đ° THE DUMP â DECEMBER 19, 2025
YOUR WEEKLY LOOK AT THE WEIRD, THE WILD AND WILLIAMSON COUNTY
âTis the season, friends â and âtis also Friday, which means itâs time for your weekly look at the weird, the wild, and Williamson County.
Maybe youâre working today. Or maybe youâre âworkingâ today. Either way, you picked a fine moment to stop pretending to be productive and spend a few minutes with us. Weâre glad youâre here.
This week, weâve got redemption where you didnât expect it, ambition with a clipboard, and a digital tip jar you didnât open. We also revisit a small town Christmas tradition the internet rediscovers every year, a Franklin staple serving one last plate, and one calm, grown-up conversation about something Facebook is already screaming about.
Careful. This week has some fragile ornaments. And at least one opinion someone will take personally.
Letâs dump it out.
đ FELONY NAVIDAD
Look whoâs finally HOA eligible.
Yesterday, Governor Bill Lee pardoned 33 people who served their time, stayed trouble-free, and met the standard for executive clemency. Right there on the list â before a couple of Jeffreys â sat Jason DeFord. You know him as Jelly Roll, the tattooed troubadour of Tennessee redemption.
The paperwork makes it official: the man who once couldnât vote, serve on a jury, or buy into certain zip codes can now do all three. And if youâve followed his story, this wasnât some out-of-the-blue Christmas miracle. Jellyâs been working toward this for a long time â longer than most people stay famous.
He didnât just stop doing crime; he started doing good, and he did it with purpose. Rehab centers. Tuition checks. Juvenile justice reform. Showing up where the pain is, not just where the cameras are. And now heâs done something truly impressive: earned a unanimous âyesâ from both the Tennessee Board of Parole and Gov. Lee.
The governorâs office knows what youâre thinking, so they were quick to note that Jelly Roll was âtreated the same as every single person who asks for clemency.â Fair enough.
WW BOTTOM LINE
Jelly Roll crawled out of the worst version of himself and then spent the next several years holding the door open for people still stuck there.
Grace isnât always glamorous. But every now and then, it still sneaks past the velvet rope. Well deserved, Mr. DeFord.
đ âTIS THE SEASON⌠TO ASK FOR SIGNATURES
If youâve ever looked at a county meeting, a zoning map, or a school board agenda and thought, âI could absolutely do this better,â congratulations. The system is about to hand you a clipboard.
Starting Monday, Williamson County officially opens the petition window for 2026 county offices. Thatâs the moment when ambition leaves the group text and enters the public record.
From December 22 until 12:00 noon on February 19, 2026, anyone with a pulse, a filing fee, and enough neighbors who havenât blocked their number can begin the process of putting their name on the ballot, for roles most people ignore until theyâre personally affected.
And yes â the timing is perfect. Nothing says public service like showing up to Christmas parties, New Yearâs gatherings, and end-of-year drop-ins with a pen in one hand and a carefully rehearsed version of yourself in the other. Youâll tell people youâre âjust concerned about the direction of the county.â Youâll say youâre ânot really political.â Sure.
This is how it always starts â with sign-ups quietly circulating between ham sliders and bourbon pours, between hugs from people who havenât seen you since last Christmas. Nothing says civic duty like cornering your neighbors near the cheese tray.
WW BOTTOM LINE
If youâre thinking about running â really thinking about it â December 22 is go-time. Clipboards out. Smiles on. Democracy happens between happy hour and appetizers.
đŚ CHECKOUT PLUS: THANK YOUR LOCAL PORCH PIRATE
If youâve ordered anything online lately, youâve seen it: a few extra dollars subtly parked at checkout under something called âorder protection,â âpackage protection,â or the vague catch-all âCheckout+.â It shows up right before you hit pay, often pre-checked, framed as optional but paired with a friendly warning that the retailer wonât be responsible if your package disappears. Perfect.
That fee exists for one reason: porch piracy.
Retailers didnât invent this out of thin air. Package theft has been a recurring local problem for years, spiking â like clockwork â every holiday season. Franklin Police have issued warnings, circulated footage, and recently made at least one arrest after what they described as an extensive investigation. But the behavior hasnât stopped. It merely stabilized.
So the retail world has shifted liability.
Instead of eating replacement costs, sellers now outsource the risk to third-party âprotectionâ services and pass it downstream. The package gets stolen, the retailer shrugs, the carrier points to delivery confirmation, and the customer is left staring at a disclaimer they clicked past. Pay the fee or accept the loss.
At that point, theft stops being a crime problem. It becomes a pricing model. Losses get averaged out, while responsibility gets diluted. And the checkout page absorbs what the justice system hasnât.
Now, itâs just one more line item that everyone learns to ignore, like shipping or tax. You didnât agree to fund porch pirates. You just live in a time where the assumption is built in.
WW BOTTOM LINE
Porch piracy didnât get solved. It got normalized â and sent to your cart. You now pre-forgive theft. Youâre welcome.
âĄď¸ McNATIVITY: AMERICA REDISCOVERS SPRING HILL ON SCHEDULE
Every December, the Spring Hill McDonaldâs does the same simple thing itâs done for years. The windows get painted with nativity scenes. The words âHis Name Is Jesusâ appear on Main Street. And, as reliably as Christmas lights on a timer, the photo goes viral again.
Itâs become its own seasonal ritual. The image makes the rounds, stripped of context and framed like a fresh discovery, usually by someone who just learned where Spring Hill is. Some people share it with a smile. Others react like theyâve uncovered a national controversy.
Whatâs changed over the years isnât the tradition â itâs the reaction to it. Once, phrases like âJesus is the reason for the seasonâ could spark endless debate. Now, all mostly lands as a reminder that not every community feels the need to sand itself down for strangers on the internet.
Locals know the routine. They know the owners have been painting those windows for over a decade because it matters to them. Thereâs no attempt to make it bigger than it is. The paint goes up. Christmas arrives. January follows. And social media moves on to something else.
WW BOTTOM LINE
Businesses with character â still a good thing.
Merry Christmas, Spring Hill. Donât ever change.
đ˝ď¸ ONE MORE PLATE: FRANKLIN LOSES A HOME-COOKED STAPLE
After nearly 30 years of feeding Franklin families, Barbaraâs Home Cookinâ announced it will permanently close on December 31. The news came via a heartfelt Facebook post â and hit a lot of people harder than expected.
Barbaraâs doesnât just serve meals; it feels like being invited into someoneâs home. Sunday lunch after church. Holiday catering that saves stressed families. A true meat-and-three â the kind thatâs getting harder to find â where the yeast rolls are soft, the fried chicken is spot on, and the voices behind the counter greet you like family.
The restaurant opened in 1997, started by Barbara Thomas, a Mississippi native who left a long career as a court reporter after arthritis made the work too painful. She did what a lot of Southerners do best â she cooked for people she knew. And somehow, that turned into a place that fed an entire community for three decades.
The closing isnât just about a building going dark.
For some staff members, Barbaraâs has been their only place of employment. In their announcement, the folks at Barbaraâs openly asked the community to help them find what comes next â a quiet reminder that when longtime local institutions close, itâs not just nostalgia we lose.
The decision wasnât made lightly. Barbaraâs say they hope to see familiar faces over the next few weeks â one more meal, one more conversation, one more chance to sit down with food that feels like home.
So, if Barbaraâs fed you, catered your life, or reminded you of Sunday dinner growing up â nowâs the time to go back.
WW BOTTOM LINE
One more plate. One more visit. One more thank you.
Weâll miss you and your home cookinâ, Barbara.
đď¸ FINAL FLUSH: LETâS TALK ABOUT WHAT IDDs ACTUALLY ARE
Alright. Deep breath.
Thereâs been a lot of chatter lately about Infrastructure Development Districts â IDDs â floating around Franklin. Some of it thoughtful. Some anxious. And the rest? Letâs say it arrived carrying a faint whiff of impending doom.
And thatâs fine. This is exactly the kind of thing communities should debate. Reasonable people can â and do â land on different sides of an issue. But before we argue about whether IDDs are good or bad, we probably ought to agree on what they actually are.
Because right now, a lot of whatâs circulating online isnât exactly false. Itâs just heavy on the shadows, and it waxes a little poetic in the negative space. That may make for strong Facebook engagement, but itâs not especially helpful if the goal is understanding whatâs actually being discussed during Franklinâs Board of Mayor and Aldermen meetings. (Which, historically, has never slowed Facebook down.)
So letâs level-set.
First, IDDs did not originate locally. They are a state-created financing tool, authorized by the Tennessee General Assembly in 2024 and expanded in 2025. Cities and counties across Tennessee were handed a new option in the toolbox â one that dozens of other states already use in some form. Franklin isnât blazing a trail here; itâs showing up a bit after the fact, trying to catch up on a conversation thatâs already been happening elsewhere.
Thatâs what BOMA is doing right now: wrapping its arms around a tool the state handed them and deciding whether itâs something Franklin should ever use â and if so, under what conditions.
Second, what is an IDD? Itâs a special assessment district that allows infrastructure costs â roads, utilities, stormwater, sometimes parking â to be financed upfront and repaid over time by the properties inside the district that benefit from that infrastructure. Call it a tax. Call it a fee. The label doesnât really matter. Ultimately, itâs money these new homeowners pay.
What often gets left out is that those infrastructure costs exist regardless. Roads donât appear by magic, and sewer lines donât appear on their own either. The real question has always been who pays, when, and how. IDDs donât invent new costs; they rearrange how existing ones get paid. Traditionally, developers shoulder those costs upfront, but IDDs allow some of that burden to be amortized over time and attached to the properties that directly benefit.
Third, schools are a real issue â but not the whole issue. One of the loudest critiques making the rounds is that IDDs donât fund schools. Thatâs true. They donât. But they were never designed to. No financing tool ever fixed a growth problem by itself. IDDs and school funding live in different lanes, solving different problems, and pretending one was meant to replace the other just muddies the conversation.
Williamson County will still have to deal with school capacity. IDDs donât fix that. But they also donât cause it. Growth does. And growth brings costs whether we pay them upfront, spread them out over time, or pretend theyâll somehow sort themselves out on their own.
Fourth, yes, there are risks â and BOMA is aware. If you watched the recent work session, you didnât see a room full of people gleefully signing blank checks. You saw skepticism. You saw caution. You saw aldermen asking necessary questions about disclosure, long-term risk, defaults, homeowner understanding, and worst-case scenarios. Some expressed optimism. Others clearly did not. That tension is the point.
The debate right now isnât âhow fast can we use this?â Itâs âshould we, when should we, and under what guardrails?â Which, incidentally, is exactly what you want elected officials asking before touching a financing mechanism that can last decades.
So where does that leave us?
You can oppose IDDs, or you can support them. A reasonable case can be made for either position. Whatâs not helpful is pretending thereâs a secret tax bomb unique to Franklin, cooked up by scheming developers and waved through by feckless politicians. That framing may feel satisfying, but itâs not honest.
IDDs are simply a state-authorized tool. They could be useful, but they could also be risky. They absolutely require discipline, transparency, and restraint if theyâre ever used at all. And right now, Franklin is doing the least dramatic thing imaginable: talking about it. In public. On the record.
Thatâs also known as governing.
By all means, argue the merits and the risks. Argue schools, growth, density, and annexation. But letâs do it with the same thing we keep asking of our leaders: a clear understanding of the facts â before we start spinning out over fear.
Thanks, as always, for reading this week and for making Williamson Wrong part of your Friday. We hope the coming days are filled with friends, family, full plates, and at least one good story worth retelling.
Weâre taking next Friday off â and maybe even the one after that. But donât be shocked if a few unscheduled thoughts wander out before the calendar flips. We canât help ourselves.
Until then: Merry Christmas, happy holidays, and a truly Happy New Year to all of you.
Enjoy the break. Enjoy your people.
As always â stay wrong, Williamson.
