On Wednesday, Nashville Mayor John Cooper delivered the 59th annual State of Metro address.
Below is a transcript of the full address released by the mayor’s office:
“We’re here today at the Southeast Nashville Community Center because the Nashville we know
and love, the Nashville we want to serve – and preserve – is a city rooted in our neighborhoods,
and in our families,” said Mayor Cooper. He called it “the perfect backdrop to tell you about my
agenda for Nashville Neighborhoods and Families, which is the heart of our work in the year
ahead.”
The Mayor’s agenda has six core components, each of which include strategic investments made
alongside the city’s growth to meet the new challenges facing a dynamic and rapidly growing
Nashville. The six focus areas for the Mayor’s agenda are:
- investing in our children’s futures through education
- keeping Nashville’s streets and neighborhoods safe
- creating and preserving affordable housing
- addressing homelessness
- improving core services and transportation infrastructure
- becoming a greener, more sustainable city
“Good schools, clean streets, safe neighborhoods, reliable city services, affordable housing,
world-class parks, live-work-play communities to raise a family in. That is Nashville,” said Mayor
Cooper. “As we grow, we must do so in a way that works for every neighborhood, and make sure
no one gets left behind. That requires investing alongside our growth and innovating to keep
pace with the challenges presented by the growth. That is our vision.”
In each core focus area, the Mayor made several new commitments and announced new
investments and programs meant to drive real progress toward meaningfully addressing the
biggest challenges facing the city. In keeping with tradition, the mayor also revealed his
comprehensive budget proposal that contains hundreds of line items necessary to fund the Metro government for the next fiscal year. Below is a summary of some of the most significant
new initiatives included in the Mayor’s agenda:
- For the second consecutive year, the Mayor will propose a record investment in education, allocating $91.2 million in total new dollars for Metro Nashville Public Schools. As part of that funding, the Mayor’s agenda will increase wages for Metro bus drivers, and for the first time ever, provide paid family leave to ALL Metro Nashville Education employees.
- The Mayor’s agenda will significantly increase the number of first responders and police officers to bolster community safety on Nashville’s streets by adding 157 new emergency response personnel, including 46 more police officers, in addition to the 40 added last year, many of whom will staff the new 9th police precinct in Southeast Nashville slated to break ground early next year.
- Mayor Cooper has quintupled Metro’s rate of investment in building and preserving affordable housing since taking office, and created the city’s first Division of Housing within the Planning Department. The Mayor’s agenda will also increase the total spend on affordable housing – a portion of which comes from the American Rescue Plan passed by Congress last year – which means in three years, his administration has allocated over $150 million for affordable housing – five times the rate of investment before he took office.
- Mayor Cooper is determined to drastically reduce homelessness over the course of the next 3 years and set Metro Nashville firmly on the path to making homelessness rare and brief. Today, he announced funding for 9 additional staffers for the Metro Homeless Impact Division, which Mayor Cooper has grown 92% over his past two budgets. Mayor Cooper announced a bold $50 million plan for homelessness using funds from the American Rescue Plan to confront the crisis. The plan represents an unprecedented effort by the Metro government to address homelessness in Nashville.
- The Agenda for Nashville Neighborhoods and Families includes a number of initiatives aimed at recommitting to the fundamentals of city government, including investing an additional $10 million in this year’s budget to increase the reliability of trash collection, add crews to repair our roads, and increase maintenance along roads, bikeways, and in alleyways – to sweep streets, clear brush, and keep trash out of storm drains and groundwater.
- Creating a more sustainable, resilient city is a key piece of the Mayor’s agenda, which includes his promise this past February to formally adopt an ambitious community greenhouse gas emissions reduction goal of 80 percent from 2014 levels by 2050. He is also creating the Office of Music, Film and Entertainment as a new division in the Mayor’s office to better support our creative class and protect the future of Music City.
