NEWS

A Few Questions with Councilmember Erin Evans, District 12

BY JUDITH TACKETT

Council member Erin Evans spoke to us about the most pressing concerns in District 12 and her work on the Metro Council’s Public Health and Safety Committee.

The Contributor talked with Evans as part of a series called A Few Questions With where we interview council members about their district’s most pressing issues.

What stands out to you when describing District 12?

District 12 feels like the gas for the engine that runs Davidson County. It’s a very residential community. There are not a lot of businesses, but there are people who help power the rest of Davidson County as employees and entrepreneurs.

It’s the only pure Hermitage district. The other Metro Council districts either have parts of Hermitage and Old Hickory or parts of Hermitage and Donelson.

What are some of the main concerns you hear from your constituents?

The number one concern I heard from constituents was just resolved about a week ago. It was about a shipping container that had been dumped at the intersection of Bell Road and Old Hickory Boulevard. It had been going on for about a year.

Other concerns are really about things like speeding, car thefts, those kind of things, and then of course people experiencing homelessness have also become more of a concern among the residents.

You chair the Metro Council’s Public Health and Safety Committee. What are the key issues that have come before this committee and what are your thoughts on them?

This is the first time that we have married health and safety together. There are a lot of issues that are happening in our city that are directly tied to the health of Nashville.

One of the early issues that the committee looked into was emissions testing. Everyone was on board about how we should eliminate that process.

Another issue I have been really focused on has been drug overuse and Fentanyl poisoning. That’s a huge challenge in Davidson County. It’s something our committee needs to continue to focus on and elevate because we just came out of a public health emergency with COVID, and how we navigate the response to the drug issues that Nashville has is really another public health emergency.

On the public safety side, we have focused on violence reduction – how are we working with neighborhoods to help reduce gun violence and the things that may cause or set up neighborhoods to have more gun violence in their communities?

And then of course the Partners in Care focus with the pilot programs for North Nashville and Hermitage precincts on pairing mental health professionals to be able to go out with police officers when residents may be having a mental health challenge as opposed to a policing issue.

These are things where I feel our committee is helping set things up for future policy changes. We’re in very early stages on some of these issues.

Is there some feedback you are receiving from departments on how the work is progressing from this committee?

The Mayor’s Office has been very helpful in some of these issues we’re dealing with. For instance, Dia Cirillo (former senior policy advisor to the mayor), who recently left the Mayor’s Office, has been a huge supporter of Partners in Care, has been a huge supporter of a non-MNPD response model, and was very active in the conversations about drug overuse and overdosing — in addition to the Health Department and MNPD, of course.

On the policy side, Dia had been instrumental in really helping move things forward as has John Buntin who’s in the Mayor’s Office (director of policy and community safety), in being the intermediary to help bring all these departments that are touching these processes. They helped us understand what the goals are, and what they’re hearing from the community so that we can figure out what actions should be taken.

Are there already some actions that have come out of it, or are you close?

I think anytime somebody who has been a key partner leaves a department, it can throw you a little bit in disarray for a minute as everybody regroups. And so, like in the instance of talking about Fentanyl, my goal is to have another public meeting about drugs after the budget cycle has finished. We can talk more about the MNPS response to Fentanyl and trafficking Fentanyl in Davidson County and also potentially hear from families who have been impacted by their children being poisoned by Fentanyl, as opposed to somebody who might have an addiction issue. This drug crisis is impacting people who may take one pill that’s laced with Fentanyl and die from it.

I feel on the policy side there is definitely the support from the mayor to expand the Partners in Care program. But around the drug issues in Davidson County, there is more awareness and education that needs to happen in Davidson County including part of the Metro Council.

You are one of three appointees to the Nashville-Davidson County Homelessness Planning Council (HPC), the community’s governing board that should guide the implementation of a coordinated approach to preventing and ending homelessness. What are your observations of the current goals of the HPC and what would you like to see them tackle next?

I would like for the body to align more closely together about what we want to accomplish. If you take into consideration the number of people that are involved in this committee who are actively working on ending homelessness and improving people’s lives, it’s a really powerful group. But when we’re out of alignment, and we don’t have a clear path that we’re all working towards, and we get caught up in personality or other kind of conflicts, it just distracts from the focus that we should have. It’s a group that really should carry more weight with the Mayor’s Office and with the Metro Council.

Myself as a representative of Metro Council on the Homelessness Planning Council along with Council members Sepulveda and O’Connell, we should be tasked with bringing things forward on behalf of that group, and I don’t think we’ve gotten there yet.

So, there is a lot of potential, but we really need to get back together and push forward from the issues the Homelessness Planning Council has been experiencing.

Anything else you would like to add? Can I put a plug in for The Contributor?

Absolutely.

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