By Bill Dries

Memphis Mayor A C Wharton Jr. describes his first two years at City Hall as “triage,” as his administration responded to crises.

Wharton has run twice in two years for the city’s highest office with the stated goal of changing the character of Memphis politics. With the full term Wharton won in October, he intends to focus more on his long-term goals for specific changes in the way city government operates.

“For two years, city government has been engaged in triage,” Wharton told several hundred people Sunday, Jan. 1, after he took the oath of office at the Cannon Center for the Performing Arts. “We tackled corruption, a school funding crisis and budget crisis, waste and inefficiency, and a lack of fiscal and procedural discipline.”

Wharton described what comes next as a focus “on priorities that produce the most significant impact.”

The change brings into play a cast of think tanks and nonprofits the city had been working with closely starting during former Mayor Willie Herenton’s administration.

About his 100-day plan to be outlined later this month, Wharton said those institutions will be instrumental in “the programs and the actions that will jumpstart our work on my top priorities for the next four years.”

The most interesting of the private entities is The Bloomberg Philanthropies. Even before becoming Memphis mayor, Wharton cultivated the relationship with the billionaire New York City mayor, who heads the philanthropies.

Michael Bloomberg has been criticized for blurring the line between his foundation and his mayoral administration. It has been difficult to tell in some cases where Bloomberg’s administration ends and his foundation begins.

But one of Bloomberg’s tenets is that governments cannot undertake the kind of innovation cities need to change and grow. Nor should they, he is quick to add. So with his personal wealth, he has funded innovation efforts in which the foundation pays the tab for salaries of people who hold quasigovernment positions.

That is the arrangement between the Bloomberg Philanthropies and the Wharton administration.

With the Bloomberg money, the city has hired former Memphis Naval Support Activity Commander Doug McGowen to head the Bloomberg Innovation Team. The team is to come up with strategies for combating the city’s historically high levels of violence. Wharton has long believed the answer is to approach gun violence in particular as a public health issue, not exclusively as a crime issue.

The team mixes that goal with small-business development.

Bloomberg money also constitutes half of a $12 million, three-year program to offer cash rewards to families in poverty as an incentive to begin better health and education practices.

With White House funding through the Strong Cities, Strong Communities pilot program, President Barack Obama’s administration operatives have also set up shop with a staff at City Hall, with the goal of direct city contact with the Obama administration to clear bureaucratic hurdles between Memphis efforts and Washington funding.

Wharton also wants to free up some of the city money that now goes to fund the Memphis City Schools system.

To date, City Hall has not been a visible presence in the school merger discussions that began in earnest this past October, when the merged school board took office and the consolidation planning commission began its work.

As quietly and tactfully as he possibly can, Wharton has talked about the merger to come of the still-separate school systems as a day when the city will no longer be required to fund local public education.

He has also been careful to say the city will not necessarily withdraw from any funding of the new merged school system. But he has also clearly looked forward to freeing up most of the $70 million or so in city funding that has traditionally gone to Memphis City Schools in recent years.

At the start of his first full term, Wharton has become more vocal about the possibilities.

“We’ll have concrete plans on all of those areas,” he told reporters after specifically bringing up the school funding topic on his own.

There are still differing legal opinions about when the city’s legal obligation to fund the schools ends. One school of thought is that it continues for three years after the merger.

“We’re not working on that premise,” Wharton said when asked. “But whether it’s three years, two years or one year, we need to start planning now to make sure that to the degree those funds are freed up, they are not squandered.”