The Dump — August 15, 2025
Your weekly look at the weird, the wild and Williamson County
Hey again, folks — you made it through another week. Welcome back to The Dump, your weekly look at the weird, the wild, and the “did-that-really-happen?” in Williamson County.
In this edition, the school board’s chasing dings, while Bulso’s chasing headlines. Franklin’s BOMA is stuck in neutral, and Brentwood’s pickle palace is toast. The county GOP’s grumbling into its coffee, and Westhaven’s already out swiping signs like it’s an Olympic sport.
Let’s see what we can clog this week.
Let’s dump it out.
🍎 WILLIAMSON COUNTY SCHOOLS — BACK FROM SUMMER BREAK, ALREADY DINGING
After skipping July, the Williamson County School Board finally reconvened — looking alert, hydrated, and ready to… politely discuss enrollment trends. The meeting had all the energy of a tranquilized turtle, but buried in the bus driver counts and ribbon-cutting updates were a few choice nuggets.
Cell Phone Crackdown Creep:
High schools are now basically Fort Knox for mobile devices — no phones in class, hallways, or study halls. The rollout’s been too smooth, so the hot contraband now is Apple Watches and AirPods. Those dings, pings, and stealth hallway earbuds are the new black market. Teachers are confiscating watches like it’s a diamond heist, with Siri as the world’s most disappointed getaway driver.
Mature Book List Buy-In:
Thirteen percent of parents opted in to the district’s “mature book list” restriction, mostly in elementary schools. Middle and high school lists are expected to have about as much action as a Franklin roundabout at midnight — but hey, it’s the principle of the thing.
Enrollment Quirk:
Seniors are the fastest-growing grade level. Translation: families parachute in just in time for the diploma, avoiding the 13-year property tax tour. Who could’ve guessed that in a county where the cost of living drives away teachers and bus drivers, it might also drive away young families? Oh right — everyone.
Physical Activity Pivot:
The state wants 90 minutes of weekly physical activity for high schoolers. Some campuses wedge it into lunch, others into study hall, and PTOs are now in the “spike ball procurement” business. It’s a noble experiment in getting teenagers to voluntarily move, and it might just work — as long as someone hides the Apple Watches first.
WW Bottom Line:
We waited a month for this meeting, and we still came away with the same big questions: How do we afford to live here? Who’s moving in? And how do we stop teenagers from streaming Netflix on their wrists?
🚧 HARLIN ON HOLD: BOMA SAYS ‘COME BACK WITH PAPERWORK’
Franklin’s long-brewing Harlin development — a few hundred homes, commercial space, boutique hotel, trails — was supposed to take its second step toward approval Tuesday night. Instead, it face-planted in front of a standing-room-only crowd that packed the meeting hall like it was a Taylor Swift presale.
The culprit? A missing interlocal agreement with Williamson County deciding who’s responsible for fixing and maintaining Hillview Lane and Coleman Road. No agreement, no vote.
It was a tense room, primed by days of Facebook fireworks — including one oddly glamorous pro-Harlin promo video that looked like glamour shots meets Hallmark nature special. Picture greenways, frolicking deer, and slow-motion daisies. What you didn’t see? Houses. The comment section (nearly a hundred deep) was mostly residents sharpening their “no thanks.”
Alderman Matt Brown didn’t mince words: “My understanding is the county has not approved this interlocal agreement. I don’t think this board should be approving a development plan… We need the county to weigh in on the interlocal. It is premature to vote.”
City Attorney Shauna Billingsley backed him up: “If the county won’t let us maintain [Coleman Road] or improve it… we’re kind of stuck.”
Alderman Greg Caesar addressed the crowd: “Thank you for coming and being engaged. At this point, we’ve potentially wasted a bunch of time discussing this.”
City Administrator Eric Stuckey insisted nobody was blindsided: “This isn’t something that was held out from you.” Translation: the county attorney dropped this in our lap yesterday.
With the Highway Commission not meeting until Sept. 3 and the County Commission on Sept. 8, the next vote is now punted to Nov. 11 — post-election, giving everyone time to shuffle papers and, as Vice Mayor Jason Potts suggested, maybe “get an updated traffic study” while we’re at it.
WW Bottom Line:
The developer’s marketing shows deer running free. Right now, they’re the only ones moving.
🎾 PICKLE DOME, PICKLE DONE
Brentwood’s long-running tennis-and-pickleball soap opera finally aired its season finale this week — and the ending was a full-blown tragedy for a select few and a comedy for everyone else.
By a 4–3 vote, the City Commission pulled the ripcord on its nearly $1 million design contract for the Crockett Park racquet facility, invoking the magical “for convenience and without cause” clause. Translation: We’re canceling because we can, and because voters are still wielding pitchforks from the last time we tried this.
The casualty count is staggering:
• Former Mayor Mark Gorman — out.
• Commissioner Allison Spears — out.
• Commissioner Susannah Macmillan — resigned before she could be voted out.
• And somewhere, State Rep. Gino Bulso is allegedly stringing his tennis racket through tears, whispering HB0065 into the wind.
This was supposed to be Brentwood’s big rebound after losing 21 courts when the Maryland Farms YMCA shut down. Instead, it’s been a masterclass in how to ignite fiscal outrage, dodge referendums, draw ethics complaints, and leave behind nothing but an $82,000 pile of vaporized plans and political careers.
And let’s not forget — the facility was nicknamed the Pickle Dome. Meaning a dome of pickles has now outlasted the political ambitions of at least three elected officials.
WW Bottom Line:
The Pickle Dome is a cautionary tale — proof that in Brentwood politics, if you build it, they will sue you, fire you, or vote you out before ground is even broken… at least pickles age gracefully.
⚖️ BULSO FIRES LEGAL NUKE OVER TRANSGENDER STUDENT IN GIRLS-ONLY CLASS
Speaking of a pickle, State Rep. and attorney Gino Bulso (R–District 61) has launched another courtroom offensive, filing a lawsuit in Williamson County Chancery Court against Legacy Middle School Principal Alicia Justice and the Williamson County Board of Education.
The case stems from a May 2025 incident in which a transgender student — a biological male identifying as female — attended a 7th-grade, girls-only Family Life (sex education) class. Parents say they’d been told in an April 11 school email that boys and girls would be separated for the course.
At least 13 girls opted out after learning the transgender student would attend, then opted out again the following day when the student returned. The complaint leans on Bulso’s own 2023 state law defining sex as biological at birth, plus the “Accommodations for All Children Act” requiring gender separation in certain settings.
No damages are sought — just a court declaration that the law was violated and an injunction to prevent it from happening again. WCS has until late August to respond. Advocacy groups have already criticized the case as targeting vulnerable students.
WW Bottom Line:
At this point, we’ve lost count of how many lawsuits Gino Bulso has going and how many people he’s suing. But we do know this: this is how he operates — skip the middle steps, drop the legal hammer, collect the headline.
He’s working overtime to be the darling of the far-right, suing the pants off anyone in reach, but word is he spoke to the Westhaven Conservatives last night (at a WCRP-sponsored meeting) and still lost the straw poll. So no matter how hard he tries, he can’t seem to win over the crowd he’s courting. Wonder how long before he sues them, too?
📩 WILLIAMSON GOP FILES PROTEST LETTER OVER PRIMARY LAW
On August 11, Williamson County Republican Party Chairman Steve Hickey and Vice Chair Diane Chenard submitted an official letter to the Williamson County Election Commission. The letter confirms the party will conduct primary elections — as now required by law — for all 2026 county races, including commission seats, school board contests, and more.
But the letter doesn’t end there.
While affirming compliance, the WCRP also filed the notice “under protest,” claiming that the state’s new primary requirement violates the party’s First Amendment right to freedom of association.
Sadly, the letter reads like it was signed with clenched teeth and a pen chewed halfway through.
This follows months of opposition from Hickey and other caucus defenders, who argued that Republican nominees should be selected quietly, internally — preferably in a carpeted room without any voters present.
Since the law’s passage, a favorite fallback excuse has emerged: crossover voting. Critics now claim that holding primaries risks sabotage by Democrats — and that caucuses, while “not ideal,” were necessary safeguards.
But caucuses don’t just filter out Democrats.
They also exclude deployed military, first responders, nurses, caretakers, seniors, business travelers, and just about anyone who couldn’t block off a random Tuesday night to stand in line in a hotel ballroom.
Under the new law, Republican voters can cast ballots early, vote absentee, or show up on Election Day like any normal election.
WW Bottom Line:
Caucuses weren’t built to stop Democrats. They were built to stop Republicans who didn’t know the secret handshake.
The playing field didn’t tilt — it finally leveled out. Good guys win.
🚽 FINAL FLUSH: SIGN STEALING SEASON BLOOMS EARLY IN WESTHAVEN
Franklin runs on five seasons — spring, summer, fall, winter, and Sign Stealing Season. It’s that magical time when the air gets crisp, the leaves turn, and somewhere in places like Westhaven, someone in orthopedic sneakers is tiptoeing through the lawn like a cat burglar in broad daylight.
This year’s opening act comes out of Ward 4. A candidate says his opponent’s acquaintance was going around telling residents — incorrectly — that campaign signs couldn’t be displayed until 60 days before Election Day. In reality, Tennessee law starts the clock at early voting, which begins October 8. The City Attorney confirmed it. The signs were legal. But some still didn’t survive the week — a Westhaven resident, who could be described as an early bird aficionado, was caught on a Ring camera waddling up a lawn, yanking out the sign, and shuffling off with the spoils like she was smuggling state secrets in a Publix tote.
The rumor-spreading and sign-snatching got so bad that the Westhaven HOA issued an official notice reminding residents they have the right to display campaign signs on their own property. When the HOA has to step in to protect your First Amendment rights, you know the neighborhood grapevine has turned into a weedwhacker.
And Westhaven isn’t alone in this hobby. A few years ago, a Williamson County School Board race got ugly in Brentwood giving us the unforgettable spectacle of supporters of a group, whom we won’t name (but rhymes with Toms for Biberty) who had a penchant for prowling lawns, planting smear signs, and — for the federal crime flourish — stuffing mailboxes with campaign letters — because nothing says “grassroots outreach” like committing a federal crime before lunch. Political engagement, apparently, meant bringing a flashlight, a flexible spine, and a loose definition of “private property.”
Still, Westhaven is where the legends are made. A few years back, at a Franklin mayoral forum, a crowd physically shoved investigative reporter Phil Williams out the door. That was the same race where the Westhaven Conservatives were all-in for Gabrielle Hanson — a candidate with white supremacist photo-ops — and Jeff Feldman, whose résumé was so inflated it should have come with a helium tank. Feldman, already infamous in his own neighborhood, made headlines for posting on social media that a gun could be used against “unruly kids” in Westhaven. Those endorsements didn’t just age badly — they spoiled overnight.
In most neighborhoods, campaigning means knocking on doors. In some, it means checking the security footage, zip-tying your sign to the rebar, and hoping the HOA doesn’t send you a “courtesy reminder” about your First Amendment rights.
So yes, Westhaven, y’all are wild — and we thought the pineapples were too much. But let’s be honest: no matter where you live, Sign Stealing Season is here.
Stay frosty, my political friends — the poacher may be on camera, and yes, danger sometimes uses a walker.
To each and every one of you who stick it out all the way to the bitter (and hopefully entertaining) end of this weekly diatribe — thank you. You’re the reason this thing keeps flowing.
So keep your signs staked and your Apple Watches hidden. Thanks again for tuning in, have a great weekend, and we’ll see you next week, Williamson.