By Jimmie Covington
Commercial Appeal January 18, 2004

When 23-year-old Nita Armour reported to a teaching job at Collierville Elementary School in 1969, she saw cows grazing next to the school's playground.

Armour drove out from Memphis each day. "I remember there was one house that sat up in there (north of the school on Peterson Lake Road)," she said. "All the land around the house was a cow pasture. I was a city girl, and I can remember calling mother and daddy and saying, 'You have got to come out here and see this. Cows are grazing right up to the edge of the playground.' "

The pasture was long ago replaced with homes. Many other subdivisions have followed. (Armour retired in 2002 after 33 years at Collierville Elementary, the last 13 as principal, and is now principal of Fayette Academy Elementary School, where she is seeing similar growth in Somerville.)

Census figures show that Collierville's population increased from 3,651 in 1970 to 37,044 in a special census in the spring of 2002. Town officials believe the population is now near 40,000 as new homes and businesses go up at a rapid rate

And Collierville has plenty of room to grow. Its current boundaries include about 29 square miles. Under Shelby County's growth plan, the town has the right to annex an additional 21 square miles.

The above-average population growth, plus the cost of homes relative to local incomes, led Money magazine recently to rank the East Shelby County suburb as one of the 10 "hottest" places to live among cities under 100,000 population in the eastern third of the country. It was in the eighth spot, just ahead of the Nashville suburb of Brentwood.

The magazine cited population growth of more than 100 percent between 1990 and 2000, a median household income of $85,716 and a median home price of $230,000.

Collierville sits in the path of a decades-long eastern movement of people in Shelby County.

Despite major annexations by Memphis in the 1970s and 1990s, population in Shelby County outside Memphis has grown steadily since 1970. Most of the growth has been across the eastern section of the county.

Memphis's population growth over the past 50 years has stemmed from the annexations of Frayser, Parkway Village, Fox Meadows, Whitehaven, Raleigh, Hickory Hill, Cordova and other areas.

The county population outside Memphis grew from 98,484 in 1970 to 130,357 in 1980, to 215,993 in 1990 and to 247,372 in 2000.

The late former Collierville mayor Herman Wright Cox Jr. and his fellow town board members welcomed and managed business and residential growth during Cox's 24-year tenure as mayor from 1975 to 1999. Cox earlier served 16 years as an alderman.

Retired pharmacist Tom Brooks, a friend of Cox's for more than 50 years who served on the town board throughout Cox's terms as mayor, said Cox was a visionary leader who "could see down the road as good as any man I ever talked to."

Brooks said Cox, town board members and other leaders worked together to support and manage growth. Without those efforts, he said, Collierville would still have experienced some growth, but it would have been "harum-scarum development."

Mayor Linda Kerley and the town board have continued to embrace growth since Kerley moved up from alderman in 1999. Through the imposition of various facility and other fees, the town has sought to make growth pay for itself instead of imposing major property tax increases. Town officials last year levied a new development tax to pay for new police facilities and equipment that will be needed in the next few years. A fire facilities fee was enacted in 1993 to pay for additional fire facilities required by growth.

Collierville's property tax rate is $1.45 for each $100 of assessed value, including a special 10-cent increase approved in 2001 to pay for expansion of parks and recreational facilities and programs.

The 2003 Shelby County property tax roll certified by county Assessor Rita Clark last spring showed Collierville leading the county's suburban municipalities in property value increases for tax purposes.

The town had a $37.5 million, or 4.5 percent, increase in assessed value from the previous year. Despite the property value gains in Collierville and other areas outside Memphis, however, the overall assessment figures showed a $37.6 million decline in assessed value countywide as a result of a drop in values in Memphis.

In a report to town board members last August, Collierville Finance Director Jane Bevill said the town's government is in strong financial shape and its goal is to improve an already high Aa2 bond rating. Bevill said only three municipalities across Tennessee - Germantown, Brentwood and Franklin - had higher ratings.

Public schools in Collierville are part of the Shelby County school system, which Collierville property owners help finance through county property taxes. School construction and operations are major factors in county property tax increases. Additional increases in county taxes for school purposes apparently will be needed in the future if crowding in county schools is to be addressed and a deterioration of county school programs is to be avoided.

Analyses indicate that property owners in Collierville and some other areas of the county pay more in county property taxes than the cost of the county services they receive. Despite that, and the fact that Collierville and other areas outside Memphis are producing increasing amounts of county property tax revenue, the town and other municipalities face the prospect of having to raise their local taxes to provide some of the services now provided by the county.

Libraries are an example.

Last year, Shelby County Mayor A C Wharton proposed a $1 million cutback in library funding. Through a County Commission compromise a reduction was averted, but Wharton has said he will seek to phase out $5 million in county library funding over several years. Collierville and other municipalities outside Memphis would have to replace the funding or take over the library branches to keep them open.

Also, further cuts may occur in state-shared funding for municipalities. If that happens, municipal taxes also might have to go up to avoid cuts in town services.

Some challenges obviously lie in the future. However, bond rating agencies and others, such as the Money magazine researchers who rated cities, like what they see in Collierville.

In an overall financial comment about the town before the municipality's latest bond issue, Moody's Investors Service, a bond rating agency, said:

"The high quality rating (Aa2) is supported by the city's rapidly growing tax base, above-average wealth levels, sound financial management, substantial reserve levels and low direct debt levels."

Contact staff reporter Jimmie Covington at 529-2884.