MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Mayor Lee Harris is putting more pressure on Shelby County Clerk Wanda Halbert’s office Wednesday, as time runs out for Halbert to sign a new lease on her satellite office.
At issue is the Poplar Plaza satellite office location of the clerk’s office. The lease for the space is set to run out July 1, but as of last week, Halbert had not agreed to a lease on another space in the East Memphis shopping center.
“It’s time to put a stake through the heart of this vampire situation,” Harris said Wednesday morning. The mayor said one email from Halbert to the property managers could resolve the situation.
Halbert met with county commissioners to discuss the office lease Wednesday. She said negotiations are still happeneing at Poplar Plaza, and rebuffed calls for her resignation.
But the issue, which has dragged on since September according to emails obtained by WREG Investigators through a county government source close to the matter, already has reached a boiling point with county leaders. One commissioner has called for Halbert to resign.
“We cannot let Clerk Halbert close the Poplar Plaza location,” Harris said. “Under my watch, we’re not gonna see another location of this clerk’s operation close down, and we’re gonna move heaven and earth to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
In 2020, a Germantown branch of the clerk’s office closed after the office failed to sign a new lease. A new location at Winchester and Riverdale was supposed to open last year, but has been repeatedly delayed. A Whitehaven location is on a month-to-month lease.
“We need her to give up whatever this fight is, around not being serious about planning for the future of Poplar Plaza. She has to completely give up this direction because it is going nowhere, and it is harming the community,” Harris said.
The delays prompted Harris to give Halbert an ultimatum last week: sign a lease at Poplar Plaza or be forced out of office for dereliction of duty.
Halbert responded with a 25-page letter to the mayor and commissioners in which she asserted her independence as an elected official and detailed, sometimes with multiple exclamation marks, problems she has claimed have hampered her office’s ability to function.
Harris on Wednesday called Halbert’s response a “rant” that was “borderline delusional.”
Tuesday, County Commissioner Mick Wright called for Halbert to resign, saying in part she’s ignored deadlines to find replacement locations, “as well as office closures, delays, long lines, mailing problems, accounting difficulties, communications gaps, intra governmental disputes and a growing list of unresolved complaints, the citizens have lost faith.”
Halbert appeared before the Shelby County Commission in an emotional and sometimes contentious question and answer session Wednesday, and gave her office a negative assessment for customer service.
She said her office isn’t getting the resources it needs from the county.
“I give this operation an absolute negative, because I am a customer myself, and I am appalled,” Halbert said. “I give this county a negative zero for even having our customers go through that.”
Wright said his constituents are concerned about the clerk’s situation and are asking him to take care of it.
“I hold nothing against you personally, but is it not time to step aside?” Wright asked Halbert.
Halbert replied, “To answer your question, sir, absolutely not. I’m not going anywhere.”