But What Are the Conditions?

Tennessean columnist Gail Kerr picks up Metro Planning's meme that the May Town developers' request to the Planning Commission to reconsider a do-over has merits that can be assumed without being publicly articulated:

it is legal to ask, and it is legal to grant a rehearing under certain conditions.

She moves on without saying anything else about "conditions." This time the media is colluding in the question-begging, even though Ms. Kerr spends the rest of her column trying to convince us of how hard Tony Giarratana is going to have it on Thursday. As if it weren't already a wonder that the May Town Center zombie has made it this far with assists from Planning and Metro Council in the face of much public rancor and so little promise. While my heart bleeds for this against-all-odds image of poor Tony G., the character test here is put to the Planning procedures which have allowed consideration of a do-over without stipulating the merits of so allowing.

If this zombie can be permitted to keep coming back, then anything can happen Thursday, and Gail Kerr's column could result in a false sense of security and pacification of the opposition, which seeks to preserve rather than pave Bells Bend.