📰 THE DUMP — December 12, 2025

YOUR WEEKLY LOOK AT THE WEIRD, THE WILD AND WILLIAMSON COUNTY

Dec 12, 2025

Hello friends, and welcome back to The Dump. Once again, it’s your weekly look at the weird, the wild, and Williamson County.

This edition brings a judicial plot twist for the schools, some suspiciously convenient cartography in Franklin, and an unexpected science lesson courtesy of Mother Nature. The ongoing “pond” saga somehow found a deeper end, Page Football finally delivered a finish worth every mile, and election integrity… well, isn’t.

Are you ready? Let’s dump it out.

🎭 THE PRONOUN SHUTDOWN

If you felt a strange breeze sweep across Tennessee schools this week, that was the collective exhale of every administrator who just realized their district’s carefully crafted pronoun policy is now about as enforceable as a dress code on Senior Skip Day.

The Sixth Circuit has ruled that using biological pronouns is, in fact, protected speech, which is astonishing only because so many districts spent the last few years pretending they had the constitutional authority to police it.

You can almost picture the reaction inside central office conference rooms — administrators staring down at their pronoun policies like they’re deciphering a treasure map, realizing that “discipline for misgendering” just got swallowed by a judicial sinkhole. The planning sessions, retreats, flowcharts, training hours… all those acronyms — dissolved in a single paragraph from a judge who clearly heard enough.

And Tennessee didn’t walk into this unarmed. Public Chapter 453 already banned compelled pronoun use and barred districts from punishing anyone who chose not to play along. The Sixth Circuit reinforced the legislation, closing the “bullying” and “disruption” loopholes districts used to act like the law didn’t apply to them.

Schools still get to handle real bullying — the kind that actually hurts somebody — but the practice of elevating pronoun disagreements to Defcon 1 has officially expired.

WW BOTTOM LINE
The Sixth Circuit didn’t “update” pronoun policy — it unplugged the whole machine. Tennessee’s law slammed the door, and the court welded it shut. But somewhere in Tennessee, a district is going to ignore this ruling. And administrators who insist on resurrecting “pronouns or else” should keep their calendars open for depositions.

🏗️ ANNEXATION SEASON: WHEN A STUDY ISN’T JUST A STUDY

If you thought the Harlin project was going into winter hibernation — bless your heart. Turns out Santa dropped off an early surprise at Franklin BOMA: a brand-new annexation feasibility study for 80 acres of land sitting perfectly beside the very development everyone said was stalled until spring.

Quite a coincidence, isn’t it?

The Ingram family owns land on both sides of the city–county line, and this particular piece is the only chunk still in county territory. So they’ve asked to bring it into the city. No development plan. No request for services. Just a wholesome, “Hey, please annex my farm.”

And if that were the whole story, we could all go home and sip something warm.

But here’s the peppermint twist:
If this parcel becomes part of the City of Franklin, the Harlin project no longer needs an interlocal agreement with the county — which never seemed likely anyway. The minute this land touches the rest of the project, poof — everything becomes contiguous. And “contiguous” is Tennessee’s magic word for skipping the county’s approval entirely.

Suddenly that “nothing until spring” promise feels a lot like saying you’ll start your diet after New Year’s.

Aldermen Bev Berger and Greg Caesar were the first to raise the obvious questions:
• Why study annexation when the applicant doesn’t even want services?
• What’s the benefit to the city?
• And why now?

Neighbor Rob Dodson made the clearest point of the night:
If the property owner isn’t asking for city services, what’s the legal basis for annexing it at all?
Why annex land whose entire purpose appears to be helping someone else leapfrog a regulatory step?

And this is where things get even more interesting.
Because the citizenry isn’t taking this lying down. Groups like Citizens Against Reckless Expansion have been sounding the alarm for weeks, pointing out the timing, the sudden “coincidence” of this annexation request after a decade of silence, and the very real concern that once this door opens, the southwest quadrant turns into a development free-for-all.

Vote: Passes 7–1, with Caesar dissenting.

WW BOTTOM LINE
The public sees what the developers see.
The timing, the positioning, the eagerness — it all points in one direction.
You’ve got to give all sides here credit for tenacity.
To be continued.

🦠 THE SPORE YOU KNOW: HISTOPLASMOSIS HITS WILLCO

In the latest sign that 2025 has stopped pretending, the Tennessee Department of Health announced that Spring Hill and Thompson’s Station are now dealing with a fungal lung outbreak. While the rest of the country debates tariffs, affordability, and the balance of power in Congress, Williamson County is out here raw-dogging spores. Terrific.

TDH says eighteen cases of histoplasmosis have turned up since September. This county inhales trouble along with its oxygen. The fungus lives in soil contaminated with bird or bat droppings — otherwise known as Tennessee soil.

Most people breathe this stuff in and move on. Others get fever, cough, and chest pain — also known as the “Google told me to rewrite my will” starter kit. But no, you cannot catch this from another person. This is a direct-to-consumer disaster, courtesy of Nature, LLC.

For immunocompromised residents, this can get serious — GI trouble, lesions, even brain involvement. So yes, laugh if you must — but also steer clear of all bat-poop dust clouds this week.

WW BOTTOM LINE
There’s still no word on spore-triggered zombies.
Even so, keep your head on a swivel — not for the undead, but for Brenda down the street, the Regional Vice Prophet of whichever essential-oil empire she’s repping this month — who treats every health advisory like her cue to peddle oregano cures and chakra fixes door-to-door. Hide your chakras.

💥 HARD ROCK DATE: SURPRISE, IT’S A QUARRY

Looks like Rep. Todd Warner’s “farm pond” is finally getting its day in court — or at least in a conference room at Henry Horton State Park.

According to the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, the public hearing for Mining Permit TN0070733 — a.k.a. Warner Farms Lake — will take place January 15, 2026 at 5:30 p.m. There’s even a Zoom option for anyone who’d rather watch from a safe distance — preferably outside the blast radius.

We told you weeks ago that the paperwork didn’t lie: this wasn’t irrigation, it was excavation. And now, after months of denials, road closures, and mysterious dump trucks, the state is finally ready to hear from the people living next to the county’s most hated “agriculture project.”

So if you’ve got something to say about cracked walls, sleepless nights, or the gradual geological relocation of Chapel Hill, now’s the moment. The 30-day public comment window is officially open, though the announcement sign is reportedly lying flat in the grass. Fitting, really — nothing says “we’re listening” quite like an announcement face-down in the dirt.

WW BOTTOM LINE
The hearing’s on the calendar, Warner’s intent is in writing, and the “farm pond” fairytale has officially run out of water. See you at Henry Horton — bring a hard hat.

🏈 PAGE HIGH FINALLY BREAKS THROUGH

They did it! After four straight years of coming home with polite applause and another runner-up plaque, Page finally made the December trip that counts. Last Friday, the Patriots walked into Chattanooga 13–0 and walked out 14–0 — Page 21, Sevier County 14 — claiming the school’s first ever state championship.

And yes — it was Page doing Page things. The defense shook off an early 7-point deficit, stuffed Sevier County on a fourth down, and knocked down the final Hail Mary like they’d been saving that moment. On the other side of the ball, the offense answered with Knight Wilson’s tying touchdown and then the late strike from Cam Kruse to Cayden Aukerman. Kruse admitted afterward the play was basically something they “drew in the dirt,” which feels about right.

The seniors felt the weight of this one more than anyone. Guard Jacob Rathbone said he and his dad — Coach Charles Rathbone — finally shared “happy tears” instead of their usual post-game autopsy. Linebacker Sean Cunningham, the third in his family to play on this stage, called it their “last shot.” And Wilson summed up the whole point: he wasn’t relaxing “until that last Hail Mary hit the ground.”

WW BOTTOM LINE
After four years of knocking on the door, Page finally stepped through — and for the first time, they carried something out worth all of the miles. Congrats, men. Willco shares your pride.

🔥 FINAL FLUSH: IF IT AIN’T BROKE, THEY’LL BREAK IT

Tennessee ranks #1 in election integrity — four straight years. Most states would celebrate.

Here, a few activists took one look at that gold medal and declared: “Well, that won’t do at all.” Apparently, the real threat to democracy is… Tennessee doing a good job.

Enter Tennessee Fair Elections — a group whose mission statement sounds noble until you read what they actually propose, which basically boils down to: “what if voting, but make it harder?”

Their website and literature don’t tiptoe around the issue. The whole thing hits like a frying pan to the head: “All vote on Election Day.”

Translation: eliminate early voting entirely. If your boss needs you, your kid gets sick, your shift runs long, or life behaves like life — well, Tennessee thanks you for playing and wishes you better luck next cycle. And here in Williamson County, 80% of November 2024 ballots were cast early. Eighty.

So the questions rush in: where exactly are those voters supposed to go now? Who is explaining the hours-long lines? Who is explaining the people who give up and leave?

And then there’s the deep spiritual anguish over voting centers. While normal humans see “vote anywhere in your county” as a convenience, Tennessee Fair Elections treats it like a gateway drug to cyber Armageddon. In their telling, if voters can cast a ballot anywhere in the county, the whole system will ultimately unravel with online voting. What?

So instead of a modern voting system, they want to drag us back to precinct-only, paper-ballot nostalgia — a setup that works fine in a county with two stoplights and a Dollar General, but collapses the moment it meets Williamson County traffic… or really any traffic.

If you live in Fairview and work in Brentwood? Sorry, friend — you’re not voting unless Elon invents teleportation. By their worldview, voting must be a pilgrimage: inconvenient, exhausting, and ideally discouraging.

And the whole pitch reads like parody. If Tennesseans are allowed to vote somewhere convenient, evidently, democracy is one Scantron away from imploding. Meanwhile, the biggest “integrity issue” in recent Tennessee history was a handful of redistricting mistakes — not fraud, not machines, and certainly not the apocalyptic Upside Down fantasy being workshopped on Tennessee Fair Elections’ Zoom calls.

So why the crusade? Why upend the most secure election system in America?

Because the same groups cheering this on — the Williamson County Republican Party’s current leadership, Tennessee Stands, and all the other turnout-shrinking miscreants — have been running the same playbook for years. When you can’t win when lots of people vote, make sure lots of people don’t. Whether through caucuses or “integrity reforms,” the goal is always the same: reduce participation so the loudest minority can dominate.

And now they’ve graduated to a plan that genuinely tests the limits of self-inflicted political damage. Restrict voting this aggressively and you don’t just frustrate independents — you also enrage the sensible Republicans who rely on early voting.

Williamson County didn’t become a turnout powerhouse by accident. We’re consistently top-three in the state because we make voting possible. And it’s not just us: the six Tennessee counties that use vote centers see about a 5% bump in turnout over the counties still clinging to precinct-only voting. Almost like convenience helps democracy breathe a little — imagine that.

Call it ideology if you want, but don’t call it reform. And please don’t call it fair. Fair elections do not depend on whether a nurse can sprint from a 12-hour shift to the one precinct she’s been assigned before the doors lock.

And while we’re at it, which legislator is excited to stand in front of their district and say, “Hi, I’m the reason you stood in line for four hours.” Let’s see who’s volunteering for that.

Again, here’s where logic speaks: we don’t need rescuing. In the last special election, Williamson County posted the highest turnout of all 14 counties — 51% of active voters, compared to 37% districtwide. That’s what a functioning, accessible system looks like. That’s what genuine voter confidence looks like.

We don’t have an election crisis. But we might have a voter-access crisis — if we let others redesign the system around inconvenience.

Because if the only way your reforms work is by making voting harder, you’re not defending integrity.

You’re strategizing — and not the honest kind.

Thanks for sticking it out through another round of Williamson County’s finest chaos. Enjoy the Dickens out of this weekend — may it involve fewer spores and absolutely zero “agricultural ponds.”

Appreciate you reading and laughing along with us.
See you next week — same county, new surprises.

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