"Music City Center" Posts
Music City Center Passes: What It Means to SEIU Members
A statement from
Doug Collier, president of SEIU Local 205:
On Jan. 19, a majority of Metro Council members voted in favor of the Music City Center, which is expected to cost close to a billion dollars. This is bad for Metro employees and taxpayers in general for many reasons, including...
- Some $14 million that the city relies on for police and fire overtime, MTA, and other programs will either be cut or replaced in order to pay for the MCC by dipping into the General Fund (which is what pays Metro employees' salaries and benefits).
- The MCC will have to rely on taxpayer money through a General Fund Pledge if the city's projections are off by even as little as 15%. For the record, the projections done by HVS in its feasibility study are almost always off, as evidenced by what we know about their past track record.
- Goldman Sachs has predicted that the city's bond rating will be likely be lowered because of the MCC.
- The convention industry has been in major decline for close to a decade and nobody who works in the industry can credibly say that it will return to what it once was.
- 72% of Davidson County voters wanted to see this project put up for a vote by the people. Not only did council members vote for the MCC, they voted against allowing you to cast a vote on a project which will be the most expensive single public project in Tennessee history.
Over the last few months, your Union fought hard to stop the Music City Center by helping conduct a city-wide petition drive to put the MCC up for a referendum by the voters. We urged union members to call or write their councilmember. We turned out members to the various community meetings on the MCC across the city and to speak at the Council’s public hearing. And we lobbied our elected officials. But our work was not enough. The Chamber of Commerce, once again looking to line its own pockets instead of doing what is in the best interests of the city, spent nearly a million dollars to get the MCC passed. Our strongest weapon, our members, simply did not come out in force enough to overpower the Chamber’s money.
This should be a sobering lesson as we get ready for another budget season and an election year in 2011. Metro employees simply will not get ahead until they decide to get involved through the Union to get what they want and what they deserve. That’s something to think about as Metro employees face a third straight year without a raise. As more layoffs bear down on workers to balance the budget. As General Hospital braces for another subsidy cut. And as our schools now face a $38 million budget shortfall.
SEIU will continue to fight on city employees’ behalf, but if we can’t get more members involved, our hands are tied. We ask that you pledge to do more throughout the year to help us beat back more cuts, more layoffs, and more corporate welfare.
Posted By: Mark Naccarato on 1/20/2010 4:17:00 PM
Convention Center
,
Karl Dean
,
Metro Council
,
Music City Center
,
Nashville Chamber of Commerce
Karl Dean's Backdoor Budget Cut
In The Tennessean, reporter Nate Rau points out that the Mayor's financing plan for the Music City Center would take about $14 million in hotel/motel tax money away from a bunch of different departments and programs to help pay for his proposed Convention Center. Those programs (including police overtime and subsidies for public transportation) will either have to be cut entirely or money will have to be taken from somewhere else to pay for them. Can you guess where that will come from? If you guessed the General Fund, which is where Metro workers pay and benefits come from, give yourself a prize!
Oh, and let's not forget that the Music City Center requires a General Fund Pledge to get the project started, meaning that if the MCC fails, money from the city's General Fund will be used to pay off bonds, loans, and debts. The best part of that? It's structured to take precedence over all the city's other needs. Meaning that the bankers will get their money before anyone else in the city does.
Are we loving the Convention Center yet? Not!
Read the whole story from the Tennessean
HERE.
Posted By: Mark Naccarato on 12/7/2009 3:09:00 PM
Convention Center
,
Karl Dean
,
Metro Budget
,
Music City Center
,
Nashville Chamber of Commerce
Hotel? We Don't Need No Stinkin' Hotel!
According to the
Nashville Business Journal, it looks like the Mayor's proposed Music City Center doesn't need a hotel on the Convention Center property after all.
This after Mayor Dean and his Chamber buddies have been insisting for months that the Music City Center just had to have a hotel. At least until they realized nobody in the private sector was interested in building one.
Will all of these big mega conventions that the Chamber has been talking about still come to the Music City Center if it has no hotel? The smart money says no. Meeting planners, who are the decision-makers on which city to go to, almost always demand that their chosen site have a hotel attached to the facility.
So either one of three things is happening.
1) Dean has decided that we really don't need a hotel;
2) He has an ace up his sleeve and there really is an interested hotelier who is holding off on making a decision until they see the Council approve the MCC; or
3) Dean will try to pass the MCC first, then come back afterwards and renege on his promise not to pursue a taxpayer-funded hotel and blackmail the Council into signing off on one.
Time will tell which of these are the truth.
Posted By: Mark Naccarato on 12/3/2009 2:54:00 PM
Convention Center
,
Karl Dean
,
Music City Center
,
Nashville Chamber of Commerce
The Music City Center: What We Know Now (And it Ain't Good!)
Metro employees have gone two years without a cost-of-living increase or longevity pay, even though the cost of gas, food, and health insurance continues to skyrocket. And yet, Mayor Dean and the Chamber of Commerce continue to push forward with a new Convention Center and Hotel that they are calling the “Music City Center” without a fact-based analysis that addresses major questions about whether Nashville actually needs a new facility and who will be responsible for paying for it.
While there is a lot we don’t know about the Music City Center, here’s what we do know.
Under the current agreement, Metro would have to pay all their obligations (debt service, bondholders, etc.) BEFORE any other of its obligations. That means if the MCC project underperforms, the city still has to pay its debts before Metro employees get raises. This would affect funding for General Hospital, Metro Social Services, Metro Health Department, Metro Action Commission, and all other agencies that rely on Metro subsidies to operate. That nearly guarantees the programs will be cut and layoffs will follow.
Metro Schools would also take a hit. Sales taxes make up about 1/3 of funding for our schools. It appears now that the sales tax from the existing Convention Center and Renaissance Hotel could be redirected from the General Fund to pay for the project. Since overall sales tax revenues are going down, then it’s going to have to be made up and its likely to be our schools who are going to suffer.
Right now, the MCC proposal would include building a hotel on the property. Aside from the fact about whether the government should be getting into the hotel business, the likely company to run it would be Marriott. Marriott is one of the worst anti-union hotels in the country and has been fined tens of millions of dollars for violating workers’ right to organize and wage-and-hour laws.
Speaking of Marriott, the current proposals for the MCC would ensure that Marriott would get paid by the city if there was not full hotel capacity. That’s right—in hard times, your raise would be put at risk to prop up an anti-union company.
Notwithstanding these areas of concern, the Mayor’s Office keeps pushing forward with a publicly-funded hotel and Convention Center. It’s obvious to everyone that the economy is far different now than when all of the positive scenarios were put forth by the project’s supporters. It is time for current, credible, objective information that taxpayers can use to make an informed decision about Nashville’s largest public works project ever.
People need to understand the full impact such a large project will have on Metro’s budget, property taxes, and how this project will affect Metro employees, Metro retirees, and Davidson County taxpayers. That discussion hasn’t happened yet and it needs to start right now.
Posted By: Mark Naccarato on 10/28/2009 11:18:00 AM
Convention Center
,
Karl Dean
,
Metro Council
,
Music City Center
,
Nashville Chamber of Commerce
"Nashville's Priorities" Taking On the Music City Center
A group of citizens calling themselves
Nashville's Priorities has formed "to educate the public about the impact the construction of a new downtown convention center and hotel would have".
The group's spokesperson, Kevin Sharp says, "this is not a stop-everything campaign. It is an effort to educate the public with good reliable, credible data, and then allow the public to make an educated decision about what is in Nashville's best interests."
Full story at the Scene's blog,
Pith In the Wind.
Posted By: Mark Naccarato on 9/30/2009 3:32:00 PM
Convention Center
,
Music City Center