Good morning, Nashville. After a long, long, long Metro Council meeting last night, they decided to pass the amended fairgrounds bill that will spare the racetrack and fairgrounds from demolition at least through 2012. More than 1,000 folks turned out for the meeting and hundreds of Nashvillians (and lots of non-Nashvillians, oddly enough) spoke on both sides of the issue. In addition to the fairgrounds vote, the non-discrimination ordinance requiring all of Metro’s contractors to have non-discrimination policies in place passed its first reading. However, it did not pass unanimously as bills usually do on their first reading.

• Bless their hearts. TDOT has already dropped $20 million on cleaning all the snow and ice off the roads this winter, which is $6 million more than they budgeted. And it’s only the middle of January! Snow storms are so expensive.
• Stop the bus. Metro will soon be installing 600 GPS trackers on their school buses so dispatchers can tell when they’re running late, extremely late, or on time. Maybe they can also find the buses that are lost, such as the one that got lost yesterday and showed up two hours late.
• Bits & pieces. The Titans would like us to sign a petition to help them prevent a lockout. You can find it here … Southern Sudanese refugees voting in Nashville voted almost unanimously for separation from Sudan … The Nashville Public Library is doing that thing where you can pay back your overdue fines in canned goods … Updates on the snow predictions for tomorrow and next week … The Preds sailed past the Coyotes last night with the help of JP Dumont’s first hat trick in 9 1/2 years.

Photo by Daniel Mack.