The Craddock candidacy post-mortem

It was a matter of time before CM Michael Craddock was going to bow out of the race for Mayor. His campaign really was like running a pump car up against a locomotive. And Craddock simply did not have any progressive chops to pull votes away from Karl Dean. He simply waged one too many culture wars over the years. I like the guy personally, but if he didn't lose my vote several years ago over the Kay Brooks/School Board fiasco or over English Only or on his latest vote against non-discrimination, there are any number of other votes documented on this blog that would have given me pause before pulling the Craddock lever.

Even the council member's attempt to play the populism card was not enough. I needed a nobler brand of populism.

11,000 Nashvillians leverage August referendum that could check Mayor's power to demolish Fairgrounds

Supporters of a measure that would require any plan to demolish the Fairgrounds to get a supermajority of council member votes (27) got the minimum number of petition signatures needed to leverage an August referendum (6,700), according to the Metro Election Commission. And then some.

Not only did Save My Fairgrounds almost double the required number of signatures by turning in 11,000, but they got 22 times the number of petition signatures that Neighbors for Progress got on their petition in support of Karl Dean's demo plans. NFP, captained by former Tennessean reporter Colby Sledge, has a lawyer and appears to be posturing toward a court challenge. But their previous claims that Nashvillians do not care that the Mayor intends to tear down and sell off public property look embarrassingly false and stupid now. And their argument that the opposition, which turned out 3,000 people for a public hearing a few months ago, comes largely from outside of Davidson County was also an utter fabrication.

So, Neighbors for Progress (and behind the South Nashville Action People) are big losers in the MEC decision.

VIDEO: this drama just happened at the Metro Election Commission

CM Jamie Hollin captured this shouting match over the District 29 candidacy of Isaac Okuri-Baah, who wanted to be listed on the ballot as Isaac Baah. CM Hollin noted it would place Baah first on the ballot. Baah and his wife accused the Election Commission of racism. Security was called but the Okuri-Baahs left before being taken out against their will.

Re-elect Karl Dean solicits journalists to join his community steering committees

An eyebrow-raiser:

Don't know how many other reporters received invitations to jump on the Mayor's campaign bandwagon, and surely the reporters are not at fault for getting solicited by Karl Dean's campaign. However, this does not allay concerns that news about Mayor Karl Dean is managed and filtered rather than reported, and it does not help the journos maintain a level of detached neutrality, if not objectivity.

Righting a past wrong and helping pay for environmental impact of growth

Two independent council members are bringing back up an initiative this Metro budget cycle that Mayor Karl Dean and his council marionettes fought the last time stormwater rates were considered:

Photo credit: EPA Smart Growth

Two Metro council members are working to help small businsses.

Emily Evans and Jason Holleman are working to restructure or remove a cap from storm water run-off fees that some businesses claim is hurting their bottom line. The fee covers the environmental concerns for disturbing nature by building.

There is currently a $400 cap for building above a certain size, which small business owners say is unfair, because it gives bigger businesses a break.

CM Evans already made an elegant case at her blog for why fair stormwater fees are good for all. Nonetheless "progressive" CMs like Megan Barry, Ronnie Steine, and Erik Cole voted against fairness and with Karl Dean on this. We will see if an election year and less than satisfactory budget conditions cause the Dean Machine to back off giving big business water big breaks and saddling the rest of us with carrying a larger portion of the weight for water treatment.

This issue proved to be somewhat of an embarrassment for Megan Barry. Will she risk that again or incline toward a greater sense of justice?

Another Salemtown storm damage photo from yesterday

Backyard on 6th Avenue North

More photos of Salemtown storm damage from overnight

When today's early morning storm blew in, winds knocked down the tree in the photos below. The tree uprooted sidewalks and landed on an elderly Salemtowner's house, also swallowing up the next door neighbors' yard. The disaster happened on 7th Avenue North.

Some of today's Salemtown storm damage

Sorry for the crappy quality of these photos. I departed from my habit of using a digital SLR for photos and used an iPad 2 camera, which is not exactly robust.

Limbs & power lines down in Morgan Park along greenway

Wind-destroyed tree on house on 4th Av N

Tennessee Chamber of Commerce: Wash, Rinse, Repeat

So, Tennessee's Republican Governor Bill Haslam has now quite predictably signed the Republican bill that quite predictably kills Metro Nashville's ordinance that would require all of its contractors to include sexual orientation and gender identity in non-discrimination policies. With the ballyhooed "twitter campaign" supplicating the Governor for a veto and thanking corporations for their support, things were setting up as another Democratic Party fight with the GOP with businesses, company-by-company, walking away from responsibility for the mess.

Ballpark brass tacks: Chatter Class blogger notes who will absorb financial blows of construction

The news media is not bothering to examine Mayor Karl Dean's line item for a new Downtown ballpark in his capital budget, despite the facts that:

1. the Nashville City Paper christened a "grassroots" movement behind a new ballpark
2. the Nashville Civic Design Center, a regular partner with Metro in planning capital projects, hosted a forum for stadium design "proposals"



Worth some schools, parks, & libraries?

3. the Mayor's Office has issued a Request for Proposals for a new stadium site that includes studies that constitute the planning process

For now only bloggers are honing in on the $55 million proposal in the Mayor's 2011-12 capital budget, given that the process is clearly moving along this year unlike it has in others. Nashville Chatter Class blogger Richard Lawson lays out the possibilities for how the bills would get paid (note the risk to schools, parks, or libraries):

Sorry, but I just can't play nice with Tennessee Democrats

The state Democratic Party didn't ask me, but if I were to have designed the poster for their "values summit" this weekend in Jackson, TN, I would have tweaked it:

Yeah, I know. I used to help these boys and girls out. Just got to be too much of an echo chamber where values are "framed" in limited ways. For all of their accommodations to the red state, they aren't exactly snowballing toward success.

Thanks for helping me reach this milestone

Quite a bit of web traffic over the past few years for a small, nondescript hyper-local blog in Nashville, TN:

$55 MIL ballpark included in Mayor Karl Dean's 2011-12 capital budget

The relevant excerpt from the 135-page budget before Metro Council:

No community plans. No neighborhood hearings. No assurances that Nashville can afford it.

Metro Council has until June 7 to amend the capital budget. If you have concerns I encourage you to contact your council members before then.


UPDATE: Is the City Paper's Metro beat reporter, Joey Garrison, who has latched on to the possibility of a new ballpark voraciously and breathlessly in the past couple of years, downplaying the 2011-12 stadium line item via Twitter? Nothing to see here, move along, eh?

Improbable odds and double standards

• Save My Fairgrounds, the preservationist group, was required to turn in almost 16,000 petition signatures from registered Davidson County voters to leverage a referendum on a charter provision that would simply increase approval for any demolition by half-a-dozen CM votes.
• News reports a week ago said that SMF had collected over 10,000 signatures in a matter of weeks. They maintained last Monday that they have more than the required number.
• Last December South Nashville Action People set a goal of 2,000 signatures on a petition expressing support for the Mayor's plan to start Fairgrounds demolition in order to motivate the council to vote to demo.
• According to SNAP leaders a few weeks later, they had only collected 500 signatures while bound by no limitations, rules, or deadlines. Nonetheless, they lost the council vote to demo by a whisker.
• SNAP announced this week the "hiring" of a lawyer to challenge the authenticity of SMF petition signatures, alleging that SMF brought in "disruptive" agitators to influence local politics. 
• The SNAP petition's legitimacy and authenticity never faced the same doubt or scrutiny that SMF's is. Despite the fact that SNAP never produced large public demonstrations or held transparent meetings, they received the benefit of the doubt in most cases, and very nearly pulled out a council win.

There is no way the preservationists should still be in the fight. The bar has always been set higher for them than for the South Nashville organization. In fact, the bar has been in perpetual motion, lofted higher every time SMF scratches out a victory.

The greater petition requirement is only the latest inequity. Assuming they got 10,000 signatures, they collected 20x more sigs than SNAP did. If they have enough to leverage a referendum they will have collected 30x more sigs than SNAP did.

But I tend to believe some other obstacle will be hoisted should they eek out another accomplishment. The small group on the other side shows no willingness to compromise and they have friends in high places.

We share no common frame of reference with 1961 thanks to the student catalysts of 1961

I have questioned before misguided attempts of some who misuse the Civil Rights Movement in the news media by comparing it to benign current events. A couple of weeks ago columnist Gail Kerr seemed to feel that the best way to honor the 50th Anniversary of the Freedom Rides was to compare the Nashville students who risked their safety, their lives by testing desegregation on interstate buses with Nashville student movements today as they editorialize in campus newspapers and demonstrate on uncomfortably cold days.

Hardly comparable to sending protest emails or tweets

As far as I know, none of the Vanderbilt, TSU, or Belmont students protesting lately faced the risk of injury, death, imprisonment or expulsion from their universities. It is not denigrating the protest of today's students to argue that the protests of 1961 faced longer odds and more dire consequences than anything students face in 2011. It does not take away from the importance of contemporary causes to argue that the memory of 1961 needs to be safeguarded against trivialization through apples-and-oranges comparisons.

More on the Mayor's lunch with neighborhood leaders: Bellevue library, Fairgrounds, David Torrence, Public Schools, legal options on nondiscrimination, Sulphur Dell

Earlier today West Meade neighborhood leader Mina Johnson published a report to the Nashville Neighborhoods elist on her exchange with the Mayor a couple of days ago during the lunch I mentioned in the previous post. She gave me permission to republish some of her Q&A based on her neighbors' feedback here:

Q: Could you reinstate the former brush pick up schedule of four times per year instead of current three times a year? If not, can special arrangement be made especially after the massive storm damage like we had recently.
A: Currently no budget to increase the regular schedule. However the emergency clean up should be placed and I think they have dispersed those services right after the recent storm.

Q: How about tornado warning siren in our neighborhood?
A: There is a county-wide evaluation going on right now regarding sirens to determine where new one should go.

Q: What is the plan for Bellevue Center and library? Can Metro buy [Dillard’s] building to put library instead of building a new one to save the cost?
A: We would like to put library in the Bellevue Mall and it is still our plan and negotiation is ongoing. However, we don’t know what the Mall management team wants to do with the site at this time. It is a private company and the Metro cannot just buy Dillard’s building or tell them how to redevelop the site. We need to wait what they decide to do and hopefully pick the best location for the library to benefit both.

Q: Why does Metro want to sell the Fairgrounds which makes money and bought flooded airport in east Nashville?
A: The council voted to create a master plan for the fairgrounds site. It will be determined when the master plan has developed. Although I am not convinced that the Fairgrounds making money. Cornelia Airport in east Nashville was bought because it was flooded and unsafe. It will be made to Greenway as a part of Open Space/Green initiative.

Q: What can be done to the elected official David Torrence? The report was unacceptable.
A: Yes. It is very bad. He sent me a letter of apology right after the TV interview. I told him to do the right thing as I don’t have authority to remove him. He can resign or needed to be recalled. Don’t quote me on this but I heard DA’s office is looking into the way. Also the judge he works for might be able to request some kind of disciplinary action or dismissive. Something has to be done for sure and will be done.

Q: Why did Metro Public School System fired 300 teachers in part to make way of new project “Teach for America”?
A: Teach for America is the one of the best project in the country right now. They are not fired because of Teach for America. Each year Metro School System looses 400 to 500 teachers. We may not be able to rehire them because there is no more stimulus money coming in.

Q: It won’t be fair to the experienced teachers to be replaced by freshly graduated teachers?
A: We need to choose what works best for the students.

Q: Can Metro School System do better to retain good experienced teachers rather than losing them to elsewhere?
A: Yes, we need to do better in our School System. We have made quite a bit of improvement, the graduation rate is up in all area and the test scores are getting better. We are on a right truck but still a long way to go.

Mina also discloses that the Mayor says he has no plans to pursue a legal remedy to the Tennessee General Assembly's crack down on Metro's nondiscrimination ordinance. That's news to me.

On the subject of the ballpark, Mina writes:

The location of a new ball park stadium was asked. The Mayor responded RFP was issued a recently to study and compare new stadium site. He said he is somewhat biased towards Sulphur Dell site because the location is supported by a lot of neighbors and it will be great to energize North side of down town.

"A lot of neighbors" may or may not support a Sulphur Dell ballpark without any qualifications or assurances or attention to community character. However, until bona fide community meetings are held this baseball fan is not buying the vacuous marketing or the campaign fodder. If I had been present I would have asked Karl Dean why a construction timeline for a new ballpark should jump ahead of the one for the Museum of African American Museum of Music, Art, and Culture, which is no less important for North Nashville's economic development and has been planned for a much longer time. Although, I fully grant that museums are not as sexy during election campaigns as ballparks are.

Neighborhood blogger: Mayor waiting on surveys and studies before moving on Fairgrounds, limiting feasibility study to Sulphur Dell stadium

The Lincoya Hills neighborhood blogger had lunch with Mayor Dean a couple of days ago and reports on several issues, of which two stand out to me:

Mayor Dean continues to believe that the Fairgrounds is and will be in the hole financially, and that the area can be put to better use, however, he is waiting on the current surveys and feasibility studies that are being undertaken before making any further decisions.

Mayor Dean is also very much pro sports, and for a new baseball stadium. He stated that they have just recently put out a RFP (Request for Proposal) to look at the feasibility of doing a stadium at Sulphur Dell

The Mayor said last year after having his Fairgrounds redevelopment plan rebuffed that he was in a holding pattern, even as his staff continued to make "Plan B" types of moves behind the scenes, so I'm not convinced that he has not already made up his mind.

And maybe I misunderstood, but didn't news reports say that the ballpark RFP was to study the feasibility of several possible sites, not just Sulphur Dell? Has the decision on a ballpark site already been made at the top as well with the RFP as formality?

MDHA and its embarrassing mention in a WaPo story on dereliction at HUD

Little wonder that I crack open a Washington Post story--on how the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in Washington has squandered millions on plodding projects and failed to hold accountable local developers and housing authorities--and I find Nashville's Metropolitan Development and Housing Agency (MDHA) mentioned in connection with the dereliction.

MDHA has its own documented dubiosity in recent years, including:

• allegations in an independent financial analysis that MDHA was either hoarding money, ripping off HUD, or underpaying its own workforce
• the housing authority allowed a public relations firm to overtax the convention center marketing budget in order to sell the concept to taxpayers
• hiring a Florida construction company for the new convention center with a record of being "most unproductive" and for generating an "inefficient mess" and an "uncoordinated nightmare"
• dragging a streetscape out longer than the projected timeline by generally not staying on top of contractors, but entertaining shortcuts, and ignoring community input on lingering problems
• regular inattentiveness to care and upkeep of Section 8 housing

So, reading that Nashville is among the communities that have black-hole housing developments and authorities that swallow up federal dollars while returning little for the millions concerned prompted no surprise. Here is MDHA's section of the infamous WaPo story:

$1.7 million in funding (2001)

Monticello St., Nashville, Tenn.

Since 2001, the Metropolitan Development and Housing Agency of Nashville invested $1.7 million in this delayed project, meant to provide about 40 homes for low-income families. Federal money was spent to buy land and put in roads and utilities, but there is no money to start construction. "We essentially kind of moth-balled it for the moment," said Joe Cain, director of development. "We are holding it."

It's bad enough that the federal government does not oversee, regulate, or track the money it sends these local agencies, but MDHA is a bad seed and probably should not be the agency HUD relies on to manage its money in Nashville.

The real goal of the charter provision cannot be so gainsaid

South Nashville Life blogger Jen Trail misrepresents the effect of changing the Metro charter's provision on the Fairgrounds:

A group of neighbors of the Tennessee State Fairgrounds have engaged with a lawyer* to hold accountable the petition to add a referendum to the ballot that, if passed, would make it more difficult to do anything with the fairgrounds property other than maintain the status quo.

Here is what the proposed change says:

all activities being conducted on the premises of the Tennessee State Fairgrounds as of December 31, 2010, including, but not limited to, the Tennessee State Fair, Expo Center Events, Flea Markets, and Auto Racing, shall be continued on the same site. No demolition of the premises shall be allowed to occur without approval by ordinance receiving 27 votes by the Metropolitan Council or amendment to the Metropolitan Charter

This provision does not stop the community planning process on the Fairgrounds started earlier this year by the Metro Council. It only says that any demolition that occurs on the premises requires a super-majority rather than a simple majority of the Metro Council to approve. I also wonder if it prevents a unilateral move by the Mayor to demolish (has happened before elsewhere).

During the past couple of years the chips have been stacked against those of us who opposed moving the flea market to Hickory Hollow, to hacking up the Fairgrounds and selling it to private developers, and to the Mayor's absolute power to make these moves unchecked by the community. The latest underhanded moves included stacking a neighborhood advisory group with representatives from demo-driven South Nashville Action People/Neighbors For Progress and giving them recommendation powers to an already Dean-friendly State Fair Board with unchecked fiat over the lease.

In that kind of scenario, it does not matter how many Nashvillians oppose Fairgrounds demolition. The game is rigged against broad, popular sentiment about a public property. What can bring balance to the process is the Metro Council, which can send any one-sided concepts back into the community planning process.

SNAP has had countless opportunities to try and influence the direction of Fairgrounds redevelopment, which can and should happen (in fact, it should have happened years ago while the powers that be were allowing it the property to deteriorate). Their lack of success should not place extra obligations on any one else with an opposing interest in the Fairgrounds issue. Likewise, It is not too much to ask that--whatever concepts eventually emerge from the community planning process--that they receive the support of 27 rather than 21 council members to verify that everyone had the chance to influence the final product.

I honestly fail to see why Jen and her SNAP cohort would be opposed to supporting the most democratic solution to a planning challenge, unless they believe that support for the Mayor's initiative for an office park is not popular to begin with.

Full disclosure: For the first time ever I signed a petition for a public referendum when late last week I signed and returned the petition to put this charter change on ballot the next election. I believe it encourages a more inclusive community planning process rather than narrowing the process to suit the exclusive ideas of those supporting Mayor Dean.

Vicksburg, Mississippi Flood: to crest on Thursday above 1927 record

Credit/Source: Marty Kittrell