POSITIVELY ENCYCLOPEDIC: Memphis City Council member Reid Hedgepeth was among those backing a rewrite of the city’s scrap metal ordinance this week. “I know more about scrap metal than I ever cared to know about scrap metal,” Hedgepeth said. -- PHOTO BY BILL DRIES

Once Memphis City Council members thought they had solved the problem of scrap metal looting, they faced another problem – ending a legal stalemate with scrap metal dealers who sued the city of Memphis two years ago over the ordinance.

This week, the city made a deal with scrap dealers that settles the lawsuit and tweaks the ordinance.

Gone are the original ordinance requirements that would have required scrap metal businesses to tag and hold and issue vouchers instead of paying cash for a long list of metals. In their place are modified requirements to tag and hold new copper tubing, telephone wire and cable, air conditioning parts and tubing or wiring with an ID stamp.

The voucher requirement applies to the same metals as well as catalytic converters from automobiles, aluminum siding, chain link fences, stainless steel sinks and railroad spikes.

That list of metals accounts for 90 percent of all stolen scrap metal in the city, said Memphis Police Director Larry Godwin.

The dealers who took the city to court over the original ordinance have agreed to comply with the new requirements.

“I know more about scrap metal than I ever cared to know about scrap metal,” said Council member Reid Hedgepeth. “In the two years that I have been meeting and hearing all these different opinions, the scrap metal dealers have continued to operate as they have always operated. Nothing has changed with their day-to-day operation.”

Heard it all before

Hedgepeth recalled a quote from FedEx founder Fred Smith from a meeting with the council earlier this year.

“He said, ‘Commerce is like water in a stream. Throw a rock into it and the water will go around it.’ And that is essentially what the scrap metal dealers have done for the last two years.”

The council began crafting the ordinance in 2006 as the price of copper soared and homebuilders saw their work being stripped of copper tubing and wiring before they had even completed it.

“Metal theft has gone down since you passed that ordinance. Unfortunately, it’s not because of widespread compliance with the ordinance,” said Paul Morris, an attorney representing victims of the thefts including homebuilders, Realtors, a church and the New Chicago Community Development Corp. “What we’ve had in the last two years is no compliance by the major scrap metal dealers with the ordinance. And we’ve had a lawsuit that we won several stages of.”

Assistant City Attorney Phillip Oliphant told council members the tweaked ordinance is a “tradeoff.”

“Although this decision touches on legal issues, it is ultimately a political rather than a legal decision,” he added, saying the existing ordinance should be able to withstand any challenge in federal or state court.

Godwin also signed off on the changes, saying the voucher system, which deprives those who steal scrap metal of cash in hand, should be more manageable than consigning most metals in a scrap yard to a tag-and-hold area. Godwin’s reservations were with any same-day cash payment to anyone walking in off the street with a piece of metal.

“There is an inherent problem in enforcing the tag and hold,” he said. “It’s very difficult for us … to walk into a scrap metal dealer and they have a pile of junk – excuse me, scrap – over there and I’ve got to determine if that aluminum siding came off your house. … We don’t want to get into that.”

The council approved the amended ordinance this week on the first of three readings with a unanimous vote.

And then some

In other action, the council this week:

• Approved the planned development at Fourth Street and Linden Avenue of a new 11-story hotel. The hotel, to be built by Royal Phoenix Development, is a key part of the Triangle Noir development plan for the area south of FedExForum as well as part of the South Memphis.
  The 2.8-acre plot of land is now a parking lot near the forum. Plans call for the structure to include retail development on the ground floor. Triangle Noir is a 10-year, $1 billion development plan that hinges on federal funding for the demolition and redevelopment of the city’s last two public housing projects – Cleaborn Homes and Foote Homes.
• Approved a budget amendment that will allow the city’s public services department to restore the mobile vehicle inspection program. The program and the inspectors were cut in the most recent round of city budget cuts.

As a result, buyers of new and used cars across the city had to take their vehicles through car inspection, something dealers normally had done on their lots with the mobile inspection program.

Janet Hooks, director of the city’s division of Public Services and Neighborhoods, told council members the fees from the mobile inspection services amount to $270,000 annually after expenses.