City Council getting back to business

With budget approved, now moving on to false-alarm ordinance, crosswalk

After more than two months of meetings dominated by budget talks, the Memphis City Council will plow back into its regular business Tuesday.

The council, which last Tuesday approved a 2014 budget, will take the second of three votes needed for a schedule of new fines and fees to help curb the number of false home alarms in Memphis.

The new law would give Memphis homeowners a fine of $25 after the second false alarm at their home and each occurrence thereafter. They are now charged $25 after the fourth alarm.

The annual alarm permit fee would be raised from $5 to $15. The alarm permit would be revoked after the sixth false alarm, but with a process to show that problems have been resolved. An alarm permit may now be re- voked after a seventh false alarm.

Any revenues collected beyond the costs of the Metro Alarm office would be divided each year between the Memphis Police Department and the Shelby County Sheriff’s office.

Although a vote setting a fall referendum to hike the localoption sales tax is scheduled for Tuesday night’s full council meeting, the co-sponsor of the ordinance, council budget chairman Jim Strickland, said Monday he will ask the council to pull it from the agenda.

The council approved the referendum in two votes earlier this year, but the issue continually got pushed aside as the council focused on the city’s budget.

The referendum would ask voters to raise the Memphis sales tax half a percentage point

to 2.75 percent, up from the current 2.25 percent. If approved, the tax rate would be the highest allowed in Tennessee and could raise as much as $47 million annually.

The money would be earmarked with $27 million going for pre-kindergarten programs and $20 million going toward a property tax decrease. Shelby County’s six other municipalities voted last year to raise their local sales taxes to the maximum 2.75 percent to fund new municipal school districts that they hope to eventually operate.

The council’s public works and transportation committee will vote on whether to appropriate $1.2 million in funds already approved for the construction of a crosswalk project at the University of Memphis.

The project is called the Central Avenue Safety Project and includes fencing along the student parking lot on Central, wider sidewalks and a median beginning at the intersection of Zach Curlin and ending just before Patterson. The median is intended to slow down cars. The fencing will funnel pedestrians to the larger crosswalk on Central.

Since 1995, at least two students have been killed and another critically injured while trying to cross Central.

The crosswalk will cost a total of $3.3 million, with the Tennessee Department of Transportation paying more than $1 million and the Tennessee Board of Regents paying $893,740.

The day’s committee meetings begin at 9 a.m. in the fifth-floor conference room at Memphis City Hall. The full council meeting begins in the firstfloor council chambers at 3:30 p.m.