NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — A lot can happen in just a few months. Just ask Metro Mayor Freddie O'Connell.
This first week of the new year marks his first 100 days in office. I sat down with the mayor just before Christmas break to look back on what's been a busy beginning and look ahead to the challenges and consequential decisions he must make for Nashville in 2024.
Watch Rhori interview Mayor O'Connell in the player above.
Not surprisingly, the devastating tornadoes that struck just a few weeks earlier were still top of mind.
"If you were in the path of the tornado, I mean it leveled entire buildings,” Mayor O’Connell told me. "I think the hardest part for me was arriving to the first confirmations of casualties. Arriving at that news was where I think the real weight was felt."
Mayor O'Connell says despite that weight, he's proud of how the city responded, including Metro departments and every day.
“It's such a great example of how many hands make short work — site by site, home by home, watching volunteers help with that process,” he said.
Another challenge for the new mayor: construction combined with congestion at Nashville International Airport. Just as the holiday season began, we saw images of frustrated travelers leaving vehicles stuck in traffic along Interstate 40 to walk to the terminal. Mayor O'Connell told me it caught his attention. He's working with the Airport Authority and TDOT on short and long-term solutions.
"If you go out there right now you will see some construction underway to try to ease that entry point right off of I-40," he said.
Shortly into his tenure, the new mayor received reports from transition committees, tasked with prioritizing potential steps in three key areas: transit, government operations, and growth also known as "How Nashville Moves, Works and Grows."
Recommendations included a renewed focus on customer service with more staffing for Hub Nashville to help answer citizen concerns faster. The committee studying growth highlighted the need for more affordable housing — especially within the new East Bank development. The transit group, however, received the most attention by not only suggesting a new transit referendum to go before Metro voters, but to get that plan on the ballot this November. Mayor O'Connell told me it's a challenge, but thinks it is possible.
"If we go down this road if it turns out, we see all the gates, and we can pass through all the gates — the legal and financial, the procedural things it's gonna take to even offer Nashvillians this choice. Then it's our obligation to offer as high-quality a plan as we possibly can,” he said. "To me, what that means is this is not gonna be a 'shiny object' scenario. This is gonna be a service and sidewalks plan."
His plan would include additional transit centers — in places like Antioch, the East Bank, and SoBro — and expanded hours of operation. New sidewalks, signage, and lighting, O’Connell says, are also needed. A recently announced $20 million grant for improvements along Nolensville Pike is a start.
"If we were to secure dedicated funding for transit, it would include the connections to transit so that those long stretches of Nolensville that have no sidewalks right now, these long stretches of Gallatin and other corridors that don't have sidewalks right now, suddenly, communities would be better connected to one another,” O’Connell said.
"Right now along Eighth Avenue South, which isn't even one of the busiest transit corridors, we are currently moving more people using transit than by car."
Mayor O'Connell didn’t tell me when we might know if a new transit referendum will appear on the November ballot, but he says his team is moving quickly.
The Mayor himself has moved quickly especially with public appearances. In his first 100 days – based on his weekly public calendar – I counted at least 60 events the new mayor attended from graduations to ribbon cuttings and tree lightings.
So I asked him why he thinks it’s important, and whether he’s able to balance work and home life.
"When I show up to these things, it's not with a lot of pomp and circumstance. These are just great little neighborhood events," he said.
Events the mayor says he often shares with his own family. They also give him a chance to talk with constituents, one-on-one.
"So my commitment was that I wasn't just gonna sit at a desk in city hall mayor — that I was gonna be mayor for the entire city," he said. "So when I go out to Hermitage, when I go out to Old Hickory, when I go up to Whites Creek, I think there is a very strong appreciation for knowing that the mayor's office isn't just having this perspective that we're here to be there for all 525 square miles, but that I personally am trying to set foot in all of these communities."
It's truly the small things that add up to a great day - and Warrick in Lebanon is having a big impact. His familiar face is becoming a staple in one part of the community and inspiring closer connection in the simplest way. Enjoy his warm personality! You may even feel inclined to wave to a stranger today, too.
-Rebecca Schleicher
