Nashville's Latest Folly

As we were enjoying our Southern version of icecapades with six water mains bursting on our main drag and major tourist destination, our city government was about to have the first public meeting on a proposed convention center that the city's vested interest elite are trying to ram down the public's collective throat. With such glaring needs in infrastructure as century old pipes exploding all over the city in a sustained but not particularly extreme cold snap and potholes appearing on every mile of road surface, you would think city leaders would have higher priorities than a convention center that will see sporadic use. With poor public education and high dropout rates, this ego stroke and money pit can wait. Nashville can sadly not compete in amenities or attractions with other convention host cities. We do not have Las Vegas-style casinos, glitz, or shows, or perfect weather like San Diego and those cities with so much more to offer tourists and conventioneers are suffering, nor do we have Orlando-style family venues without so much as a local theme park, but our political class assures us the new convention center will cost us nothing with hotel revenue drawn from our visitors footing the entire bill. What if gasoline prices continue to soar or our recession deepens and Nashville visitors dry up even more; then the general fund drawn mostly from those who pay property tax in Davidson County will be left with the burden of the six hundred million dollars for the venue (a low ball figure- exclusive of an adjoining hotel that will likely put the expense that Metro citizens are ultimately responsible for at over one billion dollars). The elites will have the feather in their caps of the new project complete with the possibility of kickbacks, cost overruns, and graft that a project of such a massive scope invariably engenders and once again, the average working man will receive no benefit but be left holding the bag.