Nashville Mayor David Briley and many members of the Metro Council, as a collective, act as though the 2011 referendum on the Nashville Fairgrounds never happened, said Metro Council member Steve Glover.
As reported, if all the shiny details get finalized, a Major League Soccer stadium will likely go up on that property.
But there’s that one little problem — dating back to 2011.
There was a referendum that year where voters, by a margin of 73 percent, said to just leave the fairgrounds alone, as is.
But Metro officials act as though it’s OK to ignore the voters’ wishes and do their own thing, Glover said.
“This is something people need to understand. The MLS didn’t come to us and say ‘We need to be at the fairgrounds.’ This was Megan Barry’s administration who said ‘We want this, and this is where you will go. You will go here,’” Glover said.
“The administration basically told the people of Nashville ‘We don’t care what you voted for. This is what we’re going to do.’”
None of Glover’s 39 colleagues returned messages seeing comment Thursday, and neither did anyone from current Mayor David Briley’s office.
For their part, Metro officials think of the proposed stadium, and they see profit.
Glover, however, sees impediment.
As reported, critics of the proposed arrangement see it as a land giveaway. Other concerns involved the revenue bonds and how much of a gamble this is for Metro if the stadium doesn’t generate the expected revenue.
“They make it sound like the stadium is going to make money,” Glover said.
“Well, we might make money, but they also told us they would make money with the Sounds Stadium. But we’re not making money. We are losing money.”
Nashville Sounds spokesman Chad Seely declined to comment for this story.
“The Nashville Sounds Baseball Club does not disclose financial information,” Seely said in an emailed statement.
But more and more Metro Council members, Glover went on, are finding their views in harmony with his.
“More council members are beginning to think this way,” Glover said.
“They see in their districts nothing is happening in the outlying areas. All the money is getting spent downtown, and we are the ones having to pick up the tab for it. More and more of them are saying ‘This is wrong in so many different ways it’s not funny.’”
Glover, who represents the Hermitage area, said his only commitment is to the constituents who chose him to occupy that Metro Council seat.
“The majority of the people who elected me say they don’t want this,” Glover said.
“They don’t want to violate the charter amendment. They certainly don’t want to pay more taxes for stupid stuff. They’re not willing to have their taxes raised for another stadium.”
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Chris Butler is an investigative journalist at The Tennessee Star. Follow Chris on Facebook. Email tips to [email protected].
