Mayor Strickland's Weekly Update

Friends,

There’s plenty to share this week out of City Hall, so let's get started:

• First, our prayers and our thoughts are with the family of veteran Memphis Fire paramedic Brian Malone, who passed away recently in an off-duty accident.
• If you’re a Monday customer of our Solid Waste department, you’re about to get something new. Beginning this Monday, we’ll be distributing 96-gallon recycling carts to our Monday customers. (We’ll be distributing to other customers through the coming year.)
• Councilman Philip Spinosa has taken the lead on neighborhood security cameras, and he asked me to share with you this handy chart on how you can arrange for a donated camera to be installed in your neighborhood.
• Just yesterday morning, I rode the No. 50 bus into work at City Hall as part of the national Dump the Pump Day, when we encourage more Memphians to take advantage of our improving bus service. I’m excited about where MATA is heading under Ron Garrison’s leadership, aided by the millions more we appropriated in the upcoming budgets and the implementation of a new plan to streamline and simplify routes.
• And to our city employees: Yes, you’ll be able to ride MATA for free beginning July 1!
• I hope you took note of the opening of the new, 4.15-mile segment of the Shelby Farms Greenline. It extends the popular trail eastward into Cordova, giving our citizens even more recreational options.
• Did you see these great numbers from earlier this week about improved performance in minority- and women-owned business contracting? In short, we’re up 17 percent in that category in just our first four months. It’s thanks to a deliberate effort I’ve stressed throughout city government and the hard work of director Joann Massey.
• Speaking of, you can learn the certification requirements for small, minority, women-owned and disadvantaged business enterprise (SMWDBE) programs, as well as specific upcoming procurement activities at the City of Memphis, at a pre-certification workshop Wednesday at 10 a.m. Register here.
• I can’t say enough good things about our Chief Financial Officer, Brian Collins. His peers think highly of his team's work, too: Just this week, we learned that the Government Finance Officers Association gave Memphis a Certificate of Achievement for Excellence in Financial Reporting for our most recent Certified Annual Financial Report. Our report demonstrated “a constructive ‘spirit of full disclosure’ to clearly communicate its financial story,” the group said.
• Here’s a great story from WREG-TV on our partnership with the White House to improve youth programming.
• And how cool will those new bridge lights be? Even cooler: The project is all due to the generosity of some great Memphians, and won’t cost taxpayers a penny.
• And finally, I reiterate the challenge I had for you last week: Thank a public safety officer next time you see one. They deserve to hear our support.

I’ll close today on a more somber note -- by remembering George Lapides, the longtime Memphis figure and sports radio talk show host, who passed away overnight. I was proud and honored to call him a friend and was a longtime listener to his show, but I know how he made Memphis a better place far beyond the microphone. We send our condolences to the family.

Yours,