Most weeks, fervent Metro government observer @startleseasily recaps the bimonthly Metro Council meetings with her column "On First Reading."Â Startles is taking the week off, so Scene staffer Eli Motycka has filed a substitute column in her stead. Startles will return in two weeks.
In Metro Council world, substitutes are a part of life. Sometimes hostile, sometimes friendly, they’re meant to be good-faith alternatives to legislation. This week, Nicole "@startleseasily" Williams is enjoying some respite from the Historic Metro Courthouse, and I’m filing a substitute in her place. With much respect to the Scene’s 2021 Best Local Government Obsessive, I start by briefly acknowledging Vice Mayor Jim Shulman’s dais, where a sewn tomato pin cushion smiled down on the chamber.
Working on the Relationship
Mayor John Cooper started off the night with a brief address and a letter. His relationship with the legislative body, where he previously served as an at-large member, has been strained at times this term — members cite late-filed amendments (where Cooper is an outlier among predecessors), spotty communication and pressure to rush deliberative processes, like council approval for April’s acquisition of the Global Mall. Tuesday found Cooper making a concerted effort to communicate, the key to many successful relationships. He spoke to the council about Metro’s new neighborhood improvement tracker, which Cooper offered as concrete results of financial stabilization, and praised government principles of transparency and accountability. “Over the past couple of years we have worked together to get our city finances in order, and we’ve made sometimes difficult decisions that have stabilized Metro’s fiscal standing,” Cooper said to the body. “I think we’re starting to reap the benefits of those decisions.” He also touted Hub Nashville and shouted out improvements in pothole turnaround and litter pickup.
In a letter that followed, Cooper notified councilmembers of the $610 million general obligation bonds sought by Metro. That debt is backed by the city’s general fund, and a notification is customary per the state comptroller.
2026 Vision
Council formally adopted a new 2022-2026 Vision Zero plan, the city’s blueprint for improving street safety for pedestrians and cyclists. Years of planning and researching and strategizing come alongside dozens of deaths, particularly along already-identified dangerous corridors like Gallatin Avenue, Murfreesboro Pike and Nolensville Road. Two councilmembers who have made Vision Zero their business split on the vote. Angie Henderson took a (largely symbolic) vote against the plan, telling the floor that it lacked clarity and effectiveness, a nominal improvement on the city’s existing plan. Mayoral candidate Freddie O’Connell called it too much talk and not enough action, taking aim at the mayor’s office, which quarterbacked the new plan.
“I expect us to be a vision zero city, given the number of cycling and pedestrian deaths, and the curve is moving in the wrong direction,” O’Connell said on the floor. “We are still not resolving our dangerous intersections.” He cited overdue improvements to Korean Veterans Boulevard, Eighth Avenue South and Demonbreun Hill, using the vote to make a point about the administration’s lacking sense of urgency with regard to pedestrian and cycling safety. O’Connell will challenge Cooper in next year’s mayoral election. “What we need is not the vision, we need the action.” O’Connell ended as a “reluctant yes,” and the plan was adopted. Notably, the plan sets a goal of no roadway deaths by 2050. Read it here.Â
Sorting Garbage
Trash woes became a point of debate following a study proposed by Councilmember Jonathan Hall. The legislation sought to identify better locations for trash transfer stations across the city, prompting questions about the real chokepoint in Nashville’s disposal chain (landfills, according to other councilmembers) and the potential impact of such a study on nearby real estate. Though Nashville is largely out of its Red River days, missed routes have been reported recently in Districts 5, 26 and 29.Â
Cloud Forecast
After council passed a legislative framework that will/could/might govern the use of license plate readers back in the winter, two ordinances moved forward Tuesday that attempt to further regulate the use of automatically collected data. One passed on second reading, preventing the use of LPR tech to assist in enforcing laws related to the criminalization of abortion care. The second, excluding LPR data from being used in immigration enforcement, passed on third reading. While council nobly tries to draw lines around digital privacy, the genie may already be out of the bottle. LPR data is a mess of overlapping jurisdictions and potentially hostile federal and state law enforcement agencies. By the time cameras get up and running, it’s not clear what authority the city will have over the information its cameras collect.
In Harmony
Joy Styles withdrew her ordinance seeking to create the Nashville Entertainment Commission. She had been legislatively competing with Councilmember Jeff Syracuse to create a Metro harbor for the city’s entertainment industry. Tuesday’s move signals a collaborative way forward. The mayor's office helped broker the deal, part of its ongoing efforts to establish an Office of Music, Film and Entertainment.
“It pains me to have to withdraw it, but we don’t engage in personality politics and are more focused on doing legislation that helps constituents,” said Styles.
Armistice at Sutton Hill
Legislation from Green Hills Councilmember Russ Pulley enshrined contextual setbacks into law, a nod to an ongoing fight among constituents at Sutton Hill Road. Neighbors pushed back against a legally allowable setback that clashed with neighboring homes, creating a small crisis for the city’s zoning administrator when neighbors’ opposition was held up on appeal over written law.
