Gov. Bill Lee may have done something… GOOD!?… for Nashville.

I know, I know. And yes, I’m referring to this same guy who has the outfit, video/audio tech skills, and idea-of-a-fun-time energy as that of a recently divorced pediatrician uncomfortably easing his way back into the dating scene.

So, what did he do that was good?

Gov. Lee, through a “come on down to Nashville, we are open!” video, managed to get Nashville officials to talk about and acknowledge a reopening. This is a good thing because many people (myself included!) have seen the reopening momentum and have been wondering why it’s treated more as a feeling of malaise and not a topic of conversation among elected officials.

That is the good part of this. Now we have some communication from people we elect locally.

The frustrating part is that Nashville should have been able to dictate it’s own reopening! Through our silence, we ended up punting our own narrative and as such, losing a bit of control.

Case in point: the morning after Bill’s Bellicose Boot Buyin’ Broadway Barrage, Mayor Cooper said the 4th of July fireworks will be in person AND he offered re-opening metrics that were dependent on % of population that had been vaccinated.

This is a big deal because the last time we had heard ANYTHING AT ALL about Nashville’s reopening was 11 months ago (April 2020), when the Mayor released the “Roadmap for Reopening,” which included a 4th Phase that was fully open. It’s kinda wild, but there has been virtually no acknowledgement of an end to COVID restrictions from public officials at all this past year. This is despite the fact that over the past month there has been a palpable feeling towards reopening.

Now, we can argue about whether we should lift capacity restrictions or whether we should wait for additional vaccine groups before opening up. I would have welcomed and loved actually hearing local public officials have these sorts of debates! Instead, we got just the opposite. It’s almost like a giant boulder was rolling towards Nashville. We know at some point it will get here and over the past couple of months it appears to have picked up speed. We can now see it on the horizon. Maybe it will be OK, maybe it will be nothing, and maybe it will be BAD. At the very least, you would think that public officials would at least ACKNOWLEDGE the boulder.

Sadly, that didn’t happen until Gov. Lee made his video.

Which begs a couple more questions:

1- How long has the in-person fireworks and the reopening by population that has been vaccinated % been in the works? Why was that not made public? If you are a struggling business, shouldn’t you have the right to know that the government is planning on essentially re-opening on or before 4th of July? That may influence decisions you make!

2- It seems as if almost it’s a requirement for Nashville elected officials to decry any attempt by the state to butt in here and tell us what to do. I sympathize and agree with that position! But, if we are going to get on the soapbox about Local Rule, then, maybe the Local people in charge should not be so timid to bring conversations to the public sphere?

More questions to come!

In the end while I am frustrated that Gov. Lee inserted himself into Nashville’s reopening narrative, I am also happy that he managed to do what no leader in Nashville was willing to be the first to talk about.