Do campaign donations matter to community revitalization?

State Rep. Powell

During and after a town hall meeting held in South Nashville a little over a week ago, I received some email correspondence from Mike Peden about important questions he had for elected officials about the community impact of developments. The companies funding those developments, Advance Financial in particular, have political action committees that dole private campaign donations to candidates for public office. Mike gave me permission to piece together his emails here into a narrative for the sake of underscoring the influence that money has over growth that can undermine our quality of life.

According to Mike, elected officials in attendance included state representative Jason Powell, CM Fabian Bedne and CM Jason Potts. Also attending representing the Mayor's Office was Daniel Wainwright. Mike has an office on Nolensville Pike and he says that he is particularly concerned about the impact of the growth of high-interest payday lenders along the corridor. Given that the town hall meeting encouraged questions about "revitalization of Nolensville Pike", Mike had some questions for Rep. Powell in particular:

I asked him how much money he has taken from the payday loan industry and he refused to answer.  He has, of course, taken several contributions from them.

I spoke to him on the phone a couple of months ago and he told me that he has no problem with payday loan stores, and that he knows the people at Advance Financial, and they are "good people".

Nolensville Pike

Mike tells me that everyone he talks to in South Nashville has a problem with the explosion of predatory lenders. It seems to me an entirely fair question to pose to any elected official who has influence over how a community grows and develops: have they accepted funds from owners of those shops? If they have, it should be stated unequivocally so that voters can determine for themselves whether such influence over quality of life suits their interests.

Not everyone who attended the meeting was happy with Mike for raising questions about the influence of the donations of predatory lending companies on conditions along Nolensville Pike. He forwarded me emails that accused him of having a "political agenda." How is it a political agenda to ask a politician to identify the sources of his financial support which might lead him to support certain developments that neighbors have issues with? It seems common sense to me.

I remember that right after CM Erica Gilmore was elected the first time to represent the district where I live, a Germantown leader told me straight up that several people in that neighborhood donated an impressive amount of money to her campaign to leverage their historic overlay, which she eventually took to passage. People understand that this is how the system currently operates. There is no other agenda in learning about who is beholden to whom. It is a natural question we should be asking.

Jason Powell's second quarter campaign finance report shows a $1,000 donation from the Advance Financial PAC. What is the harm in asking Rep. Powell to be publicly accountable to South Nashville constituents for the wealthy special interests that could influence how he supports revitalization along Nolensville Pike?

Dean: "at some point" the neighborhoods most affected by a new ballpark will be brought into ballpark planning

I distinctly recall that in the days when a previous ballpark proposal was under consideration under a previous Mayor, community meetings were held for feedback on location and other considerations well in advance of the legislative debate beginning. Not going to happen under Karl Dean:

crucially, the mayor did say, at least during his time left in office, there would be a new park in Sulphur Dell or there'd be no new park at all, quashing once and for all any hopes of a stadium at the old Thermal Plant site in SoBro or at the foot of the Korean Veterans Bridge on the East Bank. The former was all-but a done deal in 2008 and the latter was briefly considered a frontrunner as late as last year.

Indeed, the Sounds — and even former Nashville Vols who actually played at the original Sulphur Dell — were on the record, in the past, as being unenthused about the prospect of moving to North Nashville.

Sticking with the theme that all of this is very early — the mayor wouldn't commit to any "hard timeline" on the project — Dean said at some point the area's neighborhood associations would be brought into the discussion, though he said "this is a project for the whole city."

I guess under this "strong executive" form of county government, the Mayor unlike other mayors need not be a "neighborhoods mayor". However, the peculiar hypocrisy of saying the interests of proximate neighborhoods should take a backseat to the city is obvious to those of us who watched the theatrics of the Mayor's plan to sell the State Fairgrounds to private developers.

First, I recall a gaggle of residents from South Nashville neighborhoods around the Fairgrounds supporting the Mayor's plan and arguing repeatedly that even though the Fairgrounds is public property, their communities should have more say over demolition and planning than anyone who did not live nearby. Second, when Karl Dean introduced his Fairgrounds sell-off plan, he greased the skids at the first council committee meeting considering his plan by showing a video of neighborhood association president Keith Moorman promoting Fairgrounds demolition/redevelopment to the Chamber of Commerce and the news media. South Nashville Action People, the association representing the Wedgewood Houston neighborhood, got their own exclusive public hearing before the council during which Mr. Moorman pitched the Mayor's Fairgrounds plan. No opponents were allowed to speak at this committee meeting. Instead, they had to wait until council's public hearing. Further, the Mayor's SNAP supporters even insinuated that they were entitled to their own public hearing later in the council process, as if Mr. Moorman had not been given one in the first place.

And one more note. The land on which a new Sulphur Dell would sit belongs to the state. By Hizzoner's own logic, a new Sulphur Dell ought to be "a project for the whole state" with the city brought in "at some point".

Straight from jump this Mayor has consistently shown benign neglect toward North Nashville. He merely perpetuates that neglect by not affording our neighborhoods the same influence over a major capital project (in this case a ballpark) that he grants others. My interpretation of "the point" at which Mayor Dean will bring North Nashville communities into the process is basically when, if ever, it is safe for him to.

Local news scraper/occasional blog falls silent for months

We local observers who stick out the vagaries of online publishing (especially gratis blogging) know full well that it is a rather transient endeavor, a field-in-flux where efforts disappear as quickly as they emerge. Local, popular website Nashvillest, which aggregated local news and marketed deals for consumers daily for several years, appears to have fallen silent for the last 6 months. I do not know whether the project has been shuttered and shelved, and I could not find anything online to clarify the status of Nashvillest is at this point in time.

Given the push in pro journalism to emphasize "local coverage" (the quality of which is open to debate) especially via reporters' social media and to aggregate local coverage on news media sites, I'm not surprised that Nashvillest has ground to a halt. News corporations generally co-opt everything. We will see if the break is permanent if its founders, Morgan Levy and Christy Frink, ever make public comment.

Nashvillest played a positive role at trying times. Other times, they left something to be desired. One thing I will absolutely not miss about them if they have called it quits is their failure to acknowledge the community that I have blogged about for nearly a decade:

North Nashville neighborhoods did not exist at Nashvillest

I totally get that a lot of energy (and money) flows west-to-east in this city. But if the Nashvillest authors made an effort to list South Nashville, how could they logically fail to list North Nashville on their site? When news scrapers ignore news in certain neighborhoods, they render the happenings in those communities invisible. On the flip side, websites like Nashvillest prove to be irrelevant for North Nashville when they ignore us.