In an unusual move, bill before council would send $100,000 to the Neighborhoods Resource Center

News reports last summer said that council member Scott Davis is a board member of Nashville's Neighborhoods Resource Center. CM Davis has introduced a resolution to take $100,000 from "the Undesignated Fund Balance of the General Fund of the General Services District" in order to fund a grant that would pay for some of the NRC's programs. The resolution has been introduced in council committee twice, and on both occasions deferred due to CM Davis' absence from the meetings. CM Davis deferred the bill in council a couple of weeks ago until February "to get information to council and to work a few things out."

This is not the first time the NRC stood to get contributions from Metro government. Back in the 2006-07 session, Metro Council approved approximately $100,000 for NRC from their "Discretionary Infrastructure Funds" pool which was used mostly for private non-profits organizations instead of public infrastructure. To be specific, the council had voted themselves $1.95 million in these "infrastructure funds" during the summer of 2006, but 80% of the money approved to be spent before the end of the fiscal year was privatized for organizations like NRC. Labeling them "infrastructure funds" was a monumental act of deception on the part of the Metro Council.

What makes CM Davis's resolution different is not the money to be privatized for NRC. What makes this proposal different is that it proposes to draw money from a fund that is not generally spent on anything but public infrastructure as far as I can tell. Here are the Metro departments that where these funds have gone in the past:

• Dept. of Health
• District Attorney
• General Services
• Farmers’ Market
• Codes Administration
• Office of Trustee
• Metropolitan Transit Authority
• Fire Dept.
• Metro Action Commission
• Public Works

In 2009, a $125,000 contribution was made from the undesignated fund balance to the Belmont Presidential Debate. Otherwise, the lion's share of these appropriations seem to pay for public infrastructure rather than for subsidizing private organizations.

I have tended to feel concern about NRC's collaborative relationship with Metro government over the years, and I worry that tying them to more public funding will blunt any critical role they might play when occasions call for dissent, not collaboration. I am also worried that $100,000 to NRC might be that much less money for authentic and legitimate infrastructure projects that need it. Finally, continuing to treat NRC as a private partner and extension of Metro government softens the Mayor's responsibility to fund a robust and responsive Office of Neighborhoods, and hence be accountable to constituents. As a private agency, NRC is ultimately only responsible to its board rather than to voters. In general, giving money to autonomous, unelected non-profits also gives elected officials separation and deniability if funds are not truly used for "the general welfare."

CM Davis owes taxpayers a clear explanation on why NRC is a more worthy recipient of these funds than Metro departments who have more direct influence neighborhood quality of life. It is not that I don't support NRC; I have yet to be convinced that this is a wise practice for fundraising and funding general services.


UPDATE: in December 2014, NRC sent out email blasts urging supporters to lobby for passage of the resolution. Here content from one such email:

CALL TO ACTION
On Tuesday night, Metro Council will vote on Resolution RS2014-1316. This resolution will provide the Neighborhoods Resource Center with partial funding, in the amount of $100,000.
We ask that you contact Metro Council Members immediately and encourage them to vote for this resolution.
As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, we are within our rights to send this email requesting your support. We have provided a sample email and background information below.
We hope that we can count on your support and your action on this important resolution.

Jim Hawk, Executive Director
Mark Wright, Board President

Sample Email to Metro Council
Dear Metro Council Members,
I am writing in support of Resolution RS2014-1316. The proposed legislation will provide the Neighborhoods Resource Center with critical emergency funds that will, in turn, support neighborhoods across Metropolitan Nashville and Davidson County.
I am a member of __________________ neighborhood and I have personally worked with the Neighborhoods Resource Center. I know that they have helped our neighborhood succeed and have helped us work more effectively with Metro government.
Sincerely,

Background Regarding this Resolution
July 2014

Over 75 neighborhood leaders and other key allies gathered for a series of meetings to discuss the financial crisis and offer recommendations. The leaders agreed that NRC was vital to the success of Nashville's neighborhoods. Dissolution was not an option.

Neighborhood leaders recommended diversifying NRC's revenue streams, which specifically included making an emergency request to Metro Council. Both neighborhood leaders and several Metro Council members wondered why this hadn't been done even before the financial crisis. Council Member Scott Davis was asked if he would champion the cause before Metro Council.

August 2014

A new Board of Directors and Executive Director were chosen.

In a two-week period, $10,200 was raised to provide for the mortgage and utilities for six months.

All staff were laid off.

The Board of Directors and volunteer staff began working on a funding plan that involved revenue streams from corporate gifts and sponsorships, foundations and grants, individual/household memberships, fundraising and events, and support from Metro Council.

October 2014

NRC began launching its new Individual/Household Membership Program, submitted grant proposals and started work on a 2015 Corporate Gift and Sponsorship Program.

November 2014

The Neighborhoods Resource Center held a series of open public meetings to discuss progress and plans to diversify funding. Leaders were again asked if NRC should move forward on a funding request to Metro Council (Unanimous Agreement to move forward).
After obtaining support from the Mayor's Office, Council Member Scott Davis moved forward and submitted his proposal to the Finance & Budget Committee.

December 2014

Resolution RS2014-1316 is submitted to Metro Council for action on Tuesday, December 16th.

To date, supporters of the Neighborhoods Resource Center have secured over $55,000 in funding. NRC is projected to raise an additional $77,000 (from sources other than Metro Council) by the end of our fiscal year in June.
PLEASE CONTACT METRO COUNCIL TODAY

Worth underscoring are the facts that unanimous agreement was expressed at public meetings for lobbying Metro Council for subsidies to keep NRC going and that they required support from Karl Dean before moving forward. CM Scott Davis withdrew the funding resolution at the last council meeting. Curiously, the NRC board had requested the withdrawal. I have seen no follow-up correspondence from NRC explaining the course change.

Racism and the "stage-managed narrative" in transit and ballpark plans

Last year I gave Metro Councilmember Scott Davis a pass on his view that a new east-west bus rapid transit line would help "low-income residents" in his district even as it won't help the same classes in North Nashville. Based on the opinions of poli sci professor, Sekou Franklin, maybe I should not have been so quick to concede CM Davis's boosterific points for "the Amp".

Dr. Franklin's recent column is a scathing reflection on the transit injustice wrought by MTA and Karl Dean's administration and the minions supporting "the Amp":

...Amp advocates, backed by the mayor’s office and Metro Transit Authority officials, selectively picked winners and losers for the project. They relied on flawed data, steered federal civil rights officers away from studying North Nashville bus routes and backed zoning changes to boost the appearance of higher ridership in the West End corridor, which stands to benefit the most from the Amp.

The pro-Amp group’s East Nashville angle also has been an insincere attempt to inoculate itself from racial and civil rights scrutiny. Pro-Amp advocates claim that Amp terminals east of the river will help working-class blacks, when in reality, they are located in a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood. The project could actually accelerate the displacement of blacks who still remain in the Main Street-Five Points area.

The Amp debate also has exposed how Nashville’s leading officials exploit the politics of race while lacking any real commitment to systemic racial inequities. Similar to the debate about the Sulphur Dell ballpark, Amp supporters have brought attention to distressed communities and African-Americans, but only to bolster a stage-managed narrative of Chamber of Commerce boosterism — a narrative that is not intended to help African-Americans or distressed communities, but meant to convince urban pioneers that Nashville is the premier Southeast destination.

The irony is that the so-called distressed neighborhoods for both projects (Germantown for Sulphur Dell and Main Street-Five Points for the Amp) are places where working-class African-Americans are being pushed out in record numbers.

In both cases (a new ballpark and the east-west connector) development for the business sector has taken priority over residential interests and social justice. Metro Nashville does not seem committed to balanced, smart and sustainable growth, but seems more bound to a malignant growth that devours quality of life and historic communities. The scales are tipped toward money and power. If you don't have much like the predominantly white Courthouse class does, then you are only in the way.

The truly sad part for me personally, is that there does not seem to be a critical mass of people organized at the grassroots who care enough to speak up for equity in development and in mass transit. The opponents who do speak out are ignored, pigeonholed and marginalized, even by North Nashville council members who are supposed to represent them.

At least he acknowledged that AMP bus rapid transit is leaving North Nashville behind

North Nashville's working class won't be thrown any BRT bones, while East Nashville workers will enjoy some of the transit crumbs from Amp:

“Yes, people in parts of North Nashville are being left out of it,” [East Nashville CM Scott Davis] told The City Paper the following day. “I’m not arguing that. But we have to remember that it’s also helping low-income residents in my neighborhood that are along the [route]....”

“We forget those low-income people along that route have been left out of the conversation,” he said. “They work over there off of West End. And they don’t have some of the glamorous jobs, you know? A lot of them are in the maintenance part, or they’re working in the boiler room at Vanderbilt.”

If they’re driving to work, Davis said, many of those people struggle to pay the cost of parking. For many who use the current bus system — which must work its way through car traffic that The Amp, with its dedicated lanes, will avoid — getting off the job and making it to a day care, for instance, to pick up a child before extra charges start to kick in is a challenge.

“Not everyone low-income and in trouble hates The Amp, it’s just that they can’t make it to a 3 o’clock meeting or a 4 o’clock meeting to let people know,” Davis said.

I will not dispute the point that there are folks among East Nashville's working poor who will benefit from the exclusively east-west corridor. And I don't blame a CM for voting in what he perceives to be his constituents' interest. If only North Nashville council members had attempted to assert North Nashville's best interest instead of sitting quietly by when the Amp vote came before Metro Council.

What I do find fault with is perpetuating the perception that this corridor maximizes benefits for the masses of Nashville's workers or at least strikes a balance between the transportation needs of the working class and the profit motives of businesses to the west. Amp will subsidize the tourist industry with cheap transit for visitors and it is going to provide some attractive infrastructure improvements for West Nashville neighborhoods that do not need them as much other others.

I also find it curious that none of the low-income residents whom CM Davis claims it would help were interviewed for this news story. Regardless of the anecdotes, I would like to see hard numbers on how many of the working poor are going to benefit from this project vs. how many might be helped if it went farther north. Will more Vanderbilt undergrads take Amp to party Downtown and around East Nashville's Five Points than Vanderbilt workers ride it to work in boiler rooms?

Part of the problem here is that we are constantly promised that the more we spend on the tourism industry, the more will flow down to average Nashvillians in the form of infrastructure. With Amp, infrastructure suited more to the hotels, restaurants and venues that serve tourists seem to be replacing that promised to all our communities.

Twitter account of tonight's Cleveland Park community meeting on building a garbage transfer station

I'm sure that Jamie Hollin is going to follow up with a thorough, reflective and engaging report of the proceedings of tonight's community meeting on a proposed solid waste transfer facility for Cleveland Park at his blog, but here is a quick-and-dirty summary based on his blow-by-blow Twitter stream with a couple of observations tweeted by Matt Pulle, who was also at the meeting:

• It was the largest turnout for a Cleveland Park Neighborhood Association meeting in memory.
• A meeting that should have been 30 minutes dragged on for 2 hours.
• The meeting dragged on for 2 hours because the community was preached at by meeting leaders.
• Among other things, meeting leaders preached to neighborhood leaders on how to be engaged in the community.
• Meeting attendees were admonished to keep their questions to 1 minute.
• 30 minutes into the meeting, the audience was still not told what the purpose of the meeting was.
• People were ready to vote on the neighborhood garbage station an hour into the meeting.
• Garbage station owners said they are "small operation" even though they operate in 30 states.
• Planned building will be 100,000 square feet which equates to tons of garbage trucked through Cleveland Park.
• Scare tactics were used (that is, threats of what could go in place of a garbage station).
• Pro-garbage-station speaker promised there would not be garbage odor problems in Cleveland Park.
• Pro-garbage-station speaker compared storing tons of garbage in Cleveland Park to a household storing a rubbish bin under the sink.
• No one in the audience showed public support for the project when vote was taken.
• According to Matt: 99% attending were against a trash station in Cleveland Park.
• CM Scott Davis says he will file the bill in support of a neighborhood garbage transfer station tomorrow (Friday), which puts in on track for a June 19 council meeting.
• CM Davis seemed elusive, but may be part of the 1% supporting a trash station in Cleveland Park.

I would say never underestimate the power of a council member to leverage "councilmanic courtesy" to pass legislation over the protests of a majority of constituents. Metro Council is tight like that. This sounds like a potential mess for Cleveland Park.

Maybe if they act hard enough like a new facility is a done deal, then people will just assume it is

They do not have a facility yet, the community may not support one, and there remain questions over whether Nashville even needs another one, but they held a job fair earlier today in East Nashville:

UPDATE: This does not sound good for anyone. According to Jamie Hollin:

1000 Apex St. is the former site of US Lumber and is zoned industrial. Many of you may remember the site and immediate surrounding area being under water in May 2010. The area’s detailed neighborhood design plan marked the area as proposed green space. In order to turn the site into a waste transfer station it will require the passage of a resolution by the Metro Council, then it will require the approval of the Board of Zoning Appeals for a special exception.

So, is Waste Connections setting this up to be a jobs over planning/green space issue by pushing a job fair prematurely?

Solid waste transfer facility in Cleveland Park

From the Cleveland Park Neighborhood Association to Cleveland Park residents via the Nashville Neighborhoods elist:

Waste Connections, a solid waste services company, is interested in purchasing the abandoned industrial facility on Apex St. between Cleveland Park and Ellington Parkway. They intend to renovate the building and convert it into a waste transfer facility. Councilman Scott Davis notified both Cleveland Park and Greenwood neighborhood associations because of their close proximity to the facility. Residents of Greenwood and Cleveland Park have met with the leadership of Waste Connections to get information and ask questions about the company's plans. Last Thursday, CPNA invited representatives from Waste Connections to be the main agenda item at our general meeting. CPNA’s leadership has been gathering as much information as possible
about the proposed site and the company, which included traveling to one of the company’s other transfer facilities in Memphis.

We would like to share this information with you at this link. We will continue the conversation at our next general meeting June 14th, location to be announced later (likely the East Precinct). All residents of D5 are welcome.

Council member tells former council member she can join community meetings just like every other constituent

Just when you think that the shameless shenanigans of former East Nashville CM Pam Murray are finally behind you, here comes news of her latest foolishness. She has a special place in her heart for NEON; hence, CM Davis should have a special place on his calendar for her:

________________________________
From: PAMELA.MURRAY [rest of email addy removed]
Sent: Friday, February 17, 2012 5:13 PM
To: Davis, Scott (Council Member)
Subject: Request A Meeting

Councilman Davis,

As newly elected President of NEON, I am requesting a meeting with you regarding the status of NEON, ArtsWorks!, and info relating to programming in our community that NEON will be sponsoring. Thanks, Pam

CM Davis handled her highness's request deftly:

From: "Scott Davis (Council Member)" <Scott.Davis@nashville.gov>
To: "Pam Murray (Council Member - Fwd)" [and a long list of other East Nashville leaders, also removed]
Sent: Tuesday, February 21, 2012 12:37:50 PM
Subject: RE: Request A Meeting

Hi Pam,

I would be more than happy to meet with you, however I will be inviting other neighborhood leaders to attend the meeting. I feel that Neon is an East Nashville organization.  How does Monday the 27 or Thursday March 1st  look on every ones calender.

"Everyone's calendar". Got it? No favoritism toward thorn-in-the-side former CMs.

HT: Mike Peden