Who Owns the Suburban School Buildings?

Memphis, Tn - Bartlett, Germantown and Collierville High Schools are all located in their respective suburban cities. They were all paid for by Shelby County taxpayers.

Consultant to the suburbs, James Mitchell, says getting the buildings for the new municipal school districts should be no problem.

"Our attorneys feel the weight of legal authority and the history of past practice of transferring facilities at no cost should be followed."

The suburbs are relying heavily on a ruling more than 100 years old and based on annexation law.

There is no exact legal precedent for what's going on in Shelby County right now, which is why some Memphians don't agree.

School Board Member Martavius Jones says he plans to sue, as a Memphis citizen, if the buildings are just given away.

"Memphians contributed 80-85 percent of the money for the construction of those buildings," said Jones. "There's no way at all that Bartlett or any of the other municipalities, at the time when most of the schools were constructed, could have built those alone with the contributions from Memphians."

The debt for most of the buildings constructed in Shelby County belongs to the Shelby County Government.

Shelby County is in debt more than $1.6 billion, much of that from school construction.

Government watchdog Joe Saino says a compromise would be to give the suburbs the buildings and the debt as well.

"The liability is on the county books, take it over and transfer it to the Germantown, then they've got to pay off those bonds, as long as the debt is properly transferred."

Since 81 cents of your county taxes is debt service, in theory, your county taxes could go down and suburban taxes would go up.