Metro Councilman Charlie Tygard said he’s withdrawn a controversial request to name Nashville’s Public Square for a former vice mayor and will focus on another facility instead.
Next week’s parks board meeting agenda includes a request from Tygard “to formally address the Board with regard to naming the Public Square Park Plaza in honor of former Vice Mayor John David Scobey.” Scobey, who presided over the council from 1971 to 1995, died two years ago at the age of 85.
But Tygard told The Tennessean today that he decided to drop the plan after meeting with Parks Director Tommy Lynch and council attorney Jon Cooper. Instead, he’ll file legislation sometime next month to name the council chamber inside the historic courthouse for Scobey.
“This is an appropriate honor for the Scobey family,” Tygard said.
Metro Clerk Marilyn Swing, one of Scobey’s five children, sits below Vice Mayor Diane Neighbors at the front of the council chamber during each meeting, recording the legislative body’s votes. The clerk’s office is the government’s official record-keeping agency.
Before he withdrew it, Tygard’s Public Square proposal had started attracting some negative attention. Councilman Mike Jameson, who represents the downtown district the Public Square is in, said he doesn’t like naming parks for politicians, dead or alive. While calling Scobey “a saint,” he said politicians shouldn’t get special honors like that just because they once worked in the public eye.
“There’s probably a plumber who passed away yesterday who did just as good a job in his profession,” Jameson said.
He said parks should be named in ways that give the public a sense of where they are, like Riverfront Park. He also noted that Metro Parks policy prohibits accepting nominations for names from individuals, including elected officials, unless they make “a significant financial contribution … and the naming is a condition of the gift.”
The Parks policy manual also says a park’s name can’t change once it’s been officially named. But it also says, “In the case of parks where only geographic, conceptual or other generic names exist or have been proposed, and when such names are not of special historical or geographical significance to the neighborhood; nominations may be made to name a park or park facility for a local or community leader (non-living).”
However, the name “Public Square” does have a long history in and around that spot overlooking the Cumberland River, where the area’s first settlers started to map the city that became Nashville.
Tygard said he decided to take the parks board “off the hot seat” after Lynch, the department’s director, told him the proposal “puts us in a little awkward position.”
The Public Square park was proposed by former Mayor Bill Purcell, whom Tygard is not exactly fond of. Bill Phillips, who was Purcell’s deputy mayor, said he and his boss stood on the courthouse steps facing Union Street a few weeks after taking office in 1999, looked at the parking lot there and decided they would try to get rid of it in favor of something nicer and more appealing. The park opened in 2006, with a parking garage underneath.
Tygard, an at-large councilman from Bellevue, said he wasn’t trying to name the park for another politician to prevent it from being named for Purcell at some point.
“I’ve tried to put Purcell behind me,” he said.
Jameson said he was pleased that Tygard withdrew the Public Square proposal but still concerned about “politicians naming things after other politicians.” He proposed a formal process for naming structures with public input in 2005, but the council rejected it.
