All words used Friday evening to describe the Clarksville Center Redevelopment Plan that deems 1800 parcels of lands and two square miles of the city as “blighted,” a move that would allow the city to take property designated as blighted and “redevelop” it to its maximum potential. Read “profit.”

Terry McMoore of the Urban Resource Center sponsored a community meeting at the HOPE Center on Legion Street to present a panel of speakers on this issue and to field questions from a worried public.

One phrase in the ordinance that concerned panelists and residents alike reads as follows:

“…the Plan for the project area will afford maximum opportunity consistent with the sound needs of the locality as a whole, for redevelopment of the area by private enterprise.” [Ordinance 73-2005-06, Section 7]

This meeting is one of a number of citizen- and community-sponsored events scheduled to address the concerns of proposed legislation that designated the entire downtown area — including the multi-million dollar courthouse, the new FM bank building, and businesses and homes in the district except property held by Austin Peay State University. The endorsement by the City Council followed a “revitalization” program in which citizens of the Red River and Brandon Hills area were invited to a series of planning sessions on the betterment of their community. Not long after the hype of “community betterment” project came the issuance of what Clarksville homeowners are calling “the blight deal.”

The panelists for this program, which aired to a full house of fifty people, included Nashville Atty. John Summers who currently chairs the Tennessee Historic Preservation Coalition, Dan Brown, Executive Director of the Tennessee Preservation Trust, Civil Rights activist and advocate Jimmie Garland Sr. (at left) who is currently serving as President of the Clarksville branch of the NAACP, and author and Human Relations Commissioner David Shelton. Ward 6 Councilor Marc Harris was scheduled to be on this panel but failed to appear.

“This is not just a development issue, this is a social justice issue,” Brown said, calling the plan, bold, audacious, over the top, the largest [redevelopment plan] of its kind in the nation.” The plan can be included on a top ten list of most endangering projects in the United States.

“There is no plan to it. It is ‘enabling’ legislation that allows developers to come into a community and take property.” Brown said the scope of the project is “unbelievable.”

John Summers (at right) displayed maps of Nashville Redevelopment projects, citing seven individualized development projects targeting specific issues in specific neighborhoods, each with it own issues and objectives, couched in long-range planning, unlike Clarksville’s move to blanket the entire center of the center under the collective label of “blight.”

“This kind of action is unprecedented; no other city in all of Tennessee — not Memphis, not Nashville, not Chattanooga or Jackson — has declared all of a downtown district as part of a single redevelopment. [Clarksville] declared 1800 parcels as blighted irregardless of their actual condition.” — John Summers

Summers and the panel agreed the only course of action to get this plan repealed, and said it would take a dedicated effort by residents to make that happen. He said the community must come together with a consensus. He said that while he hopes the plan will be repealed “because it is the right thing to do,” this precedent-setting legislation should be “fought on every level.” He has been in touch with a historic preservation legal trust fund. “This plan if allowed to manifest itself has national implications.”

Garland noted that a high percentage of residents in the area are middle and low income families, and many are people of color. Garland sees the plan as a way for the city to shift the balance of the community and move the poor out of the downtown corridor. Garland is taking a copy of the the ordinance (73-2005-06) to the state NAACP for review and discussion of potential action.

“If you trust your city council in this matter, go home and sleep well.” With those words came a rueful and wry laughter from the audience.

“This law will let developers build the convenience stores people say they need, and build the playgrounds, but there won’t be anyone living there to use them.” Not one presenter or member of the audience spoke in favor of this legislation, and many questioned the absence of any city officials.

Residents collectively voiced concern that the designation of blight will either diminish the value of their property and/or hinder their ability to sell property since anything in that area would be vulnerable to eminent domain takings for redevelopment.

It doesn’t matter if your property is not run down, if you live in a nice home…if you property is attached to a parcel that is needed to complete some other building package, it can and would be vulnerable to a taking. Summers said.

If Clarksville’s administrative and political leadership think the issue will die out, they need a reality check. The homeowners were not just worried, they were fighting mad. And they are organizing.

On Monday at 6 p.m. at the Train Station downtown, the Clarksville Property Rights Association will stage another meeting — complete with petitions — extending the face and the voice of the people affected by this designation.

These images reflect “the face of concern” at Friday’s meeting:

Editor’s Note: Author/Editor Christine Anne Piesyk facilitated the event at the request of the sponsor, the Urban Resource Center. Photos by Bill Larson

Clarksville should take steps to memorialize Juan Julian Vasquez Sr and the contributions he made towards the unity of our city during his tenure as the vice chairman of the Human Relations Commission.

A fitting way would be for the city to come up with, and enact, a comprehensive ordinance, to protect the civil rights every resident of this city.

Each person should by law, be equal in our society, without regard to their race, creed, religion, national origin, sexual orientation or identification. Discrimination based on any of these criteria, should be a violation of the law.

Clarksville should strive to become a society which does not tolerate discrimination in any form, for any reason, the city that Juan Julian Vasquez, Sr would have hoped for us to be.

I did not have an opportunity to personally speak with the Vasquez family at the funeral, so I will deliver the message I would have given them here. For the friends and family of Juan and Thomas, the pain you now feel will fade with time, the love and joy that they brought into your lives never will.

We will miss his passion, integrity, and his sincere desire to make a positive difference in the city of Clarksville for all of its residents. His voice was one of reason and was driven by his sincere hope that together, we could bring about real change and encourage a better relationship between all of Clarksville’s social, ethnic, and racial groups. 

Yes, he will indeed be missed. Our thoughts and prayers go out to his family and friends. We were proud to know and serve with him. 

Sincerely, 

David W. Shelton
Secretary, CHRC
Public Relations Committee Chair 

This commentary is based on the news report in today’s Leaf Chronicle that “Clarksville Human Relations Commission may have violated law, that no public notice was given of a meeting with title VI compliance officer”.

What is the Tennessee Sunshine act you ask? Well the law makes that fairly clear in it’s introduction:

The general assembly hereby declares it to be the policy of this state that the formation of public policy and decisions is public business and shall not be conducted in secret.

This is a laudable goal and one which I agree wholeheartedly with. I do not believe in secret acts by the government or it’s agents. It is one of the reason why I have such serious problems with secret searches by police; warrantless spying on American citizens; secret prisons; rendition of people to countries with, well lets be nice and say lax human rights records; and secret courts.

All meetings of any governing body are declared to be public meetings open to the public at all times, except as provided by the Constitution of Tennessee

Lets see what the law identifies as a meeting:

(2) “Meeting” means the convening of a governing body of a public body for which a quorum is required in order to make a decision or to deliberate toward a decision on any matter. “Meeting” does not include any on-site inspection of any project or program.

So in order to qualify as a meeting which requires public notice, the meeting must be for the purpose of deliberating towards, or making a decision; on any matter. Any meeting which is not directed towards those goals would then, not be subject to the sunshine laws.

CHRC Chairman Robert Brooks said to the Leaf Chronicle that:

The meeting was designed to be a lecture by Birdsong, not a debate among commission members — that, he said, would have been properly advertised. No action was taken at Tuesday’s meeting

This meeting was much like an in-service training session conducted by a state employee to help familiarize the commission with an area of their responsibility.

The article quotes an Enoch Hagans, The executive director of the Title VI Action Committee, as saying

I don’t participate in closed-door meetings. I don’t understand why it was closed…It should have been announced. I believe it should have been open to the public so the public could come and express their viewpoint.

I do not believe it was the intention of the CHRC or it’s individual members to deny this group or the public at large, their rights to address the commission at a normal public meeting. It should be beneath the dignity of anyone to suggest otherwise. However during an in-service training session public participation would have been a distraction from the things they were there to learn, and thus would have been in-appropriate. I am sure, if anyone has questions for John Birdsong who is the executive director of the Tennessee Title VI Compliance Commission, the CHRC can invite him back on a future date or they can contact him directly.

I intend to be at the next meeting of the CHRC to give my thanks and show my support for the commission, and the important work which they do for our community.