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Dan May @dbmay.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

In case unclear, this is a real question - Not trying to be argumentative. Think there are real tradeoffs worth wrestling with

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Dan May @dbmay.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

How do we should balance enforcement in all this? Im skeptical the right on red ban would be enforced any more than our existing laws which I see violated with complete impunity. Yet I see strong opposition on here to more traffic stops, cameras, or anything else that would penalize violations

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Dan May @dbmay.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

Yes. We still have open primaries for the moment. There was a bill in state leg to change last cycle but didn’t pass

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Dan May @dbmay.bsky.social · 29/06/2026

also there would be real downsides. The gold rush property taxes have allowed mnps budget to double in last decade despite declining state funding and flat enrollment

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Dan May @dbmay.bsky.social · 29/06/2026

There is definitely something to that but i don’t think size restrictions would help much Since you’d still have fundamental scarcity of homes in the most sought after neighborhoods. Hard to turn back the clock on the gold rush

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Dan May @dbmay.bsky.social · 28/06/2026

I’d argue 1) is partially a result of 2). If you buy a piece of expensive land and can only put 1-2 homes on it, the homes have to maximize square footage to cover the fixed cost of the land. If you were allowed to build more, you could build the same total square footage across more small homes

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Dan May @dbmay.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

And to the extent it was an austerity budget it was in large part because last years budget grew so much rather than leave room for steady growth through the appraisal cycle. Though I agree with you that the grocery tax cut was political pandering that could have gone to better use

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Dan May @dbmay.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

I dont think it’s accurate to call this an austerity budget especially for MNPS which got substantially all the spending growth.

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Dan May @dbmay.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

They have improved this intersection a bit recently! Bike lane is now continuous in both directions whereas before it disappeared for a turn lane. Still a busy spot but far less stressful than it used to be

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Dan May @dbmay.bsky.social · 01/04/2026

pro - higher turnout, cheaper to run one set of elections Con - voters probably less informed about local issues of national politics dominate news cycle. I also worry it’s harder to maintain non-partisan nature of local races If local candidates are running against national election backdrop

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Dan May @dbmay.bsky.social · 25/03/2026

Also to @neilkornutick.bsky.social original question, I think there is a much broader political constituency for ped safety than bike. Everyone is a pedestrian. Biking (as much as I love it!) is pretty niche

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Dan May @dbmay.bsky.social · 25/03/2026

Agree on both fronts. That seems way cheaper than sidewalk. Use precast concrete drilled in like a flex post. Any reason we aren’t building these all over town? I can think of tons of places near me with plenty of right of way where you could pop these in

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Dan May @dbmay.bsky.social · 25/03/2026

this seems like something we could use way more of (ideally with sturdier and more visually appealing than flex posts). We aren’t going to get good sidewalk coverage at the 1000+ per foot cost that it takes to build traditional sidewalk with curb and gutter. $5m a mile is too much money

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Dan May @dbmay.bsky.social · 21/12/2025

i never suggested turning McCabe into housing (understand others did). I’m just responding to your claim the golf course serves a lot of people. My math is that, at peak usage, it serves 5 people per acre per day, which is not the best way to use urban recreational land

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Dan May @dbmay.bsky.social · 21/12/2025

if a group of 4 starts every 6 minutes On each of the 3 9-hole courses, that’s fewer than 1k golfers per day on a 200 acre piece of land. >10k people per day walk the greenway which takes up a fraction of the space. It could be far more used as an 18 hole course with 1/3 of it used as a real park

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Dan May @dbmay.bsky.social · 20/12/2025

As a starting point with McCabe, they should take down the non safety related fences they’ve just put up and let people go for walks on the course paths after hours again

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Dan May @dbmay.bsky.social · 14/11/2025

He’s carving it out of a bill that reduces heights. I get that the truly correct answer may be to zone it for more density, but what’s the benefit of reducing allowable heights in an urban core neighborhood? i feel like I’m misunderstanding something

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Dan May @dbmay.bsky.social · 13/11/2025

But the parcels he is exempting aren’t currently zoned DTC are they?

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Dan May @dbmay.bsky.social · 13/11/2025

Isn’t he carving it out from a bill that reduces heights? That seems good?

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Dan May @dbmay.bsky.social · 20/08/2025

Only in the residential character area

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Dan May @dbmay.bsky.social · 14/08/2025

Does replica do simulations - eg what happens if I build a new apartment building here or upzone an area and it adds people over time? I don’t understand why developers pay for traffic studies when we have replica.

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Dan May @dbmay.bsky.social · 31/07/2025

Here is a link to a non paywalled prepub version of the paper. Worth a read in full www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10...

econstor.eu

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Dan May @dbmay.bsky.social · 31/07/2025

To be clear, this chart just the relative cost of homes before and after on that parcel. This (afaik) doesn’t give any credit for the fact that a 4 home development also takes 3 families out of competition for other homes nearby

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Dan May @dbmay.bsky.social · 30/07/2025

New cars are expensive and mostly bought by affluent people. But when there was a chip shortage in 2021, used car prices went way up because there wasn’t enough new car supply for people to trade up. Our zoning code is a self-imposed shortage of well-located land. It drives up prices of all housing

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Dan May @dbmay.bsky.social · 01/07/2025

Don’t love this take. One of the best things about Metro is that it’s non-partisan and you can work with people you usually disagree with. I haven’t thought deeply (read: at all) about the merits of this issue, but CMs should work with everyone.

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Dan May @dbmay.bsky.social · 28/06/2025

For example, there are lots of good reasons we don’t let healthcare work as pure market especially for elderly people. Just don’t see the same types of issues in housing

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Dan May @dbmay.bsky.social · 28/06/2025

For me, the thing that would change my mind would be a clear articulation of why housing is somehow intrinsically different than other important things we buy (eg food, transportation, etc) that it warrants an extraordinary level of government control or that market forces don’t apply the same way

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Dan May @dbmay.bsky.social · 28/06/2025

Real question - I promise I’m not trolling. Are you open minded on this issue? Is there a set of facts that could persuade you that we should zone for greater housing supply? If so, what kind of evidence would move your position?

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Dan May @dbmay.bsky.social · 28/06/2025

You’re right - tomatoes are probably a bad example. Our ag policy does include a lot of weird subsidies and is widely agreed to be a debacle. I’d like housing policy to look less like that.

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Dan May @dbmay.bsky.social · 28/06/2025

Yeah - it’s not how we run anything else in our economy. We don’t pass laws to make sure we build just the right number of cars or plant just the right number of tomatoes. Centrally planned economies have a pretty poor track record. Yet for this one big thing, we insist on central planning.

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Dan May @dbmay.bsky.social · 28/06/2025

Ah I see. Seems like no matter how you slice it the city has grown a ton in the last decade despite several atypical years around a pandemic and has returned to growth post COVID. Seems like we need to build more housing!

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Dan May @dbmay.bsky.social · 28/06/2025

It’s not wfh. Job growth in Davidson county is faster than population growth. Maybe more people are commuting from the suburbs because the city is too expensive! If they just want a bigger yard, then fine, upzoning won’t produce much development because the homes won’t sell!

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Dan May @dbmay.bsky.social · 28/06/2025

And the city lost ~3-4 years of growth around COVID as people moved to suburbs. Would probably be 750+ but for that

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Dan May @dbmay.bsky.social · 28/06/2025

I’m not sure I follow. 200k over 25 years is 8k per year people added. If we were at 645 in 2015 (your number above), then 8k per year over the intervening 9 years would be 717. We are at 729 according to census/ACS data for 2024.

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Dan May @dbmay.bsky.social · 27/06/2025

Census says 729k in 2024. Agree that if we built more housing to reduce gentrification pressure it would be higher instead of pushing so much development to Rutherford and Wilson Counties www.census.gov/quickfacts/f...

census.gov

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Dan May @dbmay.bsky.social · 18/06/2025

This doesn’t seem implausible? If you had a house that used to appraise at 300k, you’d have paid about 2440 in tax (300k*3.254%*25%). If your appraisal went up 50% to 450, you’d now pay ~3,240 (450k*2.88%*25%). Numbers obviously imprecise but they do work out to 800 bucks and don’t seem crazy?

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Dan May @dbmay.bsky.social · 14/06/2025

That park is amazing. My kids spent hours there. Also had free sunscreen sponsored by a local dermatology practice.

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Dan May @dbmay.bsky.social · 07/06/2025

Why just the affordable housing?

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Dan May @dbmay.bsky.social · 05/06/2025

i am surprised there isn’t a much better way to do traffic studies using cell phone location data. It’s 1) not anecdotal, 2) includes all modes bc your phone can tell walking, bus, biking and car driving apart, and 3) comprehensive. Yet everyone still pays kci to go count cars with clickers

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Dan May @dbmay.bsky.social · 21/05/2025

I agree that we shouldn’t need to put in tickets for things that are obvious and right downtown but 1) I’m sympathetic that government doesn’t have eyes everywhere, 2) love that when I submit tickets they often get fixed very fast, and 3) think it’s a reasonable ask of us as citizens to help

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Dan May @dbmay.bsky.social · 19/05/2025

Shouldn’t property taxes grow at roughly inflation + population growth where hopefully new building contributes as well? You could then make an affirmative decision to grow or shrink government, but this seems like the baseline. That has almost never been 6% per year.

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Dan May @dbmay.bsky.social · 06/05/2025

1) not according to the census bureau fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TNDAV... 2) Nashville job growth outpaces population growth bc we don’t have enough housing so people move to surrounding counties

fred.stlouisfed.org

Resident Population in Davidson County, TN

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Dan May @dbmay.bsky.social · 02/05/2025

I’m not sure - US population growth projected to be much slower (+36m in next 25Y vs +60m in last 25).

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Dan May @dbmay.bsky.social · 02/05/2025

Someday millennials will have the same political clout that boomers do today as a demographic matter. What will our blind spots be that will hurt/irritate young folks the way nimbyism hurts our generation? Worth remembering what it feels like to be on this side, so we don’t do it to our kids

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Dan May @dbmay.bsky.social · 02/05/2025

haven’t been at every meeting but I think quite positive. The neighborhood association has also been very supportive

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Dan May @dbmay.bsky.social · 02/05/2025

So excited about @rollinhorton.bsky.social’s UDO in The Nations. He’s done a ton of work in the neighborhood to make this a true community plan. It’s going to provide a bunch of new housing in a great neighborhood. Let’s all help him get it passed!

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