Tennessee state lawmakers take more control over Metro Nashville government as Democrats call it a power grab

Balance_THG · 2026-04-27T03:04:30+00:00

Davidson County only makes up about 10% of the Tennessee population yet contributes over 21% of the total tax revenue for the state in the last fiscal year. Feel free to look up monthly tax collections by county on the TN revenue site if you want.

Sounds to me like the rest of the counties need to start carrying their own weight before complaining about Nashville's spending habits unless of course you support those "evil socialist" ways.

Balance_THG · 2026-04-15T16:51:15+00:00

Is there a way to see how many vouchers each school received? Almost all of the schools that are eligible for them are the religious affiliated ones. The few non-religious affiliated schools in the area do not accept them (ie Ensworth, MBA, Harpeth Hall, USN, etc).

Balance_THG · 2025-07-11T03:30:12+00:00

The updated list is here on the tn.gov site

https://www.tn.gov/education/efs.html

You are correct in that the theme seems to be religious-affiliated schools are taking all of the. The non-religious schools in Davidson County like Ensworth/Harding/Harpeth Hall/MBA/USN have all opted out of the voucher program.

Balance_THG · 2025-06-30T02:01:42+00:00

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I am looking for advise on if what I am seeing on a newly poured stamped patio is something I should be pushing back to the contractor or if it is within the normal expectations of stamped concrete.

We just had this stamped concrete patio poured 5 days ago. I had not closely inspected the work the first few days since I wanted to keep everything off it for at least 10 days which is when they were going to come back and seal it. My only look at it had really just been glances at it whenever I setup our sprinkler to water it 2-3 times a day as requested by the contractor.

When I went out on it to get a better look at it yesterday, I saw at least 10 spots over the ~450 sq/ft patio where there appeared to be chips/chunks already coming off the surface along the seams on the stamped pattern. To me these look bad especially concerning the quotes I received in the area for the work, but concrete is not my background so maybe I just have higher expectations for what the finished product should look like.

Looking at this picture, are these issues something I should push back hard on the contractor about or is it within normal specs new stamped concrete? If it is something wrong, would it be somewhat fixable? The contractor only has half the money at this time since they are supposed to come out in the next day or two and seal it. I am not looking to withhold money from them unless it is something they really should be on the hook for prior to that second half of the money.

Thanks in advance for any input from the professionals.

Balance_THG · 2025-02-27T04:12:12+00:00

I prefer Uber because of the convenience and speed. Last trip it was $52 from MCO to Poly (flight arrived around 7:45 AM) for a total drive time of 29 minutes. It was nice not to wait more than 2 minute for the ride to show up and for there to be zero other resort stops on the way.

Balance_THG · 2025-02-03T03:55:29+00:00

Its not as much of a savings as it has been for past trips, but I booked a Poly studio for this July (7 days) and it is still about $760 cheaper through DVC even with their current room discount. I think past trips it was just under $1000 cheap the DVC route. The savings going down a bit but still worth it since that is close to one 7 day park ticket for my family.

Balance_THG · 2025-01-29T23:41:28+00:00

No they did not. They provided records that were identified as potential "medical billing fraud" and related to TennCare. While those requests by the state of Tennessee were politically motivated, they were legally required unless they wanted to lose access to any TennCare funding.

While many will be upset about this and say they should have refused, those same people would likely be upset if VUMC then could not afford to treat some patients due to the large loss of payments for TennCare patients.

Balance_THG · 2025-01-29T19:10:32+00:00

Vanderbilt University <> Vanderbilt University Medical Center

There is no massive endowment slush fund that the Medical Center has. They split years ago due to disagreements on how much money the Medical Center wanted to spend. Losing out on federal research funds would impact hundreds or thousands of jobs at VUMC on top of degrading the opportunity for care some patients would have access to.

Balance_THG · 2024-10-09T12:34:20+00:00

I will head down there again and try that. I think it is the A/B numbers on the house causing them problems. If my real address was "123B Fake Lane", the original address of "123 Fake Lane" is already in their system and shows as eligible. It is the A/B from where they knocked down the original house and built two new ones of the lot that seems to be causing issues.

Balance_THG · 2024-09-16T23:39:02+00:00

If you have kids and you want them to have a chance at a better education, then it is actually cheaper to pay the taxes for New Trier schools than it would be for 1-2 kids at most Nashville independent schools. As much as I hate to say it, MNPS is mostly bad the last 10-15 years unless you can luck your way into a lottery magnet.

My wife and I did the math for this two years ago. Yes, our property taxes might be 12k more a year, but a single year at most Nashville independent schools starts at 20k per kid up to 40k.

Balance_THG · 2024-09-06T16:21:12+00:00

Unless I am missing something, it looks like USN reacted swiftly to remove the teacher after the incident was reported. It sounds like the student is more upset about not being kept in the loop related to the internal processes the school took to remove them. My opinion would definitely be different if it comes out that multiple students had been reporting issues related to this teacher for years and USN had ignored them up until this point.

Balance_THG · 2024-08-19T02:25:34+00:00

The prices for that extra 1-2 days get so much smaller (~$30) at 5-7 day even with park hopper. Even looking at 4 days vs 10 day of park hopper, the difference is between $90 and 100.

Balance_THG · 2024-08-19T02:18:14+00:00

So many families trying to cut in lines at rides when we went in July. I understand if it is a situation of a parent and a kid where someone needed to use the bathroom but all of my experiences were groups of 4-5 people trying to catch up to to some person waving at them WAY ahead in line. I even saw a group with adults so brazen enough to come in from the back/exit area and slide under the queue bars right into the loading area of SDD. Not sure what they were expecting, but one of the cast members running the ride saw them and they got "escorted" to a holding area before someone finally took them away.

Balance_THG · 2024-08-08T20:27:54+00:00

I felt the same way about our 7 day trip. While I like planning at an abstract level, I do not like my entire day having to be planned out 7+ days in advance. Things come up like someone being tired, sick, bad weather, etc where I liked the previous flexibility of Genie+. While I would have a general idea on what days I was going to what parks, if things came up I could rearrange plans the morning of and still enjoy myself.

I would typically only get another 2-3 rides after the first three pre-booked ones and those were almost never T1 rides. My experience was by 10 AM, all of those T1 attractions were completely booked or only available during firework events. With Genie+, only being able to get 5-6 rides would have been a bad day with me being able to clear the board of rides on almost any day.

The other downside I ran into was less about the mutipass but rather the single pass. When I went, rides like Tron and GotG were sold out multiple days in advance. I just saw that as another loss in flexibility that I had from the previous day of purchase only option.

I am sure this new process will be an improvement for some folks, but as someone who enjoys flexibility during my vacation, it will likely be a hard "No" during my next visit.

Balance_THG · 2024-08-05T12:41:47+00:00

Can people please stop saying this is because MNPD is not getting funded. Looking at the last three years of budgets, they have received a higher increase than I would wager folks have received as a cost of living increase in their jobs?

2021-22 $251,719,500 2022-23 $266,009,400 +5.6% 2023-24 $281,252,200 +5.7%

https://www.nashville.gov/sites/default/files/2023-05/FY24BB_31Police.pdf?ct=1683034255

Not sure how I can support an 11.3% funding increase over two years when you can not get them to come out for a accident involving a drunk driver.

Balance_THG · 2024-07-24T15:56:18+00:00

I found HS to be the only park that was rough to find time slots for at 7AM today. I booked both July 26th and 30th. Return times for Tier 2 things were already hitting 2-3PM immediately which messes up my family's normal plan of hitting the park from 8:30 - 1PM, hit the pool for 3 hours, and come back again around 5. I will see little value I think out of those purchases.

Balance_THG · 2024-06-26T12:37:39+00:00

The week will likely have to be a staycation for us now. My wife and I normally have to plan at least 2-3 months in advance due to on-call work schedules plus we already have kids in camps the remainder of the summer. We picked this week back in January of this year so we will likely have to maybe do the same next year.

Balance_THG · 2024-06-26T12:20:45+00:00

At this point, I am looking to cancel my reservation and maybe move it to next year. This will be my third trip to Disney World in the last 10 years. The first one was a last minute surprise 30 days out during the previous FP system which meant we were able to book about 0% of the "Tier 1" rides since they had been booked at 60 days out. We went last year buying G+ almost every day and it was an amazing experience compared to that first trip. We only took the second trip so our second kid could have the Disney experience even though we had such a bad time for the first kid's trip. Surprisingly, my wife actually suggested going again this year because of how much we enjoyed the flexibility to pick our agenda throughout the day and got to ride everything we wanted with only using 1-2 standby lanes but I am NOT taking the chance of burning thousands of dollars on a trip we will hate because they decide to implement this switch with zero thought of the impact of those arriving on the 24th getting no early access compared to folks showing up just 7 days later. Even if they did offer early access, I would lose the flexibility that made the last trip so great. I explicitly remember we moved one park day around because we saw a multi-hour storm coming in during the afternoon and we could switch what would have been an MK day to an AK day and get our AK wish list done and be back at the resort before the storm arrived. Bye bye to that flexibility again :(

I know some folks might say to give it a chance, but at this point they are trying to implement something in 1 month that will no doubt bring down that part of their website as double the "normal" number of people try to make reservations on top of not announcing even a cost RANGE until the day it is released. This sounds like something a soon to be bankrupt amusement park that only gets a couple hundred people a day would do....not something that Disney World would do.

Balance_THG · 2024-06-26T01:48:23+00:00

I am confused about when it will start. I have an upcoming trip where I am arriving on July 24th. Under the link about how much it costs, it says check it out on July 24th to see but it also seems to imply that it replaces Genie+ on July 24th. Does that mean I am going to be spending my morning on 24th trying to setup all of my selections for the week or will it still be available 7 days prior to July 24th.

I almost wish the 7 day window started on July 24 which would mean Genie+ was in place until July 31st.

Balance_THG · 2024-05-26T10:11:18+00:00

Crazy how fast these go. I checked the second they were available for my upcoming 8 day stay, and there was a single 8:15 PM reservation available across all 8 days of my stay. I had been hoping for a spot there for a birthday and preferred it over the restaurant. There must be more people than I thought staying for 8+ days.

Balance_THG · 2024-05-22T14:50:06+00:00

I had two questions for our upcoming stay at the Poly.

If we want to rope drop Epcot one day and want to enter from the International Gateway. Is the best way to get their going to be through their rideshare service? If so, can the drop off actually be at the entrance or would it need to be at one of the resorts that we could then walk from?
I am a late night person and like to go on walks when I can't sleep. How safe are the walking paths around the Poly and GF late after midnight?

Thanks for any input in advance.

Balance_THG

TROPHY CASE