Metropolitan Council - Regular Meeting

committee placards.

And other colleagues take your seat as well.

We are starting our Department budget hearings today, we are starting with the Mayor's Office. We already have our presenters up at the front. I will allow them to do their presentation. After their presentation is completed, I will open it up to questions from our Vice Chair, Council Members Spain, and then open it up to the body prioritizing Budget and Finance Committee members first. Turn on your mics. All right, you have the floor. If you could introduce yourself and then you could proceed with your presentation.

Thank you, Chair Toombs. And good afternoon, Chair Toombs, members of the Budget and Finance Committee, and esteemed members of the Metro Council. My name is Masami Tyson. I'm the Chief of Staff to Mayor O'Connell. And it is my pleasure to present an overview of the Mayor's budget, Mayor's recommended fiscal year 2027 budget for the Mayor's Office. Joining me here today is Sabrina Sussman. She's the Chief Program Officer for Choose How You Move. As this office did last year, first I will walk through the Mayor's Office budget and then turn things over to Sabrina to discuss the Choose How You Move budget for FY2027. Now, in addition to Sabrina, as you can see, there are several other members of the mayor's office staff here with me today, with whom I support Mayor O'Connell, so that we can together do the great work Nashvillians have entrusted us with in order to make the city we all love an even better place. I also want to say thank you to you and all members of the Metro Council for your service. We truly appreciate the many opportunities we have had to collaborate with you during this past year, and we look forward to our continued partnership. Finally, I would like to say a special thank you to Amanda Brown in the Department of Finance, who has supported us as we develop this year's budget. Now this year's budget for the Mayor's Office is a status quo budget. We did, however, absorb the 1.5% reduction, which in our case is just over $135,000. We have done this by tightening our expenses, primarily in staff development, training and travel. We also absorbed $226,000 for the Financial Empowerment Center, or FEC, due to an expiring grant. The mayor felt that it was critical to continue supporting the center since it offers no cost financial counseling to all Davidson County residents by partnering with the United Way of Nashville to help people move from a state of financial instability to a state of empowerment with new savings habits, higher credit scores, and lower debt burdens. Now since opening its doors in 2013, It is notable that the Nashville FEC has helped nearly 12,000 clients reduce their debt and increase their savings, therefore making true impacts in their lives. So in order to absorb these reductions, the mayor's office took considerable effort to identify efficiencies. While our team is working extremely hard, or should I say because we are working hard, we will be able to ensure that we retain the capacity to offer the same level of service and support that we do today. The Mayor's Office continues to support key efforts we've made to optimize and enhance the work on our shared priorities. And I would like to highlight several of these for you here today. First, the Office of Youth Safety led by Phyllis Hildreth is capping off its first full year of operations as a program. Phyllis has outlined a strategy for the team, added a data architect and analyst, and has been out in the community talking with youth and those who care about them. She's working to elevate discussions about safe third spaces. OIS has also brought those in our departments and in the community who are engaged in work with youth and youth safety together so that they can all put their heads together to move this important initiative forward. We also have the senior advisor for housing position added last budget year. This will soon work alongside our housing division in the Department of Planning to oversee coordination across departments and public and private sectors as we take on the considerable challenge of housing affordability in Nashville. The hiring process for this position is swiftly moving forward as we meet here today. Third, we're fortunate to have Brittany Irby in our Deputy Chief of Staff for Strategy position, where she's doing critical work to leverage data and relationships for problem solving and strategic project implementation that might not fit neatly into a single department or domain. And then we have Kendra Abkowitz, who many of you know and have worked with on sustainability and infrastructure policy and projects over the years. She has taken on a new role as the Deputy Chief of Operations for Infrastructure, Sustainability, and Resilience. In this role, she now provides a variety of support to both Kristen Wilson, our Chief of Operations and Performance, and Sabrina Sussman, our Chief Program Officer for Choose How You Move. in addition to the important work she's been doing for years. So these are just examples of the initiatives that our office has undertaken. Now given the financial forecast, the mayor's office did not submit any modifications or requests for which funding would not be available. As I've already mentioned, we did absorb a 1.5% budget cut The mayor felt this was more than appropriate at a time when so many Nashvillians are absorbing escalating costs due to current economic conditions. So we will do this for the mayor's office and for all departments across the board. With our reduction in responsible spending, among other things, we want to ensure that we do our part to enable the grocery tax reduction the mayor has proposed. Regarding this tax reduction, the mayor has said, quote, At a time when everything seems to cost more, it will cost a little less to feed your family in Nashville." This is meaningful and impactful work with a practical consequence for Nashvillians and we appreciate your advance, excuse me, we appreciate in advance the support of this council and look forward to your partnership in making sure that this comes to fruition. So with that, I'll now turn things over to Sabrina to walk through the Choose How You Move budget. And as the chair has already mentioned, once Sabrina completes her presentation, we will both be happy to take questions. Thank you.

Thanks Masami, thank you chair for having us today. Hi folks, very glad to be here for what is my first official budget hearing in this role. Really appreciate the time and interest. What I'm gonna walk you through is sort of a little different than what you'll see from some of the departments. You will both hear about the Choose How You Move team nestled within the mayor's office. And so that's why our presentations are together. And you will hear about the Choose How You Move operating budgets and investments across all of Metro Nashville. So I'll speak to any of those questions as well and have a presentation with numbers, happy to share if there are questions. But really to start, I wanna thank the Choose How You Move team in the mayor's office, a lot of whom are here or listening from afar who've worked really hard in just the first year of the program to really advance us, and you'll hear more about what we've been up to in the coming moments. But I also wanna just take a moment and recognize that Choose How You Move is really about a large, diverse group of implementing departments working together. The NDOT contingent in the back of the room is strong, given their hearing is up next, and they will wave. But it's not just NDOT, it is the WEGO team, the planning team, the team at ITS, the team at law, the team at the finance department and at MNPD, who really work together to really guide and move this program through implementation. A special thank you to the finance team for their help in preparing, including all across who is moving on to a new role at the planning department. We are sad to lose her, but excited for that. And thanks to Andrew Walzak and Amanda Deaton Moyer for being constant financial sources of wisdom to all of us. We'll go ahead and get started. And I wanna just take one moment and reflect a little bit on the first year. And what I want us to do is to reground ourselves with people. A lot of my team knows I spend a lot of time talking about a liability we have in transportation is that we often talk about systems. And sometimes in talking about systems we forget to talk about the humans behind those systems and so, as you think about the operating budget and the programs that are underway with choose how you move. I always stop to think about the stories that I have heard over the last almost 12 months. And this slide begins to tell you, you may have seen some of the coverage and the work we did telling the story of journey pass not to skip ahead. to the July-September category on the slide, but to skip ahead to that part on the slide, what you'll see is the launch of that program really had a dramatic change to lives, and basically overnight for a three-year period. And we're really proud to share today, you heard us a couple weeks ago share that we had hit 10,000 journey pass holders. Today, glad to share, we are nearly at 11,000 and we are over 1.6 million rides. And so as you hear about the work undergoing with Choose How You Move, I would ask us all to sort of reground ourselves in these stories. And there are stories of people that you see in front of you. There are stories of little girls who got their very first sidewalk that we can talk about, but that's perhaps sort of the theme that I'd use as we proceed. Obviously, it's been an exciting first year. And so folks know there was a fiscal year 25 supplemental that council worked through early last year. And then the fiscal year 26 budget is really what we're reflecting upon now. And through this process, really have learned a lot about what this looks like and how excited we all are to really begin to implement this work. And so you've seen a lot of you, we have talked about these, we've done, you know, quarterly visits with the committees. So you've seen a lot of these highlights. I would highlight that we on in November of 2025 got to do something really special, which is on the one year anniversary of the referendum passing, we got to cut our first ribbon. And that is a tremendous achievement that I'm really proud of this incredible team for getting us to that And in January, we welcomed brand new buses. And some of you have seen them out on the road as we have and excitedly take photos. I will say new bus smell is better than new car smell. So I invite you to experience that for yourself. And then this spring, as we've warmed up, we've warmed up our construction work. So visited and did our very first sidewalk, which is complete, initiated another two. We are unveiling a summer of sidewalks. So we'll be really thrilled to see those crop up around the county. In the coming months, we will also be announcing a selection for the Nolensville Pike All Access Corridor RFQ that had been posted. We're still in midst of that deliberation. And so no update yet. but know that that is really a thing that has been watched at the national level and has sparked a lot of interest from industry, both here in Nashville and industry interested in making their way to Nashville. And so we are excited for all that is to come. I will actually be back if you're interested for more for an update on January, January, June 2nd for a meeting of three committees together. So there's also, you'll get a more wholesome update from choose how you move then. Okay, digging in again, we have done sort of two tranches of capital infusion. So if you have questions on capital, the improvements to date and the investments to date are on this map are also available online. We'll focus our time today, obviously on the operating budget, but again, happy to answer capital questions, particularly again on June 2nd, if helpful. One thing I want to ground ourselves in before we dive into revenue, because the thing that is unique about my presentation is we bring with ourselves dedicated revenue, which is quite exciting, as you all know. The Choose How You Move program is governed by the IMPROVE Act, which was passed in 2017, frankly, as a part of a realization and an acceptance that our sandbox in Tennessee for transportation spending is quite limited. As a state that does not have income tax, and as one of only five states in the country that doesn't deficit spend on transportation, the funds available for utilization are quite small. And the Improve Act was really passed to sort of allow localities like Davidson County to say, we have a list of projects we need, and this is a revenue channel that's available to us. As you all know, the successful 2024 referendum is what produced the half cent. surcharge that enables the TIP or the improvement plan, it's important to sort of know that this revenue does come with constraints, right? So this is not unconstrained revenue, it's dedicated revenue that is intended to fulfill the obligations of the projects as outlined in the TIP. And so those 86 miles of sidewalk, decided. The 54 miles of all access corridor, already called out. Those traffic signals, we know where we're headed. that's an important sort of thing to govern our understanding of that revenue as we collect it, because we know where we'll be spending that. And obviously there's been some coverage of sort of the legal challenge and the success that we had in really saying that we're proud of the TIP and how we'll be proceeding with projects. Okay, so a revenue forecast for fiscal year 27 puts us at around 169. million dollars um that is somewhat in line with what we are seeing as far as projected 26 revenue which puts us at 165 this is a conservative growth assumption but as you've heard from director janine reed and every other person who's come before us conservative revenue models are an appropriate estimation for this time And so while we're expecting a little bit higher in 26 than perhaps originally forecasted, don't have signs for aggressive revenue assumptions at this time for 27. So to dig into expenditures, we're proposing a $69 million set of operating expenditures. That means that the other $99 million will be transferred to Choose How You Move capital project funds, which you'll obviously hear more about at another time. But this is the delicate balance between what do we retain for cash and then, of course, being able to pursue commercial paper versus actual operating expenses. Nearly 75% of the $69 million goes to WeGo, as intended by the Choose How You Move program, and we can dig into sort of those changes. What's important to sort of know is Is that today in the presentation what I will be mainly highlighting is the Delta or as we call them in Metro national lingo I have called modifications mods year-over-year So we won't dig back in necessarily to the full construct that was shared before but we'll look really at what those increases have been year-over-year Starting with we go again. It's a it's oh, you know nearing 52 million dollars or 75% approximately of of the expenditures. This includes 9.5 million that will go directly to service expansion. And so we've already had several rounds of service expansion. Folks know that the next one's coming July 5th, anticipated new ones in January of 2027. So these dollars is what's enabling all of those expansions. There is additional baseline services support, capital funding relief. This is for federal capital where we have been sort of using our capital dollars and swaying them into operating, kind of reclassing and allowing us to limit that practice, which is ideal. And then it also includes a nearly $4 million contribution to Wigo's operating reserve fund to maintain that best practice requirement of 30% of their operating budget. So that is a very important backbone and strength and value for Wigo. The Choose How You Move program within the mayor's office has a $5.8 million allocation. You'll see increases in personnel costs. This is as the implementation increases in velocity, as we shall call it, as our projects in the ground and headed towards construction increase, adding project managers and engagement director who will really set the course and the discourse of public engagement for all projects. increased and as expected program management support. And then some more administration and would like to call out that a significant portion of that the 75,000 is for a specialized recruiting for some of the roles that we know are a little more unique and often involve recruiting from outside of the region. Nashville DOT is 7.5% of the allocation. Again, largely an increase in personnel costs focused on the capital project implementation that end dot leads for us. Once again you'll see this recruiting this is at the theme of people, I had promised at the beginning, people are what's going to make this program happen. and supporting end dot through massive times of change and a massive increase in capital portfolio means we have to be aggressive in the way that we source talent. and working in partnership with them to make sure that we are taking that opportunity to take advantage of the excitement that there is in the transportation world for Nashville right now. MNPD's investment only is a very slight increase, obviously, to cover personnel and administrative costs. This is the 29 FTE, 26 of whom are sworn officers, the other three administrative positions that make up the Transit Safety Division. ITS slight increases in personnel for 1.5 new analysts to help as we proceed with our signal prioritization and deployment program. Finance, this is a technicality. We had originally last year included the finance manager role in the mayor's office is choose how you move office, made the change mid-year to shift that to the finance department. And so this appears as a modification, but is how we've been managing that personnel this year as well. and then no changes year over year for legal or planning who will keep their FTEs and personnel utilization as they are this year. There's a good summary here, happy to leave up again or share if helpful. But what you'll see is comparison numbers between 26, 27, what the incremental investment request is, and descriptions of what this money is being used for. And with that, I am happy to turn it back to the chair.

All right, thank you. Vice Chair Spain.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you both for being here. Just a couple of quick questions. For the Mayor's Office, you mentioned the Office of Youth Safety, if memory serves, which is always sketchy, but I think that was added in, at the time, Chair Porterfield's budget two years ago, and I want to say it was a million dollars for the Office of Youth Safety. Is that still their budget today? Okay.

Yes, Vice Chair, I believe it's $750,000 a year.

Okay, thank you. And for Choose How You Move, I was looking, we have MNPD coming before us a little bit later, and one of their modifications recognizes that 747.5 for the transit division, so that money flows directly from Choose How You Move to MNPD rather than going through WeGo?

Correct.

Okay, thank you.

Council Member Parker.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you all for being here. I've been thinking about a recommendation that the Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee made, I think maybe in their last annual report, and that was for a... I'll call it an advisor for active mobility in the mayor's office. And obviously with CHIME, we've got a lot of subject matter experts that are already on the team and are joining the team, and that's really awesome to see. And we have folks in the office who know a lot about that stuff already. But I think it would be helpful to have somebody outside of CHIME, because as I understand it, if we have a CHIME FTE, they're mostly focused on CHIME program stuff. But there's a lot of things outside of CHIME that involve a lot of different entities like the we just celebrated the completion of the. riverfront greenway by ascend with that last little piece getting built where it won't be closed during events, and you know if you go from riverfront park up to I forgot where rolling hill or wherever it is that that terminates. you know, you're going through from parks to, you know, the, the Ryman controlled property now to another Greenway segment to a privately owned public space to, to all of those things had to like line up for that to happen. And it took longer than anyone would have liked. I have sort of a, but it's phenomenal outcome. So I have a similar situation between that I think about a lot about like McFerrin Park and East Park where, I mean, you're moving from parks to NDOT to there's a couple of private improvements that are gonna happen. So anyway, I think there's probably a thousand of those around the city that different neighborhoods want to see coordinated and attended to. And I just think there's an opportunity for outside of CHIME in the mayor's office to potentially have like a senior advisor for active mobility that's kind of touching base with planning and and with all these different folks like we we sort of have that expertise on the east bank just because there's like a dedicated team and they're doing their greenway plan and stuff but outside of that i um i just think we could really benefit from having someone like that in the mayor's office or Am I correct in thinking that QIIME FTEs are pretty much limited to QIIME scope stuff? Or can you just explain to me a little bit how that works?

Yeah, absolutely. And maybe I'll take a first crack and then you can. It's such a good question. It's one that we spend a lot of time talking about. And I think there's actually, the good news is we agree. And there's a couple of different answers to how we're doing this one. One, and I think you'll hear about this from Interim Director Jones shortly, there has been a renewed collaboration and partnership between the Choose How You Move team and the NDOT team in the last several months, really trying to realign and ensure at the mayor's request that transportation project development, policy work, decision-making is really governed by the choose how you move team on behalf of Metro Nashville in partnership with NDOT. And so I think that shift has really allowed our team to dig in a little bit more and spend more time with the NDOT team, helping to guide and answer some of these questions. I think, you know, there, there is this rub between the, do you take one role and focus it on one thing, or do you make it an expectation that it's a part of how you look at every project? Um, I personally, um, really see the value in ensuring that everyone who's looking at projects has that checklist of all the specialty things so that you're not subjugating it to one person. It's my perspective that it's everyone on our team's job to support this work and have done it, I think, in really great ways, particularly in the last several months. The other asset that I would just talk a little bit about is Masami mentioned Kendra Abquitz's role as Deputy Chief of Operations with Infrastructure, Sustainability, and Resilience. One of the things that is such an asset, both to Choose How You Move and I know to the operations team, is Kendra's wide experience with parks, with sustainability, with the private sector, with the state, to really be able to be the place where a lot of these conversations are held. And so the uniqueness of her role being split between the operations team and the choose how you move team is what also helps to govern this interdepartmental planning and work. There's a bunch of examples of projects where she's sort of taken the lead in that case. Cause I do think you're right. Having sort of the mayor's office convened departments and some of that ambassadorship is a really important part of the work that we do. So, you know, what I'd say is based off of the FTE and the expertise that we're growing in the choose how you move office, really focused partnership with NDOT and then the juggernaut that is Kendra Abkowitz, particularly with park adjacent things. We're well covered, but understand the importance of this, particularly to that community.

And I'll just add that I agree with everything Sabrina said, and I agree, Council Member Parker, with that that kind of role would be such a dream. I think if resources, you know, our funding was unlimited, I would, as Chief of Staff, love to have a role like that, not just in the space you mentioned, but in so many other places, because obviously nothing that we... tackle here exists in a vacuum, right? Like, I mean, we talk about affordability, and a lot of people think about dollars and grocery tax and all that is very important in that space, as well as housing, but also transportation. I mean, Choose How You Move is exactly that. We are looking at affordability in the transit space. So to have someone dedicated to thinking along those lines and to make sure that we're taking in a holistic approach in any of our programs, And then to be able to liaise with departments that do the actual work and implement some of our initiatives is such a great idea. And obviously, needless to say, with the mayor being a bike enthusiast, I am sure that he would agree with your view that that space that you just mentioned would be one where that would be very, very effective. But again, as Sabrina has already mentioned, I think we are taking that approach in the mayor's office. And I think with the partnership with our departments, we are able to do a lot of that already. But again, that's a great reminder for us to really approach our projects and our initiatives in that manner.

Thank you, thank you much.

Thank you, Chair. And thank you both for being here and for the work that you do. I'm very impressed and I'm happy with the Journey Past program too. It's doing a lot of good work. And I had the pleasure of riding one of the new purple limousine not too long ago. So that's good. I have two questions. One, is on the modifications that is included in the budget, all the recommended modifications, the changes. And the one that jumps right out at me is the staffing and expenses for Choose How You Move. Right here it has 2,152,004 FTEs. And so that's that. So is there a breakdown of how much of that is actually salary and how much of it is other expenses? Ms. French?

I'm gonna turn to our finance colleagues.

You could introduce yourself if you have the floor. Sure. Andrew Walzak, finance manager, choose how you move. I would say about 40% of that is likely for fringe benefits, which includes medical insurance, life, health, dental, that's pension contribution, that sort of thing, and about 60% wages.

Thank you. So all of it is staffing expenses. There's no other expenses. So it's all, salaries and benefits, the two million for six employees.

Anything related directly to those FTEs is gonna be direct personnel costs.

So are you looking at the two million under summary here? I just wanna make sure.

Yeah, it might be the same one because I thought we have a benefit somewhere. I'm looking at the budget book. It's 2,052,600. I'm 107. There are two versions of the, I don't know. Online. I mean, I can't. While they're looking, I can ask my second question. That's just, I thought maybe there were other non-employee related, but if that's all employee, I just, can you provide a breakdown for that?

Yeah, we can certainly provide a breakdown on that. The six FTE number is actually, so we included wages this year for our intern program, which is listed as an FTE in the budget book, though in fact it's not actual full-time position, it's part-time intern wages. And we do have a flex position that was budgeted this year as well for evolving program need. So that is why, that was carried forward from last year as that position turned into one of our project managers that was hired.

I think that we need to take another cut at these numbers. I can assure you, I can assure you that that, When you add up the salaries, you do not get to $2 million. So why don't we take another run at these numbers, and we will come back to you, Council Member.

I will appreciate that, because if you are now telling me they're interns, interns shouldn't even make that eye.

Correct. What an internship that would be. Yeah. We will come back to you with some numbers.

Okay. All right. I appreciate that. And this other question that I have is also from your budget summaries. From your question, this is a very easy one. And I'm grateful to the mayor for allowing your salary savings from FY26 to pass on to the school, to be able to help with the school start time changes. I think that's very great. My question is, and we haven't had our conversation with MNPS yet. Is this a one-time thing on their side? And if it's not one time, do we know how the 630s will be funded going forward?

Yes, great question. That we believe will be a one time expense. And the reason is that as we engage in our discussions regarding changing school start times, the mayor was very careful to make sure that those changes would be based on science. as well as discussions with the communities and what would be best for MNPS students and families. And so a outside consulting firm was engaged and that was the expenditure that I think it was $630,000 was allocated to.

Thank you. Council Member Nash.

Thank you, Madam Chairman. In your presentation, I noted the Nolensville Pike all-access corridor. Can you describe what an all-access corridor looks like?

Absolutely, I'd be happy to. So all-access corridors, in the Choose How You Move tip, we identified the 10 corridors across Davidson County that needed the greatest investment. The corridors that move the most number of people, the corridors that frankly are a bit of the heartbeat of our community. The goal for each of those corridors is to holistically address each of the four S's. So sidewalks, signals, service, and safety. And so making sure, frankly, in some cases that you're adding those things in for the first time, improving them to best practice, and really focusing on high capacity transit. And so for Nolensville, who is one of our first corridors that we're moving forward on, that includes a pretty holistic study on what we need to make that corridor work best and support high capacity transit moving through. We know it is the second highest utilized corridor in the area. And so really being able to focus on addressing a holistic investment in all of the transportation modalities down that corridor.

Thank you. Thank you.

Council Member Gamble.

Thank you, Chair. Thank you both for being here. My questions are more on the line of the new, well, I guess maybe clarification first. Maybe these positions aren't new. The Workforce Development FTE and the Crime Prevention FTE, it looks like in your summary, that these positions were previously funded by ARPA funds and other funds. So are these, is this continuation of those one positions or are you adding additional positions? And if you could talk a little bit about the work that those two departments or positions will be doing moving forward with workforce development and the crime prevention.

Thank you for that question, Council Member. So first on the workforce development, as you mentioned, we requested those positions last year, and it was filled this past fiscal year. and works with the Office of Economic and Community Development because as you know, workforce is a very important element of making sure that our city is well positioned to fill the great jobs that the companies and other institutions are creating. And so that is a position that, I'm gonna pivot a little bit because we had a little bit of a, restructuring, if you will, in our office. You mentioned ARPA. There was another team in our office that still exists today and is ARPA-funded through June, and that was the Advancement Team, or I should say that is the Advancement Team. We had a member of the Advancement Team depart for personal reasons, and so that team initially had funding for three full-time positions, and with the departure of the director, The manager on that team decided that given his skill sets and his past experiences, wanted to transition into that workforce development position. So that position has been filled by that member of our team. And then on the violence prevention and crime reduction, or maybe it's violence reduction, crime prevention, I always get confused, I'm sorry. That position also, as you pointed out, was requested. of this body and was granted to us. And Stephanie Bradley has joined our team in the last couple months and has assumed that position. That position, it works very closely with Phyllis Hildreth, whom I mentioned previously, to help, I mean, it is, as the title suggests, It is to, again, do an analysis, first of all, of where those crimes are, where the prevention methods could be, and talk with community members and work together with Phyllis in the youth space to ensure that Nashvillians are safe and are able to be protected mostly from crime.

Thank you for that. That was my second question and you answered it. I wondered if this was associated with the Office of Youth Safety, so that crime provision position goes with that particular office. Absolutely, yes. Great, thank you.

Council Member Allen. Thank you, Madam Chair. One for the Mayor's Office and then one for Choose How You Move. There was the mention that the Financial Empowerment Center was formally grant funded. Is that something we can reapply for grants and maybe we get that and that supplements our budget in the long run, or is that money that we'll never be able to access through a grant possibility?

So I am not sure of the answer to whether the same grant can be applied for and utilized, Councilmember, but I am sure with our Office of Advancement that I just mentioned, who are always looking for opportunities for grant money, I would assume is something that we can always look for, but fortunately with our salary savings, we were able to fund that this year.

I'm glad we're hanging on to it. That's a great program. And then I had a similar program to Council Member Suarez, and maybe it got answered there on the side. On the page where we show the budget changes and it mentions the six FTE for the two million, I've been lining these things up with the requests that didn't get made, and it looked like the request was for a million and 44,000 for those 6.06 positions, is that? Or am I just adding to the confusion?

Yes, if you'll give us a moment, if you'll give us a day, we'll review it and get you that right number. I will say review the financials, the financials are correct, it's that page.

Gotcha, yeah, that thing that we got. Okay, so that makes more sense than with six positions and a few interns, okay. That answers that question. We will get the record straight.

All right, I don't see any other hands. I want to go back to the Director of Crime Prevention to kind of piggyback on Council Member Gamble's question. So I know there's a position within health that kind of manages all of the different grants that health has issued out for folks that work with violence prevention. Is there, I'm trying to understand how this person is different from that person. Is there some interaction with health to see what work they're doing? And then does this person also work with MMPD to identify issues?

Yes, I cannot speak on the details of the positions that are in health. but I can certainly attest to the fact that, as has been mentioned already, the Mayor's Office in general has undergone great efforts to make sure that we coordinate with departments and other programs that are similarly situated and could really compound upon the effectiveness of the totality of those efforts. So I know that, for example, Stephanie Bradley, who is the director of that office, facilitates interagency coordination with a focus on efficiency. So I would imagine that that kind of work is being had. I would be happy to supplement this answer by talking to Stephanie. I also would like to, with your permission, ask if Brittany Irby would like to add to that answer if she is in the chamber.

The mic is on. Ms. Irby, if you could introduce yourself again and you have the floor. Absolutely.

Good afternoon, Madam Chair. Brittany Irby, Deputy Chief of Staff for Mayor Freddie O'Connell. So specifically speaking to your question, you are spot on. The mayor felt like we definitely needed a focus for preventative efforts for crime. And this is exactly, it came from conversations within this chamber, within the community, to work with public health. Dr. Areola was very much so involved in the actual hiring process of this role. Stephanie will play a key piece in communicating with MNPD to see how we can offset and get ahead of some trends happening within communities. And so you and everyone else, this is exactly what this role will do. And it is such a great parallel to Phyllis's role with the Office of Youth Safety because those roles have to be hand in hand with each other to make sure we are covering Nashvillians as a whole. Does that answer your question? It does.

Okay. I appreciate that. Thank you. I may think of something else, but I appreciate that for now. I will be here. And I do have a question that is hot off the presses and you may have answered it in part already, but I do wanna go ahead and ask it. And it is regarding the Office of Youth Safety and the fiscal year 26 funding that that office received, was all of that funding utilized?

I will take a stab at that and then I might ask Ms. Irby to come and supplement my answer I believe that it, so Phyllis has submitted a spending plan, if you will, to the mayor and to me, and I believe the number was up about $600,000, which is planned for spending for this fiscal year.

So fiscal year 27 is 600,000.

No, sorry for this, this current year. And then for 27, I believe it was around the same number, but we are. what we have been doing is because it is a new office and because we want to be responsible with our spending, she and I and Brittany and the mayor have had regular huddles and to see what programs are effective and what else we need to supplement as we undertake different initiatives. So I imagine that we will add to the list of sort of the, I mean, it's kind of like these dream programs. And we wanna take a stab at a time and whether it's youth summer programs or things to supplement, places that close, for example, the Green Hills Library is closed right now. And so for the youth in that neighborhood, Phyllis had come up with some really great ideas, creative ways in which we make sure that these youth have safe spaces. she formed a partnership with the Green Hills YMCA and there were expenditures there. So as the needs arise, there will be more programs that she will engage in. And so for now, as we look at FY27, I do believe I saw a number around $600,000 that she has already sort of allocated. But again, I would imagine that as the year goes on and as more needs come up and as the program becomes bigger and as she partners with Stephanie, for example, the remainder of the budget I am sure will be well spent. Thank you for that.

Are there any addition? Oh, Councilwoman Allen. Thank you. I thought of one question that I wrote down in the wrong place. I didn't see it. And this may be an administrative cost, which may be different from the office of the mayor. But at one point we had money for the entertainment commission or committee, whatever it's called. And a director there that I saw is not, the same space has a zero in it this year, which may just mean it's been moved. somewhere else. Does that come underneath the Office of the Mayor, and do you know if that position is still funded this year?

Yes, Councilmember Allen, we had some very difficult conversations regarding the budget overall, as it has been discussed already many times by Director Reed and others. Our budget is tight, and so there are some programs for which we wanted to fund, which we wanted to fund, but were unable to, and that was one of them.

Any additional questions? Well, thank you, Ms. Tyson and Ms. Sussman.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you.

We will move on to our NDOT presentation. So if NDOT folks want to come on up.

This has been a service of the Metro Nashville Network. If you would like to see this presentation again or for more information on this and other programs, visit nashville.gov.