Metro Nashville Council Member Jeff Eslick joined Thursday’s edition of The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy where he discussed his recent meeting with Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell as well as his idea to form a type of snow patrol during the winter months.
“I met him on the Wednesday after Christmas, I think it was the 27th, and it was really delightful,” Eslick explained. “I had in my mind what I thought the meeting was going to be like, but it wasn’t like that at all. As soon as I sat down, they gave me a map of my district, they all had one as well, and he said, “What do you need?”. That’s where we went and we talked about the good, the bad, and the wish list for my neighborhood. I was super pleased.”
Eslick said the “most surprising thing” that came out of his meeting with the mayor is his knowledge of a specific intersection that the councilman feels could be tweaked to be “a little more safer.”
“Right at the end of my district, when you go toward Madison, it’s at the end of Bridgeway on Hickory Boulevard. And Bridgeway is an industrial, commercial road. It’s kind of a truck path for the plants…there’s a bunch of industrial type plants back there. We talked about that intersection and that street in particular, trying to figure a way to make it a little more safe and a little better for the people that live around there. Because the trucks speed down it. And I’m not saying the truck people are laying on the accelerator – it’s a hill. And so, you know, gravity is going to get you there without help. And so you must ride the brakes or you’re going to end up going over,” Eslick explained.
“But when I started talking about that, the mayor’s personal insight into that intersection was surprising,” Eslick continued. “So he said, “I’ve been to that.” He said, “you know, when you’re turning left onto that, I understand what you’re saying. It is difficult to see and make that left hand turn.” And I was looking at him like, “yeah, I’ve lived here 23 years and I don’t know that I’ve actually had that happen to me,” but he was aware of that. And I was shocked. And he said, “you know what? I’m going to look into that and I’m going to see if I can help with that interchanger, that intersection right there.””
Leahy noted that “one of the positive things about our mayor, Mayor O’Connell, is that he knows Nashville.”
“He is ubiquitous. In other words, he is very visible. He’s very accessible, very approachable. And I think he knows probably every nook and cranny of Nashville. Much better than our previous mayors, or at least I think the most recent,” Leahy added.
Pivoting to the recent week-long system of extreme winter weather that moved through Tennessee, which left at least 36 Tennesseans dead, Eslick said he would like to form a group of reliable individuals in Nashville who would be interested in helping remove snow and ice from the roadways throughout impacted neighborhoods.
“You know, I’ve lived in Nashville my whole life. I’ve been through every snow storm that we’ve had and never thought about clearing the roads in the way that I think about it now,” Eslick said. “And I’m building a team of friends, supporters, and people in my community that have a civic mind and want to help and I’ve got some ideas – I don’t know if I’ll be able to pull it off before the end of this year and I hope we don’t have another need for it with the snow and ice – but I think I’ll be more prepared going forward to be able to help us not just get NDOT to do stuff but I think, you know, if I can find people in my neighborhood that have vehicles that may be able to help and we can work to try to get some tools that may be able to help, we may be able to take care of ourselves a little better.”
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
