When it comes time to review the budget in the next Memphis election year, you can expect to see the focus of the review shift drastically. Instead of the usual focus being purely on numbers, special attention will be paid to figuring out how Memphis continues to find itself in a state of financial crisis.

Throughout the past two years, one thing has remained constant – the mayor and council members will continue to go back and forth regarding why the financial state is the way that it is in Memphis. Mayor A C Wharton has reiterated that a major cause is due to cutting funding to Memphis City Schools, while his Council member counterparts will blame the crisis on Wharton’s decision to refinance the city’s debt in 2010. Regardless of the constant repetition between the two sides, one thing still holds true – nothing has changed.

According to city finance director Brian Collins, “there was a financial crisis of once-in-three-lifetime proportions. We had a plan to deal with it. We told everybody what it was. We had very few people listen. We went ahead and executed against that plan in plain sight.”

Although earlier this year the council already approved a new plan to refinance city debt payments, there are still those that find flaws in the plan. For instance, chairman of the council’s budget committee, Jim Strickland, points out that all of the refinancing plan does is push the responsibility of dealing with the debt onto future Memphis city leaders.

Regardless of the reasons as to why the city finds itself in a continual financial crisis, the community has seen no slowing of the amount of people packing and moving to Memphis. The city hopes to make greater strides in getting to the root of the problem, so that the prior statement does not change.