đď¸ THE DUMP â OCTOBER 17, 2025
Your weekly look at the weird, the wild, and Williamson County
Hey pals, you made it â itâs Friday, and that means itâs time once again for your weekly look at the weird, the wild, and Williamson County. Grab a coffee, pour a little something extra if itâs been that kind of week, and settle in.
This round, weâve got a farmer with big political ambitions, a sleepy Franklin election, a hotel deal that just wonât check out, and a small-town sewer saga bubbling up again. Plus, another teacherâs lawsuit makes waves, and Memphis delivers a lesson in results over rhetoric.
Ready? Letâs dump it out.
đ THE COW COMES HOME: CHARLIE HATCHER TAKES AIM AT ANDY OGLES
Well, butter my biscuitâCharlie Hatcher, Tennesseeâs former Agriculture Commissioner and tenth-generation farmer, just decided retirement was overrated. The man whoâs spent the last decade protecting the stateâs food chain is now gunning for Andy Oglesâ congressional seat, and somewhere an anti-RINO Facebook group is already convinced heâs part of Big Milk.
Hatcher isnât just another public servant; heâs bona fide rural royalty. His familyâs Hatcher Family Dairy in College Grove bottles its own milk, pours chocolate milk that tastes like Saturday-morning cartoons, and has probably employed half the county somewhere along the line. Heâs a veterinarian, a UT-Knoxville grad, and the guy Gov. Bill Lee trusted to run the stateâs agriculture department for seven yearsâbasically the kind of rĂŠsumĂŠ that used to win elections before outrage did.
When he stepped down this September, folks wondered if he was really done with politics. Turns out he just widened his fence line. His message so far feels like a return to the practical: protect farmland, invest in rural youth, keep the federal government out of the barn. Itâs traditional Republican fare, delivered with the patience of someone whoâs handled more than his share of bullâboth kinds.
As for U.S. Rep. Andy Ogles, heâs still the incumbentâloyal to Trump, loud when it counts, and perfectly at home at the intersection of populism and public hijinks. Love him or loathe him, heâs carved out a space few Tennessee politicians occupy so unapologetically. His base remains fiercely loyal, and his national profile has made him one of the stateâs most recognizable conservatives.
That makes Hatcherâs challenge interesting, not just because heâs credible, but because heâs familiar. He doesnât come across as a bomb-thrower; heâs more like the neighbor who shows up with a tractor when your driveway washes out. Whether that brand of competence can compete with Oglesâ charisma is the question.
In a district thatâs seen its share of showdowns, this one feels less like a brawl and more like a barn raisingâtwo very different ideas of what Republican leadership should look like, both deeply rooted in Tennessee soil.
WW BOTTOM LINE
If Ogles thought the only thing nipping at his heels this year would be fact-checkers, auditors, and maybe Phil Williams, he just met a vet who knows how to close a gate before the herd gets out.
đ´ SILENCE AT THE BALLOT BOX: FRANKLIN VOTERS HIT THE SNOOZE BUTTON
Speaking of elections⌠if democracy dies in darkness, Franklinâs Board of Mayor and Aldermen election is still looking for a flashlight. Early voting for the October 28 municipal election began more than a week ago and, according to the Williamson Herald, has been about as lively as a Tuesday night zoning meeting.
By Tuesday afternoon, only 490 ballots had been cast â less than 1% of Franklinâs nearly 60,000 registered voters. Thatâs not a typo. Thatâs a turnout rate low enough to fit in a council chamber.
Election Administrator Chad Gray called it plainly: if the trend continues, Franklin could see the lowest voter turnout in over a decade. Four aldermanic seats are up, but only two are contested:
⢠Ward 2: Incumbent Matt Brown vs. challengers Erinn Watkins and B.K. Muvvala
⢠Ward 4: Incumbent Patrick Baggett vs. Rodney Taylor
⢠Bev Burger (Ward 1) and Jason Potts (Ward 3) are running unopposed â which about sums up the mood.
Early voting runs through October 23 at the Election Commission office on Downs Boulevard, with Election Day on Tuesday, October 28. Polls are open 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. weekdays and 8 a.m. to noon on Saturday.
WW BOTTOM LINE
Hereâs a twist: Weâre not telling you to go vote â but we are here to remind you that local government is the one actually paving (or not paving) your street. You donât need a revolution for your voice to be heard. You just need to leave the house.
đď¸ EXTENDED STAY: THE MARRIOTT MESS
Hereâs a story that should come with complimentary breakfast and a checkout problem. Williamson County still co-owns the Cool Springs Marriott and Conference Center with the City of Franklin â a 1990s public-private experiment that, despite its quirks, actually makes money. Over twenty-six years, the partnership has netted about $4.8 million for the county and kicks in more than $1 million a year in local tax revenue. Not bad for a deal signed when people still faxed each other.
Chartwell Hospitality â the folks running both the hotel and the county-owned conference wing â showed up Monday night asking for an early contract extension. The current agreement ends in 2027; they wanted ten more years, to 2037, so lenders would relax and convention planners could keep booking weddings, retreats, and motivational speakers far into the future. Franklinâs Board of Mayor and Aldermen had already said yes.
Thatâs when things got interesting. Commissioners split into two familiar camps: the pragmatists, who said âitâs working, letâs keep it,â and the purists, who said âgovernment shouldnât run hotels.â Commissioner Gregg Lawrence and Commissioner Matt Williams called the deal profitable and nearly impossible to unwind. Commissioner Steve Smith said, âItâs been very beneficial over the years.â On the other side, Commissioner Mary Smith â who wants to be mayor â said the county shouldnât be in the hospitality business at all. Commissioner Christopher Richards accused the county attorney of âword gymnastics,â saying if this qualifies as a capital improvement, mowing the lawn must count as infrastructure.
After a round of parliamentary hopscotch, the board trimmed Chartwellâs wish list twice: first to 2035, then to 2032. Every vote landed 14â8 â same cast, same script â and the shorter deal squeaked through. Franklinâs version still runs to 2037, meaning the two partners are officially living in different decades.
The Marriott stays profitable, the commissioners stay divided, and the audience stayed restless.
WW BOTTOM LINE:
The contract may end in 2032, but the politics just extended themselves indefinitely. Mary Smith wants the mayorâs seat while voting against one of the few government projects that actually makes money. Maybe âprofitâ just doesnât poll well with her pals.
đ§ PAY NOW, POUR LATER
In most towns, the phrase âpublic-private partnershipâ means ribbon cuttings and press releases. In Thompsonâs Station, it means arguing over who gets to flush first.
Tuesday nightâs BOMA meeting turned into a plumbing-policy potluck over how to pay for the next round of wastewater expansion. Developers GBT Realty and St. John Properties showed up with checkbooks in hand, offering to pre-pay their sewer fees for a guaranteed 325,000 gallons of capacity sometime down the road.
Vice Mayor Sean Alexander wasnât sold. He reminded the room the town has already committed about $35 million toward sewer work and barely $2 million toward roads, warning that selling capacity early gives away the only brake pedal Thompsonâs Station still has.
Mayor Brian Stover and Alderman Harry King took the other side. Commercial capacity, they said, means commercial growthâand thatâs the kind that eventually pays for roads. Town Attorney Andrew Mills tied it off neatly: the deal just hands developers âa ticket to the dance,â not the dance itself.
When the music stopped, the vote landed 3-1. Alexander sat out. The rest of the board decided to keep the band playing and let growth lead.
WW BOTTOM LINE
Flush responsibly. The townâs balance between âmanaged growthâ and âmake it rainâ is down to about 325,000 gallons â and they just poured them all into a pipeline.
đŹ UPDATE: THE KIRK EFFECT SPREADS
Last week, we covered Rutherford County teacher Susannah OâBrien, who lost her job after mocking the flag-lowering for the late conservative activist Charlie Kirk. She called it free speech. The district called it unprofessional.
Now comes Franklin Highâs Emily Orbison, who apparently looked at that situation and thought, yes, that seems like a good precedent to follow. Orbisonâs private-but-not-really-private Instagram post quoted one of Kirkâs old remarks about gun deaths being âworth it,â then ended with:
âDonât mourn his death. Itâs just the price of doing business. Rational.â
She says it was satire. The district says it was a violation of the Tennessee Teacher Code of Ethics, whichâfun factâisnât a suggestion. Itâs state law. It requires educators to âdemonstrate respect for the inherent dignity and worth of all personsâ and avoid conduct that disrupts the learning environment. Mocking a high-profile death tends to check both boxes.
Orbison was suspended without pay, banned from all district property, and later needed a federal judgeâs injunction just to attend her daughterâs kindergarten events. Her lawsuit, filed a day after OâBrienâs in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee, argues she was exercising personal free speech. Both suits insist their posts were harmless; both were filed only after those âharmlessâ posts made national news.
Two teachers. Two counties. Two lawsuits. One lesson nobody seems to be learning.
WW BOTTOM LINE
Tennessee law already spells it outâteachers are supposed to model respect for human life, not audition for Twitter fame. Call it irony or hubris, but every time someone says âit was satire,â another attorney gets billable hours.
𧝠FINAL FLUSH: APOLOGIES DUE IN MEMPHIS
When President Trump ordered the National Guard into Memphis in early October, the reaction was immediate â and furious.
Democratic lawmakers called it unconstitutional. Civil-liberties groups denounced it as tyranny. Memphis Mayor Paul Young said he never asked for it and didnât believe it would work. The ACLU even called it âregressive,â while National-security lawyers warned of âdangerous normalization.â
Two weeks later, the aftermath tells a different story: 854 arrests. 180 illegal guns. 44 missing children found.
Read that again â 44 missing children found.
Thatâs not conjecture â itâs the official data from the Memphis Safe Task Force, a coalition of federal and state agencies that deployed under the Guardâs protection. Those numbers represent lives saved, predators stopped, and streets reclaimed. The same deployment that was branded âoverreachâ is now delivering the most tangible public-safety turnaround the city has seen in years.
Every one of those critics owes the people of Memphis a full-throated apology. Not for skepticism â thatâs politics â but for rooting against success because the wrong president signed the order. The children who came home donât care about party labels. They care that someone finally went looking.
If you truly believe in the âpublic good,â this is it in action. The ideological discomfort that surrounds it says more about modern politics than about policing. Because if this many arrests and rescues can be achieved in a matter of weeks, what does it say about the years that preceded them?
This isnât an indictment of the men and women in uniform. Itâs an indictment of the system that left them outnumbered, the bureaucracy that mistook inertia for justice, and the leadership that confused talking about safety with actually providing it.
Memphis just proved what happens when government stops apologizing for enforcement. And by any moral or statistical measure, it worked.
So, yes â the critics are loud. But the numbers are louder. And in a contest between outrage and outcome, the outcome wins every time.
Williamson County may not need troops in the streets, but we could still use the reminder: real compassion protects, real leadership acts â and the perpetual naysayers owe Memphis, and those forty-four children, a tearful, heartfelt apology in full.
And thatâs the week, friends â a little politics, a little plumbing, and just enough drama to keep things interesting. The weatherâs good, the leaves are showing off, and youâve officially survived another spin through Williamson County.
If something here made you nod, smile, or shake your head, pass it along. Word of mouth is still the best kind of circulation.
Thanks for reading. See you next week, Williamson.
