Another local builder is challenging Metro’s practice of requiring infrastructure improvements before granting project permits.

In a complaint filed last month in Davidson County Chancery Court, Fair Lane Properties contends that Metro’s requirement that it pave two alleys and the street in front of its Edgehill-area residential project was unconstitutional. According to the complaint, the work cost more than $69,000, and the company is seeking a return of the costs and a court declaration that the permitting demands are unconstitutional.

The company built four million-dollar homes on Alloway Street.

The developer’s lawyer, Dominick Smith, has represented builders seeking to recoup sidewalk costs incurred under a policy since thrown out by a federal appeals court. The Alloway project already has recouped its sidewalk costs, he said.

The other permitting conditions are “unconstitutional for the exact same reasons,” he said.

“Metro is always trying to see what they can squeeze [and] get them to do,” Smith said, calling Metro’s permitting regime “the Wild West.”

The newly filed case echoes the complaints of another developer, which sued Metro in federal court in September. In that case, a company alleges that it was forced to replace a waterline as part of Metro’s “extortionate” permitting regime.

Though Metro has declined to comment on the cases, city lawyers filed a response in the federal case last week. In the filing, Metro denied that any of its requirements were unconstitutional and reiterated that the expanded waterline was necessary for modern fire protection needs.

“The conduct and actions of all Metro officials regarding the issuance of the building permit that is the subject of this complaint were objectively reasonable and justified under the circumstances,” Metro lawyers wrote.

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Metro is planning its first significant work at the Global Mall at the Crossings since purchasing it for $44 million.

The city has decided to demolish the mall — leaving the four anchor buildings standing — partly due to water damage, Metro Chief Development Officer Bob Mendes told the Banner.

When then-Mayor John Cooper announced plans to buy the mall and lease part of it to Vanderbilt University Medical Center, the main structure of the facility could have been used to house the medical offices. But VUMC ultimately backed out — in part because of negotiations over the roof — and plans for the site since then have not included use of the main structure, Mendes said.

“Every version of a master plan or vision for the mall involves the interior being gone, and it is in poor condition right now,” Mendes said. “The four anchor buildings are completely fine, but the interior portion has water intrusion that is significant and appears to be deteriorating. … Since the interior needs to come down at some point anyway, we’re going ahead and looking at what the pricing and timing would be to demolish the interior.”

Mendes opposed the acquisition when he was a member of the Metro Council, in part because he said the deal was “loaded with unknown cost.” Now, some of those costs are becoming apparent. Around $4.5 million secured in a past capital spending plan should be more than enough to pay for the demolition, Mendes said, and the administration is planning to increase the Global Mall line item on the capital improvements budget from $40 million to $75 million. (Funding for projects in the CIB must be allocated separately, so including the line item does not mean the city will spend that money on the mall next year.)

A master plan for the mall site is currently being developed, and Mendes said it should be presented to the Planning Commission by the end of the summer.

Metro Councilmember Joy Styles, whose District 32 includes the mall, told the Banner this week that she is fine with the demolition because it’s “what we were going to do anyway.”

She said she supports the general framework unveiled in August, including child care, housing for artists, park space and other amenities. Earlier this month, she told WKRN she was “utterly livid” at the prospect of moving a public health clinic to the property. Speaking with the Banner in March, she shut down any discussion of affordable housing at the Metro-owned property.

“I don’t want to hear about what the whole city wants for my district,” Styles said in March. “I want to know what my community wants for our district.”

But the O’Connell administration views the project differently.  

“Hopefully there’s agreement that, after the city has invested $45 million so far on a 70-acre mall, it’s clearly an asset for the city,” Mendes said this week. “It will need to work for the southeast part of the county, but it’s clearly an asset for the whole county.”

Mayor Freddie O’Connell picked the property’s library and community center as the site of his transit referendum announcement last week, and a WeGo transit hub will also one day help anchor the property. The goal, Mendes said, is for “private development partners to pay for as much of [the infrastructure costs] as possible, like we’ve done on the East Bank, but we need the CIB to reflect a more realistic value of the infrastructure needs at the mall.”

Styles responded that she is “looking forward to holding the administration accountable to the community plan that has already been presented and figuring out if there are additional needs and wants that can be supported.”

The post Demolition Planned for Former Hickory Hollow Mall Site appeared first on Nashville Banner.

When Metro was founded, one of the charter’s core principles was a system of boards and commissioners to help govern the city. Unlike the Metro Council or the mayor’s office — or the paid bureaucracy that works for Metro — these positions are volunteer in nature. 

As the rancor of the last year for the Metro Arts Commission has demonstrated, “volunteer” does not equate to “controversy-free.” But as the Metro Council is learning, changing the way boards are appointed is not without peril, either, and one proposed fix is being changed by its sponsor before even being introduced. 

District 30 Councilmember Sandra Sepulveda has introduced and since announced that she will defer BL2024-303, which would require board and commission members to file the same financial disclosures filed by councilmembers, the mayor and Metro staff. After receiving significant blowback from commissioners, she told the Banner that she intended the legislation to be a conversation starting point, and never intended for volunteer board and commission members to go through the same process as elected officials.

“Someone suggested that I do it just for boards and commissions who approve money, loans and all that so it makes more sense,” said Sepulveda. The goal is to create more transparency, to ensure that people are not voting on things where they have a conflict of interest. 

But it’s a delicate balance. 

“While I am completely on board with trying to ensure that our boards and commissions are as economically diverse as they are based on gender and race, I just don’t think that we will cause people to want to serve if we start digging into their personal finances,” said Davidson County Clerk Brenda Wynn. “My husband’s on a board. My daughter-in-law is on a board. I just don’t think it’s fair to ask people what they make. Especially if you’re not paying them.”

One option is to ask appointees if they have any financial connections to organizations relevant to the work they will do on the board or commission. This could easily be integrated into the current vetting process. 

“If I understand this bill correctly, I think it’s well intended,” said Robert Davidson, who sits on the convention center authority. “I agree with board members being transparent. They should disclose certainly any kind of conflict of interest, any kind of financial self-dealing.”

That said, Davidson also worried that the bill in its current form would discourage people from serving on boards and commissions and could even lead to mass resignations. 

“I would be likely to step down from my board position rather than do this because it just exposes a lot of personal and family information that I don’t feel like you know, is relevant or appropriate for a volunteer board position,” said Payton Bradford, who sits on the zoning appeals board. 

The volunteer nature of boards has been essential since Metro’s inception.

“When they were putting together the charter and figuring out how to govern different entities and agencies, the thought was that you really want citizen government involvement,” said Dewey Branstetter, whose father, Cecil Branstetter, was instrumental in the creation of the Metro Charter and voluntary boards and commissions. “You don’t want to have paid bureaucrats doing everything.”

According to the latest boards and commissions dashboard on the Metro website, Nashville has 70 active boards and commissions. Each body has anywhere from five to 18 members, totaling 636 seats, with 573 filled as of March. Just about every aspect of life in the city has a conjunctive board or commission. Whether it’s art, beer, zoning, education, farmers markets or wastewater, there is an authoritative body making decisions that have an impact on everyday life. 

Many consider the voluntary aspect to be vital. The idea is that rather than a paid staffer or an elected official making every decision about life in the city, some decisions should be left up to citizens. Rather than an engineer solely deciding on how a road should be built, advocates say that requiring a commission’s approval brings the issue closer to the community, allowing for more input from the neighbors. 

“It’s the place where the feelings of the community are most quickly delivered in a focused area of concern,” former Mayor Bill Purcell told the Banner. “And I don’t think it’s too much to say that it really extends democracy within the city. The city couldn’t run without boards and commissions.”

Recent controversies have put board and commission membership under a microscope. Not only has the situation at the Arts Commission led to calls for more in-depth vetting to ensure members don’t have ties to organizations that could pose a conflict of interest, but it has also led many to advocate for appointing more working-class people. But it’s not as simple as just making a nomination: you have to find someone willing and able to put in the hours first. 

“A lot of people won’t put their name up because they can’t meet those hours,” said Sepulveda, who chairs the Rules Confirmations and Public Elections Committee. “If you’re meeting in the middle of the day, during the week, you will only have a certain type of people that are able to participate.”

Depending on the board or commission, the time commitment could be anywhere from a few hours per month to dozens of hours weekly. One arts commissioner at a recent meeting said he had spent nearly 50 hours trying to better understand the situation over the past week. For most working-class people, that just isn’t feasible on a volunteer basis. 

“Any time commitment at all, to someone who doesn’t have a flexible job, that’s asking a lot,” said Ellen Angelico, who briefly chaired the Metro Arts Commission before resigning in 2023. “From my perspective, you either have to minimize the commitment of the volunteers, which means you need to have a really well-oiled machine where the volunteers are getting a really complete look at all the information and being able to make informed decisions. Or you have to have paid people and then everybody’s staff.”

Boards and commissions largely play an oversight role, making bigger-picture departmental decisions while paid staff do the day-to-day work. However, trying to make well-informed decisions isn’t always the most straightforward task, especially when there are problems within the department itself. Add in the fact that board and commission meetings must adhere to both the Tennessee Public Records Act and Roberts Rules of Order — complicated ways to operate for someone not used to the spotlight public officials deal with — volunteers sometimes don’t realize what they’re getting into. 

“I just kind of got in there and started asking questions and started trying to get the vibe,” said Angelico. 

Outside of some boilerplate HR and Ethics training, board and commission members receive little in the way of an orientation. 

“I wish that I had just been handed a book to read about the history of the department and the different types of projects that we work on,” said Angelico. “I am an enterprising person, and I went and found a lot of that information myself. But I know not every commissioner has the ability to do that or chooses to do that… Plug the bylaws into ChatGPT, ask it to put them at a 6th-grade reading level.”

Other current board and commission members the Banner spoke with agreed that some form of commission-specific orientation likely would have made their jobs easier. But implementing such a thing becomes more complicated. If volunteer members are the unifier that connects all boards and commissions, then just about everything else disconnects them: Size, authority, meeting frequency and member requirements all set boards and commissions apart from one another. 

“They’re not uniform,” said Sepulveda. “Some of them have over 10 members and then some have five members. Maybe if there was more uniformity, it would be easier to get a handle on.”

In the meantime, Councilmembers are trying to use the current vetting process to ensure prospective appointees are prepared for their roles. 

The mayor has historically appointed board and commission members, but as of 2023, the Metro Council also makes appointments . When someone is nominated for a seat, they first go before the Metro Council Rules, Confirmations and Public Elections Committee. That committee is responsible for interviewing the prospective candidate before either sending them off to the Metro Council with a positive recommendation for approval or a negative one. 

Outside of the Rules Committee, there is no formal vetting process. And while the Mayor’s office has staff devoted to vetting candidates, when the council makes a nomination, members are responsible for vetting. 

“I don’t expect everyone to know everything, but I expect them to have a general idea of what to expect,” said Sepulveda, who chairs the Rules Committee. At a recent meeting, the approval of a Metro Arts Commission nominee was deferred when committee members didn’t feel he had a full understanding of the issues at play. 

While the situation at the Arts Commission has been a wake-up call for some that change is needed, the next few months may see just how much the volunteer concept can be tested.

“The kind of people you want on boards and commissions are folks who don’t have to do it, who it’s not a financial benefit for them, but they want to do it because it’s something good for the communities,” said Branstetter. “You make that harder [and] you will run those people off and make it harder to get true citizen involvement that I think was the whole purpose behind why we have volunteer boards and commissions.”

The post How Does Metro Change Boards and Commissions? Very Carefully appeared first on Nashville Banner.

Editor’s note: This story is one in a number of neighborhood and localized issues facing district council members the Banner will cover in the run up to the Aug. 3 election.

Rhiannon Guillet had enough. By the summer of 2020, she and her family had seen any number of instances that made her Wedgewood-Houston street dangerous: accidents, speeding, drag races and more. All she wanted was for the street to be safe enough for her and her two small children to enjoy.

But getting a speed bump installed might be a more complicated process than Nashvillians would imagine. Guillet and her kids masked up in the middle of the pandemic and gathered signatures on a petition for Nashville Department of Transportation to implement calming measures. And while Guillet says her neighbors were enthusiastic about the idea, when it came time for approval by NDOT, her neighborhood was not found to need traffic calming. 

The process has gone through several changes in the past year, one of the most significant being the elimination of the petition process Guillet went through that put most of the onus on residents to get projects approved. But while it’s been streamlined, for parents in neighborhoods waiting for traffic calming, their projects can’t come fast enough. 

“We were told basically we had to have enough accidents on our street before we could get traffic calming,” Guillet tells the Banner. Guillet and her neighbors were so desperate to make their neighborhood safe, they even joked about intentionally getting into accidents in order to be approved for traffic calming. Guillet and her husband, who works in construction, went so far as to begin the process of getting speed bumps installed on their own, before running into liability issues. 

“It is kind of a proactive program and a reactive [one] at the same time because we are using existing data,” says Jason Oldham, the interim chief engineer at NDOT. “But if we don’t do something, we know what we’re going to get in the next five or 10 years.”

When NDOT goes out to collect data on a street that has applied for traffic calming, the department looks at a number of factors: accidents, fatalities, injuries and speeding to name a few. Every year, 50 streets are selected from the pool that applied to receive traffic calming. Oldham explains that streets are prioritized based on risk — while a street could have some concerning speeding taking place, if there are 50 streets with worse issues than that one, it will not receive traffic calming. 

NDOT could soon be able to double its traffic-calming output, expanding the number of streets it can prioritize. Part of the budget surplus, which will make its way through the Metro Council in June, doubles the amount of money allocated to NDOT for traffic calming. 

“I think the challenge is with this program, every time we get 50 streets done, we got 50 new streets that are entering the program, and we already have close to 500 streets that are sitting in the program,” says Oldham. But he hopes with additional funding, along with a few more innovations, they can continue to speed up the program. 

In 2022, Guillet’s neighborhood tried again, this time with success. NDOT had overhauled the process since their first attempt, switching to a ballot system and doing away with the petitions. Residents now apply for traffic calming, and if officials deem the street dangerous and in need of traffic-calming measures, a series of community meetings is held, followed by a vote in which property owners are given a say in the measures. Until recently, a company owning multiple parcels got one vote for each parcel, but the policy has been changed so that all parties get one vote no matter the number of parcels they own. 

In October, after being approved for traffic calming, Guillet’s neighborhood voted 80 percent in favor of the measure, passing the two-thirds threshold needed. The project was completed in April. 

Oldham estimates that currently, from the moment someone applies for traffic calming to the moment the project is finished, it takes about a year. He tells the Banner that this is in part due to a large backlog of projects from the old petition system, and he believes they can get that period down to eight months. 

But term-limited District 17 Councilmember Colby Sledge thinks it can be done even faster. Throughout his two terms, he has been involved with the traffic calming process in its different iterations, and says he is happy with the improvements that have been made to the process. While the traffic calming process rules are departmental and not voted on by council, Sledge has served as a link between his district and NDOT. He was a loud voice against the rule allowing companies multiple votes in the traffic calming ballot if they owned multiple parcels. 

It’s one of dozens of ways councilmembers have influence outside of the Council chamber voting on bills.

Right now six months of the process is spent on data collection, community engagement and the ballot process. Sledge believes that NDOT should do away with the ballot process altogether. 

“If they know that the road is lending itself toward people speeding, then we [have got to] fix it,” says Sledge. “We don’t vote on whether we fix it or not. We can have a community that says we’re going to fix this because it’s a problem, it’s inducing speeds that are higher than the limit. We can have that community conversation, but it needs to start from a point of ‘we are going to be doing something here.’” 

Sledge also pointed out that renters do not get a say in the process, which he said is “inherently inequitable.”

While Guillet’s street voted in favor of traffic calming, not all streets pass. One example is Rosedale Avenue, which in February received 63 percent positive votes for a project from Nolensville Pike to Rosehaven Drive. When a measure fails, a street that has been determined by NDOT to be a safety risk does not receive traffic calming. 

“To me, we need to be passionate about whether or not we’re going to make the streets safer,” says Sledge. 

The post Slowing Down Neighborhood Traffic appeared first on Nashville Banner.

When Vivian Wilhoite announced she was seeking to become mayor, the overwhelming question from observers was “why now?” With just under 100 days left before the election, Wilhoite launched her campaign with the endorsement of District Attorney Glenn Funk and a group of supporters in Southeast Nashville pledging to run as hard for this office as she had for Property Assessor and the Metro Council. Wilhoite sat down with the Banner to answer questions about her late entry, what she thinks can be done about transit and more.

Why do you want to be mayor?

So I’ve always been what is called a lifelong public servant, and I have not stopped being that person. I love people. I love helping people. I just like to see results. So when I was a council person for District 29, during that time there were quite a bit of activities that the community was involved in, whether it was neighborhood cleanups, whether it was neighborhood watch programs. And so as time has passed, I don’t see a lot of that, if anything – none of that. Even something as some people may see as small as National Night Out Against Crime, you don’t see those activities happening in different communities, other than IN communities closer to the downtown area. If we know who’s in our community, we will care. My point is, these types of activities help to strengthen neighborhoods. We need to be focusing on neighborhoods, and providing them the resources that have made them stronger before. Being a public public servant as I am, I want to help. I feel like I have the energy. I know that I have energy. Some people say what do I operate off of? I say one cup of Starbucks every day. That’s the key – and drink lots of water.

So let me ask you about that. There are some people who would say, “You know what? I don’t I don’t want somebody who’s been in government their entire life.” We need somebody with a different perspective. What do you say to those folks?

Well, I say to those folks what you’re saying is experience doesn’t count. That’s what you’re saying. What you’re also saying is that you want a new fresh perspective. Would you say that someone who’s been in government — not just been in government, but serving the people — is not worthy? Because that’s not the same perspective. They’re talking about being “The Establishment,” not listening to the people. “You are a one-person show and you don’t listen to the people.” That’s what they’re saying. But that’s not the type of public servant I’ve been since I’ve come to Nashville. I’ve never been that type of public servant.

Is there something that you think makes you uniquely qualified to be mayor?

I think what makes me uniquely qualified is that I genuinely love people. When I go into a position, I’m going in there to make it better than what it was before. When I went into the Assessor of Property office, salaries were at an all-time low — $32,000-33,000 for intro level in 2016. I had staff that were working part time jobs. That was not competitive pay. But the entry level for an Appraiser 1 is [now] well over ($40,000) I’m trying to move it to ($50,000) entry level by the end of the year. I invest in my staff. I encourage them about getting their classes and getting their credentials. I remind them about the work that they do makes up 59 percent of the city’s budget – so what you do is important. It is critically important. And I let them know that they’re valued. That’s a public servant that is there to help the people and make the situation better. You know, I want my people to know that I see them.

How do you assess the current city-state relationship right now?

Well, you know what it is: It’s not good. I want to help make it better. I think that we are going to have to do a hard reset. As I stated before, there are folks who have been a part of the reason why we are where we are. And I know there’s been frustration on both sides. But we can find common ground to work for the greater good for the people. And that is the part that I want to do. We may not agree on everything — that’s not going to happen. We’re not going to agree on everything. But there are some very important issues that we should be able to agree on and be respectful about it. So I think that the situation right now, it does need a hard reset. And it requires, I think, a new perspective — and that new perspective would be Vivian Wilhoite.

Education is something that every mayor says that they want to help move the needle. One of the problems, though, is that you don’t really have much control. What’s one thing that the next mayor could do in order to make education better in Nashville?

Well, you know, some people say keep throwing something at a situation and hope for it to get better. But education must be fully funded, there is no doubt about that.

What does fully funded look like to you?

Well, working with Dr. Battle, and her providing the needs of the system. I do believe that Dr. Battle has her finger on the button of needs for the Metro public school system. I think that as mayor, I should do my due diligence to also talk with staff, meet with teachers, and meet with those members of the edge of the educational system, to hear from them, in reference to creative ideas of providing for students — the more than 86,000 students in Davidson County — because they’re on the front line. They’re the ones that are actually seeing and experiencing what is needed. Speak with parents. I mean, you could have a PTO meeting with the mayor. Why not? Why can’t you hear from the parents? It doesn’t mean you can get everything done. But working with the superintendent of schools, because they know the needs, but also working with parents and working with teachers and staff to hear them directly. 

Governor Lee is going to call a special session in August related to some gun legislation in the wake of the Covenant shooting. Do you think that there’s anything that Metro can do about school shootings?

You know, we can’t establish red flag laws and things like that. That is not within our authority. But we can assist in reference to reducing crime. We can assist by working with Chief John Drake. And, of course, [Juvenile Court Judge] Sheila Callaway, the DA’s office and all of that. It does go to funding in the most traditional way. We can provide resources and go after the root cause of why these crimes are being committed. We need to provide our youth access to community centers and activities.

The city has an affordability crisis right now. What is one way the next mayor can begin to address soaring rents and home prices, for those who are trying to either buy into this market or find an affordable place to live?

I’m very happy about the direction we’re going in hearing the mayor’s [State of Metro] address and the amount of affordable housing stock, but we can’t stop there. I think that one way that would be helpful in dealing with affordable housing is for us to continue to fund the Barnes Fund and ensure that we have the resources there for establishing more affordable housing and workforce housing. And you said one way, but you know, of course, we can’t do it alone. So a part of that one way, we have to continue to create public-private partnerships because Metro government cannot just do that alone. That has always been the case when it comes to affordable housing — we’ve had to do creative initiatives in reference to public-private partnerships, and that is now the situation more than ever. We must utilize that tool more than ever. So yes, I see those I see supporting the buyers buying and also definitely continuing with public-private partnerships that can help us increase the affordable housing stock that is needed. 

How high of a priority should transit be for the next mayor?

Yeah, it should be a priority. But we’re going to have to be realistic: It’s not going to happen tomorrow. And as far as what we’re investing, we have to, again, look at it realistically to make it a priority. But no, that is not something we can promise people that’s going to happen just immediately, but tell the people of Davidson County that we are going to invest. We’re going to deal with this big gorilla one bite at a time. We’re going to set goals for where we need to be by Year 2, Year 3, Year 4. And in the meantime, we can go after some low-hanging fruit. I was looking at a map the other day while talking with a friend, and one of the things that was pretty clear in regards to Nashville: All the traffic comes through the center of downtown to go to I-65 and I-40 and I-24. And there was that I-840, looking like it needs to be completed going around [the north side] of Nashville. When I was talking about finding common ground, I’m talking about working with the state and getting them to complete I-840. I thought it could be definitely the path for 18-wheeler trucks to go to the other side of Nashville without coming directly through Nashville, but not for all of the trucks that come to Nashville. But that’s a low-hanging fruit and something that we can work with the state on, and getting it developed would provide immediate relief — not tomorrow, but much sooner than some folks talking about light rail. And then when we’re talking about buses, mass transit is not just about buses. Mass transit is definitely not something that we can do alone. It is not just Davidson County where mass transit is a major issue. It should be important to all of Middle Tennessee, so we need to also have this sitting down at the table in a regional effort in dealing with mass transit and the cost of it should not be borne just by Davidson County residents. So it’s going to take all of these Middle Tennessee counties to be able to help address this. We’ve got to get on that same page. That’s the only way it can happen. It won’t happen overnight. But it is regional, in reference to the approach. 

The Titans just had a $2.1 billion stadium plan that was recently approved by the council. How would you have voted if you were on the council?

I don’t know all of the details to it, but it seems like it’s going to bring some great benefits to Davidson County. But the con of it, and the part that is hard for everyone to swallow, which I do understand, is that you’re talking about $2.1 billion. And we have other things that also should be addressed. So guess what? Let’s address those. 

What’s an issue that we’re not talking enough about right now?

I would say economic parity. You live in the general service district, or let’s just say urban services — either one. And then, say you’re in your neighborhood in Antioch. You don’t have sidewalks. But if you go to East Nashville, they’ve got sidewalks. I’m paying the same tax rate as the person over in East Nashville, but I can’t have sidewalks. We’re going to close the gap on economic parity and work to get neighborhoods who are paying that same tax rate in another part of the city under that same umbrella and provide them the resources that another neighborhood of Nashville has.

If you promise to put a sidewalk on my street, I’ll endorse you right now.

[Laughs] I promise to get sidewalks in areas that are needed and continue to make sure the areas that want it and need it [get sidewalks] and continue to make sure that we keep fulfilling that promise to everyone in Davidson County. We’ve got to figure out a way to close that gap. Tell me your address.

You got in with a little over 100 days to go before the election. Is that enough time to run a competitive race?

Well, I say yes. That’s why I got in. I think it was enough time, but I had to get into the race when it was the time for me. So that’s what I did. 

What made it ‘the time’ for you?

Just seriously, things that you want to talk about with family and look at, and yeah, pray about. That’s what I did. Running for mayor was something I had already considered 

How much money do you think you have to raise in order to be competitive?

People tell me $350,000 to get to the runoff. I’m not there yet, so I’m working toward that goal. I mean, I start out with name recognition, so I think that’s good. So I’m just building on that, and there’s some things that I’m probably not going to be able to do traditionally, like five mailers a week. I won’t be able to do that. But I will work. There are things that don’t require money, but it’s going to require hard work and being everyplace and talking to as many people as possible, and putting a lot of skin in it. People have spent a lot of money and have not been successful in running for offices. So I’m just going to do my very best, and I’m going to let my passion and love for the people of Davidson County show through. And I’m going to do that sincerely, not authentically. And I hope that’s what people will see.

Finally, what do you think people should think about when they’re considering your candidacy?

This will be a mayor that they can trust. They should think about what she has done in a huge way in government, where she worked in her district in Southeast Davidson, and what she’s done in the office of the Assessor of Property. And maybe once you meet Vivian, you know that she does have the energy and sincerity as a public servant — that she loves people.

The post Q&A with Vivian Wilhoite appeared first on Nashville Banner.