Giant construction bills leverage treasury dough

I did a fair amount of hand wringing over the fact that the wizards in the Metro bean-counting department low-balled the cost of upgrading the utility infrastructure to First Tennessee Park in spite of widely-held knowledge that North Nashville's infrastructure is crumbling and antiquated. Haunting subsidized ballparks in general is the public payola they enjoy when teams can not even afford their own construction costs:

There is nothing wrong with new stadiums and arenas per se — well, unless you think they’re ugly, but plenty of old ones are, too. But the reason the U.S. has so many of them, and is tearing down its not-quite-as-new ones to replace them with shinier models as fast as possible, has nothing to do with the alleged riches that can be made off of them, and everything to do with the fact that in order to get those fat checks from the public treasury, you need to be able to present a giant construction bill as justification. If we could only start subsidizing something useful instead ... there would still be a massive transfer of money from the public to a bunch of rich dudes, but at least we might get something out of the bargain other than fancier cupholders.

So, the numbers for construction are already juiced when the proposals are made. Then the municipal wizards come along afterwards and say, "Uh-oh. We did not expect archaic utility lines because you know they are underground and we can't see them yet even though it was like 1969 since the last time everything was dug up here at Sulphur Dell, and we could logically deduce the odds." So, they tack on millions more. I shouldn't lose sight of the original sin to the ineptitude of the bean counters.

Want to kill a neighborhood's connection to a sporting event? This is how you do it

I've been following the Country Music Marathon up close for years now but April 2014 was the worst experience I've had on the race course here in North Nashville. Why? Because instead of shutting all of Rosa Parks Blvd. down for the marathon, race organizers opened half of it up to vehicular traffic, effectively cutting off the view of spectators as the runners went by.

When asked, a Metro Police officer responded that some developers of some of the construction projects in the area lobbied to keep long swaths of Rosa Parks open so that their trucks and workers could get in and out continue to gentrify on Saturday.

This was the view of the race and the traffic from just outside the Werthan Loft complex last April 26:

While not a marathoner myself, I maintain that marathons are unique in that they give neighborhoods the most direct, immediate contact with an organized sporting event that fields professional athletes. That's what I once enjoyed about the Country Music Marathon.

It is too bad that Metro government, real estate developers and the marathon's organizers had to spoil that direct contact and the view with auto traffic in 2014. Will it happen again this year? I guess if developers continue to hold sway here it will.

Press the Accelerator: is turning Metro employees into entrepreneurs a good idea?

The business of business has nothing to do with "addressing inequality". The business of business is to maximize profits, even if it means supporting or generating inequality. In the 1950s, businesses had to be forced to acknowledge the civil rights of African Americans. It was not a benevolent free market that incorporated respect for human rights. It was a combination of government coercion and popular and political movements that forced businesses to comply.

As I learn that Mayor Karl Dean through his Office of Innovation is "innovating" Metro employees to become entrepreneurial by means of a "City Accelerator", I am concerned, not excited:

Through the Entrepreneur Center, we help really smart Metro employees learn about these tools, and turn them into quasi-entrepreneurs ... inside of Metro government so that they can make their ideas real businesses and real solutions for our city .... During the accelerator two more cohorts of innovation fellows will create new innovations for Metro government

The problem with this is it sounds exactly like the Republicans' decades old saw that "government should be run like a business," which has been tried and failed so many times in recent history. Disruption and innovation are the latest fad jargon for what is going on in the tech industry, which moves like gang busters in Nashville. But when stripped of the hype, the ideas amount to warmed-over conservative shut-down of public goods guaranteed by a democratically elected government.

Innovators invariably look for a different set of rules outside of government regulations by which to be "free" and to operate on their own. Then again, so do many Republicans.

Entrepreneurs by definition are people who risk their own money in order to start a business or profit-making enterprise. (Never mind that Nashville's Entrepreneur Center is heavily subsidized). Governments in democracies focus on providing access to broadly shared goods, like clean water, public safety, preserved undeveloped green space, transportation options and right to assembly. At times those purposes are complimentary, at times they are not.

For example, privatizing public education invests venture capital dollars heavily subsidized by the Obama Administration so that investors can experience a return in the education marketplace while selecting and keeping the students the corporations want rather than providing equal education opportunities for every student (the very purpose of the idea of government-provided education). Regardless of student development and welfare the bottom line is to avoid risk and maximize financial benefits.

A problem with turning government workers into entrepreneurs is that they will logically act to maximize profit-making enterprise regardless of whether it meets the test of universal accessibility. When they come up against regulations, even ones designed to protect consumers from an indifferent and arbitrary marketplace, they might look for ways around them (as if savvy government bureaucrats have never done that before).

Worse than trying to do something more disruptive than the regs allow is insisting, as Director of Financial Empowerment Erik Cole does in the video, that innovation can work "within the context of poverty" to solve inequality. Look at companies with reputation for greatest innovation before you buy his logic. Two start-up ride-sharing companies--attempting to disrupt cab companies and the government rules that regulate them--do not seem to be doing much to end inequality in our lifetime (are they even disrupting it?)

But it can be too easy to forget that people make “instant” happen. And, generally, these people are not a traditionally stable workforce. They are instead a flexible and scalable network of workers — “fractional employees” — that tap in and tap out as needed, and as suits them.

It’s estimated that more than 100,000 of these jobs have been created, especially due to the largest on-demand mobile services: The ride-sharing companies Uber and Lyft, whose drivers provide alternatives to taxis and other forms of transportation.

The Uber-style model works when a company can turn that kind of disparate workforce into a reliable branded service. It’s not quantum computing, but after you click “buy now,” it falls to someone to do the hard and sensitive work of moving physical stuff around in the real world.

Uber says it is creating 20,000 U.S. jobs per month by allowing drivers to tap into its ride-hailing service in their local cities by renting a phone from the company (it used to be free).

And so, at its core, you might think of the instant gratification economy as a story about jobs — new kinds of jobs. Here’s how it works: People like to get stuff when they want it. And, because of smartphones and smart logistics software, deliveries can happen much more cheaply and quickly, especially in cities.

So, the availability of on-demand services generates more demand. To meet it, companies bring on more workers. And ultimately, finding one of these jobs — or often, more than one of them — can create living wages for people who might otherwise be out of work.

But it’s not all shiny happy job creation. It’s not terribly uplifting to think that the future of labor is delivering stuff to rich people.

That does not sound promising at all for low wage workers and homeless people. The expectation is not that workers achieve stability in the fluid "sharing economy" (or is that "service economy"?). The inflexible mantra is "stay flexible and scalable".  The goals of democratic government and the sharing economy work at cross purposes if the goals are equality, social justice and labor stability. If a few people actually achieve a living wage, it will like charter schools offering a way out of poverty to college for a small number of high school students, while the charter school corporations get rich.

I do not have a problem with innovating in government. One of the biggest innovators in U.S. history was Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. I do have a problem with dismantling government programs and precautionary regulations under the banner of absolute freedom for private enterprise, especially the absolute freedom to evangelize government workers and turn them into drones who support business innovators more than they advocate for ordinary Nashvillians.


UPDATE: Beyond how business innovation actually changes income inequality is the specific question of Karl Dean's practices dealing with homelessness before the City Accelerator was a prospect. Last year, local pastor Jay Voorhees observed that the Mayor's Office has a poor track record on helping the homeless:

...outside of some basic lip service, Mayor Dean has not seemed particularly interested in the social safety net side of governmental services, and certainly not the challenges of the homeless community. In the days after the 2010 floods the mayor’s office was noticeably missing in trying to address the needs of the former tent city residents, leaving the question of how to deal with this population to a set of dedicated volunteers and clergy. The Metro Homelessness Commission has languished during the Dean administration, some of which can be attributed to its members, but part of which is reflective of a mayor who is more concerned with creating new business opportunities than assisting those who are down and out.

It is worth noting that Erik Cole, who appears in the video and makes comments supporting the use of business-oriented innovations to help the homeless, was appointed by Mayor Dean to chair the Metro Homelessness Commission (2008-2012). As council member, Mr. Cole always voted with the Mayor when it came down to spending that favored business interests.

Neither the Office of Innovation nor the Mr. Cole's Office of Financial Empowerment look like improvements on Karl Dean's general disinterest in policies of social uplift. It is hard for me to believe as the video claims that the Mayor has actually lost sleep over the problem of income equality given his past lip service without tangible actions. We cannot expect the City Accelerator to do anything more than help the involved business interests and the Entrepreneur Center.


UPDATE: mayoral candidate Megan Barry loves her some disruptive innovation. Her supportive comment on Nashville's bid on the city accelerator website:

Like Erik Cole, Council Member Megan Barry never bucked Karl Dean on policies that served business interests first. Her campaign for mayor seems to angle now towards a kinder and gentler mock-up of Karl Dean. She may actually lose sleep over income inequality. However, her campaign for council once promised to be a voice for everyone in Metro government and we see how that populist tone failed to materialize in real policy. I doubt a Mayor Barry would do much beyond lip service to the intention of leaving no one behind. I have never witnessed her hard-nosed enough to challenge the powers that be that leave people behind in the first place.

Whites Creek gets nextified

Education advocate Anthony Cody recently tweeted a sentiment on another subject that applies to the recently launched community plan process in Whites Creek: "the test of a democratic process is how minority voices are treated".

I attended Whites Creek's first community planning meeting last week the day after the Nashville Sounds meeting introducing their video update of the construction of downtown's First Tennessee Park. In at least one way the meetings were dramatically different. By my count Whites Creek turned out at least 3 times the number of those attending the Sounds' video promotion. The ballpark meeting had a lot of empty seats (and a lot more press coverage). It was standing room only in Whites Creek (with no news media coverage to my knowledge). The turnout reflected to me the high level of interest in having some influence over the future in Whites Creek.

However, most of the agenda (I stayed the first hour and a half of the two hour meeting) was directed towards rehash of the past three years of "Nashville Next," Metro Planning's gimmicky process to bring more people into county-wide planning for the next two decades. In fact, I would count this meeting as my first Nashville Next meeting and respond to it as that because I am not convinced it was about Whites Creek at all.

Mr. Bernhardt took questions, but not until after he finished what seemed to be a stump speech and one-size-fits-all media presentation of Nashville Next. He pitched their speaker series, their early visioning workshops, their summer "lounges" and their social media tools. He also presented the statistical analyses from which the assumptions of Nashville Next arise.

One of the future trends cited was one about how population growth would increase in the next 25 years, but that families with children would decrease. That seems to be Metro's justification for planning smaller homes in denser areas.

That will be fine if the future trends hold and there are no more baby booms in the next two decades.

However, 20th century baby booms tended to follow catastrophe and calamities that beset people. Statistical analysis about future trends cannot predict those. In the U.S. two world wars (and perhaps the Great Depression) generated baby booms in the 20th Century. The Baby Boomers (births 1946-1964) were a generation that blew "future trends" out of the statistical water. My problem with strong reliance on statistical analysis of future trends is precisely this: they can only predict what will happen if all things remain equal and cultural and environmental shockwaves are not factors on population levels.

Anything can happen over the next 25 years that could cause another boom in population. If Nashville puts all of its eggs in the basket of ramping down housing options so that individuals and empty-nesters are the largest populations served, it is setting itself up for inability to handle future crises and unexpected changes in the trends.

Also bugging me about this component of Nashville Next is the appearance of the tail wagging the dog. Planners are placing an emphasis on Millennials (which is definitely a generation that has to influence current policy) and their current preferences for smaller living spaces, robust public transit and childless lifestyles. Some developers stereotype Millennials as lifestyle tourists who want urban homes to be places that they can chill with their posses before heading out to restaurants and bars. They base the stereotype on the same statistical trends that planners use to promote nextification. If that stereotype is true, is the clubbing motive anything to build long-term, diversity-focused community plans on?

Building exclusively toward specific interpretations of future trends will drive people out of the city. If homes are built strictly for empty-nest, lifestyle Millennials, other generations, other configurations of families will be forced out of the urban core. Out to places like Whites Creek (a rural rarity since it is very close to the urban core), which will then lose its character and become one among many suburbs. The assumptions that Nashville Next planners carry with them, even where based on statistics can have profound repercussions across the county.

When Mr. Bernhardt eventually got around to Whites Creek proper, he challenged the audience to answer a single question as they continue in future meetings about their community plan: "What is rural?" He warned them that there is a tendency for neighbors to identify what they don't want in their community instead of declaring what they do want. Hence, his challenge to define rural seemed to be his attempt to hedge against falling into a "not in my backyard" posture.

Outside of being lumped in with people who are looked down on as NIMBY, those attending were encouraged by another speaker to leave their "knives" and "bullet-proof vests" at this meeting and not to bring them to future meetings. During my entire time there I saw no threat of proverbial weaponry used against planners.

These kinds of insinuations about community leaders attending these meetings strike me as cynical and jaded. Meeting organizers should be inviting robust, vigorous debate, which includes dissent so that all views are out on the table. As long as no one is verbally threatening or harassing someone else, civil debate should foster disagreement so that consensus can be reached. In the south we seem to confuse being civil with deferring rather than demurring. Forcing people to act genteel can create resentment, lead to passive aggressiveness and block authentic resolution of conflicts.

Openness and criticism are just as vital to the planning process as are closure and consensus. Any plan for Whites Creek (or for anywhere else in Nashville), should include an invitation to people to honestly share their thoughts: good, bad or indifferent. It will not always be smooth and harmonious, but open debate free from aspersions (like seeing NIMBY motives where there is no evidence of such) will make for better planning.

One final issue arising from last week's meeting has to do with the process of Nashville Next, which is unapologetically striving to replace the community planning process with a more county-wide vision for the neighborhoods. I thought that Mr. Bernhardt was clear in his remarks that Nashville Next is more about shaping planning county-wide over moving from community to community to do so. If that truly is the case, then will the views expressed by Whites Creek residents eventually yield to countywide wishes once the "lounges" close, community meetings end and the planners sift through all of the data?

If Davidson County believes that rural areas like Whites Creek ought to lose its self-determined character for the sake of flipping it into a bedroom community for a downtown workforce, why should the community yield? Simply because the interests of the many outweigh the interests of the few? Not in a liberal democracy. And yet, for all of its branding this is what the organizing principle of Nashville Next seems to be in a nutshell: giving the county more credibility than neighborhoods in dealing with housing issues that directly impact those neighborhoods.

The test of this planning process is how it ends up treating minority voices. You may doll up the planning process all you want with lounges, hipster idiom and social media campaigns, but if it does not treat the people of Whites Creek in inclusive ways when the final decisions are made then it will not be democratic or worthy of our support.


UPDATE: The social media person at Nashville Next responded to the comments on this post below on Sunday. Here is the tweet:

If this clarification of the process is supposed to give me faith in Nashville Next and put my concerns to rest, it fails. The question remains, how can we trust that future growth and zoning will reflect the character of the Whites Creek community and will adhere to the idea of community-based planning if future outcomes are predetermined by 15,000 responses by people, most of whom do not likely come from Whites Creek?

Here's another question: what makes planning at a county level (which itself predetermines and limits the influence neighborhoods will have) better than community-based planning? The concerns are entirely different. But this is an arbitrary move. By the same logic, would not regional planning be better than county planning? Would not state-level planning be better than all of the rest?

Council member opposes plan to shrink Metro Council

I have yet to see a strong argument that persuades me that shrinking the Metro Council will make that body a force with which the Mayor will have to reckon in the future. The arguments in favor are either partisan, histrionic or contrived. On the other side, opponents of shrinking the Metro Council issue all kinds of intelligent warnings about the risks entailed so that even at my most open moments to being partial to a smaller council, they pull me back to rationality.

Take CM Fabian Bedne who posted his opposition yesterday on Facebook:

Some people are tempted to change the size of the Council because they believe that the larger numbers contribute to the perceived weakness of the Council as compared to the power given by the Metro Charter to the Executive (Mayor). Although there could be an argument made that the Charter slants the balance of power toward the Executive, a reduction in the number of council members would do little to alter the perceived balance of power.

Our Metro system of government allows regular citizens to run for a council seat. We elect members from all backgrounds with deep roots in the community, that understand what really needs to be done to make communities flourish -- both large and small. If we need to change anything, it should be in the direction of how to encourage more of our neighbors to run for Metro Council.

If the concern is to strengthen the Council there are better ways to do so. An increase in the Council's budget could provide staff members to do research about proposed legislation that would be a tremendous benefit to council members. Additionally, funds from a budget increase could be used to educate council members about issues and processes.

Cannot argue with the logic. To believe that size alone is cause of council weakness is foolishness. CM Bedne sees that from the inside.

Metro council member advocates selling off public healthcare for the elderly 120 years after Metro started it

Save the strong, lose the weak.
Never turning the other cheek.
Trust nobody, don't be no fool.
Whatever happened to that Golden Rule?

-- Stevie Ray Vaughan, Crossfire 

Despite my chagrin that we have a Mayor who would turn Nashville's elderly patients over to the foibles of private healthcare providers, I was struck that one council member defended the Mayor with his own peculiar brand of social Darwinism:

Councilman Jerry Maynard, who chairs the council’s Health, Hospital and Social Services Committee, said privatizing the centers would allow Metro to strengthen Nashville General by putting the city’s entire health care subsidy behind the hospital. “I believe that’s our moral, legal and ethical obligation — to provide a public, safety-net hospital,” he said.

Got that? If Karl Dean and Jerry Maynard have their way, we are going to cut off our elderly from subsidized long-term care and accountable Metro oversight in order to flip the funds to general healthcare for those in the population who do not need long-term care. Reverend Maynard's ethics are utilitarian (funding as much good as the Mayor's Office will allow for a larger number of short-term patients, or as Karl Dean calls them, "customers"). But the Reverend's defense is also brute social Darwinism: the younger, biologically superior population deserves the best chances to survive and the access to government subsidies in order to do so.

Just like that, after 120 years of the county looking after long-term needs elderly patients, Reverend Jerry Maynard is prepared to sell out nursing home residents' interests to the indifferent marketplace. He is willing to hock instead of promote their welfare. He is intent on casting them out into the world of medical commerce, where are as likely to be picked out of the herd by industry hyenas as they are to get accountable medical treatment.

The trade-off: he saves his own pet projects. Word is he is planning to run for Mayor, so I assume "saving" Metro General while letting the elderly go has value as future campaign fodder.

This is a brave new world. Government leaders who call themselves "Democrats" no longer even bother to lift a finger to advocate for those who cannot any more. To them this is just one more privatization deal to grease the skids of the special interests.

Jerry Maynard's resume includes pastoring a church. I assume that means that he sees himself as an authentic Christian minister. I wonder how he reconciles these ethical compromises with power and money to the teachings that his faith tradition considers as definitive for character. When I survey Christian scriptures to find justifications for subjecting weaker people to brutal societal forces I instead read these:

• For I was hungry, and you gave me something to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave me something to drink; I was a stranger, and you invited me in .... whatever you did for one of the least of these, you did for me.
• Blessed be you poor: for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you that hunger now: for you shall be filled. Blessed are you that weep now: for you shall laugh .... But woe unto you that are rich! for you have received your consolation .... Woe unto you that are full! for you shall hunger. Woe unto you that laugh now! for you shall mourn and weep.
• How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God! Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.

I don't see how a Christian minister can adhere to these tenets but exercise a lifeboat ethics, cutting loose those assumed to be less worthy of the guarantee of a public safety net. If anything, Reverend Maynard should be advocating for the elderly at Bordeaux precisely because his Christianity will not allow his politics to turn away conveniently from the most vulnerable like the priest and the Levite on the Jericho road.

If he has heard the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. in the past, perhaps Reverend Maynard needs to hear them again with fresh ears:

the Jericho road is a dangerous road. I remember when Mrs. King and I were first in Jerusalem. We rented a car and drove from Jerusalem down to Jericho. And as soon as we got on that road, I said to my wife, "I can see why Jesus used this as the setting for his parable." It's a winding, meandering road. It's really conducive for ambushing. You start out in Jerusalem, which is...1,200 feet above sea level. And by the time you get down to Jericho, fifteen or twenty minutes later, you're about 2,200 feet below sea level. That's a dangerous road. In the days of Jesus it came to be known as the "Bloody Pass." And you know, it's possible that the priest and the Levite looked over that man on the ground and wondered if the robbers were still around. Or it's possible that they felt that the man on the ground was merely faking. And he was acting like he had been robbed and hurt, in order to seize them over there, lure them there for quick and easy seizure. And so the first question that the priest asked -- the first question that the Levite asked was, "If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?" But then the Good Samaritan came by. And he reversed the question: "If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?"

It is hard to reconcile MLK's view with a social Darwinist or utilitarian politics that argues that good government should not be "in the business" of securing the common good. Securing the common good means spending more and risking more for those most spent and at most risk in our society. It means stopping to help those who need our help even when rational calculations tell us that it could cost us.

In all of his words defending Mayor Dean on privatizing healthcare, Reverend Maynard does not bother to stop and ask what might happen to the elderly Bordeaux residents once their facilities are privatized. His faith is built on nothing less than the marketplace and Dean's noblesse.

But Reverend Maynard's problem is that he frames the question completely at odds with the common good. We are not simply in the nursing home business by providing long-term care for the elderly. We are not simply competitors with private industry. Publicly-subsidized healthcare, which Reverend seems to advocate when it comes to Metro General Hospital or Obamacare, is a safety net for those who might not benefit from privately-run care. Any one of us deserves refuge at our lowest moments, and those of us who are at most risk, especially so.

Publicly-managed long-term care should be sanctuary from the predatory inclinations of the private enterprise system, where the goal of making money can overwhelm the mandate to do no harm. It shouldn't be another real estate deal that Metro government brokers under the guise of the "public-private partnership". Why should government be in the business of real estate if it should not be in the business of healthcare?

We rely on our legislators to be advocates for protecting patients from the market rather than being lackeys for private healthcare interests who covet the windfall of flipping public long-term care to the marketplace. We deserve better from Jerry Maynard.

Are the Mayor's board appointees not supposed to express opposition to the Mayor?

Twitter exchange between two local reporters:

Mind still not changed

Over the past few days I have met dozens of really nice people from the television soap-opera series "Nashville".

About a week ago we gave permission to "Music City Productions, Inc. 'Nashville - The First Season'" to occupy, stage, and film a short scene (maybe 30 seconds?) in an upcoming episode (16) at our home in Salemtown. I can confess that we were a bit nervous having people in and out and having one of our walls altered to fit the scene. However, I encountered people from most of the segments of the production -- location, construction, design, lighting, sound, make-up, director, producers, actors, etc -- and I found them to be gracious and easy to host.

As I told their location manager (who followed up after everyone was gone to make sure that we were completely satisfied), we were so pleased with how the experience turned out that we would welcome them back if they needed to re-shoot something anytime. And I would recommend them to any fellow Nashvillians who were considering sharing their homes as sets. The production company even responded favorably when I asked them to make a $500 donation to the Salemtown neighborhood association as an expression of good will for the disruption of closing the street to film.

Even for an introverted homebody like me there actually were fun experiences across the past few days. Listening to construction people talk about working on other film projects (like the upcoming bio on Jackie Robinson, "42"). Observing designers at their craft. Sitting next to Callie Khouri, wrapped in awe, while she studied the action on a video monitor. Listening to Michael Waxman describe how New York City is different than when he grew up there and how his daughter stops for kolaches on her way back to his Austin ranch from college. Hearing Chip Esten (a.k.a., "Deacon") laugh at our 8-year-old's notes tacked to a kitchen cabinet as he ate breakfast over our stove. Watching another actor, who plays Deacon's romantic-interest-of-the-moment, romping around our backyard with our dog between takes. It seemed all surreal, but entertaining without the show.

As fun as the ride was, it did not change my opinion that Metro government should not subsidize the network TV series. My opposition to giving the production company public money by no means indicates a lack of support for Nashville's film industry. I would like to see many more films and series made here, employing lots of people. However, Nashville the municipality still has budget obligations to the needs of its citizens first, and until the Mayor can fully fund those obligations, production companies should have to make it on their own (and they seem to me to have the resources to do so).

After our positive experience of the past week, I wish I could support subsidizing a TV series. I might have been so inclined if we had a Mayor who consistently put spending for the benefit of the masses ahead of special treatment for the few. I hardly believe that the dozens of hard-working, but considerate folks we met were undeserving of the support.

A beautiful wreck

The very day that Metro IT touted its pretty spread in the paper
I could not find overlay documents I searched for.

Metro's IT Director Keith Durbin is very proud of his department's online makeover:

“We had a number of goals .... One was to make the site simple enough so that visitors don’t feel like they need to understand the organizational structure of Metro government in order to find what they need .... It looks great and it works great [and its function is] based on marrying today’s website technology with information we gathered from surveys and focus groups over the last two years.”

It also looks like a big promotion for the Mayor's future political aspirations based on the subsidized capital projects and corporate tax breaks he has doled out over two terms. It sets links to Mayor's Office flackery and their email subscription service above most everything else.

This is no sour grapes. The winners are the ones who write history (and the code), but just from a pragmatic point of view it looks like one of the other IT goals is to sublimate user-friendly and practical links for Metro service delivery under huge banner pictures that appear to be striving for Hizzoner's glossy feel-good portfolio.

Likewise, many helpful links that I have linked over the years on this blog that brought Nashvillians closer to the halls of governance are moved elsewhere. I've heard grumblings from various quarters by those who came to rely on ease of access of important information. Now it is a scavenger hunt obstructed and sidetracked by huge banners and air-brushed mayoral portraits. Did those focus groups really care to contemplate a Photoshopped mural of the Music City monument to tourists instead of riding a straight shot to a rezoning proposal or a Public Works contact form?

Mayor Dean appears to be against state intrusion whenever it is convenient

City Paper Metro beat reporter Joey Garrison via Twitter this morning on inconsistencies of Karl Dean's political agenda and state government intrusion:

On state's overturning of Metro's CANDO bill, Mayor Dean last spring said, "Now is not the time to abandon our belief in local government."
But in urging the state board of education to authorize Great Hearts, Dean is asking the state to overturn a local, Metro decision.

Such intrepidity on the part of the City Paper reporter is not going to earn him the Mayor's most favorite journo status like the Tennessean's compliant stable seems to enjoy.

Metro Police shut down single Occupy Nashville tent protest on the Courthouse Square

According to Occupy Nashville protester, Mark Hamill, when he tried to occupy the Metro Courthouse Square, Metro Police sent 7 cops to remove him from his outpost on municipal public property. This is how he related his story to Tennessean reporters:

An attempt to move the Occupy Nashville protest from the state Capitol to the city’s Public Square ended after several hours early Tuesday morning.

One tent was set up on the lawn of the city government headquarters Monday night. Early Tuesday, a Metro Nashville police officer told tent dweller Matt Hamill a local ordinance barred camping there. Hamill packed up his tent and left ....

Protestor Jason Steen said Metro Police arrived at the Public Square shortly after 5 a.m. and asked Hamill, the lone protestor there, to leave. Steen said the encounter was amicable and Hamill left without incident.

Occupy Nashville's legal team is looking into the required permits to move the protest to the Public Square

Right idea, too little and too late for execution.

The Metro police response was overkill: it looked more like a drug bust when all they needed to clear a guy in a tent out was a couple of constables in one cruiser. The response indicates to me that Metro government had set itself, had Occupy Nashville targeted city hall, to act heavy-handed, to be overbearing just as other cities forces have been.

Now ON does not have the bodies both to occupy the Courthouse and to maintain a beachhead at the General Assembly. It is unfortunate that Occupy Nashville (that is, Nashville proper) will probably only amount to one tent hauled off willingly by a guy who didn't want to be subdued and arrested by a half-a-dozen-or-so police officers.

The one who doesn't like government is gearing up to work on Metro government

Last autumn when media commentators were making rather strained analogies between Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party movement, placing the former as the left-wing counterpart of the latter, I tried to counter a lot of the spin in the social media by pointing to more significant differences.

The Tea Party broke with government establishment, but did not break with corporate establishment, which meant it really did not break with government establishment. The Tea Party was just the latest surge of right-wing political operations with lineage to groups like the Moral Majority.

Occupy Wall Street seems connected in time more with the international reaction (starting with the Arab Spring) to finance industry abuses and the hardships they've caused through puppet governments. OWS has yet to play government off against business as a Tea Party counterpart might. Many of the occupiers have exercised civil disobedience against government and businesses alike. Unlike the Tea Party, OWS has generally been organizing alternative governance ("General Assemblies"), not rejecting government altogether like the Tea Party libertarians. In many parts of the country OWS has even tried to stage alternative government within municipal government meetings with "mic checks".

In spite of this defending of Occupy Wall Street against spin that they are the Tea Party counterpart, I am baffled that in our city, the group that has been loud and clear about working to change Metro government is the Nashville Tea Party, while the group that is making no effort whatsoever to change Metro government is Occupy Nashville.


UPDATE: As if on cue, Occupy Nashville releases its 2012 plans, exclusively focused on the State General Assembly. No plans to focus on Metro Council or the Metro School Board. They appear to be ceding Metro government to the Nashville Tea Party.

Metro gives up plan to convert golf course to park

Metro Parks Director Tommy Lynch issued the following statement very late last week via CM Karen Johnson's website:

we will withdraw our staff recommendation to the Park Board for the acquisition of the Nashboro Village Golf Course.

The very reason we have public meetings is to get the chance for community feedback. After last night’s meeting with residents in the Nashboro Village area, we agree with them that it is in the best interest of the community and the Parks Department to give residents in the area the opportunity to pursue private funding for the continuation of golf in the area. As well, the council member [Johnson] representing that district has pulled the legislation to authorize acquisition of the property.

Metro Parks will continue our efforts to fulfill the Open Space Plan as well as the Master Plan for Parks and Greenways in communities that welcome such initiatives.

Of course, Nashboro Villagers are entitled to relinquish public conservation to gamble that private golf course owners will take no legal action in the future to try to shrink or eliminate the current green space. But they should not imply that our public parks and greenways in other neighborhoods threaten property values while private golf courses do not.

NewsChannel5: some Germantown residents "seeing red" about fire station move

Historic Germantown, Inc held a meeting at Morgan Park for dissatisfied residents to vent about Metro's proposed move of the 2nd Avenue North fire station to East Nashville:

Greater transparency = greater constituent satisfaction

Oh, that our courthouse class, public school district, and news media might one day take these findings to heart:

Surveys in several communities have found that the people who believe their local government does a good job sharing information are more likely than others to feel satisfied with civic life.

Those who believe city hall is forthcoming are more likely than others to feel good about: the overall quality of their community; the ability of the entire information environment of their community to give them the information that matters; the overall performance of their local government; and the performance of all manner of civic and journalistic institutions ranging from the fire department to the libraries to the local newspaper and TV stations. In addition, government transparency is associated with residents’ personal feelings of empowerment: Those who think their government shares information well are more likely to say that average citizens can have an impact on government.

The Metro Charter already set the Fairgrounds specifically apart from other public property

CM Emily Evans responds to constituent questions about the Fairgrounds referendum at her blog:

Some have raised the rather specious argument that the question of the Fairgrounds does not rise to a level of importance necessary for inclusion in the Metro Charter. They are, of course, ignoring the fact that the reason we have a State Fair in the first place is because we are directed to do so by the Metro Charter.

Compare this to a quote that Dean supporter and McNeely Pigott & Fox spinmeister Katy Varney attributed to the son of a Metro Charter architect:

The charter was not set up to address specific issues, but rather it is the overarching instrument that sets forth the process by which decisions are made by our elected officials ....

Regardless of how we feel about the future of the fairgrounds, it is a mistake to change the charter to apply rules to one place that are not in place for any other Metro property.

Given that the Metro Charter as drafted already made specific exceptions for the Fairgrounds that it does not make for other Metro property, how is it inconsistent with the Metro Charter to amend further exceptions for the Fairgrounds into the charter? Distracting us from the merits of the Fairground referendum with a logical fallacy like an argument from authority is not just bad form, but Varney's appeal is also undermined by her own authority's argument, which is itself inaccurate at best, deceptive at worst.

What council redistricting is doing for voters

Late local election changes for your inconvenience:

Davidson County Election Commission

Updates Voter Database for Redistricting

At 1:00 pm today, July 1, 2011, the new Metropolitan Council districts and School Board districts were uploaded into the Election Commission’s computerized database of registered voters in Davidson County. This comes after weeks of preparation involving staff from the Election Commission, Planning and IT Departments. This step will allow the Election Commission to proceed with the following:

Tennessee Chamber of Commerce: Wash, Rinse, Repeat

So, Tennessee's Republican Governor Bill Haslam has now quite predictably signed the Republican bill that quite predictably kills Metro Nashville's ordinance that would require all of its contractors to include sexual orientation and gender identity in non-discrimination policies. With the ballyhooed "twitter campaign" supplicating the Governor for a veto and thanking corporations for their support, things were setting up as another Democratic Party fight with the GOP with businesses, company-by-company, walking away from responsibility for the mess.

About Tennessee Republicans' attempt to micromanage Metro Nashville

An Enclave reader writes to express dissatisfaction with the failure of the press to draw out the hypocrisy of a Williamson County Republican's attempt to kill Metro Nashville's non-discrimination ordinance from the top-down in the General Assembly:

Did you know State Representative Glenn Cassada opposed the Metro anti-discrimination ordinance against GLBT and wants to overturn it?

Did you know Cassada doesn’t live in Davidson Co?

Did you know Cassada has worked for the Pharmacy giant Merck/Schering Plough in the animal health division of for the last 23 years?

Did you know Merck/Schering Plough has its own diversity program for both employees and suppliers (http://www.merck.com/about/how-we-operate/diversity/employee-diversity.html)

Did you know Merck/Schering Plough celebrates it number 9th position in the Top 10 companies for GLBT employees (http://www.merck.com/careers/life-at-merck/diversity-recruiting/home.html)

Did you know the company Cassada works for has its OWN supplier diversity definitions (http://www.merck.com/about/how-we-operate/diversity/definitions.html)?

If it is not bad enough that Tennessee Republicans look dishonest on this red-meat issue, the Out and About blog points out that they are on the same side of Tennessee history as the 1920s Knoxville Ku Klux Klan.

Campaign behind the curve?

According to a specialist on local governments and economic development, outsourcing government functions (a.k.a. "public/private partnerships") does not live up to the cost savings promised and is actually the wave of the past, not the future:

Privatization peaked among local governments in 1997. From 1992 to 1997 new outsourcing contracts accounted for 18 percent of all service delivery, while in-sourcing was 11 percent. The ratios shifted in the 1997-2002 period with in-sourcing exceeding new contracts out by 50 percent. From 2002 to 2007 the rates were about equal (new contracts out were 11 percent, contracting back in was 12 percent). So the pendulum swings.

So, is this tweeted talking point pushing the envelope or falling behind the curve?