What stood out to me was this: "By a 27-5 vote". That number seemed really high, so I looked it up - this isn't a city or a county or some kind of private tax distict - its was the nation's first city-county government.

"The Metropolitan Council is the legislative authority of the Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County, the nation’s first, fully consolidated city-county government, established in 1963. The Vice Mayor serves as the president of the Council, which is comprised of 35 district members and five members serving at-large."

https://www.nashville.gov/departments/council

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iamdelirium 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This isn't true?

San Francisco is consolidated in 1856 and according to Wikipedia, a century before Nashville (1963).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco#cite_note-Coy_19... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nashville,_Tennessee

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phire 6 hours ago | parent [-]

I think they are claiming it was the first merger of a multiple cities and a county. Rather than something that was originally created a merged county/city (like San Francisco) or a merger where the city/county boundaries were already identical (like Philadelphia and Philadelphia County)

Which might be true? But it's a really hyper-specific claim that's far less impressive than it first sounds.

	▲	ProllyInfamous a few seconds ago \| parent [-]
		The craziest thing about Metro Nashville (the city/county entity we are discussing) is that the wealthiest enclaves (former cities) voted to keep certain city-powers within their control (because *of course they did) – mostly Southern Davidson County, as you approach WilCo/Franklin.

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Zafira 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> [T]he nation’s first, fully consolidated city-county government.

This feels really tortured. Their argument is that they can say this because “Metropolitan government is a consolidation of two governments rather than the county taking over the city or the city taking over the county government.”

But, multiple cities have consolidated city/county governments. San Francisco is one such example.

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mixdup 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

>this isn't a city or a county

Yes it is, it's both of those things. Consolidated city/county governments are not a weird oddity that no one knows how to handle, they're not super common but they're not governmental arrangements from Neptune, either

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annzabelle 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Coming from the state of Virginia, I might say that they're a perfectly standard way to govern.

	▲	mixdup 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		VA independent cities aren't that, though. They're what they say on the tin: Cities without a county, they're not a nominal county and city both existing on paper but governed as one

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gs17 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Yes, Nashville has a huge number of council members, and it's much better that way. I moved from there to Seattle, and there's 9 council members (7 districts + 2 city-wide) here so we share a representative with a huge area (six times the people and two and a half times the land) and our local concerns have no voice.