Where do Convention Center Authority minutes reflect the decision to relocate the Greyhound bus terminal northward to make way for Music City Center?

After pointing out that the Convention Center Authority meeting agendas do not clearly notify the community of action to move the Greyhound bus terminal to Charlotte and 11th, I went back and looked through all of the minutes to see if the official CCA records reflect authorization for a new lease with Greyhound (signed on May 5).

I cannot see any record of authorization in the minutes; in fact, I cannot find a single mention of Greyhound in any of the minutes of CCA going back to October 2009 or in those of CCA's Construction Committee going back to February 2010. The Tennessean provides an unofficial written record in an op-ed written by CCA's Marty Dickens and MDHA's Phil Ryan, who along with CM Erica Gilmore tried last Friday to tamp down North Nashville frustrations over the hushed and veiled signing of the relocation lease. Here is what they wrote:

All these factors were thoroughly discussed at a meeting of the Convention Center Authority’s construction committee, before a recommendation went to the full authority for approval of a 13-month lease, with the option to extend the lease for an additional three months.

Note that these Courthouse insiders had problems recalling dates themselves, and they obviously could not depend on the meeting minutes to get their timeline straight between them.

Other actions CCA took are specifically described:

• "Mark Arnold made a motion to approve the Commonwealth Development Group, Inc. and Bone McAliester Norton, PLLC contract amendments" (misspellings not corrected)
• "Leo Waters made a motion to approve the lease agreement between MDHA and the CCA memorializing the Convention Center Authority's right to be on MDHA's property"
• "Leo Waters made a motion authorizing the Authority to accept the guaranteed maximum price in an amount not to exceed $415 million"

It seems curious and strange to me that the minutes would reflect in copious detail the other actions of the CCA and its committees, and yet not refer specifically to the Greyhound decision. Can you find any specific reference in the minutes?

There are a number of vague transcriptions where I guess the relocation discussion could be hidden. Here is one passage that tells us next to nothing and looks like a waste of space:

Leo Waters, Chair of the Construction and Development Committee, was then asked by Mr. Dickens to report. Mr. Waters gave an overview of what the committee had discussed. Larry Atema was asked to give a project update. There was discussion about the project and land.

Unless the Greyhound bus terminal situation lies somewhere between "project and land," there is no official evidence in the Metro meeting minutes that relocation or a lease were authorized. If the authorization happened, why was the CCA so bashful about publicizing it before the media found it and the community dragged the details out in the May 27 meeting? Did the Music City Center honchos figure it was so toxic that any mention of it would draw undue and unfriendly attention to it?

What I learned from tonight's cover-your-ass-in-public meeting on the Greyhound relocation lease

My impressions of Erica Gilmore's public meeting on Greyhound's relocation held earlier tonight:

1. The best way to control imagined "You lie!" incivility in controversial zoning issues is to treat the few locals yokels who show up (a large number of attendees seemed to be Metro employees, politicos, and news media) as if they are in detention, restricting them to 1 minute each to ask questions and make comments.
2. If urban neighborhoods wanted to stop this specific Greyhound/Music City Center relocation, they had their chance during the Downtown Code community meetings a few years ago.
3. Given #2: any future community plan (e.g., the North Nashville Plan) better be formulated only by those leaders in the community who are psychic and can predict exactly where and when the Mayor's Office will be relocating businesses they don't want to see by their tourism attractions Downtown.
4. Neighborhoods lost opportunities to be informed by not being prescient enough to attend public meetings of the Convention Center Authority (CCA) where they could not give feedback, even if they were not informed by CM Gilmore (who has said that she only heard things in passing and found out about the decision in the media rather than by attending CCA meetings).
5. The CCA publicizes their agenda; community leaders can look at the agenda and clearly see when the Greyhound bus terminal relocation will be discussed if they exercise extrasensory perception (note an example agenda below):
   
   
   
   
6. The CCA meets the first Thursday of every month, and if working Nashville citizens want to burn vacation or sick days away from the job each of those Thursdays after 8:00 a.m., then they have the chance to find out more about controversial relocations by attending.
7. Greyhound has picked an undisclosed permanent location; you still don't have any say over it; your 1 minute for a question is up, next question.
8. I don't know how to interpret the conspicuous absence of Hope Gardens neighborhood leaders (who organized the well-attended and angry May 27 public meeting) at tonight's meeting.
9. CCA rep Holly McCall failed to follow through on her May 27 promise to release the Greyhound lease to the public. Instead, she sent it to CM Gilmore.
10. Given #9: I'm disappointed that CM Gilmore did not forward a copy of the lease to me given that she should have a May 27 e-mail from me requesting a copy of that lease from MDHA's Joe Cain as well as Mr. Cain's reply saying that CCA had it. Nevertheless, she promises to release it tomorrow.

Rank Remiss: Another Abominable Product of Privatizing Prisons

Just days after a report that Nashville-based CCA intends to expand facilities in San Diego, a Tennessean article reports that a prisoner at Nashville's CCA facility was allowed to stay in his cell for 9 months (not even leaving to take a shower). No mental health evaluation was ordered until the Metro Health Department received a complaint about the prisoner's unhygienic condition. CCA may be expanding its San Diego facility to deter higher numbers of illegal immigrants. Can you imagine how much worse immigrant detainees would be treated by the for-profit corporation?

A corollary to this story is the finger pointing that Sheriff Daron Hall--the golden boy of the Metro Council, seeming to get gold from and to spread gold to council members--is doing at the Health Department and at CCA. Doesn't privatization of public institutions just create an outside object of blame? And aren't the private subcontractors a layer removed from the control of voters? It's not like average citizens can boycott CCA if we don't like their product, because their clientèle is the government. But regardless of the bureaucratic torture of logic in the Sheriff not accepting responsibility, doesn't mere common sense direct that ultimately the person with the title of "Sheriff" generally oversees an institution called a "jail"?

Packed angry room tonight dealt with Music City Center domino falling on urban core neighborhoods

I confess that when I arrived at tonight's community meeting on the relocation of the Greyhound bus station from the Downtown core to 11th & Charlotte, my feelings were tempered and cool. My lack of enthusiasm had nothing to do with a lack of priority about this insulated and hushed-up move. Instead, it had to do with the fact that I've been waving red flags for months about dominoes bound to fall in the wake of the Music City Center; so, I wasn't shocked or surprised Metro's top-down, insulated habits of ruling over locals rose up to bite nearby North End neighborhood Hope Gardens. The transitional and blighted businesses Downtown have to go somewhere now that the new convention center is going up. We broke ground and bought the fallout.

However, I do not think that I was prepared for the abrupt confession by a Metro Planner that the move is permitted because of the Downtown Code (DC), which Metro adopted this past February. The DC was intended to be an expression of progress set out by the community in the 2007 Downtown plan. It was intended to remove obstacles for builders in order to develop "vibrant neighborhoods" that attract more people to live and work Downtown. I was incensed in this meeting, as I sensed others were, that Planning and the Convention Center Authority (CCA) were using the relative freedom granted in the DC as a loophole to drive the Greyhound terminal relocation through.

In my opinion the planner was so busy justifying the adherence of the relocation to the letter of the DC that she could not see the violation of the spirit of the code. The CCA was hard pressed by its failure to place the terminal on Murfreesboro Road because of shrill opposition. However, one Charlotte Avenue business owner suggested that sign kingpin and Metro backroomer Bobby Joslin had something to do with discouraging the move south, closer to his little empire. CCA spokesperson Holly McCall chimed in that the latitudes of the DC did not extend down Murfreesboro Road. A local resident retorted that Hope Gardens was being punished for attempting to be more progressive in helping formulate the DC than Greyhound opponents further south.

My frustrations failed to be allayed by Ms. McCall, who admitted that they never bothered to inform the local community that they were signing a contract with Greyhound for 11th & Charlotte because they were not required to. (Yes, to my bitter surprise, the contract has already been signed; so, effectively no other regulations can be mandated). But I was also just as frustrated with some in the audience who seemed shocked that no neighborhood representatives were on CCA. How many keep themselves willfully ignorant about the insular process Mayor Karl Dean uses to appoint boards and committees? Why do neighbors continue to assume that they can support Courthouses pet projects like Music City Center and that they have any control at all over the hyper-local repercussions of construction?

I appreciate that neighborhoods like Hope Gardens, Germantown, Buena Vista, and Salemtown are going to band together now to work to close the Downtown Code loophole that could allow such Music City Center fiascoes to spread north to Jefferson Street. I appreciate that Grayhound promises to work with neighborhood leaders to make sure the blight and crime associated with the terminal does not build. But where was the vigilance a few months ago when the convention center was just a concept? Surely, neighbors didn't believe that Music City Center was going to be all fairies and waterfalls like the Music City Center Coalition wanted us to believe. One of the items on the bill of goods we bought was an open door for the Courthouse culture to twist a well-intended building regulation into a cynical tool for selfish ends.

All anyone has to do is consider the fact that the Mayor's Office was invited to tonight's meeting. Karl Dean sent no one. No one. This was a meeting tailor-made for the empty shell that was once the Mayor's Office of Neighborhoods. Yet, the Mayor could not muster anyone from that do-nothing department. Before you buy the line that the Mayor's Office cares about the concerns of neighborhoods, consider this important North Nashville meeting that received nothing beyond its benign neglect.

Last, but not any less deflating, was acknowledgment that the CM for this district, Erica Gilmore, had known about the relocation and the lease signing for some time without informing her constituents. This is beyond befuddling. It is something we came to expect from Gilmore's predecessor, Ludye Wallace (who happened to be there tonight while she was not). While CM at-Large Jerry Maynard attended and spoke, he seemed at a loss when addressing Ms. Gilmore's knowledge and support. All he told us was that he was aware that "certain government officials" knew about the contract with Greyhound. A few days ago Erica Gilmore sent a personal statement to relocation critics, and then later she issued a second one that looks formulated by communications staff jargon hounds.

I left the meeting more disillusioned and annoyed than when I entered it the realist. It amounted to Metro-crafted insults on top of what I see as the community's self-inflicted injuries. It may have been an important community meeting, but it was not a good one for me. I could be getting too old for these confidence game confabs. The one redeeming quality is that the Courthouse showed how low it is willing to stoop with the Downtown Code. In the future none of us around the urban core should be caught off guard by the scope of this particular depravity.

More on One of the Most Unscrupulous Businesses Located in Nashville

We need more dirt like this dug up by the media, given CCA's rap sheet and its collusion with ICE. It's a fertile field ripe for sharp media plows in the home quarters as well as at CCA gulags around the country. But this is progress:

CCA's well-respected CEO, John Ferguson, sits on the elite board of the Nashville symphony while corporate counsel Gus Puryear belongs to the rich and lilly white Belle Meade Country Club. So, unlike the families in their care, Gus and John probably take for granted the luxury of a quiet moment on the throne.

They have to find something to do with their cut of the $3 million per month CCA gets from our taxes in exchange for keeping innocent kids in cells for hours with no toys or diversions and under threat of being taken from their parents. There may not be a place in prison for corporate officers who tolerate the abuse of children, but there ought to be a part of hell with their names on it.

Nashville-Based Clink Merchant Looks to Profit from Immigration Drama in Southern California

CCA is looking to expand its San Diego detention center into a "mega-prison," amidst ACLU law suits and questionable incarceration practices:

Nashville, Tenn.-based Corrections Corporation of America has applied for a permit to build a “secure detention facility” in two phases on a parcel of about 40 acres ....

It would hold more than four times the number of people that the immigration agency now holds in San Diego. The agency, known as ICE, contracts with Corrections Corporation of America to house up to 700 detainees – individuals awaiting deportation or a decision in immigration cases – at the company's private San Diego Correctional Facility, which sits on land leased from the county.

Read the whole article to get a feel for CCA's checkered history and the lack of ICE certainty about how a huge new facility would be used as well as local neighborhood concerns about expansion. CCA billed the federal government for millions per month in order to incarcerate innocent children in Texas.

While CCA Gives Convicted Criminals ESPN and Pizza in West Tennessee, It Imprisons Innocent Children for Profit in Central Texas

According to the Texas Observer blog, Corrections Corporation of America--which was spotlighted in this morning's Tennessean--is getting paid for incarcerating the innocent children of immigrants who have fled violence or persecution in their home countries and landed in Texas. In spite of the fact that CCA is billing the the US immigration enforcement agency $3 million a month for detaining these children, detainees of all ages tell the Observer:

• Kids spend 10-11 hours each day in a cell where they are not allowed to have toys or even crayons.
• Guards frequently threaten children with separation from their parents.
• Just like a “regular” prison, there’s no privacy in the cells. Kids have to go to the bathroom in front of their parents and vice versa, a deeply humiliating experience in some cultures.
• Sick children often do not receive prompt or adequate medical care.
• The food is unpalatable and foreign; meals last only 10-20 minutes. As a result, kids frequently undergo rapid weight loss.

Our tax money is apparently paying private corrections corporations for mistreating children and spoiling convicted criminals.

Private Prison Pimping for Public Poppy Poses for Public Relations

Matt Pulle provides the link to local company CCA's online war room, where they put their own spin on the damaging news on prison malfeasance and mistreatment of immigrants from various sources that has been exploding since March. Besides the sources Matt mentioned, there are other media sources like the Texas Observer and the San Diego Union-Tribune, which I linked over the past few months.

A comment to Matt's post from someone who is no doubt your average "English First" ballot referendum card signer illustrates the moral fiber of some anti-immigration dweebs:

[S]tories about how a local prison company abused immigrants and their children get old real fast. It's not like all of them died.

Beating up protesters is much easier than plugging potential security breaches in local utilities

Last week I had an interesting chat with a former security guard employed by Metro Nashville contractor Wackenhut to guard the Downtown water treatment plant near Salemtown. He told me that he believed the potential for catastrophic, lethal chlorine spill was real because the system does not have tight oversight.

Reportedly, the FBI is supposed to be regularly testing the security of the chlorine railroad tanker cars that deliver the concentrated toxic chemical during the water treatment process, but he never saw any conducted. He said that chlorine leak alarms went off several times in the small control building next to the tankers while he was on duty and that the building is supposed to be airtight, but on a number of occasions security personnel had to don gas masks while responding to the alarms.

Whenever there was a leak on-call "specialists," some of whom did not act like they knew how to resolve the problem, responded, according to the former guard. He also confirmed what has been reported in the past by others: the complex is remarkably vulnerable to sabotage given its proximity to Downtown Nashville.

Sandbagging tankers against the 2010 flood. 

It has been frustrating enough watching what looks a tragic accident (or act of terrorism) waiting to happen get attention from outside sources while Metro, state, and federal government officials seem to ignore the threat. A major chlorine spill would be a catastrophe for Downtown and both sides of the river. However, what I find even more galling is to watch how government misdirects its security forces away from real threats and toward innocuous inconveniences like the modest protests of dissenting citizens. Take the Department of Homeland Security, which assisted the Tennessee Highway Patrol's misguided crackdown on the relatively small Occupy Nashville protest. Give the protesters credit. They've fought the battle of Legislative Plaza against the state, gone to jail and won in the courts, and been acknowledged across media (along with overwhelming public support) for their perseverance.

Nevertheless, the committed followers who continue with the group beyond Governor Bill Haslam's bumbling heavy-handedness do not seem to expand. Moreover, ON has really not done much to occupy Nashville or otherwise live up to their name. They have not shown the slightest interest in occupying Nashville's Courthouse or the Chamber of Commerce or Gail Kerr's writing cubicle or the windmills of Jerry Maynard's mind or any other place of local political influence in Nashville. They've picketed NES and staged a street play at CCA. Today they're going to occupy the Tennessee Tower. They've basically given Mayor Karl Dean  (a Democrat with political aspirations) a pass. None of this is to slight the alternative democracy they're trying to run in the form of General Assemblies.

But really, was their nonviolent unwillingness to leave state-owned public property worth the attention of Homeland Security or the FBI or any other federal agency sworn to protect Americans against enemies, foreign and domestic? DHS overstepped its boundaries in assisting Bill Haslam's act of stepping on his own feet in the ON crackdown. Why are they not more focused on finding terrorists who might strike in Nashville or on securing vulnerable targets like the chlorine tankers at the Downtown water treatment facility?

Now we see reports that agencies like Homeland Security and the FBI may be coordinating responses with city halls across the country to suppress popular backlash against Wall Street and the financial industry. I have to wonder, given that President Obama broke his campaign promise to close George Bush's oppressive GITMO detention camps, whether the White House might actually be encouraging municipal and state-sponsored gagging of dissent as well as the compromise of universal human rights at home.

I notice this morning that Juan Cole is worrying about it, too:

Oakland Mayor Jean Quan let slip in an interview with the BBC that she had been on a conference call with the mayors of 18 cities about how to deal with the Occupy Wall Street movement. That is, municipal authorities appear to have been conspiring to deprive Americans of their first amendment rights to freedom of assembly and freedom to petition the government for redress of grievances.

Likewise, A Homeland Security official let it slip in a phone interview that the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security had been strategizing with cities on how to shut down OWS protests. The FBI is said to have advised using zoning ordinances and curfew regulations, and to stage the crackdown with massive police force at a time when the press was not around to cover the crackdown ....

What these two reports show is a high-level conspiracy to deprive Americans of their constitutional right to protest peacefully.

When will we see Occupy Wall Street protesters hooded, dressed in orange jump suits, and sent to Guantanamo for military trials? When you let the government act without regard for the rule of law toward foreigners suspected of terrorism, you open yourself to be treated the same way if the rich decide to sic their police on you (it is mostly their police).

Chapel Hill, NC cops suppress OWS protesters who occupied
an abandoned building to perhaps start a free clinic
-- KATELYN FERRAL AND MARK SCHULTZ

Sounds like the FBI is too distracted with aiding local police--who in turn act like paramilitary thugs toward nonviolent protesters--to spend much time testing for security holes at strategically significant utilities like Metro Water Services. I would agree with those who argue that if Homeland Security is coordinating these crackdown efforts against Occupy Wall Street, then we are not very far away from the day when we will see protesters rounded up and detained GITMO-style. The federal security apparatus, whose overseer is the President of the United States, needs to keep its eye on the ball and focus on potential local threats that are real. It should avoid micromanaging protest response as if it were quelling hostile coup d'etat. It ought to fix holes in the system rather than rolling back the civil rights of Americans.

Sometimes late is not any better than never: now that Greyhound signed a lease to relocate, CM Erica Gilmore schedules a public meeting

Since the Convention Center Authority's bid to sneak the Downtown Greyhound bus terminal to Charlotte Avenue and 11th Avenue North on the Q.T., the District council member, Erica Gilmore, has issued ever more formal media advisories. Today's is consistent with CM Gilmore's recent pattern of communication:



The release calls the relocation a "proposal." This is misleading if we are to believe what we were told at the Hope Gardens-sponsored community meeting last week: that Greyhound has already signed a lease. The Greyhound move to the old Hansen Chrysler dealership is a done deal. In fact renovations have already started and parking stripes have already been painted.

The first question that needs to be asked is why are the Metro media flacks who crafted this advisory for CM Gilmore spinning and distorting this as a "proposal" when the parties have all signed on the dotted line? I cannot see our neighborhoods having any influence at all now that the deal is contractual.

Therefore, the ostensible purpose of next Monday's meeting is to try and influence community opinions that seem to be weighing against the relocation and to try to soften the shock over the growing perception that CM Gilmore knew about the terminal agreement and chose not inform her constituents until reporters discovered the story. If the purpose of the meeting is to allow public feedback and influence, the timing of the meeting could not be worse. It should have happened before the lease was signed.

As it is, it would be more honest not to have another public meeting about Charlotte and 11th at all outside of those to which Greyhound has agreed in order to work directly with neighborhood associations to keep crime and blight in check.

After missing last week's meeting, MDHA is sending their executive (the beleaguered housing agency still controls business relocations in the convention center project). Police Commander Huggins was kind enough to attend last week's meeting, and his input will be welcome on Monday. The Metro planner still needs to produce a valid explanation for how the Downtown Code allows special relocation privileges for the Convention Center Authority without any input from community "stake-holders" affected by cynical Courthouse power moves.

However, it is a mystery to me why the Director of Room in the Inn is attending, other than the offices are near the Music City Center site, too, and hence, subject to relocation. One rumor I heard--denied by an CCA spokesperson last week--had either or both the Campus for Human Development and the Men's Rescue Mission being considered for relocation to Jefferson Street near Germantown. Other than considering other possible moves within the urban core what will Father Strobel be there to do Monday? Vouch for the way Greyhound terminal enhanced the quality of life on the block?

Finally, note that the Mayor's Office has still not committed to attend (they were invited to last week's Hope Gardens event), but maybe someone there wonders as I do where they will be allowed to park at the Downtown TSU campus. I have no idea where I will be able to park or if I need to load my pockets full of change to feed meters or parking attendants. That has me wondering why the powers-that-be did not schedule this meeting in a church or a neighborhood center with plenty of parking that people do not have to vet before they go. Why did Metro leaders not provide a more user-friendly venue for this public meeting?

Probably because it will not amount to a hill of beans anyway.

CM Gilmore needs to work more diligently with the North End neighborhoods to come up with solutions for tightening the Downtown Code so that neighborhoods receive early warning and proper notice from a transparent government in future planning. Otherwise, Monday's meeting looks like window dressing to me.

Enclave's 7th Annual Best and Worst Metro Services

In last year's Best and Worst I offered some New Year's resolutions for each of the Metro Departments I covered. None of them were realized, so I won't even try this year. I did stay with last year's form of picking the 3 services whose activities got most of my blogging attention. I also continued the idea of tacking the rest of the mentionable departments after the big three.

Without further adieu, the best and worst of the services that are supposed to be of some benefit to us.

Metro Council
Surprisingly to me, there was a lot more good than expected from the council whose term ended with last August's elections. That council launched the nondiscrimination ordinance in the wake of the Belmont soccer coach controversy. That ordinance, destined to be blocked by the right-wing Tennessee General Assembly, prohibited Metro contractors from discriminating. Also good was the joining together of both council progressives and conservatives to stop Mayor Karl Dean's unilateral plan to demolish the racetrack after a huge, historic turnout to the public hearing. Not even Vice Mayor Diane Neighbors' draconian public hearing tactics could derail the results. To their credit, the council required any Fairgrounds redevelopment to include a bona fide, inclusive community planning process. Finally, CMs approved Mike Jameson to General Sessions Judge. Like I said, it surpassed my expectations.

On the other side, the council generally behaved like the cowed tools of Dean it has generally been. The Budget Committee followed the Mayor's budget hearing script, and they failed to properly review County Clerk John Arriola's inappropriate spending habits, which later blew up in the media, resulting in belated CM calls for Arriola's ouster. They also failed to do their due diligence on objectively filling a Criminal Court Clerk vacancy, instead approving the Mayor's hand-picked choice, Howard Gentry. Then there is the newly elected council, which looks like it will be more Dean-dependent than the previous council ever was. Having learned nothing from the Mayor's summer IQT debacle, the sheep herd moved to approve the Mayor's plan to allow LifePoint to pay no taxes for several years and reduced taxes up to 15 years in exchange for property that could have itself been incentive to relocate.

Noteworthy CM performances:

• Emily Evans and Jason Holleman tried to bring back an equitable plan to remove cap on storm water run-off fees for businesses.
• Jamie Hollin, who could plausibly qualify for Nashvillian of the Year, was the drum major for nondiscrimination legislation and struck a populist chord on the Fairgrounds preservation. He brought progressives and conservatives together in winning efforts, while being a gadfly for Mayor's Office and culture warriors alike. Any current CM who desires to be perceived as independent should look to Hollin.
• Erica Gilmore expressed unqualified support for historic preservation of the Fehr School Building. She also took a leading role on the council's nondiscrimination ordinance. She finally put the African American Music, Art, and Culture back on the radar after being distracted by the Sulphur Dell ballpark concept.
• Karen Bennett voted against nondiscrimination and then said she encouraged those who supported her vote not to take an online neighborhood poll on the nondiscrimination measure, even though the poll could be taken anonymously.
• Jerry Maynard compared the Fairgrounds to crack houses and bristled when North Nashville talk show listeners called him the Mayor's "rubber stamp" on the air, prompting him to call them GOP "ringers". Also, Maynard had to scrub "lawyer" from his campaign website after it became clear that he was still suspended from practicing law.

Mayor's Office
The main feather in Karl Dean's cap had nothing to do with his re-election talking points to staged neighborhood meetings of "economic development, economic development, and economic development". It was signing the nondiscrimination ordinance over the protests of the local Chamber of Commerce and in spite of his past reticence to sign anything that regulated the "free" market. Sure: it seemed arbitrary and capricious given the story of his change of heart was a chance encounter with wealthy booster Mike Curb, but any time Karl Dean breaks from the Chamber it is beyond all doubt newsworthy and laudable. To his credit, Hizzoner also finally followed through on his longstanding promise to move the Metro Action Commission's main offices and utility bill support service to more accommodating facilities than Salemtown's old Fehr School.

And then there was the rest of the mess. Dean didn't visit Antioch after a February tornado, but he did carry on with a non-essential trip to Japan in spite of State Department warnings against non-essential travel. He announced a plan to reduce the size of North Nashville police force and to increase the size of the suburban force. The Mayor stuck to his plan to demolish the Fairgrounds Speedway despite mounting losses on Fairgrounds redevelopment and demonstrated public pressure against demolition. However, he never consulted the Fairgrounds staff for feedback before introducing his demolition plan. Obtained emails showed Dean staffers tried to exclude some preservationists from the public meeting process. When they were not trying to torpedo their Fairgrounds opponents, the closest Dean advisers accepted gifts of vacation lodging and other perks from a no-bid Metro contractor in violation of a 2008 executive order signed by Dean.

Meanwhile, the Mayor was expanding his staff. He hired former Bredenistas at prices that could have paid for more Metro services. He doubled his communications staff to "serve the needs of the media".  The hirings did not sit well with all, given that in 2011 less than 250 stormwater projects completed after 2 years and road maintenance and repair needs were lagging behind. The Mayor also cut back the concept of a green roof on his expensive new convention center to a small fraction of the structure to save money. In July the Mayor lost a jury decision and in December he lost the appeal, both of which guaranteed that the convention center budget was busted. Dean told the press in June that "our citizens" expressed "overwhelming support" for a new convention center, even though construction never enjoyed more than 37% support in polls; last year construction only got 26% support.

Dean, a politically connected lawyer besides being Mayor, plead ignorance on news that fellow Democrat Phil Bredesen had leveraged the transfer of millions of dollars in non-hockey-event sales from Metro coffers to the Nashville Predators hockey club. Dean raided funds designated for services to pay for streets, parks, libraries, and public safety in order to subsidize professional hockey in Nashville because he had to redirect tourist taxes earmarked for the Predators to construction of the Music City Center.  The Mayor's Office looked the other way while the Predators tried to extend a no-bid, noncompetitive contract with an NHL insider and while they lied about checking with other potential vendors. Finally on the sports front, Mayor Dean dropped $157,000 on a ballpark feasibility project, but he concluded in December that a new ballpark is a "luxury."

Karl Dean joined forces with GOP Governor Bill Haslam to offer the IQT company government subsidies, tossing 1,000 Canadians out of their jobs; because of their admitted failure to adequately vet IQT, they were shocked when the company declared it was not moving to Nashville. On the education front, the Mayor flung himself even deeper into privatizing, venture philanthropy trends in public education with Teach for America, charter school incubators, and "CEO Champions".  He earmarked $10 million for KIPP Academy (charter) while bona fide public school infrastruture continued to crumble.

As for his re-election, Dean supporters criticized any opponents who dared politicize the 2010 flood, while the Mayor held campaign events under the banner of "rising" from the 2010 flood. Shockingly, the Mayor's re-election also solicited journalists to join his "community steering committees".

Metro Nashville Public Schools
It is rather depressing, as a public school parent, to say that I found nothing good about MNPS this year. I wish I could find a half-full glass.

Director Jesse Register signed a letter with wealthy special interest group leaders from Nashville's Agenda to oppose the state's plan to streamline teacher evaluations. Charter school and innovation czar Alan Coverstone held a North Nashville "collaboration" and in private school fashion did not invite everyone with a stake in North Nashville schools. MNPS's advocacy partner Stand for Children gave subtle indications that some interpret as moving against teacher unions as other Stand organizations have done in other parts of the country. An embarrassing YouTube video appeared in June that showed the SFC CEO telling an audience that his organization used the best lobbyists in Illinois to jam proposals down the throats of teachers unions. SFC Nashville waged its own campaign by endorsing Karl Dean for Mayor, in spite of the apparent conflict of interest. While my kid's underfunded North Nashville school suffered for a lack of computers, a Boston charter school company was spending over $100,000 (stipend + benefits) on each of its twenty-something MNPS charter school founders.


The best and mostly worst of the rest in no particular order 

• Metro Finance -- Rich Riebeling could not or would not project a cost for Fairgrounds demolition even though he was its most ardent advocate.
• State Fair Board -- Emails showed that Buck Dozier lampooned a Fairgrounds redevelopment concept informed by the community and written by the Nashville Civic Design Center.
• Convention Center Authority -- 10 months after CCA PR manager Holly McCall swore that the Music City Center budget would not go over budget, the Music City Center budget was blown by poor estimates on the value of land acquired.
• Metro Water Services -- Scott Potter failed to respond to a West Nashville community leader who emailed her concerns about locating the West Nashville Police Precinct along the Richland Creek watershed. Only one community meeting was held on the matter after a number were promised to get feedback. And I learned some interesting information on vulnerabilities at Central Wastewater Treatment from a former security guard at MWS that makes me feel a lot more insecure.
• Metro Health Department -- Cited Occupy Nashville for food health violations, then performed an about-face, telling the press that they should not have been cited.
• Metro Police -- Stationed a not so inconspicuous van as "undercover dignitary protection" for former Bush official Donald Rumsfeld, who even after all of those years patronizing privatized black ops security companies can obviously no longer afford private protection.
• Metro Night Court -- Magistrate Tom Nelson refuses THP request for arrest warrants on Occupy Nashville protesters, thusly defending their basic liberties.
• Metro Planning Commission -- In Autumn, local company Yazoo Brewery teamed up with small Bells Bend farmers and produced their first line of beer made with locally grown hops, appropriately called "Bells Bend Preservation Ale". If it had not been for the Metro Planning Commission's narrow rejection of May Town Center, this buy-local project might not have happened. The rejection happened in 2010, but the ripples spread into the community this year.
• Mayor's Office of Neighborhoods -- Played a Halloween trick on neighborhood association leaders by handing an alarm company all of the latter's contact info, which is now held by Metro under false pretenses.
• Metro Historical Commission -- Kick-started the process to help Salemtown toward rezoning for the historic Fehr School building, a Civil Rights Movement monument.
• Metro Planning Department -- Finally included a nondiscrimination provision on gender, gender identity and sexual orientations 2 years after Metro Council passed an ordinance requiring it and a few weeks after Mike Peden started emailing them, Megan Barry, and Jason Holleman about noncompliance.
• Public Works -- Attempted to redesignate collector streets without any community input despite profound impact on pedestrian neighborhoods.
• Davidson County Clerk -- John Arriola spent wads of public Benjamins on superfluous signs and SUV among other forms of malfesance.
• MDHA -- Washington Post goes national with the agency's failure to start construction on low-income housing even after federal money was spent to buy the land and to build infrastructure.
• Metro Legal -- Dismissed a spurious, stupid complaint by a supporter of Mayor Dean against Emily Evans after the supporter misconstrued a friendly chat as unfriendly.

Writing these each December becomes harder rather than easier. I keep looking for more progress in Metro, but it is a rare commodity.