THE DUMP — AUGUST 1, 2025
Your weekly look at the weird, the wild and Williamson County.
Hello, friends, and welcome back to The Dump, your weekly look at the weird, the wild and Williamson County.
This week we’ve got zoning fantasy fiction in Franklin, sticker diplomacy in Arno, and a Brentwood politician who brought a map to a commission fight. We’ll check in on Nolensville’s City Commission and Little League warriors, revisit our Crypto Casanova, and wrap things up with another foot-stomping fit over science textbooks (yes, really).
So grab your coffee — or perhaps something stronger.
Let’s dump it out.
🅿️ “WEGO OR NO-GO?” FRANKLIN PLANNING COMMISSION BETS THE BLOCK ON A TRANSIT MIRAGE
At last Thursday’s meeting of the Franklin Municipal Planning Commission, the board voted to approve — deep breath — two multi-level parking garages fronting both Carothers Parkway and McEwen Drive.
For the uninitiated: that’s not allowed. Like, explicitly not allowed under Franklin’s own zoning ordinance.
So… why'd they do it?
Enter the Magic Word: Transit.
The developers behind Ovation, a 100+ acre mega-development in Cool Springs, made a curious pitch, which is paraphrased something like this:
“We might need those garages right there — in case WeGo, Nashville’s regional transit authority, decides to work with us someday on a park-and-ride or transit hub.”
You see where this is going, right?
Suddenly, this wasn’t a request to bend the rules for convenience. This was about the public good — about regional transportation — about solving traffic, connecting communities, maybe even saving the planet — all wrapped up in a presentation rendering and a well-timed promise of collaboration.
And Franklin bit.
They voted to allow the garage placement immediately.
The Planning Commission approved the garage locations based on developer-submitted design upgrades — not staff’s recommendation for transit integration. While staff had suggested incorporating ticket kiosks, park-and-ride stalls, and a full pedestrian-transit interface, those requirements were left off. Instead, the Commission chose to trust the developer’s voluntary aesthetic commitments — even as the promised WeGo partnership remained entirely speculative.
To be clear:
There is no commitment from WeGo.
No signed partnership or defined transit services. No shared funding, ridership modeling, or shovel-ready timelines.
And if that dream doesn’t materialize — if the Nashville transit bureaucracy decides not to make Cool Springs their next suburban pit stop — then Franklin will be left with exactly what it just approved: two parking garages built directly on its most visible corridors, serving no public transportation purpose whatsoever.
The Planning Commission gave away a major zoning exception — and didn’t get a single binding public benefit in return.
No commitment, fallback clause, or even much negotiation.
Just the zoning equivalent of a handshake and a “fingers crossed.”
And when the WeGo deal evaporates — as these things so often do — the response will be all too familiar:
“Golly, shucks, those transit folks are tough to pin down.”
Uh huh.
WW BOTTOM LINE:
Franklin didn’t plan for transit. It planned around a hypothetical. And in doing so, it handed a private developer everything they wanted, without requiring the thing for the variance: actual transit.
Build it and they will come.
📍BRENTWOOD’S KENNY TRAVIS BRINGS A MAP, GETS MAP-SMACKED
Monday’s Brentwood City Commission meeting started off smoothly. New commissioner Steve Pippin was sworn in. Leadership Brentwood gave its feel-good project updates. Everyone clapped. Everything was fine.
Then Commissioner Kenny Travis spoke up.
Turns out, his nominee for the Planning Commission had been quietly rejected. Tradition holds that appointments require unanimous consent from the board, and one commissioner—Anne Dunn—had concerns about the nominee’s geographic location. That should’ve been the end of it.
But Travis decided to turn a routine personnel matter into a full-on performance review of the process itself.
He came armed with a slide showing a hand-marked map of Brentwood, complete with dots illustrating where current commissioners live—his attempt to prove that his guy from Witherspoon wasn’t any more “clustered” than anyone else. He called the process confusing, said he’d received “no guidance,” and declared that blocking someone without a clear standard was unfair—and “embarrassing.”
Then came the Mayor Nelson Andrews, dropping the sharpest line of the night:
“I think if there's an embarrassment involved, it's been entirely upon you by bringing the candidate's name out in public.”
To which Travis quickly replied:
“He asked me to.”
Andrews, who apparently is your huckleberry, replied:
“Well, then that's fair enough. So then you should not be embarrassed at all.”
Oof.
Travis and the map shrinked away. And Steve Pippin—still holding his brand-new oath of office—got a full crash course in how Brentwood handles its drama: out loud, on the record, with a map.
WW BOTTOM LINE:
Unfortunately, the only real outcome was an awkward political squabble where no one looked especially strong—and newly sworn-in Steve Pippin got a front-row seat to Brentwood’s unique brand of civic dysfunction.
Welcome to the job, Steve.
📍NOLENSVILLE’S NEXT CONTESTANT?
With Commissioner Kate Cortner stepping down in June, Nolensville’s Board of Commissioners is set to vote next Thursday to fill her vacant seat. The only problem? No one really knows who’s in the running.
Unlike Brentwood — which posted all its applicants publicly, complete with resumes and cheerful transparency — Nolensville’s keeping things a little closer to the vest.
So here’s the list of applicants according to the rumor mill:
Josh Streufert — Planning Commission member. VP by day. Doesn’t vote in primaries, only in November.
Clark Gray — McDonald’s franchisee. Missed a commission seat barrely last fall. MAGA hat at the polls.
Heino Moeller — Former candidate. Hosts a real estate radio show on 99.7 FM.
David Windrow — Retired Nolensville fire chief. Former Brentwood deputy. Republican.
Mary Kate Pollreis — Personal trainer. Known to support Democratic candidates and causes.
WW BOTTOM LINE:
A little red, a little blue. Some vote, some don’t. Only one gets the seat. The rest get parking validated. Thursday night is shaping up to be a mystery grab bag. Should be fun.
📍ARNO VILLAGE CHARETTE — THE STICKER SESSION
Developers say they have no plan. Residents say they don’t trust them. And yet somehow, everyone ended up in the same church fellowship hall with a giant map, a box of stickers, and a dream.
The Arno Village charette kicked off Monday night with about 50 locals crammed into Grace Church, ready to offer their input — or at least mark their territory. Brian Wright and the "Character Development" crew hosted the civic pageant, explaining that nothing is finalized (except the part where there will definitely be commercial buildings on the corner of 96 and Arno).
Wright emphasized that the property could be home to roughly 4,000-square-foot lots, and that widening Arno Road is probably inevitable. But first, it was time to consult the oracles: local residents armed with red, green, and blue stickers.
Red meant “don’t you dare.” Green meant “fine, I guess.” Blue meant “sure, why not.” Each table got to mark up a giant map with concerns, opportunities, and deeply passive-aggressive neighborhood preferences. Then, like a low-stakes episode of Shark Tank, each table pitched their vision to the room.
According to a Facebook recap, the biggest issues were traffic, school crowding, plummeting home values, and the general sense that fast-food fries and box stores would be the end of Franklin as we know it. Some folks called for minimum lot sizes of 1 to 5 acres. Others said if you must build something, please make it a coffee shop — but for the love of God, no chains.
One resident reportedly asked for a safer way to cross Arno Road “besides a crosswalk,” which raises the obvious question: are we talking footbridge… or zipline?
Wright closed the night with the kind of rhetorical olive branch only a planner could love:
“Wouldn’t you rather be coauthors of what happens here?”
Sure, Brian. Right after we coauthor the traffic study.
WW BOTTOM LINE:
The next stop is Tuesday, August 5 — where we all find out whether your sticker map dreams made it past the whiteboard.
🎤 CRYPTO CASANOVA: THE GRAND OLE FRAUD, PART II
Last Friday, we brought you the tale of Franklin’s own Crypto Casanova, a man so bad at breakups he didn’t just ghost his ex—he allegedly cleaned out her crypto wallet and tried to fly the coop in a shirt that screamed midlife crisis meets Guy Fieri's nightmares.
Well, folks… it’s worse.
Much worse.
Turns out the woman at the center of this financial heartbreak is none other than Nancy Jones, widow of country music legend George Jones.
Yes. That George Jones. Lawnmower down the highway, George Jones.
So now, not only is 58-year-old Kirk West in jail on $1 million bond for Theft Over $250,000—we’ve got updated totals:
$400,000 in cash
5,534,307 XRP tokens
Total value: over $10 million
And about $1 million still missing
Nancy reportedly kicked West out of her Canterbury Rise home on June 28. Shortly after, she called her granddaughter to secure the valuables. The granddaughter opened the safe. Boom. Empty.
The private key to the crypto wallet? Shared only between Nancy and—you guessed it—Kirk.
According to the police affidavit, West later called Nancy and offered to return some of the money.
“Five million dollars,” he said, “and that’s all you’re getting.”
Which is a bold move for a man whose fashion sense screams divorced magician turned pyramid scheme life coach.
Franklin Police—with help from Homeland Security and airport authorities—nabbed him at BNA less than 24 hours after launching their investigation. That’s how fast you move when a man robs the widow of a country music icon and tries to dip out with enough XRP to buy a mid-sized island.
🌀 WW BOTTOM LINE:
There is no way we were making it through this segment without saying it:
"Heeeeeee… stopped lovin’… herrrr… todaaaaay."
But only because the Franklin Police Department stopped him first.
📍NOLO FALLS SHORT, BUT THE FIGHT'S STILL ON
The Nolensville Little League All-Stars took the field yesterday in Warner Robins to kick off their Southeast Regional run — and let’s be clear: they came ready to fight.
Facing off against Florida’s Lake Mary Little League — last year’s Little League World Series champs — Nolensville held their own in a tight, gutsy game that was anything but a blowout.
Lake Mary jumped on the board early with a groundout RBI in the first. But our boys didn’t flinch. In the fourth, Luke Tomlinson answered with a clutch groundout to bring home Brysen Lithmexay and tie it up at 1–1. The momentum shifted again late when Florida eked out the go-ahead run — and that’s where it stayed. Final: 2–1. A hard-fought, low-scoring battle between two teams built on discipline and grit.
So no, it wasn’t the fairytale opener. But it was affirmation: proof these Nolensville kids are right where they belong — battling the best, playing with heart, and showing the rest of the South that Tennessee doesn’t back down.
WW BOTTOM LINE:
They lost the game, but not an ounce of pride. The road to Williamsport gets steeper now, but the journey’s far from over. Let’s rally boys — plenty of baseball left to play!
💩 FINAL FLUSH: THE FOOT-STOMPING CONTINUES
You may have thought the Williamson County Schools drama over the STEMscopes science curriculum had finally been put to bed.
The board debated. The public weighed in. The committee did its job. And yes, the school board made a decision—out loud, on the record, and in full view of God and Channel 2.
But apparently, for some, that wasn’t the right decision.
Because now, a group of deeply credentialed, highly persistent parents has sent a formal letter to the WCS Textbook Reconsideration Committee, claiming the board’s vote was somehow unlawful, unfair, or otherwise invalid.
It’s long. It’s footnoted. It includes a statute or two. It also includes some very serious disapproval about how School Board Member Claire Reeves asked for a side-by-side curriculum comparison. The horror.
On the surface, the letter reads like a legal brief. But once you get past the citations and the tone of wounded righteousness, what it really says is:
“We didn’t get what we wanted, so we’re going to act like something shady happened.”
Let’s be clear: it didn’t.
This was a legal process. A public one. And just because the board didn’t rubber-stamp the committee’s recommendation doesn’t mean something nefarious occurred. It means elected officials did their jobs—and didn’t do what others asked.
But that hasn’t stopped the letter writers from dredging it all back up, dragging it into a subcommittee, and asking for another round of attention.
And folks, we have to ask: what are we doing here?
We’re talking about a months-old curriculum decision. The books are ordered. The budget’s allocated. Teachers are preparing to use it. The district has moved forward—because it’s literally their job to move forward.
But now we’ve got a group of parents—many of whom hold titles like JD, MD, and PhD—arguing that this whole thing must be reexamined. Because apparently, no one thought to check whether Reeves signed the right piece of paper before attending a virtual meeting.
This is not serious. This is sour grapes dressed up in legalese.
And frankly, with all that education, you’d think someone in the group might realize that Reconsideration Committees don’t have the power to overrule board votes or purchase new material. Or that quoting a statute doesn’t magically change what the board is allowed to do. Or that “we didn’t like the outcome” isn’t the same as “we uncovered misconduct.”
But no. We’re back in the ring again—this time with more PDFs.
And we’d probably just laugh and move on, except… well… we took a closer look at the signatories. Of the twelve parents who signed this letter, five have clear healthcare backgrounds. And four of those are directly tied to Vanderbilt University or its medical center.
Now, we’re not saying this was planned during a faculty retreat or a pediatrics lunch-and-learn. But we are saying—it’s curious.
Is this really just about textbooks? Or did a handful of well-placed professionals decide they know better than the rest of us, and they’re going to use every ounce of institutional weight, influence, and resume-padding they can muster to drag this thing back for a redo?
Because we’ve seen this before.
These are the same voices—many of them—who stood in front of this community during COVID and insisted that they alone held the moral and scientific high ground. That their credentials gave them authority over the rest of us. That parents should sit down and listen while the real experts made decisions.
And here they are again.
Still talking.
Still asserting.
Still convinced that being smart means being right, and being right means getting your way.
But friends, the decision was made. The vote was public. The process was followed.
If you want to opt your kid out, the district has made it possible. But this little backdoor effort to override the will of the board through a procedural side alley?
Nope. Not happening. Not on our watch.
And yes—we are paying attention. If this turns out to be something more coordinated—if there’s vendor involvement, institutional pressure, or a stealth campaign to get rejected materials reinserted through committee technicalities—we’re going to call it out. By name.
Because we actually believe in transparency. And we're not the ones trying to bury all in a subcommittee.
Your move, goofballs.
Just like that, we’ve reached the bottom of the barrel — the end of another edition.
Thanks for reading, raging, or maybe even fact-checking. Franklin’s still paving dreams, Brentwood’s still arguing over dots, and somewhere out there, the committee is still looking for a variance.
Catch you next week.
Stay loud, stay local, stay wrong, Williamson.