Amy Bryson, neighborhood activist and realtor, is running for the District 5 Council seat. Amy has been a resident of Greenwood Neighbors and an active member of the East Nashville community for 8 years. Amy believes in the power of a community working together for a common goal. She is dedicated to positive growth and development in District 5, and is passionate about affordable housing. Amy has attended countless zoning, council and neighborhood meetings, working for her community on all aspects of quality of life issues.

In Nashville, that agenda, so to speak, dates back most infamously to 2003, when the bill to extend the same protections to all of Davidson County failed by one tie-breaking vote. The bill, sponsored by former Councilman Chris Ferrell, now CEO of Scene parent company SouthComm, brought all manner of drama both private and public. That included a council request for a legal opinion on the bill's constitutionality from Metro's then-director of law. "While municipalities cannot adopt ordinances which infringe the spirit of state law or are repugnant to the general policy of the state, they can adopt ordinances that go beyond the state and require more," the city's legal director responded in affirmation. His name? Karl Dean. At the time, at least 92 city and county governments across the U.S. had adopted such protections. That figure has jumped to 136, according to the Human Rights Campaign. Some of Nashville's largest corporate citizens already abide by private practices that are similar to Metro's, including AT&T and Corrections Corp. of America. CCA is one of Metro's largest contractors; in 2010, the city budget dealt the company $16.5 million, with its contract calling for more than $80 million over five years. For Dean, a city executive with an avowed interest in pleasing private business and its boosters, meddling in a university's employment matters would be about as popular as renaming the Courthouse in honor of Vince Young. Even adversaries acknowledge him as a social progressive who is caught in a difficult position with the city's more regressive business elite. "I think I know where his heart lies, and I get not wanting to piss off the chamber, but for God's sake," Jameson says. "The guy's got a paper trail that tells you exactly where he should be on this."

Nancy McCune said Evans approached a man as he stood in line to speak on the issue of demol­ish­ing the Ten­nessee State Fair­grounds race­track and said in a threat­en­ing tone, “I do not want you in this line. I do not want you speak­ing on this.” McCune referred to the man as “John Doe” in a com­plaint filed with the Metro Clerk’s office Mon­day but con­firmed in a tele­phone inter­view that it was Sumter Camp, a res­i­dent of the Bells Bend area who, like Evans, has spo­ken out against the pro­posed May Town Cen­ter project there. “I was sim­ply appalled by the audac­ity that this woman would step through the door and say what she did,” said McCune, a clin­i­cal hyp­nother­a­pist. “Her tone was threatening.” Evans, who opposed the pro­posal to destroy the race­track, said McCune mis­in­ter­preted or mis­un­der­stood her con­ver­sa­tion with Camp. She said she told him “some­thing along the lines of I was kind of sur­prised he was there on a dif­fer­ent issue than May Town.” “I did not say any­thing that’s in this let­ter,” she said, refer­ring to the com­plaint. “Absolutely not. … She just took some­thing out of context.”

Greetings Truth Listeners, I was the fairgrounds on Saturday and spoke with vendors and the people. I asked them how are they enjoying the fairgrounds. They all responded we love it. There were so many people out there on Saturday it makes you wonder what is the real reason why Mayor Karl Dean wants to shut the fairgrounds down. We will discuss that on Monday's show. Also, we must get ready for the elections coming with our council members and figure out how to get rid of Karl Dean. "OPERATION STOP KARL DEAN" is in full effect on "Nothing But The Truth". We will discuss which council member is running for re-election and their district so we can put it in the "CROSSHAIRS" on the map along with the Mayor. Visit my website later tonight and I will have map posted. I have invited all council members and the mayor to come on the, but I have received a response yet. I will keep you updated if any respond to the invite. Remember I am now on 880am WMDB "The Big Mouth" 3pm to 4pm weekdays.

Though it’s impossible to know exactly what the discourse was like inside the closed-door conservative strategy session, a few themes leaked out. According to one source, an organizer said conservatives are doing an effective job of confronting these issues on the statewide and federal levels, but often neglect local governments. They characterized the Metro Council as an increasingly liberal body. Also of note, the source relayed how organizers discussed the advantage of framing the debate as a business issue rather than a moral, Christian one. Still, a resistance to extending rights for the LGBT community seems to be fueling much of the opposition. Manning the door at the gathering was David Shelley, a pastor at Nashville’s Smith Springs Baptist Church, who serves as Truth Project trainer for the Family Action Council of Tennessee. “I believe homosexual behavior is not only morally wrong, it’s abhorrent, it’s unnatural,” Shelley said. “It prevents the species from reproducing and continuing, and it’s certainly not something that should be given special protection by law.” Predictably, the nondiscrimination bill has already met with criticism from the council’s right-wing members, who voted against Metro’s nondiscrimination policy two years ago and against the new bill on first reading last week.

Metro Coun­cil­man Parker Toler, one of nine spon­sors of leg­is­la­tion that would have demol­ished the fair­grounds race­track, wound up cast­ing what was prob­a­bly the decid­ing vote Tues­day against an amend­ment each of his co-sponsors supported. The amend­ment, spon­sored by Coun­cil­woman San­dra Moore, who rep­re­sents the fair­grounds area, would have kept the track alive, but it also would have pro­hib­ited rac­ing there until Metro com­pletes a mas­ter plan for the entire fair­grounds site, assum­ing the plan includes rac­ing. Toler’s vote proved cru­cial, allow­ing crit­ics of Mayor Karl Dean’s fair­grounds rede­vel­op­ment plans to kill the amend­ment by a 21–19 vote. If Toler had voted for Moore’s amend­ment, Vice Mayor Diane Neigh­bors, a Dean ally, almost cer­tainly would have bro­ken the result­ing 20–20 tie in favor of the mayor and race­track oppo­nents, putting rac­ing on ice.

In the end, following a three-hour-plus public hearing, the council voted to approve an amendment introduced by Councilman Jason Holleman, which takes the language “demolition of racetrack” completely out of the bill, calls for the state fair to stay at the Nolensville Pike property through 2012, retains the expo center until a new location is landed and paves the way for the master plan to determine the best use of the property. A 40-acre park is already in store for fairgrounds land that falls within the city’s floodplain. With the amendment approved, the revised bill found undivided support, clearing the council’s second of three votes by a unanimous 37-0 vote, setting off a few cheers from racing fans in the gallery. The ordinance is up for third and final reading next month. “I’m terribly pleased,” said Councilman Michael Craddock, one of the leading voices in support of the fairgrounds and its racetrack. Craddock pointed out the bill had only hours earlier sought to demolish the speedway. No doubt, Tuesday night was a clear victory for Nashville’s racing community, as the council also voted 21-19 to defeat a competing amendment introduced by Councilwoman Sandra Moore that would have effectively ended racing at the speedway. The council chose Holleman’s amendment because it lacked that provision. “We’ve heard a lot of people who care about racing tonight,” Holleman said. “When we come to the table for this [master plan] process, everyone needs to come on equal footing.”

The Metro Council voted 22-13 Tuesday night on first reading in favor of a bill that would require companies that contract with Metro to adopt non-discrimination policies covering sexual orientation and gender identity. Typically, all council legislation passes on the first of three votes unanimously as a way to direct bills into the council’s committee system. But, as expected, council conservatives who say government should not interfere with private business singled out the controversial bill to call for a separate vote on the ordinance. Councilman Robert Duvall of Antioch made the motion. “We shouldn’t be imposing on private business,” Duvall said. “We shouldn’t be imposing the guidelines that a private business is supposed to operate out of. They all have their own work rules. They all have to follow federal and state laws. We, at the Metro level, shouldn’t be setting another layer of regulation. “It’s just crazy,” he said. “This country is choking to death on regulation.”

Barrett sent letters to each Metro council member, Mayor Karl Dean, members of the Metro Planning Commission and Director of Law Sue Cain, asking them to use 2010 census data expected to be released next month to redraw council district lines and to avoid potential legal “apportionment challenges,” according to a release from the Barrett Johnston LLC law firm. “The citizens of Nashville should not be submitted to four years of governance by an improperly constituted city council,” Barrett wrote in the letter. “I stand ready to seek the assistance of the federal court should such reapportionment not take place prior to the August 2011 city council elections.” The release states that Metro should have 2010 census data next month, leaving the council and the planning commission more than two months to redraw the district lines before a May 19 qualifying deadline for candidates.