NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — With her time up on the Metro Council, Sharon Hurt is running to run the whole city.
Hurt has been on Metro Council since 2015. She is the executive director of Street Works. Attorney Abby Rubenfeld, who fought Obergell v. Hodges before the Supreme Court of the United States and won, is her campaign treasurer.
NewsChannel 5 sent every person running for mayor a questionnaire with the same questions. We have not edited these answers from the candidates, meaning these responses are straight from them.
Nashville’s violent crime rate outpaces the national average as well as that of similar-sized cities. As mayor, how would you work with MNPD to ensure Nashvillians can feel safe in our city?
You have to get to the root of a problem before you get to the fruit of it. I will focus on the root causes of crime and give our kids the resources they need to be successful. It all begins with public services — getting money into our schools, our social services, our rec centers and our public swimming pools so kids have a place to go after school.
We need to set up our kids for a pipeline to prosperity rather than a pipeline to prison. We also have to make sure that Nashville is a leader in community policing and that the police have relationships with the people they’re supposed to protect. When I was growing up, the captain of the police lived a block away from me and my mom would greet him every morning. That’s the type of relationship we need between the police and the neighborhood. Baltimore has successfully piloted a community-based policing program that has cut violent crime there. As Mayor, I will implement a similar program to ensure Nashvillians are safe.
We’ve seen multiple neighborhoods grapple with the proliferation of homeless encampments that pose threats to public safety and sanitation. How would you balance compassionate treatment of the unhoused with the desire of citizens to live in clean, safe neighborhoods?
Again, we need to get to the root of the problem before we get to the fruit of it. As the executive director of Street Works, I think about these problems every day. Our caseworkers connect people to housing, transportation and provide food. So I see these issues and I see these people. I believe when we think about homelessness, we need to think about the root causes, like mental health and substance use disorders, and the intersection of those problems with homelessness. We need to address these issues with wraparound social services to really address homelessness.
The next thing we need to do is address the affordable housing crisis so a person can afford to live in Nashville on any salary. I have a comprehensive plan for combating the affordable housing issue in Nashville. I plan on zoning government-owned land in Bordeaux and the East Bank for affordable housing and I will work with developers to incentivize this development.
Metro Nashville government has been involved in a series of spats with the Republican-controlled state legislature that could have far-reaching effects on how the city functions. How will you work with the state legislature and preserve the will of Metro Nashville’s voters?
The first thing I will do is meet with Speaker Sexton and establish a working relationship. I believe communication is key and as a Black woman, I bring a different approach to my communication that can be disarming and uncommon in Tennessee politics. I’m a fighter for the people and they’re not used to my approach. Regardless, we have legal strategies to combat attacks on Metro government and I support the non-enforcement of certain state laws and bringing up a legal case where appropriate, like the recent successful case against reducing the size of the Council.
For the first time ever in Vanderbilt’s annual poll, a majority of Nashvillians said our city is moving in the wrong direction. How do you think we can get Nashville on the right track?
Nashville is growing. This growth was supposed to remove the decline we find in some parts of Nashville. But the growth has instead only benefited some parts of the city while leaving other blocks forgotten or even more difficult to live on. I believe we can get Nashville on the right track by ensuring Nashville’s growth reaches every hand on every block in every community. That doesn’t mean stopping our growth. Rather, it means being more intentional about our growth.
As Nashville has grown, so has the cost of living. What strategies would you employ to make our city affordable for working families?
There are so many buildings and lots that are sitting vacant in Nashville. If Habitat for Humanity can build a house in a day, why can’t we get a few dozen crews together and build on these lots? There are literally acres of empty government-owned land in the Bordeaux area that we can zone for affordable and attainable housing and build on.
I will work with developers to streamline the building permit process and provide tax incentives to make sure these units get built. We also need to develop workforce housing for our teachers, firefighters and other public servants so they can afford to live in the communities where they work. These kinds of hard-working legacy residents have made Nashville the ‘It’ city it is today and we must ensure they can afford to stay in Nashville.
A Nashville mayor hasn’t discussed rapid-area transit in earnest since Mayor Barry’s plan was rejected by voters. What are your thoughts on what the city needs for public transit?
I believe that if you do nothing, you get nothing. The 2018 plan was not perfect but it was better than what we currently have, which is nothing. We need public transit in Nashville because this is an equity issue preventing our residents from picking up groceries and going to doctor’s appointments. I support a comprehensive multimodal transportation plan including light rail, bus-only lanes and expanding commuter rail.
However, I think we need to work on our public transit infrastructure one bite at a time rather than through a sweeping referendum. I want to start by building a bus-only lane on Murfreesboro Pike and other piecemeal projects. When people begin to see the progress in our public transit, and actually start using it and seeing how it benefits their life, I believe they will become less skeptical of it and we can fund more ambitious projects.
Just under 30 percent of Nashville’s third graders are reading at grade level. Nashville has trailed significantly in education gains compared to other Middle Tennessee counties. What can a mayor do for education?
Educational excellence is one of the cornerstones of my platform. I believe that in order to read to learn, first you have to learn to read. I want to get to the root of our low-performing public schools by establishing a Mayor’s literacy initiative. This initiative will ensure every first-grader is reading at grade level by the end of my first term.
In addition to my reading literacy initiative, we need to think about how the Mayor’s Office can work with the school board. The reality is that the school board controls our public schools. The Mayor primarily ensures the money is there. On the council, I have voted to increase teacher pay so our teachers are now the highest paid in the state. As Mayor, I will commit to fully funding our public schools. That means raising teacher pay, providing workforce housing and investing in hiring more diverse teachers.
There is a perception that downtown is more of a priority because of the revenue it generates. What policies do you propose that will serve all neighborhoods?
We need the money generated downtown to come back into the community. That’s why I have added requirements for contracts to go to local, minority and women-owned businesses for every project involving public dollars in this city from the Titans stadium to the airport renovation.
We can have Amazon and Oracle and all these other big companies moving into Nashville pay PILOTs to fund our sidewalks and schools. These are the policies I have supported for the past 8 years as council member. I will fight to ensure investment in downtown comes back into our neighborhoods as Mayor.
Nashville has faced the following in the last three years: the pandemic, a tornado, a bombing, and a mass shooting. What makes you qualified to handle these levels of crises?
I want to start off this question with the fact that I am a boots-on-the-ground leader. I was at the vigil for the Covenant School on the day of the tragedy and at every memorial afterward. This is the type of leadership I will bring to the Mayor’s Office. I am the person with the heart to understand the needs of the people and the professional experience to get those needs met.
I have devoted the past 45 years of my life to the community. As a council member At-Large for 8 years, I gained an understanding of Nashville’s political process and developed the necessary relationships with city employees to get things done. As the executive director of Street Works, I work to provide social services to people who have been hit with a backhand slap by life every day. This is all a portion of my qualifications and how I meet people where they are regardless of being a janitor, secretary or CEO.
Come July 1, Nashville’s Community Oversight Board, as we know it, will cease operating. How will you ensure that Nashville gets the same level of community oversight that voters overwhelmingly approved?
I am sponsoring legislation to reinstate the Community Oversight Board in Council as we speak. The state has stripped our original COB of some of its powers but we will bring it back at the municipal level.
The COB has received more than 200 complaints from residents. Who would handle these complaints without the COB? I hope my fellow council members follow my lead in supporting this common-sense policy that the people want.
