0:00

you're a politician you're running for mayor sure you can't use your political office for slamming a business I mean

0:07

you might get attacked by a lot of people are you just going to turn on them if they attack you I mean I'll just

0:13

say it this way the city makes deals with all kinds of companies we get to be

0:19

strategic about not only what we invest in who we invest in what kinds of people

0:25

we'd like to attract to this city so Freddie welcome to the podcast glad

0:32

to be here thank you so glad you're here Nashville native I want to kind of yeah ask you some broad questions a little

0:37

more detailed yeah um so uh where did you grow up and uh what's your background here yeah grew up in Richland

Freddie O'Connell's background and childhood in Nashville

0:44

West End kind of West Nashville before there was an i-440 in the house my parents are still in and you know they

0:50

got into the neighborhood when it was still uh surprisingly cheap to get into in the 1970s I've got a younger brother

0:57

and it was you know it was a classic story of childhood and a family kind of

1:02

trying to um you know do whatever was possible to move from working class to middle class my mom was

1:09

a career teacher my dad had studied agricultural Sciences in college and came back here and worked for USDA for a

1:16

lot of his career and we were probably the uh the only family in Richland West End when we were growing up to have a

1:23

cattle shoot in the driveway because he was trying to eradicate brucellosis from

1:28

cattle herds across Tennessee interesting so I got to experience rural Middle Tennessee as a kid which was very

Freddie's early experiences and interests

1:34

interesting and you know we we would ride our bikes we had a bunch of kids in the

1:40

neighborhood and it was kind of like you know tumble out the back door go find the neighborhood kids and generally stay

1:46

in the neighborhood and we you know the edge of the neighborhood was this uh it's a railroad track we'd go explore

1:53

with our friends kind of up and down that for a mile in every direction and

1:59

um then you know grew up interested in computers and knew I wanted to go study

2:04

computer science so when I left Nashville for college that's exactly what I did and lucked into some really

2:10

good internships throughout high school and college learning how to do that stuff in

2:18

an applied way and have had a 20 plus year career in software and technology so it's been an interesting journey and

2:25

then um you know it's it's interesting because I didn't think I I definitely knew that I wanted to go to college I

2:32

knew what I wanted to study and I knew that I wanted to spend some time outside of Nashville and so kind of made a deal

2:39

with my parents that I would work my way through Summers and Winters kick that into tuition pick up any student debt on

2:45

the backside myself but that I could you know they'd help with tuition and I'd have whatever school I could get into

2:51

we'd work that out and I knew I wanted to have a different experience than Nashville for a part of

2:58

life where I knew it was going to be a way but then would have open options and I wasn't sure when I left I honestly

3:04

thought I might not be coming back to Nashville but I've seen you know it's interesting because you learn a lot by

3:10

being gone you learn a lot by experiencing other cities what a city's potential is and also that

3:17

great cities don't happen by accident and so by the time I got back I was seeing signs of what mayor

3:24

bredesen then mayor bredesen had done to kind of start to modernize downtown and

3:29

to even allow people to start living downtown and Nashville was starting to it was almost like we had made a choice

3:36

right in that moment that I was away of oh yeah hey we'd like to try being a big

3:41

city and now what I think we found you know 20 plus years later is

3:49

that was great but also it still matters and so when you go through three Mayors

3:55

in three years and growth is kind of managing you rather than vice versa you

4:02

get to a place that's a little uncomfortable and so I spent a long time doing things that I cared a lot about

4:09

because in that period of getting back I wound up

4:14

basically making a tough decision where I had just paid off all my undergraduate debt and that was the uh the moment that

4:22

the car I was driving which was my girlfriend's car she was away doing pre-med it had a catastrophic

4:28

transmission failure so what a great reward for becoming debt free is this incredible choice of do I buy a car or

4:35

do I save up for a house and I bought a bike instead and so I figured out how to move around the city without a car and

4:41

figured out our transit system and then in those years it was amazing

4:46

how quickly I saved money and that became a down payment for the house we'd been in for 16 years in Salem town so I

4:53

moved from kind of West Nashville to Inner North Nashville and uh

4:58

it was it was a great experience and it taught me a lot and that got it kind of

5:03

opened a lot of doors into Civic life I got invited by mayor Carl Dean to join his Nashville MTA board of directors so

5:10

I was suddenly I had gone from a committed user of transit in the city to

5:17

helping make policy decisions about how we do better on transit in the city and

5:22

for seven straight years mayor Dean invested incrementally in transit and we

5:28

saw our ridership growth go grow faster than our population growth and then

5:33

I thought running for Council connected all these issues I was interested in we

5:38

kind of wound up in the neighborhood we did because of Transit issues we

5:44

also we're in a working class diverse neighborhood partly because Whitney had

5:51

gotten into Meharry for Medical College I got invited by neighbors to take on a

5:56

leadership role in the neighborhood we had the Nashville Rescue Mission there so we're kind of grappling right across

6:02

from cheating place which is an mdha Community with very low income and

6:08

frequently homeless people and Metro Action commission was also in the neighborhood and while we were having

6:14

that conversation and working with them they worked on this poverty reduction initiative and so I was kind of seeing

6:20

all of this happen meanwhile our biggest neighbor to the east was Metro Water I got involved in a Citizens advisory

6:27

committee with them to look at trying to prevent raw sewage from flowing into the Cumberland River when it rains really

6:33

hard that was an interesting project and so by the time 2015 came around I realized that Council was an opportunity

6:42

to amplify a lot of the conversations I was already involved in so 2015 my predecessor Erica Gilmore was term

6:49

limited she was going to run for at large Metro Council I had a conversation with a bunch of my

6:55

neighbors and looked like it would be possible to have the conversation I wanted to have with the whole district and we went out and won a council race

7:03

so it's been an exciting eight years and now here I am running for mayor so um you mentioned that you were living in

7:09

other places uh where did you live and what did you learn from those experiences yeah so I went to Brown

7:14

University which is up in Providence Rhode Island and Providence is really interesting because it's on both the um

Freddie's experiences living in other places and what he learned

7:21

Amtrak Corridor connecting DC to Boston and we could go to all of the Big East

7:27

Coast cities we my friends and I and some friends from here that were in any

7:32

of those East Coast cities we could stay pretty easily connected because we had Amtrak service so right great passenger

7:38

rail so at least once or twice a semester we'd go up the coast into

7:44

Boston we'd go down the coast into New York sometimes all the way down to DC but you could also do it by bus and be

7:51

even a little bit cheaper we had at the time Bonanza and Peter Pan and even the

7:57

Chinatown Bus and a couple of the regional buses up there so you could very inexpensively experience uh not

8:06

just kind of regional transportation in that way but also the big city so I got to spend time in DC in New York in

8:13

Boston experience what Transit was like in those cities Providence was a little bit smaller but it was also while I was

8:20

there kind of under doing an urban Renaissance buddy Cianci who while he

8:26

was a problematic mayor who wound up having a you know kind of a

8:32

catastrophic Scandal that wound up taking his administration down

8:38

he's still managed to somehow preside over a lot of core investments in

8:43

downtown get providences kind of arts and theater Community elevated they

8:48

started this Riverfront reinvestment process that resulted in a a kind of

8:54

arts-focused event that is still going on today decades later called water fire which brings people onto the river you

9:02

know they have gondolas and they literally light kind of miniature bonfires up and down the Waterfront

9:07

they had a new skating rink they reinvented the kind of Transit Plaza

9:13

downtown they built this somewhat controversial Providence Place Mall a

9:18

very Urban shopping center but as they did all these things you also saw in

9:24

Providence leading indicators of what we were about to see in Nashville which was making core investments in the urban

9:33

environment means that your downtown which Providence was actually very similar to Nashville back then

9:39

it had been historically for the the you know decades leading up to when I got

9:45

there mostly commercial Office Buildings downtown and the city itself kind of cleared out after five o'clock all of

9:52

this investment brought people back into the City and suddenly you had restaurants downtown bars downtown just

9:58

kind of a nightlife and people downtown and so it was interesting to kind of get

10:03

back here and see that building Bridgestone Arena and seeing

10:09

um you know an era of kind of adult bookstores and peep shows on Broadway give way to not just one or two and now

10:18

apparently an unlimited number of Honky Tonks right but I remember in high

10:23

school you would occasionally have cruising on Second Avenue and we went through this

10:28

period where you'd have enough dancing in the district dance in the district um I saw a bunch of shows down on you

10:34

know the the old Riverfront Park before there was an Ascend Amphitheater

Development of downtown Providence

10:40

um and you know so you you do learn a lot uh about what works in cities and so

10:47

it's still striking to me that here you know not just 40 plus years after I grew

10:52

up here but 20 plus years after I started riding the bus here we've barely made a dent and one of our key quality

11:00

of life cost of living overall accessibility things and that's Transit and so it's one of the things I want to

11:06

work on yeah so what what would you do uh for Transit what would be your plan there's kind of a near-term and a longer

11:13

term approach um so I left the Nashville MTA board of directors running for Council winning

11:21

that seat and you can't do both and so I had to resign my seat on the MTA board but one of the things we were working on

11:27

right before I left was our first ever long-range strategic Plan called In

11:32

Motion it still exists today it's still a good basis for any future work that gets done but there was a steering

11:38

committee that was a part of that and they a couple years into the council term put on everybody's desk including

11:45

the Mayors a really smart idea which is this is a three-year work plan for

11:52

useful visible popular cost-effective things we can do that will Elevate the

11:58

stable base of ridership we're trying to create right it's building a few more Community Transit centers and

12:04

communities that we know need them so that not everybody who gets on a bus has to come into downtown before they go

12:10

back out to some other part of the city most other cities have figured this out it's building the crosstown capacity and

12:16

the frequency to do that and the good news about that plan was that it fit into what mayor Dean had already been

12:22

doing effectively which is a slightly larger set of incremental Investments but one that fits within our ordinary

12:29

operating budget right it's not something that would require any special funding or a property tax increase or anything like that it's just a like a

12:38

slightly larger slice of the pie now what mayor Barry tried to do was to

12:43

shoot the moon on Transit and secure dedicated funding for it with a referendum with a very ambitious plan

12:49

now I think what we should do this time is the walk-in chew gum approach where we do

12:55

this work plan we finish Community Transit centers we put one here on the East bank now that we're Master

13:00

developer for a lot of reclaimed public land with the Titan Stadium deal done uh we just bought a mall in southeast

13:07

Nashville we can and should put a Community Transit Center there the convention center already owns land that

13:13

is anticipated to be one these are things I thought might actually happen already when we got a bunch of one-time

13:19

Federal money in the form of the cares Act and the American Rescue plan act we missed some opportunities over the past

13:25

few years I don't want to miss those opportunities ahead because we have both the infrastructure investment and jobs

13:30

Act and the inflation reduction act two other big Federal opportunities that Nashville needs to take advantage of if

13:36

we do all of that and build those Community Transit centers strengthen our frequency and Crosstown capacity so that

13:42

we can do things like get buses to and from the soccer stadium during games I think we'll be really well prepared to

13:49

reinvest in a conversation about dedicated funding in a more reasonable plan so Community Transit like what is

13:54

what exactly does that mean like what's is that buses going from place to place like where would they go to and from

13:59

right so if you go down to the new Hillsboro High School right now in Green Hills you'll see climate controlled

14:07

waiting rooms much more um visibility into when and where buses

14:13

are going it's a place that multiple routes can terminate and originate outside of downtown and eventually if

14:21

you do it right you'd run a route basically directly from Green Hills for instance to Antioch or Green Hills up to

14:28

we're building another Community Transit Center like the one in Green Hills on Clarksville Highway in North Nashville

14:33

so that you could get directly from North Nashville to Green Hills without having to do this expensive come into

14:40

the center of the city and go back out and fight through that track it's not like a new Lane like the amp it was yeah

14:46

this would be more additional bus space service I think then you'd also be looking to graduate to something called

14:52

bus rapid transit in an ideal scenario you might have dedicated lanes for

14:57

Transit emergency vehicles some other specialty scenarios but you can still make Headway on a

15:05

corridor like Gallatin like Charlotte like Murfreesboro where you also modernize your traffic signals and this

15:12

helps motorists because we've got a traffic Management Center that we can simultaneously invest in now you're not

15:19

stuck at a red light if you're driving your car when nobody's coming the other way how would that be so uh and um Matt

15:26

wilshere and Alice Rowley it's mentioned the same thing like we've got to modernize that how much would that

15:32

actually affect the traffic flow it's a big deal and so I'm going to give mayor Cooper some credit because he already

15:37

initiated the process of traffic management years ago there was this moment where Public Works put out a big

15:43

press release of hey we just re-timed the traffic signals well that's nice but

15:49

we have I mean I say this as a software guy better than manually re-timing every

15:54

traffic signal in the city is when the traffic signals themselves know where the traffic is if if the traffic signal

16:02

knows that I just passed through one intersection there's nobody coming in either direction at the intersection in

16:08

front of me and ordinarily it might be like oh time to change to red well now it knows where the traffic is flowing

16:14

and it can let traffic on Broadway or Nolensville or whatever Corridor in the city flow a little better so it's

16:21

actually great to try to do all these things in a coordinated fashion sure now that we have an Asheville Department of

16:26

Transportation building out that traffic Management Center capacity modernizing our traffic

16:32

signals helps traditional motorists but it also helps Transit because as we

16:37

modernize our Fleet the buses can say hey the light is about to turn red we're

16:43

behind schedule Stay Green a little longer just long enough to let us get through the intersection and now you're

16:49

improving Transit flow as well so that you're not stuck in traffic there yeah and so you know you said short term uh

16:55

what about the long-term plan so the long-term plan would look more intensely at bus Rapid Transit and this is

17:02

effectively trains on rubber wheels and we did years ago when I was still on the

17:07

MTA board a local preferred Alternatives analysis and what we learned through that was there are a couple advantages

17:13

to brt you get a lower cost per mile you don't sacrifice anything on return on

17:19

investment where you can for instance build affordable housing on the corridors you can get a great kind of

17:25

retail response to a place where people know there's going to be heavy Transit ridership you get a lot of amenities out

17:32

of actually having Transit on a corridor like Murfreesboro like Gallatin like Charlotte like Broadway

17:39

Vanderbilt is the largest Transit trip gender in the region Murfreesboro and Gallatin tend to still be the highest

17:45

ridership routes in the city if we did gold standard bus Rapid Transit where

17:50

you had enough curb to curb width where you could do a dedicated Lane if we build the East bank right you can really

17:58

start to see a more contemporary approach to Transit that connects

18:03

multiple parts of the city has some high capacity modes of Transit like brt and

18:09

eventually I think you could probably graduate to the one light rail route that I think the city needs most which

18:14

is the airport to potentially both downtown and the East Bank yeah and so

18:19

what other cities have done the the bus Rapid Transit and how does it worked what's I'm sure some places this work

18:25

well maybe others not as well what are the what's everywhere that does it they get a very successful response the two

Bus rapid transit in other cities and how it could be implemented in Nashville

18:31

that I've written personally actually there's three I have written it in Cleveland which was the first city I

18:37

went to 15 years ago they've got the health line it's kind of mostly a straight shot route but it is exactly

18:45

what I described it feels just like a train on rubber Wheels but it moves people so efficiently like it's just

18:51

really well done Urban implementation surprisingly considering it's mostly a college town in Oregon Eugene Oregon has

18:58

a really great dedicated lanes-based bus Rapid Transit implementation Portland

19:03

has one too but more cities are getting there in fact I'm a little disappointed

19:10

in in some ways without trying to be disrespectful to Memphis this was something that is the capital city as

19:16

the major economic force in the city in the state I expected Nashville to be

19:23

leading on issues of Transit infrastructure Memphis is about to have about Rapid Transit implementation

19:29

before Nashville is and I feel like this is unfortunate because we're kind of watching Memphis beat us and leading in

19:37

that we're watching Chattanooga beat us in active Transportation infrastructure and

19:43

when I first got invested in these things Nashville really seemed poised to

19:48

lead not just Tennessee but the southeast and some of this Common Sense stuff that we've watched everywhere

19:54

around the country the the studies show you the same thing the economic development response to Transit and safe

20:00

infrastructure that supports active Transportation walking biking you know these days using a scooter whatever

20:07

all of that stuff actually creates a really vibrant local economy response

20:12

where small businesses Thrive you tend to get overall more turnover into

20:18

businesses like retail and restaurants and so we're just we're starting to lag we're missing our opportunities we

20:24

watched 75 million dollars that we had in a federal budget uh walk to some

20:30

other City to go implement this when we didn't invest in the amp we have missed multiple Federal grant opportunities for

20:36

infrastructure over the past three years and I want to be extremely serious and diligent as a mayor about not leaving

20:43

money on the table we have just missed an incredible number of federal state and similar opportunities to bring money

20:50

into the City and I think we need to perform better how long would it take though to do something like that you know it would we be able to do it in an

20:56

eight-year term or oh yeah I mean if we had done if we had for instance completed even just the single route of

21:02

the amp that mayor Dean had proposed a decade ago we'd be writing it today right from points to St Thomas west

21:09

you'd have an extremely quick and efficient transit route on the densest part of the city if we're serious about

21:16

this we can do within within a single term you would see more Community

21:23

Transit centers and Crosstown capacity for traditional bus service within two terms if we

21:29

go with a community-based plan that doesn't over invest in light rail or have secret billion dollar tunnels under

21:35

downtown and is half the cost or less to get bus Rapid Transit as a demonstration

21:41

project on key routes you could have people riding it within two terms and so

21:46

I mean when I think of buses and Light Rail I think of old like you know 100

21:52

years ago yeah and you know I feel like we might have missed our Mark 10 years ago and it might be too

21:58

late and I guess my my thought on this is you know how do we build a city the future yeah and we're going to have

22:04

autonomous vehicles AI is coming really fast you're a computer scientist I think you understand that you know could it be

22:10

too late and you know do we pivot towards really building that City the future because 20 years from now this

22:16

could all be obsolete uh there's never going to be a time I I can't imagine

22:22

because even as we made cars a commodity they're still the second most expensive

22:28

asset that people have and unlike a home they depreciate in value they don't

22:33

appreciate in value unless you manage to maintain a classic car right right which

22:39

a lot of people don't and so if you go by the cheapest vehicle on the market right

22:45

now in the United States the cost of owning maintaining fueling and ensuring that is still quite High if even if we

22:52

get to an autonomous vehicle future then had a really interesting conversation about this with Gabe Klein who is one of

22:58

the most Innovative people that I've met and have watched his career for a long time he

23:05

was one of the guys who was uh I think a co-founder at least senior executive at Zipcar years ago and he has worked on

23:13

everything from Bike Share to autonomous vehicle preparation to Big infrastructure projects in big cities

23:20

from DC to Chicago Zipcar was based out of Boston he came here to talk and he

23:26

actually worked on a program with Nashville as a kind of consultant of the city called Gear Up 2020 a few years ago

23:31

and his Outlook was yes modern American cities should be preparing for automatic vehicles in fact

23:38

the berry Administration was working on that and when I say the dedicated lanes for emergency vehicles and so forth they

23:44

can actually also be used for AV support and that's a really good way to blend

23:49

that into the system but he said and this is I I fundamentally agree with him you shouldn't ever think about that

23:55

future without a mass transit capability because it's always going to be the most efficient way to move people for the

24:02

individuals who are being moved it's still going to be far cheaper to do that than to ever own even like an entry

24:08

point automated vehicle even if you went into something that was like a

24:14

multi-vehicle chain or whatever or lift and those kinds of things for if you think about where we are right now as a

24:20

city and the the struggle for the hospitality and Healthcare Industries to

24:25

maintain a Workforce part of it is because either parking in the urban

24:30

center from Vanderbilt to downtown over here in East Nashville uh or using ride sharing and other

24:37

services on a daily basis the rates are pretty extraordinary they're pretty expensive whereas if you can rely on a

24:45

meaningful transit system you can cut your household costs dramatically and so from a standpoint of Public Service

24:50

delivery it's still going to be really important into the future and Transit can take advantage of all the technology

24:56

that's out there too I mean you could imagine someday having automated mass transit that's what I was that's what

25:02

I'm talking about yeah that's what I think it is and yeah it does make sense if you already had that lane you have a

25:07

way I just I do wonder if you know if it is too far because the AI is coming so

25:13

fast yeah I mean well there's there's obvious debates on how fast but

25:18

um and you know I think it's important right now for whoever's voting to look at the mirror like how are they going to

25:24

be a mayor of the future because these really are revolutionary times future Readiness is one of the things that I

25:30

think best positions me because I have spent so long in the software and Technology industry I've thought a lot

25:36

about resilience in fact mayor Berry did a really smart thing a few years ago by creating an office of resiliency within

25:42

the mayor's office and it was looking at stuff like this it was looking at everything from

25:48

um you know climate mitigation and severe weather to Global pandemics and

25:53

the impact thereof before we had coveted it was looking at disruptive Technologies and it's really important

26:00

for cities to be able to maintain a Long View and that's that's one of the things I want to specifically bring to the

26:06

table here there's a lot of talk obviously on affordable housing and it's a big issue for the city uh what would

26:13

you be actually what would your definition of affordable housing be yeah this is maybe the most important uh way

26:20

to think about this too uh I would say the

26:25

in the um in the practice of Housing and building developing and kind of thinking

26:32

about policy the overall Outlook is if you are spending more than 30 percent of

26:38

your take-home pay on your housing you are cost burdened and your housing is not affordable so for instance when I

26:45

was 30 years old and we were a single income household because Whitney was in

26:50

med school and I had just bought a house um there was a moment before she had

26:56

completed her medical education and residency where we were probably cost burdened because we had bought a house

27:02

it was before interest rates had kind of come down to an exceptionally low point

27:08

and so the monthly payment was a little higher and you know we were a single income

27:16

household so that arguably though I had bought a little more house than we needed I had kind of pushed it at the

27:22

stretch level and as our income volatility is a couple of young people finding their professional footing there

27:29

were periods where you could argue that we weren't in an affordable home or if you are coming to Nashville and

27:36

you're hoping to make it as a songwriter and you're working as a host or Hostess

27:42

as a server whatever you're in some segment of our hospitality industry you're making good tips but you're you

27:48

know you're in the wage hourly wage Marketplace and you're paying 2200 for

27:55

an apartment with a roommate chances are you're going to discover that that's not

28:00

affordable housing there's not a kind of one-size-fits all and if you look at the

28:05

kind of buckets of income that people tend to fall into you could be making zero dollars to thirty percent of area

28:12

median income that's that tends to be where very low income affordable housing is targeted 30 to 60 percent of area

28:19

median income and then 60 to 120 percent you may be looking at working Workforce housing middle class housing and then

28:26

anything up above that you're making incomes where you kind of get to choose where you are on the

28:31

affordability piece but there's not really just uh hey 400 a month is affordable housing and

28:37

that's all you say about it it tends to be based on how large is your family what's the overall household income what

28:44

is your take-home pay and really at the end of the day are you spending more than 30 percent of what you earn on your

28:51

housing yeah so um you know what would be your approach to make housing more affordable in the city yeah so the good

28:58

news is we have a very good affordable housing task force report that came out a couple years ago it adds some key

29:04

recommendations in it we just completed one of the core recommendations there

29:09

which is to for three years in a row invest 30 million dollars into the

29:15

Barnes Housing Trust Fund this is a fund that non-profit typically but for-profit

29:21

too affordable housing developers can go make applications for long-term

29:26

affordable housing projects typically any dollar they take out of that fund they can go leverage up to six times in

29:33

the market to draw in other leveraged sources of financing and go build

29:40

housing that they can then maintain at below Market rates the trust fund has

29:46

provided thousands of units over the entire period of its existence and as

29:52

we've grown it the reason this matters is for the first time this year based on all the Investments we've made in that

29:57

affordable housing toolkit and I was proud to be a part of a council LED effort for the two previous years to

30:03

make sure we hit that 30 million dollar Mark but we did and this year the mayor started at that point himself and so as

30:10

a partnership we've gotten that key recommendation met and it means for the first time we are closing the gap

30:16

between the number of total housing units we know we need and the supply we're bringing into the pipeline so

30:22

that's good news almost every recommendation of that task force report is actually in

30:29

progress or about to start like there's a catalyst Fund in there that will allow Metro it's got a 20 million dollar

30:36

initial investment it's going to allow Metro to acquire land that becomes available that may not hit the open

30:42

market yet that then the private sector can come in and again partner to create

30:48

long-term affordable housing on land that the strike fund acquires that's going to be a big new tool that we've

30:54

added we've got a Community Land Trust that's built a few homes I want to see that capacity expand but we also created

31:01

a housing division within the Metro planning department they are underway right now with a unified study and I

31:07

think that unified study is going to be a very great road map for the other approaches we should be taking funding

31:14

levels we should be thinking about policy changes we should be considering so I am eagerly awaiting that unified

31:21

study and while we wait for it we're going to continue taking steps in the direction of the the things that are

31:26

already recommendations that task force report so Envision Casey um not much has happened uh to me

31:33

unfortunately I don't know your position on it what what uh would you continue that project or yeah so this one's tough

31:39

because when Envision Casey started it it did take advantage of an Innovative program that was administered

31:46

through HUD it was called rental assistance demonstration and basically allowed mdha our local housing authority

31:52

to instead of having the federal government own that land and have mdha effectively be the landlord mdha could

32:00

take ownership of the land go capitalize and begin construction of new affordable

32:06

housing which had not happened in a generation really I mean we were effectively losing affordable housing

32:12

Supply by not growing any of our public housing capacity over the past several decades

32:17

Envision Casey has added several hundred new units of mixed income housing that's

32:23

a good thing when it began though the plan was not to add any additional very

32:28

low income affordable units right so it was yeah we're deconcentrating poverty by bringing more types of housing into

32:37

the overall KC reinvention but you're not actually increasing the supply of affordable

32:44

housing fortunately mdha has since changed that pathway it's on the move but we also need to

32:51

look across the board including across the river we've already been through two other Envision planning scenarios Napier

32:58

and sudicum which is what I represent in the kind of southeast part of District 19 also Envision Edge Hill which is over

33:04

by the Edgehill Apartments which is in District 17 represented by council member Sledge we've each been deeply

33:10

involved in Community discussions that played out over the past five years but

33:15

we haven't taken a single step in the construction process for that right and so this is where one of the key things

33:22

that the mayor has to do going forward is actually re-establish a functional partnership between Metro and mdha so

33:29

that we can actually Supply as a part of our affordable housing toolkit either some of the infrastructure support or

33:37

and possibly and local funding because when we've done that in the past we've

33:42

created great mixed income communities like Randy Rogers right on Roselle Parks Boulevard which took over an old

33:50

underused training facility and created a community of 100 mixed income apartments right on a major Corridor

33:56

walking distance to a grocery store walking distance to multiple Community amenities and that was aided by 25

34:04

million dollars in general obligation bonds that was just part of our overall

34:10

Capital spending so that it's another tool in the toolkit and we ought to reinvest in that yeah but I I wonder you

34:15

know you talked about other boards have been set up and those type of things but it seems like so much red tape and bureaucracy that it doesn't get done uh

34:22

what like it's great if we make another plan you know but the plan gets people excited I

34:28

like this plan because it wasn't displacing people yeah uh it allowed people to stay in their neighborhood which is super important and to me it's

34:35

a travesty that these things don't get done like you know what what do we have to do as a city to get those important

34:42

things done so I a few weeks ago put out a list of

34:48

15 fixes and one of the biggest things on that list is going back to something

34:53

that mayor Dean had initiated which is honestly it is a process of cutting red

34:58

tape in many cases Metro is the obstacle to slowing down delivery of affordable

35:06

housing whether it's because we get in our own way from an infrastructure perspective and changes in Metro Water

35:13

policy for helping get infrastructure costs paid for slow something down I've

35:18

been working on a project for months that's stuck in those gears I'm actually working on some legislation to try to

35:23

unstick that um there are scenarios where any of a

35:29

mix of codes the national Department of Transportation known as indot NES the

35:35

fire marshal water those five departments tend to be involved in any

35:40

development scenario and we need to be looking at ways Where We Are fundamentally accelerating projects like

35:47

Envision projects under mdha any Barnes funded project in the city any project

35:53

that's qualified for a mixed income payment in lieu of taxes which is another great tool we just implemented

36:00

Metro should be trying to catalyze not red tapeify the delivery of affordable

36:06

housing it's a big issue right now well you know I look at what's happened with codes and you know they've had it hard

36:12

up there they need more people and so you know and I know and we'll get into the whole building of Nashville in a

36:19

little bit but I think we should at least agree that it shouldn't be a

36:25

hassle to get things done because we don't have enough people so what would you do to support you know fixing that

36:32

so the good news is though I almost had a heart attack when Bill Herbert the outgoing director of codes and Emily

36:38

lamb his deputy director did something I've never seen happen in Metro they walked out the door at the same time I

36:44

know now I don't blame them because I've known bill for years and he felt just absolutely strapped to your point that

36:50

there were some significant Personnel issues but before he left he left on our

36:56

desks a great report that he had worked on that talked about Personnel needs and

37:01

again I will give mayor Cooper some credit over the past two fiscal years including in this fy24 budget which just

37:08

started on July 1 in which the mayor will inherit in October and work on through the rest of the fiscal year on

37:14

June 30th these two fiscal years have enough positions for planning codes in

37:21

indot in particular to increase their permitting process the inspection process and the planning capacity

37:27

process as long as we are able to keep up with the kind of War for talent that's out

37:33

there and we keep Metro pay scales competitive with the market and that's cost of living that's everything else

37:39

we've got the capacity to relieve some of those Personnel pressures this is actually a very good thing and it credit

37:46

to Bill Herbert and Emily for working on that so intensively and credit to Mayor Cooper and my Council Partners on uh

37:54

agreeing that that was a priority yeah I hear I hear it a lot and I know it's it's painful and you think about the

38:00

morale too yeah you know a lot of people don't consider you know if you look at what's going on in a city or a country

38:06

or state yeah you know you don't consider the morale of the workers and you know in certain departments the city

38:13

the morale is not the best yes how can you help uh how would you help the the

38:19

morale uh if you're mayor so we've talked a lot about this and I think some of it really does start at the top this

38:26

has been and I'm I'm going to give a lot of Grace here this has been a very very difficult

38:31

period of Nashville's existence to govern through uh 2020 alone as a year

38:37

was a devastating tornado a global pandemic that dropped by the end of the

38:44

following week and started to change even the ability to recover from the tornado in the middle of that series of

38:52

straight-line wind storms and knocked a hundred thousand people out of power after some of them had just gotten it back after the tornado

38:58

a surprising amount of civil unrest from events that had happened across the country uh and again that was all with

39:06

the backdrop of the pandemic and then ending the year with this just absolutely insane and fortunately not

39:15

with loss of life but from a property standpoint devastating bombing on Second Avenue that was all one single year of

39:21

our city then this year even before the term is out we have the tragic and just

39:27

awful like traumatic shooting at covenant and so

39:32

I do think that I'll say it this way as we have had our conversation with the

39:38

city over the past year taking all of that into account there's a surprising

39:43

amount of Readiness to be hopeful again I think people know that we can do

39:50

better we've seen ourselves do better at managing the city and I think

39:55

um against the backdrop of all that chaos this has been a tough Administration to keep intact and so

40:03

you've seen more turnover than usual out of the mayor's office but I think we've got an off opportunity Now to create a

40:10

stable four-year team that is really there I will say I'm very proud of the team that we've built to get this

40:17

campaign working so effectively and I think what I've experienced is

40:24

when people come interact with our team on this campaign we've had more than 200

40:29

volunteers come join us over the past few weeks logging more than a thousand hours of volunteer time and their

40:36

experiences they're doing something in many cases that they've never done which is talk directly to other nashvillians

40:43

about their concerns and ideas and they're working hard but they're

40:48

telling us they're having fun and they keep coming back for more I think the same can be true within Metro if we just

40:55

remind ourselves of the spirit of service and being civil servants and we

41:00

Elevate not just First Responders but also teachers and we Elevate the people

41:05

that are really in Frontline customer service rules that's one of the things I want out of the next few years is for

41:13

Metro to be one of the top tier customer service organizations in the city and I

41:19

think if we're delivering on that and people are having positive interactions with the city whether it's you know

41:26

getting a pothole filled or a street light fixed or a sidewalk repaired or going through the process of getting

41:33

minor construction like if they're adding a deck to their home or you know building a new home or building a you

41:39

know an apartment for Grandma you know whatever it might be if that's a positive experience the

41:45

morale lifts on both sides it lifts on the Metro employee side and it lifts on

41:50

the resident side and I think both of those things are really important goals because if nothing else by the end of

41:57

four years I want nashvillians to be agreeing that we are back on the right track because

42:03

for five years we have felt like we're on the wrong track yeah I know Nashville has it's been through really a

42:09

tremendous amount you know you think about you know the things that you just said um you know we had the tornado then a

42:15

week later covid uh you know and then the the crazy one it was like the icing

42:20

on the cake per se that the bombing it was like constant like yeah it was tough and so

42:26

um it was kind of like a a rattling you know situation it really was and I will say most of those events including a lot

42:34

of the elements of civil unrest had their epicenter in District 19 which I represent and it's not something I

42:42

expected but I will say it has turned out uh to be a

42:48

useful portfolio of skills to have now been through crisis response a number of

42:54

times and I think that's not something that a lot of people have as much direct exposure with I've had to deal with

Freddie's unexpected skills in crisis response

43:01

displacement of hundreds of my constituents Mass displacement in many cases where entire buildings full of

43:07

people got leveled I mean that's the lesser-known story of the bombing was hundreds of people lost their homes into

43:14

17 degree weather on Christmas Day dealing with that and working with the American Red Cross as a key partner you

43:22

know working now that we have a housing division one of the things I want to think about is how we better respond to

43:29

those kinds of things to displacement I want to use the powers of the mayor's office to coordinate around moments like

43:35

that as effectively as possible what's going on with Second Avenue right uh I guess you said you're a bike rider I

43:41

didn't know that I I had three electric bikes downstairs so my mom's gonna go go with me yeah but um I drive by

43:46

Secondhand a ride by by rather Second Avenue all the time and it's we're

Second Avenue development

43:52

coming up on three years it doesn't seem to me like anything's been done where are we at with that so the hardest part

43:58

about this from working through the Second Avenue recovery process a couple good things um and I again I'll I'll shout out the

44:05

mayor on his the both the seriousness and dedication of his response the recovery effort you may have seen one

44:13

really good thing is the the bombing itself occurred closest

44:18

to the at T facility there they have now completely renovated that and they actually have the largest piece of Phil

44:25

Ponder art that we just installed on the side of that building and so they have

44:31

kind of completed their piece in this phase and they've done the internal and exterior work and honestly that piece of

44:39

Second Avenue looks better than it probably ever did in my lifetime before that because it was otherwise a boring

44:45

faceless wall and now it's got a legendary nashvillians original art uh

44:51

kind of put up on it if you are south of Commerce Street everything that sustained damage from Mike's ice cream

44:57

to the Wild Horse Saloon they are back open for business the hardest part is that couple of blocks from Commerce up

45:05

to Union and I will tell you one of the hardest parts has been working with the

45:10

insurance companies I have spoken to Property Owners up and down that stretch of Second Avenue and the insurance

45:16

companies are being unusually terrible for people who have just lost not just

45:21

their homes but in many cases their livelihoods um the lack there's no lack of

45:27

commitment on the part of Metro first the mayor tapped Ron gobble to be a project manager who did a fantastic job

45:33

kind of coordinating property ownership now we've moved on to mdha actually

45:40

coordinating with planning to do a lot of the follow-up work a wonderful woman Michelle scopel is working on that

45:46

they've coordinated a whole bunch of things where we hope to improve just little things like

45:52

Solid Waste Management for a tough part of the city that doesn't always have you

45:58

know alleys and has back of house has been on First Avenue for a long time I think the mayor had the right vision of

46:04

trying to connect up if we do this right in a few years you will be able to walk

46:10

from representative John Lewis way formerly known as Fifth Avenue of the Arts through the uh completely restored

46:18

arcade through a network of interesting alleys like Bankers alley all the way down to Butler's run and get down to the

46:24

river and it's going to be this really interesting Urban experience with a

46:30

restored Second Avenue but there is the unfortunate process of working through

46:36

the insurance so it's just the insurance that's holding it up again I'm guessing that you have individuals and insurance

46:43

for each of the residences and businesses were condoed out right so if you had the

46:49

quarters there were multiple individual property owners in a building like that they are all waiting on settlements

46:55

right now and we have to still get the coordinated response rate so that NES is

47:00

a good partner so that between them Metro codes and Metro historic are good

47:05

partners but this is where Michelle Scott scopel's efforts have paid off the

47:11

streetscape designs have been finalized Nashville Department of Transportation is doing really good work there I think by the

47:19

end of this year you'll see even further progress beyond what we've seen with Phil Ponder's art on the at T building I

47:26

think we're going to see improved streetscapes up and down at my you know you'll know when all the fencing comes

47:33

down and Second Avenue itself is fully open to both foot and vehicular traffic

47:38

that's going to be one of the biggest signs that yes we're bouncing back all the way yeah it just it's telling to me

47:44

and I say it's great that at T is up but it's telling that you have big Corporation

47:50

has their stuff together and the small businesses and the people that really

47:56

are affected the most ATT can go into offices anywhere it's you know but like you know and I know you say it's

48:01

insurance companies there's got to be something that the city can do to like to hold the insurance companies

48:07

accountable if they're holding it up there's surprisingly little and I say this from having talked to both the

48:13

Metro Council legal office metro legal as an entity I have worked with private

48:18

sector attorneys on some of these conversations I have personally intervened I've done site visits with

48:24

the insurance companies um it is challenging and it's also it's not

48:32

the kind of thing where Metro can easily on behalf of all these Property Owners kind of um go put its own leverage on the line

48:38

we looked at property tax relief but we you know we've started to do an expedited permit process I mean we've

48:45

we've tried to take every Common Sense approach to accelerate uh this but the reason that that ATT piece was easier

48:51

was they were the sole owner of a large building and they had deep enough Pockets that they didn't have to wait

48:58

for a settlement to come here smaller individual Property Owners can't just go

49:03

get over leveraged to rebuild all of that stuff and Metro can't

49:09

on their behalf go create all the financing streams for the Redevelopment but we can be a partner in it sure we've

49:16

just got to wait for and and you'll see it on a piecemeal basis also some property owners are more eager to move

49:23

than others and so that's why you've seen a little bit of a different pace like some buildings are back online and open and others may take a little longer

49:30

yeah I see that big giant you know I know it's the hardest thing yeah it's hard to see every time you know and

49:36

I hear what you're saying that you know there's not a whole lot the government can do that does that does make sense I

49:43

just hope that when the insurance companies say go yeah the city steps up and says we're not going to hold you up

49:50

one minute as a council member through the end of this term as a mayor uh I hope I get the opportunity to do this we

49:56

are going to make sure we take every step possible we can in partnership with those Property Owners good

50:03

um let's go to the stadium you were the only uh you're the only candidate that opposed um the stadium being built the new

50:10

stadium being built Jim Gingrich and it's not that I oppose the stadium being built it's that I posed the deal the term deal okay so you thought that you

50:17

understood uh that we had to do something with the old stadium no matter what it was going to cost a certain

50:23

amount of money right okay so what what kind of deal would you have made if you were mayor

50:28

so I don't know everything that happened I we may never know the entire story but here's what I can tell you about what I

50:34

experienced personally just over 18 months ago I sat down with

50:39

the team and people working with them to review a proposal for a package of 600

50:44

million dollars in upgrades to the existing Stadium uh just a few weeks later

50:51

suddenly it was a 2.2 billion dollar fully enclosed stadium that seemed to have had quite a bit of work already

50:57

done with the state of Tennessee to offer part of that Finance what did it start out I'm sorry 600 million dollars

51:02

for upgrades to the existing Stadium I see split down the middle it was a 50 50

51:07

deal okay that's from a public investment standpoint not even as significant as the convention center

51:13

sure I thought great we can start this conversation easily because that will complete the lease that'll take us out

51:20

through 2039 everybody seems to be very satisfied with this just a few weeks

51:25

later uh before I might have even been before spring had arrived we had a 2.2

51:32

billion dollar initial cost of construction proposal that already if you just look at the initial cost of

51:37

construction would have amounted to the largest public subsidy for an NFL stadium in the history of the NFL

51:42

Meanwhile we're looking around the country at multiple uh privately funded

51:48

or majority privately funded stadiums we weren't even hitting the 50 Mark between the state and local contributions we

51:56

were as taxpayers putting up the majority of the capital for that initial cost of construction but it got worse

52:01

from there once we saw the total expected Revenue that came through the

52:07

East Bank Stadium committee process it amounted to three and a half billion

52:14

dollars of Revenue accumulated over the 30-year terms of the New Deal plus a

52:20

Capital Improvements budget item for 500 million dollars in infrastructure which we will be on the hook for as a city so

52:26

no matter who takes office uh in October uh the Titans are expecting to play in a

52:31

new stadium by 2027 so the entire term the future mayor is going to have to be

52:37

working on infrastructure for the East Bank I am not opposed to that but it is

52:44

absolutely not the case that that took pressure off of the general fund to get us out from under the terms of a bad

52:49

deal it not only put a three and a half billion dollar 30-year term uh which was

52:55

twice as big as the 1.8 billion dollars they asserted was going to be the actual cost of upgrading we never got an answer

53:01

that question we still don't know what our full legal liability was under the lease and you still you still don't know

53:08

that is correct how is that well we asked that question in fact we put money in the budget last year to say please

53:14

answer this question and the mayor's office did a different thing they said what would it cost to do the things that

53:20

you would like to do to the new stadium that is very different than understanding legal liability and what

53:26

is well so so when you're going through this process um and you get these answers which are

53:31

you know their BS basically how you know what's the reason for that

53:36

they're just trying to push it through without you know the public knowing what's going on I don't I can't answer that question I

53:43

can tell you the questions I asked and I can tell you the answers I got back but I don't I can't tell you what the

53:50

motivation or their reasons were I mean I will be the first to acknowledge that

53:55

the terms of the old lease were not good for the city um it's unclear who was

54:03

sort of liable for initiating the repairs and submitting invoices right like should Metro have pushed harder to

54:10

do better maintenance because one of the key questions I asked too was when we had Consultants there helping us

54:17

answer the question of what would you like in an upgraded Stadium which again is a very different question from what

54:22

is our liability under the terms of the existing lease I said how long should a football stadium last and they said 30

54:29

years and I said so we're getting about two-thirds the life out of our Stadium now I don't know why that happened right

54:38

there's probably a little bit of shared responsibility between the team and Metro and the Metro Sports Authority

54:45

um but it was a it was a more it was a more complicated conversation I think than just uh should we build a new

54:51

stadium yeah well I want to hear answers like that I'm not saying it's right or wrong what they did I don't know the

54:57

details but when I feel like we should get all the information in a clear way so the city can make a decision uh with

55:05

being as informed as possible I'll say by the time it was all said and done I felt like I had enough information to

55:11

conclude that this was not an appropriately good deal for the taxpayers of Metro to feel comfortable

55:17

voting yes for it and I'll give you the clearest reason why my colleague Brandon

55:22

Taylor put an amendment on the deal that effectively would have been like a rent on tickets that the team could have

55:29

chosen to pass on to ticket buyers that made the deal substantially more like what the Predators did okay the

55:36

Predators have no taxpayer obligation in that facility for its current or future

55:42

status they have an amazing set of potential upgrades planned for the future of Bridgestone Arena and their

55:49

campus and it will be entirely paid for by user fees on people using the

55:54

facility they have they're one of the top ticketed venues in the world so it made a lot of sense as they looked at

56:00

their forecast to do it that way I think when this new Titan Stadium is fully enclosed you're going to see far more

56:07

capacity for ticket sales because it is enclosed and so you'll see a variety of different types of events there won't be

56:13

as many concerns about weather there may be some advantages to that I've heard mixed reviews from sports fans I mean I

56:19

know plenty of football fans who have like an open air Stadium I have been to both and don't have

56:26

strong feelings about it from a Fan Experience I've had fun in big Arenas I've had fun in open air stadiums so I I

56:33

can see either way and I think the Nashville SC experience is a great Fan Experience and that's an open-air

56:39

Stadium um at geodis Park and you know by the time we got to the end of it though

56:45

councilmember Taylor's Amendment showed that we had the capacity to negotiate more because while that amendment was

56:51

not accepted as it was a kind of response Amendment

56:56

demonstrated that we could get a return on our massive public investment and so we did get a Minutemen on there that

57:02

effectively will return four million dollars a year back directly into Metro's coffers while it's not

57:09

everything we looked at it showed clearly that there was more negotiation that could have been done and arguably should have been done but I guess the

57:16

deal is done now the deal is done you can't go back and add a tax or you can't to ticket sales or anything like that

57:21

I'll say it this way I I look at deals as you know it to me it

57:30

is a case of it is clear that a majority of my colleagues it is clear that the mayor's office is clear that the team uh

57:36

and and certainly some people in the city were comfortable with this I don't intend to try to unwind the deal what I

57:44

intend to do now is take the other good work that was done along the way in the East Bank Vision plan yeah and really

57:50

try to take the best elements of that from both an ambitious affordable housing targets perspective and also a

57:57

really elegant infrastructure perspective and try to make those successful how do you keep it from ending up like

58:04

Envision Casey to where we actually get you know East Bank done so in this case

58:11

so I'll say it this way mdha unlike Metro while they do you know collect

58:18

rent as a as a landlord in some ways their tenant population it's not like

58:24

they they're not a for-profit entity right they're not um like a large multi-family for-profit

58:31

apartment complex their funding streams are complicated and systematically for

58:37

decades the federal government has reduced funding flows into public housing

58:43

Metro as a government has significant operating and capital capacity that we

58:48

get by having a large property tax base and sales taxes and uh you know activity

58:54

taxes and those kinds of things we have just become the master developer for

58:59

hundreds of acres in the stadium footprint as the master developer it is going to be imperative and one of the

59:06

things I expect to have in our Administration is a director of infrastructure and capital projects

59:11

because we're going to have to kind of keep Pace as the the Titans will be setting pace

59:16

for their portion of the footprint to get a new stadium constructed by 2027. Metro is going to have to keep Pace with

59:23

the surrounding infrastructure and sequencing of the parcels through the master developer process to get that

59:30

right and we'll have to see what external Market forces are cost of construction all of those things but my

59:38

hope is as the person and that I you know hope I'm in a position to spearhead

59:44

that Master developer process we should be setting our own pace and setting a standard for we don't want

59:50

this to be red tape we don't want the Titans to be looking at us and saying where are you guys we absolutely want to

59:56

keep Pace with what they're doing to get the stadium open by 2027. yeah but Matt Wilshire was talking about making an

1:00:01

Arts District down there and um you know and a TPAC mentioning is having some problems is that kind of part of your

1:00:08

vision as well or what what kind of area would it be they have affordable housing of course but what type of businesses

1:00:13

would be there I would love to see biotech yeah Nashville is poised to be a

1:00:19

biotech City we have the largest hospital groups in the United States and our Biotech Industry isn't that strong

1:00:25

but there's nothing that's really keeping us from from doing that so I'll say it this way one of the things that I

1:00:30

thought was most compelling in the East Bank Vision plan was this idea of a cluster of new neighborhoods

1:00:36

at its heart and I know early in the going the Titans kind of gave voice to a

1:00:42

Wrigleyville atmosphere I think having a series of urban neighborhoods anchored

1:00:48

by very connective infrastructure that creates better Pathways both into East

1:00:54

Nashville and connecting to downtown is ideal I do think there needs to be in

1:00:59

the state of Tennessee is already committed substantial funding for a new home for TPAC I would love to find them

1:01:06

a home on the East Bank I mentioned earlier I think that's an appropriate home for a an east of the River

1:01:12

Community Transit Center because there is so much public land we know the Titans are interested in partnering with

1:01:18

the city on some park space that could accommodate tailgating which I think is important we're gonna have to think

1:01:23

about infrastructure scenarios that include multimodal capacity there's a Greenways

1:01:29

Network that's in there I am I guess I would say it this way I want

1:01:34

um I want to see something that celebrates the riverfront one of my favorite cities in Tennessee is

1:01:41

Chattanooga they've done such a good job of creating an urban fabric that is

1:01:46

adjacent to their Riverfront it's very accessible it's it just feels like a place that you

1:01:54

want to walk around and spend time that's what I want to have on the East Bank more than anything what I want it

1:01:59

to be is not a junior version of the Entertainment District just across the river I don't want a Broadway two I want

1:02:06

something that is more conducive to living there if we get creative

1:02:12

opportunities for industry I think that would be pretty cool um you know I I have seen so many

1:02:18

interesting maker spaces across the city kind of modern industrial I think there

1:02:23

are some things that you could actually connect to the old Riverfront era in

1:02:29

that regard I mean I wouldn't say I'm opposed to the idea of Biotech being there but I don't necessarily want to

1:02:35

prejudge what would sure be there and I'd be happy to keep talking about that idea yeah I just uh I'd look at

1:02:41

Nashville I think it has more potential for biotech yeah I mean than than pretty much any place it's yeah it's true given

1:02:48

what we have it is it's wild that it's not a hub a major you know colleges and

1:02:53

universities that have are producing great research and looking for translation opportunities yes yeah translational medicine that's actually

1:03:00

one of my main passions and uh yeah there's a lot of a lot of opportunity with that your wife

1:03:05

um uh went to Meharry yeah what was that experience like for her and um you know talk a little bit about your perspective

1:03:12

of her experience with that yeah your experience with that as well and opportunities to make General Hospital

1:03:18

better yeah so that was one thing that was interesting right mahari's teaching hospital was Nashville General this is

1:03:25

something that is very much going to be a nearer term problem for the next administration because the lease with

1:03:32

maheri also ends in 2027 so we've got a few clocks that are ticking for the next

1:03:37

mayor one of them is the Titan Stadium opening in 2027 one of them is the lease at the mahiri facility the general

1:03:44

occupies as a hospital also ending in 2027. so we're going to have to figure out a new solution for Nashville's

1:03:51

Public Safety Net Hospital there are a couple ideas the hospital Authority itself is looking at land and Metro

1:03:57

Center it is currently owned by Metro Parks I don't know how that conversation is going to go I did sort of raise the

1:04:04

question in the public conversation about an acquisition of Hickory Hollow Mall which I did not support

1:04:10

to say why did we kind of cherry pick vumc as opposed to

1:04:16

looking at we know we've got a conversation unfolding about Nashville General I think we have some

1:04:22

opportunities there but I again I want to look at the site selection process I

1:04:27

want to look at the overall Hospital accommodation like patient population

1:04:33

and Clinic plans I want to see what Mahari what they have as capacity is a Medical College Whitney's experience

1:04:40

there was very positive she looked into a really amazing class she was class of 2011. they had a very cohesive Bond as a

1:04:48

class one thing that was apparent to me though and is we kind of moved into the community around that time was that

1:04:55

unlike a lot of our other colleges and universities the HBCU Corridor along

1:05:00

Jefferson Street does not have kind of those anchor third places like there's

1:05:06

not a a Hillsborough Village or the little area off of Granny White where the Original Pizza Perfect used to be in

1:05:12

Copper Kettle and and those kinds of places coffee shops years ago there was

1:05:18

a kijiji's coffee on Jefferson Street and there's yayas over there now but

1:05:23

it's not it's not the same kind of vibrant place where students and faculty spend a lot of time in fact when he had

1:05:30

a lot of peers that would go across town to actually study in the Vanderbilt

1:05:36

footprint on weekends because there was kind of a lack of nightlife along

1:05:41

Jefferson Street and close to campus a lot of people would go to Atlanta or St Louis and so it was a really instructive

1:05:48

look at the kind of cultural ecosystem around our hbcus but her overall

1:05:55

experience was very positive in some ways I think that the exposure she got

1:06:00

into clinics wound up changing her life because one of her mentors on the Pediatric side encouraged her to go do

1:06:07

an away rotation at Vanderbilt to look at pediatric neurology and that became her specialty and so now she's

1:06:13

practicing at Vanderbilt Children's Hospital in the pediatric neurology division oh that's awesome yeah

1:06:18

um yeah it's got so much potential and I wonder you know there's these old

1:06:24

hospital models and to me that's an old hospital model but she had the historic black medical school right right there

1:06:31

and I think you can make it even more appealing by you know putting translational science

1:06:39

in there like why for instance uh why not put a genomic slap I mean it's not

1:06:45

that expensive we're talking about spending hundreds of millions of dollars on things you could put an amazing genomics lab in there for 10 million

1:06:50

dollars and serve the underprivileged because they don't have access to this stuff and we know next Generation

1:06:55

sequencing is the future well it's here right now and we can make discoveries we

1:07:01

can raise their level of health care we can match specific drugs with their genetics you know have you thought about

1:07:08

doing something like that or I haven't thought about necessarily that

1:07:14

as a public investment strategy or even the way it Partners but I'm I think to your

1:07:21

point looking at the future of Biotech and especially the fact that we've got some really uh Innovative manufacturing

1:07:28

Concepts happening here that that live right at the space of technology and Healthcare I think there is an

1:07:34

opportunity there um I will say I think one of the biggest decisions that needs to get made is if

1:07:41

we look at models of healthcare delivery that are working in other major cities very often the city does have a general

1:07:49

hospital concept but it's not specifically attached to

1:07:54

any of the affiliate teaching hospitals and so I'm wondering if I mean we kind

1:08:00

of need to answer this question of should whatever the future iteration be of a general hospital model here take

1:08:08

place on mahari's campus or should it be at a more neutral location and maheri continues to use it as a teaching

1:08:14

facility what does that access look like and I will say I think North Nashville

1:08:20

has a strong preference for maintaining Geographic access to that hospital

1:08:26

in whatever form it might continue to exist and so I think there's a couple

1:08:31

questions about that and that's why I think the site selection process is going to be as interesting now I will

1:08:36

say maheri is not just a Medical College it has graduate science programs fisks is

1:08:42

very eager to do more with technology they'd love to add a computer science

1:08:48

curriculum TSU has a very robust graduate program in The Sciences so I

1:08:54

think across all of the hbcus there really is an opportunity for more translational capacity and it could very

1:09:01

well live on the site of a former General if that moves or be a companion

1:09:06

piece to it if we we Factor it in some way but I don't think that conversation

1:09:12

is far enough along yet to know for sure yeah we have a great hsbcu uh Community

1:09:18

here in Nashville and I don't think a lot of yeah I don't think a lot of

1:09:24

people even realize that well what would you do for that Community uh to support it even more so we've already done some

1:09:30

important things and I think this is something that uh mayor Cooper and Fisk University and I uh worked pretty well

1:09:36

together on which was using some of our American Rescue plan act dollars to create an incubation Center at Fisk and

1:09:42

so there will be a new um you know kind of Entrepreneurship focused Community Hub on Fisk campus

1:09:49

that has some Public Funding I think that's a big deal one of the things I'm proudest of as I close out my two terms

1:09:56

on the Metro Council here is another use of one-time Federal money to do a one-time startup cost type of thing

1:10:02

which is the best thing you can do it's it's hard to start what are really supposed to be

1:10:08

sustained programs with one-time Federal money we've got a few of those out there lingering that I'm I'm worried about as

1:10:14

risk but I wanted to look at a startup cost scenario so we used a few hundred

1:10:19

thousand dollars of American Rescue Planet money to get our all four of our hbcus Fisk Mahari TSU and American

1:10:27

Baptist College uh started up on Wego ride this allows faculty staff and

1:10:32

students at all four of those colleges and universities to access Transit where their student ID basically is their fare

1:10:39

in the institution's pay an Institutional rate the startup costs tend to be the hardest part and then once you've got it going uh the

1:10:46

institutions can Factor it into their budget but because the endowments tend to be smaller at hbcus they've lagged

1:10:52

years behind their peers because Vanderbilt Belmont Lipscomb and even Trevecca have all been participants in

1:10:57

we go ride for a long time this actually builds a stable Transit ridership base

1:11:03

across that major HBCU Corridor along Jefferson Street all

1:11:08

the way from fisk's campus to tsu's but it also incorporates American Baptist which is actually right up around the

1:11:15

corner from the new Community Transit Center in North Nashville when when you stabilize that base of ridership for

1:11:21

people who want to ride but you know our students and don't have a ton of disposable income and staff and faculty

1:11:28

who would love an opportunity to cut costs this should pay off for years of

1:11:34

both increased Transit ridership but also increased Equity across our hbcus

1:11:39

and I think it's possible to look for more opportunities like that where we try to

1:11:45

think about strategic needs that the the historic challenges that that collection

1:11:51

of universities has faced and see if Metro can be an appropriate partner to

1:11:56

them so um let's go on to education public education obviously a big issue I went

1:12:03

to public school in Nashville you know Overton High School your mom was a teacher

1:12:08

um and yeah I'm proud of my education I didn't go to college I got in trouble

1:12:14

when I was 20 years old was facing I got eight years probation wow started my

1:12:20

businesses afterwards looked back to my coaches and teachers and a lot of the lessons that they taught me you know and

Freddie's personal struggles and overcoming adversity

1:12:26

was over you know overcome a lot of adversity and I feel like it was you

1:12:33

know the education that I got in Nashville really the relationships of people in the community that would lift

1:12:38

me up maybe at my lowest yeah um I think we're losing that now

1:12:44

um as far as quality of Education in the city the literacy rate's not great

1:12:50

um I know next year they're going to be doing a rating system we're going to have an F rating system for Nashville Public Schools from my understanding uh

Quality of education in Nashville

1:12:58

it's a big problem and I what what are you going to do to make it uh an

1:13:04

education system yes we pay the teachers the most but you know that's obviously not enough to get the education these

1:13:12

children deserve so I think um I'll say a few things whatever we do

1:13:17

from a core education policy perspective is going to have to be done in partnership with metro schools I mean

1:13:23

they they operate as a nearby uh but obviously very adjacent and

1:13:28

collaborative entity to Metro and we fund them um we're also going to have to contend

1:13:34

with a lot of State intervention and education policy uh and so we're gonna

1:13:39

have to carve out that pathway where we're looking to triangulate the mayor's office with State interest and

1:13:46

educational policy and outcomes and whatever the school district is looking at from everything from you know Talent

1:13:53

Recruitment and pedagogical scenarios that's all going to have to be done collaboratively I will say I think the

1:13:59

the strongest tools the mayor's office can offer to overall successes or

1:14:04

looking at the big picture and so I'll tell you a couple of stories that are things I want to do and then we can look at a couple of the things that I think

1:14:10

are also important from an overall standpoint so so we know that covid was

1:14:16

challenging and we lost a lot of families from the schools that our daughters attended right both of our girls have gone to Aitkin Elementary

1:14:21

which is where I went k-6 it's currently a K-5 School our older daughter is on to

1:14:27

West End Middle School overall they have had fantastic experiences in metro

1:14:32

schools now the way I knew they were likely to have fantastic experiences in

1:14:37

metro schools was that when mayor Dean was in office his administration

1:14:43

partnered with metro schools to do this thing called a First Choice Festival this put every

1:14:50

School in the district generally speaking I mean there may have been a handful that chose not to participate

1:14:56

but it did something really great it kind of broke open the idea that any

1:15:02

given school should assume that on the first day of school students will walk through its doors and instead said what

1:15:08

are you going to do to attract families to come to your school because this is a

1:15:14

really important way to put your best foot forward so that Festival was great because I walked in and I discovered 20

1:15:21

schools that I would have been proud to send our daughter to I went back a

1:15:27

second year and I narrowed my list down to six schools that I would have been not just proud but excited to send her

1:15:33

to and those were schools we submitted into the Open Enrollment process and we have found Pathways for our daughters

1:15:39

that not only are very convenient to our lives because their schools are very close to the

1:15:45

Vanderbilt footprint which is where Whitney works and both of them had been through the Vanderbilt pre-k program and

1:15:52

my parents live just around the corner in Richland West End and our older daughter was able to walk home from

1:15:58

school on a nice Friday afternoon for the last couple years to just go visit her grandparents these are all great

1:16:03

things and we discovered that all by going and talking to school leaders faculty looking at programs we're in an

1:16:11

international Baccalaureate program which is great International Baccalaureate is you know combined World

1:16:17

language and culture but also social and emotional learning there's Montessori programs in metro schools there's

1:16:23

paideia programs and metro schools there's a Nashville School of the Arts there are multiple Pathways into Magna

1:16:30

and arts programs it's great to celebrate all of the options there and I think one of the things that the mayor

1:16:35

needs most to do is invite people back in to celebrate the Excellence that does

1:16:40

exist in metro schools there are not only lots of great teachers but also lots of great educational Pathways and

1:16:47

it's really important to celebrate those because one of the things that's been hardest for us as a Metro Government is

1:16:53

chronic enrollment declines even as our school age population has increased thanks in part to covet and the response

1:17:00

to that but also looking at some of the I think overall perceptions about quality have meant that

1:17:07

we've lost a lot of funding and so one of the best ways to recover is to try to

1:17:13

get people to come back in and experience metro schools I would love for People's First Choice generally

1:17:18

speaking to be metro schools if it's at all reasonable from a household Logistics and educational quality

1:17:25

standpoint now we also discovered in getting naked that we weren't going to

1:17:31

have access to aftercare because there is not a guaranteed after care spot for all students who enroll well we found

1:17:37

out the hard way that parents who lived in the neighborhood closest to the school had filled up all the Aftercare

1:17:43

years ago and got on weightless basically when their kids were born it took us three years to get off the

1:17:49

waitlist Well in that three-year period I was fighting and wound up basically losing a job over having to leave the

Freddie's work in the office

1:17:56

office at 3 pm uh two to three days a week but I didn't want to give up on the fight

1:18:02

and so I stayed and fought and we got a second on-site Aftercare program established at Aiken This was a great

1:18:08

way to pay it forward and now dozens more families per year get to take advantage of two different Aftercare

1:18:14

programs at that school the hard part was watching a couple years go by now both programs have wait lists

1:18:21

so there are still Working Families who cannot choose metro

1:18:26

schools and we've talked to several of them because they don't know what they're going to do with their kids after school particularly the elementary

1:18:33

years I do think it's critically important to lower barriers for Working

1:18:38

Families to even be able to choose metro schools in the first place another example is we have the earliest High

1:18:43

School start times in the country this is not a good thing 7 A.M is when

1:18:48

schools like Overton ring the bell 6 55 technically and

School start times and mental health

1:18:54

it's bad for mental health it's bad for student performance it's bad for family

1:18:59

environments to try to get kids up and running that early and figure out again the after school scenario so

1:19:07

that's by all accounts a logistics issue that we can solve yeah Metro can you

1:19:12

move the time up yeah that's what I want to do what time what do you think would be a good time I think 8 A.M is the

1:19:17

earliest we should ever expect high schools to start and some of them do the the magnets frequently do start later

1:19:24

than the uh the general high schools do the comprehensive high schools and so I think looking at a no later than 8 AM

1:19:31

start time would be really really helpful as I move in the right direction Middle School start at 9am right now

1:19:36

yeah that does uh that does make sense I don't know I'm remembering back to my Overton days and I remember going to

1:19:42

school 7am you mentioned the effects covet had on

1:19:47

everything and you know for a while people would say trust science trust science and then

1:19:53

you know I was like this is no longer science this is political science uh and I felt like the school board held

1:20:00

uh the political science over the kids heads I don't know your view on that if you agree would you have done something

1:20:07

about it if you don't tell me why you don't so this was tough because I actually got

1:20:14

into some pretty intense arguments with um family friends who were in schools

1:20:20

with us and I mean I'll say we tend to be a pretty evidence-based household from a uh a health and Health Sciences

1:20:27

standpoint just because there's a physician in the house um I remember distinctly when Whitney went

1:20:34

to her first Grand rounds about coven and I was like oh my gosh we are going to have to take this a lot more

1:20:39

seriously than I think a lot of people are expecting to and I kind of divide my

1:20:45

Outlook into this the whole response to covet into

1:20:50

um pre-availability of vaccines and after the availability of vaccines and I will say for me that first summer was

1:20:58

specifically very scary because I had multiple friends who narrowly avoided

1:21:04

going on ventilators despite having been perfectly healthy before they contracted covid I had a friend who recounted being

1:21:11

in a bed uh in the Vanderbilt parking garage in their overflow Healthcare

1:21:17

scenario on oxygen looking to his left and right and not sure he was going to

1:21:22

live and that's pretty terrifying that we could have lived through that and I I

1:21:28

think it is interesting because I know there has been a lot of intense discussion about hey what's the

1:21:35

evidence say about this I I still think one of the hardest parts about covet is that the individual personal health

1:21:41

response to it has been so chaotic I mean even this week I've talked to a friend whose father is two friends whose

1:21:50

parents are both experiencing the after effects and the form of long coveted in

1:21:55

ways that is still it's created chronic health conditions and

1:22:01

you know I I think once we got through the period where

1:22:06

Health Providers and kind of Frontline people in a variety of professions were vaccinated and

1:22:12

I will say one thing I wish we had done earlier is prioritize the availability

1:22:18

vaccines to teachers I also think the state got it wrong when they saw

1:22:23

um that Supply was way over demand in outlying counties and demand was

1:22:29

incredibly high in urban areas they should have shifted the distribution of availability vaccines to allow

1:22:35

nashvillians to get vaccinated sooner I found vaccine availability for my parents outside of County I found

1:22:41

vaccine availability for my daughter's teacher outside of County this is a little bit absurd when you've got a lot

1:22:47

of people who do want to go back in I will say we were Guided by the timing of these things and I will

1:22:53

say our daughter struggled with distance learning her teacher did not want to be doing distance learning as soon as it

1:23:00

was clear that Metro could have done a hybrid model in the second semester I

1:23:05

think we should have just started the semester that way as soon as availability of vaccines was covered for

1:23:11

any Metroid Schools teacher who wanted one yeah I know like with uh with kids Dr Hildreth I actually watched the FDA

1:23:18

panel which she was on for the kids I watched it twice at times two it's like seven hours yeah and I appreciated what

1:23:24

he said though I was frustrated throughout the whole thing yeah because I saw pretty early uh that it was

1:23:29

political science and you know there are there are I don't believe science is consensus there's an argument that scientists can sense this now and it's

1:23:36

an interesting uh interesting debate yeah but you know Dr Hilder said in I'm

1:23:42

paraphrasing here but he said you know I'm going to vote for this but I don't think you know we're considering or we

1:23:49

should consider rather that about 40 to 50 percent of the kids have already had covet so they had natural immunity and

1:23:56

you know there were some of us that were saying that non-stop like well we should consider natural immunity and these

1:24:01

types of things that's just one example of where the where it was political science you couldn't say those things

1:24:07

without being called anti-vaxx I mean I got called a right ring Trump supporter

1:24:12

I caught a left-wing idiot I got called all these things just for speaking the truth as I saw it not you know toting

1:24:19

the status quo so I will say I was I took the most heat I think as a

1:24:28

public figure thinking through public policy and health policy as it applied to the general public through a pandemic

1:24:35

for not being um a mandate Enthusiast for masks because

1:24:42

while we knew I mean while Whitney is a health professional could tell you that a fitted 90 n95 mask is a good thing if

1:24:50

you're going into a room where somebody has for instance tuberculosis sure whatever yeah um and for covid II uh you know like

1:25:00

a surgical mask certainly a cloth covering these things are not going to be as as good as a medically fitted n95

1:25:09

mask I started looking very closely at things like ventilation and air quality

1:25:17

studies that's why I was very excited to see a building downtown actually achieve fit well status because if you do some

1:25:24

of these things and I actually had some moderately productive but also

1:25:31

moderately frustrating conversations about the Metro school's plant process about anything simple from opening

1:25:36

Windows or outdoor instruction right but also looking at reducing viral load

1:25:42

systematically because reducing viral load at the building level helps

1:25:48

everybody who enters the billing whether or not they choose to wear a mask and certainly when our daughter was coming

1:25:55

home kind of complaining that her peers didn't seem to be picking up the process

1:26:02

of how to wear a mask appropriate and that's the hardest part yeah anybody who's wearing a mask down here

1:26:07

you've like that's already contaminated right so it's I mean the exposure risk a

1:26:14

mask mandate turns out to be um one of the most difficult things to

1:26:19

enforce and in fact just socially if you are trying to then have an

1:26:25

argument with somebody who refuses to wear a mask now someone's yelling you're in a confrontational standpoint whereas

1:26:32

if you're approaching it from the system of have we brought the likelihood of viral load down from a facility

1:26:38

standpoint we've done a lot more if we've opened Windows used HEPA filters

1:26:43

if we've done if we've maximized how safe the overall air that everyone is

1:26:49

sharing is I do a lot more than a child wearing a mask as you were saying you know if a kid's touching it constantly

1:26:55

if they're wearing it perfectly and they have an n95 sure that's as good as it

1:27:00

gets but they were pushing cloth mass that that was the the most offensive because we knew I mean there was there

1:27:07

was no scientific evidence that cloth Mass work and uh it became you know but

1:27:12

if you said that you got put into camp and and that kind of shows the divisiveness it was so

1:27:18

divisive because I had really good friends who were extremely frustrated with me that I was not calling

1:27:24

aggressively for Mass mandates I got friends who were frustrated at me for uh

1:27:31

listening to the voices of Skeptics because I was paying most attention to

1:27:37

what the evidence highlighted and there were times when it was like yes there were there were some orthodoxies that

1:27:44

persisted that did not have their basis in even science maybe not consensus but

1:27:50

at least looking at it and so I was tracking all of those things I was looking at Mass quality controls on that

1:27:57

I was looking at ventilation I was looking at you know impact on kids I mean it's interesting through all of

1:28:03

that neither of our daughters ever contracted covet in a school environment

1:28:10

yeah I mean what do you think about you know during that whole time there was no

1:28:15

well I shouldn't say no there was very little talk about health overall health

1:28:21

imagine if we would have gone on a public health campaign where we say you

1:28:27

know yes it's dangerous for everybody even if you're healthy you can have bad outcomes but we know through the data

1:28:35

uh likely who's going to die of this 65 and up 80 to 90 percent

1:28:40

um obesity is a big problem my best friend growing up his dad was a teacher at Overton uh he died of covet over

1:28:48

heavily he's overweight um and uh you know so I absolutely you

1:28:53

know acknowledge Him from a personal standpoint how dangerous it was but I thought the approach got so divisive you

1:29:00

couldn't have a conversation about health and you think about if there was a health uh conversation go walk outside

1:29:07

they were telling people you can't go walk outside uh which was pretty wild for a while in the very beginning

1:29:13

um but if there was a health conversation about diet healthy foods guess what in six months if you don't

1:29:19

contract this and you lose 30 pounds you have a a more of a chance of being alive

1:29:25

than even if you get the vaccine and that is actually what you know studies show it was largely obesity and activity

1:29:33

related uh as far as bad outcomes yeah I think

1:29:39

maybe part of the difficulty of it was that we had we had a global pandemic hit the United

1:29:46

States at a time when our politics had become more volatile than any time that I've

1:29:53

experienced in my lifetime right and I granted I grew up after the 1960s I grew up after uh the

1:30:01

peak of kind of the the core of um you know post-segregation civil

1:30:07

rights congregate conversations I grew up after um you know there there were still

1:30:13

obviously politics there's always politics but I think that there was just

1:30:19

a different way that politics embraced the nation um during the Trump presidency and the

1:30:25

the way the the Sorting of the Contemporary Democratic and Republican

1:30:31

parties has played out and unfortunately what you saw was in many cases

1:30:38

a partisan sorting in response to covet but you also saw that to your point

1:30:44

if you weren't aligned with the orthodoxies of that partisan sorting you were going to find yourself out of place

1:30:50

pretty quickly oh yeah um and I don't know what to do about that right

1:30:57

I don't know I I think that in many cases the Cooper Administration

1:31:03

um handled coveted with seriousness and responsibility but I also to your point

1:31:12

I was trying to follow the threads of which parts of this were political

1:31:18

science and which parts of this were applied Public Health policy and you know I think

1:31:26

going forward to your overall point about health

1:31:31

now is when we most need to recover our footing on that front and

1:31:39

we are our sort of post-covered maybe biggest failure as a community has been

1:31:46

our so far inability to successfully grapple with the opioid crisis right and

1:31:51

the impact of that as You could argue it's a companion uh

1:31:57

Public Health scenario but it's certainly an epidemic in its own right here and our Metro Public Health

1:32:03

Department really does need to publicly step into that and as I will say I

1:32:10

watched um mayor Dean do a really good job with preventive Public Health I I remember

1:32:18

very clearly he elevated a member of his staff to be a director of Healthy Living

1:32:23

we want a consequential Federal grant to the tune of seven and a half million dollars called communities putting

1:32:30

prevention to work you may remember he did the walk 100 miles campaign I told

1:32:36

the then director of Health Bill Paul who has gone on to bigger and better things in a national and Global level at

1:32:43

the time that I expected that and this was obviously not knowing that covert was coming but that if we looked down

1:32:48

the road from the things that came out of the cppw era here and mayor Dean's

1:32:54

focus on Fitness and Nutrition right the healthy eating active living combination

1:33:00

that we may see in long-term improvements in public health outcomes in Nashville and I think that's really

1:33:06

important to be mindful of yeah and we we need to get back to that well I mean obesity is it's just such a huge problem

1:33:12

and you know the foods that we eat right now I mean with the glycosates and it's

1:33:18

it's it's like it's a crisis and and we don't even know it I mean with the between the fast food and you know the

1:33:24

cheeseburgers and I mean I go back to covet I hate to say this but eat a cheeseburger get a vaccine I'm like it's

1:33:30

it stands for everything I'm against I can't I can't support that because you're telling people to eat the thing

1:33:37

that is going to kill them too I get I get it you're enticing uh people in a

1:33:43

way but that that was that was the messaging instead of hey you know here's

1:33:48

a uh you hear some fruits and vegetables yeah uh but I digress

1:33:54

um so let's get into downtown because that's I guess where I'm gonna say you're the most controversial uh you

1:34:01

know um there's a few issues I wanted to kind of go over uh with that

1:34:06

um Sound Ordinance downtown yeah um do you support a bill that would uh

1:34:13

limit music outside uh the Nashville the downtown Nashville bars so the reason

1:34:19

this is of interest to me is because Chief Drake specifically approached the

1:34:25

administration to request some assistance as we've watched the number of requests for service in the

1:34:31

entertainment Entertainment District go up uh to the point where we now have a specific Entertainment District

1:34:36

initiative Within Nashville Police Department I am very

1:34:42

um I guess I would say I am very likely to listen seriously to a request from the chief of police for legislative

1:34:49

relief and a regulatory regard now that's not to say that I am likely to

1:34:55

rush something through uh but I know councilmember Syracuse has worked with the administration and I

1:35:02

I want to see what the response from business owners is and I want to see what uh what the specifics of the public

1:35:10

safety-based request for this are and see what we can produce yeah so I mean I

1:35:15

guess uh you know the business response on Broadway is going to be no sort of I

1:35:21

mean early there's been I will say it this way I it got at least workshopped with some people

1:35:28

that didn't reject it out of hand out out of the gate um and now I think it's going to be a

1:35:34

question of who are the stakeholders who are the ones that have responsible versus

1:35:40

irresponsible voices in this what are their incentives what are the drawbacks here

1:35:46

um and can you get I mean my question in almost all of these things that involve a

1:35:52

regulatory component is can you get to a tolerable equilibrium and right now it

1:35:57

still seems to me that some characteristics of the Entertainment District uh are operating outside of the

1:36:04

concept of a tolerable equilibrium yeah so I guess uh so the the chief of police is the one that proposed the sound I

1:36:12

guess yeah I don't know if he like I don't know if him and PD's lawyers said hey here's what we'd like in legal

1:36:18

language but the chief of police did approach the mayor's office to my understanding and say can you help us

1:36:24

with some constraints on the sheer amount of noise on Broadway you know

1:36:31

what kind of problems that's that's causing I'm not sure if it's identifying I mean there I've it could be anything

1:36:38

from if there is somebody calling for help if there is uh you know a report of

1:36:45

gunfire if it's it may be making it harder to isolate specific incidents

1:36:50

related to noise it may be about Police radios there may be a variety of things here I I've heard so far the chatter

1:36:58

around it seems to focus on the ability to provide

1:37:03

timely and effective Public Safety response but I'm I'm eager to hear more details from that what do you think

1:37:09

about you know the the homeless uh issue downtown I mean the there's homeless AP

1:37:15

the defecate they um you know they post their their tents you know do you support them uh you know

1:37:23

being able to put their tents out downtown or would you because for instance Portland yeah we see what has

1:37:29

just happened there over the last few years um you know would you have a different approach yeah we I mean I'll say I am

1:37:36

downtown regularly uh I have only ever been sent one picture of a tent and it

1:37:41

didn't last long there are other places where across the city there are encampments but I would say generally

1:37:47

speaking and I've worked on the issue of homelessness uh now for really on and

1:37:54

off for 20 years but more intensely for the eight years I've been on Metro Council representing the area where most

1:38:00

of the providers are located and most of the people experiencing homelessness congregate but there are encampments all

1:38:07

over the city they are almost never on the streets of downtown now I will say

1:38:12

I've been you know sent video of people defecating but it's not just the homeless it's people off of party buses

Homeless encampments in the city

1:38:19

I've seen both vomiting and urination from that I've seen people walking out of Honky Tonks doing the same thing so I

1:38:26

wouldn't just associate the behavior with people that are assumed to be itinerant or homeless there are a lot of

1:38:33

unfortunate behaviors perpetrated by a lot of people downtown right now overall I'm cautiously optimistic about

1:38:41

where we are with this legislation that I led last year has created the first

1:38:46

ever Standalone office of homeless Services I am excited for that

1:38:52

department as a new Metro Department which is credit mayor Cooper has funded in its first year he has also LED our

1:39:00

first ever large investment in Mitigation Of harmlessness that's going to include we hope creation of permanent

1:39:07

Supportive Housing for the people that are hardest to house that are more likely to be chronically homeless that

1:39:13

we will have some of the temporary housing I just met a guy this afternoon who has been homeless for 23 days

1:39:20

generally speaking the cities that are performing well for somebody who newly becomes homeless you want them to become

1:39:26

rehoused within 30 days so you do a model called rapid rehousing we've got

1:39:31

some funding for that some additional Supportive Services and some security funding there as well if we deploy all

1:39:38

of that well with a good office we should be able to continue to focus

1:39:44

on public health and safety measures where we've seen that kind of get a little bit out of hand at some of our encampments we should be able to offer

1:39:51

Pathways into housing for people that are congregating in areas that are more

1:39:57

public and my hope is that this is a good opportunity for this new office to

1:40:03

demonstrate straight the strengths of its existence some of the bar owners on Lower Broadway

Need for more police enforcement in certain areas

1:40:09

say that you know they've had to hire their own police force I think they're spending around four million dollars a

1:40:14

year from that and they suggest that you did not support more police in that area

1:40:21

and more enforcement is that true names and I'd love to understand this because

1:40:26

there is not a honky tonk based police force I'm ex-officio on the board of the

1:40:32

Nashville downtown partnership I know Steve Smith personally is running ads against my mayoral campaign if that is

1:40:39

what Steve Smith is claiming that's one thing there is a Broadway entertainment Association they have never called me to

1:40:46

say hey why don't you support more police presence I had been a vocal supporter of the existence of the

1:40:52

Entertainment District initiative and as a member of the Nashville downtown partnership I think they were moving to

1:40:59

advance the model of safe and clean that they've provided for a long time and think there are still a lot of things to

1:41:06

look at from the PSO model that they've arranged but that is not something that I understand The Honky Tonks are

1:41:11

presiding over okay so you don't like there's not another uh police force

1:41:16

being funded by uh there is there's a Business Development Fund okay uh that

1:41:22

was recently imposed the overall District Merchants downtown supported

1:41:28

the existence of this and again it did go into additional Public Safety capacity down there but all of that is

1:41:34

being administered by the Nashville downtown partnership I am not aware of a private police force that is

1:41:40

administered by Honky Tonk owners and if you are please share yeah no I just I missed that's that was my understanding

1:41:46

so they but let's say it's it's the Nashville downtown partnership what is that then explain that is so the

1:41:52

Nashville downtown partnership overseas Urban Nashville's two Central business or two business Improvement districts so

1:41:59

there is the Central Business improvement district which covers most of downtown there's also the Gulch business

1:42:05

improvement district they each have a corporate board of directors but the overall umbrella Organization for

1:42:11

presiding over those two districts is the national downtown partnership okay who funds that the property owners do

1:42:17

basically to create those districts the boundaries are established by a majority of property owners within the district

1:42:23

and they pay a surcharge on their property tax that then funds the downtown Partnerships operations okay

1:42:29

but they're not giving private money to that not giving extra money to that well I mean in the form of like if you go

1:42:35

downtown you'll frequently see people on Segways and yellow jerseys those are ambassadors at the national downtown

1:42:41

partnership they help people find where to go while they're not necessarily a

1:42:46

police presence they are an organized presence with a supportive organization downtown to try to make sure that you

1:42:53

know people walking around any part of downtown are experiencing a safe environment they

1:42:59

have multiple uh vehicles that are used cleanliness like street sweepers they

1:43:05

will empty the corner trash cans after special events it's a it's a pretty comprehensive downtown organization not

1:43:12

unlike I mean there's a whole national network of downtown organizations and ours is known as the Nashville downtown

1:43:17

partnership okay so you're not aware of another uh police force that has police

1:43:22

from outside districts that come in and I mean they do have a proprietary

1:43:29

security organization that has enabled under state law but that is not administered by The Honky Tonks okay who

1:43:34

who who runs who who funds that then the partnership does partnership does so I

1:43:40

guess that's what they're saying I'm just trying to get to that I'm not an expert at this I guess they're saying

1:43:45

that they're funding uh whatever it is the partnership yeah that funds A I

1:43:50

guess it's a private police force or maybe it's a state-run police force that allows officers to come in from other

1:43:57

parts of the state right do you support that I mean I will say I think the partnership is looking at enhancing

1:44:03

Public Safety downtown and as a board member even without being directly

1:44:08

involved in the procurement decisions of which vendors to work with I think the the PSO model was done with the full

1:44:15

awareness and I believe supportive mmpd and yeah I mean I'm I will say it this way I am supportive of whatever

1:44:22

Innovative approaches we can take uh to keep downtown safe for residents and visitors alike okay and this seems to be

1:44:29

something that the partnership is continuing to to monitor refine and work

1:44:35

on its Effectiveness okay and you didn't support less funds for police uh on the

1:44:40

Lower Broadway area nope um talking about like uh the the Steve

1:44:46

Smith back and forth he ran ads against you you tweeted actually I'll read it directly just to get your your response

1:44:53

for it here yep you tweeted if every place owned by

1:44:58

Steve Smith closed the city would be safer Broadway would be less obnoxious and the beer would be cheaper

1:45:06

um why did you tweet that and it sounds you know from the outside like you don't want businesses to

1:45:13

succeed on Lower Broadway because there's a lot of other bars that are a lot like Steve Smith's bar uh you know

1:45:19

they have live music they have alcohol um and it sounds like an attack on Lower

1:45:25

Broadway and so you can imagine the people that are there they think when

1:45:30

you say things like that that well if you that's your position to go and close

1:45:36

down lower Broadway or at least slow the businesses down or at least businesses like tootsies or kid rocks or those type

1:45:45

of bars that you don't want them there at all um what is your position and how would you respond to that yeah uh

1:45:52

I got I'll tell you another multi-venue operator downtown literally

1:45:59

sent me an animated gif of Applause because they all know what a pain Steve Smith is as a personal operator that's

1:46:04

why I didn't say if every place downtown closed uh you know frankly if they were under new ownership it would probably be

1:46:11

safer the number of requests for service from police generated this year out of

1:46:19

Steve Smith's establishments would almost qualify them for public nuisance treatment it's insane but it's it's a

1:46:27

lot of the other places too not like this yeah we have the logs yeah I would love to see the logs I mean my

1:46:33

experience going downtown and I've been going downtown I mean you know my whole life Broadway just kind of hit big what

1:46:39

10 12 years ago got really busy per se maybe a little longer but you know

1:46:45

they're all pretty much the same I mean my friends they're definitely not the same yeah somebody who grew up going to

1:46:51

Robert's Western World well Roberts is one okay sure Roberts is one thing but if you look Foreigner is not the same

1:46:58

as like Honky Tonk Central definitely not more touristy at Honky Tonk Central

1:47:03

but yeah I see what you're saying with that but all red not the same uh it's pretty it's it can't depends in all of

1:47:10

these places I have two I have two pack me for you didn't see not the same so you're saying that just the ones that

1:47:16

are like which ones are good which ones are bad then how would you choose that because when you when you write a tweet

1:47:22

like that yeah you know a lot of the other mayoral candidates stayed out of that a lot of other mayoral candidates

1:47:28

aren't being singled out by a single Honky Tonk owner either and hundreds of thousands of dollars of Television spending do you think it's helped you or

1:47:34

hurt you or are you are using that uh in your opinion help your campaign well I mean it remains to be seen I'm just I'm

Impact of a single business owner on a campaign

1:47:41

not gonna sit there and take it from a guy like Steve Smith though I mean you know it's it's outrageous to me that a

1:47:47

single business owner is getting this invested in the in the mayor's race well

1:47:52

I mean so do you think that his ads that uh mayor Cooper not to run no no you

1:47:58

don't think that anything to do with it I think that's zero to do with mayor Cooper's decision do you know why mayor Cooper ended up not running by any

Why Mayor Cooper ended up not running

1:48:04

chance I mean I can read mayor Cooper's public statement and then you know from there I don't know if anybody really

1:48:10

knows so I guess uh bar owners that are like are not like Steve Smith you don't

1:48:18

have a problem with and of course he ran attack ads against you right and so you're saying I'm defending myself

1:48:24

against attack ads I are you going to single him out though if you're mayor I I don't know we haven't gotten to the

1:48:32

end of the mayor's race yet first I have to get to be mayor I was like if you're a mayor would you look at singling him

1:48:39

out I I will say this I am not going to sit by while somebody spends hundreds of

1:48:45

thousands of dollars attacking me personally but but you're a politician you're running for mayor sure you can't use your

1:48:52

political office of course you know for for for slamming a business I mean you

1:48:58

might get attacked by a lot of people are you just going to turn on them if they attack you I mean I'll just say it

1:49:04

this way the city makes deals with all kinds of companies and institutions we

1:49:10

get to I mean look at anything we've done over the past 30 years going back to the Titans right I mean theoretically

1:49:16

the city could have partnered with Larry Flint to make the world's largest Hustler Hollywood store right we get to

1:49:22

be strategic about not only what we invest in who we invest in what kinds of

1:49:28

people we'd like to attract to this city I I be perfectly happy to have a

1:49:34

Broadway full of places that were more appealing to people of all ages than walking out of the Ryman Auditorium

1:49:40

pulling out of the parking garage and having a party bus blaring lyrics As I

1:49:47

roll down my window that my daughters can hear that are things I won't even repeat on a podcast yeah but do you do

1:49:53

you think though I mean Big Picture This is personal for you you know do you think that it could be

Potential dangers of using mayoral power against personal attacks

1:49:59

dangerous uh using your power as Merit and at least acknowledging using your

1:50:04

power as mayor against someone that attacks you personally that's not how I

1:50:09

intend to govern the way I intend to govern is to look at the priorities of the city and the things that the city of

Freddie's intentions for governing and closing remarks

1:50:15

Nashville what I what I've heard for months is that there are people who used to come downtown that are locals didn't

1:50:23

miss it that want to come downtown more often and they feel repelled by The

1:50:28

Atmosphere downtown right now it's not everybody but it is a lot of people who have spent a lot of time in this city

1:50:34

and ultimately I would love for the idea of downtown to be more than just the

1:50:41

Entertainment District I would like for the Entertainment District not to repel locals and I would like for the city as

1:50:47

a whole to not have the chaos of the Entertainment District become symbolic

1:50:52

of the city as a whole what would you do about the the smell of downtown because it's getting pretty bad so the this is

1:51:00

where the the partnership has actually been um pretty important and we have looked

1:51:06

specifically at the time like the sequencing and times of doing the street

1:51:13

sweeping getting you know the gutters kind of attacked from a standpoint of

1:51:19

power washing and all of those kinds of things I mean there is simply a lot of foot traffic there's is a lot of stuff that spills out onto the street whether

1:51:25

it's from a vehicle or from an establishment that's brick and mortar the solid waste strategy that we are

1:51:32

pursuing for Second Avenue as the recovery continues all of those things are uh they're they're in progress right

1:51:42

now and my hope is that eventually we get to again a wonderful scenario where

1:51:48

all of the streets of downtown are as clean as they possibly can be given the

1:51:53

amount of traffic and the amount of things that come onto the street have you ever looked into the the trash

1:51:59

trucks that don't allow leaking yes and I've had that conversation so this is what's interesting right over the past

1:52:05

few years we have watched our overall Solid Waste operations moved from what was our public works

1:52:13

department over to the Metro Water Department that is currently under what I would

1:52:18

characterize as a somewhat flimsy memorandum of understanding and one of

1:52:24

the things I hope to do very quickly in a new term is establish a permanent home

1:52:29

for solid waste I think once we do that we're actually going to have leadership

1:52:34

in that department that I am going to yes have another conversation with about uh

1:52:41

just the Simplicity of those kinds of trucks because I have personally

1:52:46

witnessed the stuff leaking out of the trucks we currently have operating in parts of downtown yeah and you know with

1:52:53

that too uh you know do you know how often the the streets are sweeped and cleaned I haven't gone back and looked

1:52:59

in the schedule in a minute but that is something I've talked about with the partnership I mean it's you know what we don't want is Nashville

1:53:07

ending up like New Orleans that's right and New Orleans stinks

1:53:12

um you know I think that you know within the city I think you got to be careful I don't I don't like you know I don't like

1:53:18

your position on that with uh you know somebody attacks you you know because you're going to be if you win you're

1:53:24

going to be in a powerful position and it does make me trust you less I think

1:53:29

you make a lot of great points in this conversation but you know you don't want people that are afraid of you as

1:53:36

business owners and that I'm not going to say consensus but the undertone in

1:53:41

the business Community is that is their worry about you and I'd love for you to

1:53:47

name names if you're going to say that because we have incredible support from the business well I mean it's it's I'm not going to name names and get people

1:53:52

well good I mean I'm I have name names and you can go look at my disclosures and they're bipartisan they're robust

1:53:58

and they're city-wide and they're small business owners and so I guess my point is though if you have

1:54:04

P like people are concerned about those type of things I'm not saying that

1:54:09

there's nothing good there's not good people supporting you good business owners I'm saying that those type of

1:54:16

comments make people not trust you as as much and so when you do things like that you know

1:54:23

it hurts the city overall even if somebody is attacking you you know nobody else and I agree nobody else was

1:54:29

attacked fair enough but when I've talked to other candidates about it they won't say anything like I don't want to

1:54:35

get into the dirt here and if you look at the comments on your Twitter you have people that supported you were like ah I

1:54:40

wish you wouldn't have done that and that's that's all I'm saying is you know if you're mayor you got to be mayor of

1:54:46

the whole city even people that are against you because that's what we need to be able to build Bridges not walls

1:54:52

we're in the most divisive times before we got to this point

1:54:57

I voluntarily and independently reached out to try to sit down with Steve Smith and he refused that and instead started

1:55:05

running these attack ads if he wants to make it personal it can certainly be personal but that

1:55:10

was not how I started this conversation fair but I mean I guess you know it depends on you know where you want to go

1:55:17

with with these things I want to go with celebrating the idea of Nashville of

1:55:22

Music City of our vibrant business Community I want to make it possible for businesses large and small I want to

1:55:29

make it an amazing place for entrepreneurs fundamentally I want our livability as a

1:55:35

city to be the thing that attracts visitors and we've gotten a little bit away from that yeah and I am not going

1:55:41

to celebrate everything that I think Steve Smith's particular establishments represent I'm not going to defend that but I am not going to spend my mayoralty

1:55:49

or the rest of this campaign attacking him I'm also just not going to sit there and take it when he makes completely uh

1:55:56

un attacks that he can't defend with data when he is as much a culprit for

1:56:02

the things he's accusing me of being I'm not mayor right now

1:56:10

but right now today yeah I don't have higher fire over the chief of police I

1:56:15

don't have most of the executive Authority that deals with the permitting process uh you know we we have watched a

1:56:23

lot of chaotic things happen uh that are not an executive function that I

1:56:28

currently possess he is trying to blame me specifically for that and I definitely reserve the right to defend

1:56:34

myself yeah I you definitely have the right to defend yourself I mean it's I think there's what did Michelle Obama say when they go

1:56:40

low we go high and uh you know I'm just throwing that out there and uh I hope

1:56:46

that you know if you are mayor that those that have lost some trust with those comments

1:56:53

you can build those bridges because we need this city if I know anybody who's lost trust I'm happy to go back and try

1:56:59

to rebuild those bridges I mean it is it is absolutely my intent to govern the city for all nashvillians to try to

1:57:06

rebuild trust actually in Metro Government and most of that's going to come from the performance of Metro Government we have watched even my own

1:57:13

neighbors who have seen the city's sharp growth uh within view of their porches

1:57:20

and front steps and they will tell me about sensing a decline in city services

1:57:26

fundamentally I want Metro to be a top-tier customer service organization a

1:57:31

trusted partner in conversations with the community and a place where we can all live work play and to the extent of

1:57:38

our abilities and best yeah no and I want the exact same thing and you know we have some good candidates I've

1:57:45

interviewed a couple of them at Wilshire and Alice Rowley uh probably interview a

1:57:50

couple more next week and you know I think with all the things that we've talked about the problems that we've had

1:57:57

the last four years with covid we've gotta we've got to work together on on

1:58:03

uniting and you know we can have uh a difference of opinion on complex issues

1:58:09

even on personal issues and I think we've lost in a way the ability to have a conversation and you know I uh I hope

1:58:18

that if you are mayor that um you know you can have that conversation and that Vision you just gave is what's leading

1:58:25

and what's making a positive difference for the city because it's better for everybody you know Nashville needs to be

1:58:31

a better City for everybody for the poor for the middle class for the rich uh you

1:58:37

know we need to be a city for everybody and I think that's I think that's important yeah and I just I'll

1:58:42

reemphasize the point I offered the conversation it was refused yeah so we'll continue with anybody who wants to be a participant fair enough

1:58:49

um in closing you you want to bring up anything maybe we didn't cover or say

1:58:54

anything um you know to the people listening so I think the the biggest thing

1:58:59

um that has really inform my thinking about the decision to

1:59:05

do this has been what I've heard for a year and more uh all around the city

1:59:14

about the difficult Choice people are making about whether or not to stay in Nashville and sometimes it's because of

1:59:22

some of the political Strife we've had right the the tension in state and local issues uh sometimes seeming adversarial

1:59:29

to specific communities but as often as not it has everything to do with the

1:59:36

things that we have chosen either to prioritize or focus on or have a lack of

1:59:42

focus on as a city and I think some of that has been Metro's volatility over the past eight years the five years in particular where we've gone through

1:59:49

three Mayors in three years and so what I really want to establish is a

1:59:54

collection of priorities in the mayor's office where we demonstrate our capacity to perform basic city services

2:00:00

effectively where we do rebuild actual trust in our and confidence in our

2:00:06

ability to invest in ourselves and ultimately that we also don't lose sense

2:00:12

of the aspiration of being able to do things that we know cities across not just the South cities across the country

2:00:19

and cities across the world do which is do the the livability things of

2:00:24

sidewalks and neighborhoods you've raised the the point about concerns about the quality of Education

2:00:31

um the the the approaches we're going to have to take to ensure safety

2:00:38

community-wide but also our biggest missing ingredients and some of those are elements like a transit system and

2:00:44

one that can respond to Innovation it's some of the long-term thinking that we need to do to make sure that we can

2:00:50

weather economic externalities Public Health externalities severe weather all of

2:00:57

those things and I think at the end of the day yes we have a lot of good candidates

2:01:04

running for mayor I don't think uh the majority of the candidates come to the table with the preparedness to govern on

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day one uh understanding all of the tools that Metro specifically our local government specifically have to bring to

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bear to improve cost of living and quality of life for residents to improve a business environment for those that

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are starting and operating businesses here and ultimately to have the priorities of the city be focused on the

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project of making it just a little easier to stay here so that's at the end of the day that's why I'm running awesome well thank you for coming here

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and it was a long form interview we've got a lot in and uh I appreciate just having a having an open conversation and

2:01:46

oh it's really great thanks for providing the space for it all right thank you please like And subscribe if

2:01:51

you want to hear further conversations