Today’s email of the day comes from a viewer who is kept up day and night due to constant barking from the neighborhood dogs.
Representatives,
I am writing you this email after bedtime on a Wednesday night after several months of suffering. My neighborhood has a problem with barking dogs. It is non-stop and spans day and night. I have tried calling Metro Animal Control for help. At first, the issue with one neighbor was seemingly resolved. Then it started again. Metro Police refuse to do anything about the after hours noise pollution. They say it is Animal Control’s jurisdiction. Animal Control will only believe there is barking if they witness it themselves during their business hours. So I am left to suffer every night. I cannot sleep. I cannot enjoy peace in my own home even during the daytime because my neighbors cannot control their pets. I don’t know where else to turn for help. I pay property taxes and should be able to enjoy my own home without constant disruption from neighboring properties. Does a dog have more of a right to bark all night long than I have the right to sleep? Why are these dogs barking constantly? Are they being neglected? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Troubled and Concerned Citizen (and registered voter)
Are you kept up day and night by barking dogs all over your neighborhood?
If so, contact us at That’s Messed Up! We would love to here your Messed Up story about barking dogs!
Brentwood City Officials have indicated that close to 13,000 vehicles that travel this route will be redirected.
Some parents wonder how this will affect school bus pick up and drop off times?
Carol Birdsong is Williamson County School Public Information Director. Birdsong says it does not look like a worst case scenario.
“We have six bus routes that we have restructured,” she says.
These routes include Edmondson Elementary, Brentwood Middle School and Brentwood High School.
Of the six routes, one will need to be picked up 20 minutes earlier,” she says. According to Birdsong, as of this writing, Bus # 195 which travels Old Smyrna Road, Beachgrove Farms, Williams Grove Subdivision and Weatherbrook Subdivision will all be affected. These are routes that go to Brentwood Middle School and Brentwood High School, she tells Messed Up.
Birdsong adds, “There are 7 additional routes where we added some extra time to the route.”
She says these delays will be minimal, only five to ten minutes.
“With all our routes,” she adds. “When school starts, we tell parents, that we will be making adjustments through Labor Day. Kindergartners don’t start till later, so we adjust all our routes. But in this case we do know we will have one bus that will pick up at least 20 minutes earlier of the six.”
Birdsong says the restructuring will affect approximately 350 students.
“We work hard to make sure our routes meet state law and transport kids safely, to and from school as quickly as possible in the safest way. This is just normal for us. Anytime there are road closures we adjust our routes.”
Brentwood resident Trace Adkins has heard rumors of much longer delays due to the Concord Road Closure.
“We were forewarned our kids would have to get up 45 minutes earlier, than normal, to take this long circuitous route to school, and the school is at the end of this road.”
Adkins lives off Liberty Church Road. He walks me past an historic church to a stop sign in the middle of the narrow road.
I pulled the paperwork that authorized the barricade. According to ordinance 99-19, signed on 9/13/99, this stop sign was placed here because the “narrow width and surface conditions of this section of Liberty Church Road are not safe for higher traffic volumes resulting from recent and anticipated future development in the area.”
The ordinance goes on to say: the public interest will thereby be served by the closing of a section of Liberty Church Road to through vehicular traffic from Normandy Way southward to the Liberty United Methodist Church property.
Trace Adkins says if the school bus could go through this barricade his kids could get to their school in a few minutes, instead of winding down Concord road, and through a series of detours, and backed up construction on Edmondson Pike.
For the next 3 months, Adkins says the city should pull the temporary barricade up to allow a few school busses to pass through.
“I am totally willing to compromise here,” Adkins says in a gravely low voice. “If you don’t want this road open to everyone who comes through here that is fine, how bout opening it to official county vehicles only i.e. school busses, ambulances, fire trucks, police officers that should have access to this thorofare.”
I pose this question to Asst. City Manager Kirk Bednar who writes:
Andy - while it might sound simple to just pull the bollard up when needed, that is really not practical. First, the bollard is locked in place - if it wasn’t locked then everybody would try to pull it up when it was convenient for them. Emergency response vehicles have a master key for these locks and if necessary are capable of cutting the locks. Second, it would be extremely difficult to enforce this type of limited use of the road without a consistent police presence that we do not have the resources to provide on a daily basis.
Adkins becomes irritated when we talk about the barricade being erected at all. He says it has nothing to do with narrow roads or safety. He says it has nothing to do with Civil War troop movements or natural beauty of a tree lined canopy. Adkins questions whether you would see such a barricade anywhere else but Brentwood.
“How come the people who live west of this barricade right here, how come their serenity, is more important to city hall, is more important than the serenity of the people who live east of that barricade. Why is the serenity of the adults west of the barricade more important than the safety of the children who live east of that Barricade?”
Adkins says the barricade was erected 10 years ago because residents at the end of the road didn’t want through traffic.
This road was open to two way traffic for 200 years. And then 10 years ago they closed the road. I won’t get into the politics, but Tim and Faith use to live on this road. They moved some 3 years ago, and it was not solely cause of them road was closed, but there are some other people on Liberty Church Road who had some juice at city hall and they went with it and said yes, we want to keep this road closed. We want to keep people who live east of Liberty Road from having access to this road because there is just too much traffic through here.
Adkins rolls his eyes and adds:
So in the mean time, why can’t you [Brentwood] let a school bus through here. Let us take our kids to school through here,” he says pointing at the narrow road with the cathedral like canopy of trees that allow a splash of sunshine to filter through. “And it is the politics of this thing that bugs me the most now. It’s the bogus reasons they come up with. I don’t buy it. It is Messed Up Andy!! It’s Messed Up!!
His low chuckle of dissatisfaction pierces the pristine quiet of Liberty Church Road.
We wanted to ask Brentwood City officials about the road closure.
Then Vice Mayor Joe Reagan told us this by phone:
At the time the ordinance was signed, the road was not wide enough. And it cannot handle traffic to be an alternate route for Concord construction. It has small lanes, and no shoulders. Any alternate route needs more space and wider roads than Liberty Church. If they opened it, people would be more sorry that they opened it. And it [the ordinance] had nothing to do with Tim McGraw and Faith or trying to keep people out.
For more information on Williamson County Schools and bus routes click here to visit their website.
Concord Road in Brentwood is scheduled to be widened. The project will commence in the next few weeks. The job will be labor intensive and disruptive to motorists.
According to TDOT approximately 15,000 vehicles use Concord Road each day. To complete the project, a half mile stretch of Concord Road between Crockett Road and Edmondson Pike will be shut down. The Brentwood City manager tells me that it will be completely closed for at least 2 months.
Assistant Brentwood City Manager, Kirk Bednar tells me:
We have to replace a creek crossing and build retaining walls along the edge of the road. We had hoped to have this closure in the summer months, when traffic is a little less, and school is out. But because of right of way delays, the project was pushed back because of bidding. It will be a significant traffic challenge out there because of volume of traffic on that road and we will we have to detour it.
Why close Concord down completely, instead of keeping one lane open?
We debated that. It is narrow. There is a topography issue, with hills and there is a portion where we are replacing the creek crossing where the whole road has to be cut and the potential to build a detour lane, well, it would be tough to do, and there are houses impacted, and the topography would have made it difficult.
Bednar says keeping a lane open would have easily double, perhaps triple the time to complete the project, so city leaders decided to absorb the pain of a complete closure for hopefully no more than 3 months.
I ask Bednar about school issues. He admits there will be some disruptions.
“School wise it will affect school traffic, there are schools in the area. Busses will have to get going earlier.”
Brentwood Police Chief, Ricky Watson tells me there were 52 wrecks on Concord Road in this location last year. Thankfully there were no fatalities.
TDOT spokeswoman BJ Doughty writes: I just looked at the construction plans for the job and a count was taken in this exact area.
13,390 vehicles per day in 2008. The 2028 projection is 22,562 vehicles per day.
Doughty tells me that there will be a pre construction meeting on August 3rd. It is open to the public, but it is not designed as a public information meeting. It is more technically oriented, where construction experts will talk about very specific issues related to the job.
Not everyone is pleased about the closure, especially as it relates to school bus pick up and drop off times.
In part two, Country Music Artist, and Brentwood resident, Trace Adkins explains his thoughts and questions why certain school bus routes are not available in his part of the county.
Brentwood City Leaders weighed the option of partially closing down the road, or completely shutting down the road.
The Assistant City Manager says the city plans to completely shut down a 1/2 mile stretch of Concord Road.
For more information click here to visit the City of Brentwood’s website on road construction.
More than 50 tires are dumped near the Johnson School fence. Dozens more are stuffed in the dumpster right next to the Chestnut Hill Community Garden behind the school.
Who dumped all these tires?
Cassandra Finch doesn’t know, but she did witness some of the dumping.
Finch is a member of the Chestnut Hill Community Garden who was in the community Tuesday afternoon. That’s when she claims she sees a man and a woman pushing a cart specifically designed to hold tires rolling up to the dumpster.
She says the cart is stacked high with used tires and the man climbs up on the dumpster and begins stuffing them in as fast as he can.
Finch knows this is wrong, but the people look shady and she is uncomfortable confronting them.
“I am looking at this and I cannot believe they are dumping in the day time,” she says. “Isn’t this illegal? Shouldn’t they pay?”
John Munn is a community activist who helped organize the garden. He calls That’s Messed Up after seeing 50 to 60 more tires piled against the fence.
“This is my neighborhood and my community,” Munn says, his voice full of passion, “And they have the gall to dump in my community. I am outraged! I have called everyone I know. These tire company’s charge $2 or more to recycle and then dump the tires on someone else’s property and pocket the money. It is outrageous! I won’t stand for it!”
To help expedite clean up, I get on the phone with Metro Public Works, Health, and Codes.
By the next day, Metro school employees with a dump truck and a bob cat arrive and clean up the mess.
The men tell me that people dump on school property all over the city, and they are use to this.
Mr. Munn tells them it is outrageous. The workers agree.
“There are tire places on Nolensville, and Murfreesboro Road. They are all around this neighborhood,” the animated activist says. “Who knows who did it, they dump into low, socio-economic neighborhoods like this one because they know they can get away with it.”
This letter was sent to me from Brian Todd at the Metro Department of Public Health regarding the tire issue:
Andy,
Metro Schools was contacted this morning about the illegally dumped tires at 1st and Chestnut. They have agreed to go to the school, check out the area, and remove the tires.
The Health Department works closely with Metro Public Works, Metro Codes, and in this case Metro Schools when we learn of a problem. Wayne Denton, an inspector with our General Sanitation Division, says this is one of a number of problem areas in Nashville. Those who choose to illegally dump tires, junk and debris, select areas that are secluded and areas where there are few if any witnesses. Illegal dumping occurs at any time during the year but we typically see an increase during the summer months when overgrowth of vegetation helps provide a cover. The Health Department will cite private property owners to cut tall grass and weeds as a way to deter those seeking to unload their junk.
Health Department general sanitation inspectors respond to complaints of illegal dumping every working day. We prosecute those responsible when our inspectors or other Metro Government personnel catch them in the act of dumping. We ask for the community’s help to curtail illegal dumping by providing key information if they witness the act. We will cite the responsible party to court if a witness provides a license plate number and description of the person responsible, and agrees to appear in court. Those who are caught are subject to a $50 fine. Health Department inspectors spend many hours working an investigation and time in court so we would support increasing the fine. In addition to the fine, we ask the judge who hears the case for those found guilty to go back to the area and clean up what they have dumped.
Members of the community who witness illegal dumping and would agree to appear in court are encouraged to call our general sanitation division at 340-5644.
Here in the Messed Up Situation Room, we get tons of voicemails every day. Only a tiny portion of them become the stories you see where Cordan swoops in and very often makes a difference.
We only wish we could clone Andy Cordan and have at least three of him.
Here is the first of what we hope is a weekly installment of Messed Up Voicemails of the Week, the stories that didn’t quite make it to air. Click below to hear them.
An atrocity happened on July 9th. On that day someone walked up to a defenseless dog and opened fire with a BB gun.
The dog was struck multiple times in the face.
The pet owner called Metro Police who then called Metro Animal Control.
No one has been held accountable for the crime that took place in the animal’s very own back yard just yet.
Elizabeth Hernandez adores her dog Henri. She took the Sheppard Mix in some 6 years ago as a stray.
On July 9th, the Antioch woman went to work as normal. However when she returned to her Country Hill Road home that evening, something terrible had happened.
According to Hernandez, someone came into her back yard and shot Henri in the face with a BB gun.
A neighbor later tells Hernandez that she heard a popping sound and a dog yelping.
Henri’s eyes are now devastated by the injuries.
Hernandez says the dog could lose his right eye entirely and is practically blind in his left eye.
Hernandez finds five BBs on her deck which is covered in blood.
She also finds a small plastic end table by her fence. The table has a discernible shoe print on it.
A clue?!?
Metro police visit the home briefly, filling out a vandalism report, classifying the case “damage to property”. Metro Animal Control becomes the lead investigative agency on the case. Director Judy Ladebauche is appalled at the savagery of the blatant act and says her people are investigating this crime as a case of felony aggravated animal abuse.
Animal Control officers have solid leads and plan to investigate further.
Messed Up is on this case as well and will continue to follow it.
In the meantime, Ms Hernandez has put up flyers offering a $500 reward for information that leads to the arrest of the shooter.
If you have any information contact Metro Animal Control, or contact us at That’s Messed Up, and we will see that the information gets to the right hands!
Messed Up exists in all corners of life., but few stories are as Messed Up as this one!
Who shot Henri?
According to investigators, someone shot this animal in the face with a BB gun at point blank range. The dog is now blind in one eye and partially blind in the other.
So far nobody has been charged? Henri’s owner hopes that one of you Messed Up viewers saw something which can help bring the coward who did this to justice. She is offering a $500 dollar reward.
We’ll have much more on this tragic story, Wednesday on That is Messed Up at 5pm.
According to airport officals, 10 million people fly in and out of Nashville International Airport each year.
It’s a good bet that anyone driving to or from the airport has said to themselves “what the heck is going on with this construction? It started 9 months ago. Why is it taking so long, and when is it going to end?”
You notice it the moment you pull off I-40 - orange cones, “extreme caution” signs and concrete barricades greet you.
Airport Spokesperson Emily Richard says it’s all a part of the terminal access roadway improvement project that is designed to improve traffic conditions on Ring Road which circles the airport.
“The goal of construction on Ring Road, which is the road which circles the airport and connects I-40 and Donelson Pike, is to address merge and weave issues,” Richard said. “It will straighten it out and make it an easier, safer exit from the terminal building to I-40.”
Richard says citizens just need to be cautious, drive slower and allow for more time to get to and from their destination.
“We expect it done the fall of this year. It has been months. We are trying to do it while still operating an airport. We want to provide access to business and leisure passengers traveling. ”
Richard says the good news is the construction should be done by the Fall. She says the money comes from airport fees. She also says the cell phone waiting area will be reopened.
Andy,
I live between McGavock Pike and Shelton Avenue on Riverside Drive. Today, upon returning from a bicycle ride, I noticed public works out clearing the median in front of my home. While your story may not have persuaded the dumpers to quit dumping, apparently you persuaded public works to come clean up the mess, so thank you for that. I’d also like to thank you for bringing attention to folks parking in the bike lane, as we now have signs stating it is illegal along Eastland Avenue. Keep up the good work!
We also got this one complete with the photos you see in this post:
Andy, thank you for the great job you did on the followup segment on Riverside Dr. I want you to know that Metro public works cleaned up Riverside Dr today. Jimmy Stephens stopped to talk to them and they told him they got a call from the Mayor saying to get it cleaned up now. I have attached a few pictures of them working. Thank you so much for your help. I think we finaly got the attention of the right person. We couldn’t have done it without you.
by
½ a mile of Concord Road will soon be shut down.
Brentwood resident Trace Adkins has heard rumors of much longer delays due to the Concord Road Closure.
I pulled the paperwork that authorized the barricade. According to ordinance 99-19, signed on 9/13/99, this stop sign was placed here because the “narrow width and surface conditions of this section of Liberty Church Road are not safe for higher traffic volumes resulting from recent and anticipated future development in the area.”
Adkins becomes irritated when we talk about the barricade being erected at all. He says it has nothing to do with narrow roads or safety. He says it has nothing to do with Civil War troop movements or natural beauty of a tree lined canopy. Adkins questions whether you would see such a barricade anywhere else but Brentwood.
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According to TDOT approximately 15,000 vehicles use Concord Road each day. To complete the project, a half mile stretch of Concord Road between Crockett Road and Edmondson Pike will be shut down. The Brentwood City manager tells me that it will be completely closed for at least 2 months. 
Assistant Brentwood City Manager, Kirk Bednar tells me: 
Bednar says keeping a lane open would have easily double, perhaps triple the time to complete the project, so city leaders decided to absorb the pain of a complete closure for hopefully no more than 3 months. 
In part two, Country Music Artist, and Brentwood resident, Trace Adkins explains his thoughts and questions why certain school bus routes are not available in his part of the county.
She says the cart is stacked high with used tires and the man climbs up on the dumpster and begins stuffing them in as fast as he can.
“This is my neighborhood and my community,” Munn says, his voice full of passion, “And they have the gall to dump in my community. I am outraged! I have called everyone I know. These tire company’s charge $2 or more to recycle and then dump the tires on someone else’s property and pocket the money. It is outrageous! I won’t stand for it!”
“There are tire places on Nolensville, and Murfreesboro Road. They are all around this neighborhood,” the animated activist says. “Who knows who did it, they dump into low, socio-economic neighborhoods like this one because they know they can get away with it.”
An atrocity happened on July 9th. On that day someone walked up to a defenseless dog and opened fire with a BB gun. 
