Bright & Early: Consider Our Minds Blown Edition

Good morning, Nashville, and happy St. Patty’s Day. During this time of Severe Economic Suck, Metro is trying to look for money anywhere it can find some. Last week, they revealed that we as a city have racked up over $2M in unpaid parking tickets including one dude who has $8,186 mostly from expired meters. When interviewed by WSMV, the chronic offender (who works at OSHI Flowers downtown) offered this reason: “I need a parking space… There’s no parking spaces.” Wait, what? We can think of a few dozen options that would cost less than $8,000! So his tickets go unpaid, our city remains broke, and life goes on.

• More bailouts. The Metro Council is trying to do its part to bail out the Community Education program by loaning it $165K to get back on its feet. You may recall the fiasco last month about someone’s decision to combine adult literacy with community swimming pools, which ended up putting the literacy program in a tough place financially.
• TVA prevention. A bill requiring safer handling of the state’s coal ash passed in the state Senate yesterday and is expected to pass in the House. Not that it really helps Kingston after the fact, but combined with new federal regulations, we can all hope that the TVA does’t spill that mess again.
• Bits & pieces. It’s sort of like Nashville Star week on American Idol, because we miss Nashville Star so much … Here’s a headline that made us want to claw our eyeballs out this morning … A Vandy professor might be onto something when it comes to curing Alzheimer’s disease … News flash: Vince Young showed up to work yesterday! … Michael G Tangredi is pretty much getting his butt handed to him in court.

Photo by Peppysis.