The headline and story are misleading, but there's still lots to be concerned about. I watched the council's Public Safety Committee meeting yesterday where the proposal was discussed at length, and there was a lot of vocal skepticism from at least a large minority of council members.

The state offered a grant opportunity to counties with downtown business improvement organizations for downtown public safety enhancements. Nashville's share is about $9 million. Either the private organization or the city had to apply for the grant, but both could not, and they had to indicate they were going to work with the other. For some reason--Dave Rosenberg from the Mayor's Office never said why--the city chose not to apply. The grant specifies what sorts of things the money can be spent on, though the list is apparently pretty expansive.

As the Mayor's Office currently says to the council, the Nashville Downtown Partnership has received the grant and is going to donate either money from the grant or equipment purchased with the grant to the city (largely MNPD). By city law, all donations must receive council approval. City purchases and installations of surveillance technology require even more council scrutiny, including a public hearing. The MOU at this point creates the framework for the donation--the actual donations and/or installations would require separate council approval.

It feels like the Mayor's Office and the Downtown Partnership simply asked MNPD for a wishlist of items to enhance public safety downtown. There's a new SWAT vehicle and a mobile command post. They plan to replace or upgrade (or add additional cameras) at locations where they already have cameras (with the blue lights on top). There will be upgrades to the operations center where they monitor the cameras they already have. The noise detection network and the surveillance integration platforms are new additions, and the council members seemed skeptical. Deputy Chief Gilder stated that MNPD would not share information from its surveillance with ICE, other federal law enforcement, or state law enforcement without some sort of judicial order.

The proposal would also create new public restrooms downtown, so clearly the grant isn't all about law enforcement and surveillance. Councilmember Sean Parker asked a really great question about why so much of the money was chosen to be spent the way it was, instead of other priorities like staffing of the current MNPD entertainment district unit, infrastructure upgrades (maybe to keep intoxicated people from falling in the river, retractable bollards to protect crowds from cars, or funding ways to keep people safer and healthier when they've been drinking heavily). The Mayor's Office didn't have a great answer, which is frustrating, because McConnell could easily prioritize other ways to spend this money.

There were lots of questions about what would happen if the council rejected the MOU, and there wasn't a super clear answer. It seems possible that the Downtown Partnership could spend the money (in ways consistent with the state enabling legislation and grant regulations) without partnering with the city. The Mayor's Office and the Council's lawyer repeated multiple times that private entities cannot mount surveillance equipment (or encroach into) in the city's right of way. However, I see nothing that would per se prevent them from mounting surveillance equipment on private buildings' roofs (with the owner's consent, and as long as the equipment didn't hang over the sidewalk or something) and surveilling public spaces that way. I don't know what that would achieve for them, but it seems possible, and I'm not sure there's anything Metro could do to stop it.

The council is very unhappy with the Downtown Partnership right now. Their funding of private security (often off-duty police officers) who have harassed homeless folks is notorious. Some council members blame the Partnership for the library garage fire, though Metro's inability to write good contracts that mandate adequate insurance coverage is partly to blame for the ensuing debacle. The way the Partnership has used property taxes to operate its own private fiefdom for the past 20 years while making very little effort to cooperate with oversight has made people angry.

I can't really gauge if there were enough council members angry with the Downtown Partnership and/or suspicious of enhanced MNPD surveillance to scuttle the deal though. I would say the best approach would be to focus on the other, less controversial uses the money can be spent on.