Exit Interview

I’ve been serving Metro in different ways since Mayor Dean appointed me to the NES Board in 2011. After four years with NES, eight as a Council member, and two as Chief Development Officer for Mayor O’Connell, my last work day with Metro was October 24.

When people ask me to reflect on my time with Metro, so many thoughts come to mind that it’s hard to make sense of them. The three main threads are about the people I’ve worked with, about how the work changes but never ends, and about the deepening polarization of America.

I have also been thinking about Teddy Roosevelt’s “In the Arena” speech: 

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.

 - Teddy Roosevelt, Address at the Sorbonne, April 23, 1910: "Citizenship in a Republic"

I know I am one of those who errs, and comes up short again and again. But sometimes, with the help of others, the worthy cause comes out on top or least gets moved forward a little. My lasting Metro memories will be of the people who I have stood with trying to make progress on our worthy goals.

As I leave full-time service to the city, I’ve collected some of the efforts that meant something to me and hopefully to the people I’ve represented. When I think about the last decade, my mind goes to these issues...

2014

In the early days of the Tennessee super-majority, there was a Republican-led effort to unseat 3 Tennessee Supreme Court Justices. I spent the summer of 2014 helping to organize efforts to retain the Justices. We won and the Justices kept their jobs.

In the second half of 2014, I began work with NOAH’s Affordable Housing Task Force to draft inclusionary zoning legislation for them to ask the Metro Council to consider. I started on this before I had actively considered running for Council. At the time, it was pro bono legal work, not political activity.

2015

The outgoing Metro Council passed a law asking the Planning Department to draft an inclusionary zoning proposal in July 2015.

On September 10, 2015, I was elected as an At-Large member of the Metro Council.

After starting in the Council in October, the affordable housing work continued. We wanted to pass an inclusionary zoning law that honored owners’ existing property rights and zoning entitlements while also creating a market where additional development entitlements could be exchanged for affordable housing.

2016

In April 2016, I passed my first legislation to reform tax increment financing, of TIF. This economic development tool that can be good where there is true blight and declining property values (like parts of downtown in the 70s and 80s, or Rivergate Mall now) or abused (once a market is willing to pay for infrastructure itself).

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At the time, there was a widespread feeling that Metro had drifted into more bad TIF deals than good ones. My intention at the time was to trigger a full reset on how TIF would be used in Nashville. This was a success in large part because of unanimous or nearly unanimous votes from the Metro Council on my TIF reform initiatives over the years. These early efforts were also shaped by my co-lead sponsor, Erica Gilmore. Her experience in the Council and relationships with second term Council members were critical to get the ball rolling on TIF reform.

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In August 2016, I filed 3 short term rental reform bills hoping our Council would take action to protect neighborhoods.

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Many of the people involved in the STR debates of the day will recall a community meeting at the East Police Precinct that summer. The sign-in table was staffed by STR industry folks and the room gave industry-led rather than community-led. That meeting pushed me from being a newbie member of the Council who was laying back to believing the only way to get corrective legislation passed was to file corrective legislation and debate it out. It took a year, but the city found a new balance on STRs. Due to the threat of complete deregulation of STRs by the State, the Council ultimately adopted an imperfect balance that still improved the experience in many neighborhoods.

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In September 2016, the Council passed a trial version of inclusionary zoning that I drafted. Part of the political consensus it took to pass the bill was a letter of support from the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce. I think we got their support because the bill was market-based – it 100% respected and did not change, alter, or diminish any existing property right or development entitlement. Instead, it focused on allowing Metro to exchange new additional rights and entitlements for new affordable units.

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I’ve mentioned At-Large CM Erica Gilmore once already. I’ve told her before, but I’d like to say here that Erica and At-Large CM Sharon Hurt meant a lot to me. I sat between them from 2015-2019. I loved how they both supported me and encouraged me on ways to be a better ally.

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In November 2016, after the scathing Driving While Black report was issued, I drafted and filed legislation (with co-lead sponsor Erica Gilmore, and 24 additional sponsors) to require MNPD to report traffic stop demographics to the Metro Council. The former police chief fought the idea. It took the Council until the next April to pass the legislation.

2017

Jocques Clemmons was shot and killed during a traffic stop in early 2017, which led to a Council meeting being interrupted by a “furious” public. This was among the many things that ultimately led to a change in traffic stop policies in Nashville. This also provided the push for a successful petition-led effort for a referendum to create a Community Oversight Board for the first time.  

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In my time in the Council, our meetings were interrupted only a few times. And one of the “interruptions” was not really an interruption. It was the very extended public comment session on the budget in 2020. Each time, there were members annoyed with the public. I never saw it that way. Expressing dissent by showing up at a publicly-noticed regularly scheduled meeting of the city council is Civics 101 and Council members should support it no matter how much time is involved.

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In spring 2017, I filed legislation to have Metro not spend its taxpayer money on federal civil immigration enforcement and to stop our local jail from housing civil ICE detainees for whom there are no criminal charges or warrants pending. I regret withdrawing this legislation in the face of threats from the State. If I had it to do again, I would have pushed it to a vote.

In late 2017, the soccer stadium financing package came before the Council for the first of two times. I forget the exact number, but the vast majority of changes the Council sought to the deal were my suggestions. Most notably, I asked for the team guaranty to be amended to cover stadium and infrastructure cost overruns and to clearly cap Metro’s spending at $225 million. Since the final cost was much higher, at $335 million, I feel good about that amendment. I appreciated the Barry administration and the soccer team for hearing me out and incorporating most of my suggested changes to the deal.

2018

Despite the support of the business community, our inclusionary zoning law was nullified by the State in 2018. My comment at the time was, “It’s disappointing because we have tried so hard to have a balanced, market-driven approach…Under our law, owners would get the full value of what they purchased, so we are protecting property rights.”

By budget season in 2018, it was clear that Metro had more or less forgotten how to maintain an appropriate property tax rate. Before the 2008 downturn, the city had typically built a budget and tax rate from the ground up by determining the cost of running the city and then setting the tax rate. During and after the ’08 downturn, the city stopped doing that. As a result, despite our A+ downtown experience for tourists, city services were stretched thin, important vehicles fleets and other capital needs were being neglected, and employees were being squeezed on pay. This was the first of three years when I led efforts in the Council to fix the tax rate. The 2018 effort fell short by one vote in the Council. If the rate proposed that year had passed, Metro would not have entered COVID with the worst fund balance among the top-25 cities in America.

I also supported passage of the Community Oversight referendum in 2018. Nashville voted in favor of the referendum. And then the state legislature promptly passed its own legislation to override the will of Davidson County voters. The state action significantly reduced the power of the oversight board.

2019

In 2019, I tried again to correct the tax rate and failed by one or two votes again. As we debated that budget in May/June 2019, we didn’t know that the State Comptroller was going to reject the Mayor’s approved budget a few months later, and we didn’t know COVID was coming nine months later. For the many Council members who voted for the tax rate correction in 2019, it was little solace that we were shown to be right about Metro’s financial position. We would have preferred to skip COVID and the Comptroller problems than be proven correct.

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Although I had passed plenty of legislation by 2019, I learned a lot more that year during the losing budget battle about how to be effective in the Council. In particular, outside the Council, guidance from Jason Freeman and the support of engaged teachers like Delishia Porterfield were invaluable. In the Council, I appreciated Anthony Davis’s guidance as a co-sponsor, and Dave Rosenberg’s ability to accurately predict vote counts.

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The last legislation I passed in my first Council term was more tax increment financing reform. After leading a Council-created committee to a unanimous set of recommendations, the Council passed additional reform in August 2019. 

In August, I was also re-elected, this time to serve in the #1 seat in the Council.

In October 2019, Sheriff Hall announced that our local jail would no longer house civil ICE detainees. In announcing the decision, he cited a desire to focus on his office’s priorities. To the extent the failed 2017 legislation to get the city out of housing civil ICE detainees showed that the will of the community was to focus our local jail on local issues, I’m glad to have helped.

2020

Like most us, 2020 was a blur for me. I served as Chair of the Budget & Finance Committee through the beginning of COVID, the economic turmoil of COVID, the March 3 tornado, the May 3 derecho – all while trying to fix the financial issues that had led the State Comptroller to reject the prior year’s budget. Though my Vice Chair Kyonzté Toombs was in her first year in the Council, she was a huge help in working through the many hard issues that year.

At this point, Metro literally had no choice but to increase its property tax rate. The only question was going to be how much. In the fine print of the budget that year, I added a process for how Metro would decide to spend the hundreds of millions of federal relief dollars. The “COVID committee” process served the city well. It was transparent. Spending was subject to Council approval. These checks and balances let Nashville deploy federal relief money in a way where political and community leadership was bought in and supportive. Not every city could say the same.

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Part of my professional experience has been to reorganize businesses and non-profits experiencing financial distress. Leaning on that experience, I told the Council that the 2020 tax rate increase would turn out to be the “easy” one because there was no choice. The challenge, I said, would be to voluntarily return to a best practice of building budgets from the ground up. That would mean regular, predictable rate increases that allow the city to keep up with ever-increasing costs and allow residents to plan. This is still a work-in-progress. I’ll continue watching whether Metro’s core capital spending (on schools, fire stations, roads, etc.) is adequate or lags. If it lags, that will indicate more work needs to be done to match the tax rate to the city’s core needs.

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2021 

Still COVID.

In 2021, I worked against destructive efforts to amend the Charter to limit tax rate changes.

I managed to get sued by the Chair of the Davidson County Election Commission over the events of that year. The lawsuit is still pending…so I won’t say any more about that here.

2022

After the city tightened down on tax increment financing, some started looking for other ways to sidetrack property tax revenues for uses outside of the annual budget process. I started warning about this shift.

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I have never had blanket opposition to property tax diversions. I have been opposed to diverting property tax revenues from the annual operating budget appropriation process without a clear understanding and plan for how much is being spent outside of the annual operating budget. Whether a city dedicates taxes to specific uses or chooses to forego some tax collections, it is all a form of spending. If it is treated and disclosed that way after an informed discussion, then that’s great with me.

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Also, in 2022, the Council rejected efforts to bring the Republican National Convention to Nashville in 2024. I get blamed for this by some…so I might as well take credit for it. I definitely led the Council effort and would do it again. But, let’s be clear, I never passed a thing in the Metro Council unless it had the support of my colleagues. And when we were out in our communities that summer, the message we heard was loud and clear — after January 6, there were too many unknowns and risks. There simply wasn’t local appetite to host the event or deal with the disruption that would have come with it.

Conventional wisdom is that the Council vote on the GOP convention led the State Legislature to begin carpet bombing Nashville with adverse legislation in 2023. Here’s my comment to the Tennessee Lookout before that happened:

Fallout from the state is a constant state of affairs in Nashville. Just last fall we had most of the powers of our health department taken away for really no good reason at all. So I expect there to be fallout, but I always expect there to be fallout from things we do and don’t do.

Even setting aside Nashville entirely for a moment, there is plenty of evidence that any city, when faced with an opposite party super-majority, should expect to be squeezed for monetary value and/or control of key city assets.

In August 2022, the voters passed a referendum to improve how petition-led Charter amendments are considered and approved to go on the ballot. This ended several years of uncertainty due to the continued right wing efforts to undermine the city’s ability to set a proper tax rate. I’m proud to have led the effort to get this Charter amendment drafted and approved for the ballot.

2023

In early 2023, my main legislative effort was to oppose the financing package for the new football stadium. Though we lost the vote on the financing package, it became a major issue in the 2023 mayoral and council elections. Mayor O’Connell famously used the issue to help his winning campaign.

We also learned from the Banner in 2023 that “Bob Mendes has enemies” in the State government. Thinking back to the Teddy Roosevelt quote, I count this as the price of fighting for the “worthy cause.”

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When I was in the Council, I would sometimes joke that, when I needed a break from the rough and tumble of politics, I would retreat to the relatively peaceful world of complex commercial disputes. In politics, I have always found my litigation experience to be grounding. With just a few exceptions, it would be tough to find an opposing counsel who thinks I am an “enemy.” In politics, though, some people roll differently. While haters are going to hate, I’ve tried to do my best to, well, shake it off and focus on what’s in the best interests of Nashvillians.

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2024 and 2025

In early 2024, the football stadium broke ground. Despite Mayor O’Connell’s opposition to the 2023 financing plan for the stadium, he felt strongly that it is in Nashville’s best interests to provide continuity in government, and that means fully and genuinely honoring the contractual obligations of prior administrations.

It is worth remembering that, after the prior mayor mixed things up on the soccer stadium deal in early 2020, it was not a foregone conclusion that an O’Connell administration would want to honor the stadium financing fully. I am thankful for Mayor O’Connell’s approach, and I would like to personally thank the Titans’ leadership team. When I showed up to lead Metro’s side of the conversations two years ago, it took an active choice for all of us to shake hands and implement the approved deal. To keep a $2+ billion project headed toward an on-time delivery, it takes continual work and cooperation. I appreciate everyone involved in that process.

We also passed the landmark East Bank development deal in 2024. It will take years more for the new neighborhood to take shape. Speed was important in that negotiation because the football stadium had already broken ground by the time the Council approved the development terms. But it was more important that we got the right deal for Nashville. I’m proud that we achieved 99 years of protected affordability for a large number of housing units. And, while it is mostly nerdy transaction professionals who appreciate it, I’m proud of the “participation rent” feature of the deal where Metro will get a share of the gross proceeds from every building sale and cash-out refinancing done in the development area over the next century.

We also managed to get the exact same law passed through the State Legislature and the Metro Council in creating the East Bank Development Authority. I wonder what the betting odds would have been when Freddie was sworn in on September 25, 2023, that his administration, with me as point person, would have gotten identical language passed by both legislative bodies in less than a year. Low, I’m guessing.

There also was a transit referendum — you may have heard of it — approved in November 2024. My main contribution was to focus on moving the huge real estate projects Mayor O’Connell inherited forward. When he came into office, the large projects only existed on paper. I appreciate that he trusted me to lead those efforts so others in the administration could focus on the transit plan.

Mayor O’Connell also promised to deliver progress all over Nashville. Over the last two years, we’ve been able to begin work to redevelop Global Mall including a transit station there, work to improve the Rivergate mall area, expand the city’s affordable housing commitments, begin planning for a new Nashville Fire Department headquarters, enter a better management agreement for Ascend Amphitheater, keep the Musician’s Hall of Fame at Municipal Auditorium, and much more. Through these two years, it has been rewarding to have a chance to act on the principles of equitable growth the Mayor and I talked about for eight years in the Council.

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When we came into the Mayor’s Office two years ago, I wasn’t sure there would be enough time to learn from a younger generation. That concern was misplaced. We found the time and a rhythm. For the fearless under-35 crew in the Mayor’s Office — you’ve shown that hard work and kindness never go out of style. You turn every challenge into a blank space for new ideas. Even with all the bright lights on the Mayor’s Office, you are never blinded. Getting to know you all has been one of the best parts of the last two years.

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My years in city government have been a privilege. Thanks to everyone who has been a part of it. I am looking forward to seeing what’s next.