What I learned from tonight's cover-your-ass-in-public meeting on the Greyhound relocation lease

My impressions of Erica Gilmore's public meeting on Greyhound's relocation held earlier tonight:

1. The best way to control imagined "You lie!" incivility in controversial zoning issues is to treat the few locals yokels who show up (a large number of attendees seemed to be Metro employees, politicos, and news media) as if they are in detention, restricting them to 1 minute each to ask questions and make comments.
2. If urban neighborhoods wanted to stop this specific Greyhound/Music City Center relocation, they had their chance during the Downtown Code community meetings a few years ago.
3. Given #2: any future community plan (e.g., the North Nashville Plan) better be formulated only by those leaders in the community who are psychic and can predict exactly where and when the Mayor's Office will be relocating businesses they don't want to see by their tourism attractions Downtown.
4. Neighborhoods lost opportunities to be informed by not being prescient enough to attend public meetings of the Convention Center Authority (CCA) where they could not give feedback, even if they were not informed by CM Gilmore (who has said that she only heard things in passing and found out about the decision in the media rather than by attending CCA meetings).
5. The CCA publicizes their agenda; community leaders can look at the agenda and clearly see when the Greyhound bus terminal relocation will be discussed if they exercise extrasensory perception (note an example agenda below):
   
   
   
   
6. The CCA meets the first Thursday of every month, and if working Nashville citizens want to burn vacation or sick days away from the job each of those Thursdays after 8:00 a.m., then they have the chance to find out more about controversial relocations by attending.
7. Greyhound has picked an undisclosed permanent location; you still don't have any say over it; your 1 minute for a question is up, next question.
8. I don't know how to interpret the conspicuous absence of Hope Gardens neighborhood leaders (who organized the well-attended and angry May 27 public meeting) at tonight's meeting.
9. CCA rep Holly McCall failed to follow through on her May 27 promise to release the Greyhound lease to the public. Instead, she sent it to CM Gilmore.
10. Given #9: I'm disappointed that CM Gilmore did not forward a copy of the lease to me given that she should have a May 27 e-mail from me requesting a copy of that lease from MDHA's Joe Cain as well as Mr. Cain's reply saying that CCA had it. Nevertheless, she promises to release it tomorrow.