Happy Wednesday, neighbors!
As I’m writing this, I am sitting in the observation lounge aboard a cruise ship 35 miles west of the western side of Mexico. As I promised some of you, I am doing all I can to keep an eye on development and zoning/rezoning cases in our neighborhood.
A lot has happened in the past 2 weeks. I would strongly encourage you all to review the updated cases page (http://hhneighbors.com/current-metro-planning-cases-for-highland-heights/) to see what is happening. Some of these may warrant your involvement as they can have a considerable impact to our neighborhood. Even those that are for only a parcel or two can set precedent that we may or may not want for our little area of Nashville.
A number of us have been very involved in working to preserve our community’s mix of housing and the diversity of neighbors we currently enjoy. Development and density increase is inevitable, but it is paramount for us to voice our opinions in an attempt to control such changes. Across Nashville, communities who haven’t been involved have seen their neighborhoods become filled with non-owner occupied Short Term Rental properties, overrun with construction, and plagued with parking problems that none of us would have thought possible 10 years ago.
What can you do? Whether you support or oppose these rezoning and development cases – make your voices heard by taking one or more of the following actions:
- For those cases before the Planning Commission, email the commissioners at planning.commissioners@nashville.gov
- For those cases before the Metro Council, call or email our Councilmember as well as other Councilmembers to let them know how you feel about the bills before them. A list of these representatives may be found at https://www.nashville.gov/Metro-Council/Metro-Council-Members.aspx
- Plan to attend the meetings in person. Yes, this is not the most convenient solution, but having constituents take time to appear at a public hearing and voice their opinion can have an impact.
As always, I do strive to make myself available to neighbors should they need more information on these cases and to help those who want to engage with the Planning Commission and Council on these and other issues. Please feel free to email me at chairperson@hhneighbors.com
Have a great day! I’ll see you at the April 18 General Membership meeting!
Gordon Stacy Harmon is the current chairperson of the HHNA Steering Committee.
