Woof, Woof
💸 Questions linger from MNPS settlement · Dogs... Nuff said · Funding cuts hit local public radio · Land dispute in Coffee County · Much more!
Good afternoon, everyone. Dogs. What makes ‘em special? We consider… The funding cut to NPR is hitting a local station and they’re scrambling… MNPS agreed to a $6.5M settlement with no discussion. Why… And Coffee County gets the Wall Street Journal treatment with a story that would make a great movie.
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Feel compelled to share a paragraph from Ernest Jünger’s essay on dogs and cats this morning:
Why does the enjoyment of such a being touch us so deeply, why does it refresh and exhilarate us in a way that has a stronger effect than its individual affection? Certainly: it is beautiful when the dog looks at us, as if he would like to guess something in our eyes, hoping for a sign to cross the immense gulf. But even if he understood our language, we could not answer his question. I had a dog only once, a shepherdess; and it was strange how strongly the animal knew that it belonged to me, although I missed much about it. It died of distemper at the foot of my cot in one of the World War I quarters. I sat before it and felt deep regret, as I have always done and had reason to do when one says goodbye forever. It was a silent hour as the shadows lengthened, peaceful, almost out of time. Luxi had golden brown eyes and showered me with tenderness until her last breath. What had I done to deserve this? There was something going on that I could only guess at and that she understood a lot better than I did.
Enjoy your day. DAVIS HUNT
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🖋️ Edited by Megan Podsiedlik.
💰 Bully Battle & And The Largest Settlement In Metro History During last night’s Metro Nashville Public Schools board meeting, the body approved the $6.5 million settlement for a lawsuit against Metro Nashville Public Schools and Superintendent Adrienne Battle. Five years after the case was filed, lawyers have reached an agreement on claims that Battle and MNPS retaliated against five former administrators by stripping them of their positions.
Councilmember Erin Evans spoke on the issue during public comment. “Having come off a really difficult budget cycle, it's just disheartening that it is almost a percent of COLA that you're talking about,” she said, explaining how the large settlement is a result of an “unforced error” and “far exceeds the previous five years of settlements in aggregate.”
Indeed, the $6.5 million cash out is believed to be the largest settlement in district history. In comparison, Nashville government paid out a total of $4.2 million in legal settlements
in 2024. Councilmember Evans continued by encouraging the board to think about how they can improve handling difficult conversations with employees and to reflect on this outcome when making next year’s budget requests.
In the end, the board unanimously voted in favor of their entire agenda on consent with no discussion. Instead, the hour-and-a-half meeting was dedicated to presentations that highlighted the progress of MNPS, with 2 minutes of deliberation over the lengthy, 125-page agenda.
🦠 Faux-zempic Part Deux: Bioterrorism? Last week, Senator Marsha Blackburn and Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti sent a letter urging the Federal Trade Commission to investigate the “shady online marketing” of off-brand weight loss medications.
"These drugs, increasingly promoted as alternatives to FDA-approved medications like Ozempic and Wegovy, are being advertised in ways that mislead consumers and undermine both public health and integrity of the pharmaceutical marketplace," reads the letter. In a press release, Blackburn also noted that “foreign criminals and con artists are defrauding and endangering Americans by selling and shipping counterfeit or deceptively-marketed GLP-1 drugs and active ingredients.”
Back in February, Skrmetti led a bipartisan coalition requesting that the Food and Drug Administration “take swift action against bad actors who are endangering consumers with counterfeit and unsafe forms of the weight loss and diabetes drugs.” He also linked this Faux-zempic black market to “shady supply chains running from China, Turkey, and other overseas suppliers,” and stated that some operations are selling “entirely different drugs manufactured and packaged to look like GLP-1 drugs.”
🪒 Public Program Gets A Shave Nashville’s WPLN is feeling the pinch after Congress decided to strip public broadcasting programs of their federal funding last week. The local news/National Public Radio station is now trying to find ways to make up for a $400,000 shortfall in their budget. According to Axios, listeners have been participating in a fundraising drive in response to the cuts. WPLN Vice President Mack Linebaugh told the outlet that the local station has already raised a third of the funds needed to make up for the loss.
DEVELOPMENT
- Party Fowl slated for Five Points (Post)
- Start date unclear for proposed Gulch hotel project (Post)
- Local company starts work on massive Clarksville-area project (Post)
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✹ COFFEE COUNTY IN THE WSJ
MANCHESTER, Tenn.—Smack dab between the swelling urban centers of Nashville, Chattanooga, and Huntsville, Ala., rural Coffee County was poised to become Tennessee’s next boomtown, with subdivisions rapidly replacing farmland.
But when the county’s pro-growth mayor, Judd Matheny, died under unusual circumstances last year, it unleashed a development battle with a Southern Gothic twist that has split this deeply red area over the fundamental question of what it means to be conservative.
County officials are pushing hard to limit development across the area’s vast farmlands. In March, the county imposed a three-month moratorium on all large subdivision projects in areas zoned for agriculture. After that ended, officials passed an ordinance ruling that property owners in agricultural areas could only sell land in a minimum of 5-acre-lot increments, effectively halting large subdivisions in those areas.
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.
TONIGHT
🎸 Doom Mutual @ DRKMTTR, 8p, $12.16, Info
+ Nashville shoegaze
🎸 Hotline TNT @ The Blue Room, 7p, $22.10, Info
🎸 The Adam Meisterhans Trio @ Vinyl Tap, 7:30p, Free, Info
🎸 Liam Bauman @ The East Room, 8p, $15.42, Info
+ Nashville based indie folk singer-songwriter
💀 Tennessee Dead @ Tennessee Brew Works, 6p, Info
🪕 Bluegrass Night @ The American Legion Post 82, 7p, Free, Info
📰 Check out the full newsletter archive here.
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Today's newsletter is brought to you by Megan Podsiedlik (Nashville), Jerod Hollyfield (Crowd Corner), Camelia Brennan (Local Noise), and Davis Hunt (everything else).