Don’t get me wrong: As I've said before, I’m agnostic about a new soccer stadium. But I am still confused about why the city is so eager to get rid of land that it — and therefore we the taxpayers — owns for so little in exchange.

Blake Farmer over at WPLN has a story on the Metro Council’s iffy feelings about whether we need to give developers 10 acres of the fairgrounds in order to get a soccer stadium.

Chief operating officer, Rich Riebeling, says the team's owners proposed the concept in exchange for shouldering most of the debt for the $250 million coliseum. "The acreage was part of the negotiations," he said. "As with every negotiation, you start at a place and you end up at a place. And we feel like where we ended up was a fair negotiation that is very much in the city's interest going forward."

So just to recount everything the city has tried to give to developers — 10 acres of the fairgrounds, a third of Fort Negley Park, more of Rose Park to Belmont, and two-thirds of Tony Rose Park, which we’re getting back, at least at some point.

But if there’s one thing we should learn from the Fort Negley Park debacle, it’s that even if the city promises these are just leases, and the land will return to open space for the whole neighborhood, apparently we can’t trust that. The understanding for years was that when the lease on Greer Stadium ended for whatever reason, that land would return to the park. That's all out the window though, because now developers want to put a neighborhood there.

I don’t think we should be developing our communally held land into private space that most people can’t use. Period. The end.

But, and this is a big but, if the city is hell-bent on stripping South Nashville of its open space and turning it over to developers, as the stewards of our communal land, this administration has an obligation to milk these rich fuckers for all they’re worth. Oh, I’m sorry. I mean, this administration has an obligation to make financial decisions that benefit the city.

I don’t know when Metro chief operating officer Rich Riebeling last looked out from his lofty perch and gazed upon Nashville, but people want to build stuff here. We don’t have to give them land way, way below market value to get something done with that land. If we want to make South Nashville utterly devoid of open-space for some reason, we could put the land on the market and see what the market would bring us.

Why are we negotiating like we’re the ones with the shitty hand? We have land that Belmont wants to put their baseball crap on. If the community is going to lose parkland and downtown views, why didn’t we force Belmont to make it worth our while? What else were they going to do? Spend their money on land closer to campus and put their baseball stuff there? Oh, OK.

Same for the soccer stadium. Sure, it’d be nice to have, but we don’t need it. If developers want 10 acres near the stadium, let them convince the factories or warehouses around the fairgrounds to sell. They’re not doing us a favor by agreeing to take on the debt associated with their own project. We’re doing them a favor by letting them use our public land for their private profit.

And the same is true for Fort Negley Park. We don’t need anything there. If the city knocked down the stadium, pulled up the parking lots, and threw down some grass seed, the imaginations of the families in the surrounding neighborhoods would fill that greenspace with all kinds of adventures. So why are we cutting those developers such a good deal?

In all cases, the status quo is OK, which means we have the leverage and bargaining power.

I’m very curious and concerned about why the city is going out of its way to be accommodating to the folks who need things from us, instead of making them accommodate us.