Wake Up Call

Wake Up Call

The wake up service vibrates the bed.  Its 4:54 in the morning and Ms. Buetel has something she wants to share with her first e-mail of the day.  I flip the phone case open and do some fuzzy morning math.  Less than four hours sleep.  Kirt Rieder from Hargreaves provided the tour of their new Nashville riverfront park last night.  We arrived back at the hotel sometime after 1:00 a.m.

Nashville on a Saturday night is a tumult.  Only my second time in the city, I was prepared to dislike it the first time I visited.  But I didn’t.  Opera, jazz, classical?  Sure, there’s a fancy building for that, but that building isn’t defended by leather jackets and dresses not nearly warm enough for tonight twenty or more deep.  This is Guitar Town, and if you have a heartfelt song, you don’t need an elaborate composition or stage.  My first visit started to build a theory of the city, based primarily on the number of guitar cases strapped to backs and Dodge Challengers rumbling round town.  It’s a very likable place.  

Music City was rocking on Broadway last night.  Who knows how many hundreds of musicians were playing live countryrockpopfolk music in a one mile radius, but for every one of them, there must have been a thousand bar hoppers.  The neon kitsch catches their eye, and the twang pulsating from the beer creosoted stage draws them in.  The lines for the venues with live music were so deep we didn’t even try.  We window shopped instead, and ducked into Ernest Tubbs’ music store to wait for a table at Merchants.  That you can’t count how many bars have live music, and there are still lines for every one of them, violates some basic rule of free market economics.

Merchants, meanwhile, is fantastic.  An oasis in the storm, it is the worst place to ever go if you want a small piece of excellent chocolate cake.  If you want a piece of chocolate cake large enough for death bed regret for not finishing it, it will more than suffice.  Nice things like chocolate cake, guitar twang and late night walks through parks are entirely too transitory.  Permanence is what we seek, and rarely find.  “This is why we can’t have nice things” goes the saying. 

The riverfront tour features some very nice places, interestingly achieved (to perhaps only me) by challenging permanence.  Every place we visit has an industrial past, turned into beautiful public parks, open and free to everyone.  Each park is unique.  Each park is beloved.  Each park has spurred massive private investment.  All of this is readily apparent to even the most casual visitor or most hard-minded capitalist.

What may only be apparent to the hired hand government wonk on the tour is something else they all share.  They all feature some brand of metropolitan government.  Most of the places we visit feature completely merged city / county governments.  There is no cost unconscious bureaucracy, layered atop or aside another, doing mostly the same thing.  There is no minor kingdom, arguing with the prideful fiefdom just down the street, both convinced their essential purpose and sincerity is beyond question.

Indianapolis, Nashville and Louisville are metro governments.  Chattanooga and Hamilton County, while not a metro gov, have a shared city – county building, building trust and incubating shared efficiencies.  Cities and regions much larger than ours have figured out investment in infrastructure and economic development are far more important than self-serving tradition.  Conceptual city manager math is every $100,000 spent on a government salary equals $1,000,000 not invested in improved roads, better public education, gigabit fiber or other transformational public asset.  Duplicative, self-perpetuating local government in the Quad Cities region costs tens of millions each year.  You would think someone would commission a study, but reducing a county board from 25 to 15 passes for progress, while adding another bureaucrat to maintain the status quo turf slightly more professionally.       

Chattanooga says every dollar of public investment has been matched by thirty-two dollars of private investment.  Louisville reports over a billion dollars of private taxbase growth from improving their riverfront.  Nashville could hardly squeeze another reveler into a standard issue November Saturday night, so they’re building more riverfront parks and stages.  

But as we walk through Indianapolis’ beautiful downtown park, teeming with visitors on a cold November day, Commissioner Linville worries we can’t possibly afford such park improvements in Davenport.  I lay out my theory; stating “you can have me and people like me” or, spreading my arms to convey the beautiful park  and vibrant city we are standing in …“this”.

Sharp as a tack, Audrey smiles, raises her hand to wave and says “Bye, Bye”.