Erin Evans is a second-term council member representing District 12. She shared that coming into this new term with the transition between the John Cooper administration to the Freddie O’Connell administration has felt different.
“At the beginning of my first term, we were dealing with a tornado, then a global pandemic, and the financial issues, all coming back to back,” she said. “If we can work tougher and collaborate within Metro government and hopefully private entities, then we can have an impact.
“And then, our Vice Mayor, Angie Henderson, has taken a very different approach in how she is navigating working with all 40 of us, and how she is thinking through committee work, advocating for some discipline that we didn’t have previously, and being an encourager and champion of our individual initiatives,” Evans added. “That has been a positive start to the new term.”
She added that there are still plenty of issues to sort out now, but that it no longer feels as overwhelming. She also pointed to the energy of the new council members that she finds exciting because they help advance conversations that were not addressed in the first term due to the constant state of emergency.
“I’ll use housing as an example,” Evans explained. “We’ve got some new folks who are very passionate about housing and zoning reform and that’s going to be one of those situations where we, as a body, have to either lead or get out of the way. I think that’s really cool and exciting and has brought a new energy.”
Evans said her goals as a district council member are to learn the new boundaries after the redistricting process, the history of the areas she is not as familiar with, as well as meeting with her new constituents.
Besides helping residents in her district maneuver Metro departments to get roads paved, construction piles removed, and potholes filled, Evans said one issue she focuses on is to help renters work with landlords who refuse to maintain their property.
“There is just a lot of need with helping residents advocate for themselves when it comes to things like home repair and apartment maintenance and how that dovetails with state law and the Residential Landlord-Tenant Act,” she said.
She currently chairs Metro’s Council Public Health and Safety Committee, which oversees some critical policies and funding.
What are the responsibilities of the Public Health and Safety Committee?
I was chair of this committee two years ago. Coming back into a chair role and having had that initial experience last term, I really wanted to think about how chairing this committee could be different, also taking into account our new vice mayor’s vision. She collapsed some of the committees to make them more comprehensive and focused. As a result of that, Public Health and Safety started to incorporate more departments than we had previously. And so I spent a fair amount at the beginning of this chairmanship to focus on how we can get educated and informed about these departments and the issues they’re facing. That way we’re not starting from scratch if there is something that comes up later on.
I feel that has been a pretty good approach because of the number of new people that we have and also not knowing what this term was going to hold in store. I’ll give you an example. The Metro Human Relations Commission is under Public Health and Safety. Davie Tucker, their executive director, was one of our first speakers and his department has become very pivotal in several initiatives — with the Arts Commission and with conversations about the Community Review Board — there has been a variety of things that his department has touched that we have learned, and we had that preview at the very beginning when we started.
We also heard from the Community Review Board Director, Jill Fitcheard, who came and spoke to us after the law last year changed the Community Oversight Board to the Community Review Board and explained what it means and what the structure of her department was like. And now, of course, we’re seeing what the conversations are like with the Community Review Board and MNPD.
How could the Public Health and Safety Committee, if at all, work alongside or help guide Metro Police and the Community Review Board in their current discussions?
With the tension, I would say right now, the Community Review Board (CRB) needs to bring their MOU (Memorandum of Understanding) to fruition with MNPD (Metro Nashville Police Department).
And [with this] outside investigation happening, I think where our committee can help is with transparency and the process. I view our committee chair roles as really pressing and getting information and to be as transparent as possible related to some of these issues. That’s where my focus is, using my influence for the betterment of education. I think you see a tremendous lack of trust between the CRB, MNPD, Metro Legal.
When you have that level of distrust, I think the role of the committee and individual councilmembers is to use our relationships and voices related to how we can help and — I hate to even say rebuild trust because I’m not sure it existed in the first place — look at how we can help with stronger conversations that will get to the root of some of the issues and amplify those.
The opioid crisis is a huge topic that you have already paid attention to in your last term. The Metro Public Health Department has received a three-year grant providing about $2.1 million per year to establish an opioid care system. What is the Council’s role in overseeing that and what are some of the current strategies that you think are effective?
We will have Dr. Melville-Chester come to the committee to review the opioid settlement plan with that connection to care. This is a process that was established with BHWAC (Behavioral Health and Wellness Advisory Council) and with an opioid settlement working group last year. And then they went to the RFP process with procurement and then now they have determined two service providers to connect people to that care system.
The question then becomes how is that going to work. And that’s where our influence is, in understanding what that linkage model really looks like for these providers, and also continuing to reinforce the necessity for transparent communication.
Metro has spent about $1.2 million to purchase more than 100 pallet housing pods during the COVID-19 pandemic to shelter people. They have never been used and you have taken the lead to look into the reasons and remedy any situation to get them out of storage. Could you explain the situation and where it stands?
With hindsight being 20/20 and everything, this is one of those things where you look at functional silos creating issues across cities and state governments primarily because we ended up acquiring structures as part of a grant through the Tennessee Department of Health. These structures are an allowable expense under the grant. The biggest thing that just did not come up until it was too late was whether they meet the Tennessee Fire Code. And the version we bought did not.
The manufacturing company that built these things, Pallet Shelter, they even offered to look at the second reiteration of these and see if we could do a swap [and see if] the second version would meet the state requirements. And while it’s a little bit better, there are similar issues. We [still] have a couple of outstanding questions based on how the materials are tested and how things are built. [The problem is that the state is looking] at them as manufactured housing and these pallet shelters are not built to the same standard and that has created all of the challenges.
I got a good suggestion online (on a recent tweet exchange on X) about whether this is something that a state legislature could take up to make legislative changes. They made some positive changes this last term related to single stair cases, which is a big zoning reform issue.
Initially, when I passed the resolution [urging the Metro to evaluate the housing pods and create an action plan for their use], I did not think it would end up being this onerous to get us to a point where we could use these. So that’s really disappointing overall because in the end we do have a situation with many organizations around town that could really use having a temporary place for somebody in an emergency situation to be able to be while they figure out a long-term solution.
It’s really frustrating that we can’t get there. But I’m committed that if I can’t get to the bitter end, let’s say that changing the law is not a possibility for whatever reason, and we can’t figure it out locally, I believe that then the next step should be to look at some of the cities that can use them. I would so much prefer if we could pull them out of storage and some other city could pick them up and use them than I would for them to just sit in storage and rot until they just end up in a landfill.
You also sit on the Rules, Confirmations, and Public Elections Committee that appoints community volunteers to different boards that oversee specific departments. There have been some controversial appointments this year. How has Metro Council changed in appointing people to its boards?
Some of the rules have changed where we have some additional appointing powers. The Committee Chair, Councilmember Sandra Sepulveda, has been involved in this. So, I feel like the Council is getting really good at nominating people for some of the Council appointees.
And then, with the mayoral appointments, we’re doing a better job of asking questions. I think there has been this recognition – and with all the Arts Commission issues – I feel that has really illustrated how powerful these boards and commissions are, and that we also put a lot of responsibility on some of them who have hire and fire capabilities. That’s really critical and in some cases, they’re leading departments with big budgets that are having a lot of responsibility. So I think we’re being more sensitive to the fact that it shouldn’t just be an appointment that’s done because, “I like you, so I think you should serve on this board.” It should really be about the nominee’s qualifications. It also should be about what skills they bring to this process that is going to make the conversation or make the oversight aspect better. So, I think that we’re being more thoughtful about it.
I will give a lot of credit to the Vice Mayor and also to Chair Sepulveda for focusing and harnessing attention on this because I think it’s making a difference and we’re going to end up with a better process by the time we’re finished.