By Peter White NASHVILLE, TN – He’s one of the biggest developers in Nashville and he’s building on some of the priciest real estate in town and doesn’t plan on stopping anytime soon. He isn’t Bert Mathews or Tony Giarratana. They are small fish compared to Jim Harbison, the Executive Director of Metropolitan Development and Housing Agency (MDHA). Harbison is the big kahuna when it come to new affordable housing in Nashville. He’s got 11 of 20 public housing properties already converted into a federal program called the Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) with nine more to follow by the end…
Author: Article submitted
By Peter White NASHVILLE, TN — The trouble started when a brown-skinned man who wears a turban thought he could play with the good old boys who run this town. His name is Devinder Singh Sandhu and he met with Karl Dean in 2014 about turning Greer Stadium into a soccer facility. Sandhu met with Mayor Megan Barry in February 2017 to get her support for his idea and she told him to give it his best shot but they were going to let developers have the Greer Stadium property. And they did. It looked like Sandhu’s long-held dream died…
By Peter White NASHVILLE, TN – Two new plans have surfaced amidst the swirling controversy about what to do with the old Greer Stadium parcel in Fort Negley Park. Both plans take a “parks only” approach to the site where three thousand former slaves built a union fort and where hundreds of them died from disease and exposure in the winter of 1862. One plan would build a sports complex on the footprint of the old stadium and develop land next to the park. The other would tear down the stadium and return it to the park as green space.…
By Peter White NASHVILLE, TN – A coalition of community groups says Nashville can be saved if the airport expansion project uses union labor and Community Benefits Agreements. People from Stand Up Nashville met in the historic Mount Zion Baptist church last Thursday to talk about getting better economic opportunities for residents in Nashville’s six Promise Zones. Promise Zone is an euphemism for a pocket of poverty and high crime in the “It” city where people do not live lives of quiet desperation. They are too busy trying to survive. Think about “Escape From New York”, the Hollywood movie set…
By Peter White NASHVILLE, TN – It was a dark and stormy night last Thursday when the remnants of Hurricane Harvey came to town. Beginning around 6 pm tornado warnings wailed and sirens shrieked as heavy rains lashed the region and creeks quickly swelled beyond their banks. It could have been much worse. Harvey brought more than 50 inches of rain to some parts of Houston last week. Nashville got less than 2 inches. However, the National Weather Service (NWS) reported a tornado hit near Bordeaux at around 1130 pm CDT Thursday night . “It traveled to the northwest and…
By Peter White NASHVILLE, TN – Cheatham County District Attorney Ray Crouch is submitting evidence to a grand jury that meets Tuesday, September 5. They will decide whether or not to file criminal charges against Anthony Townsend and his two sons for intimidating and harassing people who wanted to visit the Bell Town cemetery. Underlying the alleged criminal acts is a land dispute about whether, or under what circumstances, a private landowner can take or control a public right of way. The most recent troubles began more than a year ago. In June 2016 Kenneth Joyce and Jeffrey Crutcher went…
By Peter White NASHVILLE, TN – Three members of the NAACP Nashville Branch delivered some really bad news to the city’s Budget and Finance committee last week: after almost ten years, the city has still not kept its promise to increase the number of contracts awarded to black-owned businesses. “Metro has not lived up to its responsibility,” said Alex Coure, spokesman for the NAACP’s economic development committee. Coure said the city’s 2008 nondiscrimination procurement program has failed to create opportunities for minority businesses since its inception. ”You did the disparity study in 2002 that ended in 2004. You passed legislation…
By Peter White NASHVILLE, TN – Civil Asset Forfeiture is when the police take your stuff and you have to pay to get it back even though you did no wrong. It’s big business. According to the Department of Justice, cops took $407 million from people they were sworn to protect and serve in 2001. By 2012, the seizures increased to $4.3 billion. Law enforcement agencies are addicted to taking people’s cash, cars, boats, houses, and business property. They know they should stop but can’t. Police started taking things in 1984 to help fight the War on Drugs and soon…
By Peter White NASHVILLE, TN – Budget and Finance Committee meetings are not usually like watching a Predator’s hockey game. But there was hardly a dull moment at City Hall last Monday afternoon. The meeting went long. At one point Vice-Mayor David Briley interrupted the crowded council chambers to tell everyone to get on with it because they were holding things up. What they were holding up was a presentation by a group headed by Bert Mathews about their plan to tear down Greer Stadium and develop the 21 acres of Fort Negley Park into residential, commercial, and retail properties.…
By Peter White NASHVILLE, TN – It’s called STEM or STEAM and its how today’s middle-school kids are getting ready to work the high-paying high-tech jobs that are out there just waiting to be filled. To that end, Metro schools just signed a five-year contract with Discovery Education to overhaul the curricula in all 33 Metro middle schools. STEAM stands for science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics. “Metro Nashville has a big achievement gap between the rich kids and the poor kids,” says Dr. Cindy Moss. “I personally believe the achievement gap is something we’ve created. It’s really all about…