Subject: Karl Dean

• Mayor Karl Dean's Weakly Schedule

  June 24, 2008

• Silence of the Lambs

  July 14, 2008

• Our MIA Mayor

  October 15, 2008

• Tent City Flip Flop: Closing Indefinitely Indefinite

  October 24, 2008

• School Board Should Drop Superintendent Search

  A lot of people are scratching their heads over what the school board thinks it's doing. It's one thing to look for a new superintendent. OK, why not? But now we have the list of applicants, and it reads like the education field's equivalent of the cauliflower-eared pugs at the bottom of a Saturday night boxing card in Palookaville. It's time to give it up. Instead, the board is talking about signing the new schools director to a three- or four-year contract. When Mayor Karl Dean takes control

  December 4, 2008

• News from Planet School Board

  Today's City Paper would make George Orwell proud. First, the school board blatantly violates the state's sunshine law by casting secret ballots during its search for a new superintendent. Then Pith points it out and the board is forced to redo the vote. And that chain of events produces this City Paper headline: "School board works to add transparency to director search." Unless I missed it, the story neglects to mention the sunshine law violation but points only to "a flaw in the search pro

  December 10, 2008

• Karl Dean's Transformation

  Up from the morass of Metro government comes a screeching protest. Mayor Karl Dean is trying to make a few little changes. Is he out of his mind? Dean appointed a committee to study how to fix up Centennial Park, and he suggested combining the Metro library system with school libraries to create efficiencies. Those two earth-shattering actions produced this front-page headline in today's Tennessean: "Mayor's leadership style causes friction. Critics say Karl Dean doesn't seek consensus like

  December 17, 2008

• "The decision to pass the amendment..."

  August 14, 2008

• Our MIA Mayor

  His first year has been marked by a fierce determination to dodge controversy

  October 16, 2008

• School Board Snaps Out of State of Denial, Confesses Shortcomings to Mayor

  Mayor Karl Dean met yesterday with that merry troupe of slapstick comedians officially known as the Metropolitan Nashville Board of Education. In a surprise, the board admitted it has really sucked at its job. The surprising part is that it took the board so long to figure that out. Our schools are dropout factories, and they have failed for five straight years to meet student achievement standards. The state has taken over many of the administration's functions, and the mayor is threatening to

  January 28, 2009

• Dean & Bredesen: What's With These Democratic Fence-Sitters?

  Anyone have a spare set of testicles they could loan this guy? There's a theory prominent in Democratic circles that goes like this: If you want to be successful in South, you can't actually behave like a Democrat. Gov. Phil Bredesen's a master at this. It helps that he tends to see the world as a series of budgetary line items rather than home to human beings, making him a Democrat with a Republican's heart. But even on something he apparently feels strong about -- like the guns in bars bill --

  June 3, 2009

• Karl Dean's Scary Flirtation With Charter Schools

  The good ship Dean sets sail for the rockiest coastIt's hard to blame Mayor Karl Dean for his flirtation with charter schools. He's presiding over a city with a failing system that only seems to be getting worse. And like 1,000 mayors before him, he has no idea how to fix it. So he's turning to the magic bullet of charter schools. If you read the brochures, they're supposed to offer competition, innovation, a reinvention of the learning process. They're designed to be free from the rule-bound bu

  April 2, 2009

• Sincerely, Karl Dean

  When the mayor says he wants to keep kids in school, he might really mean it

  July 3, 2008

• Dean’s Dilemma

  Mayor ducks money issue in his first State of Metro speech

  May 15, 2008

• Kissing Karl Dean

  The Metro Council loves the new mayor, or maybe it’s just a rebound after their last rocky relationship

  April 3, 2008

• Outlawing Poverty

  Dean going along with crackdown on panhandling

  January 31, 2008

• Head of the Class

  Nashville’s earnest new mayor is willing to try something different to fix schools

  January 31, 2008

• Funds Times

  Lobbyists take moral high ground, guard billfolds from politicians

  November 8, 2007

• Five O’Clock Fashion

  Aides ape Dean’s shadow

  October 4, 2007

• Love-Hate Mail

  September 13, 2007

• A Scene Exclusive

  August 30, 2007

• Yankee Doodle Dean

  Karl Dean is the third in a string of nerdy underdogs from the Northeast bidding for Nashville’s top office

  August 30, 2007

• Advice Priced Right

  What Would the Queer Eye Guys—and Dick Morris—Tell Clement and Dean?

  August 23, 2007

• Angry Bob Clement’s 15 More Ideas

  They just keep coming from deep in the candidate’s id

  August 16, 2007

• ‘40 Days and 40 Nights’

  Bob Clement compares himself to Jesus while Karl Dean plays rope-a-dope

  August 16, 2007

• Post-Election Palaver

  On David Briley and the at-large field

  August 9, 2007

• Inclement Bob

  Black leaders warn Clement attacks may backfire in the mayoral runoff

  August 9, 2007

• Big Mo in Mayor’s Race

  As Clement falters, Dean rises on strength of TV ads

  July 26, 2007

• Hot Summer Fabricator Roundup

  July 12, 2007

• Love-Hate Mail

  July 12, 2007

• Dean Schools Opponents

  July 5, 2007

• Friends of Karl

  Do lawyers give to Dean just because he’s a great guy?

  July 5, 2007

• Anybody But Bob

  Should Dean or Briley drop out to save day the for progressives?

  June 21, 2007

• Howard’s End

  Lukewarm support from black preachers could doom Gentry’s candidacy

  May 24, 2007

• Money Chase

  Can anyone compete with Clement in TV ad wars?

  April 12, 2007

• Dean and Briley Make Things More Interesting

  October 26, 2006

• The Jury's In

  Report finds Council chumming with Bud Adams wasn’t improper

  March 16, 2000

• A New Bill Appears

  February 27, 2003

• Mayor Asks Legislature to Expand Charter Schools

  Mayor Karl Dean came to the legislature this morning to plead for expanding the number of children who can attend charter schools. Under present law, failing students or students who attend failing schools are eligible. Additionally, at-risk students in grades K-3 can attend, but their numbers are limited to 25 percent of enrollment. A bill by Rep. Beth Harwell, R-Nashville, would expand eligibility to any child receiving federally subsidized lunches, which in Nashville is 70 percent of the kids

  April 29, 2009

• Senate Passes Charter Schools Expansion

  With Mayor Karl Dean lobbying for it, the Senate voted 22-7 this morning to expand charter schools in Tennessee. Under the bill, which escaped a House subcommittee yesterday, nearly three-quarters of Nashville's students would become eligible to attend charter schools. Under present law, only failing students or students who attend failing schools are eligible, along with a limited number of at-risk kids in grades K-3. Dean says the city's failing system could use a couple dozen charter schools

  May 7, 2009

• Mayor's Office Still in Denial About Convention Center Hotel

  Mayor Dean's trip to Gulf Shores takes an unexpected turn for the worst.Mayor Karl Dean introduced his capital spending plan the other day. And I know you're all thinking C'mon Pith, bore us to tears with all the brain-freeze-inducing details! But no, we're not gonna do that. Because giving you what you want will only make you grow large and blood-thirsty, like the venus fly-trap from Little Shop of Horrors. (Seyyyyyyymour!) So instead, we're just going to point out that the convention center

  June 11, 2009

• Karl Dean "Voted" Against May Town Center Rezoning?

  Before last week's planning commission vote on the May Town rezoning there was some public kvetching that Mayor Karl Dean was sitting out the whole controversy, refusing to weigh in on the biggest county land use issue in many years, if not decades. Writing in the City Paper, for instance, Liz Garrigan described Dean's public sentiments on the issue as "vague, noncommittal, muddy." And perhaps they were -- until last Thursday's vote. It's easy to forget that by virtue of Metro Charter chapte

  July 1, 2009

• Mayor Makes Another Move to Calm Furor Over MP&F

  ​In another attempt to calm the PR storm created by the PR masterminds at McNeely, Pigott & Fox, the mayor is calling for the creation of a new entity within Metro Government to oversee the development of Nashville's new downtown convention center. MDHA shamed itself by letting MP&F rip off the city for a half-million dollars, so what we need is another government entity under the thumb of Karl Dean to handle this situation, right? "While the process of forming the Convention Center Aut

  August 10, 2009

• Mayor Dean Aims to Derail Referendum on Convention Center

  You've got to get up pretty early in the morning to outsmart this guy.​We don't often agree with Eric Crafton but we think he's onto something with his latest claims about the new convention center. It takes a veteran conspiracy theorist like Crafton to wrap his brain around this little game of Mayor Karl Dean's, so follow closely now. It looks like Dean hopes to finance the project with revenue bonds, even though the debt service would run the city $10 million more than general obligation bo

  August 12, 2009

• Channel 5 vs. MP&F: A Clash of Titans

  The fearsome NewsChannel5 has McNeely Pigott & Fox squarely in its sights. First, investigative reporter Ben Hall attacked MP&F for gouging the city for a half-million dollars for flacking for the new convention center. That was a nice scoop, although it was a little strange that Hall was the reporter. He was the press secretary for Bob Clement in the mayoral campaign won by Karl Dean with help from MP&F, which has hated Clement dating back to the time he beat Phil Bredesen for Congress. Anyw

  August 18, 2009

• Convention Center Discourse: Puffy and Creative

  ​As the Dean administration edges toward unveiling a financing package for the proposed new convention center and accompanying hotel, pro-Music City Center forces are escalating their propaganda. In the last few days, for instance, we have seen an extraordinarily puffy Tennessean op-ed piece by Music City Center Coalition vice-chair Sam Howard, as well as an exceptionally creative claim about public support by the mayor's finance chief. We start with some choice morsels from the Howard op-ed:

  October 8, 2009

• Best of Nashville 2009: People, Places & Events

  October 15, 2009

• Council members feel the burn as the Music City Center fight heats up

  November 5, 2009

• Morning Roundup: Mayor Announces Steps Toward More Charter Schools

  Mayor Karl Dean tells the SouthComm editorial staff he intends to start a charter-school incubator to get more such schools underway in Nashville.... A suspicious cooler was found downtown this morning.... More H1N1 vaccines are available for free starting today.... Some drunken asshole who can't behave himself is causing the city to have to kill his dogs.... Nashvillians won't get to vote on the new convention center.... Who would be brazen enough to steal from the Fraternal Order of Police? A

  November 10, 2009

• New Music City Center Narrative: No Hotel and Who Needs One Anyway?

  The key message Mayor Karl Dean and his finance director Rich Riebeling tried to send in today's unveiling of a financing plan for a new convention center can be summed up in 10 words: no hotel for now and we don't need one anyway. Flanked by wingmen from Goldman Sachs (the bond underwriters), HVS (the consulting firm that has produced demand and revenue estimates) and Bass, Berry & Sims (the city's bond counsel), Dean and Riebeling told a joint meeting of two Metro Council committees that

  December 3, 2009