Traffic & parking planning in Salemtown sinks from deficient to dumpster fire with latest ballpark predicament

First, Metro tells us that they blew up their $65,000,000 First Tennessee Park construction budget because they didn't account for the age of the buried utility lines. Yesterday another shoe dropped: the garage that was supposed to keep game day fans from filling up our vanishing parking spaces won't be baseball ready until the 2016 season. That's an entire traffic-clogged baseball season to you and me:

Two and a half months before opening day at the Nashville Sounds' new baseball stadium, Metro officials are searching for places where fans can park their cars.

That's because an $18 million parking garage to accompany the city-financed stadium won't be ready this season, presenting complications for the inaugural year of First Tennessee Park ....

The 1,000-space garage — paid for by Metro and built by the state of Tennessee on state-owned land — is part of an agreement between the two governmental entities and the Sounds. The plan is for state employees to eventually use the garage during the day and for stadium-goers to use the garage at night and on weekends.

But the state, which will own the four-story garage, only recently broke ground on the project and state officials estimate it won't be finished until Oct. 31.

How is the Mayor working to extinguish this dumpster fire? Well, to start, four hours before the bad news broke, his spin squad announced a media tour of the ballpark construction site to take reporters' minds off the negative impact of the parking snafu on the local neighborhoods. He also promises a "temporary parking plan" using shuttles and parking lots off-site. Even when the garage was part of the concept as planned back in 2013, the Mayor made vague references to shuttles and off-site parking lots with few specifics or details, so I do not have much faith in his latest parking plan. I think baseball fans will be scouring Germantown and Salemtown for parking, especially because there are no spaces to be had downtown.

I tried to warn CM Erica Gilmore about the need for a traffic and parking plan, but she wouldn't listen as she pounded ballpark construction through the council. She has already told me point-blank that she will not even consider reserved street parking for Salemtown residents. She does not have her ducks in a row on parking issues in our neighborhood. And she's a last-term lame duck herself this election year, so I'm not expecting any high flying at the council level this spring and summer as we fight for parking spaces near our own homes.

For his part, Nashville Sounds team owner Frank Ward uses the occasion to lecture on the differences between being realists and expecting perfection:

"Will it be perfect?" Sounds owner Frank Ward said of the parking plan. "No, but it will help alleviate the parking issues. And we're working hand-in-hand with the city in coming up with that and making sure that we get it out to all our fans in sufficient time.

"Part of the plan with the city is to minimize the inconvenience of residents in Salemtown and Germantown and to keep [the parking] all south of Jefferson Street."

Maybe I missed something. Who expects perfection? Please, Mr. Ward, don't confuse demanding good and careful planning before jumping into historically huge construction with "perfection." Don't confuse expecting the mayor to have contingency plans already publicized with "perfection." Don't confuse a real, transparent risk assessment of higher costs after ground is broken with "perfection."

Despite the fact that that his club is now living on the Metro dime, Mr. Ward's ultimate allegiance is not to us taxpayers but to the Sounds ownership group and to the luxury suite and other season ticket holders.

However, I am pleased to see that Mr. Ward can for once utter the name, "Salemtown" with reference to the impact of his new toy. Hopefully, the Nashville Sounds will start treating us with more respect as time goes on.

I will not put my money on it, though.

Mr. Ward and the Sounds stopped their nostalgic references to Sulphur Dell and Jefferson Street once the council rubber stamped the Mayor on the plan. The nods to local history are over.

Moreover, I'm told that when our association's event organizers approached the Sounds about co-sponsoring a recent event, the club sent some left-over bobbleheads and out-dated t-shirts. That is not much of a sponsorship. It is rather pathetic.


UPDATE: The spate of reporters tweeting pictures today of the Mayor's tour of the new ballpark says to me that it was effective in turning a bad story into positive news media PR. Rather than reaching out to the neighborhoods most directly affected by the delay in the parking garage until 2016, the Mayor's Office of Neighborhoods is joining the feel-good chorus by posting photos of Hizzoner's tour of laughter and forgetting on Twitter:

"Creative visualization is my new plan to see that parking garage behind right field."

UPDATE: Give a sports reporter a hard hat, a yellow vest, and personal access to the Mayor and he is bound to go all giddy. The Mayor's Office and the Nashville Sounds have to pleased with this free advertising: "the new park appears to be the latest home run for the city." Is the Tennessean's Dave Ammenheuser bucking for a future promotional job with the team?

In a video connected to that editorial (because it is not good journalism), Frank Ward tells press, "Everything inside the ballpark will be ready for opening day." And conditions outside the ballpark? Fuhgeddaboudit!


UPDATE: At least some local journalists are giving us a fair shake after attending the Mayor's publicity tour of the stadium. Staff reporter E.J. Boyer at the Nashville Business Journal acknowledges the challenges facing this zooming construction project:

Another big question that has emerged this week is related to parking, a concern for the neighborhood, which has seen an influx of residents and visitors in recent years, crowding already narrow streets with cars. Dean's original proposal included a 1,000-spot garage to be funded by Metro but built by the state on state-owned land .... the garage won't be ready this season.

On Wednesday, Dean shifted responsibility for the garage's delay to the state, noting that on Metro's side, this is a fast-moving project. He added that his team has been working on a back-up plan for months, anticipating a delay, and that he hopes to reveal something in the next few weeks. Both Dean and Sounds owner Frank Ward said details are being worked out as to which party would pick up the tab for an alternative parking situation (which would most likely use shuttles to get fans to satellite parking locations) ....

The mayor's office will organize and host neighborhood meetings in the coming weeks to offer details on traffic patterns, noise and light pollution.

So maybe we will eventually get some answers to a laundry list of quality-of-life questions that should have been answered in the planning stages before approval was ever given to start construction.


UPDATE: So, the opening of the parking garage was never an expectation for opening day, huh? Then why are Metro officials acting like the news came out of left field?

"It really put us in a lurch to figure out where we're going to park people," Metro Sports Authority Executive Director Toby Compton said. "A. We wanted to figure out as much of a parking blend as possible. And the mayor was really insistent that there be a free component to the parking. That was big.

"To layer that, what we've also done is encourage people to think about mass transit options ...," he said. "Once they see this plan, they are not going to go north of Jefferson."

Metro powers-that-be have "cobbled" together a transit plan that includes free parking at Farmers' Market, state lots on James Robertson Parkway, and the "center piece," $5 parking at the Courthouse 7 or 8 blocks away from the new ballpark.

Will baseball fans buy the idea that no parking exists
above the map's top edge?

My first reaction is: why not free parking at the Courthouse? If I'm a commuting baseball fan and I have choice between parking in Germantown 2 or 3 blocks away for free or parking at the Courthouse farther away for fee, I would take the Germantown option. The fringe benefit of my choice is that I also get some exercise; health benefits accrue to the free Germantown option. Until the parking garage behind right field is built, there should be free parking for every fan in all of these lots south of Jefferson. Otherwise, Germantown and probably Salemtown are going to lose on-street parking. Universally free parking is the least the Mayor can do after blundering through the planning stages with no transit options ready-to-roll.


UPDATE: the primary reason that the ballpark legislation was shamelessly rammed through the process with little council debate and practically no citizen influence over planning is realized Opening Day, April 17. Hizzoner reserved the right to throw out the symbolic first pitch.

Mayor Karl Dean throws out the first pitch
(as celebrated by CM Jacobia Powell on her Twitter feed)

His work here is done.


UPDATE: It's Friday morning, April 24, 2015. I reserved seats in the ballpark weeks ago for my family to attend tonight's game. Paid for them and everything. I got an email mere hours before game time that our seats have been moved farther away from the action. Here is the relevant part of the email:

Dear fan,

This is not the kind of email we like to send. We’ve just been told that we have to move you to a new spot at your upcoming event, and we’ve been searching for new seats you’ll like just as much.

Nashville Sounds Vs. Oklahoma City Dodgers
First Tennessee Park
Friday, April 24, 2015 at 7:05PM

We’ve done everything we can to get you comparable seats!

If they keep treating me like this, I may have to re-evaluate my long-time status as a Sounds fan.


UPDATE: It's Monday morning, July 13, 2015. Have to say that I am hearing more and more complaints in the local community as the summer goes along that Sounds fans seem to have discovered all of the free streetside parking in Germantown and Salemtown. I cannot say I feel too much sympathy now, because the dire and bloated parking situation was predictable and preventable.

In the meantime, John Oliver's Last Week Tonight recently produced a brilliant piece on public taxes (in the form of municipal bonds, like those going to First Tennessee Park). The whole segment is wonderful and hilarious (according to one long-time stadium observer called it "more thoroughly fact-checked" than most news media coverage), but pay particular attention to the impact of one stadium on a neighborhood business, which locals who are "the regulars" abandon during games.





Hopefully, you also noticed that one big league owner refused to be transparent about his team's finances in exchange for public revenues "because that's just how it is" in league history. You may also recall that Metro's Finance Director made the exact same argument for committing municipal bonds to build First Tennessee Park, even though there are glaring instances in which that was not the way it was at all, and even though Nashville claims to want to be unlike any other city in the country. You cannot really be "It City" if you simply conform "because that's just how it is."

More broken promises at the Tennessean

Last June, the Tennessean made a concession to Metro Council (in exchange for defeating an ordinance that would have regulated delivery of their unsubscribed "free" editions) that employees from the newspapers' offices would do "ride arounds" with the delivery help and pick up unclaimed papers littering sidewalks and streets. The Tennessean is not keeping its promise in Salemtown.

I took the photo below this morning near my house. The rolled-up, plastic-packaged Tennessean at the foot of the steps in the background is yesterday's edition. The rolled-up, plastic-packaged Tennessean at the curb in the foreground was delivered on December 24, 2014.

The Tennessean is not keeping its promises to Metro Council. CM Megan Barry championed the defeat of litter regulations in our neighborhoods last June by describing the concession of the Tennessean to reclaim their unclaimed papers as a "good thing." This is the same Megan Barry who is running for mayor this year promising "not to lose sight" of neighborhoods by permitting economic activity to "degrade quality of life."

Well, as you can see, the Tennessean continues its quest to make more money by littering my neighborhood's public spaces with unsolicited advertising. Litter degrades Salemtown's quality of life.

Promises broken by the news corporation. Promises broken by the corporation's political patrons on the Metro Council. Promises broken all around.

I asked the Tennessean to stop throwing papers at our house. They did it anyway. On Christmas Eve.

Back in early November, I pointed out to our council member at-Large Megan Barry that the local daily newspaper was not ending littering Salemtown with its advertisements each Wednesday as she suggested they would back in June. The Tennessean social media person responded with contact info to stop delivery.

Despite my cynicism (expressed above) that the Tennessean would actually change their established pattern of ignoring my stop-delivery requests, I emailed the "tmc" account provided and asked them to stop Wednesday delivery.

For my diligence, this morning we received another unwelcome gift from a Tennessean delivery drone: the plastic-wrapped "free" Wednesday advertising edition of the Tennessean.

As the littering of Salemtown continues without any options to stop it, thanks to Metro Council elves, I recall CM Barry's argument on a warm June night for leaving the Tennessean alone to do what it wills:

The conversation [about controlling the unsolicited litter dumps in neighborhoods] has led to some really good things that the Tennessean is doing .... tonight I am going to go ahead and say, “Let’s just put this to rest” and I’m going to vote against [stopping unwelcome litter in neighborhoods].

What Megan Barry helped put to rest last June was any chance you and I have of controlling a vast polluting, dead-tree corporation that is more of an advertising agency than a news source. Is it because the Tennessean stands to provide her mayoral campaign with the kind of advertising (masquerading as journalism) she could not buy? That I cannot say for sure, although it stands to reason that not rocking the boat minimizes her risk of media hits and broadsides.

However, only an Orwellian can argue that dumping dozens of rolls of unwanted paper within a community trying to keep its streets cleaned up is a "good thing."

Marshaled by mayoral candidate Megan Barry, the council refuses to discuss any downside to the Bridgestone dealio

In October CM Megan Barry characterized the problems that uneven growth causes in places like North Nashville as "growing pains" completely ignoring the historical prejudice and systemic flow of resources away from our neighborhoods. By minimizing the collateral shambles and planned blight caused by growth, she ignored how North Nashville has perennially been treated as a dumping ground for wealthy Nashville's refuse and as new territory for white settlement after real estate prices bottom out. Her answer to the "growing pains" is "transportation and affordable housing." Ironically, her last significant transportation vote as council member was to fund that $18 million sidewalk, exclusively serving downtown, while some Madison children walk to school in the street. Has she considered the limitations of calculating what gets called "affordable housing" in gentrifying neighborhoods?

Last night she also made clear that another option she would favor as mayor would be more of the same untamed corporate sweetheart deals that Karl Dean has become a rock star at ginning up while benignly ignoring North Nashville:

By turning this parking lot into a permanent [Bridgestone] fixture in the Nashville skyline, we are moving Nashville forward .... We are going to keep 1,100 Nashville jobs, but we are going to add 600 new jobs in Nashville with an average salary of $93,000 in which it increases our tax base for schools, for transportation and for public safety .... Let's be clear this is not a corporate giveaway.

Ms. Barry went on to soft-pedal one of the more alarming aspects of Dean's deal: Bridgestone can lay-off up to 20% of the 1,700 people it promises to deliver without losing its tax-free status with Metro. She said that "if Bridgestone fails to deliver" 1,700 jobs by the end of 2020, Metro can "claw back" a fraction of the taxes owed. But Bridgestone is still given leeway to shed 20% of this workforce and still be exempt from property taxes. The Bridgestone boosters are not being entirely honest about the risks of this deal. As one reporter put it, "Council members stayed away from discussing any possible downside to the Bridgestone deal."

The Orwellian dimensions of council supporters' comments about the Bridgestone deal are staggering. Bridgestone is not obligated to create any new permanent jobs. The company is praised for importing 600 out-of-state employees, but it can shed over half of the 600's filled positions and still keep its tax break. Supporters also tout Bridgestone's pledge to donate $150,000 to Metro schools. $150,000. That's it. They're getting a $56,300,000 hand-out from Nashville, and they're only pledging $150,000 to our schools, which I assume they can claim on their tax returns. Yet, in CM Barry's words, "this is not a corporate giveaway."

Another Orwellian moment was CM Barry's claim that the new Bridgestone building would be a permanent fixture in the Nashville skyline. Backing her up, CM Erica Gilmore said the HQ would "forever change" the skyline. The only real constant with regard to buildings in Nashville is that older ones are torn down to make room for newer ones, regardless of the history or need to preserve what is important to people here. Anyone who claims that there is permanence in Nashville's built environment is acting misleadingly and dishonestly. A new building downtown may be here for a long time, or it may give way to some future capital project subsidized by the mayor and ballyhooed by a blustery council.

Megan Barry is right about one thing. The new Bridgestone HQ is going to be a fixture, permanent or not, on the Nashville skyline that many will be able to see. Many in North Nashville who will never have the opportunity at any possible living wage jobs Bridgestone might catalyze will see it, too. And that is as close as they are going to get to the sense of entitlement downtown. The Bridgestone HQ sits on a far horizon for most of those who work their livings in this town. Average North Nashvillians will not be enjoying those $93,000 jobs even if the projected taxes on them eventually trickle down here and there like crumbs from the master's table.

And Megan Barry will continue to minimize the growth-induced plight of working people as "growing pains" that are somehow necessary when a city barters away its corporate tax base due to the Courthouse terror that companies might plead poverty and abandon it.

Karl Dean wants to be known of late as the kinder and gentler mayor

We shouldn't be shocked that the same Tennessean newspaper that anointed Nashville Mayor Karl Dean back-to-back "Tennessean of the Year" (2010, 2011) published another obsequious editorial this week, penned by Frank Daniels III, celebrating Hizzoner. (An interesting side note: former Tennessean reporter Michael Cass wrote both "Tennessean of the Year" tributes to Mayor Dean; Mr. Cass was recently hired to be the Mayor's speech writer.) Nashville's daily paper has been an unfailing, unflinching advocate of this mayor his entire tenure in the Courthouse.

The editorial provides a rebranding of Hizzoner into a kinder and gentler mayor than he has actually been when attempting to and succeeding in his steamrolls of expensive capital projects that benefit wealthy campaign donors more than common neighborhoods.

Somewhat insulting our intelligence, Mr. Daniels III claims that Mayor Dean lavished "lots of sidewalks" on us, when in reality so many communities outside of downtown languish with no pedestrian access and egress. Some parents still have to walk their kids to school on streets close to dangerous traffic for lack of sidewalks. It was only when he needed council votes for an $18 million downtown luxury sidewalk that Mayor Dean offered to be kinder than usual to other neighborhoods. Otherwise, his spending on community infrastructure relative to his sexier projects has been stingy.

Try to rebrand Karl the Kind as they might, the newspaper cannot convince some of us to forget the original, industrial-strength brand of Mayor's Office that has benignly neglected communities for years.

It is interesting math that does not factor in the cumulative effect of trash

Every now and again, council member Emily Evans defies logic and lays a head scratcher on us that introduces new mathematics equations I am not familiar with. For instance, last June, while advocating shrinking Metro Council representation, she claimed merely popping out kids already shrinks a community's influence in government. Hence, have a nuclear family, give up power to influence. Subtraction by addition.

Also in June, in defense of the Tennessean littering our neighborhoods with unsolicited trash every Wednesday, she said this:

It's no more an inconvenience [to pick up rolls of the Tennessean littering yards, sidewalks, and streets] than taking the junk mail out of your mailbox and putting it in the trash.

Actually, if you stack the amount of Tennessean paper you have to throw away every week on top of the junk mail you discard every week it equals more garbage, more drag on your own time than if the Tennessean never darkened your door again. The extra burden is on someone else to clean the mess if the Tennessean will not do it themselves.

We now hear that the "newsroom of the future" is a more "metrics-based" project of meeting customer demand rather than reporting facts that might shed light on events readers might not otherwise discover. In other words the Tennessean is flipping itself to be an advertising circular rather than a news vehicle. So, we are more inconvenienced now by more junk mail, the main difference being that Tennessean junk mail is in plain sight, not hidden in our mailboxes.

I fail to understand how adding to the pile of unwanted junk somehow equals "no more" in Emily Evans' new math.

Nashville's most whipped, domesticated Metro Council ever

The Metro Council passed the Mayor's plan for an $18 million Gulch sidewalk on second reading tonight without a lick of the resistance they showed last winter when the proposal was expressed to them in other terms.

Besides the $2 million spending gap, there is little difference between plan 1 and plan 2. In plan 1, Mayor Karl Dean was going to give his friends in the downtown business class $16 million from everyone else's infrastructure funds to build the Gulch bridge. After council members pointed out that they need their sidewalk funds because they don't have enough sidewalks, Hizzoner came back with plan 2 a few weeks ago: $18 million collected from Gulch businesses would pay for the bridge, meaning that the money would sheltered from broad use (like to defray the cost of sidewalks in other neighborhoods). As I said before, it's a shell game played with tax money that belongs to all of us, not just to downtown businesses.

Either way, Karl Dean reserved his preferential option for the rich at the expense of the working classes who generate the wealth Davidson County enjoys.

He threw the challengers in the Metro Council some bones, trotting out his Finance Director to say that they had put more money for sidewalks elsewhere in the Mayor's budget. and would do so until the Mayor's last term is over.

His term is over a year from now. How many sidewalks can he build us in a year? And how many will not be built that could have been built in the past 8 years?

Mayor Dean bristled last April at suggestions that he might be a lame duck. Just to prove it he dangled a few sidewalks in front of this council that he should have built years ago, Naturally, they folded like a cheap suit. Maybe there was arm twisting. Who knows? I doubt it took much pain to get this project through this compliant council.

It was remarkable to watch tonight. Much like the passage of ballpark proposal a few months ago: moving quickly to minimize questions and to steamroll any attempts to even express "no" by recorded vote. Vice Mayor Diane Neighbors, ever Karl Dean's catalyst, asked only for a voice vote, which does not register no votes.

Only a handful of CMs made their opinions clear, and one was mayoral candidate, Megan Barry. In unrelated events, Ms. Barry got in touch with her inner populist last month and declined to attend a campaign debate due to its posh price tag:

I was disappointed to learn yesterday that this forum will be a high-dollar fundraiser for the Nashville Business Coalition PAC instead of being an open forum with a diverse
audience. While I understand the need to cover costs of the event, I believe that Nashville needs to be an inclusive city where our community can join with business leaders to openly discuss the issues that matter to everyone.

Regretfully, I must decline to attend this event unless an effort is made to make the forum more accessible to the hard-working men and women who have helped to grow our economy and enabled our businesses to thrive.

I find it outstanding that CM Barry is finally standing up to the Nashville Business Coalition rather than appearing before them at beck-and-call as she did during her council campaigns. However, declining an appearance at a PAC's forum demands little risk. Candidates decline to appear at forums all the time. Where is the risk?

If Megan Barry truly intended to lay it on the line against Nashville's exclusive elites, she could have spoken against and voted against at least one of Mayor Karl Dean's big-ticket capital projects. But to the very end she refuses to do so. From the convention center to stormwater fee structure to Fairgrounds redevelopment, Megan Barry has persisted in her support of the wealthy over "hard-working men and women." (And the wording of her letter above is troubling: working people do not simply "help" someone else grow the economy. Their labor is the primary cause of the wealth that gives people like Karl Dean more power.) She did not depart from that path regarding the Gulch bridge.

So, how did Megan Barry justify an $18 million sidewalk this evening? By saying that "connecting Nashville" (Mayor Dean's slogan to generate public support for the bill) is a "necessity". Well, of course, connecting our communities is a necessity, but the Gulch bridge does not do that. It connects niche luxury hotels in the Gulch to tourist venues downtown with terraced seating and lots of plants. It is another tourist stop in a city of tourist stops. In places far from stylized downtown chic, parents have to walk their kids to and from school without sidewalks dangerously close to auto traffic. So, excuse me if I do not shed a tear over out-of-towners forced to cross the Gulch on Demonbreun Street's existing sidewalks. Excuse me if I do not buy bogus claims that a lone $18 million Gulch sidewalk helps Madison families. Megan Barry's insinuation that the Gulch bridge meets the pedestrian needs for more transit options across Nashville is false. To call it a piece of a larger "transportation policy" is not grounded in the reality of Nashville politics.

Her claims sound a lot like the Mayor's justification for building bus rapid transit only for west and east Nashville, while promising that neighborhoods north and south would one day--in some great, gettin' up morning--win their own BRT. And we believe that snake oil, don't we, North Nashville? Likewise, why should we ever believe that a new pedestrian bridge for the Gulch would serve anyone but the people who can afford to live and to lodge there?

As long as she rejects any resistance to Karl Dean's policies, Megan Barry's claims to aim for a more inclusive city will never materialize. She has tied her fortunes to his.

In the larger picture, CM Barry's vocal support for Karl Dean is symbolic of this docile Metro Council, which looks pathetic as a representative body at times. They do not act boldly. They do not take chances. They never ever lay it all on the line at the risk of great loss. So now we're going to get a token number of sidewalks that Mayor Dean should have built (and more) since day 1 of his first term.

Promising sidewalks to the council was the right thing to do years ago. Now it just looks cynical. And the council along with it. For the inconvenience, we are getting an $18 million bridge that most of us cannot enjoy unless we actually buy the con that downtown belongs to and benefits us "inclusively". Thus, the bridge is already built on a trickle-down lie.


UPDATE:  Megan Barry has been voted "Best Current Council Member" at the Nashville Scene. Maybe there is some pride in being the best member of one of the worst representative bodies Nashville has had.

What can Brown do for SouthComm?

It has been a while since a local reporter wrote the following about lightning-rod education reformer, Michelle Rhee, so it is time to see how the 1 1/2 year old copy stands up to reality. Writes Andrea Zelinski, circa January 2013:

Michelle Rhee is an icon of the education reform movement. She’s pushed to hold teachers more accountable for students’ performance, busted open the doors of school choice and shaken up the education establishment. She’s also thrown a few elbows and drawn criticism for her style.

A Tennessee transplant, she is turning her attention to schools in her new state.

The polarizing former Washington, D.C., schools chancellor heads up StudentsFirst, an education reform organization she founded just as she began setting roots in the Volunteer State. The group has already handed out hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations to state-level political campaigns and a handful of local elections here, positioning itself as a force to be reckoned with.

Back when Michelle Rhee was a rock star, this kind of fawning coverage might have flown in spite of the protests of those like me who judged it to be a load of crap. Ms. Rhee was a celebrity, and aspiring news coverage seeks to hitch its wagon to a star above all.

Now, given what we have learned about the pitiful "movement" Michelle Rhee fabricated, the SouthComm interview appears to be folly without the slightest hint of courage to probe for the truth. One makes choices, and Zelinski's (or was it SouthComm's?) choice not to challenge Michelle Rhee is inane in light of the harder questions other journalists ask:

Rhee’s StudentsFirst campaigns have done little to animate parents. In Connecticut, an investment of about $700,000 produced a [Rhee head-liner] at the State Capitol ..., which drew only about 75 people. In Alabama, where StudentsFirst claimed 17,000 members, only about 20 showed up at a meeting she called at that state’s capitol.

Revelations about Rhee’s accomplishments while she was chancellor for Washington, D.C., public schools have also sullied her self-avowed reputation for “raising achievement”....

Darkening the pall cast over Rhee’s reputation is an unresolved cheating scandal on Rhee’s watch in D.C. The alleged scandals — and what, if anything, Rhee might have known about them — have never been adequately investigated....

the stench of questionable numbers is likely to follow Rhee wherever she goes, with any new appointment likely to prompt more questioning and investigation from journalists ....

Not only has Rhee’s reputation as a results-oriented school leader gone south, but her organization StudentsFirst is not doing so well either ....

StudentsFirst, the lobbying and political actions firm Rhee started, is shutting down its Minnesota office due to a “changing legislative climate” .... Reporters at Politico noticed the office closing too and added in its daily newsletter that StudentsFirst has “pulled out of five states and laid off six staff members as the midterm elections approach,” shutting down operations not only in Minnesota but also in Florida, Maine, Indiana and Iowa.

Additionally, the reporters noted, “The organization hasn’t brought in anywhere near the $1 billion that Rhee confidently predicted she would raise when she founded the group in 2010.”

On the other hand, what StudentsFirst seems to excel at is funneling campaign contributions from its undisclosed financial backers to lobbying efforts and politicians, who are mostly Republican and mostly incumbents. So much for being a “change agent.”

The contrast between Andrea Zelinski's ode and the latest point-by-point interrogation of Michelle Rhee's actual career could not be more stark. Keep in mind that SouthComm fancies itself as "alt" journalism, but all the "alt" that we can learn appears to be elsewhere.

SouthComm is in a difficult place. They hitched their wagon to Rhee's star instead of at the very least playing devil's advocate, and now that Rhee's star is fading they don't have a shred of credibility left on the subject of education "Rheeform."

The only option they have left to save face is to gin up a promotional interview with Ms. Rhee's replacement in the anti-teacher niche, Campbell Brown, and hope she "transplants" to Tennessee, too.


UPDATE: There was evidence out there in January 2013 that Michelle Rhee was nothing more than a marginal "Tennessee transplant."

Study: the jobs "created" by big municipal projects were never really "created" at all

Recently I cited a bunch of evidence that debunked the urban myth that building new ballparks results in net gains for economic development in neighborhoods. The prospect of economic development is one of the rationalizations used by Karl Dean's office to defend Metro's support of First Tennessee Park in its Jefferson Street location.

Another prominent rationalization used to defend Metro's financial support of the park--that subsidies create jobs for North Nashville--is open to debate in the wake of a study that finds that subsidizing capital projects does not do anything of the sort:

a recent study by the Kauffman Foundation suggests that the money [from public subsidies and tax breaks] only shifts jobs from one state to another and doesn't necessarily create them. State and local incentives rarely target the new and young businesses that actually do create jobs.

The subsidy escalation that states have entered has become a zero-sum game in which a largely fixed set of jobs shift from one state to another as companies search for the highest bidder. And even when new jobs are created, companies would likely have needed to add them anyway, and the cost per position to taxpayers can be astronomical.

The 2011 embarrassment of the failed move of IQT Solutions that Karl Dean went through a few years ago drove the point home that the "creation" of jobs in Nashville would cost Canadian workers their jobs if the company had not eventually gone bankrupt. To a certain extent common sense should tell us that the relocation of companies often comes at great cost to the places they leave. But studies help reinforce the point.

If you build it, they will relocate.

At last year's community meeting on the ballpark proposal, Dean's Director of Finance, Rich Riebeling admitted (perhaps in a moment of candor?) that Metro is subsidizing the project because that is how other cities do it. But otherwise, the refrain from ballpark supporters is that transferring money to private companies "creates" jobs; as if those companies do not use the money for purposes other than creating jobs.

How many livable wage jobs (I'm not talking about construction jobs, which end in a few months when the building is erected) are going to be created by First Tennessee Park? The latest research indicates that we will not see enough jobs to equal the $65 million investment that we are dumping into the development.

She simply will not acknowledge that shrinkage is a wash: everyone has less of a challenge

CM Emily Evans continues to respond with specious claims in defense of the campaign she supports to shrink the Metro Council. Here's the stretch and the pitch:

If you are either the mayor or let’s say you are a special interest, you’re a lobbyist, and you’re lobbying on behalf of XYZ waste management company .... The lobbyist and the company are going to get whatever resources are necessary to make sure that they get passed what they need to get passed. They’re going to apply the resources necessary whether there are 100 council members or there are five council members. So the paid professional people are going to get what they need done because when you look at the cost of lobbying the council versus a large council that they may try to get approved, it’s inconsequential.

Now, let’s say you’re a neighborhood group and you are trying to get a conservation overlay group or you’re a neighborhood group that’s trying to stop bad development. You don’t have unlimited resources. You have very limited resources. So, to me, the balance in that situation doesn’t go to the lobbyist or the mayor with unlimited resources, it goes to the people with less resources. Because now suddenly, they have less of a challenge.

The prevailing fallacy, naturally, is that private enterprises like pro lobbyists have "unlimited resources" to burn through. Granted, they may have a lot more to burn through than neighborhood groups, but suggesting that shrinking the Metro Council will catch neighborhood groups up to the power of lobbyist to influence legislation is ridiculous.

Slashing the council to 27 members will be a net savings in the expense column for lobbying firms. They operate on an annual budget just like any other organization. The windfall they get from not having to lobby a dozen more CMs can be spent in other ways: lobbying the remaining CMs harder as community-based efforts ramp up, lobbying a host of other pieces of legislation that that can effectively undermine popular influence, sending lobbyists to the General Assembly to push for top-down legislation to impose on Metro government, etc. The human capital currently allocated to service a large council will be redistributed with a small council. Cash flow will be maximized.

To quote a shrinkage supporter: cutting the number of CMs would be "a slam dunk" in savings for lobbying firms. I have a hard time believing that lobbyists would be anything but delirious over the financial savings for their income-expense reports in having to leverage fewer votes.

But let's turn the tables on CM Evans. Is it really logical to believe that it would make no difference to a private firm, which has a bottom line and managers to keep costs down, whether there are 5 CMs or 500 CMs? We are supposed to believe that lobbying firms are willing to risk insolvency to lobby giant legislative bodies? This logic is supposed to persuade us? Really?


UPDATE: On second thought, my title above is not entirely correct. Not everyone will have less of a challenge. Individual voters will have less representation on the the council and they will have to compete with increasing numbers for constituents for council members' shrinking attention and action.

Boston will be Nashville's favorite mistake

It's just a matter of time for before the snowjob to expand convention centers hits Nashville, too:

The [Massachusetts] House overwhelmingly passed a $1.1 billion expansion bond last week. The Senate is scheduled to take up the legislation Thursday, after trimming $110 million from it over concerns of a giveaway to hotel developers.

President Therese Murray is a strong supporter of the expansion. So strong, in fact, that in a speech last month before the Boston Chamber of Commerce, she quoted verbatim the talking points of Massachusetts Convention Center Authority Jim Rooney, who says the expansion will vault the state into the top five convention destinations in the country and create thousands of jobs and $184 million of additional economic impact every year ....

Heywood Sanders, a professor of public administration...said in a phone interview that convention space in the United States grew from 40 million square feet to 71 million square feet between 1990 and 2013, but tradeshow demand has been flat since 2000. Moreover, Boston’s expansion would occur alongside expansions planned or proposed in cities such as Anaheim, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and San Diego.

“There is nothing Rooney can do to make Boston a top-five convention destination,” Sanders said.

Joan Eisenstodt, a Washington-based national event planner, said competition sometimes prompts convention centers to virtually give away space to lure conventions, which pokes a hole in so-called economic impact. She also said a bigger Boston center may actually amplify Boston’s current weaknesses, such as our growing congestion.

Nashville faces a perfect storm of 1) post-sexy-beast debt that will plague the next administration and drag down the Metro budget, 2) image-conscious politicians who will be tantalized by pretty new capital projects to pad resumes, 3) outside competition from foolhardy cities like Boston who are trying to keep up in the race to the next big thing. That convergence assures that Nashville will be before long looking to expand its brand new Music City Center.

Also, consider for a moment some of the logic behind the Mayor's new plan for an east-west bus rapid transit connector to serve the convention center. Music City Center has created more Downtown traffic congestion. The Amp is designed to alleviate that, which in turn, provides another rationale when MCC expansion is proposed by a future mayor. The Amp will likely free up room for even more congestion caused once future MCC expansion is approved.

These capital projects look more and more like vicious circles within which Nashville is suspended and within which taxpayers are trapped. When does it stop? Where do we reach the tipping point where the costs destroy the few benefits that trickle down to us?

And how long before Music City Center starts giving away space because their competitors are doing it? Not long. Try August. A convention of convention planners is getting a free ride from Metro:

Cities trying to keep their massive convention centers busy bend over backwards to bring Graham’s group to town.

Nashville isn’t charging a dime for using the new Music City Center. And the Convention and Visitors Corporation is spending roughly $1.5 million to provide everything from private concerts with country music superstars to Nashville-branded air fresheners in taxicabs.

CVC president Butch Spyridon says it makes sense to waive the rental fee and go all out.

“You’ve got to build a mousetrap to capture the money,” he says. “And if you want to be in the game, you have to be competitive.”

Convention planning. Nice work if you can get it, thanks to the sweetheart treatment planners get from municipal governments who choose to remain willfully ignorant about independent studies on convention trends. Money buys other "studies" to the contrary.

In the meantime, the drag on Metro services caused by Music City Center, the expensive albatross that many of us have been concerned about, is already here:

In its first year of operation, the Music City Center convention hall failed to meet projections for hotel bookings, saw its surplus revenue fund drop by nearly $8 million and had its bond rating downgraded ....

At a cost of $623 million, Music City Center, which opened in May of last year, is the most expensive civic project in Metro's history. The center, overseen by the city's Convention Center Authority, also triggered $245 million in public spending for the headquarters Omni Hotel.

The project's supporters remain confident and paint a different picture of Music City Center. They point to a self-reported economic impact of $125 million through March in addition to a wave of expensive hotel renovations and potential new downtown projects ....

However, the real challenge for the Convention Center Authority appears to be lurking in the next three fiscal years, when incentive payments for the Omni and debt payments for the center will escalate, while hotel bookings in those years continue to lag behind expectations. Hotel bookings are important, because the Music City Center and Omni incentives are funded with a series of tourist taxes.

Cheerleaders for Music City Center can spin their own "economic impact" numbers any way they wish. When Nashville's Mayor annually proposes slashing the budgets of Metro departments, we are not fooled by the spin. The benefits are not trickling down. Any impact is negligible for those of us on the outside of tourism looking in. The cheerleaders make their money off the taxes we kick in to provide free conventions for tourists. Of course, they are not going to acknowledge reality. To do so would cut against their financial interests in keeping public money flowing to their coffers.

In the meantime, get ready for future build outs. The tourism industry has an addiction to feed. The rest of us are the saps backing these transactions, watching our money flow into a bottomless pit of big boxes in need of future expansion. The spin cycle won't stop any time soon.

Council member defends reducing size of Metro Council: "You're less represented every time somebody is born in your district"

Today's Nashville Scene reports that CM Emily Evans is taking a presentation (this conservative one?) around to small groups in the community.

Parenthood ≠ power

The spin over at the Scene is that her proposal is not so much emphasizing shrinking the Metro Council as it is trading long-term CM term limits for shrinking the Metro Council. The newspaper's spin also casts the question of whether we might trade less representation for CMs being able to stick around longer (including the ones whom we find appalling).

Sound appealing? Less representation, less influence alongside longer term limits for bad and good apples? What will control freaks do when bad CMs stick around longer and feel emboldened to ignore constituents because they are insulated by higher numbers of them?

Oh, I forgot their leap of faith: a smaller Metro Council automatically attaches to quality leadership. Bad apples will not bob to the top. Voters in larger groups make better decisions. Or at least that rationalization is what supporters tell me when I ask for good reasons to back their cause.

As for the justifications for the grand bargain of Emily Evans, they continue to defy common sense:

"You're less represented every time somebody is born in your district and every time somebody new moves into your district," she tells the Scene

Wow. Did she really say that our newborns cause us to have less representation on the Metro Council? Is she really insinuating that voters who live in districts that grow have less representation, that those who live in districts people flee have more influence over the political process? Less representation is "natural"?! What?!!

There is defying common sense, then there is stripping and shaming it:

"The Metro model will always inherently favor the mayor, but she says a smaller council would have some more muscle."

The way to have more muscle is to become smaller? Does that muscle analogy apply to literal muscles, too? Smaller muscles have more muscle than larger muscles?

Before we agree to a referendum to rewrite the Metro Charter to reduce our representation, let's be more level-headed and plant our feet firmly on the ground, free of temptation to join these leaps in logic.

Flag this tweet for future reference

Context for this tweet: Nashville Scene reporter Steven Hale and I were debating whether District 23 CM Emily Evans should be consuming time working on resolutions to shrink the council as well as on a PR effort outside of the council to persuade neighborhoods to sign her petition on the question. After pointing out that I have read some constituents' concerns that this initiative is becoming a drain on time CM Evans might spend on their issues, I alluded to the possibility that a PR firm (like The Calvert Street Group) might be being paid to do the time-consuming campaign so that CM Evans might not have to. Steven Hale's reply to my speculation is the tweet posted above.

A PR firm describes what they do.

I'm just making note of his reply in case at some future time we find out that a PR firm is indeed being paid to shape public perceptions on CM Evans' wish to shrink the council.

One other point: it is cheaper for the lobbyists at any PR firm to have a smaller council to influence and leverage rather than a larger one like we have. If a PR firm is getting paid for working this campaign, it would be like double dipping to win it.



UPDATED: almost one year later CM Emily Evans concedes that her bid to shrink the council is getting help from the Calvert Street Group. Her exchange with Steven Hale in an April 9, 2015 interview:

[Hale] Is this just a one-woman show here? Are you getting people to help out, whether it's professionally or just volunteers? What's the campaign look like? ....

[Evans] The campaign part of it was what I'm laughing about. It's volunteers. We hope to pick up some endorsements, which will help as we move along. We're getting some help from [PR/lobbying firm] the Calvert Street Group. Darden [Copeland, managing director] is a friend, a personal friend, and he's ... being a personal friend [laughs].

"Metro Council @50" pleads case for smaller Metro Council before offering survey

I received a slide presentation that appears to be that of the supporters of the idea of making Metro Council a smaller body (link at the end of this post). Please note that I have not confirmed its source yet, so take it for what it is worth.

The slant of the presentation is definitely toward offering fodder for minimizing the Metro Council and particularly for slashing the council's expense line in the Metro budget. You will see that it initially provides a lot of historical and statistical data to get heads swimming, but don't get lost in the data. Follow how the data is interpreted, because that is what supporters are trying to get you to believe about details that can be interpreted in many ways.

Page 31 of the presentation is decisive. The presenters lay their cards on the table right before they ask people to fill out their survey (push poll?) on page 32. On page 31 the authors present

• a "savings analysis," arguing that a "smaller government" will save the Metro budget $312,650 per year or $3.5 million over 20 years
• an analogy of a smaller council to a smaller classroom
• the view that bigger districts provide larger pools from which to draw candidates
• the argument that the council would have "Broader City-wide perspective"

How is this presentation designed to appeal to progressives? None of us want to waste money, but let's be frank: open democracies where all people are fairly represented are typically the most expensive and most inefficient forms of government. If the primary interest in Nashville is to minimize cost of representative democracy, then centralizing more power with the executive to make decisions rubber-stamped by a minimal council may be the better course (assuming the Mayor doesn't blow Metro money on foolhardy projects). But democracies are messy and expensive. If the priority is making sure people have a voice in Metro government, then some level of inefficiency is going to naturally occur. The best deciders budget in leeway for the inefficiencies of democracy.

This presentation's focus on the cost of Metro Council and on cutting their expense line in the budget is a conservative argument. The move to make the council smaller is a conservative move if this is the presentation to do so.

The other three arguments that presenters make expose, in my opinion, that supporters are advocating as much status quo as they are transformation. If the Metro Council is like a classroom, then the classroom needs a teacher. Who is most likely to be the teacher in a strong-executive form of government? The Mayor. Making a smaller council makes a strapping Mayor even stronger, which is fine if the Mayor truly represents everyone. And when he or she does not represent everyone? If the council is the class and the Mayor the teacher, where are constituents in the analogy?

Creating larger pools from which to draw candidates does nothing to guarantee that diverse interests will be represented any more than the current large council does. In fact, it may dilute the power previously exercised by better organized popular movements to elect and to influence their candidate of choice. Observers noted the power of African-American voters in the last judicial election. That GOTV power could be diluted during council elections if Nashville increases the size of districts.

You want to see an example of how well broader city-wide perspectives work in Metro Council? Look at the current crop of at-Large Council Members. Even those who are considered the most progressive time and again voted against organized community interests when the questions came down to the Mayor vs. the community. "Broader city-wide perspective" is a myth that the council and other politicos like to perpetuate, but it is rarely manifested. By way of analogy (better than the classroom analogy), a smaller council is more likely to vote with the Mayor and against actual community interests if that perspective is its priority.

Again, these are conservative arguments that endorse consolidating power with the Mayor and with the wealthy campaign donors who have more influence on local politics than voters do. The move to make the council smaller is a conservative move if this is the presentation to do so.

Regardless of what I believe or of what the presenters intend, don't let anyone tell you what the data says. Interpret it for yourself. But be sure to keep your eye on how they spin the data. Jump to the presentation:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_l3GAtZila2SmRFQ1V4TXU3Vkk/edit?usp=sharing

When the testers don't perform

This week it is just plain "outage"

Boy, watching Tennessee's standardized testing regime's derailment this week has confirmed our decision last year to pull our daughter out of Metro public schools. The naked hypocrisy and outright shame of a high-stakes testing regime--which pushes kids into performance anxiety--sputtering and stalling under its own inept weight and low performance are proper payback for the toll the system took on us and many others.

Maybe someone should test the testers.

Forget it. That will never happen. They will just go on bumbling through the future, coercing kids to prove themselves over and over by standards that may or may not have anything to do with teaching kids to think critically or to become functioning citizens in a democracy.

This waiver is good for the Metro public school students who are going to have their grades reflect their actual academic performance in real classrooms for once. That beats being measured by an arbitrary stick imposed upon public education under duress by the special interests of business lobby groups and chambers of commerce and enforced by flawed federal policies.

It won't be long before Tennessee's education apparatus rights itself and this cycle of psychological violence and abuse starts all over again. Our public school children will be reduced again to survivors before long.

In the meantime, payback is a bitch, ain't it?

The online fight over size between current and former council members continues

Again, I am not included in the list of people privileged enough to enjoy the war of words in the email blasts between current and former CMs on the question of a smaller legislative body for Metro, but former East Nasty CM Jamie Hollin has entered the fray. From my Inbox:

[To John Summers:] Are you going to educate the rest of us on why this is not a good idea? I feel if you put me on this list, you at least owe me more. Your email below is simply conclusory absent some fear tactic about developers, which also translates into "voters are dumb." This ain't DC--just ask whomever ran against Amy Frogge for school board.

You also state that your rarely disagree with CM Evans. She can tell you that I rarely agree with her on anything. EVER.

All amped up

However, she has made compelling arguments in support of reducing the council and has the support of the Charter Revision Committee, which illustrates the depth of her efforts. Notwithstanding my past and future disagreements with CM Evans, I know a good thing when I see one. This is one of those times and I'm glad you gave me the opportunity to demonstrate the same.

Besides, it is very, very difficult for a citizen to get involved in a process and attempt to influence the majority of a 40 member body on any matter. Reducing the number will increase the quality of the candidates because weak candidates--even those with campaign war chests--will lose. Moreover, the ubiquity of email, Facebook, twitter and traditional communication methods make contact with your CM easier.

I'll listen to your rationale to oppose as soon as you develop some. And, I earnestly hope you do because I want to learn why this shouldn't be a slam dunk. I know what it takes to beat the executive on the floor of the council and 40 members makes  the Mayor's job very easy. If you want a weak legislative body--like we have--keep the status quo. If you want a check on the executive, support CM Evans.

Between his PR work for the bus rapid transit project to benefit Downtown and West End businesses ("the Amp") and this diatribe against questioning the idea of a smaller council, Mr. Hollin seems to have moved away from his days as a firebrand populist on the council challenging a mayor over a Fairgrounds development plan that would have terminated inexpensive entertainment for Nashvillians who could not afford the Titans or TPAC.

Of course, the former council member does not give many good reasons for why voters should support a smaller council even as he accuses Mr. Summers of failing to give rationales.

• I've already dealt with the argument that a smaller council would be easier to influence: that's a wash because the rich and powerful class (including developers) would also have an easier time lavishing money and influence on CMs to legislate their bidding. It's not that voters are dumb, Mr. Hollin. It's that ordinary people don't have the resources or time that wealthy people have to influence the process. They don't lack the smarts. They lack the power. The size of the council won't change that.
• The disappointing quality of the current at-Large CMs is strong evidence against Mr. Hollin's claim that reducing the number of CMs increases the quality. To claim that a smaller group equals higher quality is wishful thinking with no basis in reality. At some level we're going to have to change the soul of Nashville's political culture rather than misplacing trust in rewriting the charter.
• I'd like to see Jamie Hollin sell his case for "the ubiquity of email, Facebook, twitter" to Nashville's working class who watch their walking-around money, their disposable income being diverted to pay utility bills, loan balances and medical charges instead of going to purchase computers and iPads, which allow access to such "ubiquity". This is the most anemic argument when it comes to convincing me that common folk will have greater influence over a smaller Metro Council.

As a private citizen, Jamie Hollin is entitled to his opinions, but he also invoked his service as CM, so I venture to say that this look is not good for him. He looked much better fighting the good fight for ordinary people as a council member.

In the end, calling a smaller council "a slam dunk" is hyperbole. Even if you believe there is a strong case for it--which I have yet to hear--there have to be risks. Let's talk about those, too.


UPDATE: Jamie Hollin ("@jrhollin") hides his tweets from public consumption, so I'm not sure what he said in this Twitter exchange about my blog post. I gather it was somewhat disapproving, given Justin Mundie's self-defense that he doesn't agree with it himself:

Wondering: why Master Hollin can't make an appearance here and comment his thoughts about my views below rather than shielding them in a private account? Maybe for the same reasons he does not include me in his email blasts?

Size matters?

One of the more unfortunate ideas to be recently advanced in Metro Council is that of amending the Metro Charter to cut the size of council simply because few other cities have a council this size.

Those who have made the case for a smaller council outside the council tend to refer to its hilarity rather than to explain carefully how decreasing the size of the legislative body won't just lead to more streamlined rubber-stamping of the strong executive (who will actually have to spend less time lobbying for votes) and to more abbreviated levels of comedy. All you have to do is look at the current Keystone crop of at-Larges and their pet projects and their obsequiousness to Hizzoner to have a good idea of how a smaller council would function. It would be 24 at-Larges who are just as jealous and territorial as the current crop. Changing the size does not guarantee a change in the dynamic. It just means less messy democracy.

Nonetheless, the council member sponsoring this bill, Emily Evans, is broadcasting herself as a champion of "the public", and she plans for a petition drive if the bill does not pass. I won't sign her petition until she convinces me that it is in my best interest to do so.

On top of that, she's engaged in email blast brawls with former CM John Summers, who opposes significant shrinkage.

I--like many of you--was not privy to this debate (the thread was forwarded to me by Mike Peden). I have been unwilling to give Summers or Evans passes on their mistakes in the past, so I can understand why they would not include me in their grandstanding. Why they might not include you is something you might ponder.

First, former CM John Summers writes:

It’s simple math, you make the Council districts larger, you increase the number of people one Council member has to represent, YOU get less representation.   You have more neighborhoods, farther apart lumped into fewer districts.

Larger districts will make campaign contributions more important.   That increases the influence of developers who are the primary donors that fund Council campaigns.   That means it will be harder for neighborhood friendly candidates to get elected.

I rarely disagree with Councilwoman Evans on issues, but on this one I very much disagree.   She believes to convince voters to change term limits, she has to offer them fewer districts.   And sbe believes longer terms will make the Council more independent of the mayor.  I served under two administrations (Fulton and Boner) without term limits and it made little difference.   Both of those Councils were dominated by the Mayor ....

In the abstract fewer Council members sounds good to many people. Everyone wanted to get rid of Luyde Wallace. But you’ll eliminate as many good Council members as you will not so good.

This is a bad idea. It’s bad for neighborhoods. I hope you will e-mail the Council and express your opposition to reducing the size of the Council.

I doubt Ludye Wallace would like to read that one. As much as I don't care for Mr. Summers, I'd judge his argument against Ms. Evans a strong one. I even agree with him about Mr. Wallace.

Next up, CM Emily Evans responds from the affluent 37205 zip. I did not see Mr. Summers listed among those in her blast audience, so I'm not entirely sure he got her message. Curious:

John has really jumped the gun on this one...and left out a few very important facts.

Shrinkage sponsor

First of all, John and I have never discussed this issue in any meaningful and in depth way so there is no way he can credibly tell you what I do or do not believe about the size of council and term limits. So, let me make a few points:

1. This amendment is designed to increase the term limit from 2 to 3. I strongly believe that term limits are detrimental to this city and its long term prosperity. Term limits makes it near impossible to address long term and difficult issues like mass transit and poverty. Why? because you need more than 8 years of work to solve these things. A total of 24 members. That's right, 60% of the council is term limited in 2015. Any issue, I don't care which one, will start at zero in September 2015 with a new council and a new Mayor. How can that be a good thing? PS: I am not running no matter what.
2. This Council action does nothing but put the question to the voters. John and anyone else on this list is welcome to vote no and convince others to do so.
3. This amendment was approved (a first I believe) by the Charter Revision Commission 5-1.  That Commission includes Dewey Branstetter, son of charter author Cecil Branstetter, long time Metro Law head, Jim Murphy, Hal Hardin, Susan Short Jones and Lorinda McLaughlin largely because they too recognized the damage such an onerous term limit does.
4. I am asking for a deferral tonight so I have time to get in front of community groups and neighborhood associations to discuss why I think it is important to let the voters consider this question.

Had John contacted me before sending the email below I am certain he would have produced a more thoughtful argument. So, instead of sending me your objections - which at this point are premature -could you please help me schedule a time to visit your group, Neighborhood Association, etc and make a presentation about this proposed amendment? I think I have a good case and would appreciate the courtesy of making it. If you disagree, so be it. But at least give me the chance John wishes to prevent.

It is worth noting that both Mr. Summers and Ms. Evans included a recently deceased neighborhood legend in their email blasts, Germantown's Ernest Campbell. I guess when one is really invested in a charter squabble, sensitivity is a casualty.

I would be curious to see how Ms. Evans herself can explain to associations how cutting their representation on Metro Council actually creates more democratic opportunities for them to influence council members from the grassroots.

It only makes sense to accept the argument that democratically organized groups would have stronger influence on a smaller council if one also accepts the argument that the organized money thrown at CMs by the wealthy would also have greater influence on a smaller council. A smaller council would be a wash for associations from that angle.

If neighborhood associations want greater influence with a smaller council, they are going to have to work on stronger relationships with like-minded associations. Otherwise, their influence will shrink with a smaller council. It stands to reason. It is the simplest explanation, barring the rationalizations of the smaller-is-better crowd. A charter change would mean even more groundwork for neighborhood organizers to task.

Meanwhile, there is still that nagging trump card: the Mayor would have an easier time executing his or her will over a smaller council than s/he does now. In the absence of a "neighborhoods Mayor" that is not good. I don't buy this bill of goods.


UPDATE: Over at her Facebook page, CM Evans is defending her support in the face of criticism from constituents. One comment that questioned whether she should be wasting her time on a charter amendment instead of representing her district stood out to me:

Our NA board and neighborhood advocates that I have heard from overwhelmingly advocate keeping the status quo as far as the number of district councilpersons in Metro. Emily, whether you are right or wrong, the combination that these neighborhood advocates are your root support group and the fact that votes for a smaller council have failed consistently over the years tells me that these efforts will fail, and will be a waste of your precious time that we have remaining with you on our Metro council. Our NA's 2 highest priorities are a downzoning for our neighborhood and the redevelopment of the 70/100 split. Other NA's also want to see this redevelopment. The very fact that we have not advanced as far as these issues is an ammunition in an argument against a larger council. Our fear is that in the next election we will get a pro business candidate who could care less about these issues. You have been a great councilperson and you can really achieve something with the 70/100 redo, but this council size thing will go down as one more failed attempt.

Why can't Emily Evans wait until she gets out of office and then organize people to lobby council to work on a referendum resolution?

While Nashville subsidizes a convention center for tourists it may end subsizing long-term care for its own elderly

Cities don’t have the expertise.

--Mayor Karl Dean's excuse for proposing to sell Metro-run

Bordeaux Long-Term Care to a private corporation

Taking care of tourists, selling out the elderly.

I do not know the history of public nursing home care in Nashville. I would not be surprised to learn that it grew out of the Depression-era New Deal or out of the civil rights revolutions of LBJ's Great Society. But I cannot say with certainty for now that I know those possibilities to be factual. [Note: see "Historical Update" added below].

I can say that when I started following a community-based organization here in Nashville in the early 1990s, Metro-run nursing homes were in existence. That organization, Tying Nashville Together, conducted public hearings with official's regarding Metro's nursing homes and even challenged Mayor Phil Bredesen to raise the pay of Metro's nursing home workers to help assure quality care for the elderly.

So, Metro has been about the business of operating nursing homes for some time now to my knowledge. Unless at least 3 administrations have been malfeasant--including Karl Dean's 2 terms in executive office--and they all hired assisted living staffs that were not qualified for the positions, then how can Mayor Dean now claim that our city has no expertise at running nursing homes? The city has a track record and institutional knowledge in the field. What exactly is he expressing to past residents and their families about the care they received from Metro Nashville's employees?

The context of Mayor Dean's quote is plain, according to the Tennessean. They are clear that, by selling, Nashville will join a list of other red-state cities to bail on public nursing home care, and in the process Nashville will save $10.5 million (maybe to help offset a more expensive new ballpark at Sulphur Dell?). The entire quote from Karl Dean then follows: "In this environment, city-operated facilities just aren’t competitive....Cities don’t have the expertise."

The Mayor's comments belie the Bordeaux facility's own introduction:

Bordeaux Long-Term Care...is a regional leader in the provision of intermediate and skilled healthcare, rehabilitation therapy and palliative care. We are committed to providing our residents with the highest quality healthcare in a comfortable and caring environment. With an impressive team of compassionate caregivers, the Bordeaux Long-Term Care staff is trained to provide a broad range of healthcare services and rehabilitative therapies while promoting creativity, innovation and clinical excellence.

Again, how can residents and their families at Bordeaux have faith in any of these words they might have read in the past when the Mayor himself insinuates that Metro does not exactly know what it is doing in assisting living treatment? What would the Mayor say about Bordeaux's authenticity when he claims a private company can serve residents better than they have? That Metro Nashville was never really genuine about the high quality of care provided to its own residents?

Besides Karl Dean poisoning his own well with the claim that the city's nursing care delivery cannot keep up with private companies, his logic is shot full of holes. Did the city have the expertise that tourism industry giants like Gaylord Entertainment have when it subsidized the building and maintenance of a new convention center and hotel? He did not think twice about Nashville competing with private companies for tourism dollars when he built and operated Music City Center, which serves actual Nashvillians measurably less directly than long-term facilities do.

Maybe it is just easier for Karl Dean to give up on elderly Nashvillians because they have a lot less disposable income than tourists and the tourism industry does. Lest you assume this is no big deal, just remember that governments, in privatizing their services, have screwed up service delivery: utilities, prisons, schools, the military, you name it. There is some kind of horror story involved in every effort to privatize that I am aware of. And the casualties are usually common folk.

I await further details on Hizzoner's latest privatization plan, but it looks despicable, even vicious, right now.




HISTORICAL UPDATE:

Bordeaux Long-Term Care, Metro Nashville's current 420-bed nursing home on 121 acres northwest of downtown, began in 1893 as the successor to the poor farm. It provided various medical services to residents as Bordeaux Hospital until 1967 when its focus became long-term care.

A few reflections for today's ceremonial groundbreaking for a new ballpark at Sulphur Dell

Leading off in the wrong direction: new ballpark's plate will face other way.

This evening Mayor Karl Dean is holding his soiree (today shutting down 4th Avenue and two state parking lots) to break ground on his new underwhelming ballpark for the Nashville Sounds. He has ordered infield dirt and home plate be set up on 4th, about a less than block away from where the new home plate will likely be. Fittingly, home plate is facing the wrong way. It is a metaphor for me on how this process has started on the wrong foot. Token, purely symbolic attempts were made to invite community buy-in. If this project starts going pear-shaped with cost overages or construction delays, Hizzoner and a few North Nashville council members are likely going to regret not getting more popular support before moving forward.

Instead, they have expressed garden variety meanness toward anyone with a critical question. Admittedly, it comes with the territory in politics. You ask questions about the Mayor's rapid bus plan, you get labeled as conservative and anti-mass-transit. You ask questions about the Mayor's Fairgrounds sell-off, you get labeled as anti-neighborhood and regressive. You ask questions about the Mayor's new convention center, you get accused of wanting to hold back growth in Nashville.

Likewise, you ask questions about the Mayor's ballpark and the process he undertook to make it happen in less than 6 months, and your love of baseball is questioned. (In some cases the invective is uglier). What is particularly troubling is when the meanness is expressed in emotional moments by your own council member, whose public comments seem to suggest that she only considers the emails of supporter of projects that she supports. It may be, as Erica Gilmore argues, "a strange kind of love of baseball" that insists that Metro government be accountable to constituents for its capital projects even when they involve the national pastime, but to question people's deeply held devotion to something when you cannot even seem to spell correctly the name of the ballpark whose history you claim to be celebrating in your new capital project smacks of hypocrisy. Questioning someone else's love of baseball or history when you don't seem to have a grasp on either yourself amounts to being the bad sport.

For her love of the game, I'd be interested to know whether CM Gilmore has put her deposit down on season tickets in order to financially support the new ballpark she claims will "revive" Jefferson Street.

Are you crying?
There's no crying in baseball!

That is merely one of the questions I have going into this afternoon's groundbreaking. They deserve answers, not more hyperbole. Has the Mayor done the work on examining the area for archaeologically sensitive sites? Has soil analysis been done to test for contamination? Where will any toxic soil be dumped? What is Mayor Dean doing to protect historic buildings nearby? What will we do about traffic and parking? What are contingency plans for future catastrophic floods? There are a host of other questions I have heard asked that have yet to receive answers. Rather than lashing out at people who ask questions like this, rather than impugning their motives the Mayor's Office and its minions in Friends of Sulphur Dell should offer clear answers. This is baseball. It concerns our neighborhoods. We deserve more than tempestuous politics.


UPDATE: The Associated Press in a story on today's event repeats a meme that a new ballpark will end the 50-year-old deterioration of Jefferson Street. It also makes a claim that I have never read before: that Sulphur Dell was demolished due to the construction of the interstate, which is a dozen or so blocks away from the old ballpark site.

Nashville Mayor Karl Dean and the Nashville Sounds baseball team are hosting a ceremonial groundbreaking for a new minor league ballpark that will return Nashville baseball to its historic home.

The new park in Sulphur Dell will be near the site of an old downtown ballpark that was demolished more than 40 years ago to make way for an interstate and redevelopment. Those changes cut off the historically black neighborhoods of North Nashville from downtown, helping to drive those neighborhoods into an economic slump.

Residents and officials hope the new ballpark will help revive North Nashville, especially the central business district on Jefferson Street.

It looks like whoever wrote this piece is drawing information from a December report which made the debatable claim that our community "never recovered" from demolition of Sulphur Dell and the construction of the interstate.

The Tennessee Tribune offered a contrasting point of view to the AP last year:

“The interstate was only the beginning of the problem,” said Janice Jones, a retired nurse who lived in North Nashville for 55 years. “These hooligans moved in and starting committing crimes. It used to be safe here 40 years ago. Black folks were supporting each other and businesses were thriving.”

Jones paused to collect herself. “Now they’re over here killing each other and abusing drugs. It’s ridiculous.” Kassir agrees. “We showed unity back then. We supported each other. But somewhere in the years after segregation and Civil Rights, we lost our way and turned on each other. This neighborhood hasn’t been the same since.”

Not everything on Jefferson Street has gone downhill. In 1994, an organization was formed by longtime Jefferson Street residents, business owners, homeowners and developers called Jefferson Street United Merchants Partnership to provide a jump-start to Jefferson Street.

I am sure that the Mayor's Office has no problem with the AP notion that a ballpark may save Jefferson Street neighborhoods after 50 years, thus making Karl Dean our superhero, but the facts and the truth seem to be more complex and nuanced. And the Mayor has not been attentive to North Nashville as a rule of his two terms.

As far as I can tell the folding of the previous minor league fanchise had more to do than the building of the interstate with the demolition of Sulphur Dell. And to claim that in 50 years Jefferson Street neighborhoods have done nothing but decline is blind to reality. The AP should get a grip and stop inventing news.