at Goodlettsville City Hall
Zach Young was tested beyond his years even before he was elected to the Goodlettsville City Commission at age 20.
A few weeks before Young graduated high school in 2010, his stepfather had a heart attack and died in the middle of the night. Young has a relationship with his biological father as well, but says he was also very close with his stepfather.
“I was lucky; I had two father figures in my life,” he tells the Scene, sitting in an office at City Hall in Goodlettsville, one of Metro’s satellite cities, which sits to the northeast straddling the Davidson-Sumner county line.
After graduation, he enrolled at Belmont University to study journalism and public relations, and he says he loved it. But a year later, his mother was diagnosed with advanced breast cancer. (She’s currently participating in a clinical trial at Vanderbilt.) Young stayed in school but lived with his mom — to help her at home and accompany her to the doctor. He says he quickly realized that he couldn’t do both. So he withdrew from Belmont and enrolled part time at Volunteer State Community College. And soon after, with three seats opening up on the city commission in 2012, he decided to run.
“Serving Goodlettsville was always something I thought would be something I want to do,” Young says. It runs in the family, too. His great-uncle was the first police and fire chief of Goodlettsville.
Young describes himself as “very progressive,” and will be knocking on doors for Mary Mancini’s state Senate campaign. At home, he hasn’t hesitated to rock the boat a bit. Late last year, he fought a Goodlettsville ordinance effectively banning sales of The Contributor, the street newspaper sold largely by homeless vendors. It was a fight he eventually lost, and he didn’t hide his disappointment.
“It really weighed on my heart a lot last night as I laid down to go to sleep,” he told the Scene the morning after the final vote.
He also tried last year to expand the non-discrimination policy for city employees, but says the effort didn’t get any traction.
“In Goodlettsville we have city employees that are of the LGBT persuasion, but yet we don’t have a policy to protect them,” he says. “And that concerns me.”
Those aren’t the only ways he wants to move the city forward. Young says he wants to convene a group of citizens and elected officials to come up with a strategic plan for Goodlettsville’s future, to determine where they see the city in 20 years and what they need to do to get there.
“Middle Tennessee in the next 20 to 30 years is about to explode,” he says, “and if we miss that train, then we’re done for.”
