It keeps coming back to the issue of turf between the city of Memphis and the six suburban municipalities.

The complex questions of who paid for what, how much they paid and who gets it predates the ongoing move to schools consolidation by years. And it has everything to do with whether Shelby County has one or multiple public school systems at the start of the 2013-2014 school year.

The municipal school districts outlined in the reports issued last month by Southern Educational Strategies LLC are not built around students from within the borders of a town attending a set of schools within the same boundaries.

“It’s the same attendance zones that currently exist,” Collierville Mayor Stan Joyner said two weeks ago after he and the city’s board of aldermen held their first work session on the idea of a municipal school district. “One of the things we looked at early on in working with the consultants was again, it’s about the children. I’m not talking just about Collierville children. I’m talking about the kids who go to Collierville schools. We’ve got children from across the Wolf River that come to Collierville schools because they are in that attendance zone.”

That includes school-age children in the Memphis annexation reserve area.

“We’ve got children who live in Memphis’ annexation reserve area at Houston Levee all the way over to north of Winchester – all the way over to Hacks Cross Road that come to Bailey Station Elementary School,” Joyner said. “We don’t have a problem with that. We have capacity for those children. This is where they started to school. This is where they can continue.”

A new bill introduced in Nashville by two Shelby County legislators would take a swath of land in southeast Shelby County bordering Fayette County out of the city of Memphis annexation reserve area.

It would negate the need for any agreement or consultation between the city of Memphis and a municipal school district.

The bill first filed Thursday, Jan. 26, by Collierville Republicans Curry Todd and Mark Norris – of the House and Senate, respectively – provided only general detail at first. A bill summary reads that it “moves a specified area of land located in Shelby County near the southeastern county line from the area reserved for annexation by Memphis to the planned growth area of the county.”

A companion bill sponsored by Norris and state Rep. Ron Lollar of Bartlett would allow for a referendum by voters in the area to be annexed before it could be annexed by any city in Shelby County. It also provides for a “deannexation” referendum.

All five of the plans for municipal school districts built around Shelby County’s suburban towns and cities include some use of the city of Memphis annexation reserve areas or unincorporated rural areas. The report on a Millington municipal school district has not been released yet.

The division of the county’s un-annexed areas among the seven towns and cities within the county is a plan all counties are required to have for “planned growth.”

The plans were the result of legislation approved by the Tennessee Legislature in the 1990s that allowed small groups of citizens to incorporate as towns and cities. The city of Memphis fought the so-called “toy towns” or “tiny towns” law in court and won, arguing it blocked the city’s growth through annexation.

Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton considered the court fight and win the most significant accomplishment of his 18-year tenure as mayor.

The legislature approved and required the growth plans as a way to allow for more orderly growth by annexation and to make homeowners in unincorporated areas aware of whose reserve area they were in.

The specific reaction from Memphis’ elected leaders was swift. Memphis City Council members met Tuesday, Jan. 31, in committee to discuss a fast-track annexation of the Grays Creek area of Cordova. The ordinance requires passage on three readings.

The committee recommended a vote by the full council on the first reading at its Feb. 7 meeting.

Meanwhile, council member Harold Collins has been exchanging email messages with Norris since Tuesday on the legislation. In the exchange, Norris wrote that neither of the bills will advance "unless and until the AG (Tennessee Attorney General) blesses these bills."

"In short, no surprises," Norris continued. "But I will be surprised if the AG blesses these bills which is what I conveyed to the House sponsors when they brought the bills to me."

Norris said he expects to have a legal opinion from the Attorney General's office by the end of the week.

Several council members said they want to keep the annexation ordinance moving but not to the point of scheduling special meetings to speed up the process.

Council member Shea Flinn and Memphis Mayor A C Wharton Jr. said the council could not beat the legislature in a race to see who could pass their measure first. And Flinn as well as several other council members questioned whether the council should respond with an annexation to legislation that would probably wind up the focus of a lawsuit anyway.

Wharton said the city has already invested in sewer lines to the area and has plans for a fire station. Should the council move toward a final vote on an annexation, Wharton said his administration would have a plan of service, which is required by law, ready by final reading. And he said the city is prepared to accelerate training classes through the Memphis Police Academy to put additional police on the streets by July 1.

The annexation legislation was a surprise to Joyner as well as Bartlett Mayor Keith McDonald. McDonald, in particular, had expressed concern about requiring a referendum in advance of any annexation his city might make of an area in its reserve when the idea was floated during deliberations of the Metro Charter Commission in 2010.