Who Makes the Rules for the Rule Makers?

“I suspect that we can govern ourselves as well as we govern our government,” said Emily Benedict during yesterday’s specially called Rules, Confirmations, and Public Elections Committee meeting. For the past six weeks, the District 7 council member has been shilling a change to Rule 13 of the Rules of Procedure of the Council which would allow council members to throw caution to the wind when making last-minute adjustments to the council agenda. 

Benedict’s proposal wouldn’t just move around certain deadlines for bills and resolutions, it would also allow council members to self-file documents on the fly, circumventing the clerk’s office and enabling representatives to introduce binding legislation in the middle of council meetings. Several members in attendance raised concerns about transparency.

Margaret Darby, Director and Special Counsel of the Metropolitan Council Office, reminded everyone that a late-filed piece of legislation wouldn't be visible to the public until it’s published onto Legistar—the public facing site Metro uses to track the status of bills: “So if something were to be filed in the middle of a meeting, we can talk about it, but the verbiage itself would not be, you know, public.” Similarly, Jacob Kupin, who represents Downtown, worried that allowing free-form discussions to unfold on the council floor would lead to confusion, furthering mistrust among constituents.

In addition to the ambitious assumption that the council could self-regulate last-minute agenda modifications, allowing legislation to be timely-filed mere hours before a council meeting would impair the council's ability to properly vet eleventh-hour legislation submitted by a panoply of sponsors and departments—including the mayor's office. "The way that 13 is in place right now, with the filing deadline being with the council office on Friday, that was instituted...about 20 years ago," explained Darby. "And the purpose and reasoning behind the institution of that rule was to allow council members to have more time to review legislation filed by the administration." 

As the meeting progressed, it became painfully clear that an embarrassing number of council members weren't just in the dark about the implications of Benedict’s change, they barely understood how their current rules work. Questions flew about current filing deadlines, how the clerk’s office processes legislation, whether the clerk's office passes legislation onto other departments for review, and why certain bills and ordinances couldn't be filed.

“Once we have cleared up Rule 13, whatever it is the body decides to implement…we need to be very clear as to the procedures and the deadlines so there's no confusion among the council body as to when we're allowed to file and when we're not allowed to file,” said committee Chair Sandra Sepulveda. “Because apparently there's a lot of council members who are very confused by that, and so a notice would be prudent.”

Halfway through the meeting, it dawned on Sepulveda that the problem Benedict raised could be alleviated by simply retracting a rule change the body previously passed, which restricts the introduction of late-filed, non-binding resolutions on the council floor. “I feel like, just through having this conversation, we've pretty much circled back around in every case except the non-binding resolutions,” concluded Councilmember Burkley Allen. “...And being able to suspend the rules gets us there.”

For her part, Vice Mayor Angie Henderson remained impartial, saving herself from having to accept or deny the hearing of a late-filed resolution during a council meeting. “I think I would be comfortable with going back to the way it was,” she said. “But putting the threshold of, ‘it still has to have a recommendation of this committee.’”

Though Benedict’s Rule 13 change will still go before the entire council for a vote next week, the chances of it gaining enough support to pass seems slim. Instead, it’s likely other council members will come forward with an alternate solution: reinstating the old rule and allowing non-binding, late-filed resolutions, with the caveat that they must be brought to the Rules committee for review in the hours before the start of a run-of-the-mill, 6:30 p.m. council meeting. Much ado about nothing. MEGAN PODSIEDLIK

👍 You Can't Like That A bill that would prohibit MNPD police officers from liking “jokes, memes, retweets, and other statements that advocate racism, violence, misogyny, homophobia, or other kinds of hate or discrimination” on social media will be up for first reading at next week’s council meeting. The main sponsor of the bill is District 25’s Jeff Preptit. Delishia Porterfield, Kyonzte Toombs, Emily Benedict, Terry Vo, Brenda Gadd, Ginny Welsch, Antoinette Lee, and Zulfat Suara have all signed on as co-sponsors. Preptit is on record saying things like “Police don’t stop/ prevent crime,” and has all the predictable political positions you’d expect of someone who is stupid enough to say something like that without a hint of irony. DAVIS HUNT

✰   ✰   ✰

🧹 Metro Housekeeping Yesterday, Dave Rosenberg, O'Connell's Director of Legislative Affairs, paid a visit to the Rules committee to discuss a Metro-wide initiative aimed at improving the operations of the city's boards and commissions. Rosenberg began by tabulating the "nearly 100 boards, commissions, committees and...resident-led bodies," many of which were created by the Charter over 60 years ago. 

On Tuesday, the mayor’s office began the overhaul by sending out a 40-question survey to all board and commission members to gauge their opinion. Do members think there are enough seats? Too many seats? Is the meeting place easy for them to get to? How are they overseeing personnel? “In the first 24 hours, we got about 100 of them back,” Rosenberg said. “So we’re off to a really good start with it.”

This initiative to trim the fat in Metro’s boards and commissions, by addressing efficiency and cutting out various dead-beat appointees who have, apparently, been notoriously MIA during their time of service, will take about two years. While some of the more recently created boards and commissions can be changed directly by council legislation, bodies established by the Charter will have to be voted on by the public in 2026. MEGAN PODSIEDLIK

✰   ✰   ✰

🎶 Music On My Mind In the Spring of 2022, the city's COVID-19 financial oversight committee agreed to fund a study on bolstering the health of music venues in Nashville, awarding $300,000 to PennPraxis to produce it. Two years later, they delivered their findings in the form of a hefty 160-page document. The full report includes some interesting tidbits on the history of music in Nashville, but there was one factoid that stuck out to me which I thought worth relaying. According to the report, “Nashville’s per capita concentration of venues is notably high among global music cities: more than six times higher per capita than New York City or Tokyo. The venue density of Downtown and East Nashville clusters rivals that of central districts of Tokyo, Berlin and New York City.” When I touched down in Austin recently, I was greeted by a sign declaring it the Live Music Capital of the World. I don’t understand how you can build a place on a giant lie like that. Nice enough city though. DAVIS HUNT

DEVELOPMENT

• Plug gets pulled on $40 million amphitheater project in Murfreesboro (NBJ)
• Veteran hotel developer proposes 24-story tower in SoBro (NBJ)
• Harken Hall venue announces opening (NBJ)
• Mixed-use tower eyed for Rutledge Hill (Post)
• Fancypants sets debut on east side (Post)

✹ REVIEW: A QUIET PLACE: DAY ONE (2024)

There’s an unacknowledged pleasure in the apocalypse. It’s the equalizing promise that the ruling class and MAGA devout alike will all end up cast into the same lake of fire, or, in the case of the A Quiet Place franchise, eviscerated off-camera by extraterrestrial arthropods. 

However, the end of the world is tricky stuff. Those who wade into the subject risk coming off as pale imitators of George Romero’s acidic zombie satire or engaged in histrionic PG-13 violence porn ala 2012. Though A Quiet Place and its sequel rode their largely dialogue-free conceit of monsters attracted to sound to surprise blockbuster status, what set the series apart is an unrelenting optimism rooted in the preservation of the family unit, a drive to emerge unscathed with the best of civilization attached. 

Shifting the setting from Anytown, USA, to the heart of New York City, Day One asks a question largely absent from the end-of-the-world tale: how does one already on the cusp of death react to the Last Days? It’s a quandary Lupita Nyong'o’s hospice patient Samira spends most of this prequel raging over as she finds herself stranded in the city during a field trip with her fellow terminal cancer patients when the invasion occurs. She knows she’s toast regardless, but somehow still possesses an unrelenting desire to survive. 

Turning a Hollywood franchise into a character study is a risky move, but writer-director Michael Sarnoski proves his masterful 2021 indie debut, Pig, wasn’t a fluke. As Simara encounters the newly doomed with her service cat, Frodo, in tow, she’s hellbent on sucking out the last marrow of life the city has to offer while finding her true purpose. The monsters she faces may slightly succumb to CGI blandness, but Day One understands that what’s always made the movies great is a celebration of the human spirit, flaws and all, that endures even when the man comes around. 

A Quiet Place: Day One is now playing in theaters.

THINGS TO DO

View our calendar for the week here and our weekly film rundown here.

📅 Visit our On The Radar list to find upcoming events around Nashville.

🎧 On Spotify: Pamphleteer's Picks, a playlist of our favorite bands in town this week.

👨🏻‍🌾 Check out our Nashville farmer's market guide and yearly festival guide.

TONIGHT

🎸 Halloween @ DRKMTTR, 8p, $10, Info
+ gothic grunge

🪕 Bluegrass Nights w/ Della Mae @ Ryman Auditorium, 7:30p, $38+, Info

🎸 Cola @ The Blue Room, 7p, $19.41, Info
+ post punk / indie, ex-Ought members

🪕 The Dead South Up Close and Personal @ Vinyl Tap, 4:30p, Info
+ free with purchase of album

🎷Live Jazz with Parker James, Paul DeFiglia & Anson Hohne @ Vinyl Tap, 7p, Free, Info

🍀 Live Irish Music @ McNamara’s Irish Pub, 6p, Free, Info

🎸 Kelly’s Heroes @ Robert’s Western World, 6:30p, Free, Info

🎸 Open Mic @ Fox & Locke, 6:30p, Free, Info
+ vet community here

✹ WEEKLY FILM RUNDOWN: July 12-18

The latest releases and special screenings hitting Music City this week. For a complete list of upcoming releases, check out our 2024 Film Guide.

Longlegs Osgood Perkins (son of Anthony) further establishes himself as a singular horror director with this moody serial killer thriller that finds an FBI agent (Maika Monroe) facing off against a psychopath (Nicholas Cage) with whom she may have a personal connection. Perkins’s The Blackcoat’s Daughter and Gretel & Hansel are two of the most original horror films of the past few years. Early raves and a pitch-perfect marketing campaign that reaches Blair Witch heights could propel this into the summer’s most unlikely hit. Now playing in theaters. 

Fly Me to The Moon The star-studded, big-budget Hollywood comedy makes a comeback with Scarlett Johannson as a PR maven tasked with creating a backup moon landing in case Apollo 11 fails and Channing Tatum as the NASA launch director with whom she clashes. The kind of breezy good time summer moviegoing was made for. Now playing in theaters. 

Last Summer French cinema’s ultimate provocateur, Catherine Breillat, returns from a decade-long hiatus with a taboo-smashing, May-December story of a lawyer who unexpectedly falls for her 17-year-old stepson. Expect the kind of honest and absorbing dissection of sexual politics American film largely abandoned years ago. Now playing at The Belcourt. 

Eno A documentary about the iconic Roxy Music frontman would be a must-see, but director Gary Hustwit has brought the world’s generative movie that–much like an Eno show–never replicates itself. Using software developed specifically for the project, Hustwit gives Eno’s life the “Choose Your Own Adventure Treatment” with millions of possibilities. Featuring a post-screening Q&A with Hustwit. Thursday at The Belcourt.