Metro Council votes to approve Brady Banks' rezoning request despite receiving a neighborhood petition with 400 signatures against it

Admittedly, I don't know a lot about this "Plum Orchard" rezoning ordinance in Brady Banks' Brentwood district because I have not been following it like some in the community have, but here is what I learned about from last night's council meeting:

• There were many more people present in the council gallery opposing his ordinance last night than favoring it. One of them even presented a petition against it with 407 signatures.
• The primary person speaking in favor of it was Tom White, land use lawyer and registered lobbyist for the Home Builders Association. The last time I saw Mr. White, he was defending the controversial proposal to introduce rural Whites Creek to more suburban sprawl. The rezoning request CM Banks is proposing would subdivide Brentwood farmland into 78 suburban plots.
• Former CM and current engineer-to-developers Roy Dale also spoke in favor of the project as he is on this development team. Does Mr. Dale ever work on a project that does not raise questions?
• Reportedly, there are opposition signs against the project "all over" the area around the intersection of Church Street East and Cloverland Drive.
• Opponents said during last night's hearing that they do not oppose development, but they oppose the rezoning, which they say would generate more auto traffic. They support the owners' right to develop the property within the zoning, which would mean tracks larger than the current plan, but still smaller than those in surrounding neighborhoods.
• One opponent said that when he asked CM Banks during a phone call which side he was on, the CM replied that the opponent did not understand that there were "some highly politically influential [unnamed] people involved." The same opponent pointed out that Roy Dale claimed that the development is within walking distance of Brentwood, but that Metro had not provided sidewalks or any other pedestrian infrastructure along the route to Brentwood.
• After the public hearing was over, council engaged in practically no debate in spite of the petition. To his credit, CM Bruce Stanley rose in opposition and reiterated that Metro's infrastructure is "substandard" to suit the plans that developers keep concocting. He also said that a "progressive" development is one that "shows benefit for the entire community, not simply the developer."
• Mayoral candidate and at-Large CM Megan Barry, who is running on the promise "not to lose sight" of neighborhoods in favor of economic development, said nothing about Plum Orchard rezoning and ultimately voted to approve Brady Banks' ordinance. As at-Large, she is technically this area's representative, too, but she did not lift a finger in advocacy for the neighborhood last night.

In the end the council approved CM Banks' rezoning proposal. The moral of this story: 1 lobbyist carries more weight with this Metro Council than does the petition of hundreds of neighbors in the impact zone of developments.

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.

Moving pictures

The Mayor's self-funded, sketchy, astroturfed

501(c)(4) created to pose a tax increase as grassroots popular (2012):

Hizzoner's failed attempt to dedicate rapid transit to West End hotels & Downtown tourist stops (2013-14):

The extension of the Dean administration by other means (2015):

David Fox and Megan Barry say they would be powerless to stop business as usual

During coverage of today's mayoral candidates debate local reporter Steven Hale tweeted points Mr. Fox and CM Barry made about Metro's sweetheart subsidies for corporations and developers, and I could not let the moment pass without reference to the obvious:

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.

The dance of the rubber stamp fairy: Metro Council goes through the motions of "considering" the bid to bribe Bridgestone to stay in Nashville

The gingerbread soldiers put up more of a fight against the mice army in the Nutcracker than Metro Council is mustering against King Karl's latest public-private partnership payola to keep the Bridgestone headquarters in Nashville. Two weeks ago the local news media reported the beginning of "the debate" on Bridgestone in council chambers; the council passed the deal on first reading without a peep.

They promise us now that the plan is up for second reading that they will actually discuss the question. Metro Council may have started their cursory chinfest on the mayor's corporate welfare plan but it looks much like the confabs the preceded other major subsidy proposals (like Dean's plan to build the Sounds a new ballpark). It is a foregone conclusion. This deal is predestined to win because this council rubber stamps everything Karl Dean proposes.

Here is what happened yesterday when Dean's deal was heard by the most important committee the council has. Not much of anything:

At-large Councilman Ronnie Steine, during a series of questions with Metro officials, alluded to a policy stance of Jeremy Kane, a mayoral candidate .... In a letter to council members over the weekend, Kane called for a reduction in the size of Bridgestone's property tax abatement in order to protect revenue that could be used on public schools.

Metro Finance Director Rich Riebeling, who defended the administration's commitment to education, said that while one can always second-guess negotiations "this was one that was done thinking about the best interests of the city." He also suggested it would be difficult to amend the deal at this juncture.

"It would be very difficult to change what's been agreed upon at this point in time," Riebeling said.

At-large Councilwoman Megan Barry, another mayoral candidate for the 2015 race — and the only one among the five declared candidates who will take a vote on the Bridgestone deal — called the proposal "a really great deal." She said it would keep a major headquarters in Nashville, bring high-quality new jobs and reinvigorate downtown.

"We can take apart all the different pieces of this … There are probably pieces that we could refine and change, but that's not the deal on the table," she said.

The role of council in this process was defined by Mr. Riebeling's comment that the deal is already done between the principals (the Mayor, the Governor and Bridgestone), and the council cannot do much about it. This is the body we elect to represent us when Hizzoner will not, even though they have practically no power to do so.

Even if they did, CM Steine and CM Barry make it clear that they do not have the fortitude or the will to question the decisions that Karl Dean makes. Ronnie Steine has been unquestioningly loyal to the mayor since we forgave his unpleasant brush with the law and put him back in office.

For her part, CM Barry merely echoed the Dean administration's talking point that the Bridgestone deal is good for all of Nashville; just like she parroted his point that the opulent Gulch pedestrian bridge will inexplicably connect all of Nashville. What she will not address is the jeopardy placed on Metro services--sidewalks, school buildings. libraries, park programming, community policing, etc--by permitting one of Nashville's biggest employers to skip their property tax obligations for 20 years. $56 million is a lot of money for Nashville to risk losing and, per Karl Dean's usual script, Bridgestone is not risking a doggone thing.

But then again, neither is Megan Barry. She rarely has from her seat on the Metro Council.

I'll give mayoral candidate Jeremy Kane only partial credit for trying to set himself apart and prompt a more lively council discussion of the budget implications of Hizzoner's shortsighted trade-offs. It may seem noble to try to shield Metro school income from the brutal realities of selling off public goods to private corporations. (There is irony here given that Mr. Kane is an unwavering charter school advocate, and we see the damage privatization does to public education). However, in the breakneck shell game of Metro budgeting, shielding Metro school income can come at the expense of other services in departments that serve a clientele wider than and including children in public schools. In sum, his Bridgestone option is itself weak and impractical.

No Nashvillians should be put at risk so that Bridgestone can get wealthier than it already is. Maybe it makes no difference, given the Mayor's executive power, that Metro Council refuses to acknowledge that. But wouldn't it be quaint if for once they interrupted their dance and went through offbeat motions?


UPDATE:  According to one news source, our Deaniac overlords are enraged with the Kane mutiny. I wonder if Mr. Kane's rather limp waywardness opens up a place at Karl Dean's right hand for Megan Barry, who is forever loyal to Hizzoner:

The day after releasing the letter, Kane told the Scene he supports the Bridgestone package and wants it to pass. He veers away from anything that could resemble a criticism of the Dean administration, but the implication of his proposal seems clear enough: Could the city have gotten a better deal?

Behind the scenes, the Dean administration is livid that Kane made such a public display without approaching them for clarification.

If anything, this scores just how important loyalty is to the Dean administration. Remember how important it was in the George W. Bush presidency? It seems to have those proportions with Karl Dean. Any independent query draws their ire. All questions should be run by the Mayor's Office before they are made public. No wonder Metro Council is so whipped.

The new ballpark blows its $65,000,000 Metro budget and the casualties include our future services from Public Works and Metro Water

First Tennessee Park wants you to marvel in the glory of their beige bricks
as the ballpark construction budget hits a wall.
[screenshot from their Instagram account]

Last year Mayor Karl Dean, with a big assist from my very own council member Erica Gilmore, ramrodded the plan for First Tennessee Park through the compliant Metro Council with little or no discussion and minimal chances for community feedback. When it was suggested that the developer/owner Frank Ward be held liable for any budget overages beyond the $65,000,000 budget, CM Jerry Maynard called it "a poison pill", supporters wrote in letters not to stipulate such a responsibility on poor, cash-strapped Mr. Ward. The compliant council--with the enthusiastic support of 2015 mayoral candidate Megan Barry--absolved the Nashville Sounds club from any responsibility for cost overages.

And just like that, the mayor and the Metro Council encumbered the Metro budget for any obligation beyond the $65,000,000 of expense planned for project construction.

Now the chickens are coming home to roost for us, even those who so blindly hopped on the bandwagon without a second thought or a single misgiving. You see, the council stuck us with the bill.

The Mayor's Office admitted to the Tennessean that it will have to spend $5,000,000 more on the ballpark due to water lines, electric lines, and paving along its properties. Mind you, this is Metro government. They have all of the information on water lines, electric lines, and paving. They are people who are supposed to be able to see this sort of thing coming. You cannot convince me that they did not know. Either they kept themselves willfully ignorant or they considered anything over $65,000,000 as bad PR in the days leading up to the big council vote.

Ever since my family moved to Salemtown 10 years ago, we've known that the area has 100 year old water and sewer lines underground. Every time a development goes up here that knowledge is reiterated. Some developers have balked at the price of upgrading the antiquated infrastructure here. This is not some big unknown. If we knew that fact, if others knew that fact, does Metro Nashville (and more importantly Metro Planning, which informed the ballpark plan) have any excuse for not knowing that when it came time to proposing a budget?

Gilmore: refused to slow
the plan down to talk
things through

Of course, there are many who would have supported this plan sight unseen were the proposal $70,000,000 or $75,000,000 or $80,000,000 regardless of the damage to funding the delivery of the Metro services we actually rely on every day. The idea of community planning, of involving stakeholders in big capital projects in the process, is lost on these people. And I'm not sure that they understand the connection between increased expenses to pay for this luxury and the loss of income to sustain our basic services.

It is such foolishness, because that is exactly what Hizzoner's budget busters are going to cost us; delivery of services because the money is going to come out of other Metro departments; Metro Public Works, Metro Water, and Metro IT (Metro Water is already raided annually to pay off the Tennessee Titans' football stadium). Keep this mind: it will be bad form to criticize the failure of these taxed departments to deliver services in the future if you made no effort to slow down Erica Gilmore in 2013 when she brought this project to full approval less than three months even against the protests of her constituents that we need more time and community involvement.

Others of us were waving red flags about this plan and its unanswered questions as soon as the first community meeting ended. We warned that something like this could happen to put our services at risk. And, by golly, we were right. The Mayor's Office plans to raid other services that our tax dollars pay for. And here is not a thing we can do about it now. After all, Courthouse logic would say, "We've already committed so much money to this. We need to bite the bullet and see it through. Compared to $65 million, $5 million is chump change." And you know what? We, the citizens of Nashville, are the chumps. This was an open-ended confidence game from jump.

Playing Nashville like a dollar store guitar.

It is amazing to me that Rich Riebeling, the mayor's finance director, can claim with a straight face that he already watched the budget overages of the new convention center. So, he expected them in the ballpark plan. He said nothing about expecting the same kind of overages in the community meeting he at the Farmers' Market. And if he had the same realism regarding the ballpark, why did he fail to provide some cushion in his initial cost estimates? The only thing that I can figure is that he failed because he was just as willing to risk the future delivery of Metro services on First Tennessee Park as he was on Music City Center for the sake of wealthy developers.

The Mayor's Office rationalizes the overage by setting the economic growth ceiling even higher. The sky is the limit for these guys and no expense can be spared for Frank Ward, even though many of us understand that everything has limits. Unforgiving limits. Like those causing Metro Nashville Public Schools to teach some children in frigid portable buildings. See how it is? A minor league baseball owner lives high on the Music City hog because he is already rich while some of Nashville's kids shiver while trying to learn math or science.

Beyond the ballpark dreamers, will it truly be a boon for our North Nashville neighborhoods? We know it will be for Mr. Ward. One spellbound real estate journo relates the owner's plan for thousands of feet of restaurant and bar space to the "symbiotic relationships" retail space has will new ballparks around the country. The flip side of that symbiosis is that in other cities the restaurants and bars that already existed in surrounding neighborhoods are reduced to survival mode.

For all of these rationalizations that local businesses will prosper due to Metro Nashville dropping more bling on Mr. Ward's ballpark, residential and retail, one unwavering truth remains. Frank Ward will be competing with the businesses along Jefferson Street. He will try to pull customers into his complex to spend more in order to backload his government subsidized income. We are bankrolling his competitive advantage. It is that way with all professional team owners in this age. But don't take my word for it. Sports economist Victor Matheson makes the case:

Teams aren’t in the business of making sure to generate a lot of money for the local bar across the street .... They’re in the business of selling you the $11 beer ... once you’re inside the stadium.

In the end, Karl Dean and Rich Riebeling and Jerry Maynard and Erica Gilmore and Megan Barry and every other stadium supporter are hawking a bill of goods and a gallon of snake oil to justify spending tens of millions for what is nothing more than corporate welfare to keep a very wealthy real estate kingpin from pleading poverty and moving the team out of Nashville. As if we don't hear everyday how Nashville is such a hot commodity that people choose to stay without being bought and paid for. As long as we swallow the myth that rich big shots require our tax dollars we will simply look the other way as these budget busting overages continue to roll in.

We can choose to bury our heads in the sand under the pretense of supporting the local team and North Nashville, but how long can we afford to keep doing that?

 Play ball, Megan Barry?  Pay bills!

UPDATE: As of March 18, 2015, the expenses are skyrocketing $10,000,000 over the original budget projections. Karl Dean says that he will not raise taxes or float bonds to pay for it which means that the revenues will have to come from Metro services.


UPDATE: The Tennessean reports on July 17, 2017:

More than two years after the first game at the Nashville Sounds' First Tennessee Park, a new Metro audit says the final cost of the publicly-financed project ballooned to $91 million when adding the amount spent to make improvements to the surrounding area.

The same audit also blames an expedited, 13-month construction timeline as one reason the minor league baseball stadium overshot its budget for construction and land acquisition by around $10 million ....

The audit, which was finalized in April and presented by Metro Auditor Mark Swann to the six-member Metropolitan Nashville Audit Committee last week, was conducted after the stadium was built because the total cost significantly exceeded projections.

"It was basically 13 months from approval to opening day," Swann told The Tennessean. "When we were going through the billings, you could see where we were paying overtime for expedited deliveries."

You may remember that some of living around the ballpark site advocated a more deliberate, participatory, and slow approach to the gentrification project. Can't say we didn't warn you.

The gang of three and their weak tea

The last time we saw the 3 mayoral candidates--Charles Robert Bone, Jeremy Kane and Megan Barry--together in North Nashville it was 3 months ago for the town hall meeting held in the wake of the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO. In August and then in September I pointed out that none of three had said anything meaningful about how to deal with either the militarization of police or the problem of police brutality in predominantly African American neighborhoods.

I'm not aware of any promises or policy proposals that any of these candidates made on the subject in October. Now, after 100 days, on the eve of a grand jury decision on the shooting, with Missouri in a declared state of emergency and protests planned around the nation (including Chattanooga), these candidates made a second appearance in North Nashville this week. Nothing has changed. They still offer scant insight regarding what they are willing to do to deter a Ferguson from happening in Nashville.

Not only did they fail to address the question again, but their solutions for equality of prosperity leave something to be desired:

Bone, who spoke first, said investment and attention on downtown Nashville isn’t being felt in all neighborhoods, even just five miles from the city’s core, where the forum took place.

“In many respects, we sit 50 miles away,” said Bone, an attorney. “As a city, I think we should have the obligation to keep our foot on the gas, but at the same time to be very intentional about taking the investment and that prosperity that some of us are seeing and pushing it out to communities like Bordeaux and North Nashville.”

Barry...was unequivocal about the state of the city: “There’s a lot of work still to do.” She briefly spoke about economic investment, education, social justice and transit.

“Neighborhoods are what knit all of this together,” Barry said. “I will make sure the neighborhoods we cherish exist even though all that economic development is coming.”

Taking only a slightly different approach, LEAD Academy charter school founder Kane used his time on the microphone to recount his family’s involvement in underserved neighborhoods.

He said that while the candidates agreed on Nashville’s needs, the difference would be the solutions they pursue. He said he has the track record in the school he founded and in his community service.

He said he wants to make sure the city’s reputation for nonprofit giving, entrepreneurship and strong faith improves all places.

What each of these candidates is offering North Nashville is not bold. It is weak tea for our edification. The vision for governing our communities must be larger than the trickle down strategies of Mr. Bone. The next mayor has to do more than merely make sure that neighborhoods "exist" amidst exclusive prosperity, as CM Barry suggests. Mr. Kane's claims that philanthropy and entrepreneurship are answers to preventing the destructive side of economic growth seem short-sighted, paternalistic and unsound.

These are all just the extension of Mayor Karl Dean's policies and practices, which have not been good for North Nashville. No less significantly, they still do not offer anything to address police militarization and brutality, which are issues that continue to be important and unresolved to North Nashville residents. Do these candidates really understand their audience when they come into our community? They all seem more at home in West Nashville.

The gang of three minimize the disjuncture of Metro Nashville's financial investments in big business downtown and the shrinking resources for services to neighborhoods outside of the Courthouse sphere of opulence. Many of our communities are dislocated from the rising wealth focused on the tourism, hospitality and entertainment industries. Unchecked economic growth, leveraged by self-serving developers, tends to cause untrammeled gentrification of North Nashville neighborhoods, driving folks of more modest income out while dismantling diversity.

With that kind of dislocation, police may be more prone to mobilize to protect the movers and shakers if movements appear to protest the injustices. With whom will Metro Police identify in neighborhoods bypassed by subsidized wealth? What kind of patience and forbearance will cops show for people who orbit far and away from the inner bands of Music City influence?

We can be sure that Metro Nashville will protect its huge investments in Nashville's wealthiest private enterprises. Local government cannot afford to lose its corporate welfare wager. Will the police follow suit? How they will treat the 99% as well as dissenters remains open to question. But let us be crystal clear: they have the firepower to suppress popular dissent, especially non-violent civil disobedience, if they choose to; they have a militarized arsenal suited for urban warfare if necessary.

And Ferguson showed that when cops march against protesters a good number of innocent bystanders and local neighborhoods are dealt the unjust collateral damage.

For Nashville's mayoral candidates to continue to fail to address the capacity of Metro Police to exercise different standards in North Nashville neighborhoods than they do elsewhere indicates to me that none of them is truly serious about being mayor of all of Nashville.

Ferguson will stay on our radar. When will it appear on theirs?

Another boring postmortem on this election past

I used to care more about electoral politics than I do now. I still go to the polls and vote as I did the day before yesterday. But the power of the two parties, the influence of campaign finance to predetermine elections, the blame segments of rightfully uninspired voters get for not casting a ballot and the shoving aside of everyday politics have all soured me of any enthusiasm for what is cynically called "participating in democracy".

I go to the polls, but I do not begrudge otherwise well-meaning folk who do not. I may still go to the church, but I, like many of you, have lost the religion.

Nonetheless, there is something instructive about the drubbing the Republicans handed the Democrats in Tuesday's mid-term elections. It is instructive for what it can tell the little blue island of Nashville, which is afloat in an even more deeply red state: progressives have got to curb their triangulation with the right and start taking bold stands on economic issues that affect people's everyday lives.

Prominent Nashville Democrats clearly set themselves apart on social progressive issues like immigration, reproductive rights and gay/lesbian equality. But on the economic questions that hit blue-collar working people the hardest in an environment where the wealthy are the only segment to have bounced back from the recession nicely, these Democrats either are no where to be found or have consistently acted to undercut economic equity.

And Tuesday was a cautionary tale. Democrats with few exceptions were soundly defeated by the GOP. Why? Because running primarily on social progressive issues like reproductive rights may not get them all the way to the finish line with voters, and there are indications that support Democrats have enjoyed among women in the past eroded in this election cycle.

When Democrats dealt with economic questions they did not connect with voter concerns:

At the root of these concerns...are stagnating wages and the failure of the recovery’s gains to achieve wider, more equitable distribution. Democrats campaigned on a range of economic issues — the minimum wage, pay equity, student loan affordability, expanded pre-kindergarten education — but these didn’t cut through people’s economic anxieties, because they didn’t believe government can successfully address them.

“People are deeply suspicious that government can deliver on these problems,” Mellman says, in a reference to the voter groups that continue to elude Democrats. “And they are not wrong. We’ve been promising that government can be a tool to improve people’s economic situation for decades, and by and large, it hasn’t happened.”

Some Democrats may talk the talk of fair economic distribution, but many walk away from reforming power structures that make it impossible. Talking up what government can do and then walking away when the time is ripe makes disbelievers out of all of us. I frankly wonder whether Democrats collectively care about the cynicism they engender.

Furthermore, incremental campaigning proved to be a loser altogether on Tuesday. Democrats fall back on incrementally progressive initiatives like the minimum wage (which is not a livable wage) hikes; then guess what? The Republicans tactically soften on the issue and peel off votes the Democrats must have to win.

So, beating the Republicans and energizing voters requires boldness both on the campaign trail and in the halls of government.

Last year I pointed out that mayoral candidate Megan Barry (who has curiously been branded by some in the news media a "super progressive") has not done herself any favors with Nashville's king-maker class by being an incremental progressive on social issues while consistently voting in council to support business special interests while placing greater burdens on working men and women in Davidson County.

CM Barry's split-minded progressivism is emblematic of what is wrong with the Democrats. They are so busy triangulating to shore up their social progressive wing (against the Tea Party) while pandering to the pro-growth, pro-business lobby that they leave themselves open to Republicans. Even if Ms. Barry becomes mayor, she will govern much like Karl Dean has, and Mayor Dean has governed like a Log Cabin Republican. Ms. Barry will be forced to compromise with state Republicans who will be in no mood to broker deals for a blue atoll dwarfed by red-state upwellings.

Neither of those prospects are good for Nashville progressives as much as we may feel lucky to cling desperately to whatever is cast off from the wreckage. We should settle for nothing short of boldness.

Metro Council hands Gulch businesses a new 700-foot luxury sidewalk at the price of over $25,000 per foot

Do you feel connected now, Nashville? You should, because the Metro Council authorized Mayor Karl Dean to spend $18,000,000 on a sidewalk ("The Gulch Pedestrian Bridge") under the pretense of "connecting Nashville." If you live in Madison or Antioch or West Nashville and you don't feel connected, well maybe ye place little faith in the words of 2015 mayoral candidate and at-Large CM Megan Barry, who defended her vote by saying that "connecting Nashville" is a "necessity." Dropping $18,000,000 on a sidewalk in a neighborhood that has sidewalks is now "a necessity."

Here is how CM Barry and everyone else voted last night with absolutely no debate for that much money to spend:

Last June during debate on an unrelated charter question, CM Ronnie Steine said:

We are as a body amongst the most responsive elected officials in the country, and that's one of the things that's special about Nashville .... this council is the great weather vane of this city. Every possible opinion in this county/city is reflected in this body at one time or another .... All positions and opinions are heard .... If you look at the quality of work in this council, it's high quality. We get hammered because we agree with the mayor sometimes .... When we agree with him on an issue .., we're not rubber stamps. We're all just reflective of what this community is working on.

Is a luxury sidewalk that connects the Gulch to downtown entertainment venues reflective of what Nashville-Davidson County is working on? Or do our communities advocate spreading the wealth equitably so that sidewalks in all communities benefit from the Metro tax base?

Keep in mind that the council approved the Gulch bridge plan only after Karl Dean committed to spending $17,000,000 in other neighborhoods on sidewalks. Not $17,000,000 per neighborhood, but spread out between competing neighborhoods. That is interesting math: for one 700 foot sidewalk, the Gulch gets $18,000,000. Everyone else gets to fight over and divvy up $17,000,000.

It seems to me that the Metro Council deserves all of the "hammering" it gets for rubber stamping the mayor because it does it dramatically more than "sometimes." Otherwise, please show me a vote against one of Karl Dean's major capital projects that either CM Steine or CM Barry has taken. With the controversy and contentiousness over the Gulch pedestrian bridge, with the blatant inequality of spending more on downtown infrastructure than in places that do not even have sidewalks, these council members had cover to vote independently, but still they chose to rubber stamp Hizzoner.

Make no mistake: they're Deanpendent.

Being a council progressive means shielding the corporate polluters

False reporting? New anti-litter ordinance won't prohibit that yellow roll of spam litter.

Less than 24 hours ago WSMV reporter Patrick McMurtry contacted me to get my views on a council ordinance to regulate the delivery of non-subscription materials to homes (like when the Tennessean throws their "free Wednesday edition", which is full of advertising circulars). He asked me to call him. I reminded Mr. McMurtry via Twitter that the ordinance to discourage the Tennessean from littering our neighborhoods was defeated in June.

I didn't blog about the ordinance in June because I was more concerned about the move to shrink the council. That is where I put all the writing energy that I had. Several years ago I blogged at length about a similar ordinance that was designed to regulate the proliferation of news racks in neighborhoods, so readers can imagine my response to the latest news media hijinks.

Mr. McMurtry's request prompts me to return to the question of whether the Tennessean should be allowed to litter neighborhoods like Salemtown with paper that few people read let alone subscribe to. In June, the Metro Council voted 21-10 to kill the proposal that would have enforced our requests not to have the circulars thrown every Wednesday at our homes. Almost farcically, the council's bill would have placed stupid demands on people like you and me to stop the Tennessean litter: we would have to send our request to Gannett by certified letter and we would have to swear out an affidavit with Metro Codes that the Tennessean is violating the agreement. Who should have to do that?

In June, the Tennessean responded to the bill by making some "concessions" to the council. Those concessions included two phone numbers given to each council member providing a direct line to managers in the circulation department who would see that constituent opt-outs were being honored. Why should we need to lobby our council members to get the Tennessean to do the right thing? Again, it's adding extra steps that many people don't have time to take, especially with unresponsive council members.

Another Tennessean concession was that they would audit the distribution and opt-out lists to make sure that delivery people were only delivering to subscribers. The paper also promised to ride around with delivery people and clean up litter that had previously been left. As far as I'm concerned, those concessions never materialized. I can remember at least 6 deliveries of the "free edition" deposited on the sidewalk in front of my home since June, none of which were cleaned up by the Tennessean. All of the editions were kicked out into the street. Over time 2 were pulverized by auto traffic. The remaining editions were picked up out of the street by a volunteer last week before Germantown's Oktoberfest. Gannett/The Tennessean is not keeping their promises; the same promises 21 council members used as an excuse to defeat the ordinance.

And look at the list of progressives who voted against attempts to discourage litter in neighborhoods: Ronnie Steine, Lonell Matthews, Brady Banks, Scott Davis, Peter Westerholm, Anthony Davis, Burkley Allen, Erica Gilmore, Jason Holleman, and (last, but not least) Megan Barry. CM Barry spoke out against the ordinance, but she did not focus on the question of stopping litter in neighborhoods. Instead, she zeroed in on the bill sponsor whom she alleged was trying to force the Tennessean to write an article:

The conversation has led to some really good things that the Tennessean is doing. Having said that, I … think that this is an overreach and I am incredibly uncomfortable that we as a body would ever compel a newspaper to write a story. I heard a colleague of ours earlier tonight talk about the fact that he had actually lived some place at one point where the government could tell newspapers what to write and that was called “a dictatorship,” and I know that that’s not the intention of the sponsor here but tonight I am going to go ahead and say, “Let’s just put this to rest” and I’m going to vote against it.

On the heels of Ms. Barry's comments, CM Fabian Bedne rose to say that he was the one who related his experiences of living under a dictatorship, but he added that CM Barry's use of his own comments against this anti-litter ordinance was "missing the point." While he wholeheartedly disagreed with forcing a newspaper to write a story, he would vote for the ordinance to protect neighborhoods from "trash and litter". Phil Claiborne, the sponsor of the bill, added that he was not trying to force a newspaper story.

To CM Barry's clipped and obfuscating remarks that the Tennessean is doing "really good things," I would respond that the Tennessean has done absolutely nothing "really good" from where I sit in Salemtown. Again, folks, Megan Barry is a 2015 mayoral candidate who claims to be a progressive. How can a progressive stand with a big corporate polluter against the wishes of a community? We are getting a glimpse of what kind of mayor Megan Barry would be.

Before closing, I want to circle back around to WSMV's request for an interview. Patrick McMurtry told me that the ordinance "is back on the agenda." That is not exactly true. The ordinance on the agenda now would regulate any advertising materials except the Tennessean's. The bill's sponsor, Sheri Weiner, believes that controlling some advertising is better than none. And yet, the biggest litter nuisance at my house is the Tennessean. CM Weiner was absent from the June vote, but her bill is toothless on arrival and would actually give the Tennessean a monopoly on un-subscribed advertising litter. The council had its chance to regulate litter and they failed.

By the way, I never called the reporter back, I have better things to do with my time than waste it on a bill that would not make a dent in the Tennessean's misbehavior or on a reporter who does nothing to hold the 21 council members who voted no in June accountable for enabling the Tennessean's misbehavior. After seeing Patrick McMurtry's story, I have no regrets. My time was well spent doing something else.

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.

Today is the one month anniversary of the shooting of Michael Brown and none of Nashville's mayoral candidates have put forward policy ideas on police brutality and militarism in black communities

Photo credit: Al Jazeera America

One month ago today Michael Brown was shot dead by a Ferguson, Missouri police officer. It was an infamous event that ignited anger and concern around the nation. There were mass protests around the country, especially after militarized St. Louis County police cracked own on organized local demonstrations. Social media coverage blew up and forced city politicians hundreds of miles from St. Louis to deal with the fallout. The federal government is currently investigating how police handled the shooting and the social protests with the possibility that any militarized police force that has used military weaponry against protesters could be forced to return the grants.

In late August local congregational leaders in Nashville sponsored a standing-room-only town hall meeting in North Nashville marked by unease, consternation and qualified support for Nashville's police department, their double standard toward non-white communities and their own military arsenal gained through federal government grants. Police officers were prompted to account for the ways they have used military weaponry in service of the public.

That meeting was attended by the candidates who have announced their desire to take over the Mayor's Office next year. One would think that after Ferguson shook the country and after the shock waves were felt in Nashville that this all-white slate of candidates would be articulating some kind of policy options for checking militarized policing in Nashville. Maybe I have not looked in the right places, but I cannot tell that they have proposed any changes to the Nashville status quo. Maybe they believe the don't need the votes.

I searched local news feeds.

And I looked at their websites. This is what I found there as of today.

School reformer Jeremy Kane is otherwise a blank slate. He says nothing about his policy ideas on the issues, preferring "to hear" your ideas for Nashville on his website. He has an air-brushed PR video on the main page that basically retreads Karl Dean's three-headed campaign hellhound: education, law enforcement and economic development. He adds reformer jargon to public education like "collaboration," which is typically code for "privatization" (subsidizing private enterprise with Metro revenue that would otherwise be used for public programs).

I cannot find any evidence that candidate Kane has said a thing about policing Ferguson or the militarization of police forces. Does he believe that charter schools are the answer? He attended the August 21 town hall meeting on Jefferson Street, but his only response to that was to thank the organizers of the event on Twitter.

Megan Barry has gone farther than Jeremy Kane in giving some detail to policy questions on her website, but those details do not seem to be updated in the last month with all of the unpleasantness arising from the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson. In her public safety meditation, she vaguely refers to the justice system "treating everyone the same". She makes no specific reference to racial inequality when she fleshes out what she means by that. She says nothing about curbing the excesses of police militarism and brutality even as she touts her council votes in support of increasing the number of cops on the streets, which is only a good thing if cops are treating everyone even-handedly (as we heard at last month's town hall, they are not).

Candidate Barry offers no indication that she supports citizen advisory committees to watchdog the actions of police armored to the hilt with weapons of war. And I have already pointed out that she seemed to deny that the injustices of Ferguson are likely to happen in Nashville based on nothing but a metropolitan structure of government. As if individuals who work for Metro government cannot make bad decisions.

For his part, Charles Robert Bone has been quieter than the rest on the question of race, police brutality, and military toys for cops. Mr. Bone seems satisfied in his website comments with the direction Nashville has taken on public safety, and so I am growing to expect little illumination from him on how he would address policing problems that affect North Nashville more than other parts of the city.

So, we have three candidates for the county executive seat, none of whom have committed any public promises that they will order policies that protect communities from militarized police. A month after Michael Brown was shot dead (according to witnesses with his hands in the air), weeks after the protests shook our country and North Nashville held a town hall meeting, how can Jeremy Kane, Megan Barry, and Charles Bone remain unaccountably quiet on what they might do to forestall the repercussions of these troubling times? How can they vie for the most powerful seat in Nashville without any clear ideas for preventing Ferguson from happening in Davidson County?

Megan Barry should explain her claim that a consolidated government helps Metro Nashville avoid a Ferguson-like tragedy

In the only statement I have seen from mayoral candidate Megan Barry on the implications of the shooting of Mike Brown in Ferguson, MO and the resulting protests and police crackdowns in St. Louis County, she tweeted the following with a link to an Atlantic article on city-county consolidation:

Good piece @CityLab on city/county gov't. Nashville isn't perfect - but consolidated gov't helps.

Helps what? Helps make sure that African-Americans in Nashville get more equitable opportunities? Helps make Nashville less racist? Helps to keep police from turning their powerful military-style weapons against nonviolent protesters and innocent neighborhoods?

Reading the Atlantic piece sheds little or no light on what Ms. Barry is driving at. It claims that consolidated government would "knock down some of the structural barriers that prevent black residents in St. Louis County from succeeding." How has the consolidation of Nashville and Davidson County knocked down structural barriers? Before April 1, 1963 (when Nashville's consolidation became official) one of the most dramatic revolutions in Nashville history occurred when Nashville desegregated. It was in no way facilitated by consolidated government.

Instead, the Nashville sit-ins emerged, lead by young African-Americans--trained in non-violent tactics--who challenged segregated lunch counters by sitting in "Whites Only" areas. They were beat up by violent white mobs and then arrested by the Nashville police. They resisted without returning the violence. They tactically refused bail. As more waves of demonstrators filled up the jails, other African-Americans engaged in a crippling boycott of Downtown businesses.

The climax of the sit-ins occurred after the home of African-American Alexander Looby, who lived in North Nashville, was dynamite-bombed. The next day a large number of Nashvillians marched to the courthouse, where they were greeted by Mayor Ben West, a moderate who had before that day had left questions of segregated lunch counters to storeowners. In a dramatic moment sit-in leader Diane Nash asked Mayor West if he thought segregation was wrong. Mayor West responded: " I appeal to all citizens to end discrimination, to have no bigotry, no bias, no hatred." Taylor Branch tells the rest:

"Do you mean that to include lunch counters?" asked Nash, pressing the issue. She was standing face to face with the mayor. Her bravado hushed the crowd into silence.

"Little lady," West replied trying to be genial, "I stopped segregation seven years ago at the airport when I first took office, and there has been no trouble since."

Nash bored in relentlessly, "Then, Mayor, do you recommend that lunch counters be desegregated?"

West, a moderate white politician skewered in public before an emotional crowd answered the crucial question with a single word, "Yes." This drew cheers.

A short time thereafter Nashville businesses began to desegregate.

Consolidation was still 3 years away. What helped Nashville in 1960 was not unifying city and county governments. What helped Nashville was a disciplined protest movement with a clear strategy, practiced tactics and a willingness to suffer for their cause. What helped Nashville was an economic boycott that brought business leaders to their knees and forced them to see change as progress. What helped Nashville was a mayor who when cornered saw the wisdom of embracing the people's cause, which was also the just cause (even if he continued later to equivocate as moderates do). What would a Mayor Barry be willing to do to help take such a step?

What also helped Nashville was a national context: a movement that would leverage federal laws making segregation illegal. But before Nashville became the first US city to consolidate, it became the first southern city to desegregate. The disciplined non-violent action against segregation at lunch counters and movie theaters continued up through the year of consolidation until the next year with passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (making desegregation the law of the land). So, how can Ms. Barry claim, without explanation, that "consolidated gov't helps" keep us from becoming St. Louis County, where racism still seems to have a free hand?

Frankly, the Atlantic piece she calls "good" seems to be using the publicity of the Michael Brown slaying and the situation in Ferguson to draw the frenetic traffic of the last 10 days to arguments that the author deeply holds without real connections to breaking news. As a result I do not find the article compelling. It provides practically no comparative evidence for judging whether events in Ferguson are more likely to happen because of unconsolidated St. Louis instead of consolidated Indianapolis. It makes the bizarre claim that poor people in Ferguson are more prone to predatory lending. As if they are not in cities with consolidated government, like Nashville?

The number of payday lenders has exploded in Nashville as have the campaign donations those lenders give to council members, mayoral candidates, and people running for the General Assembly. If our consolidated government "helps," as Megan Barry claims, how do so many predatory lending outlets charge poor Nashvillians such sky-high interest rates while lining the pockets of powerful politicians? Davidson County no more makes consumer protection from predatory lending a priority than St. Louis County seems to. Is Ms. Barry indicating that she might use consolidated government to regulate the lenders? That would be a breath of fresh air after Karl Dean, who once crowed: "The less regulation of business we do, the better."

I do not have any objections to the concept of consolidated government. It does a lot of good things for Nashvillians. I would not want the separation that plagues St. Louis.

By the same token, I believe that candidates for the Mayor's Office should formulate clear ideas on how they would govern in a crisis like the one in Missouri without reaching for rationalizations just to make us feel better that we are not like them. Ferguson is preying on the minds of many Nashville voters. We should expect clear answers from candidates; not convoluted references to consolidation designed to make our city seem sheltered against prejudice and military-like crackdowns.

Consolidation did not save Nashville from segregation. Why would it shelter us from resegregation?


UPDATE: The Mt. Zion Baptist Church Facebook page announces:

a town hall meeting to discuss the recent Ferguson, Missouri, riots and launch Nashville Unites, an initiative with the following objectives: 1) foster dialogue between police and citizens; 2) propose a community liaison program between precincts and their communities; 3) develop youth leadership; 4) highlight Mt. Zion’s mentoring program for adult men; and 5) commit to follow-through on all initiatives so as to build trust and ensure a more peaceful city that is a national model for collaboration

I am hearing that Megan Barry as well as other candidates for office have signed on to participate. I appreciate that they have put their "ice bucket challenges" on hold long enough to respond to pressing matters that concern the actual responsibilities of a mayor. Maybe we will get some substantive answers from her on what if anything consolidation has to do with stopping police brutality in underrepresented communities. The mayoral candidates are coming to North Nashville.



UPDATE: According to a commenter below, Ben West's historic encounter with Diane Nash happened somewhat differently than the way Taylor Branch reported. The Nashville Mayor was said to be speaking out of school on his role in integrating the airport:

On the steps of the courthouse with Diane Nash and Mayor West that day was Rev. C.T. Vivian. When West proclaimed to have integrated the lunch counters at the airport, it was Rev. Vivian who reminded the mayor that it was President Kennedy who had integrated the airport as this was federal property. West tried to take credit for something that he had not done as to appear that he had been supportive of the cause. After Vivian called him on it, and Nash put the question to him again, the mayor searched his heart and agreed with Miss Nash. (Heard Rev. Vivian tell this account himself).

Go to the comment section to read the rest of her or his thoughts.

 

The aspirations of Megan Barry: how has being a cautious progressive helped her?

I am a recovering supporter of Megan Barry, so I took some interest in a recent Tennessean editorial on her bid to woo the business class kingmakers over at their reportedly favorite watering hole. First, erstwhile journo Bruce Dobie claims that the suits are fretting about their choices next time for Mayor. Before droning on about Barry, I have to point out that there is a certain irony in Dobie maintaining that these are the people who actually do the choosing of executives to run county government--votes be damned--and yet, their own system has left them without a candidate to run county government.

But I digress:

Second, progressive goo-goo [a.k.a., "good-government"] front-runner Megan Barry makes them nervous.

Barry, a Metro Councilwoman, has been the most public and out-front candidate to date. A resident of the not-so-mean streets of Belmont-Hillsboro, Nashville’s ground zero for left-leaning politics, Barry is known for successfully sponsoring a workplace anti-discrimination measure for the city’s gay and lesbian communities. She also was the force behind the proposal for Metro Government workers to receive a “living wage.”

Such accomplishments have prompted the Jimmy Kelly’s biz crowd to order a second martini and continue the search.

Dobie goes on to compare CM Barry to blast-from-the-past Betty Nixon because both appear to have the same genitalia as well as interest in being Mayor (in the interest of fairness, why didn't Dobie bring up a "youthful" mayoral candidate from the past to compare to Jeremy Kane?).

Without fail, Dobie falls back on that dated label of "goo-goo" to compare the two. Of course, he has in past columns mentioned Ludye Wallace as a favorite of good-government types, a claim that is a laugh riot to some of us "goo-goos" who have actually been Ludye's constituents. Dobie's dependency on a twenty-year-old term, as Ms. Nixon pointed out this week, is practically archaic. It also may show that he is more in touch with the bar at Jimmy Kelly's than he is with politics unfolding on the ground in Nashville.

While I am not cynical enough to label CM Barry's initiatives as symbolically liberal, they do strike this observer as incremental at best. Her living wage plan upset some council conservatives, but it did not help more than a dozen folks who work for Metro government. What about the many who were not as lucky as those few? Likewise, she hammered home demands of nondiscrimination against Metro employees, but she was barely a blip on the radar when the question turned to nondiscrimination for private companies contracting with Metro government.

Any credit she might get from me for taking boldish stands on strictly social-progressive issues is overwhelmed by my memories of her support of the conservative growth policies of Karl Dean. She voted for the new regressive stormwater fee structure that charged property owners who created less stormwater (mostly residential) more than those who generated more stormwater (mostly business). After going through the motions of holding a couple of community meetings on the proposed Music City Convention Center, she supported the largest capital project in Metro history without making any demands on the Mayor or leveraging progressive perimeters for the project. She supported Hizzoner's bid to tear down the State Fairgrounds and to sell all but a sliver off to wealthy private developers, which would have had the double-barreled effect of eradicating a working class entertainment venue and of making some potential campaign donors even more wealth. Megan Barry has mimicked, over and over, Karl Dean's market-driven habits of governance.

And where has it all brought her now that she is facing down the Jimmy Kelly's deciders? They still do not trust her.

Megan Barry has never remotely resembled a populist progressive concerned about class disparities, quality employment, equal opportunities for working people or the alienating effects of unfettered gentrification in urban areas. She has never even taken a stand as a "loyal opponent" of the Dean administration. She stays close to the social issues that are stylish among Nashville top-shelf progressives: the rights of women, equality for gays and lesbians, immigration opportunities. Granted, those kinds of issues do not risk the primary flow of money and power in Nashville; or at least they are not as risky as are unflinching looks at unequal growth, environmental justice, power imbalances in land development and class inequities. In my opinion, any future Nashville mayor worth her salt has to have taken some risks toward the left. I do not see that level of boldness in CM Barry's resume.

I don't know if Megan Barry would have been able to pull together a coalition giving her higher levels of popular votes to offset any donation losses she might have experienced by being even a part-time populist. I do see that being a full-time social progressive in lock-step with Karl Dean is not pulling her any closer to the Mayor's Office she covets. As conservative as she has been, she is still not conservative enough for the suits.

District 19 council member listed among others on developer's "secret tapes"

Over the weekend the Tennessean reported that "secret tapes" exist that contain 40 hours of conversations between a May Town Center developer and over a dozen council members regarding his team's plan to build a sprawling "second downtown" on Bells Bend. Noteworthy is the mention of District 19 CM Erica Gilmore:

 

By early 2010 — when the first recording was captured — May Town leaders had turned their attention from the Metro Planning Commission, where the development had stalled in a 5-5 vote, to the 40-member council, where the project needed 27 votes for approval because of the planning commission setback.

Ultimately, the council in March 2010 voted to defer the May Town project indefinitely.

According to May’s recent filing, plaintiffs secretly recorded conversations with council members Megan Barry, Phil Claiborne, Tim Garrett, Erica Gilmore, Jason Holleman, Edith Langster, Lonnell Matthews Jr., Jerry Maynard, Bruce Stanley, Ronnie Steine, Charlie Tygard, and then-council members Michael Craddock, Randy Foster and Jim Hodge. It also cites “others.”

The parties discussed the project, speculated about votes and offered their impressions of Jack May, Mayor Karl Dean, Tony Giarratana and others, according to the brief.

The Metro Planning Commission refused in a close vote to approve the proposal, which put the burden on Metro Council to approve it only with a super-majority. The proposal was eventually withdrawn, so we do not have recorded votes of these CMs.

However, some of these council members made their opinions clear during the planning public hearing process. Here is an excerpt of the May 2009 public hearing minutes:

Councilmember [Mike] Jameson first explained that he was asked by Councilmember Barry and Councilmember Cole to include their names as part of the record as expressing their opposition to the proposed May Town Center. They were unable to attend the meeting....

Councilmember Holleman acknowledged Councilmember Matthews support for the May Town Center, however, expressed his concerns with respect to the May Town Center development affecting the entire region as opposed to only Council District 1. His district is in the pathway of connecting this development to the rest of the city and he expressed his concerns regarding its impact on District 24. He explained the work that he and his constituents have completed on the West Nashville Community Plan update and spoke of how the May Town Center would impact their transportation network and infrastructure. He also explained that he and his constituents have not had the chance to review the Traffic Impact Study recently released from RPM and would like for the Commission to allow them an opportunity to review the study and provide their comments regarding the study at the next Public Hearing scheduled for June 25, 2009. Councilmember Holleman then pointed out some of the highlights included the Traffic Impact Study and how they would directly affect his district. He requested that the Commission deny the zone change request until he and his community can further digest any impacts on their district.

Councilmember Craddock expressed his support for the May Town Center development as the project is a good quality development; and that the proposal would lessen the burden on the Nashville’s taxpayers. He spoke on the issue of spiraling property taxes and the need to seek good quality development to further enhance the City of Nashville. Councilmember Craddock then acknowledged the importance of not allowing a development of this size to adversely affect surrounding districts and to need to find the best way to implement the project for the betterment of all living in Nashville.

Councilmember Matthews .... stated that over the year, he has obtained the necessary information in which he could now support the proposed May Town Center development and explained all of the positive attributes that could be derived from the development. Attributes such as increased jobs for the area, and additional opportunities for corporate relocations to the City of Nashville .... He stated he would assist the bill as it makes it way through the approval process at Council .... As Councilmember Matthews closed, he explained all of the conversations he has with all involved parties and expressed his support for the May Town Center.

I attended that public hearing, and I do not recall seeing CM Gilmore. I am curious about what her views on the May Town Center proposal are on those "secret tapes". I am also wondering, as a constituent, whether I have a right to know what my CM says to developers about voting intentions on significant projects.

Whipped off a quick email to Erica Gilmore before the start of Metro Council

Metro Council begins in a matter of minutes, but I managed just now to get one last minute email away about pending legislation affecting Salemtown:

CM Gilmore: I know that you are going to pass BILL NO. BL2012-141 to rezone the corner of Garfield and 6th Ave N from R6 to RM20-A very easily at third reading tonight. You've done your due diligence by holding a community meeting alongside the two public hearings that this legislation had to go through.  

I continue to have concerns about the potential of the project given the current poor quality of the vacant lots being rezoned. I'm not convinced that the development team cares about our quality of life unless it hits them in the pocketbook. I have attached photos I took Sunday of the blighted lots, including one that clearly shows that other vacant lot owners at this intersection are responsible and keep their lots free of tall grass and brush.

I was wondering if you could do their concerned neighbors like me one more favor after the bill passes by turning to the development team and saying to them "Congratulations. Now go mow the grass."

Regards,
Mike Byrd

UPDATE: CM Gilmore was absent from council tonight. CM Walter Hunt introduced it and CM Megan Barry introduced a substitute on behalf of CM Gilmore. The rezoning is a done deal. No word on when the overgrown scrub at 6th and Garfield will disappear.

Watchdogging for any progress on nondiscrimination beyond the shallow symbolism of council votes

Almost exactly two years ago the local GLBT tabloid hailed the council vote for adding sexual orientation to Metro's nondiscrimination policy:

Sponsored by freshman Council member Megan Barry and co-sponsored by nine other members, BL2009-502 ensures that Metro employees who feel they have been discriminated against based on either or both of these issues now will have redress within the personnel system.

Not so fast. Discrimination watchdogs have been testing the rhetoric that catapulted Megan Barry into the social progressive pantheon against the reality of existing Metro policy. Passage of Barry's bill turned out to be the easy part. Implementation? Not so much.

Take Mike Peden's case: he has been looking past all of the hoopla and pronouncements of success since passage of BL2009-502 and he is alarmed by the slow walk of implementation. About 10 days ago he sent me an email with a link showing that the Nashville Area Metro Planning Organization's expressed hiring policy in an announcement of a planner opening did not include gender identity or sexual orientation.

Here is how the relevant section of the nondiscrimination statement was printed on August 23 on the MPO site:

Equal Employment Opportunity Employer

The Planning Department does not discriminate on the basis of age, race, sex, color, national origin, religion or disability in access to, or operation of, its programs, services, and activities, or in its hiring or employment practices.

That motivated Mike to start contacting Metro Planning staffers and council members to get answers on why both Planning and the MPO were dragging their feet after two years. And those answers did not come easily, quickly, or clearly.

Mike started with the compliance officer of Metro Planning. He asked her the straight-up question, "Which statement [the MPO site's or the Metro government's site's ] is correct for your organization?" The compliance officer, Josie Bass, replied that the MPO's site was correct. She told him that the organization met the minimum federal requirements under law but that could be changed at a future review. Not satisfied, Mike responded, "Is the person being hired for this position an employee of Metro Nashville? If so, then shouldn’t Metro’s statement apply? Are you an employee of Metro Nashville?" Ms. Bass sent back a single "Yes." Mike asked her to clarify what she was saying "yes" to and she wrote back, "Yes, they are a metro employee and yes, Metro non discriminate statement does apply." At that point Mike shared his confusion with me and I have to admit I did not understand how the Metro policy could apply when Ms. Bass had said before that the MPO statement met minimum federal requirements.

In the meantime, Mike contacted CM Jason Holleman and at-Large CM Megan Barry about the loophole. They did not exactly clarify the issue for him. CM Holleman wrote that while MPO used office facilities it was not exactly a "Metro entity". Holleman also said that not all of MPO employees' salaries are paid by Metro and thus they are not classified as Metro employees. Mike's correspondence with CM Barry included the following judgment from council attorney Jon Cooper:

If Metro is the one hiring these employees, then yes, the nondiscrimination policy in Sec. 11.12.130 should apply. However, the MPO is really a creature of federal law. It is comprised of representatives from the federal, state, and local governments, and represents seven counties and the cities within them. So, it is not just a Metro organization. Just because Metro employees work with the MPO does not mean MPO is bound by our nondiscrimination policy. It only prohibits the Metro Government from discriminating in employment practices.

Mike replied with the clear statement, "I would just like an answer -- yes or no -- either they have the policy or they do not." Both Barry and Cooper stated unequivocally that they do not. Mike still does not get it because all of the employees of MPO are listed as Metro employees.

In the wake of all of this I went back to check the webpage where the MPO opening is advertised with Planning's nondiscrimination statement, and lo and behold, someone had revised the statement and added "gender identity" and "sexual orientation" since Mike had first noticed the webpage on August 23:

Equal Employment Opportunity Employer
The Metro Planning Department, on  behalf of the Nashville Area Metropolitan Planning Organization, does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, religion, creed or disability in admission to, access to, or operations of, its programs, services, or activities. Discrimination against any person in recruitment, examination, appointment, training, promotion, retention, discipline or any other employment practices because of non-merit factors shall be prohibited.

I don't know how much influence Mike's tenaciousness had over the re-writing of the statement, but he remains dissatisfied with the limited reach and loopholes of Metro's nondiscrimination policy.

I agree. It's not the vote, but the implementation that matters most.