Western Nashville Community Plan and Sidewalks Too

On Thursday, we kick of the long awaited Western Nashville Community Plan. (Senator Henry has called me out more than once for referring to this part of town as "West Nashville." West Nashville was a separate community where the Nations, Sylvan Park and Sylvan Heights is now located. It was swallowed up the City of Nashville and Metro. So to avoid confusion for you history buffs I shall bow to the greater wisdom of my favorite Tennessee State Senator.)

For those of you who don't following the ins and outs of Planning and Zoning, a Community Plan is essentially a guidebook for future zoning decisions. For the uninitiated, it is important to know what a community plan is and what it isn't. A community plan tells professional planners, the Metro Planning Commission, developers and property owners what the collective expectation is with respect to how their neighborhoods will grow, develop and change. The Community Plan will not tell you what stores will come to our community or whether they will have brick or stone facades. It won't tell you if the houses being built will be ranch or Tudor or modern. It will tell you where those stores should be located and whether the houses are on big lots or small lots.

If you live in West Meade and you are in the Natural Conservation land use policy we developed last year, we will not be revisiting that part of the plan. It will be folded into the final community plan documents.

So, here is the schedule. All meetings are from 6-8 pm at 5101 Charlotte Avenue

Thursday October 30 @ St Ann's Catholic Church
Kick Off Meeting

This is not to be missed. The kick-off meeting will be the first opportunity to discuss the issues facing our community. Planning is well aware of the concerns and issues you have raised to me personally, on listservs and at other community meetings. But, this is a great opportunity to delve into those things more deeply and raise concerns that Planning may not know about.

Monday Nov 3 @ St Ann's Catholic Church
Visioning Workshop

The visioning workshop will be an opportunity to roll up your sleeves and talk about what changes you see for our neighborhoods and how they should come about. (And yes, in some cases, that means no change).

Monday December 8 @ St Ann's Catholic Church
Concept Plan

Based on the issues you raise in the kick-off meeting and the visioning workshop, a concept plan will be produced by Planning. This meeting is your opportunity to kick it around and express your opinion. Planning usually puts all phases of the plan on the website so if you are unable to make a meeting you can email or phone in your comments.

Tuesday January 18 @ St Ann's Catholic Church
Community Character Draft 1

Once we have kicked around the concept plan, Planning will develop a more concrete draft of the Community Plan. So this meeting is another opportunity to kick things around with a bit more detail and specifics.

Monday February 2 @ St Ann's Catholic Church
Community Character Draft 2

More kicking around

Monday March 2 @ St Ann's Catholic Church
Wrap-up Meeting

This is an opportunity to review one more time the plan and address any final issues.

Monday March 30 @ TBA
Southern Neighborhoods Open House

As you have requested, I have asked that the Community Plan incorporate planned sidewalks and bikepaths. We are very lucky that the Sidewalk and Bikepath plan was recently updated and can be found here. This new plan adopts a slightly different deployment of data to determine where sidewalks will be located. You will notice however, that there is no information about where those sidewalks will actually be built. Since sidewalks and bikepaths are so important I have asked Public Works to apply the data in a manner consist with the update and tell us where we can expect them. They will not be able to tell us when those sidewalks will get built, just where they will go when they do get built. You guys can kick around those findings to make sure they make sense in the real world in which we live and then Planning will incorporate them into the Community Plan.

Early Voting Starts Wednesday!

Each time we have an election that includes charter amendments, I am often asked to describe their merits. This year (thankfully) we only have two to consider.

The first amendment pertains to when the budget is delivered to Metro Council and the public. The wording is a little difficult but basically it says that the Mayor will deliver to Council (and hence the public) no later than May 1 the operating budget for the next fiscal year.

The background: Prior to 2006, the Metro operating budget was delivered on May 25th. Since our fiscal year ends on June 30 and since the Mayor's budget will become law if Council fails to pass an alternative by that date, Council had about 5 weeks to consider how we spend $1.5 billion dollars. This program worked well from 1963 until 2006 when Council got irritated and sponsored a charter amendment to move the date back to March 25.

The upside was that Council now had over 3 months to consider the budget. The downside was that Metro Finance had to predict revenues with more lead time. The longer lead time worked OK for FY08 but FY09 may prove to be a bit gamier. Shared state revenues have fallen faster than the Dow Jones Industrial Average and we are now in a downward spiral few predicted with any accuracy. Bottom line: it doesn't help to have more time for Council to consider the budget if the information they are considering is inaccurate. So, moving the date to May 1 won't do any harm and it may do some good.

The second amendment pertains to term limits for Council members that serve to complete the unexpired term of another resigned or deceased council member. This amendment also clarifies that the office of Councilmember-at-large and District Councilmember are two different offices. Since this amendment may affect me personally, I won't express an opinion but I will tell you why we are even having this debate.

As some people interpret term limit law, two terms does not necessarily mean two full terms. Others (including, as I understand it a court of law) say that an unexpired term of another elected official does not count as a term. So we have a lack or clarity that Council has asked the voters to fix. Vote no if you think that two terms means one term plus any part of another term. Vote yes if you think two terms means two full four year term.

Just let me know if you have any questions.