NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — It's been one year since David Briley was made Nashville's Mayor.
During that time, the city has seen tremendous growth along with serious growing pains. Former mayor Megan Barry resigned after a scandal involving an affair with the head of her security detail.
Briley reflected on his year in office in a letter to the city. You can read the full letter below.
A year ago today, I was sworn in as the eighth mayor of Metro government. The circumstances were unusual and, to many, unsettling. A lot of people thought it would take Nashville a long time to recover, but they didn’t know the resilience of Nashvillians and that the momentum we had created as a city could not be stopped. We simply stayed focused and continued to move the city forward with the hard work we’ve all done in the past 12 months.
Nashville is stronger today because of the trials we’ve come through together.
As I reflect on the profound changes in my own life and work over the past year, I’m proud of everything we’ve accomplished, and I’m excited when I think about how those achievements have set the city up for even more good things in the decade ahead.
For me, the one thread that runs through everything we do is equitable prosperity. In my office, we look at every opportunity through an equity lens. Nashville has been enjoying tremendous prosperity, but not everyone has been able to share in it.
That means we need to do as much as we possibly can to bring everyone along.
That means education. It’s why I worked with Nashville State Community College and the Tennessee College of Applied Technology - Nashville to launch Nashville GRAD. With support from generous donors, this innovative program will provide scholarships to help graduates of Metro Schools cover their costs – such as transportation, textbooks or industry certification fees – and earn postsecondary degrees or credentials at those institutions. The investments we’ll make in our students will pay tremendous dividends by helping them increase their lifetime earnings by about one-third while expanding the city’s workforce pipeline.
I also appointed an 18-member Education Kitchen Cabinet to come up with recommendations for how the city can help our 23 lowest-performing schools — because the children at those schools don’t have time to wait. This committee is hard at work and will deliver its recommendations this spring.
Equitable prosperity means economic development, which takes many forms. I worked with the Metro Council to create the Equal Business Opportunity Program through a historic ordinance that levels the playing field for minority-owned and women-owned companies seeking business with Metro government. I also signed an executive order that made Nashville the first city in the South to recognize LGBT-owned businessesas a procurement category and acknowledge their certification by the National LGBT Chamber of Commerce.
Our economic development efforts have brought in more than 6,600 good-paying, high-quality jobs from the likes of Amazon, AllianceBernstein, and EY. Amazon’s 5,000 jobs by themselves will add $750 million a year in payroll to our region, and the associated property and sales tax revenues will give us many more opportunities to pay for services and infrastructure that will benefit the entire city. The property taxes alone on Amazon’s building are expected to pay for the job-based incentives I’m proposing within just a few years.
I’m proud that we completed the task of funding the Major League Soccer stadium and are in the process of revitalizing the fairgrounds property. The stadium will open in 2021 in the vibrant heart of Nashville’s international community. Like the Predators and Titans, Nashville SC will bring people together while putting Music City on another big stage. And the unprecedented community benefits agreement brokered as part of the stadium plan will bring $15+-per-hour jobs and affordable housing units to the overall project. We’ll also continue to host flea markets, auto racing and a state fair on this property, promising new memories for our children and for future families.
We can’t prosper if we aren’t safe. In the past few months we’ve started Project Safe Nashville, the largest interagency effort in Nashville history to fight gun crime; worked to implement the Community Oversight Board, which voters overwhelmingly approved; and opened the new police headquarters on Murfreesboro Road.
This week, we’ll cut the ribbon on another innovative public safety facility. The Metro Family Safety Center sits on the same property as the police headquarters and is one of the largest, most comprehensive family justice centers in the nation. It brings together, under one roof, the government and nonprofit service providers any victim of domestic violence, child abuse or sexual assault might need.
In the past year we also initiated a $351 million capital spending plan to build or improve roads, sidewalks, schools, parks and other critical infrastructure throughout the county; developed plans for 100 units of permanent supportive housing and wraparound services for our homeless population; and launched Root Nashville, an ambitious effort to plant 500,000 trees citywide by 2050. We decided to demolish Greer Stadium and convert the land into a park that will honor the slaves who built Fort Negley – an important step to help repair the racial wounds that are a difficult part of our community’s history.
Finally, the NFL announced it will hold the 2019 draft here April 25-27. The draft will be the biggest and highest-profile event Nashville has ever hosted, and the long-term benefits from visitor spending and media coverage will be immense.
We’ve had a good year, but we’re not resting or slowing down. I’m looking forward to sharing some big announcements with you over the next few weeks. These plans rely on strong public-private partnerships that will move our city ahead in important ways – a hallmark of Nashville’s success for a long time now.
I know this past year has been unusually challenging. From the hard-working Mayor’s Office staff to the Council members diligently representing their constituents, from the thousands of other Metro employees dedicating themselves to public service to everyone fueling our forward motion in the private and nonprofit sectors, I thank you for everything you’ve done and everything you’ll continue to do for Nashville.
Thank you for your trust, your candor and your love for our city as we continue to move forward and work to ensure that everyone who lives here can prosper. Our collective charge and responsibility is to leave our city a better place than we found it — and to build a brighter, more prosperous future for everyone who calls Nashville home.
Sincerely,
Mayor David Briley
