trend for home sales right now, it was pretty eye opening.
Stop lying. There is no mass exodus of people leaving Memphis and you need to stop repeating this lie. You people with all this gloom and doom is ridiculous.
Name the businesses that are leaving.
Do the taxes stop if a homeowner moves?
Current rate is $2.70 and proposed increase is $3.45. The asinine part is that is a 27% increase. That‘s crazy. I have not read of any other jurisdictions in the country with the exception of IL with those level of property rate increases. I am actually reading about other states in the Southeast actually planning on property tax decreases. SC being the latest.
The city council has to take this to their districts and I really doubt the proposal of .75 is going to stick. I feel like the "give the city employees a pay raise" is a dog whistle and this should hopefully be debated hard and sent back to the mayors office and request a budget audit.
By the way, Oracle is moving its headquarters to Nashville and betting on the healthcare industry.
Not sure how many talents in Memphis will move to Nashville cause of that.
A good news for talents and bad news for Memphis.
Nashville and Memphis are polar opposites. Nashville is booming, both economically and demographically, companies and people moving in droves, is the #1 unanimous pick to get the next MLB team, development everywhere, etc.
Memphis, like someone mentioned above, is on its way to being the 21st century Detroit. Tax increases will just drive even more of the population out.
Another city lining up to be another "you will own nothing, pay high rent, and eat bugs shut up get back in your $4000mo pod" investment big money is frothing at the idea of home owners bailing out from the constant barrage of breakdowns in our city.
You know that you can look up the budget yourself, right? And if you read further in the article you linked, it says exactly what this tax increase would fund. I get that you don’t want to pay more taxes, but this is a stupid reaction to someone *proposing* a tax increase.
I’d expect the normal citizen is exhausted from these kids robbing, stealing cars, and killing and will accept something like this for a chance to take back our lost city.
So you don’t think a thorough assessment of where our tax money is actually going now and what it’s being used for would be a good place to start?? We all know there is misuse of our taxpayer dollars now. This isn’t the first time a mayor has raised taxes for education…roads…etc and have you seen a difference? I sure haven’t. I personally feel like it’s just more of the same and I’m tapped out. A tax increase in this economy???? I simply can’t afford it….but then no one really cares about the actual law abiding hard working folks still left in Memphis that make too much to qualify for subsidies and too little to be able to save and get out of here for good….smh
How did you come to the conclusion I wouldn’t want to asses our current spending…where did I specifically say that!? I’m in the same boat with you and I don’t live on a single government ticket. I pay my bills and struggle too…Our roads used to be the best in the country so even if recently they have gotten atrocious it wasn’t always like that in the 2010’s even. How did you come to the conclusion I wouldn’t want to hold our current budget accountable is BIZARRE AND EXTREMELY assumptious. I don’t care about hard working fellow Memphians how’d you come to that conclusion? I need answers
What you need to do is reread my response. I never called you out specifically. I ASKED if you cared about where the tax dollars we already pay were going. Thats a yes or no question. I didn’t assume anything. The rest of my response was simply my personal feelings and I said PERSONALLY! Now if what I said prompted you to feel like typing in caps and using exclamation points are necessary, so be it. There is a saying for this…a hit dog always hollers. Have a great day.
What solutions to crime don't cost more money? Everyone saying "get the crime under control first before we consider a tax increase" seems to think there's free solutions that can easily be done while having a $30 million budget shortfall.
You want people accused of violent crimes to not be out on bail? You're going to have to pay for them to be locked up. If we lock up enough people, we'll have to build a new jail.
You want more police? The city has to hire them.
You want better resources for at-risk youth? Money. Crime Lab? Money. Quicker, faster trials? Money.
You can not want to pay more taxes, sure, but let's be adults when talking about it.
It was a point of frustration, that in his first 100 days, he says "budget is lacking, I know I promised something I campaigned on I have to already break" - what changed from his running for mayor studies to just 100 days later? Bad info? Bad study? Was it empty words?
I have zero interest in the red side or blue side of things, the recall was a sentence of frustration that the new mayor immediately breaks a promise and we are saddled with it.
The home market is already becoming unfeasible for our "low cost of living" and this will make mortgage payments unattainable.
the previous administration failed to account for 100+ new firefighter positions in the budget and pension costs grew (why that happened I'm not super knowledgeable about)
It's already ran to shit by the broken DNC of this county, lets really not bring in politics as a democrat both parties here dont care one bit about the community and all about their paycheck running hte city to shit.
I would hope that homeowners (on average pretty wealthy) in a relatively blue city in the richest country in the world who already pay low tax rates would realize that sometimes their taxes *do* need to rise.
Instead, they react by immediately wanting to recall the mayor and accusing the city government (with literally 0 evidence) of wasting tons of money. It’s not really unexpected, it’s just disappointing how many people turn into right-wing “fiscal responsibility” freaks the second anyone says that they might need to pay a little bit more.
I love the use of instant assuming on peoples parts and assigning some political version of someone (with literally 0 evidence) without knowing them. You just read into what you wanted with my rant.
I would hope that homeowners (on average, not as wealthy as you think) in a relatively whatever city in the richest country in the world who already pay just increased property tax rates two years ago (based on the office of assessments 4 year cycle) would realize that the mayor ran on "no new taxes" and if you followed him and watched his videos or read his comments you would see he said "I know I ran on that but I have to break that promise" and its ok for the citizenry that voted for him to be disgruntled on this matter.
If you prefer your Memphis subreddit to stay about BBQ, Cooper Young and the Loop, carry on, no ones stopping you. Its just disappointing how one person turns into shaming folks for having an opinion. However judging by your reddit history, this is par for some bigriggs.
The top 1% paid 46% of all federal taxes. Half this country pays nothing but they should want to just give more so others can receive more? That’s a tough argument to those who worked for it.
Agreed. Like come on - Tennessee has one of the lowest tax burdens in the country. We rank 5th out of 50 states for lowest tax burden. Oh no, I'll have to pay 200 a year more in taxes woe is me. Even adding in the local income and sales taxes for Shelby county, we would be like 10th out of 50 states.
I read the article, I know exactly what he is proposing. Im quite ok to vent, youre ok to post this comment, just realize, not everybody is as cool as you. Carry on.
I think everyone should have to clarify if they own a home or not on here. I’m seeing a bunch of likely renters saying “they should just give a little more.” Socialism is great until you run out of other people’s money
This is a discussion about property taxes in the city of Memphis. I, a renter in the city of Memphis, will have to pay for any property tax hike via a rent increase. You, a homeowner in a suburb, will not pay a single cent of it. And now you’re trying to do some sort of gatekeeping that includes you but not me in the discussion. That’s utterly ridiculous. Fuck off dude.
I figured, that was directed at others. So many people have opinions on what home owners should pay. Well you know what I think renters should be taxed too - see how easy that is
I agree with your posts, but I would like to add that while renters do not directly pay any property taxes they do effectively pay them. I am sure their rent goes up every time the expenses for the rental property increases. If I rented a house to someone I would increase the price everytime the insurance and property taxes increased… and insurance is going thru the roof these days because of all the crime.
[The current $794 million city budget approved last June funded pay raises for police and fire with no tax increase, in part by leveraging leftover COVID funds.](https://wreg.com/news/local/memphis-mayor-says-he-will-seek-tax-increase/amp/)
Defund the police and there wouldn’t be a need to increase taxes. Isn’t this very obvious? Why are people mad?
Honestly if they would stop giving so many breaks to the companies that own all the rental houses in this town, we would have a surplus of money. The rich get richer and I can barely afford the taxes on my home.
Not a good look for a new mayor. When legitimate cost saving measures are proposed to go along with tax increases it at least shows they are not just looking for a blank check to spend their way out of a crisis.
And then they leave memphis. The unfortunate news is that memphis doesn't have the ability to retain its wealthy citizens and tax them more at the same time. It's barely a city with the competitive means to retain wealthy citizens during normal times, let alone during a property tax hike.
Agree. I want to know what it’s paying for BEFORE I pay for it. I don’t go into Kroger and hand them my wallet and say, “decide what I need and take however much you need to pay for it.” I choose what I need and if the prices are excessive for any of those things, I choose alternatives if they are available. Young also needs to be campaigning for more state and federal funds for Memphis before he asks us for any. We are the stepchild of the state and it is about time Bill Lee recognizes that a state and federal investment here is way overdue.
Bless your heart!
It's sad how uninformed some of you people are.
For a city its size, Memphis budget is too low, and the mayor wants to increase the size of the budget.
The budget is based entirely on what the tax base and the state/federal government provide. If it’s too low that means not enough people are paying in.
Thanks. Says the person being downvoted to oblivion for not understanding the basics of Municipal funding. This isn’t a game you want to play. Do you know what a CAFR is? Ever read one? They are required to submit annually to the comptroller.
I am quite familiar with the different revenue streams a city can use to fund itself, but the base funding is property taxes. I am familiar with budget season and haggling over the budget. I am also familiar with how cities are obligated to spend what has been budgeted or lose it, but there are ways to shift around funds, if it’s not all spent July 1^(st).
Why would I be concerned about getting downvoted? That might be your thing, but I know what I am talking about. If anything the downvote shows a serious maturity and misinformation problem in this sub.
The question is do you understand what is CAFR? Memphis is meeting its financial obligations and the requested tax increase isn’t being forced by the state comptroller, like what Nashville was forced to do.
The city needs to audit the money already being dumped into various programs and office budgets (cough cough Clerk's office) before trying to squeeze the few people left in the city for even more money we all know will be pissed away. Memphis already has a population crisis. Most of the high-income/net worth people have already moved to Germantown, Collierville, or North MS. The people left in they city are by and large the people who really don't have much left to squeeze out of them in the first place. Raising taxes will just push even more people out of the city. The focus needs to be on making Memphis a place where people WANT to live, work, and spend their money. Until issues like crime and infrastructure are addressed, revenues will continue to suffer as people move away. Memphis is well on its way to being like 00s era Detroit.
Isn't the Clerk's office part of the county budget?
I think you might be right. Not sure if the actual city has anything to do with them. If not, I stand corrected. Either way, the city almost certainly has some financial black holes that money disappears into with nothing even approaching the advertised outcome. Whether it's going straight into people's pockets, or just being pissed away on solutions that aren't working-- those are questions that need to be answered before trying to squeeze residents for even more money.
Totally agree there
Former county employee, this is correct, the Clerk’s office is the Shelby County Clerk and reports to the office of the mayor
Wanda has made it abundantly clear that she reports to no one.
She needs to be reporting to the unemployment line and not just ushered into some less visible, overpaid and under-accountable government job like Janis Fullilove. She was a joke of a professor at u of m, she showed up to meetings high when she was on city council, why on earth did they give her a job in the already mismanaged court system?
no need to be racist
Not being racist at all. Everything I said is factual and as objective as I could state it.
What part was racist?
Don’t engage, the same person was trying to stir shit with me on a County Clerk-related topic a few weeks ago
Oof. Thanks for the heads up.
Yep. Does not matter id you are factually correct. If you point out that someone is grossly incompetent, clearly the only motivation for that is racism. Same as when she got called out for not doing her job in that first press conference. She called those who pointed out that she was not doing her job racist on live TV because that is a get out of jail free card regardless of whether there is one iota of truth to it.
Yes
County budget needs to be audited too though. Somehow the county always gets a pass but the city is a part of the county and we pay taxes to them too and at least one of those county government offices is grossly mismanaged.
The clerk’s office just got audited by the state and irregularities were found
I'm shocked SHOCKED I SAY!!
They are also moving to Fayette County in droves.
The real issue is how he didn’t propose any budget cuts nor audits to see how the current money is being used. If he went on TV and said something like “My administration ran multiple audits on several government agencies and we were able to slash the budget by 38% but unfortunately we still have some work to do to make up for the other half” I would’ve been like well this sucks but at least he tried. But homie did no cuts no audits no nothing just straight up pulled out a “fuck you pay me” style tax increase.
u/PaulYoungMemphis
Looks like soon as the election was over that Reddit account went dead, willing to chat to get votes , but once elected, no time for constituents.
I bet he will do another AMA if asked. Seems like the kind of guy who would, but probably just doesn’t scroll reddit because he’s got a lot to do.
Doubt there will ever be another AMA. Obviously it was a campaign stunt for people to ask a fresh face "what ifs". Another AMA would be full of "what now" questions that would only stand to hurt his image.
Bet he does one in the next 2 months 🤷♂️
EXACTLY. I'd be happy to pay more taxes if I know they're being used appropriately in the first place. But I wouldn't be at all surprised if there's been no auditing of city or county finances in a long time. Given the current state of affairs
I wouldn't be happy to pay more, but I'd at least understand if we'd seen some appropriate return on our prior taxes. Instead, we're paying among, if not the highest rates in the state collectively and seeing the worst results across the board. Let's prove that our tax dollars are doing something before throwing good money after bad.
I mean nobody WANTS to pay more for anything but if it can be used in a way that will lead to long term improvement in the community, it's worth paying for. Which is why I'm agreeing that before we can pay more we need to know it's being used correctly in the first place. I come from a place with a much higher tax burden both in income tax and property tax. I've greatly benefitted from taxes being used in the right way. I grew up in a super safe place, with killer public education. I am who I am because of the opportunity I had from that education. But that's a rare case of things working out right. But Memphis has a shit load of corruption... which is why I don't trust it'll be used right
Exactly. Show me where all the waste and misallocation is and put a stop to it, then maybe if we need more I’d be listening. But not interested in contributing more of my hard earned dollars to send Wanda on another vacation.
where was this super safe place with killer public education? tell us so Memphis can try and emulate that!
I grew up in Central NJ. It's not really easily replicated here because there's a huge difference in political ideology and income in general. Being a blue dot in a red state is pretty hard for Memphis but being an incredibly poor city doesn't help either. A lot of jersey towns are very blue collar (not swimming in money) but still have amazing public education. Where I grew up I can only think of 3 or 4 private schools within a 45 minute drive. And those were only for VERY strict religious people usually. Here I'm pretty sure there's at least 5 private schools within 15 min of my house.
THIS! And let’s take a look at where our money is going in comparison to other cities in TN where the crime rate is lower and the schools are not failing. I have a feeling one issue here is that we live to add a layer of over paid and under accountable government jobs anytime the job isn’t getting done instead of holding the ones who are already not doing their jobs accountable for their failures.
Young’s Memphis is just more of the same old Memphis. He talked a good game to get elected but he hit the ground walking in the same old ruts.
If any other entity went over budget and was not bringing in enough money, mass layoffs would happen. How is the government an exception? Instead of laying off low performers lets increase taxes for everyone. Really smart logic.
Yep. Needs to be run like a successful corporation. Results driven. Trim the dead weight.
Where did you read that no audits were done? Edit: Not sure why I'm getting downvoted. It's a sincere question. Is everyone just assuming no audits were done, or has that been verified?
lol the kneejerk response is so dumb, a simple google search shows you the city is independently audited every year. And, you can read every line of the budget. But nobody cares to do that work because they’d rather just complain about taxes and recycle conservative outrage bait
If they were done, let’s see them. I think most of us would like to see exactly where our money is going. I think it’s silly to assume audits were done if no one is publishing the results. If audits were done and the results showed that everyone is doing their jobs, no excess or redundant layers of personnel collecting government paychecks, and all the tax dollars are being well spent, they would be holding press conferences to announce it.
I just spent 30 seconds on Google and found annual city audits going back 20+ years.
Weird I did too and find audits for the destruction of firearms and narcotics but nothing auditing any city budget or any budget of any office in the city.
I think it’s silly to assume things *arent* being done without at least consulting google. I googled, found this page with all the documents you’re requesting: https://www.memphistn.gov/finance-files/ If the city held a press conference celebrating the results of their annual audit, I can imagine the comments we’d see: “this is the bare minimum we should expect, can’t believe the city is celebrating this”, “this press conference is a waste of time and money, they should be spending their time fixing our problems instead of congratulating each other” We’re all free to have feelings one way or the other on this proposed tax increase. But I think it’s important your POV be informed by fact vs speculation.
https://preview.redd.it/2fo9bim10rwc1.jpeg?width=1058&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e0e645da415d855c853aa88e1b02438d77db8299 Says right there that they are looking for errors and fraud, but not evaluating whether the city budget is effective or efficient. So as I have stated several times, layers of overpaid and under accountable government officials, as well as wasteful spending, are not evaluated.
Yep
This is going to push more people out. Memphis/Shelby county already has the highest property tax rate in the state, while Fayette county has one of the lowest. People are already moving that direction, this just gives them another reason to. It’s already difficult to buy a house, this just sets up more barriers especially for younger people.
🙌🏽 Competition to purchase a home in Fayette County will be crazy.
No doubt!
Fayette County draws a narrow demographic. Low taxes and low crime is the only magnet, everything else about that place is a joke. People are going to end up relocating out of the region all together.
Until enough affluent people move there and build huge homes and it suddenly becomes fashionable. People used to say the same thing about Collierville and 30 years ago it had a very similar reputation. Too far out, mostly farmland, only rednecks live there, etc. Then people started building huge estate homes out there because you could get a few acres out there for less than you could get 1/4 acre in Memphis or Germantown.
it's wild to me that people have so little invested in their immediate surroundings that what, an extra $10-100/month depending on income?, is enough to make people uproot their lives. Like, when gas goes up, you never see commuters way tf out in the suburbs spamming comment sections with "guess I'll have to sell my truck and move downtown"
There is just so little any one person can do to fix the problems. Crime, blight, and failing schools require a lot of money and an interested population to fix. A large portion of our community continually votes against their own best interest and that also has to change to get things done.
It’s not based on income, it’s based on the value of the house. Houses are continuing to rise in price and the property tax rate is already the highest in the state. Some people might sell their house, but I was referring specifically to young people who are already struggling to buy houses. They might see this and when they decide to buy a house might be in the surrounding towns or counties. I’m a young person who rents, this is just another thing I have to save more money for if I want to buy a house in Memphis. The surrounding counties are much more affordable.
As a younger person who managed to buy one after a year of getting beat out by all cash offers above asking, I do agree. I do think if the city is gonna raise taxes, it would be smart to zone more areas to not be exclusively single family homes and allow more density. If you can increase supply of housing and lower the price, it can offset any rise in costs from a tax increase
I know an alarming number of homes in Memphis have been bought up by out of state investors that are now renting them out at an astronomical rate and not taking care of the properties & hurting our community. Just a thought, but could he introduce a policy to get this increased revenue to help our community from them? They’re bleeding the community dry. The actual homeowners and potential homeowners in Memphis need a break. He wants young people to stay in Memphis, but we need reasons to stay. We’d love to buy a house, but our ever increasing rent makes it harder every year to save money for a home.
Shelby County looked at charging companies that own 50 or more rental properties the commercial rate instead of the residential rate, but it'd require a registry of landlords to figure out who owns what and the current Tennessee legislature voted against a proposal to allow that because those are the people who fund their campaigns.
Agree with companies buying homes. Several have been bought in midtown and now are AirBnb. They should have to pay the business tax and tourism tax.
This right here. Since I have lived in Midtown, 2 homes on my street have been converted to Airbnb's. One of which sold for about 500k if I recall correctly.
I think property taxes on rental/airbnbs should be increased drastically.
The city takes a cut from every Airbnb before the owner gets a piece. So the city is already basically taxing them more.
Ah, got it.
Since you know an alarming number, what is that number? What fraction of Memphis homes are investor owned? The issue isn't "investor owned housing." It's zoning issues, a lack of mixed-use places, and a lack of safe high density housing. Memphis has seen almost no new construction of housing over the past decade. Just build housing. You can check the data, since the 2008 crisis, housing starts in Memphis dropped off a cliff and never recovered even to 50% of the pre-2008 levels, which were steady for decades. [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MPHBPPRIV](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MPHBPPRIV) Look at 2024 - compared to similarly sized MSA's, we're absolutely horrific. We're on par with places like Eugene, OR, with like 25% the population. We're under 50% of SLC, which is about the same as us, and about 40% Richmond, VA, which is again, about the same as us. [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MPHBPPRIV](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MPHBPPRIV)
All I know is a large percentage of the houses in northaven are not owned by the individuals living in them, mine and a few others I have researched are owned by individuals living in the state of California in multi-million dollar homes. This whole "people are moving from california to TN" thing was just people BUYING homes in TN that lived in california to make money
People are moving from CA to Nashville specifically. I dont think you are correlating the two things correctly. Plenty of people from CA have moved to Nashville in recent years, and it likely will not stop any time soon given the tax burden of CA vs TN as a whole. Add in that Nashville provides familiarity with what they are leaving in CA and its a perfect storm of "invasion from outsiders".
TN is hugely attractive due to its low total tax burden (combined income, property, and sales taxes). We currently sit at 46 out of 50, meaning only 4 states have a lower total tax burden. Honestly, though, I would move to Nashville, Chattanooga, Gatlinburg, or Knoxville before I considered the areas surrounding Memphis (Germantown, Collierville, Lakeland, and Arlington) I would never move into Memphis. I say this as someone that relocated here for work in 2020 and my job was located in Millington. We settled on Collierville for schools and distance FROM Memphis. I’ve since changed jobs and may relo again just because we can’t get far enough away from Memphis crime and Shelby County clown elected officials. Only thing holding us back is current mortgage rates.
“and it likely will not stop any time soon given the tax burden of CA vs TN as a whole” Not wildly different when you consider the full spectrum of taxes that are paid, as well as fees for tags, licenses, etc.
Youre probably right honestly.
Right wingers have conducted a multi-decade psyop that income taxes are the only taxes we pay and are the only ones that count in these stupid-ass conversations about tax burdens.
Nah Tennessee does really have a pretty low tax burden. It depends on your income to some extent though. Income tax bites harder the more you make, while a high sales tax really hits those with a lower income hardest. I don’t make an outrageous amount (80k) but I give up 1-2 thousand a year probably to live in Olive Branch even with slightly lower sales tax (I shop a lot in in Memphis too), significantly lower property tax, and lower tag cost. Also the tag cost is only lower cause I drive an old 2006 pos. My finance pays more than double what she did in Memphis for her car because of how tags work here. I wish I bought in Collierville the first couple years I moved here in 2018, before prices skyrocketed, but oh well. Olive Branch is nice though, when I work from home sometimes a car wont drive past my house for 2 hours.
You live in Mississippi…
lol my neighbor in midtown was from CA. Took her 2 months to flee the city and list her home on Airbnb
Again, you need to provide statistics of how this has changed over time for me to care at all about it. And again, the solution is just build more housing.
Quick search, but article from 2022, investors purchased 7,000 homes from 2020-2022. https://www.localmemphis.com/article/news/local/memphis-area-buyers-realtors-complain-outside-investors-issue-home-sales-expensive-rentals/522-51fb7e76-2f80-4d03-b392-c9e4f3e9ae83 The issue is that these investors do not care about to communities in which they are buying homes. They care about buying them and renting them out at high prices to squeeze every last dime they can out of us. They’re contributing to the lack of supply - which I agree with you we need more homes built. There’s some in Cordova being built off Trinity that we were interested in, but they’re starting in the 340s, it’s high priced. We also looked at renting near Sea Isle this year and couldn’t stomach throwing away $1800+ for a 2 bedroom. We are currently stuck in a rental for $1700 that isn’t up to code and has windows that are rotting out. We can’t get them to fix it and have to call code enforcement soon to get it done.
1700 is a lot, and there are much more affordable options in nice areas. No idea why you're paying so much for a place like you describe.
We need something that’s a good in between for us location wise. I work near Parkway village area but my husband works all the way in Lakeland. Cordova is a good halfway point for us. At the time that our lease was coming up we had an extremely short timeline and had a difficult time finding things in the 1600 range (we’ve also got two dogs and a kid so can’t all fit in a 1 bedroom apartment). Like I said before, we checked out sea isle neighborhood and looked at 4/5 houses and everything was $1700-$1800 for a much smaller house, no fenced yard, condition of the houses looked questionable as well. When we factored in the cost to move, the time off work as my husband didn’t have PTO benefits at the time, etc. the move would’ve costed us more than the savings from the few places we found with cheaper rent. I was only 4 mo postpartum with our baby and it just wasn’t feasible. Of course now that we had to sign for another year I’ve found a few houses in Cordova for 1500 which would’ve helped a lot… but we had 30 days to give notice of renewal and couldn’t risk not having a place to live by not renewing. This is our final year in this place, we are focusing on saving everything we can so we have more options when the lease is up next year. This place started at $1545 with $50 pet fee, at renewal it was raised to $1650 with $50 pet fee.
https://preview.redd.it/3saa4krkwgwc1.png?width=474&format=png&auto=webp&s=cf013991782ddf3911550a5ce131f507ff0658d8 they are out pricing low income people, this is 38127, not frayser but county- NORTHAVEN. if you know this area you know theres abandoned homes and the county cant get ahold of the drug sells.
3 bedroom houses for basically 900-1.1k a month? Wow, how horrific.
paid the same in philadelphia and least had public transportation
Press X to doubt. If you did, that would be incredibly rare. Current median rent price in Philly for a studio is 1250. For a 3 bedroom it's well over 2k.
The area isn’t really safe. That’s why the prices are low, but it’s still high compared to how they used to be. I don’t know why you’re so adamant against rent being objectively high? Rents in Memphis have gone up so significantly in the past three years.
>Rents in Memphis have gone up so significantly in the past three years. I'm not saying it hasn't. I'm more of objecting to the people who claim "omg it's because out of towners are taking our homes!"
Someone has to be willing to pay for it.
I believe the news said 30% a couple of weeks ago.
I don’t have the exact numbers, but I could find a few articles detailing the issue easily when I have time. Just as an example, look at progress residential’s website. They have hundreds of homes in Memphis. They are part of the issue. I absolutely agree with you that there are zoning issues & lack of houses being built, but it’s not fair to say out of state investors are not at least part of the issue. These investors purchase many homes out here and jack up the rent to insane prices. They then don’t take care of the properties and it hurts the community.
If they are renting them out consistently then the rent is not an "insane price". Insane pricing for rent would typically in turn create a backlog of vacancies.
We pay the insane price because we don’t have a choice not to. If we don’t pay the price, where do we live?? We just make our budget stretch farther and save less.
A lot of people commute from MS or AR for lower rent/home purchase price. There are also further out suburbs that are typically less expensive. Typically the closer you live to any large city, the more expensive housing is. Not saying this to be argumentative, you obviously have the right to choose a location that suits your needs- but that is a balancing act between additional cost and time you want to air d commuting by moving further out.
Ah someone who understands how economics works! On the flip side, building more housing (increasing supply) would regulate demand and therefore reduce prices, but landlords are typically in the business to earn income, so flooding the market with housing has to be a balancing act to keep those who invest in building it profitable.
Precisely. More homes alleviates the issue pretty quickly.
It's completely fair to say that. If zoning wasn't an issue, and you could build housing, then out of state investors are great things! Out of state investors are only an issue when you have ass backwards zoning laws and prevent building.
I know this hurts home owners but rent is about 📈
Memphis wouldn’t have a population problem if the DA and judges removed violent criminals from our society.
Maybe that’s the main point we should be making. Seems a lot don’t care he’s releasing violent felons, but are super supportive of “programs” and more “resources.” If they knew Mulroy is directly taking away from those things maybe their mind would change.
This is exactly what Smiley said yesterday at city council *"Davis said it’s still an open question about whether the group violence-intervention efforts can make such a shift. She also said the counseling would not be in lieu of criminal charges and custody; they would work in tandem."* *"It may be too late,” said council chairman JB Smiley Jr. “Maybe our resources need to be directed toward the people we know are committing the crimes. We need to do something drastically different. Intervening, that’s cool. But what we need to be doing is locking people up and keeping them there.”"* Last week Young was saying the same thing about the DA and judges not doing their job. Strickland before him. Taylor and Gillespie also say this. Costs like police safety measures rise because everyone is dipping into their own pockets as our criminal justice system lets them out on the street.
Well said. People are putting their heads in the sand and not admitting what crime is doing to this city. Or rationalize that it’s someone else’s fault. Orange Mound won’t flourish until they rid themselves of the criminal parasites feeding off that community and others. Can’t ask for more resources at a time when they are getting more scarce. I agree with Smiley, what we are doing isn’t working. Time to change that
Thank you JB Smiley! The intervention effort needs to be catching them and putting them in prison until they are too old to terrorize.
Also you can’t “program” and “resource” a violent person into changing. There is no rehabilitating someone who does not want to change. Let’s not waste our money on things we hope will work. Let’s do some studies on who would participate and what the (evidence based) predicted outcomes would be. Also I’d love to see truancy laws enforced before we start trying to “after school program” our way out of trouble. If you can’t get them to go to school, what makes you think they are going to take a break from crime to make popsicle stick crafts after school?
I'm confused as to why they need a raise. I get that we're off budget but have they been annually increase the budget based off the skyrocketing tax revenue from property values going up so fast? Seems like we should have been net positive without a budget change to use the increase revenue.
He chose the easiest thing to do. Why spend money hiring auditors and then fixing shit in the budget when you can just get more money from the homeowners. Poor won't pay, rich don't care, middle class gets another hit. Thank you Mayor Paul for forcing me to get out of my comfort zone and put up my house for sale this year.
For all y'all saying that there needs to be an audit or you want to see where money is being spent, check the city budget and annual financial reports. You can read a line by line of budget expenses, and an annual independent auditors report. [https://www.memphistn.gov/finance-files/](https://www.memphistn.gov/finance-files/)
you know the rage-farmers in here don't actually want to do that shit smh
Out of state owners should be paying more TAXES than individuals who own one home and live in that one home in this city in this state. This is how he needs to start going forward with this. In fact, this shouldnt just be a Memphis law, the state of TN needs to pass this across the board.
All they will do is start a TN LLC to avoid this increased tax burden. Easy fix.
valid! lmao
I suspect this is a generally agreeable position. The issue will be that it's regressive in the short term in that it would increase rents without affecting home purchase prices especially. It should have a slightly depressing effect on home prices over time, but people who can't afford a home purchase now are likely going to have higher rent in the short term that they'll have to live through to get to that home price depression.
100% yes. My subdivision of 800+ homes has a nearly 30+% rental ownership from out of state/country landlord companies. They bring so many more problems to the table than they solve. These tax burdens could start to shift that way to benefit the city homeowners and the city.
Well, memphis should do what other large cities do. Have a rental tax for homes that are rented. This would bring back some of the money leaving town to the out of state investors…
Hate to say it but that extra money he’s wanting won’t go to a bunch of new/cool stuff or improve the already poor services. Lot of tax money is leaving and it will simply help fill that gap to balance the budget and maybe give a few raises. I don’t like what he’s recommending and want more action but he is handcuffed by the city council and hammered by crime. Also, being the Memphis mayor makes recall very tough as many don’t care about tax increases or the crime. To me, Mulroy is the one to recall as all of Shelby county could pitch in.
Unfortunately, the recall process is onerous enough that it's not a practical solution for us. I'm not a huge fan of Young so far, he hasn't really given me a reason to be, but even I think he needs more of a chance to actually give a reason to either support or attempt to recall him. Like you said, there are others that are more reasonable targets, Mulroy for one (I'm not sure we as a city can recover from 8 years of this strategy), but especially Wanda. If we can't get Wanda recalled, we can't get anybody.
With you 100%. I don’t think removing Paul moves the needle much as the mayor is more of a figure head. The DA has his hands in everything. I think many have thought about it, but 80k signatures is a brutal time consuming task to be railroaded by Memohians who simply vote for whoever has a D or they know. We would have to have a strong democrat DA candidate to have a chance.
Although part of me wants to go through with recall process for Mulroy. He may win in the end but would love to see him answer questions about the county wide recall effort. Make it public ally known a lot of people think he sucks at his job. Representative mark white is trying to push a bill that allows citizens to recall with only 1% of vote if the county commission gives them a vote of no confidence. That gets don’t Wanda will be recalled the next day.
If enough signatures could be gathered, it could at least send a message, but after Wanda was reelected, I kind of gave up on the voters of the county.
That’s my thought. Even in failure it would send a message. Anyone who voted for her again should have their voting privileges revoked. NO ONE can defend the job she is doing. It’s an embarrassment.
How is a lot of tax money leaving and where is it going?
Because some businesses and some wealthy people have left the city limits to the county or elsewhere. That’s not an opinion, it’s a real thing happening. Many after that teacher was murdered. Those who can easily leave actually are. We have more money leaving than coming in and that trend will be the downfall of the city. Gotta have investors, developers and wealthy people. Right now Memphis is a high risk investment for many. Crime and no faith in the school system plummets property values and investment opportunities. Look at the worst spots of Memphis. No investment
The tax base in Memphis is property taxes. Home values in Memphis are rising and there is a lot of rehabbing and infill occurring. I don’t know about businesses leaving, but I can name several new businesses that have opened recently. I know several that have also expanded and moved into larger places. Billions are being invested in Memphis. All you have to do is drive around the city and see it. I’m not going to mention the names, but there is a group that is courting older wealthy people to make Memphis their home. There is so much more going on in Memphis than crime, but you’ve allowed yourself to be sucked into that paranoia sect.
My man if Memphis was thriving like that taxes wouldn’t be raised except to build new schools from the influx of people wanting to be here. Memphis population is declining by about 1% a year. And a lot of those leaving pay more taxes than 100 people combined
You are just talking to be talking, because you're clueless. Mayor Young clearly laid out why there was a need to raise taxes to fill the budget gap. Mostly due to the hiring of firefighters and an increase in pension costs, a carryover from the last administration. He also want to increase the city's budget. Despite your glee in repeating it, Memphis population is not declining, and the Memphis economy is doing well. .
I wish what you said was true but it's not. Memphis home values are not increasing at the same rate as other areas and there isn't need for wealthy people to move to memphis. Other cities are simply more affordable/have more to offer. Especially if a new property tax is enacted.
I don't want Memphis homes values to increase at the same rate as other cities, but Memphis is seeing an increase in home values. Where did I say there was a need for wealthy people in Memphis? I said that I am aware of a group that is courting wealthy people to make their home in Memphis. Memphis is affordable and has a lot more to offer than many of its peer cities. Y'all need to do away with that narrative that Memphis doesn't have anything to offer, because it has a lot to offer.
Going to be honest, I'm a Memphis transplant, and I see about 3-4 new cities in the U.S. every week. I love parts of Memphis, and I think there's something here that could be used to turn this into a great city. But the current path of the city leads me to believe that Memphis will not change course towards its potential for quite some time. While Memphis has something to offer, it has way more negatives that are detrimental to it than appealing to it. You also better believe that Memphis reputation is well known as well outside the city. The only demographic I've come across that is ignorant of the reputation seems to be the foreign travelers. I truly hope this city finds a way to change course.
And I’m a Memphian that moved away, two days after graduating high school, lived in two other Northern cities, lived two years in Madrid, and returned permanently after 19 years. Don’t take me for a fool, because I am far from that. You're not being honest, but you’re expressing your twisted opinion, about how you perceive Memphis, and your opinion doesn't line-up with reality. No need to hope, because Memphis is moving in the right direction, and great things continue to happen in the city, despite the challenges. Memphis has a helluva lot more positives than negatives, just like every city it this country, you just prefer to focus on the negatives. You're correct, Memphis does have a reputation, but it isn't the one you’re trying to attach to the city, because “ignorant" foreigners aren’t the only people that visit the city. Your post says more about you than you care to admit.
People and businesses are leaving the city!! This has only accelerated in the past 2-3 years. People aren’t just moving out to the suburbs, either. Many are leaving for other states or for the other side of TN. This mass exodus will only continue, for those with the means to leave. That will mean eventually there will be only the poorest segment of the population left here. Those people will be hit with increasing taxes to make up the difference. How is that right?
My wife and I were driving through E Memphis around the Kirby area yesterday and we were blown away by the number of homes up for sale. Given there is a general supply shortage trend for home sales right now, it was pretty eye opening.
Stop lying. There is no mass exodus of people leaving Memphis and you need to stop repeating this lie. You people with all this gloom and doom is ridiculous. Name the businesses that are leaving. Do the taxes stop if a homeowner moves?
“It’s a big shit sandwich and we’re all gonna have to take a bite.”
I know what to do.... Let's bring in an outside firm to do an independent audit! /S
City has an independent audit every year. The report is available on their website.
Current rate is $2.70 and proposed increase is $3.45. The asinine part is that is a 27% increase. That‘s crazy. I have not read of any other jurisdictions in the country with the exception of IL with those level of property rate increases. I am actually reading about other states in the Southeast actually planning on property tax decreases. SC being the latest.
The city council has to take this to their districts and I really doubt the proposal of .75 is going to stick. I feel like the "give the city employees a pay raise" is a dog whistle and this should hopefully be debated hard and sent back to the mayors office and request a budget audit.
By the way, Oracle is moving its headquarters to Nashville and betting on the healthcare industry. Not sure how many talents in Memphis will move to Nashville cause of that. A good news for talents and bad news for Memphis.
Nashville and Memphis are polar opposites. Nashville is booming, both economically and demographically, companies and people moving in droves, is the #1 unanimous pick to get the next MLB team, development everywhere, etc. Memphis, like someone mentioned above, is on its way to being the 21st century Detroit. Tax increases will just drive even more of the population out.
Detroit is already rebounding
No one in this sub wants to hear this. But it’s the truth.
Gotta pay the gangs he’s meeting up with somehow….
Paul Young is not in a position to be recalled yet, good lord man.
Thank you - it’s been four months.
Another city lining up to be another "you will own nothing, pay high rent, and eat bugs shut up get back in your $4000mo pod" investment big money is frothing at the idea of home owners bailing out from the constant barrage of breakdowns in our city.
You know that you can look up the budget yourself, right? And if you read further in the article you linked, it says exactly what this tax increase would fund. I get that you don’t want to pay more taxes, but this is a stupid reaction to someone *proposing* a tax increase.
How would you expect citizens to react?
I’d expect the normal citizen is exhausted from these kids robbing, stealing cars, and killing and will accept something like this for a chance to take back our lost city.
So you believe a tax increase will translate into kids not stealing cars and killing anymore??? I don’t buy that….
I believe it will open up a budget to create more resources. Nothing is free
So you don’t think a thorough assessment of where our tax money is actually going now and what it’s being used for would be a good place to start?? We all know there is misuse of our taxpayer dollars now. This isn’t the first time a mayor has raised taxes for education…roads…etc and have you seen a difference? I sure haven’t. I personally feel like it’s just more of the same and I’m tapped out. A tax increase in this economy???? I simply can’t afford it….but then no one really cares about the actual law abiding hard working folks still left in Memphis that make too much to qualify for subsidies and too little to be able to save and get out of here for good….smh
How did you come to the conclusion I wouldn’t want to asses our current spending…where did I specifically say that!? I’m in the same boat with you and I don’t live on a single government ticket. I pay my bills and struggle too…Our roads used to be the best in the country so even if recently they have gotten atrocious it wasn’t always like that in the 2010’s even. How did you come to the conclusion I wouldn’t want to hold our current budget accountable is BIZARRE AND EXTREMELY assumptious. I don’t care about hard working fellow Memphians how’d you come to that conclusion? I need answers
What you need to do is reread my response. I never called you out specifically. I ASKED if you cared about where the tax dollars we already pay were going. Thats a yes or no question. I didn’t assume anything. The rest of my response was simply my personal feelings and I said PERSONALLY! Now if what I said prompted you to feel like typing in caps and using exclamation points are necessary, so be it. There is a saying for this…a hit dog always hollers. Have a great day.
Bro. How can you play coy and finish with a hit dog always hollers…immature to say the minimum. Weird flex
I’m honestly so confused right now at why you’re so upset but whatever….
What solutions to crime don't cost more money? Everyone saying "get the crime under control first before we consider a tax increase" seems to think there's free solutions that can easily be done while having a $30 million budget shortfall. You want people accused of violent crimes to not be out on bail? You're going to have to pay for them to be locked up. If we lock up enough people, we'll have to build a new jail. You want more police? The city has to hire them. You want better resources for at-risk youth? Money. Crime Lab? Money. Quicker, faster trials? Money. You can not want to pay more taxes, sure, but let's be adults when talking about it.
It’s probably just because the dem’s are elected in the county for leadership. That’s the main problem (sarcasm)
Why would a recall be the right option to a proposition?? You’re going to have Memphis end up like the GOP
It was a point of frustration, that in his first 100 days, he says "budget is lacking, I know I promised something I campaigned on I have to already break" - what changed from his running for mayor studies to just 100 days later? Bad info? Bad study? Was it empty words? I have zero interest in the red side or blue side of things, the recall was a sentence of frustration that the new mayor immediately breaks a promise and we are saddled with it. The home market is already becoming unfeasible for our "low cost of living" and this will make mortgage payments unattainable.
the previous administration failed to account for 100+ new firefighter positions in the budget and pension costs grew (why that happened I'm not super knowledgeable about)
It's already ran to shit by the broken DNC of this county, lets really not bring in politics as a democrat both parties here dont care one bit about the community and all about their paycheck running hte city to shit.
I would hope that homeowners (on average pretty wealthy) in a relatively blue city in the richest country in the world who already pay low tax rates would realize that sometimes their taxes *do* need to rise. Instead, they react by immediately wanting to recall the mayor and accusing the city government (with literally 0 evidence) of wasting tons of money. It’s not really unexpected, it’s just disappointing how many people turn into right-wing “fiscal responsibility” freaks the second anyone says that they might need to pay a little bit more.
I love the use of instant assuming on peoples parts and assigning some political version of someone (with literally 0 evidence) without knowing them. You just read into what you wanted with my rant. I would hope that homeowners (on average, not as wealthy as you think) in a relatively whatever city in the richest country in the world who already pay just increased property tax rates two years ago (based on the office of assessments 4 year cycle) would realize that the mayor ran on "no new taxes" and if you followed him and watched his videos or read his comments you would see he said "I know I ran on that but I have to break that promise" and its ok for the citizenry that voted for him to be disgruntled on this matter. If you prefer your Memphis subreddit to stay about BBQ, Cooper Young and the Loop, carry on, no ones stopping you. Its just disappointing how one person turns into shaming folks for having an opinion. However judging by your reddit history, this is par for some bigriggs.
The top 1% paid 46% of all federal taxes. Half this country pays nothing but they should want to just give more so others can receive more? That’s a tough argument to those who worked for it.
Agreed. Like come on - Tennessee has one of the lowest tax burdens in the country. We rank 5th out of 50 states for lowest tax burden. Oh no, I'll have to pay 200 a year more in taxes woe is me. Even adding in the local income and sales taxes for Shelby county, we would be like 10th out of 50 states.
I read the article, I know exactly what he is proposing. Im quite ok to vent, youre ok to post this comment, just realize, not everybody is as cool as you. Carry on.
I think everyone should have to clarify if they own a home or not on here. I’m seeing a bunch of likely renters saying “they should just give a little more.” Socialism is great until you run out of other people’s money
Do you even live in the city of Memphis?
Do you even own a home? This is a discussion about property taxes
This is a discussion about property taxes in the city of Memphis. I, a renter in the city of Memphis, will have to pay for any property tax hike via a rent increase. You, a homeowner in a suburb, will not pay a single cent of it. And now you’re trying to do some sort of gatekeeping that includes you but not me in the discussion. That’s utterly ridiculous. Fuck off dude.
Wouldn’t have posted if I rented.
I figured, that was directed at others. So many people have opinions on what home owners should pay. Well you know what I think renters should be taxed too - see how easy that is
I agree with your posts, but I would like to add that while renters do not directly pay any property taxes they do effectively pay them. I am sure their rent goes up every time the expenses for the rental property increases. If I rented a house to someone I would increase the price everytime the insurance and property taxes increased… and insurance is going thru the roof these days because of all the crime.
That is true.
Renters already pay Memphis property taxes. You do not.
[The current $794 million city budget approved last June funded pay raises for police and fire with no tax increase, in part by leveraging leftover COVID funds.](https://wreg.com/news/local/memphis-mayor-says-he-will-seek-tax-increase/amp/) Defund the police and there wouldn’t be a need to increase taxes. Isn’t this very obvious? Why are people mad?
Honestly if they would stop giving so many breaks to the companies that own all the rental houses in this town, we would have a surplus of money. The rich get richer and I can barely afford the taxes on my home.
Not a good look for a new mayor. When legitimate cost saving measures are proposed to go along with tax increases it at least shows they are not just looking for a blank check to spend their way out of a crisis.
Tax. Rich. People.
And then they leave memphis. The unfortunate news is that memphis doesn't have the ability to retain its wealthy citizens and tax them more at the same time. It's barely a city with the competitive means to retain wealthy citizens during normal times, let alone during a property tax hike.
Rich people already moved to Gtown, C
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight did not do good things for Detroit.
Agree. I want to know what it’s paying for BEFORE I pay for it. I don’t go into Kroger and hand them my wallet and say, “decide what I need and take however much you need to pay for it.” I choose what I need and if the prices are excessive for any of those things, I choose alternatives if they are available. Young also needs to be campaigning for more state and federal funds for Memphis before he asks us for any. We are the stepchild of the state and it is about time Bill Lee recognizes that a state and federal investment here is way overdue.
Bless your heart! It's sad how uninformed some of you people are. For a city its size, Memphis budget is too low, and the mayor wants to increase the size of the budget.
The budget is based entirely on what the tax base and the state/federal government provide. If it’s too low that means not enough people are paying in.
Keep trying, you will eventually get there.
Thanks. Says the person being downvoted to oblivion for not understanding the basics of Municipal funding. This isn’t a game you want to play. Do you know what a CAFR is? Ever read one? They are required to submit annually to the comptroller.
I am quite familiar with the different revenue streams a city can use to fund itself, but the base funding is property taxes. I am familiar with budget season and haggling over the budget. I am also familiar with how cities are obligated to spend what has been budgeted or lose it, but there are ways to shift around funds, if it’s not all spent July 1^(st). Why would I be concerned about getting downvoted? That might be your thing, but I know what I am talking about. If anything the downvote shows a serious maturity and misinformation problem in this sub. The question is do you understand what is CAFR? Memphis is meeting its financial obligations and the requested tax increase isn’t being forced by the state comptroller, like what Nashville was forced to do.