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

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

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

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

Moving pictures

The Mayor's self-funded, sketchy, astroturfed

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

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

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

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

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

Hizzoner casts his lot with the state: not exactly a profile in courage

Apparently, Mayor Karl Dean could not put aside his own personal fondness for the Great Hearts charter school company in order to lead a Metro agency out of a mess the State of Tennessee engendered. A Tennessean reporter tweeted Hizzoner's response to state action in September:

Mayor Dean said in interview that loss of state funds [due to declining one application for one charter school] is [Metro school's] problem. "They created it, and they need to figure it out."

Gadzooks. For the sake of argument, let's assume that the school board made a mistake. If you were the elected head of Metro government, the person who makes all of the budget decisions for all departments and agencies, is it the wisest course of action to cut loose an entire department or agency for a misstep? The alternative expression--"Regardless of what happens, we will find a way through this together. Let's pick up the pieces"--seems the proper course for those looking for a high road even when one has the opportunity to say, "I told you so."

Consider the fact that those adversely affected by the actions of the State of Tennessee are not powerful business interests who should be able to weather the lack of state funds, but the most vulnerable segment of the population: Nashville's public school children. Was it prudent for Hizzoner to take an adversarial posture with the state against a Metro agency when the latter had not violated anyone's civil rights and had not conducted themselves in an unethical manner? Was it wise to endorse the idea that the state should be spending less money on all Nashville children because a few middle class parents, who already have charter options, did not get the plum charter school they wanted close to their predominantly white neighborhoods?

How many times has this Mayor attempted to be our local Oprah with efforts like encouraging us to lose weight or to join his book club? He can weigh in touchy-feely over our personal lives, but he cannot have some compassion over the real risk to kids of red-state action?

And let's not forget one more thing: Karl Dean's campaign claims to fight tirelessly for full funding of Nashville's schools is fundamentally compromised by his stubborn willingness to side with the state and punish Nashville's school kids over a charter school application.

But let's end the dumb assumptions and let's get one thing straight: the school board made no mistake. For once, they did something right with a charter school application. And how much worse does Hizzoner's callous indifference appear in that light?

Well, you could have his favorite PR firm coach your writers, never ask him critical questions, and declare him "Tennessean of the Year"

Tweet from Blake Farmer, who was one of two reporters covering Mayor Karl Dean's speech to a Rotary Club today observing Dean's embrace of their competition:

The Tennessean journos have shamelessly hitched themselves to Karl Dean's star, and he is returning the favor with some free advertising to influential local leaders. There is no grander sell-out of the local "4th Estate," and journos at other local media companies should be pleased that they are are not hitched to Hizzoner like those at Nashville's main newspaper, because there is a cost to the groveling coziness:

Hate mail

I give you a comment to me, copied to others from Molly McCluer--resident of Salemtown since 2010 and president of the neighborhood association for the past five months--which ended a long, parsing diatribe against an email I originally addressed to a developer (who then forwarded to her):

McCluer & Mayor on SNNA website

your chronic adversarial approach to any and every issue you can conjure up is harming Salemtown, and has led to the almost complete disintegration of [Salemtown Neighbors Neighborhood Association] by the end of 2011. You are using the community to entertain yourself at others’ significant expense; you need to stop it, and do a lot of full-time soul-searching , rather than combing old emails and trolling anyplace you can find, to trigger the arguments you crave.  You are hurting Salemtown, and you need to stop it now.

This is not the first time I have received hate mail because I blogged something someone did not agree with, but it was the first time someone has accused me of dividing an association to which I have devoted so much time, energy, and money. If I were going to destroy it why would invest so much of myself in it? If I were going to bring down Salemtown Neighbors why not impugn it, attack it publicly on a regular basis in the past 18 months? I have a blog, after all.

As one who has served in various leadership positions in SNNA for years, I can testify that there were many reasons why 2011 was a down year for the association, and the actions of one person had little to do with that. If I blogged something toxic about the organization in 2011 I do not recall it. And I do not believe I pointed any fingers on this blog for SNNA setbacks. Rushing to scapegoat another individual for association problems makes no sense to me.

However, I was not going to blog on Ms. McCluer's personal attack until I found out that I was added to the business agenda of the last neighborhood association meeting at the last minute (the agenda emailed to the membership beforehand did not have me on it). Because of a previous commitment to my daughter I could not attend the meeting, but others who were there told me that Ms. McCluer brought me up unexpectedly and commented on me in ways that made them uncomfortable.

Then I received the meeting minutes from the SNNA secretary, in which Ms. McCluer's personal issues with me became a part of the permanent record of the association:

Molly addressed the group re: Mike Byrd’s blog that had negatively referred to Mike Kenner, developer of 5th & Coffee. The blog suggested that there was deception on Mike Kenner’s part to build LEED certified homes in order to obtain a variance to move forward with the development.

• Mike Kenner [principal with Kenner McLean Development who lives in Sylvan Heights], developer of 5th & Coffee property asked to address the group. He apologized for any misunderstanding but he made it clear that he never discussed building LEED certified homes in Salemtown. He builds “green”, Energy Star homes. LEED is too costly for the Salemtown neighborhood. He prides himself on being neighborhood friendly.
• A SNNA member commented that anyone’s personal blog does not represent or speak for SNNA.

I responded in no uncertain terms to the secretary that I never claimed to speak for anyone else on the blog and that I believe that this is the first time in the organization's 8-year history (much of which I have promoted in 7 years of blogging) that a member's questions about a developer have been written negatively into the SNNA minutes, which are supposed to record association business. There were no motions on me passed or approved, in fact, members present that night tell me that they openly questioned the negative comments about me (their feedback was not recorded into the minutes).

Needless to say, I am less-than-satisfied by all of this baseless spanking by an association officer on behalf of a developer. If she were not president, this would be going down a whole different way. She would have written her hate mail and it would have ended there. Unfortunately, the personal animosity continues as SNNA business.

The kicker for me: I voted for her at last year's SNNA elections. No good deed goes unpunished.

Nashville Scene judges Belle Meade a better place than Centennial Park for kids, dogs, and families

Nashville Scene writers tend to mount the high horse when the subject of excluding certain groups of people in Belle Meade pops on to their radar. Yet, since May 17, they've said nothing about the fact that their parent company's Movies in the Park event has been removed from the gritty hydrangeas and the streetwise ducks of Centennial Park to the nerve-settling pastoral milieu of suburban Belle Meade's Percy Warner Park.

The "alternative" newsweekly's professional flack told local public radio that the rationale for the Belle Meade move is to keep "this a place where people feel comfortable bringing their kids and their dogs and their families". Reportedly, there was some gang activity at one of last year's events that included gun play (no injuries), and the intrepid newspaper blinked and it is fleeing to the exurbs with its films. Even so, the marketing director did not seem to grasp the sobering and breathtaking implications of what she was saying: predominantly white West Nashville is no longer as safe for kids, dogs, and families as 99% white Belle Meade.

Capt. Dobie woulda cleaned up Centennial Park's mean streets
because white flight was not an option

This should prick all kinds of historic issues for those of us in North Nashville. West Nashville is flooded with events and services at a level that we do not enjoy. Resources flow west and east in this city, and rarely north and south. So, if the Nashville Scene judges West Nashville unfit to hold events for kids, dogs, and families, how much more will they feel led to neglect the families in our diverse communities because of their own fears?

I don't necessarily blame Scene bloggers for promoting and not criticizing the move, because they have to think about their jobs in an uncertain journalism world. However, they've dropped a couple of perches from their moral high ground on the problems of prejudice in lordly Belle Meade. After all, country clubs in places like Belle Meade are by definition exclusionary. And where country club aristocracy was not built on institutionalized segregation, then it exists with the aid of economic inequities and hoarded resources that never even trickle down to working class and under-class folk. Criticizing the Belle Meade country club for leaving other wealthy people behind is inconsistent with stifling a critical voice against your own company retreating from every other strata of Nashvillian for Belle Meade without the aid of double standards. And starting off the new Belle Meade run with "The Help", a movie about white housewives and their black domestic workers seems at once a further twist and startlingly poetic.

Metro Parks did not respond when journos asked them about the move, which does not look good for them either. They do not seem exactly out in front of this story. What is worse, however, is the perception that they have no control over functions at their more urban public parks even in predominantly white West Nashville.

The move from white West End to the even whiter exurbs smacks of white flight. It also betrays a false sense of security that gangs are only an urban problem easily solved by a more suburbanized setting. As if youth gangs do not have cars. As if youth gangs have not been expanding in suburbia for the past 40 years. So, maybe Metro Parks hopes that the Belle Meade PD can be more effective at walling out gang activity than their own rangers and Metro Police have been securing parks. We also should not ignore the cynical possibility that this may be a strategy for the parks department to save money on security in a lean budget year.

Whatever the reason, it does not look good, and I wholeheartedly agree with those have observed on Twitter today that it may indicate tacit racism and classicism on the part of the newspaper and Metro government.

Metro Council rubber stamps another Karl Dean property tax giveaway to a big corporation

Remember this when the Mayor proposes a property tax increase on regular Nashvillians the next time his budget comes before Metro Council for approval; the next time he defends that tax increase by saying, "We have no other choice if we want to fund Metro services":

Hospital Corporation of America, the nation’s largest private health care provider, is close to landing a $3 million property tax break from Metro for building a new $200 million data center in Antioch.

The Metro Council, after no deliberation, gave preliminary approval Tuesday to hand HCA a 60 percent property tax abatement on real and personal property taxes over seven years to accommodate a new Antioch data center at The Crossings on Old Franklin Road. The incentive, which Mayor Karl Dean’s administration engineered, is set for final approval in April.

We had a choice; that is to say, the Mayor had a choice. It was the same choice he had when he raised stormwater fees to pay for improvements a few years ago. At that time he raised residential water rates at a higher rate than he did business water rates, even though the latter generate huge amounts of stormwater run-off with paved parking lots and expansive roofs. At that time a few council progressives shouted protests loud and long about favoritism and dirty dealmaking with the rich.

He's passing out tax breaks now and sending us the bill for them later. Yet, some of the same progressive council members who fought the good fight last time are sitting out this one in silence. In sum, Karl Dean and the Metro Council are choosing to subsidize wealthy business on the backs of smaller property owners instead of requiring them to pay their fair share just like you and I will be expected to when the tax hammer falls.

Tax breaks for the wealthy and influential are just another form of class warfare, and the Mayor and Metro Council are choosing up sides against the middle class. But when the budget discussions start percolating in a little while not a word will be said about Metro's preferential option for the rich.

Instead, it will be about collecting the money for our public school kids, for police protection of our neighborhoods, and for job growth in the private sector. Opponents of unbalanced tax increases will be scapegoated for opposing full funding for Metro services.

These tax breaks will be forgotten or ignored.

Shame on council progressives for not lifting a single voice to oppose. Shame on council conservatives who will likely howl loud and long against a property tax increase but did not bat an eye at the subsidies flying out the courthouse door to big business (you will be the ones who deserve all of the scorn and backlash for abandoning Metro services with any budget cuts). A pox on both of your houses.

Another year-end tribute from Tennessean reporter Michael Cass for Karl Dean

Cass ended 2010 with an homage to Karl Dean. His 2011 verse same as the first.

Last year he wrote the evocative tribute to the Mayor under the banner declaring Karl Dean "Tennessean of the Year." This year Michael Cass's retrospective on Metro politics is no less ingratiating. It places Mayor Dean at the center of the action, as vanquishing victor over any opponent, as well as the unqualified champion of several policy issues and one strictly personal one (you and me losing weight). Cass even minimizes the hits the Dean budget is set to take because of convention center land acquistion/construction overages that many have warned about.

Perhaps the most pandering and shameless homage to Karl the Conquerer is Cass's cast of the Mayor's Fairgrounds opponents as finally trampled in war despite an impressive series of populist battles won from 2010 to 2011:

[W]hen Dean didn’t lay out a specific plan for the property ... his proposal died at a Metro Council meeting that brought out thousands of people on Jan. 18 ....

While Dean lost that battle, he arguably won the war six months later, when Metro voters overwhelmingly supported his re-election bid on Aug. 4 and gave him another four years in office even as a large majority also voted for a Metro Charter amendment putting further restrictions on changes to the fairgrounds.

Cass's editorializing that Dean "lost the battle, but won the war", seems to assume that the only mission of Dean's Fairgrounds' opponents for the last half of 2010 into January 2011 was to beat Karl Dean in the August 2011 election. By any standard, let alone the journalistic standard, that assumption is a stretch. Many of us who opposed Dean's plan were clear about the victory in January. Few of us were looking for an alternative candidate to run against a wounded Mayor. So, where can Cass possibly get the idea that the Fairgrounds war was won by Dean in 2011?

In my estimation, Cass's reporting has tended to hedge against Dean opponents the longer this Mayor has pressed the Fairgrounds issue. First, he initially underestimated the turn-out of Dean's opponents at the Fairgrounds public hearing before conceding the actual high numbers that were being reported the night of the meeting.

Second after a 71%-29% landslide trouncing of the Mayor's demolition plan in August at the polls, Cass oddly reported that the Fairgrounds question divided Nashvillians while Karl Dean did not. Given the lopsided results, the Fairgrounds question was no more divisive than Karl Dean himself was. So, Cass is flat wrong about Dean winning the Fairgrounds war in August. He beat a handful of no-name candidates, one of whom was homeless (which hardly makes for a big campaign finance base to the obscene degree of Dean's). It is just as plausible to conclude that if the Fairgrounds question is the litmus test, Dean lost the battles of 2010-11 and the August war. And the community planning process that the council voted as the alternative to Dean's demolition is ongoing.

And readers should never let Cass live down that 2010 "Tennessean of the Year" homage. As much as it may have gained him friends inside the Courthouse, it should also be the context for whatever else he publishes on Hizzoner. It tarnishes his image.

The January victory of the Fairgrounds preservation group was almost a year ago. A long time ago. In my opinion, the Mayor's Office and the Dean supporters at the Tennessean are counting on the length of time passing and the shortness of public memory to bury the actual events leading to the defeat of the Mayor's demolition plans.

This history is contestable. Don't let them re-write it.

Gotto's stupid teabagger trick just barely nosed out the spoken inanities of a couple of progressives last night

There were some high-flying moments at last night's council meeting (like CM Mike Jameson quoting Christian political realist Reinhold Niebuhr during the opening prayer), but a couple of progressives' comments brought the meeting right back down to the lowest denominator. In my previous post on last night I underscored Jim Gotto's foot-in-mouth disease during discussion of honoring students for their "Don't Say Gay" protests.

But a couple of progressives did not exactly measure their words with respect to the truth before opening their mouths. First, in his speech to the council as a the shoo-in candidate for criminal court clerk, Howard Gentry said, as if it were a worthy goal:

I will run the office like a business.

If I'm not mistaken, this is the same logic that John Arriola used to run the county clerk's office and to run afoul of taxpayers. Arriola expressed an unfettered profit motive to bring money in. He marketed "gratuities" as "fees" (making people believe that they needed to pay for products and services they might not otherwise choose to pay for) and he monetized just about everything he did. He had stylish and hip new signs designed to lure more customers. He maximized and tricked out his ride to work. The profit motive runs business; the profit motive ran Arriola's tenure. In other words, Arriola was more CEO than clerk.

Shouldn't the officer of a Metro office be looking to run the office less like a business and more like an institution accountable for the public good? Gentry's comment was a clear pander to the business interests that dominate the Courthouse, but frankly the prospect is frightening.

The second inane progressive comment of the night came from Dean Teamer and outgoing CM Erik Cole, who contrasted Jim Gotto's self-reference of a Republican trying to hold a "corporate citizen" (assuming that corporations are individuals!) responsible, by trotting out this gem:

You now got a Democrat standing with developers!

Let's revisit CM Cole's recent past, shall we? He supported the Mayor's plan to build the most expensive capital project in Nashville's history, a developer's dream, the Music City Convention Center. He supported the Mayor's plan to sell off a huge tract of public Fairgrounds land to wealthy developers to make a lot of money on an office park. Even if Erik Cole ever stood against developers, those two projects alone bury any pretense of forward thinking opposition he ever expressed against untrammeled growth. But let's be clear: you do not get anywhere in the Davidson County Democratic Party without the habit of standing with developers. The most powerful and wealthiest Dems are in knee-deep with developers. For Cole to suggest otherwise is to concoct an urban myth. And it was pretty darn self-serving in what it implied about Erik Cole beyond its utterance.

I can always count on local progressives to give local conservatives a run for their money in the cringeworthy foot-in-mouth department.

Megan Barry's budget committee failed to vet Arriola's budget for the rest of the Council

I appreciate that you all do the marriage licenses.

-- At-Large CM and Budget Chair Megan Barry setting the tone
for last May's powder-puff budget hearing with John Arriola

NewsChannel5 investigative reporter Phil Williams has been effecitvely stalking and running down the continuing controversy of County Clerk John Arriola. His latest coverage is a tally of council members who are and are not willing to vote on a memorializing resolution (that is, a resolution that is a nonbinding expression of the council's wishes) requesting Arriola's resignation.

May they have a percentage of your Saturday till, too?

I have it on good authority that a certain neighborhood association used the occasion of a certain street festival held last October to try and charge a restaurant a "booth fee" to remain open during the event because the adjoining street was to be closed to traffic. Got that? Some associations that have street festivals raise money by permitting with fees organizations to come in and set up booths during the festivals to promote their products and services. But the particular association in question approached an established business located in a proper structure on the festival route and suggested that they should pay a fee to stay open and conduct their usual Saturday business.

Bad form. No class. Deserved to be laughed out of the store.

Are U.S. bankers wusses?

According to TPM:

A British politician is now calling for bonuses at bailed-out banks to be limited to £2,000, the amount typically received by low-level bank tellers.

At current exchange rates this is equal to $2,854.30 -- less than 1% of the cap that Claire McCaskill has advocated over here, and for which she's been either praised or reviled as a populist lefty.

It seems like every time someone suggests exacting a fraction of the pain common Americans experience on the bankers who got us into this mess, industry defenders scream foul and attack reformers as left-wing extremists. I'd like to test just how Anglophile some Americans are by taking the same kind of scalpel to our banks that Britain is taking to theirs. Let's see just how tough otherwise protected and pampered bankers can be.

If GOP Senators Reject Stimulus on the Front End, How Can They Stoop to Accept It on the Back End?

South Carolina Republican slams the stimulus bill as a "slush fund" then says it would be crazy for South Carolina not to accept their part of the "slush fund" (via Think Progress):

This hypocrisy is cut from exactly the same cloth as that of those who demonize government while burrowing farther into offices and government positions.

Democrats May Remove CEO Salary Caps from Stimulus Bill

That's right: Democrats. Who again won the last election on the rising tide of voter indignation at corporate excess? Democrats, that's who. And now they're acting like losers.

Further Proof That a Democratic Governor in Red-State Tennessee is Irrelevant to Progress or Change

ThinkProgress considers Phil Bredesen, friend of Big Pharmaceutical, and has no love to lose.  They also link the Nashville Post blog.

UPDATE:  Bredesen's suggestion in the WSJ that he runs with the big boys can be added to the litany of hyperrealistic Bredesen postures on power relationships.

• Bredesen brought the Oilers (now Titans) to Nashville with stadium incentives like raiding $4 million in annual Metro Water funds through 2026 insisting these kinds of deals have to be made.
• Bredesen encouraged the Oilers owner to hire a local PR firm whose partner was also a former Bredesen staffer, despite the appearance of impropriety, insisting these kinds of deals have to be made.
• Bredesen brought Nissan to Middle Tennessee in sweet deal for the automaker immune from criticism insisting that these kinds of deals have to be made.
• Bredesen opened a Tennessee trade office in China in spite of the latter's ugly human rights history, of the toxic products streaming out of that country, and of the beginning of a recession that would strap the state in the coming year, insisting that these kinds of deals have to be made.

We cannot expect a politician who embraces and teases up the terrain on which political battles are fought to also be a change agent when it comes to medical coverage and care at a national level. We would be forced to continue to watch him in bed with the wealthy from afar rather than up close.


UPDATE: Foretaste things to come in a Bredesen HHS department: pharmaceuticals allowed to choose money to strip from budgets that would pay for comparative studies of effective medical treatments in order to hold down costs. Bredesen in an Obama administration would very well save the medical lobby some shoe leather in Congress.



UPDATE: Moveon.org sent out a mass e-mail today opposing Bredesen for HHS. No love lost here, either:

We need someone who's going to support visionary progressive health care reform; someone with a track record of standing up to the insurance and pharmaceutical giants at the heart of our health care crisis; someone who is 100 percent committed to giving every single American the choice of a public health insurance plan so we're not at the mercy of the private insurance companies (just as Obama promised).

Obama is reportedly considering several governors and a few senators. Many of these folks would be great, but at least one would be a bad choice for health care reform: Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen made his fortune acquiring and running HMOs. As governor, he gutted Tennessee's public health insurance program, causing more than 320,000 people to lose their health insurance. And Bredesen let the private insurance industry pay for his multi-million dollar redecoration of the governor's mansion.

The also have a petition you can sign requesting that he position go to a progressive.


UPDATE: Ken Whitehouse describes Moveon.org's rejection of Bredesen's candidacy as "devastating blow" to Bredesen's chances.

WNPT Video In Advance of Tonight's Craftonless English Only Debate

Some problems Eric Crafton is too afraid to confront tonight at 7:00: