Where is the $100M state grant for public safety going?
by: April Thompson
MEMPHIS, Tenn. — A $100 million grant for public safety was headed to Memphis from the state, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee announced last week.
“I am announcing today that we will be providing an additional 100 million dollars in grant funds toward public safety initiatives in the city of Memphis,” Lee said Friday. “There is no city in America that has access to the resources we are about to get,” Governor Lee said.
But where will that money go, and when will it arrive? The announcement caught plenty of attention, but was short on specifics.
We reached out to Memphis Mayor Paul Young’s office for details and also to Governor Bill Lee’s staff. We are waiting to hear back.
But one local leader has some opinions. Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris is not in favor of the National Guard coming to Memphis and actually thinks it’s against the Constitution.
“Right now we are trying to understand how it’s constitutional to deploy the National Guard to Memphis and Shelby County,” Harris said. “The Tennessee Constitution obviously forbids that. We are trying to figure out how legally any of it is happening.”
But as for the $100 million, Harris said there are other ways that could be spent.
“If he gave me a check for $100 million I would invest in schools. That’s our biggest need,” Harris said. “Obviously our school infrastructure is crumbling all around us and our school needs are gargantuan. If you really want to stop crime in that direction you are gonna have to go a little bit more to make sure families and kids are taken care of.”
We don’t know if Mayor Young was aware of the $100 million windfall before Governor Lee unveiled it at a press conference Friday, but the Mayor has talked about the need for more funds to support crime fighting.
“We are not taking victory laps. We know that we have a lot of work to do to get crime at a level where people really, really feel it,” Young said.
And now it looks like help is on the way.
“We have an opportunity to do something that has been long needed in this city, and the people standing here are committed to that,” Lee said.
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