And on that blog they say:
On Saturday, March 7th, MDHA, at Councilman Jameson's request, hosted a public meeting to discuss their proposed alternative sequence to the Riverfront Plan. It's a sign of the enthusiasm for this project that over two hundred residents took their Saturday morning to attend the meeting and make their sentiment hear. MDHA presented their overview of the Riverfront Plan, including all of the original projects. At the end of the presentation, after promising that we would get all the pieces that the funded plan proposed, MDHA offered a few, not so compelling reasons why they shouldn't be held to the order that was required under the original plan. In other words, despite input of over a thousand Nashvillians, over 16 months worth of work and standing on the shoulders of innumerable earlier studies, and almost a half-million dollars of public funding to create a plan which was specifically charged to include an implementation sequence, the Mayor's Office wants to scrap it and do what it chooses instead.City Paper reporter Nate Rau's biased piece failed to mention that the number of East Nashvillians attending was over 200. Of course, that doesn't look good for the Mayor's Office, so it is logical that Rau would choose to leave it out.
Hey Mike-
ReplyDeleteIt's not just East Nashville residents that oppose the Mayor's new plan. Residents from downtown spoke about the impact on "their backyard" to improving the east bank first. Tourism folks have spoken out, too, pointing to the lack of destinations downtown for families.
This isn't East v. West. We're on the same side. And it's not Jameson v. the Mayor's Office, despite efforts to spin it that way. As our representative, Jameson is carrying the message of his constituents downtown. He didn't create that message: he's just a bit more articulate than the rest of us and he can get his calls returned.
This is about holding our public officials accountable to public will. It's about not wasting tax payer dollars and not biting the hands of the thousand Nashvillians who sat around folding tables and flip charts for sixteen months building a plan that works. Unlike the revised plan, we didn't throw the original one together over a couple weeks with a powerpoint. It's the one we should follow because it's reasonable, it's efficient, it's the most likely sequence to do what we want the riverfront to do, and it's the public will.