Main Street Journal: Feature Article: God, Guides and Guts: A Conversation with Bartlett Mayor Keith McDonald

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The following article is taken from the May 2009 issue of the Main Street Journal. Click “Subscribe Online” above to start your subscription.

God, Guides and Guts: A Conversation with Bartlett Mayor Keith McDonald
By: Michael Roy Hollihan

Last summer, a couple of women who had been teaching fitness classes at various facilities around Bartlett decided to start their own business. They called it Eccentric Studios and advertised their fitness class: “Strip To Fit.”

That got a reaction from Bartlett Mayor A. Keith McDonald. “My big battle cry always is, ‘We want to keep it clean and safe.’ That’s what brought us to where we are and that’s what will take us on for future generations.”

A stop-work order was immediately issued on the remodeling of Eccentric Studios. Lawyers for Eccentric and the City started talking and they rather quickly agreed that McDonald had overstepped his authority as mayor. McDonald wouldn’t back down, however, so the Board of Mayor and Aldermen, in a 4-2 vote, did it for him. “[T]he city’s actions were undertaken in what was thought to be the best interest of the community [but] it recognizes that litigation is expensive,” McDonald said in the official statement.

Nine months later, in an interview in his office at Bartlett City Hall, he is unrepentant. “I couldn’t win it in court. I’m a pragmatist. I’m not going to die on every sword knowing it’s not going to do any good,” he said. Still, “I catch flak for it. The most email [we ever got] came out of Strip To Fit, from all over the United States because it made national news. I took a lot of criticism from other places; not so much from here.”

Referring to the derision he got from some quarters for trying to stop a legal business, he says, “I don’t see it exactly the way they express it. I believe and ran on the basis that I want Bartlett to be a family-friendly community.”

That is the important point, the over-riding priority that is never far from his thoughts. McDonald is emphatically the mayor of Bartlett, representing their interests. Not for him the subsuming rhetoric of “Greater Memphis” and “consolidated Shelby County.” “Family friendly” is a constant refrain during the interview. That and “full service community.” And it’s personal with him.”My home is here. I’ve raised my children here; now my grand-children are here. I’ve always been interested in how Bartlett was going to grow up and become the bigger city many of us saw thirty years ago.”

Since he arrived in Bartlett in the very early Seventies, McDonald has been involved in Bartlett’s destiny. He joined the first incarnation of the town’s Kiwanis club shortly after going into the insurance business. He helped morph the old Bartlett Businessmen’s Association into the Bartlett Area Chamber of Commerce in the early Eighties.

“We started talking about visioning the community and needing to to be a full-service community. Not only just be a bedroom community but have a diversity of income so our property taxes would remain low. Some of us were planning and looking to the future.”

For the last thirty years, Bartlett has contended with a metropolis that views the small towns and cities around it as fodder for future tax base expansion. The Commercial Appeal relentlessly characterises towns like Collierville, Bartlett, Millington, Olive Branch and Southaven as bedroom suburbs, appendages of Memphis, without lives or meanings of their own. However, the conception of Bartlett as a community complete unto itself is what has shaped and defined it since its official founding in 1866. (Though the town can trace itself back to 1830, when it began life as a stage depot along the route from Nashville to Memphis.) The town has spent the better part of a century and a half being a place only loosely connected to Memphis, until explosive growth brought it shoulder to shoulder with, as McDonald characterises Memphis, the “big sister in the county.”

“We better start thinking how we are going to protect our own borders,” he realised back then, and an important part of himself came to the fore. “I don’t necessarily go out seeking a lot of these things. The Lord puts them in front of me and most of the time I choose not to say no to them.” His upbringing seemingly fitted the man to the need.

“My father is a preacher. I grew up a preacher’s kid,” he says with a mixture of rueful impishness and pride.

“My dad had the calling to go to Vermont and minister to those folks up there. My mother, who was a true Southern belle, she had a total culture shock in Vermont.” After Vermont, the family also lived in Clarksville, Tennessee, for a while, where he went to high school. “Because we moved around so much, I never felt I wanted to do full-time ministry. I wanted some roots for my children.”

Still, the ministry had a profound impact on him. “Growing up around church and having a real anchor of faith in my Christian beliefs, I don’t think there ever was a choice for me. My belief is ‘to whomever much is given, much is expected’. That’s one thing my mom taught me — servanthood. That’s how I even see my role as a mayor; I’m a public servant.”

He was a member of the Browns Road Church of Christ for 25 years when he and his family first came to Bartlett. They’ve been at Sycamore View Church of Christ for a bit more than 7 years now. “We had a kind of a split at Browns Road, philosophically. I served as an elder there and there was just a different vision between some folks about what the future would hold for that congregation. I still love them all dearly; still see them.”

There it is again — looking to the future even as he is guided by his past. It seems to guide him as he talks about the most determinative issue for Bartlett’s future: consolidation. “A lot of work has to be done on the consolidation issue. That’ll be going on the next two years. That’s a real big battle right now because Memphis Tomorrow has put its finances behind Mayor Wharton. Assuming they’re not successful — and I don’t believe they will be because I don’t believe the people outside of Memphis want a united government. They want their county government separate from Memphis.” That view of towns and county is very much the traditional approach to government in Tennessee.

He sounds unwaveringly confident. “We’ve never faced the challenge of going not only against Mayor Herenton but the County mayor and the big business owners. So it’s a new challenge for us. I think what you’ll see in the next couple of months is a real push to getting it on the ballot in 2010.”

And again, his view is clear and firm. “There’s nothing that I can see in it good for Bartlett folks. It’s just a way to pass the taxes over to Bartlett for things that have been done or will be done in Memphis that we have no control or say-so in. I don’t think the people who live out here have the trust and faith; even as well liked as Mayor Wharton is, I don’t think they trust what’s going on historically in Memphis government and therefore they’re not going to trust conjoining themselves with that.”

Which ties in with the way he handles a different kind of legislating, that of business advertising, the point that opened this article. “I think Germantown has done such a good job enforcing their [business signage ordinances] for so long, people don’t try that as much in Germantown. They know they’re going to get caught. Here, because we’re competing right across the street from Memphis, the businesses tend to want to ask forgiveness rather than permission.”

“I took an oath to uphold the law,” McDonald declares simply. “Until there’s four votes on the Board to change that law, we’re going to enforce the law. Where does it stop? It’s the camel’s nose under the tent theory. If I give you a break, in effect what I’ve done is change the line. Whatever I do for you I’ve gotta do for everyone else!”

He points to a well-thumbed book lying at hand on his desk, “Legislating Morality” by Norman Geisler and Frank Turek. “I’ve used it a lot. That’s a question that does come up because of the way I do things. It’s all about — one way or another — folks say ‘You can’t legislate morality.’ In fact, they are legislating morality! The choices they make, they are setting the moral standard. Most pieces of legislation, whether it be drunken driving or rape or murder or stealing, it’s all about legislating morality.”

“There are times people want to bring alcohol into the parks for certain activities. Historically we’ve said no and if it’s up to me we’ll continue to say no.”

“Takes four votes to pass anything,” he continues. “And at some point in time there may be four votes that overturns me on that. But, we don’t allow alcohol. It’s about being family friendly. There are things that go on when alcohol is present that aren’t good for families.”

Keith McDonald believes that and only has to look over to the example of Memphis for his proof. He is the embodiment of tradition for a town that is happy to be traditional.

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