CM Jameson's Green Permit Ordinance Passes Second Reading

It looks like Nashville will soon offer "Green Permits" for builders committed to "sustainable design development."

Capital Improvement Bill Passes First Reading

Here are some of the highlights of last year's capital improvement budget. Significant infrastructure.

Edwards' Endorsement Proved to Be as Huge as Its First Blush

Pew demonstrates just how indebted Barack Obama is to John Edwards, who was vindicated for his long wait to endorse by becoming an impressive media magnet:

After backing his former rival for the Democratic nomination, by week's end Edwards was a dominant or significant figure in 10% of the campaign coverage, according to PEJ's Campaign Coverage Index for May 12-18. That is more coverage than the former senator managed to attract in three of the four weeks in January when he was still a candidate -- and more than he got the week he dropped out.

And in embracing Obama less than 24 hours after Clinton's big win in West Virginia, Edwards diverted media attention away from a discussion of renewed Clinton momentum and helped refocused the narrative on Obama's apparent inevitability.

In doing so, Edwards also helped Obama win the race for exposure last week. Overall, Obama was a significant or dominant newsmaker in 68% of the campaign coverage, well ahead of Clinton, who finished at 53%. And their coverage was very different. Despite her 41-point win in West Virginia, her narrative included considerable speculation about how long she would stay in the race and whether she might end up as Obama's vice president.

Council Asks Vice Mayor to Appoint a Broader, More Representative LED Task Force

LED Task Force resolution passed tonight. The ball is in Diane Nieghbors' court.

From Council Member Gilmore

District 19 CM Erica Gilmore announces:

Police Chief Ronal Serpas will be the guest speaker at the NAACP General Membership meeting Thursday, May 22th, 6pm Hadley Park Community Center. He will discuss the war on crime in the Nashville Metropolitan Community. Seating is limited. RSVP 329-0999 or RSVP info@naacpnashville.org. The NAACP along with Council member Erica Gilmore would like for you to join us this Thursday.

Congratulations, Freddie!

Metro Council tonight confirmed Salemtown Neighbors President Freddie O'Connell to a 5-year term on the Metro Transit Authority tonight. It's great to have a progressive voice on one of Metro's boards.

Schöne Ansicht Developers Go Back on Their Word to Light Alley

When Schöne Ansicht developers Taurus McCain and Steve Yokley were promoting the build of their townhouse development at 6th and Hume a couple of years ago to Salemtown's neighborhood association, Mr. McCain promised neighbors who lived around it that they were going to put up a street light in the dark alley between 5th and 6th Avenues. McCain even went so far as discouraging neighbors from putting up lights themselves because the developers were "going to take care of it." Last year they followed through on the promise by finally putting in a light.

This morning NES crews dismantled the short-lived street light, and they told me that the developers had requested it.

What are we to make of this? Either that Taurus McCain and Steve Yokley are not developers of their word or that the party house at Schöne Ansicht needs more cover of darkness to piss and to brawl in. Schöne Ansicht residents are now stuck with a naked, lightless pole that sits in the middle of the culvert where stormwater run-off is supposed to flow.


UPDATE: Developer Steve Yokley says that I jumped to a premature conclusion in the comments below. I talked with Mr. Yokley in person this evening about the same issues, which confirms that the comment below is his.

TNGOP: The Choice of Strip Club Owners Everywhere

The NashPo blog points to this Chattimes article that divulges that the recent TNGOP smear campaign against Michelle Obama featured a former owner of Nashville's "Bob's Gold Club" topless dance bar. Is Adam Dread getting a piece of that action? The TNGOP point man responded as follows:

“I’d have to know more details about the story,” Mr. Hobbs said of whether he would have used Mr. Pope in the video had he known of the connection.

Translation: "I'd have to know more details about the story so that I can contain the damage I caused to TNGOP with more spin."

Street Robberies Up, Burglaries Down in Nashville's Central Precinct

According to Christine Buttorff:

While overall crime in Nashville dropped for the fourth year in a row last year, statistics show robberies increased 3.3 percent. And in the Central Precinct, which encompasses most of the area within the Interstate 40 loop, street robbery has jumped 45.8 percent from last year. Aggravated assaults and burglaries are both down year-to-date.

Have Car, Will Vote

With gas prices increasing demand for more mass transit, Miami (FL) is looking to raise its mass transit fares 33% in order to qualify for federal matching grants that would help expand its rail system north to include mostly working and black neighborhoods that have been waiting for rail since it was promised in the 1970s fuel crisis.

But the high demand for mass transit also includes some of the haute couture crowd to the south:

Even the beautiful people of South Beach aren't immune: models Carmen Cordoba and Andree Baeza said they ride the bus about five times a day to reach shoots. An increase of $12.50 a week, they said, would hit them hard.

Baeza said transit riders were easy targets for politicians.

"The ones who vote," he said, "are the ones with cars."

Midnight at the Oasis: More Fallout from the Spring Hill Mirage

The Metro Council Member most qualified to evaluate proposals for Metro Water Service fee hikes did as I expected she would and came out against any proposed fee increases that don't go directly back into MWS programs. In fact, she argues that many such fee increases are illegal.

She also replied at Progressive Nashville to their proposal for funding mass transit (for more context and PN perspective see Jim Grinstead's comment below), and she divulged a piece of information that I think is much more interesting in further demythologizing the "tax-free" nirvana that the anti-tax mob sees in Spring Hill, TN. She writes:

using water and sewer rates to pay for [general fund services] is a violation of state law and possibly the Clean Water Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act. Spring Hill TN has been directed by state auditors to return $3 million from the water and sewer fund to the general fund.

We know all about those high-minded claims of "no property taxes in growing Spring Hill!" And it was plain to some that past the pep rally, Spring Hill was using fees and state grants to create the illusion that public services were free. Now it is clear that city fathers (and mothers if there are any) weren't above doing some illegal things in the name of avoiding raising property taxes.

I don't see how the Tennessee Tax Revolt can keep promoting this fallen suburban poster child in their war against urbanism and the delivery of public services. They're going to have to look somewhere else for heaven.


UPDATE: As if on cue, the Tuesday morning Tennessean has more on Spring Hill's imploding budget. Looks like no room to cut services:

Spring Hill officials will have to make a decision soon on the property tax. They have been putting together budgets that include and leave out that tax, said Mayor Danny Leverette.

"My personal take is that the with the economic situation the way it is, the sales tax is not going to be enough as far as everyday operating expenses," he said.

Leverette does not want to resort to layoffs, the avenue some governments have traveled. Metro Nashville, for instance, will lay off 200 city employees.

"We could have to cut back our services, which are bare-bones right now," he said. "We are also looking at increasing water and sewer rates, other permits and regulatory fees."

Clinton Blew a Huge Opportunity When Bush Attacked Obama

When George Bush went to Israel last week to label Barack Obama as a disloyal appeaser, Hillary Clinton should have suspended her campaign and asked her supporters to unite around Senator Obama for president as a show of solidarity and common cause against Republican demagoguery of those who dare to defy them.

It seems to me that, by doing so, she would have would have accomplished two things: she would have jumped Obama's claim to be the party uniter and she would have endeared herself to voters for a 2012 run by choosing the nobler course. The media would have been flabbergasted and they would have talked about it for weeks. It also would have broken the conventional wisdom that Dems don't value loyalty.

It would have been the perfect climax to the campaign season. I don't think she can come out any better by continuing her campaign. She blew her golden opportunity.

Smoke on the Water When Progressive Priorities Clash

While I appreciate good intentions of Progressive Nashville's call for a water rate increase to fund Metro Transit, I suspect that the people who know our water system inside and out will tell you that any coming raise needs to be ploughed back into our the water system itself to pay for stormwater run-off infrastructure upgrades. Those upgrades are at least as, if not more, important than mass transit, because effective stormwater run-off if the first step in the process of water treatment that eventually puts cleaner water back into the environment. I would be interested in seeing a comparison of the carbon emissions of effective stormwater run-off versus those of expanding bus lines.

Beside those reasons, Metro Water fees are already funding other people's priorities, like Phil Bredesen's commitment to service the debt of Bud Adams' pro football stadium. That's one league that Metro Transit does not need to join for the sake of their own reputation. Add to that the fact that Metro Council is probably going to pass a bill that spreads high business connection fees out over a 36-month interest free payment period (which decreases short-term revenue) to give small business owners relief, and there is not much room to help Metro Transit without extending the decade of Metro Water's hurt.

The reality of the situation is that Metro Water revenues have remained flat for years while they cut their budgets, and neighborhoods are seeing the results in MWS's inability to solve stormwater run-off problems quickly. And as water revenues continue to go elsewhere the backlog of crumbling infrastructure will mount as it gets older and buying power shrinks. So, Metro Transit should not look to MWS funds, and we should persuade Mayor Dean to take the 2006 property tax referendum to trial and get it overturned by a more enlightened court of law. We should be paying Metro Transit through higher taxes or bus fare increases (not excepting fare relief for poorer riders), rather than through Metro Water fees.

Laugh just a little too loud. Stand just a little too close. Stare just a little too long.

If the innuendo is true, then the Mayor's office is choosing sides and slinking toward one or the worst Metro services in 2008. They'll give us something to blog about.

Crema Coffee Naming Contest

Crema owner Rachel Lehman is issuing a challenge to all java lovers, and she is offering what looks like a very fine award: free coffee for a week.

Here's my idea: Joe Talk Thai

Fool me twice, Schöne Ansicht, can't get fooled again

Remember that nice apology note I got from the Schöne Ansicht townhouse owner, Joel Ridley, about a recent late-night brawling and pissing party? Well, I found out yesterday that, while Mr. Ridley lives in another neighborhood, he uses his townhouse as a "party house" on some weekends (last weekend was not the first party he's had, but merely the first one to impose on a wider audience of homes). That sounds like a pretty sweet deal for him (what with saving his neighborhood from being trashed and annoyed), but it was totally bad form, if not bad faith, not to claim that in his correspondence with me. I think a property owner whose parties become increasingly intrusive and destructive to surrounding property owners have some obligation to be honest and accountable.

This is akin to the time in construction when a Schöne Ansicht developer wrote me an e-mail assuring me that stormwater run-off on the development would be channeled to the storm sewer. Consequently, I spoke up for the developer in a Salemtown Neighbors meeting when the issue came up only to be rebuffed by neighbors who told me that the developer was lying. Later, of course, I found out that indeed what he wrote me was not true and that he was channelling water via the surface to a tank and to the alley. Is the place just cursed with people who make bad decisions and won't own up to them?

Well, I bought Mr. Ridley's apology without question only to find out that he was not being entirely above board on the issue of his late-night party habits. And I wrote a good will post only to have it come back up and bite me now. So, I'm back to a deeper shade of jade about Schöne Ansicht, and the latest word on the street is that the developers have shown no support for a community meeting with the other members of the Schöne Ansicht homeowners association on the subject of late-night parties. No surprise there. They've never bothered to listen to anyone remotely connected to an association.

Just Get the Money They Owe Us and End It

Why even give Wackenhut a second chance to justify their contract with Metro? I see the Wackenhut SUV driving around streets in Salemtown on a daily basis, and I always wonder what it is about our neighborhood that draws the security guards away from their Metro Water Services post on 3rd Avenue, North.

A Stronger Antidote than Tort Reform

Tennessee's medical doctors are faced with a clear choice; join in the lemming lock step to tort-reform Texas or try something different and more ethical:

with providers choking on malpractice costs and consumers demanding action against medical errors, a handful of prominent academic medical centers, like Johns Hopkins and Stanford, are trying a disarming approach.

By promptly disclosing medical errors and offering earnest apologies and fair compensation, they hope to restore integrity to dealings with patients, make it easier to learn from mistakes and dilute anger that often fuels lawsuits.

Malpractice lawyers say that what often transforms a reasonable patient into an indignant plaintiff is less an error than its concealment, and the victim’s concern that it will happen again.

Despite some projections that disclosure would prompt a flood of lawsuits, hospitals are reporting decreases in their caseloads and savings in legal costs.

So go to Texas for the wrong reasons or stay in Tennessee for the right ones. It's the practitioner's choice.

One of the More Important Tuesday Night Stipulations

The memorializing resolution requesting that the Vice Mayor appoint a legitimate LED task force is as expected on Tuesday night's council agenda. That resolution stipulates:

The membership of such task force should be representative of the community as a whole, including the following: Neighborhood representatives from various areas of Nashville and Davidson County, both urban and suburban

That's the way it should have been from the beginning.

Council Member Reports Elimination of Program that Tied Department Budgets to their Customer Service

CM Emily Evans' latest dispatch from the council budget hearings divulges that the Dean Administration is eliminating Metro's internal service fees. I pointed out during his campaign for Mayor last year that his proposal to cut building space contingency would not work based on those fees. I'm not sure whether he is following through with plans to cut space contingency and I don't know if moving away from internal fees makes a difference with space contingency now. It seems to me that someone still has to pay for Metro's empty office spaces to be maintained.

The more troubling news on Ms. Evans' blog is the elimination of a performance management program that tied department budget allocations to how well they served their customers. So, what exactly will budgets be tied to in the future? And how are department heads going to be held accountable? For instance, if the Parks Department fails to fulfill their promise to have Morgan Park's full playground installed by this summer, then how does the community hold them accountable without some customer service criteria? What may sound like a good idea from a bureaucratic perspective does not seem to bode well for neighborhoods.

"Neverland Chamberel was an appeaser, all right?"

At a time when their presidential nominee is scratching and clawing to get away from his embrace of a 100-year war in Iraq and when their spin machine is making scurrilous charges about the loyalty of Barack Obama based on a thorough ignorance of history, TNGOP is back on its heels with the national attention turned to its smear campaign of Michelle Obama.

Sure. Pay me to blog so that I can cover your print as you see fit.

I guess the city’s progressive bloggers are taking the afternoon off.

- - Nashville City Paper editor Clint Brewer speculating on why local bloggers ignored his publication's story on Metro Schools blending education and religion

Yes, I was taking the afternoon off WORKING MY FRACKIN' JOB (which has nothing to do with blogging) so that I could pay the bills.

This jab at bloggers looks like the flip side of the mainstream media's presumptive disdain for people whom they think sit around in their pajamas all day and try to copy what they do themselves. So, if they're not writing about the City Paper's stories, then bloggers must be taking the day off because God knows, we're not doing anything else. It's another example of how the press doesn't get it.

But it's really not that hard to comprehend: you, Mr. Editor, get paid to blog and to write and I don't. I fulfill the aphorism of someone who would write even if not paid for it because I enjoy it so much. It's cheap bombast when journalists say that they love their jobs so much they would report without pay because, well, they are getting paid when they say it. But I write literally without pay, and when Google Adsense does send me a check every 4 to 6 months, I turn around and give it away to local non-profits. Each workday morning I wake up early before my children rouse and I do some research and writing, and then I try to do some more writing in the interstices of my domesticated evening life while more than a few reporters are putting night caps on their happy hours du jour.

So, I'm sorry that I missed your story that was right up most progressive alleys, but I've been forced to live with the mainstream media's abject neglect of many newsworthy stories written by unpaid writers that I thought should have reached a wide audience. So, just suck it up and deal with the lack of attention (or better yet, work on having better relations with bloggers and a user-friendly website).

In the meantime, I'll tell you what: I'll trade your blending-school-and-religion story for my blending-Council-discretionary-funds-with-religion analysis (which you ignored at the time). My article on religion was just as significant as yours. What were you doing when it was published? Taking the afternoon off?

A Cabaret Lobbyist, Old Chum (Wherein "Chum" Is Just Another Word for Shark Bait)

The NashPo blog discovers that the same cabaret lobby that had Pastor Jerry Maynard introducing a Metro Council strip-club bill in order "to protect women" is holding receptions for state legislators at local strip clubs (no doubt "to protect women"). We don't dare question or criticize such pound-of-flesh lobbying lest we be accused of being uptight prudes just jealous of those who get to smoke cigars with former-Council-Members-turned-sex-industry-lobbyists (never mind the Freudian imagery).

Why Didn't TNGOP Just Photoshop a Burqa and Niqab on Her, Too?

While major Republicans are lynching Barark Obama on one side of the Middle East, bit player Bill "Mohammed Blows" Hobbs is back at his cartoon and character assassination desk--this time for his employers, the Tennessee Republican Party--attacking a woman who is not that far away from being First Lady. Michelle Obama's greatest crime was a feisty tempered bad choice of words, which should be balanced by the point that if she hates America so much, why should she stay married to an American statesman? But we learned a long time ago that TNGOP would rather bludgeon than balance.

If Laura Bush were currently in Michelle Obama's place, I have no doubt that TNGOP would pull a press release out of its sphincter that accused the former librarian of giving kids pornography and of teaching domestic terrorists how to build bombs to blow those kids up. And Bill Hobbs would be encouraging Tennesseans to burn books to observe her visit.

That's TNGOP for you. They hate us for our freedom.

When Right-Wing Talk-Show Hosts Get Their Intellectual Teeth Kicked In

Somebody needs to scrape this pathetic conservative talk-show host off the pavement after showing that he has no idea who Neville Chamberlain was even as he tries to tie him to Barack Obama:

It's further evidence that listening to right-wing radio only dumbs down your intelligence. The blowhard bases his history on "Pathway to 9/11," which producers conceded was a fictionalized account (you had to know that the vast right-wing media machine was going to spin it into truth).

Compare right-wing talk radio ignorance to a progressive grasp (in 2006) of Neville Chamberlain, who looks more like he would have been right at home in the Bush Administration:

Yep, Bush looks a lot like Chamberlain for demonizing Barack Obama in the same way that Chamberlain attacked Winston Churchill as an internal enemy for criticizing British foreign policy.

And yet, how much more audacious is it for George Bush to stand on foreign soil, link a loyal American and honorable Senator to Nazi appeasers, and then take cover behind the right-wing media machine which would not know the history of war from a hole in the head? Joe Biden had the spot-on analysis of the backstabbing tactic: "That is bullshit."

Your Gut Check Is in the Woods

Lately, the only local presser that I know of with any fortitude in challenging Karl Dean's administration is the Scene's Jeff Woods. And I quote:

Just about everyone familiar with the city's finances figures a tax hike will be needed next year to avoid some serious slashing of spending ....

Dean did say during last year's election campaign that he wouldn't raise taxes as mayor. But breaking that promise is inevitable. With the kinds of comments he's making, he'll eventually damage his credibility with voters, and he's going to need it. When the time for the tax increase arrives, he'll have to mount a big campaign to persuade the public that the city needs more money. Then, how's he going to explain away all those times he said the government could manage its way out of trouble?

In this week's hard copy, Woods eloborates in exhaustive detail what Dean's only real options are (I'll take what's behind door #2, Monte, and let the Tennessee Tax Revolt go to hell both for the saddle they strapped on Nashville in 2006 and for their damned silence now on adequate solutions to our pending budget crisis). His conclusion is ominous:

Dean’s first budget cuts haven’t caused much anguish. Likely few, if any, of the workers targeted for layoffs will wind up on the street; almost all of them will fill vacant positions elsewhere in the government. The transit authority is probably going to cut bus routes and raise fares, and public works won’t make quite as many trips into your neighborhood to chop up your fallen tree limbs. Otherwise, the public won’t much notice.

But the mayor is fooling himself—and the public—if he thinks this budget year is as hard as it’s going to get. This is the easy part.

Bush Takes a Mulligan on His Ultimate Sacrifice in the War Effort

He gave up golf for the troops before he played golf again. Hitting the links in flip-flops really hurts your game.

Local Government Viewed More Favorably than Federal

Pew is out with a study that shows the federal government's favorability rating in free fall at the same time that the favorability rating of local government has remained consistantly high. Worst of all for Democrats, who have exercised some control over the federal government for the last two years, their favorability rating is even lower: 31%. Guess they need to find a way to start acting like Dems again rather than as GOP-lite. Either that or run on local government's coattails.

The same study found lower numbers on media favorability (40%) and on business corporation favorability (47%). Local government seems to be the most highly regarded hall of power around the country. Most everyone else is sucking in the approval department.

Those Three-Year-Olds Likely Hate Us for Our Freedom

More illegal immigrants seized in LA; certain to drive up prices in the human smuggling market even more.

Philly's City Wi-Fi Still Limping Along

Philadelphia's experiment to provide free citywide wi-fi is not dead yet, but it is short a private partner after losing Earthlink, which failed to achieve 100,000 paying customers as an incentive. The new Mayor--a Democrat who was dubbed "the Seabiscuit of urban politics"--has no interest in it, so the prognosis does not look good, especially with real-world infrastructure in shambles.

Council Votes to Expand Demo Ordinance from Derelict to Vacant Properties

Dallas (TX) City Council votes to allow City Hall to demolish any vacant, unsecured property determined unsafe and open to vagrants and children.

Again, A Thank-You Would Be Nice

When I voted for Barack Obama during the Tennessee primary (even though I was an Edwards-leaning voter), all I asked from the hard-core Obama supporters was to stop crowing long enough to say, "Thanks."

Now they owe John Edwards himself thanks for taking any populist steam left from yesterday's Clinton victory out of her wide West Virginia margin. Not only will Edwards' delegates now likely all vote for Obama, but the only true populist who ran for President this year endorses Barack Obama tonight. That's a timely boost.

What started in Indiana as a shift away from Clinton is now momentum chugging fully toward Obama, who will clearly be the next Democratic nominee for President, soon and well before the convention.

Newspaper Finally Acknowledges Mayor's Office and Metro Legal in AG Zoning Controversy

Nashville City Paper reporter Nate Rau does finally get around to mentioning just barely two significant facts regarding approval of the AG zoning change bill that I've pointed out should have been placed alongside the Council's responsibility from the beginning:

Dean mayoral spokesperson Janel Lacy said Tuesday Dean never rendered a legal opinion on the rezoning measure during its first two readings while Dean was still law director ....

In addition, former Mayor Bill Purcell did not veto the bill, but he did return it to the Metro Clerk unsigned.

Okay, so Karl Dean never rendered a legal decision during the two-to-three month period that this bill was bouncing between Metro Council and the Planning Commission, but why not if it could have potentially lead to where we are now: a DOJ investigation? Buzzers and red lights didn't start going off in Metro Legal at November 2006 first reading? It is common knowledge that bills that get to third reading generally pass, so why would Metro lawyers wait until February 2007's third reading to speak up when they could have started in November 2006? Why was Karl Dean MIA on this bill?

And why does Mr. Rau seem to suggest that returning the bill back to the Metro Clerk unsigned represented anything but abdication to flawed logic? Returning it unsigned does not let the Mayor's Office off the hook, because a refusal to sign insured that the bill would become law without Bill Purcell's signature. That is not absolution. You can bet that if Mayor Purcell had simply returned the Council's news rack regulation bill with no signature rather than vetoing it later in 2007, then the Nashville City Paper would have explicitly pointed out the Mayor's failure at the time.

If the City Paper wants credit for some amazing investigative journalism on the DOJ investigation (beyond the lame claim that they were the "first" to the story), they are going to have to do more than the Mayor's Office's bidding.

I mean, get serious. Watchdogging Metro Council is not that hard. Watchdogging a popular Mayor in a strong executive government is.