NES takes down, will not reinstall one of Salemtown's federally funded lampposts after Taylor Place construction

Being a former member of the advisory committee on the Salemtown steetscape project (running roughly from 2006 to 2010), I tend to keep an eye on what has happened to the elements (neighborhood and traffic signs, lampposts, crosswalks and traffic-calming bulb-outs) over the years. I've reported burned out lampposts, consulted with neighbors on how to deal with destroyed crepe myrtles on bulb-outs and picked up decorative traffic signs run down by trucks.

The remaining lamppost at 5th & Hume

So, I noticed this week that when the construction crews building The Flats at Taylor Place started demolishing the curbside along 5th Avenue North, one of the lampposts of our streetscape project disappeared. I contacted the project manager of the new apartments who replied that NES had taken the lamppost away as part of the approved project, which will include new lighting along 5th fronting Taylor Place. I can't find any images of the new complex that include drawings of the new lighting, so I do not know what it will look like. There were no lampposts in the original sketches shown to the local community by the development team in 2012, and they made no mention at the time of altering the Salemtown streetscape during their construction.

Assuming that no other changes are made to the remaining streetscape elements, I cannot characterize the loss of one lamppost in a $500,000 block grant project as huge. Lighting was the most expensive element of all of the renovations made in the streetscape project, so the loss of any of what was approved is still a waste of some federal dollars. And "more lighting" was the most oft-expressed wish from Salemtown neighbors participating in the streetscape information sessions. I hope that NES won't just trash the lamppost but will save as a replacement in case one of the remaining lights is damaged beyond repair.

However, the bigger question looms: does the removal of a publicly-financed lamppost from a public sidewalk to make room for privately-funded lampposts (assuming Metro is not paying for them) at The Flats at Taylor Place signal that every other developer has license and sanction from NES to alter Salemtown's streetscape elements, which were approved by elected representatives of the neighborhood?

How not to use social media on behalf of your city's water utility

The City of Detroit has decided to ignore the idea that access to clean water is a human right. They have spent the last few months turning off the water of residents who cannot pay even though rates have been hiked to cover some questionable financial choices the city has made over the years. They only started turning off businesses who have not paid--which make up the lion's share of the cost of delinquency--last week. Golf courses in Detroit owe hundreds of thousands in unpaid bills, yet they get preferential treatment.

Sunday Detroit Water representatives took to social media to accuse people who are trying to get water of "stealing" it from their utility, and they looked like thugs threatening their customers on Twitter:

This is worse than bad PR. It reflects the neglect and disdain that increasingly privatized municipal services, heavily influenced by business sector wealth, have for ordinary people living in difficult times. The double standard is clear: wealthy people have need of golf courses; they have no need of people who can't afford to bankroll brokered water. They have no need of universal human rights.

Using social media to get the lights back on

Back in February 2005 I blogged a post on a cobra-head street light in front of my house burning out and the 10-day wait I was subjected to after the Metro bureaucrat at the other end of my phone request for repair drug his feet and rationalized the delay.

Jump forward to the first week of January 2012. I contacted the NES social media manager via Twitter to ask for the most effective way to report 3 sidewalk lampposts--installed several years ago as part of our federal block grant streetscape project--that had burned out. With Metro's confusing website makeover, I felt that going straight to NES was a better solution this time. That person directed me to their online report form.

One of the lampposts had been out for at least two years without any repairs. Two others stopped working late in 2012. I reported all three on January 4, giving locations and a lamppost serial number.

Despite my anticipation that going straight to NES via Twitter would get faster results than in 2005, three weeks passed with no changes to the lights. I tweeted @NESpower again. The person at the receiving end of my tweet replied, "For some reason, the work order was marked complete." They issued another work order.

Another week passed without any repairs and I direct tweeted @NESpower again. The social media specialist said that they were working with NES Customer Service to resolve the problem. Eight more days elapsed without changes, and so I followed up on Twitter again. @NESpower responded last Friday by saying that they tried to repair the lights on Thursday, but had some obstructions that kept them from completing the job.

Then on Saturday, the cherry picking truck showed up and replaced all of the the burned out lights that I originally reported on January 4. It took about 5 weeks longer than I hoped it would, but the lampposts are shining brightly once again on my street.

The lesson to be drawn is that the traditional channels for requesting lighting repairs are not any more reliable for me now than they were in 2005. In fact, replacing the lights took longer and a work order was erroneously marked as complete even though repairs were not made. And not having Metro help readily available for neighborhood infrastructure may make leveraging follow-up more difficult. My next option if nothing had been done by this weekend would have been to contact my council member.

Consequently, I would counsel anyone having trouble with NES customer service to be sure to use social media to interact with a company representative directly about follow-up.

Revolving sticker shock: unforecasted costs of Music City Center keep rising

I agree [the risk to other Metro services is] the downside of [building a new convention center]. But it's not the thing you go out there and tell people.

--Music City Center chair Ron Samuels in 2009

Despite our red-flag-waving common sense that projected costs for capital projects have a tendency to be low-balled for the sake of selling those projects to a reluctant audience, those of us who questioned Mayor Karl Dean's plan to embark on the largest capital project in Nashville history were scolded for our "negativism". I'm wondering whether Ron Samuels thinks now that it is okay to talk about skyrocketing expenses:

The cost to run the Music City Center in its first fiscal year of operation will be about $4 million more than previously projected, according to a budget approved by Convention Center Authority members on Thursday.

The increase is linked to the expected doubling of the Music City Center’s projected utility bill, which is estimated to total $5.3 million from July 2013 to June 2014. The authority had been working under the assumption that it would pay about $2.5 million in utilities in that one-year period, based on a demand and feasibility study of the Music City Center project generated by hospitality consulting firm HVS in 2010 ....

The variance exists because the HVS study was conducted around a building that had not yet been built, said Nashville Convention Center Executive Director Charles Starks, while the more recent number includes newer estimates from Nashville Electric Service and District Electric Service using more accurate information about the 1.2 million-square-foot building.

Remarkable that unflinching MCC spokesperson Holly McCall was not trotted out again to point fingers at Metro Council (and the constituents whom they represent) for the latest bad news. The traction to that rationalization must be missing.

The revenues to meet these obligations have to come from somewhere, and I doubt the bigshots in the tourism industry are going to take up a collection among themselves to bridge the gap between fairy tale and balance sheet. Besides, they have future election campaigns to finance.

Nashville broke ground on this big box and we bought it. And those of us who were realistic and didn't lose ourselves in the wet dreams of Music City Center boosters were right. Now we can only hope and pray that their fantasies will not continue to endanger the General Fund paying for most of what the people who actually live here enjoy.

Was it really a "real controversy"? I'm still waiting on a "real controversy"

Not sure why Phil Williams mentioned me along with two leaders from the Republican and Democratic camps during the Twitter chat about Bill Haslam's crackdown on Occupy Nashville. The Governor bungled the overnight occupation of Legislative Plaza, and he turned a small upstart demonstration with practically no strategic accomplishments, bearing an uncertain future into an ire-raising constitutional fight for civil rights. Supporting Occupy Nashville's right to stage on public property was a no-brainer.

While I applaud former TNGOP spinmeister Bill Hobbs for taking a strong stand in support of Occupy Nashville, this question was bound to divide Republicans, many of whom have not lost all their senses about the people's right to protest. Sure, some token party apparatchiks spoke in favor of the curfew, but there is always room for both craziness and posturing in the public discourse.

No Tennessee Democrat is going to support the curfew with a Republican Governor fumbling the ball. Their electoral chances increase the more Bill Haslam screws up. This is not to suggest that no Dems support the curfew on principle, but so many Democratic officials are financed by the big shots that Occupy Wall Street is taking on. So, supporting Occupy Anything cannot be easy for those plugged into the party system. Governor Haslam did the Democrats a favor last week by giving them an easy choice. If Phil Bredesen had done this we would hear a lot less from Democratic Party supporters, who seem more attuned to social issue controversies, rarely raising a peep to questions of wealth, poverty, and economic justice.

However, I can't fathom why I'm mentioned. I have little or no connection to the parties. The last time I volunteered to work to elect Democrats was 1988. The last time I considered a Republican worthy of my vote was in high school, when I was too young to cast a ballot (the indiscretion of youth). I consider myself an independent with a profound distrust in the parties, and thus in the ballot (even though I do vote in nearly every election). Maybe Phil Williams considers me the extreme liberal in this group and the most predictable one to support Occupy and bash Bill Haslam. That would be a rather uneasy, fleeting Kumbaya with TNGOP and TNDEM.

There was no real controversy. It was an overwhelming majority against Bill Haslam. He was bound to back down. Of course, now that the Haslam Administration has backed down, there still is no controversy, which for me is part of the problem.

I admit that I be would wrong to say that Bill Haslam was the sole catalyst of the dust-up over access to Legislative Plaza and the consequent ascendance of Occupy Nashville. In fairness to ON, their courage to face arrest and jail, their tenacity to return night-after-uncertain-night to occupation, and their unimpeachable commitment to social change also contributed to their win over the State of Tennessee.

But I do think the strategic choices they make fit the efforts of the party wonks and of the mainstream journalists to frame their protest strictly in terms of electoral politics while leaving economic questions out of the equation. A WPLN story yesterday reported that ON leaders are going to focus more on their group's identity and the perceptions created in the media. They wrote a nonconfrontational letter to the Governor asking for collaboration with his team on the occupation. After hearing that Vanderbilt College Republicans were going to come out to protest their protest, ON leaders baked literal cookies and put out the proverbial welcome mat. This afternoon Occupy Nashville will march to Nashville Electric Service of all places.

I'm confused as to how any of these actions support ON's stated goals to challenge corporate personhood and the political influence of corporations. The Nashville Chapter says that it exists to support the Occupy Wall Street movement, and yet it chooses different, narrowly political targets than those on Wall Street. OWS NYC has sent several waves of protesters to the headquarters of Goldman Sachs. OWS Oakland closed down the Port of Oakland for part of a day. Yet, Nashville leaders are marching on NES and patronizing Vandy frat boys with cookies.

In contrast, the law student arrested during OWS NYC in front of a bank in the video below personifies a core organizing principle of Occupy Wall Street in his impassioned and personal exclamations about foreclosure:





Tomorrow has been declared a national day of protest against the large banks called Bank Transfer Day. It will be the culmination of a month that has seen 650,000 people transfer their funds to credit unions and local banks in what could be one of the largest mass acts of divestiture in US history. And yet, what has Occupy Nashville chosen to do today? March on NES, which is essentially an arm of government (Power Board members are selected by Mayor Karl Dean and approved by the Metro Council).

The problem with protesting government is that big business owns government. And the political parties are the servants not of people but of the corporations who fund them. Focusing on government is like focusing on the symptoms rather than on the illness itself. That said, the NES protest does fit the conventional slots for partisan politics in Tennessee even as OWS claims to be an unconventional protest. As such it detracts from this weekend's focus on banks. In my opinion, Occupy Nashville should try to be less of a podium and spotlight for Tennessee Republicans and Democrats to frame their campaign messages and more of an alternative protest along the lines of OWS protests.


UPDATE: President of Tennessee Young Democrats fawns on Occupy Nashville. My guess is that he hopes to flip the protest into votes for well-heeled Dems come election time.


UPDATE: The Occupy Nashville Facebook page posted a video of a visit to their camp from the NES CEO earlier today, where occupiers try to make clear their reasons for marching on NES and he tries to make clear his motives for misusing funds. Note one of the commenters replying to the video pointed out that his salary still puts him in the 99% that Occupy Nashville wants to advocate against the 1%. Interesting quandary.

And AT&T is regulated now?

R. Neal laughs at the TNGOP-backed AT&T bill designed to allow them to be even more inept than they already are. Why should regulations stand in the way of horrible telephone service?

Bad timing for this AT&T customer.  I just got off the third or fourth service maintenance call in the last few months due to malfunctions with our phone line, which they always warn us will cost about $90.00 if the problem is actually in our home (it never is). However, if we sign up for their maintenance plan, we won't have to pay the $90.00 in so many words (we probably would end up paying it over time anyway if we signed up for their service plan).

But objectively, why should AT&T be allowed to raise prices for directory assistance "in order to be competitive"? I thought the whole idea of being competitive was to lower prices. 1-800-Goog-411 offers free directory assistance. How is raising prices staying competitive with the competition? It sounds more like taking advantage of the customers who do not know about free directory assistance before the ignorance window closes on AT&T.

TVA employees go on beer runs and all I got was a $20 extra payment on my last electric bill

If the Tennessee Valley Authority can afford to use their business-related credit cards to purchase alcohol, TVs, and software, how come they can't afford to supply our house with electricity without charging us a "TVA fuel cost adjustment" each month?

SC Electric Company Leaches Toxins into Environment with Fly Ash Road

South Carolina's Santee Cooper Utility Company used 425 tons of coal ash on an unpaved road leading to the leaching of carcinogenic arsenic and selenium at rates high above EPA standards. What are the chances TVA has done likewise here in Tennessee?

TVA Just Became Even More Republican

According to Kentucky.com, the former chair of Republican National Committee was just voted the current chair of the Tennessee Valley Authority. Early indications are that it puts us farther up the creek:

Director Dennis Bottorff of Nashville urged the board to delay the vote, saying he worried that [Mike] Duncan would be a partisan "lightning rod" with a Democratic administration in Washington, D.C.

Duncan, who lives outside the TVA region, said "I am more than a partisan animal" and said he looks forward to leading the nation's largest public utility.

Now the megautility is not only a secretive and destructive megautility, it is a thoroughly Republican secretive and destructive megautility at odds with reform and change. Sounds like we're going to have the energy industry's equivalent of a perfect storm coming down on our heads with Senators Lamar Alexander, Bob Corker, and Mitch McConnell throwing the lightning bolts on behalf of their GOP buddy.


UPDATE: How Mike Duncan lost the RNC Chair after being appointed 2 years earlier by George W. Bush.

McClatchy reveals that Mike Duncan was a symbol of GOP status quo:

There was a time when GOP operatives called Republican National Committee Chairman Mike Duncan "Mr. Inside" and meant it as a compliment.

After all, the Kentucky native's reputation as a behind-the-scenes workhorse with deep ties to the GOP's kingmakers helped him rise to the party's top leadership ranks. Now, with the party in disarray after weathering two cycles of bruising election-year losses, Duncan finds himself struggling to keep his position ....

"If you were a ship trying to see the Republican message you couldn't see it in the fog," said Florida GOP chairman Jim Greer, who's also considering running for the national post. "Duncan has served the party as a manager with great distinction. But there is a difference between an effective manager and an effective leader. We need a leader."

Duncan is in an awkward position as his party's leaders seek to further distance themselves from President George W. Bush's policies on the economy and the Iraq war and the surging national debt ....

Yet it's those very connections to the old Republican guard that have made Duncan a target. Critics say Duncan represents the GOP status quo at a time when the base is demanding change.

Oh, man; exactly what faulty-ash-storage TVA needs, a guardian of the status quo with deep connections to the anti-regulation Bush wing of the GOP.


UPDATE: The Southern Alliance for Clean Energy is not happy about the Duncan win:

“The selection of former RNC Chair Mike Duncan is an overly partisan and tone deaf move. It shows a real lack of understanding of the changing political and policy dynamics at TVA and in the nation. While I have nothing personally against Mr. Duncan, this move sends all wrong signals at the wrong time,” said Dr. Stephen A. Smith, executive director at the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.

“TVA faces serious challenges on multiple fronts, over $500-$800 million to clean up the massive Kingston spill, aging infrastructure, and a serious economic slow down all happening with a new Congress and administration. It is not the time for partisanship in leadership at TVA.”

TVA Fuels Image of Shadow Government with Secretive Board Meetings

No surprise to see TVA's Republican-leaning, corporately-structured board has the support of Bob Corker and Jim Cooper and cloaks their decision-making meetings (including 4 since the Kingston spill) from public view:

Board members have been meeting privately in committees, and on conference calls and closed sessions over the past month and a half — all without the public knowing. The Tennessean has learned of four meetings since Dec. 22 that the TVA describes as “briefings,” in which board members were present in Knoxville or on conference calls with management. The same type of unannounced, private meetings occurred before the spill, too.

The sessions call into question whether the board that oversees the electricity provider serving Tennessee and parts of six other states is pushing the boundaries, or even possibly violating, the federal Sunshine law. The law requires members to conduct meetings in public.

UPDATE: KnoxNews's Scott Barker laid out a proper antidote for TVA's closeted hush-hush in the weekend Wall Street Journal:

A few reasonable reforms could create incentives within the government to provide better oversight of TVA. If Congress paid for nonpower operations, most of which are performed elsewhere by federal agencies anyway, it would have a compelling reason to keep an eye on the utility. Putting TVA under the supervision of the Energy Department -- which already runs a national laboratory and a nuclear weapons plant in Oak Ridge, Tenn. -- would make TVA answerable to the executive branch. The key is to put an easily identifiable policy maker in the hot seat to hold accountable if another spill occurs.

UPDATE: Last week R. Neal reported that TVA is also shielding area well water from independent tests for toxins.

UPDATE: Today R. Neal points out that the board spends $1,000,000 to fund their secret meetings. I wonder if those are just utility rate-payer funds or also public revenues?

Sovereign Immunity = Shadow Government

27 families in the neighborhoods around TVA's Kingston Plant move to exact from TVA and the ratepayers what has been taken from them in the Dec. 22 ash spill.

TVA Don't Need Your Stinking Mandates

Part of the problem of being a quasi-government, quasi-private organization with U.S. Senators watching their back without much public oversight is that TVA can make up its own ad hoc rules for dealing with a coal ash disaster.

And get this: the local Roane County emergency management official--who upbraided the public and told us to believe him because he believed the TVA--is now saying that TVA actually obstructed recovery efforts because of their lack of emergency planning. One Swan Pond resident has already underscored holes in Roane County's own disaster protocols.

Metro Council TVA resolution will be one for Corker to scoff at

Six Metro Council members will introduce a memorializing resolution next week asking the Tennessee Valley Authority not to raise Davidson County ratepayers' electric rates to fund the Kingston coal ash spill clean-up.

As if a snowball stood a chance in hell.

Accounting for Future Sludge Clean-up Costs Levied on Consumers

On our latest Nashville Electric Service bill a note was added that reads:

THE TVA FUEL COST ADJUSTMENT THIS MONTH HAS INCREASED YOUR BILL BY $30.87.

Someone either outside or inside of Metro Government or NES should make sure that we get the same kind of messages when the costs of the Kingston fly ash spill clean-up come due:

THE COST OF TVA'S ASH POND FAILURE HAS INCREASED YOUR BILL BY $130.87.

State of Separation

All of the sudden, the State of Tennessee is reacting all regulatory toward TVA and simulateously appearing like it is distancing itself from culpability for past failures to lean on the mega-utility to clean up its act. Even the Governor is swearing that Tennessee taxpayers will not be burdened by the cost of clean-up. Bredesen may be technically correct but he is also being disingenuous since the Tennessee taxpayers who also pay TVA for electricity will be burdened with the cost of clean-up.

The Really Scary Part

TVA's undone Kingston coal ash sequestration system was not even the largest in the country according to a McClatchy report from further south:

Georgia Power plants ranked high nationally for the amount of coal combustion waste released to surface impoundments, according to information from the 2006 Toxic Release Inventory compiled by the Institute for Southern Studies. The TVA Plant Kingston that recently spilled its coal ash pond is included for context.

Plant Scherer: 4th most in U.S. at 4.1 million pounds.

Plant Wansley: 9th most in U.S. at 2.7 million pounds.

Plant Branch: 12th in U.S. at 2.4 million pounds.

(TVA Plant Kingston: 23rd in U.S. at 1.7 million pounds)

Plant Bowen: 25th in U.S. at 1.7 million pounds

Tennessee Rate Payers Are Corker-Screwed

Tennessee Republican Senator Bob Corker says that TVA and not the federal government must pay for the December 22 coal ash spill, which means that they will pass on the costs to rate payers like those of us who consume electricity here in Nashville.  There seems to be little disputing the fact that both the federal and state governments failed to regulate TVA properly or the argument that they should share some of the accountability for the disaster.  So, why shouldn't both the federal and the state governments help pay for TVA's failures? Why is Bob Corker so invested in making his utility-paying constituents foot the bill for the clean-up?

UPDATE:  Times Free Press has the math on the costs to us rate payers:

Every $100 million of extra expenses for TVA will cost electric ratepayers an extra 1 percent in higher power bills. In the past year, TVA electric rates already have jumped by more than 25 percent — even after a 6 percent fuel cost reduction last week — primarily because of higher coal and natural gas prices.

Can rate payers join the class action suit against TVA?

Think you pay too much for utilities already? Get ready to pay more, and TVA is guaranteeing you will pay more for their Kingston mess:

The tab for a toxin-laden ash flood at a coal-fired power plant in Tennessee could reach hundreds of millions of dollars, and ratepayers for the nation's largest public utility will probably be stuck with the bill.

The total cost of cleaning up last month's accident isn't yet clear, but the bill will be staggering. Extra workers, overtime, heavy machinery, housing and supplies for families chased from their homes and lawsuits are among the costs that are piling up.

And with few other places for the Tennessee Valley Authority to turn to cover the costs, the utility's 9 million customers in Tennessee and six surrounding states will bear the brunt in higher electricity rate hikes in the future, TVA Chairman Bill Sansom told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

Don't even think about demanding anything else. They have a CEO to pay.

And just remember this next June when Metro budget discussions roll around and we start hearing about the necessity to raise revenues to pay for other utilities; like Metro Water's stormwater run-off infrastructure. Once TVA is through forcing us to pay for their mistakes (Nashville "imports" electricity from TVA), where are we going to locate and how will we muster the will to take care of our other aging utilities? TVA's lack of diligence is going to trickle down and probably crush lots of worthwhile and pressing initiatives that we might have been willing to brook. Thanks again, TVA, for nothing.


UPDATE: Tennessean picks up the story.

Alexander Received $51,500 from Electric Utilities in 2007-2008

Facing South shows the influence that the electric utilities special interests have through dollars donated to members of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, which is holding hearings into the Christmas TVA ash spill beginning tomorrow. While Lamar Alexander is not in the upper echelon of recipients, $51,500 is remarkably close to what the average Republican on the committee receives from big utilities.  Plus, Alexander's take is also sweetened by several thousand more in campaign financing from TVA's current individual board members over the years.

Get Ready To Pay Even Higher Electric Bills

Developers of a planned subdivision in Roane County are suing TVA because their properties got ashed. They are welcoming other property owners to join them in the suit.

Nashvillians will no doubt be paying higher utility prices because NES "imports" TVA power, and thus, their liabilities.