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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

If you build it, they will relocate.

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

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

Moral hazard in Metro's purchasing past

One definition of "moral hazard" is taking undue risks with resources acquired when incentives exist to do so. I'm wondering whether the Mayor's Office, the police department, and Metro Council (34 members) realized that definition in 2009 when purchasing the old Frensley car dealership in order to flip it into the West MNPD Precinct.

Neighborhood leaders were skeptical and challenged Karl Dean's budget man Rich Riebeling and former police chief Ronal Serpas. They wondered if the cost was fair market. They wondered about the site's flood-proneness. They wondered about the political patronage behind the deal.

CM Buddy Baker, a buddy of Bob Frensley, spearheaded the effort even though the car dealership was not in his district. An ethics complaint was filed against Mr. Baker for allegedly concealing the information that the former police commander of the West Precinct was a trustee for Bob Frensley. Mr. Riebeling pushed the deal through without a detailed site plan, and he was surly and arrogant toward concerned neighborhoods, acting like he was going to put down $4+ million on a cheaper property simply because he could with or without public support.

The incentives for moral hazard were there.

Then came the Great Flood of 2010 that proved community leaders were exactly right to be skeptical of the risk Metro Nashville was willing to take for the West Precinct plan. So then, extra money was needed for flood mitigation of a HQ on a flood plain at a time when Metro was tearing down buildings on other flood plain. But Metro could not or would not spare enough money to provide a large enough community meeting space to allow public meetings for many to attend.

The flood was revealing of the undue risks Riebeling et al. were willing to take with public funds to ignore planning and to patronize the circle of good old boys built up around Bob Frensley through the years. Yet, it was also incentive to continue to take risks to mitigate the costs of keeping MNPD on Charlotte Ave flood plain and stay callous toward the community.

Jump forward to 2013, property reappraisal time.

If you are a property owner, you have likely received your tax appraisal from Metro in the past week. Mike Peden looked at a tax appraisal for a property near to the West Precinct and emailed me this morning:

The tax appraisal for the property next door to the West Precinct on Charlotte went down from $3,816,900 to $3,452,100. (5330 Charlotte Ave)

That seems strange since the tax appraisal on the land metro purchased was $2.88 million and they paid $4.2 million. I thought the justification for that was that the property was under appraised.

In a separate email, Mike wrote that the appraisal of Wendell's Restaurant (5300 Charlotte)--where CM Baker like to hold court occasionally--dropped 6% ($437,200 to $411,900).

Smells to me like moral hazard drove the Frensley dealership deal.

Convention center costs barreling overbudget, gaining momentum and risks after second courtroom loss

In July, Mayor Karl Dean and his MDHA minions lost a jury trial they hoped would hold the line on the low-ball offer they made to Tower Investments to get land for the new Music City Center. They might have low-balled the figure to hold down costs to make the convention center project sexier to the Metro Council, but they lose they did.

Now they have lost their appeal of their July failure to a judge, who upheld the jury's decision:

The Metro Development and Housing Agency, which was in charge of acquiring land for the Music City Center, hoped Circuit Court Judge Joe Binkley would reduce a critical July jury verdict in the contentious eminent domain case against development firm Tower Investments. Instead, Binkley agreed with the jury’s verdict that MDHA undervalued the land, which the city condemned and took from Tower to construct the new convention center south of Broadway.

Binkley rejected motions filed by MDHA seeking a new trial or to have the $30.4 million jury verdict reduced.

As a result, the convention center’s land acquisition budget remains busted, and the budget for the entire $585 million project will be left with a razor-thin contingency. A spokeswoman for MDHA did not rule out a possible appeal, opening the door for the 2-year-old case to be dragged on even longer.

“I don’t reasonably disagree with what [the jury] did,” Binkley said from the bench, citing state law that allows a judge to grant a new trial if he “reasonably disagrees” with a jury verdict. “And I do not find that the evidence preponderates against the verdict. I approve the verdict.”

Metro Finance Director Rich Riebeling, who is one of Mayor Karl Dean’s top aides, declined to comment as he left the courtroom.

So, was Karl Dean's right-hand man, Mr. Riebeling evacuating quickly to avoid having to answer tough questions about what might have to be cut from the Metro budget to pay for this monument to the tourism industry or was he headed out to figure which groups of constituents might be least angered by cuts to their basic services in exchange for a colossus that looks bigger every time we count the costs?

The Mayor's Office is in a catch-22. The Music City Center Authority swore emphatically that the project would not go over budget. If Metro appeals Tower again and loses, the budget-busting costs grow absurdly astronomical. And what have they salvaged for the other two legal cases they have to fight over land acquisition? They have already redirected tourist taxes that were subsidizing pro hockey to cover this project. How will they keep their promise? How can they if they risk losing another trial with two others in the pipeline? Metro's other budget items have been drastically cut over and over again, so how will we pay for these convention center losses and still benefit from Metro services?

Karl Dean's bad form: Mayor's Office robbed Peter to pay Paul to pay Judas

The fact that Nashville is doing what none of its sister "hockey towns" is doing--subsidizing arenas for their pro clubs--is lousy enough. I agree with those of you who may be irritated by propping up athletics aristocrats in lean budget years.

But a tidbit buried deeper in this news is far worse than the fact that we bend over backwards to cater to corporate welfare. The Preds have been made accomplices in Karl Dean's mission to transfer Metro wealth in the form of tax revenues from the services devoted to streets, parks, libraries, neighborhoods and public safety to construction of the Music City Center.

Essentially, the Mayor's Office is raiding the General Fund (which pays for the services we demand of our local government in exchange for our taxes) to cover losses in subsidies to the Nashville Predators that were being paid by tourist taxes now redirected to construction of the Music City Center:

city leaders say it’s time for a change [in paying the Preds $7,800,000 out of the General Fund], especially considering the stress on the Metro budget. Amid whispers of a possible property tax increase, Metro Councilman Lonnell Matthews said it would be difficult to justify continued subsidies for a professional hockey team out of the operating budget.

Until last year, the subsidy was funded by tourism taxes and fees, but that revenue now goes to pay the debt for the new convention center.

Many of us warned over and over again that regular Nashvillians would be the truly disadvantaged of the convention center construction project, because our services would eventually be cut to obligate General Fund revenues to pay the huge cost. Rich Riebeling connived quite a shell game to cover the Music City Center drain on our resources without appearing to pay for construction with the General Fund. But that is exactly what has been happening.

It is time to shelter the General Fund services we enjoy from being bled out by Music City Center pipe dreams. The Mayor must end the subsidies to the Nashville Predators. If he does subsidize hockey the money should come from tourism taxes.

Further convention center drag on the budget underreported in local news media

While NewsChannel5 reporter Heather Graf filed a puffed PR piece on the progress of construction of the Music City Convention Center and while the rest of the local news media was ignoring the shaky state of the demands the convention center is placing on the Metro budget, WPLN's Blake Farmer at least inquired after the implications of the recent market roller coaster for Metro finances.

While few are talking about this and the Courthouse is taking pains not to be too transparent about it, Mayor Karl Dean's 2010 blueprint to refinance debt in order to avoid raising taxes or cutting services is in limbo at best and in trouble at worst. Such is Metro's undue dependence of the vicissitudes of Wall Street and the Mayor's high-stakes risk of starting the single largest capital project in Nashville history with no safety net except the revenues that go to pay for the really unimportant stuff like police, parks and schools:

Turmoil in the financial markets has temporarily put the brakes on a bond refinancing by Metro Government. The city is trying to get a lower interest rate on roughly $100 million in bonds, originally used to pay for construction projects at parks and schools.

Metro Finance director Rich Riebeling says as a policy, the city must save at least 3.5 percent to justify refinancing any debt.

“It’s all subject to market conditions, and because of the volatility in the market right now with the stock market and interest rates, everybody kind of up in the air, we want to wait and sit back a week or two, see how it shakes out.”

And who doesn't feel more secure knowing that the Metro Finance Director has staked Nashville's financial security and Metro's delivery of services on Wall Street uncertainty? And all in the name of lavishing our resources on tourists and of doing the greatest good for the smallest number of nobles.


UPDATE: A commenter below asks about rumored plans to deal with budget shortfalls by cutting retail slated for the Korean Veterans Boulevard side of the new convention center. Can anyone confirm or deny?

Service to courthouse over service to community

Like Dukakis riding a tank

When Vice Mayor Diane Neighbors ran for her post in 2007 she swore to voters that she knew "how to make the Metro Council work better for all of us." Over her tenure in the last four years she's spent more time making Metro Council work better for Rich Riebeling.

Among other examples of her confined governing focus is her draconian treatment of the Industrial Development Board a couple of years ago on behalf of Courthouse autocrats like Riebeling, who himself has shown little tolerance for people who don't go his way:

Mayor Dean keeps CM Gilmore close-hauled on regs on businesses subsidized by Metro

From this morning's Nashville Business Journal:

Metro Councilwoman Erica Gilmore withdrew a bill Tuesday that would have required companies receiving economic development incentives to disclose internal demographic information, such as race and gender.

The bill was up for second reading, and would have required passage Tuesday and one more time before going before Mayor Karl Dean. Gilmore said after speaking to Dean and business representatives that she’d decided the bill was “a little restrictive.”

I supported our CM's bill before withdrawal because it is the right thing to do and not an onerous requirement, given that these businesses would benefit from the public dole. They would not apply to just any business. I am disappointed that CM Gilmore bowed to the Mayor's tendency to overreact to any requirements that do not come directly from Finance Director Rich Riebeling's little camarilla of influence.

All the Mayor's men: no apologies for possible ethics violations

The last thing Mayor Karl Dean needs since kicking off his re-election campaign with a couple of rebranding efforts called "neighborhood gatherings," designed to frame him as in touch with communities, is embarrassing news that smacks of elitism. However, news did crop up today that Dean's closest advisers appear to be keeping sweetheart relations with a Metro contractor.

Dean signed an executive order in 2008 reiterating and amending the ethical rules of his predecessor:

This order applies to the Mayor and employees of the Mayor's office ....

No employee shall solicit or accept, directly or indirectly, on behalf of himself, herself, or any member of the employee's household, any gift, gratuity, service, favor, entertainment, lodging, transportation, loan, loan guarantee or any other thing of monetary value from any person who:

• has, or is seeking to obtain, contractual or other business or financial relations with the department or agency of Metropolitan Government by which the individual is employed, or
• conducts operations or activities that are regulated by the department or agency of Metropolitan Government by which the employee is employed, or
• has interests that may be substantially affected by the performance or nonperformance of the employee's official duties.

Community leader disputes council's minority candidates

Local Nashville blogger, entrepreneur, philanthropist, and fashion specialist Genma Holmes challenges those council candidates running for re-election on the claims that commitment to minority spending on the convention center project has been met (you may remember that I recently posted a podcast of Jerry Maynard making those claims):

local elected officials who represent the poorest residents in Nashville voted to fund a project to bring visitors in a down economy with tax payer dollars based on property taxes when a large number of Nashvillians have lost their homes to foreclosure. Brilliant!

The [Music City Center] Project has had its share of controversy which is being swept under the rug now that 2011 elections are around the corner. We are being given the three-piece-chicken-and-biscuit-special speeches while ignoring what the community of color has really gotten from the project. A wing, a dash of hot sauce, with prayers on the side. “We are getting 20% in minority spending”, I have heard a few potential candidates say lately. No one has asked the obvious follow up, “20% of what actual dollar amount?” Please.

The Mayor’s chief cheerleader for the MCC, Walt Baker, was revealed as a racist, at least in his emails. The PR firm debacle was all over the place. And very recently, Metro Finance Director, Rich Riebeling, one of Mayor Karl Dean's top advisers, failed to disclose fully personal business dealings with a prominent attorney and a local engineering firm, which have both won large contracts for the downtown convention center project. Wonder if any color folks bid on those contracts?

Mayor's green public-private arrangement in limbo?

Curiously, over 2 months ago the blogger for the public-private partnership between Metro Nashville and The Land Trust for Tennessee teased us into expecting an open space plan by the end of January.

Blogger responds to the Dean administration's rather nebulous and problematic hire in challenging budget times

Nashville's women's health news blogger, Rachel Walden, would like an explanation from Mayor Karl Dean's office on their decision to throw $60,000 at former Bredesen Parks Commissioner Jim Fyke based on vague rationales:

The Finance Director is quoted in the article saying things that make it explicitly clear that this was not an existing job opening, one with clearly defined responsibilities and needed qualifications, that other people were able to compete for.

“We’ll assign him projects as they arise on a case basis.” Because they were “just talking” (hello, good ole boy network), and thought he could help.

You know who actually knows what they’re supposed to do and could use more money? Who would just love to have somebody around to do whatever needed doing, or at least the $60,000 a year?

The Nashville Public Library.

Or the Metro Department of Health.

Or schools, or any number of other departments with real missions to help real people. Real services that people of Nashville need and deserve, in department that struggle to do everything that needs doing with the limited-and-being-cut funds available.

Interesting that over a year ago Tennessean columnist and Dean supporter Gail Kerr telegraphed the idea of Metro government re-hiring Fyke to the newspaper's expansive readership.

While Rachel does not want to go too hard on Fyke himself but focus on Mayor Dean and his Finance duputy, Rich Riebeling, Fyke does not have an uncheckered rep here at Enclave. How could he in good conscience take that much money when year-after-year Metro departments are asked to slash their budgets?

Hermitage neighborhood leader's dispatch observes dealings behind scenes of Fairgrounds public hearing

Veteran of community-based efforts Susan Floyd was at last Tuesday's packed Metro Council meeting observing events in the common areas outside the council chambers. She e-mailed those detail-rich observations to me. They include an image of organized citizens nobler than the rabble the Mayor's supporters try to spin them into. Her reflections also indicate to me that while the politicos work together to manage their bid to bring down the Fairgrounds, the public effort to dissent and resist that bid is closer to the grassroots:

Going into the courthouse, there was a man in a red shirt that came out of the courthouse all upset. He had passed through the metal detector with his adult son. His son pulled out a tiny metal measuring tape after they had cleared security, but security tried to take it away from him. These two left before the public hearing ever started because of the way that they were treated.

The fire marshal was walking all over in a panic acting as if he would close the place at anytime. Council members Craddock, Hollin, and Garrett came out as if to take a reading of what was going on outside the chambers. CM Barry came down the stairs closely following Rich Riebeling. They disappeared into his office.

Ray Barret, the former Chairman of the Election Commissioner, came in the courthouse. I assumed he was going to be given an award. For some reason he failed security. They wanded him. The crowd was massive. It would have been nice if council members could have watched the people outside the chambers via camera and really know the magnitude of the support for the fairgrounds.

I personally never made it into the chambers, but did watch what was going on in the courthouse very closely. At one time this very clean cut gentleman wearing a red shirt and nice black jacket walked from the area near the television monitor toward the Council Offices. The lights were off in the offices, but the clerk and several IT people had been coming and going from the offices. One security and another uniformed Metro officer followed this man quickly from the center of the mezzanine. The man in the red shirt didn't see them, but they walked briskly as if to detain him. I stayed in the area and watched carefully. The man simply walked to the area near the offices, looked down the stairs, and turned around. When he turned around the officers acted like they weren't following him. He turned around and walked back to the area near the television. When the young man passed me, I told him that they had been right behind him watching him closely. He thanked me for telling him.

When the meeting started, the red team gathered around the television and even said the pledge of allegiance together along with the council. That really moved me.

After about 20 minutes, a woman passed out. Security rushed in with a first aid bag and another uniformed Metro Police officer came upstairs and stood in the middle of the mezzanine. She was really nice and never approached the people. The police woman stayed for a while and then stood at the bottom of the steps on the first floor. The sick woman was wheeled away for medical attention.

I hung out with the red shirts while I was there, spending time on each floor (2nd, 3rd and 6th), and never once saw or heard any problems. There was even a family with a little baby on the 6th floor. They sat on the cold tile of the 6th floor feeding the baby a bottle with as many people as could catch a glimpse of the flatscreen television that was set up for overflow crowds. One young boy about eight years old complained to his father that he was tired. The young boy was told that sometimes you have to make sacrifices for things that you believe in. He seemed to understand.

The red shirts waited and watched but did not make comments when the yellow team spoke. They were just simple, ordinary folks waiting their turn.

Photo credit: CM Jamie Hollin

They had been there a very long time and didn't even complain when the yellow folks got to go home while they were still waiting. I know they were tired. There were very few places to sit. Many had been standing the entire time.

The yellow shirts lined up outside the chambers all night and fed into the chambers one at a time as they spoke. They were still lined up when I left around 8:15. The red team was in the process of organizing and prioritizing their speakers. They realized that the council members were as tired as they were. They lined up District 17, Davidson County, then any others. I am not sure if they even knew how long it would take for the red team already in the chambers to speak, and although a few seemed exhausted they remained vigilant.

While it appeared to me that security feared an outbreak or unruly incident, these Nashvillians were the same folks that helped one another during the flood when some thought that there would be trouble. These citizens (yellow and red alike) seemed willing to wait their turn to have their say. They just wanted to be part of democracy. It was an honor to be in the courthouse with this historic and passionate crowd of my fellow citizens.

Deanieleaks #7: Mayor's Office e-mail correspondence on the State Fairgrounds

In the latest release, State Fair Director Buck Dozier raises a red flag with Finance Director Rich Riebeling about access problems for fleamarket vendors should they be moved to Hickory Hollow (Mayor Dean withdrew that Hickory Hollow plan December 1 after withering public blowback).

In the context of the previous e-mails it is hard to see this meeting proposal as anything but a further effort to define and assign talking points among the Dean Team with feedback from the corporate mall owners who stand to benefit handsomely from an Expo exile. Shouldn't Dozier have invited a representative from affected Expo vendors if he intended to act as their access advocate?

[Original Message]
From: Dozier, Buck (State Fair)
To: Riebeling, Richard (Finance - Director's Office)
Subject: Update
Date: Tuesday, October 05, 2010 12:15:52 PM
__________________________________

You told me to harass you as things moved along. I have not as Toby, Weaver, and others seem to be on target.

I have one consideration for you that I don't feel that we have fleshed out well. I consider it to be a HUGE issue moving forward.

The issue of egress and ingress at the Hickory Hollow site. The building has only TWO doors in which to get vendors in and out.

I really feel the need to express to ALL who will have anything to do with the build out to talk with me and my crew about these issues.

Setting up a flea market, especially this one, is not like setting up a yard sale as you will know.

I believe that it would be profitable for CBL [Hickory Hollow owner], General Services, and a few of my staff to meet soon on the build out. Your thoughts and wisdom on the matter.

When we open Hickory Hollow I want us to be successful from the get-go.

I will be in New York next week on vacation, but will be here all of this week.

It is conspicuous that this was not a matter of "if" Hickory Hollow would open as an exposition of former Fairgrounds vendors but a matter of "when" for Dozier, regardless of how "HUGE" the obstacles were.

I will continue to publish more e-mails in the run-up to Tuesday's council consideration of the Fairgrounds bills. (Jump to Deanieleaks #1. Jump to Deanieleaks #2. Jump to Deanieleaks #3. Jump to Deanieleaks #4. Jump to Deanieleaks #5. Jump to Deanieleaks #6.)

Rich Riebeling, The Demolition Man, says he can only "guess" on the cost of tearing down the track

You would think that the Metro Finance Director would be able to reel off exact budget figures to the press, given that he is set on taking out the Fairgrounds:

Metro Finance Director Rich Riebeling said this week there is no cost estimate on the demolition of the property’s racetrack, a course of action that is outlined in a bill nine council members are co-sponsoring. The bill, set for a crucial second of three votes on Jan. 18, would also retain the property’s expo center and annual state fair for at least one more year.

Riebeling has signed off on the availability of funds for the ordinance.

“I’m guessing that it’s in the half-million-dollar range,” Riebeling said, referring to the track’s demolition. “That’s a pure guess.”

Allow me to suggest that taxpayers do not pay Mr. Riebeling to make guesses, no matter how pure.

Who needs political consultants when journalists can do the dirty work for free?

Jay Voorhees parries columnist Gail Kerr's recent swipe at Metro's services to the poor as well as her play of the race card when class was the suit laid:

It’s the last sentence that really bothered me, the one about the hospital being “money losing” and implying that the only support for the institution in by the Black Caucus. Yes, the hospital is running at a deficit this year, but it is a deficit that Rich Riebeling approved. The hospital has worked hard during the past four years to become as efficient as possible. When they mayor demanded a 10% cut in the hospital subsidy last year, the hospital informed the mayor’s office that they could not meet that target without cutting services, such as the outpatient cancer chemo clinic, which is the last line of treatment for the poor who have cancer. The mayor’s office did not want to be accused of harming poor people, so the hospital was told to leave the $1.5 million dollar deficit in the budget, and that they would deal with the shortfall later in the year through other means. This year, the hospital is in better financial shape than it’s been in for many years, however their budgeting was on the money and they are still projected to have a $1.5 million deficit, mainly because we as a city would not adequately fund the health care needs of the poor. The big problem facing the hospital, a problem that you have never addressed, is the $10 million dollars in TennCare cuts facing Metro General and the $25 million in TennCare reserves due to the hospital that are not being shared by the governor. Yeah, Metro General has huge problems ahead, but they aren’t of their own making.

As for the support for Metro General, I think the 70 plus pastors, imams, and rabbis from throughout Nashville who signed a letter of support for the hospital would be surprised to learn that the black caucus was the only supporting agency. I think the 200 folks who gathered on the steps of the Metro Courthouse would likewise be surprised, as would the members of SEIU who have a personal interest in the well being of the hospital.

Gail, Gail, Gail… it’s hard to understand why you seem to want to come after the hospital. Could it be that poor folks don’t buy your paper? Or maybe there are folks in the administration that have an ax to grind with certain community leaders who have pushed hard against the administrations ambivalence toward the need for a city supported (not run) safety net hospital, and have sold you a bill of goods.

The timing of Ms. Kerr's comment relative to upcoming budget discussions is suspicious given that a couple of months ago she bayed about former Parks Director Roy Wilson while the Mayor's Office started turning the screws leading to Mr. Wilson's December 31 exit. One wonders what Rich Riebeling has in store for this North Nashville Metro health service.