Metropolitan Council - Regular Meeting

Hopefully you all saw the update from me sent out by the council office earlier today. Over the next couple of days, we are going to dig into the individual wishlist items and really talk about the nuts and bolts. In prior years, I know council members doing their due diligence have had conversations with department heads and other individuals with nonprofits. Sometimes that information doesn't carry to the larger body. So as you see, the room is packed because I have invited some department heads or department representatives as well as representatives of some of these nonprofit groups that folks have put on their wish list. So there'll be folks here today as well as folks here tomorrow so that we can have those conversations in the open and that everybody can be on the same page and we can understand what the wish list item is, what the actual cost is, and if the department can take it on and how they plan to do that. so that we don't allocate funds and those funds are just sitting doing nothing when they could have gone to something else. So we will start with Council Member Ewing, who a few of her items got left off yesterday. So she is going to go through a few of her wishlist items. I appreciate the quickly. So I'll turn it over to you, Council Member Ewing. Thank you, Chair.

Okay, first, oh, I just have to preface all of this by saying that, as I said yesterday, I do understand that judgments and losses cannot bear the full responsibility and brunt of things I want to shift and add. So with that said, and knowing that I will, have a full robust discussion about where this money will come from. Here I go. Under the fire department, I would like to, as others, add a position to the REACH program for the downtown zone Thursday through Sunday. I think this is a very important addition. Anything we can do to increase the mental health care that we provide on a daily basis is good. 75,000. from judgments and losses. Okay, next. Sorry, going quickly, thank you. Page eight. under Metro Public Schools. Again, this is repetitive. I also want to add 580,000 in for the composting to expand environmental and sustainable education programming, a position for a sustainability officer, 580,000. I am going to try and get that from MNPS operating. Next. Nashville Office of Entertainment, again, repetitive as with others, looking for funding for an executive director for the entertainment commission. I think that this is important to finally fund this so that we can get this underway and let the new executive director then get a staff member and get moving. 300,000 judgment and losses. Okay. Next up, Office of Family Safety. I would like to help continue the success of Red Frogs, which is completely volunteer-based. They need a consistent source of funding. So 250,000 from judgments and losses. Okay, yes. Apparently I'm a one-trick pony. Okay, next is Parks. Oh, sorry, planning. I would like to add $500,000 to the existing $7 million set aside for affordable housing to help boost the administrative support, staff positions, et cetera, that are needed in order to make that $7 million really go as far as it needs to. The funding, I am hoping, can come from Planning Commission. Let's see, two under the police department. I would like to add back in 150,000 for vehicle retention and maintenance to complete the budgeting needed for appropriate fleet maintenance, because it doesn't do much to have police without vehicles to carry them places. Secondly, secondary employment unit, I wanna add back in the 279,000 that will allow the MMPD to scale infrastructure to meet increasing demand for secondary employment services. And again, those are two are from judgments and losses. And I think that that is it. Thank you, Chair.

You're welcome, council member. And was there anyone else whose items were left off yesterday? Councilwoman Allen.

I spoke about him yesterday, but I'm still not seeing two of them on the list. So I may just add my name to the list. Or I'll check with Maria. Which two of those? The $350,000 for SOAR under health? Is it under health or somewhere else? Okay, haven't gotten to that one yet. Okay, great. So that one's there. And then the other one I had a question about. That may be the only one. Then the 580,000 for the compost program under MNPS. I don't see that one. Maybe I'm looking at an older list. Okay, I appreciate that. That's all.

All right, colleagues, just to go over the departments and organizations that are here today, and we will discuss the wish list items that are related to those departments and organizations. So we have FIRE, we have Health Department, National General Hospital, HRC will not be here today, they'll be here tomorrow. MNPS, do we have a representative from Juvenile Court? Okay, I see a hand. Do we have a representative from Metro Action Commission? Okay, I see a hand, thank you. NDOT, Planning Department, do we have a representative from CASA? I see a hand, great. Stand Up Nashville, People's Budget, I see y'all. And then Pet Community Center will be here, well hopefully tomorrow, they won't be, oh no, there's someone, oh fantastic, all right. All right, so we will go back to, there's a handout that says funding requests by appropriation. And I'm gonna go through that list by the departments and organizations that are present today. I'm gonna skip over the Barnes Fund and lump that all with... Does that get along with planning? Or is that a separate thing?

It's a separate budget line.

Okay. Discuss it with planning. Okay, all right. So I want to start with CASA. So the CASA person, if you could just, I guess that either end of the table back there, feel free to join us. And...

I said it again.

And press the right button to turn the mic on. But the request is for 75,000. I know I've sat in on a presentation for where that 75,000 comes from. But if you could just give an overview of the 75,000, what it would be used for and what's the impact. And then we'll get into a larger discussion as a committee.

Certainly. Thank you all for having me here today and for consideration. Last year, we were funded $75,000 to support our program. And for those who don't or aren't familiar with CASA, it stands for Court Appointed Special Advocates. And we are positioned as an independent nonprofit to provide advocacy services by way of community volunteers. to children and families that are in the foster care system. We provide this service 100% free to juvenile courts and to the children and families that we serve. Um, our volunteers, uh, collect information in fact, and they report directly back to judge on what's actually going on. We don't investigate allegations of abuse, um, but we're there to represent best interest of the child. Um, in any given year, there's about 700 youth in foster care in Davidson County alone. Last year we were able to serve 300 of those youth, um, with the funding that, um, we were able to, um, get last year. We, put that towards directly towards the program and serving our children we have paid staff that help supervise these volunteers and they have a caseload of upwards to 30 or 45 volunteers in cases our volunteers come from all walks of life so we have our dedicated staff persons to be there with them in court provide guidance and everything like that with the investment of the 75 000 last year we were able to train 30 new volunteers we keep on average about 120 to 150 volunteer advocates a year. We were able to close 77 cases that impacted, or I'm sorry, 41 cases that impacted 77 children. And as the end of March, we were serving 275 children. So we're on par to exceed the 300 number that we served last year.

Now I had, and I need some clarification from, um, our council director. Cause my understanding is that last year CASA was funded, or you probably can answer, excuse me. Uh, which department are you funded through? Is it office of family safety or juvenile court? We ultimately ended up at office of family safety. Okay. And do you know why that was? Was it just a better fit for the program? Because you're servicing juvenile court.

Correct. I wasn't exactly sure. I do know that the Office of Family Safety works with other nonprofits that serve children who have experienced abuse and neglect. So we had just assumed that that's why we got Clump there. They've been fantastic to work with. But we are primarily serving children juvenile court.

Okay. And that's why I invited the juvenile court representative because the service you provide is for juvenile court. And so the question was whether juvenile court could take on that, those funds to allocate them to CASA. And there's also, um, for the women's caucus, they have the funds being allocated to juvenile court. Um, So we may not need you juvenile court. In this instance, anyway, we do need juvenile court, but in this instance. But any questions from colleagues around the CASA allocation? It's the same as last year, 75,000. It allows you to train additional volunteers. Okay, all right, well, thank you so much. All right, next up is the eviction right to counsel. And so I have this being the funds being allocated to the planning department. So if I can get a planning department person up here. And then I know the program is administered through legal aid. Is that correct?

We have two separate contracts. So one contract is administered through legal aid, and the second contract is administered through legal aid. Okay. Am I, can everyone hear me now? So we have two contracts, one administered by legal aid and one administered by the Nashville Hispanic Bar Association, which is part of why we have so many people here today.

Okay. And so what we're needing today, so there are several wishlist request around eviction right to counsel. So we know in the mayor's proposed budget, there's $2.4 million allocated to the planning department to be, um, granted to, to this program. So we have wishlist items for a million dollars. We have one is for 6 million. One is for 2.4 million, 6.6 million. Um, 5 million, 6.5. So there's a lot of interest in increasing the funding. So can you speak to what the actual need is for the eviction right to counsel?

Absolutely. And we have, if council members are interested, we have a sort of a summary that we can, pass around, do a take one and pass it. Actually, can I keep one so I don't forget all of the numbers the moment I hand away the piece of paper? Thank you so much. So these are, this is a quick summary provided to us by an independent outside analyst company, Stout, where she is Ross. We contracted to them to get an outside perspective on what we have accomplished. And these are the accomplishments of our coalition or a quick summary of the accomplishments of our coalition during calendar year 2025. There is more than this. And if you scan the QR code, you can review a little bit in more detail of what all we accomplished. But the short version is the eviction right to counsel program aims to help tenants who are facing or at risk of eviction. So the core of the program operated by Legal Aid and Hispanic Bar, attorneys who represent low and middle income Nashvillians who are facing eviction in court. So we are in court. I was in court this morning. We are in court most every day. We operate a help desk in the courthouse for tenants who are facing eviction. And we also have a coalition of other nonprofit organizations we work with. who help with other aspects of the intervention around the eviction process. So that includes the Nashville Conflict Resolution Center. They do mediation, because we want to envision a universe where there are alternatives to the eviction court process that are cheaper, faster, more humane, kinder to tenants and to landlords, as well as Rooftop Nashville, which is a rental assistance organization, and AMAC, the American Muslim Advisory Council, who helps us with language access and outreach. around Davidson County. So we have been in operation since 2022 with a pretty much that entire time, basically a steady funding level of about 2.4 million slight tweaks in there over the years. And we are hopeful many of you may have gotten emails from some of our coalition members asking for an increase to at least 3 million. And if it's possible to 4.5 million, which we think represent scalable increases that are practical, that we really can absorb in a single year and show similar results to what we have shown with 2.4 million. 3 million would just allow us to sort of right-size some of the investments in our partner members of the coalition. When we were first getting started, those coalition partners, AMAC, NCRC, and Rooftop, we weren't entirely certain how everybody was going to work together and what the different pieces would be. So they got 50,000, 100,000 without really knowing. And now we know what it takes for them to participate in the coalition. The 3 million would just allow us to sort of right-size that because some of our partners right now are kind of losing money participating in our coalition. 4.5 million is a real investment in growing toward a fully implemented right to counsel program. Apologies. I'm a lawyer. I talk a lot.

So am I. I love it. So the 4.5 million at 4.5 million, you could reasonably scale. You could use all of that funding in a single fiscal year.

Yes, ma'am. We're very confident. We have just as one quick data point to show how quickly we could scale. Just in the month of April, there were about 51 people who contacted legal aid, went through our intake process and wanted us to represent them in court. and we didn't have enough attorneys to say yes. So we gave them advice, which is great. We love giving advice. It is helpful to people, but what they really wanted was for us to stand with them in court. That's 51 people just in the month of April. So give us the money to hire attorneys. We can represent those people immediately. 4.5 also lets us invest in building some other exciting and different new ways of reaching Nashvillians. But the need is right there. We are ready to serve them as soon as we can afford to hire a couple more lawyers.

And just looking at you, Angie, just to make sure this is something, if these funds were given to the planning department, this is something you all are on board with assisting with the funding for ERC.

Absolutely. This is one of the programs listed in the unified housing strategy that is needed in our community. We are excited about the eviction right to council moving into our division so that we can work alongside the partners in evaluating where the evictions are happening and how we can use that information to address policy, especially in programs we fund. The concern would be funding the addition through other housing programs, such as the Barnes Fund, because that's pulling from what we need to put in the pipeline that addresses the problem, where this is important to addressing a symptom of the problem. So these work in tandem in addressing our housing crisis holistically.

Colleagues, any questions regarding ERC? Councilwoman Ewing?

It's more a request for a reminder to give you an opportunity to talk about in the end how much we're saving by funding this type of program versus going in after the fact once people are already out on the street.

Thank you so much. I couldn't ask for a better question. This is summarized on this sheet. So for 2025, estimated return on investment was $4.18 for every dollar spent in this program. That split about, it's like 60-40 between public fiscal impact, so that's avoided costs to the city in terms of additional healthcare costs, lost funding when people leave Nashville, criminal justice related costs and costs in responding with the social safety net, as well as direct client benefits. These are people who don't lose their jobs, don't lose their schooling for their children, don't lose their subsidies, their subsidized housing. I always like to say, blessed in Nashville to live with a really wonderful and generous community who will really try to reach out and help folks when they have sort of fallen off the edge of that cliff. And it can cost a lot of money to help somebody climb all the way back up to stability. How much cheaper is it to reach out a hand right before they fall? And that's what we try to do. And we do not want this to be, uh, pillaging from other affordable housing programs. There are so many wonderful and needed programs. This one is on the scale of housing programs, relatively cheap and effective, um, and is helpful for addressing this one piece for the folks who, um, where the housing where they are currently live is the housing that's affordable for them. Thank you very much.

Just leave it up here. Oh, Council Member Webb. Oh, and I see Council Member Evans.

Can you tell me a little bit about the 58% of the clients with defective conditions in their home wanting to move? Is that landlords? What is that? When you say their home, I'm assuming it's not their home. Their rental housing, yes.

So we try very hard to collect data when we're doing intakes, when we're speaking to our clients, and we always ask them, do you have problems? Are there repairs problems in your homes? Which is unfortunately common. And we ask, do you want to stay? Do you want to go? What's your goal?

And what happens in that process if they're inhabitable or what is the process after you go in there and somebody says you know i've got all this mold on the ceiling does codes come in in there at that point and shut that facility down the house i'm just trying to think where the missing block is here

Yeah, so with conditions issues, sort of for what this body can do, codes is wonderful. We really appreciate them. They do so much and they respond really quickly to tenant complaints and send real human beings out for tenants to see, which is hugely valuable. And for many landlords, just getting that letter from codes does encourage compliance and improvement. That's good to hear. tenants who are dealing with effective conditions in their homes, it's really hard. One of the questions we often ask folks is, well, do you wanna stay? And a lot of people tell us yes, but only because I don't have anywhere else to go, which is where the Barnes Fund and that kind of program comes into place because there are plenty of people who tell us, Yeah, I'll stay. It's terrible. They spent 30 minutes on the phone telling me how awful every single thing about this experience is. And I asked, do you want to move? And they say, no, I don't have anywhere to go. And it's close to my kids' school and close to my job. We are trying, you can see here, one of the statistics is avoiding disruptive displacement. This 93% of our clients have avoided disruptive displacement. This is where when you get evicted, everything falls apart and you experience a period of homelessness, perhaps losing your job. having to stay temporarily with family, kids who aren't able to go to school, all of those problems. When we're able to get involved, we can usually organize what's called a soft landing. We can help them negotiate with their landlord for what is a solution that will give this tenant enough time if they wanna go, enough time to move out and find another place. Can we still make the landlord whole? Our goal is not. to stick it to all of the landlords and make sure that no landlords ever get any funding ever again. That's why there's rental assistance in our coalition because sometimes that can help. So what can we do to organize a safe transition? Thank you.

Council Member Evans. Thank you, Chair. I wanted to, you just touched on it just a little bit, on the idea of families with children that are going through the system. And there's been an increase in families experiencing homelessness in Davidson County, and that's been a topic of the Homelessness Planning Council. And so do you all get, once you get a judgment or disposition of a case, do you end up tracking anything where it's connecting, like here is the impact, like if you're not able to help with somebody, if they end up with a default judgment or any of those details, or if you help somebody and maybe the landlord is not as agreeable and the person is still gonna end up with their children being homeless, does that, I'm looking for, is there a connection that then ends up informing conversations around MNPS and families like with the HERO program and those kinds of things?

Um, yes, it's an excellent question.

We'll give it to Anne.

I think we'd really like to collect that robust data set, but we don't have the internal capacity to do it. Frankly. Um, I think an additional investment in ERTC could potentially support something like a more robust data collection or, To answer your question, tenant suits against landlords who aren't following the law, right? So not only can they get their problems fixed, they can get some justice financially. With additional investments into ERTC, we would love to expand into these areas, but as it is at both probably the three and the 4.5 funding levels, we are not able to do that.

There is one member of our coalition who I will say who is able to track that data, Rooftop Nashville. They do follow-ups after, I believe it's six months and one year. And I don't have the data off the top of my head. Do any of you remember the percentage who are still housed?

No, it's pretty good.

It's relatively high.

But they don't track the folks they can't help. Same with us. We do follow-up data for our clients, but not the folks that we couldn't help.

On the folks that we couldn't help to, I'll chime in here. In the course of just this year, we were able to help at Legal Aid plus Hispanic Bar about a thousand people or so. At just Legal Aid though, we had to reject about 1500 people. Those are folks that called in that we couldn't do three follow-up calls with. We do two, but couldn't do that third one. Or it's folks that we had to reject simply because we didn't have attorney capacity to take those cases. On those latter folks, those are folks that have gone all the way through the intake process, talked to an intake specialist, gotten some information from us and still at that point we don't have the attorney capacity. So in that terms of people we could help, there's, you know, a thousand plus people every single year we have to turn away.

I do have a remote question. Can you, can you elaborate about the cases where you can prevent eviction versus keeping the eviction off of their credit record?

Uh, yes. Um, but I will attempt to do it without, uh, giving everyone a deep dive into the law around credit and reporting and evictions. Um, in any given case, our first question is what is our client's goal? Um, that is our number one thing. And we have, we have data around our success rate in achieving our client's goals, which has been consistently 90% off and higher. of what is their goal. So some people come to us and their goal is to stay in their home. Some people they say their goal is to leave. They have these conditions issues and they want out. Some people are concerned about their credit report or what might follow them. So we have different legal tools that we are able to use depending on the facts of a particular case and a client's goals. we have the kinds of sort of the different, some of the different kinds of successes when, when an eviction case has already been filed and it comes to us, sometimes we are able to negotiate a dismissal, just a flat landlord's going to drop the case. We get those a lot, very, very frequently. And we're able to get the landlord to just say, we're going to drop this case. Often we're able to negotiate about the amount of money that is owed, which then is what usually triggers credit related issues. So we can negotiate, Hey, you say that the tenant owes $2,000. the tenant is claiming $3,000 in damages from repairs that have never happened. Can everybody walk away without reporting anything on someone's credit? Um, we're able sometimes to, uh, work with the clerk's office around the names of the cases were filed under there's not a right to, seal or expunge eviction cases in Tennessee, but sometimes we can work with opposing councils or the clerk's office to help mitigate the effects downstream. It depends a lot. We do take cases to trial and then sometimes the judge will say that we win and the landlord loses. So all those different ways we can sometimes reach positive results for clients.

Any additional, Council Member Gregg.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Often those that have a very specialized need,

don't know how to find that specialized help. You said with the 4.5, you would expand your outreach. What would that look like? I know you're at the courthouse at present, but what would that expanded reach look like?

Yep. So our court help desk is a really great example of meeting folks that have not heard of us before. They walk into their eviction court, boom, there we are. And that's awesome. We want to expand to do more listening sessions in specific communities and specific zip codes and specific neighborhoods where eviction rates are very high. We believe very strongly in a very forthright education campaign. If people know what their housing rights are, they can prevent evictions before they even get filed. That's both tenants and landlords. We're able to work with tenants primarily with additional funding. We can work with landlords also, help them and coach them on what their rights are, what their responsibilities are, and same with tenants. So that dedicated community outreach is very important to us. AMAC's a great coalition partner. They work really well in the Muslim community here in Nashville. And so being able to have more funding to reach other communities, other demographic areas, other neighborhoods is really where we expand. And that's, like I said, through listening sessions. We right now have a tenant webinar series in the works. So we're using technology, social media to have folks and meet them that way. So with that additional funding, it would not only be meeting folks in the communities where they are on the ground, but also on TikTok, on Instagram, where a lot of our clients are getting legal information. I couldn't tell you how many times someone has called in saying, well, ChatGPT said X, Y, and Z. And so being able to reach those folks with social media managers, folks that are on boots on the ground doing door knocking, just some really great examples of how we could expand that outreach to meet more people. Excellent.

And yes, we all have to be on social media.

If I might add, when it moves to the planning department, we'll be able to host information on it on the housing division web pages and another resource for the community.

Any other questions? All right. Well, thank you. You can stay. Ms. Hubbard, if you could, because there are several wishlist items related to the planning department. So we'll just dive right into those if those are okay.

That sounds great. May I ask Lisa Milligan to join me? Absolutely. Thank you. Absolutely.

And colleagues, if I am skipping over something that's related to the housing, I mean, to the planning department, let me know, because what I see, we've just done ERTC. I also, obviously, Barnes Fund, the social housing. There is a wishlist item from Councilmember Gamble. for the implementation and management of recommended programs and initiatives to address Nashville's housing needs, especially for persons experiencing housing insecurity. And that facilitates the creation and preservation of affordable and workforce housing. I don't know what specific program that is, but perhaps once we get to that item, we can figure that part out. Are there any other wishlist items that related to the planning department? Am I skipping over anything? I don't think so. I'm looking at funding requests by appropriation. So we will start with the Barnes Fund. There are several wishlist items related to the Barnes Fund, some given, some taken. But I'll ask you to just speak to, we all know what the Barnes Fund is, but just for the viewing audience, if you could speak to the Barnes Fund, the mayor's proposed allocation is 22 million. We know that the Unified Housing Strategy's recommendation is 30 million. So if you could speak to the impact of the proposed appropriation, the impact of potentially $30 million, and what is the overall impact in terms of housing units for the Barnes Fund?

Okay. Please remind me if I forget a question. Sure. First, for the viewing audience, the Barnes Fund receives its primary funding from, or all of its funding from the operating budget. And historically, or in the past few years, we've received appropriations for the American Rescue Plan Act. The $22 million is the largest appropriation from the general fund budget in the history of the Barnes Fund. It's been supplemented by the ARP funding to get it to that $30 million in the past few years. Let's see, our total appropriation since the fund was created is a little over $200 million. In the past four to five years, we've received about half of that. So it's really scaled over those years. Through the fund is grants to nonprofits or partnerships with nonprofits. They can partner with a for-profit as long as that nonprofit remains a 51% control in the deal, not necessarily in the dirt. Since then, we have put about 6,500, well, let me say this, a little over 5,000 units into the pipeline, both homeownership and rental. And then the balance of that is the preservation of owner-occupied housing. So we fund really three things, rental, new construction or rehab, home ownership, which is for sale, and owner occupied rehab. And we make these available through competitive funding rounds. And altogether that's funded or preserved 6,500 units total. So with the 22 million we expect, to fund between six to 700 homes with that funding. Around the 30 million, we get to around 800 homes. It really does depend. We're looking to prioritize deeper affordability at that 30% AMI or below or permanent supportive housing. So we tend to see a higher per unit investment when we target deeper, but that moves us. The needle more though on housing that's not gonna be created by any other tool or any market intervention. We have to have grants for those. Homeownership also tends to have a higher per unit investment because we don't have other tools in the country really. Like the low income housing tax credit allows us to scale rental. We don't have a comparable tool at the federal or state level to allow us to do homeownership at that same kind of rate. So as we look how the Barnes Fund, and I know I'm getting in, driving over into that $7 million loan program, but as we can drive higher production like low-income housing tax credits into that $7 million lane, we can free up more barns because right now it's trying to do everything to fund all of the affordable housing needs that we have. We can target it better for that deeply affordable or permanent supportive housing, homeownership, and the rehab space that really isn't conducive to a loan program.

Colleagues, any Barnes Fund questions? Council Member Porterfield.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Director, for being here and that explanation. There were some wish lists that showed a request to cut money from the Barnes Fund, which, for the record, I don't support, so that's not why I'm asking the question, but could you please speak to what cuts to the Barnes Fund would do and how that would impact the projects that y'all have currently and any projects in the pipeline or anything that may be coming forward?

Okay, thank you. So everything that we have appropriated has already been funded. So it wouldn't affect any existing project if whatever our fiscal year 27 budget would look like. The unified housing strategy calls for putting 2000 rental homes affordable at 60% or below into our pipeline every year for the next 10 years. That doesn't even count the rental. I mean, the home ownership that we need to do or the preservation we need to do through the owner occupied rehab. So every time we reduce the funding to the Barnes Fund, we're delaying putting projects into the pipeline and pushing back our ability to meet that goal. over 10 years, and then we are creating, or we're not addressing the problem and are compounding housing insecurity, which is what the Eviction Rights Council and those other programs are attempting to do, because we are still in a hot housing market, even though we have some cooling overall, we are still having an issue, and there are no market interventions at that deeply affordable, or even at 60% or below rate. Market just doesn't create that on its own. We have to have those interventions through the Barnes Fund or the loan program.

Council Member Coopin.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you for being here and all the great work you do to help affordability in our city. You mentioned that the loan or Barnes Fund can be used for for sale and for rent. What's the breakdown of how often is it being used for creation of for sale product versus for rent product?

We see about 60% on average over the history going toward rental, about 30% going toward home ownership and 10% to the owner occupied rehab.

And for the home ownership, how does that work structurally in the sense that is it deed restricted or how does that work for ownership?

So for home ownership and rental, there is a 30-year deed restriction. So the subsequent sale of an affordable home would need to be sold to a buyer at the at least 80% AMI. If a nonprofit proposed to target a lower AMI, it would need to be sold at that AMI level over to subsequent owners for the next 30 years.

Perfect.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

And Director Hubbard, has there been any or any consideration given to outside funding sources for the Barnes funds? I know right now, I believe Metro is 100% of the funding. Has there been any consideration of looking at outside private sources as well for funding?

Yes, from time to time we do get offers of donations. One of the things we're working on with the Unified Housing Leadership Council is a menu for, we have opportunities, underutilized opportunities with both corporate and philanthropic organizations to contribute to housing. all across our housing spectrum, all of the programs to create an investment menu for those opportunities, as well as the right vehicle to bring that from, so they can get their advantages for their contributions, how to bring that into Metro while they can also claim whatever advantages they want through that investment. And we are working on what that, both a strategy and those vehicles could look like, but we are, we're making a call to action for more philanthropic and corporate investment in barns all across all of our housing tools.

And you did mention the revolving loan fund. And since there are a couple of wishlist items that take money from the revolving loan fund, and I know there has been a concern whether that $7 million would actually be spent in fiscal year 27. So if you could speak to the revolving loan fund, please.

So I want to clarify being awarded versus spent because when you're building something new, it's going to take three to four years. So we can't expect to spend Barnes Fund in the year that it's awarded or the loan fund because that's just the nature of development. But we are certain we can get the seven million awarded in this coming fiscal year. And we believe that it'll perform as well or if not better as the Barnes Fund does when we move some of the high production like the low-income housing tax credits into the loan pool. Council Member Porterfield.

Thank you, Chair. Can you explain for the viewing audience how the revolving fund will work?

So we're currently building out that structure and all the parameters with our consultant, Forsyth Street. But it's not just intended to be another program that we do. It's intended to set the, I will call it a prequel for a larger evolving housing tool. And Janine is not here, so I'm not going to conjure up the words. But what it is intended to do is, one, it's a missing tool in our ecosystem. It is something we heard about in the development of the Unified Housing Strategy because really giving grants away to projects that can actually support debt is not an efficient way to use public funds. So that's one. So this is creating another tool. But instead of making it just another program, it is used to... move to that next level where we could create a subsidiary with a governance structure and a brand test the market before we introduce a larger more riskier tool and evolve it to like what a real housing kind of finance ecosystem looks like where there's you couple it with land and other mechanisms to Do the long-term affordability achieve the policy outcomes we've been talking about? Also, the loan allows Metro to have more of, let's see, a bigger bite in the deal than we might have with a grant.

Council Member Allen.

Thank you, Madam Chair. My understanding is that Forsyth worked really hard on the Catalyst Fund, creating that structure, but it took about two years. Is it possible they can start at that point and just build on it and make this happen quickly? Do you have targets and timelines?

The difference with the catalyst fund was we initiated that fund with a commitment to raise other capital before we launched it. And we wanted a credit facility on board to bring those banks. So it took about a year and a half to get a credit facility, which is First Horizon, to be our partner in it. So that's a different, that affected the timeline more than this. So now we're having the conversations on what the initial infrastructure build would look like, how that would structure, but also creating those parameters now so that we can be ready to launch the summer with a loan product, yes. Summer of 26. Summer of 26. We're not looking to, I mean, we've got to get the money awarded, right?

Right.

Okay, great. Thank you.

Council Member Spang.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Not to put you on the spot, but...

Okay.

Since we obviously have a pretty long list of ideas about how to spend money, and Council Member Ewing has already spent all of judgments and losses... Assuming that what we have in these three housing programs is what we have to work with, the 2.4 for eviction right to council, the 7 million for the revolving loan fund, and the 22 million for Barnes, is that the right breakdown of those three pots?

Well, I would ask for double. So you put me on the spot.

That's all we have.

I would certainly keep them at those levels.

Thank you.

Any additional questions related to the Revolving Loan Fund or Barnes? All right, seeing none, we're, oh, I'm sorry.

I didn't hear you. Council Member Nash. I'm sorry. We've also had a lot of discussion about the social housing and wonder where that is in planning's thought process.

Oh, that's next.

Oh.

Never mind. And I wanted to give the community groups, so we have representatives from Stand Up Nashville as well as the People's Budget Coalition, I wanted to give them a chance to speak first to give the community perspective on what social housing is and then bring in the folks who do housing for the city and see how we can possibly mesh the two.

Sounds great. Do you want us to step back and let them come up?

Just make some room. And if y'all could introduce yourselves and you have the floor.

I'm Cade. I'm an organizer at Stand Up Nashville. You all have seen me around council.

Hi, I'm Mary. I'm the organizing director at Stand Up Nashville.

I'm Andrew Cranks. I'm an organizational coordinator with the Nashville People's Budget Coalition.

All right, great. So I'll give the basic overview of what we're asking for. So basically as our groups have identified as all of y'all who ran for council and had to listen to your constituents have identified that housing is one of our major issues in the city. I think everyone's on board with that. I think the question we're at now is how do we attack that? and how do we meet that problem with the sort of ambition and imagination that it deserves. And so our approach for that in studying policy was really looking at in other cities, what has worked, like what has tangible results, what's not just like throwing stuff at the wall and hoping it sticks, what is like using our money well, to get the results in a housing market where people can stay, where we're actually having a large scale of affordable housing. We already have great tools on the books. The Barnes Fund is a fantastic tool that not a lot of other cities have. Love the Catalyst Fund, love everything that the planning department is doing. And we do believe that we have a good partner in both y'all's and the mayor's office that actually cares about solving this issue. What we want to do is add another tool to the toolkit. When we look at other cities in Europe, in Asia, in other places, even the U.S., now that have had better outcomes relative to other peer cities when it comes to housing affordability in the long term, we see that they have a large scale portion of their housing be dominated by, or not dominated, but has a lot of like what we call social housing, which is some people call decommodified housing. There's a lot of other terms for it. But basically what that is, is housing that is owned and operate owned and then managed by either a municipality, a group of tenants or residents themselves or a nonprofit. So that's like the very broad one. And the one specific thing we want to do is we are figuring out how do we leverage assets that the city has in a way that, you know, in a state that is fairly, you know, it's a hard environment to build affordable housing. How do we leverage what the city has to get these results? And what we came up with, was sort of this using bonds as a way of getting this housing. So I'll pass it to Andrew now.

Sure, so you all should have the one pager, which is a front and a back. I'm just gonna run through briefly, you can read this in detail later, but just to kind of hit the high level stuff around the key pillars of what we understand social housing to be. There's been some questions around like, Is what MDHA does already social housing? The answer is no, and we can talk about why. But just to run through this quickly, these are kind of the three ingredients that tell you whether or not this is a social housing program. Basically, as Cade mentioned, that it's either publicly or community owned, or there's majority equity ownership from the public entity or municipality. So this could be a municipality itself owning the housing, it could be a public development authority, or it could be a subsidiary, as Director Hubbard mentioned, or like a 501c3. Often public land is involved in this. You can also take over stalled private projects with this model. because there's different funding streams. And then the owning entity contracts with vetted developers and management companies. Revenue, importantly, revolves back in this notion of a revolving loan fund. It revolves back into producing more housing as opposed to just going into essentially private pockets of private developers who might still build affordable housing. but that return comes in and that really makes a big difference and makes great financial sense compared to other models. It also, public ownership ensures robust tenant protections because you can't really do that in a state like ours for privately owned housing, but if it's municipally owned or owned by a public authority or community organization, then that is possible. and it stays off the private market, which allows for that long-term affordability, even when other housing crises come and go. And then this all sets you up for being able to mandate permanent affordability in a way that you can't with other tools like LIHTC and other funding sources. Maryam may talk in a few minutes about some of what happens with LIHTC and the quality of housing and things like that. Do you wanna jump in and speak to that right now?

I also just want to, just a quick commentary. For those of you that feel like you're fiscal conservatives and words like social freak you out, I wanna say that this is sound financial strategy as well. It is the only financial strategy whereby you invest and get the return in terms of the building and also what you've invested. So while we completely agree that the $7 million revolving loan fund, and just to be clear, is intended to provide a loan to developers to finish their programs, maybe get deeper affordability because they're getting a little bit more cash in their capital stack. This is distinct from that. And again, we need all the tools in our toolbox or the backbone of our city and our thriving economy, our workers are literally slipping through our fingers and we're sending a message to them that actually Nashville's not a place to root yourself, it's a place to leave within two to three years because you can't afford it. So on top of that, I wanna just say, what's really key that Andrew and Kate have both mentioned is the permanent affordability and the C3 ownership that comes out of the subsidiary That's what Atlanta is doing. They were here just the other day at the chamber conference. They were lauded as kind of this model in the business community and also Chattanooga and again Montgomery County and elsewhere. So Chattanooga for instance, they charge an 8% and they plan to pay off their buildings in seven years. They get majority equity positions, so if I'm getting too financy, I apologize, but I want to speak to that because I want you to know that we're serious about this, and this is for a legacy for the city of Nashville. When we all leave, there will be beautiful, and that's the other important part, LIHTC affordable housing is a great option. We should continue doing that into the future. However, sometimes some of the requirements, for instance, the 30-year requirement at LIHTC makes it where you have to re-syndicate or sell that building to make it viable in any way. You're also really not making enough money off a LIHTC building to make it somewhere that anyone would choose to live. It's largely a place where people don't have choices end up living. We're talking about a product that has value, that is mixed income such that 70% actually pay a market rate, and I know that's hard to believe, but it is done across the country, and 30% pay a 50%, 80% AMI, And over time, because you have that 51% majority equity, you can get to those deeper affordability issues that I don't know if y'all know, that's what we hear about all the time, is someone makes $40,000 as a line cook or social worker or teacher and can't get into the AMI buildings because they still don't make enough to get in there. or they make slightly too much, but they can't afford that market rate. This would over time get us to that deeply affordable, and it gets to preventing some of the stuff that we talked about with ERTC. So I just want to say, all the things in the buffet, but it is important to put a little money in this and get this going, why? Because the Forsyth study that Director Hubbard mentioned is gonna be done in a couple months. Now if we don't fund a position or two in this piece, we are gonna go another year without starting on it. They have some great people that I think they're trying to hire right now and ideally those will also be champions because this was in the United Housing Strategy and we've talked to Director Hubbard and she totally is on board with all these concepts. But we just want to make sure that we're not waiting another year because we know time is ticking for our neighbors and we got to get this going. Now I will also just mention there are many ways to skin this cat. but we've asked for 500,000 because you can have a variety of staff to make this happen. A lot of it is legal fees when you're building buildings and you're putting things out there and you need someone on top that's a real driver of this. Sometimes they come from the private market, sometimes they've driven this in other cities. That's what they've done in Chattanooga. And so we're asking you to finally like, let's put our flag in the sand. Let's make a statement that we actually are gonna do something visionary, ambitious, but do it in a smart and incremental way that in 20, 30 years from now is making money for the city. Thank y'all.

One other thing I wanna add too, just about the budget that you have on the back of the sheet is that we reached out to some other cities, including Chattanooga, including Seattle and some other places to talk to them about what their operating budget is internally. And this is reflective of that as a first year So consultant fees are kind of high at the beginning, but it could be that permanent staff over time take the place of consultant services. But this is kind of an estimate for this. Also, I will say that multiple cities have told us that Having a director is essential, but also having an admin support person as well is essential because it just goes way slower if you don't have kind of at least two hands on deck plus the consultant services to help make it happen. There's more on the sheet if you want we can speak to. Do you want to speak to something about it real quick?

Very quickly going off what Andrew said, yeah, we feel like we need a driver at this point. The planning department is doing incredible work and we have been sort of the ones answering the questions that have gone from being broad, why is this important to being very technical. And we feel like for this to really go into like being an actual thing, we would like to provide extra support for the great work the planning department is doing. Someone who knows and who has done this before and can answer those really technical questions.

All right, thank you. And we will bring our planning folks back up. Yes, because we'll kind of go back and forth with questions. And so there are multiple council members put on their wishlist, the 500,000 for the staff. And I wanna turn it over to Council Member Porterfield for a moment, because she did something similar a similar structure last year with her fiscal year 26 budget with the Office of Youth Safety and how some community members work with Metro to kind of build that office up. And I think the point is for this staff member to kind of serve that same purpose within the planning department and to work with the community. So if you can talk about that co-governance model and then we'll turn it over. I'll look at you, Director Hubbard and Lucy in terms of, not Lucy, Lisa. In terms of how that could potentially work within the planning department. Council Member Porterfield.

Thank you, Chair. So historically, government has kind of operated in a way where elected officials feel as though, you know, people elected us, so we're going to make the decisions that we believe are in the best interest of our constituents. More recently, there has been a surge across the country of a model that's called co-governance. And co-governance is, in essence, democratizing knowledge. So as council members, we get a lot of information that our constituents will never know, they'll never see, they'll never have access to. So a big part of it is democratizing knowledge to make sure that our constituency has access to that information. It's also sharing power. So as an elected official, you sharing your power with community members and community members also sharing their power with you, giving you access to spaces that you may not have access to as an elected official and vice versa. So last year with the Office of Youth Safety, we were able to do a, actually two years ago, I think it's been two years now, we've been working with SMC, Southern Movement Committee, on a co-governance model So when we looked at looking at getting the funding for the Office of Youth Safety and the budget, it was really important to me that as a government, we didn't co-opt the work that the community did. And we wanted to make sure that, well, I wanted to make sure that the community continued to have a voice in how we move forward with the Office of Youth Safety. So prior to getting a director, we were in constant communication. We had SMC, myself, and juvenile court clerk Lionel Matthews met on a consistent basis to discuss the office, the needs of the office, what it could potentially look like. We got in a relationship with the mayor's office, and we were in a constant cadence of meeting with the mayor's office as well, looking at the responsibilities for the office, the characteristics of the type of director that will work well, looking at research across the country on addressing youth violence. And to this point, we have continued to be in this co-governance relationship. We honor and acknowledge, and we're very thankful for Dr. Hildreth and Mayor O'Connell and the administration and everyone that has worked on this model. We acknowledge that ultimately the decision maker is the person who has the job, right? So Dr. Hildreth is the ultimate decision maker, but we are doing this work in collaboration where we're having community partners sitting at the table, helping to influence and give their expertise. And I think that this is a beautiful example of what the co-governance model could look like when we're talking about social housing, I know myself and Council Member Parker actually went to study social housing. So we saw how social housing has been done in a few other countries. The representatives from Stand Up Nashville, as well as People's Budget Coalition, as well as Kay Bowers in the back, who I see and a few others, are experts on social housing. And I think it's really important to acknowledge, like when I talked about budget last year, we all have like a different stake in the game, right? So if you're talking to finance, finance is number one concern or their primary function is to make sure that our city is making good financial decisions. Well, as a community advocate, their number one concern is going to be to make sure that we are prioritizing the housing model. And that may look different than the way that Director Hubbard wants to prioritize it. Everyone is bringing a wealth of expertise and everyone is bringing knowledge and lived experience. So in that co-governance model, we are allowing the community to, we're giving access to the community, making sure that they have a seat at the table and making sure that their expertise is being considered when we're making these decisions. And I think that this is a wonderful opportunity to continue to practice co-governance in Nashville.

All right. With all of that information, So I'm not on the spot, right?

You're not on the spot, absolutely not. Well, first I would like to thank the People's Budget Coalition, Stand Up, NOAA, and all the advocates that have really put in the deep research on this. They're actually much further along than we are as a division. I think they've probably been working on this longer than our offices have been around. Also, we've been hearing them loud and clear. We've evolved the Barnes Fund policies and our other policies to prioritize longer or long-term affordability, stronger tenant protections in our program. So if it really wasn't for their advocacy, we probably wouldn't have those. in our programs now. And we funded three housing cooperatives through the Barnes Fund with community land trust that will be permanently affordable. So we're already starting to implement that across all of our programs and how we're looking at, we acknowledge the... state of play when it comes to tenant protections and try to, where we can as Metro, make those as strong as possible. When it comes to social housing, we started with an engagement with Foresight first to look at the performance of all of our tools, because all of them are very important as we've talked about, but we also need to clearly identify what's happening in our market, and how these all perform and what then the next model could look like. Because there are different, the Chattanooga and Atlanta models are actually different and our team and Janine Reed and her team went to visit both of these so we could learn ourselves. Where we are is, as Forsyth wraps up, we would like to share those recommendations with the groups here as well as with a national expert in this space, Paul Williams, to analyze it so he doesn't have to start from the very beginning with the analysis of our ecosystem but pick it up where we've landed. I think with the budget request, I think, you'll have to excuse, Lucy sends her regards. She was off today, so we haven't had a chance to socialize the wishlist request. is the conversation or the wishes to embed, I guess, staff within our division and planning, or to have funding ready for the subsidiary to stand up. Because I think there's two conversations here. One might need a deeper, and I'll let Lisa speak maybe to the deeper legal analysis, because with planning being a chartered department that reports to the Planning Commission how all of that works, versus... funding for a subsidiary that we would still have the community involvement in informing how that is created. So Lisa, if you wouldn't mind speaking maybe to some of the, like if it's an internal staffing things we would need to explore.

Sure, certainly. So the planning department, as you all know, exists under the purview of the planning commission, which is charter created. The staff of the planning department is largely um, contract employees of the planning commission. Um, the executive director is, she's officially the secretary of the planning commission as well. And so those are all positions that are through the planning commission. And we report to, um, the planning commission in regards to our structure and operations. Um, so the housing division is, is under Lucy, um, director counts as the executive director. and then also reports back to the planning commission. And so we just haven't had time to sort of think about and look through what a co-governance structure might look like given our operational organizations being a charter created department.

Councilman Porterfield.

Thank you so much. Co-governance can have many different faces to it. And I am happy to help you all hash out what that can look like. I actually train on co-governance across the country. So I am happy to, for free, tell y'all and support y'all in how you can co-govern. In essence, it's just giving community people a seat at the table. Instead of just making all the decisions ourselves as a government, it's just saying we're consulting with the community. We're making sure that they have a voice and that they are in conversation. So that doesn't have to look a certain way. It is just sharing information with the community, taking information from the community and being in relationship. But we can definitely talk about that offline, but don't think you can't do it because of a capacity thing. Y'all can definitely do it.

And I think also there was a desire or there is a desire to to have a social housing expert in house that is kind of guiding or guiding the city as the city decides how to structure its social housing model, particularly when we get to the point where we can issue bonds, like what that looks like. how that can be used for social housing. And so there is a, so the staffing is an issue that needs to be resolved, whether or not there could be, even if that's a contract person that is working with the planning department slash planning commission to create a social housing model in conjunction with community members.

Thank you, we still have 100,000 from, it's moving forward from last year to be able to engage with an expert on a contract basis to evaluate that.

Just to give an example, in Chattanooga, this was driven in the mayor's office first, and the C3 was created as a subsidiary to the housing agency, and then the director was brought in. So it could definitely be a transition that happens, hearing the legal and regulatory things, but you just need someone to get that ball rolling, and then initially that C3 is there or in the works of being there, and then you can kind of put the people over there, if that makes sense.

Gotcha, okay. So I think the question for this fiscal year is, one, whether it's appropriate to put or legally possible to put a position within the planning department. If it is, would you be accepting of funding to pay that person? I think as a backup, also looking at the mayor's office as a potential spot to put that person in, and obviously getting a buy-in from the mayor's office for that. Would you agree that's where we are?

We are certainly open to the social model, social housing evolution and looking at how that evolves. I can't without director can't fear can't commit on her behalf on what we will do staffing wise, but would love to have the further discussions on how we can have the deep community involvement in how this moves forward to achieve the outcomes that the People's Budget Coalition, Stand Up and NOAA have been advocating for.

Okay.

Council Member Nash.

I guess this is for Stand Up and NOAA and the People's Coalition. I think I heard the director say, Ms. Hubbard say that they have $100,000 maybe the jumpstart, the jumpstart, so to speak, a consultant to bring on, see what it looked like for Nashville, maybe the best within I'm sure cooperation with you all. Is that something that's acceptable? We've already got something funded,

So that was, in last year's fiscal budget, I'll start. We had, planning had a $500,000 request for financial consulting and underwriting to take the next level implementation from the UHS to looking at the tools. Are they scaled right? Are they targeted right? And then, Council Member Porterfield appropriated money for the social housing. We didn't do those concurrently. We've sequenced those so that we could get this first study done and then have the social housing consultant, instead of having two consultants looking at the same market data and doing kind of maybe duplicating work, getting one thing done first. And Forsyth Street is the one who did all the evaluation on our calculus fund, so that's how we utilize them in this work. So now we can, as they're wrapping up, be able to present these findings of our market to help the expert really look to see what would work better here, because how Chattanooga's doing their housing is different than how Atlanta is, and those are all based on how their market is performing.

Could I just respond quickly to that? I think the study has its value, but it's a certain kind of function, a study, as opposed to a staff member to kind of set something up. So I just want to name the distinction between someone to contract for a study and someone to start running and operationalizing something, if that makes sense. So I just want to name that.

Council Member Nash, did you have additional? Yeah, I'm not sure I got my question answered. $100,000 would provide the expert consultant that might determine how to best set this program up and then lead into bringing in staff so that the staff knows exactly what the program is supposed to look like moving forward. And certainly part of the consulting, I'm sure you all would be involved in those discussions. So I'm just curious if that was acceptable to you at the moment as we...

I appreciate the conversation. I think the most important thing is, having used a lot of consultants, sometimes they're outsiders and they're sort of giving you advice, right? They're giving you guidance. They can't necessarily drive a thing. I don't think they can establish like a C3, for instance, you know, this type of thing. So we just want to get at, you know, does planning, there's also a position that the mayor's got, this housing director, right? And these are out there, is there a person that can, because y'all are on so many cylinders, and we've put you on so many cylinders, is there a person Because a lot of times, my experience with consultants is you have to consult the consultant. You have to drive the consultant a lot of times. And so is there a person internally that understands Nashville, understands Metro, understands it's going to be an MDH question, that's going to be legal issues, right? You're going to have to work with all these that can drive that so that we set it up for... for this to take off. And I just, total honesty, I'm skeptical of an outside consultant having that ability. So yeah, that's my response to that.

I would also say that probably the difference between where we are and where planning is, is we feel like if, and sort of the responsibility for council is like, we feel like if y'all, if the mayor's office feels like This is a good plan. We should do this. That we are like, I have faith that, you know, down the line studies and come here and though, but also like tides change really quickly and the political tides of the city, you know, heading into another election year, we don't know what will happen. So we would like to also like see stability and the way that a staffing position provides that may be a consultant opportunity. wouldn't of being like this is something that we have the intention as a city to do to bring in and to build this program and to like again I think like one of the reasons and you all are kind of seeing a meeting with us and the planning department and director Hubbard here is like they are so busy and it would be really nice for like talking about a co-governance model for us to have one person who is in charge of this is what I'm doing. I'm setting up this co-governance. I'm like answering your questions. I know how to answer them. So we're not always, you know, playing phone tag with director Hubbard being like, what about this? What about this? You know? So that's sort of like our, what we see the benefit of a position being.

Council member Evans.

Thank you, Chair. When we had the planning department conversation, there was a really robust conversation on kind of this topic. And one of the things that I mentioned at that time was in 2023, it's good that Councilmember Gamble just walked in. Councilmember Gamble, Councilmember Toombs and I were all on the bus in Atlanta. touring properties related to this development corporation and how they had set up their corporation, seeing some of the projects that they were working on, the impacts that they were having. And so I think about that from a, that was November of 2023. It is 2026 now. We're gonna have a year left of this term. And so it's like, if this is a council that is going to be, take some bold action in the space, to me, this feels like a natural place to do it. because of the dovetailed conversations kind of around Metro and property that started last term, that has carried over. So you just think about the longevity and how long it takes. And so speaking to Cade's reference about stability and kind of forward thinking, I feel like it's important, but I also recognize that if planning isn't in a good space or if the mayor's office is not feeling confident about this direction, that that can break the whole thing. And so that's where I feel like we need to kind of maybe get some more guidance, whether it's Director Kemp or the mayor's office on where they're feeling about this. But I also feel like who's in charge and we have power and we should exercise that power on this issue.

Council Member Porterfield.

Thank you, Councilmember Tills. Thank you, Councilmember Evans. I was over here giving you some amens. That's right. We have power. And we can execute that power in the way that we see fit. I wanted to piggyback on everything that you just said. This problem gets worse by the day. And every day that we wait, the problem is just going to continue to snowball. And I wanted to answer councilmember Nash's question that the consult the money for the consultant won't that won't be enough like we put that in the money in the budget last year and I'm thankful that director Hubbard is willing to move forward with it But we're a year later and we haven't moved forward with the social housing piece So we move forward with the financing piece and I also want to acknowledge I'm very thankful that we're in the position that we are now because a few years ago I there would have never been a situation where you had community leaders council members and metro officials sitting down talking about social housing so i'm very thankful that we have made the progress that we've made but we can't continue to like slow this down the consultant will be great to advise us on what this could look like based on the financial model and the financial information that foresight has given but to miriam's point you really need a driver to really push forward with getting everything established. And also, for anyone who's not familiar, it takes a while to hire somebody through Metro. So even when we looked at getting the director for the Office of Youth Safety, we put the money in the budget, but it still took a while. Usually, HR has, I don't want to say a hierarchy, but they are you know, they have positions that are already in the queue that they're working on that they're trying to hire for. So funding for this position right now doesn't mean we have somebody that starts July 1. It may be November or December before someone even is hired at that point. The consultant could be wrapping up their study at that point. So we need somebody that's willing to, ready to take the ball and move it down the field once that consultant's done.

Council Member Coopin.

Thank you, Chair, and amen from me for both of what was just said. And I'm very supportive of this as well. Appreciate Kate's point. Having a point person would be great. Director Hubbard does a phenomenal job and I've sent many, many people her way. But having a point person for the social housing piece would be great. you know as you all know my day job is in residential real estate and so i talk to people quite often who say what can i do to help i know there's an affordable housing issue how do i get involved how you know can i help develop something can i help invest in something and so i get those calls a lot and i send a lot of them to director hubbard and she does a great job kind of communicating with them and giving options but to have another kind of direct point person for this direct topic i think would help also take members of the public who want to get involved in this issue and give them someone to kind of run with in that particular lane.

I see Council Member Gamble. Thank you all. Good evening, everyone.

Sorry to be late, but I'm glad I'm right on time, actually, because this is one of the most important things that I've listed on my wish list. I didn't list specifically the social housing piece, but learned a lot about it yesterday from the... representatives from Stand Up Nashville. And as Council Member Evans pointed out, we did see how this program works in action in Atlanta. Was it Atlanta? Yes, yes. And we left that tour of that facility optimistic about all the things that we can do in Nashville. And as she said, we are three years later and really haven't moved the needle. And so I see this as an opportunity to move the needle. And as we're looking at funding towards affordable housing, it needs to be diversified. I mean, there needs to be a lot of different ways that we look at affordable housing, not just the Barnes Fund. Of course, I support the Barnes Fund, but we have to have multiple tools to achieve the goal that we're trying to do. This is another tool, as I spoke about yesterday, and I don't know if you all talked about that yet on the list about housing preservation. is another tool for affordable housing. And so it's not a one size fits all. I hope we can look at diversifying the funding so that we have multiple tools in order to get broader results. And so I support social housing. I hope you all support the housing preservation. And I hate that I missed the presentation from planning about the status of everything that you all are working on. that this is something that you foresee. I know even with the housing programs funding that was in last year's budget, it took time to get that going. We were at the end of the fiscal year and you're just now kind of getting that funding out. But I'm hopeful that during that last year, you kind of got some things in place and policies. I know even for the affordable loan program, it'll take time to get that program up and going and policies in place. And it's like, I would really like to see us move the needle on the programs we already have before we start funding new ones at a level that's really taken a bite out of what we have been doing and what we know is successful. So I'll just leave it there. Thank you.

Mr. Cranks, did you have something to add?

Yeah, quickly, just in the spirit of the co-governance topic, thank you, Council Member Porterfield, for what you shared and Council Member Evans and others. This is a room that is deep in the halls of City Hall and we're all here and there's a great deal of power in the room. I just want to name that right now our organization has people out knocking doors in apartment complexes around the city, like literally right now. And people are clamoring for this. People are clamoring for housing that they can actually stay in. We're all familiar with the notion of a desire for people to stay, right? And people are telling us every other door we knock that they're not sure if they can. And so I just wanna bring in the voice to just note that people in our community that we have been talking to every day for the last few weeks as we go out and knock doors are really eager for this type of program to come into the city. So just wanna bring that voice in, thank you.

And thank you for that. It sounds like we will need to do some follow up with Director Kemp. We have several more work sessions scheduled so hopefully we can get her in on one of those so that we can continue to flesh out at least the initial like what it looks like and if you all can actually take on funding for a new position dedicated to social housing. Any other questions on the social housing piece? Well, thank you so much, folks from Stand Up and People's Budget. I really appreciate you all coming and engaging with us. Stay there right there, because Council Member Gamble, you are right on time, because the housing preservation, I believe, is the last thing that relates to the Planning Commission. So if you could talk about your wishlist item so we can flesh that out a little bit.

Thank you chair. And as I kind of alluded to yesterday, but not in much detail, I'm asking that we add $1 million from the affordable housing loan program to go to housing programs in last year's budget. we had a line item account for housing programs and projects that really focused on preserving housing for individuals in the affordable housing space. Preserving, keeping people in their homes is like the first step to affordable housing. And so I noticed in this year's budget, there was no funding towards that effort. And so I have seen firsthand as a volunteer would be rebuilding together in Nashville, how organizations such as those help seniors, particularly in neighborhoods that have been gentrified and where they can no longer really afford to live, but own their homes. However, those homes are dilapidated and need a lot of work and they're cited by codes, but on a fixed income and can't make the necessary repairs, whether it's the roof, a fence that's laying down, whatever it is, these organizations fill the gap and help those individuals stay in their homes. And so, as I said earlier, There's several different pieces to affordable houses. There's not one silver bullet and we need to look at all the different tools. And so I didn't have a chance to talk to Angie Hubbard before I put this on my wishlist. Although we've talked a few months ago about the importance of that program and where you all were on that. And so I guess my question is, what is the status of the program as it is today with the funding from this current fiscal year? And do you see the benefit in adding a million dollars to the program moving forward?

Director Hubbard. Thank you. Yes, in the FY26 budget, we had 1.75 million for anti-displacement. And as you acknowledge, it takes a minute to get things ramped up. And we had been following up on an announcement that Rebuilding Together partnered with Environmental Court. So we felt like it was a natural partnership there. It's my understanding, Councilmember, that money, because it was in the department budget, is in our department budget this year, rolled up in the general planning operating budget. And we are currently, we have working with Rebuilding to finalize that and move that forward beginning this coming fiscal year.

That's great news because in the past, Westminster Church and Rebuild Together has had to compete with Barnes funding, which in my opinion should be dedicated to new affordable housing projects, not competing for that. So if that's in your budget and it's continuing, I'm good.

Yes, it's in our budget, but also this year with the Barnes Fund, following a unified housing recommendation, instead of all the projects competing against each other, we and the Trust Fund Commission approved allocations by project type. So we have a specific line for owner-occupied rehab only. It's not the biggest portion, but it's about comparable to what they've been doing. Then we've got some federal grants rolling in where we'll also have opportunities to do home repairs. So we're going to have... several millions of dollars flowing soon around the preservation side of things.

That's great news. I know that Rebuilding Together has a waiting list of about 30 clients that are in need.

So thank you for that update. You're welcome. Any questions around home preservation? Thank you, Director Hubbard and Lisa. Thank you. All right, next up, just going through the wish list, we have several wish list items related to fire. So the first one that I see looking at that same funding request by appropriation on page four, Council Member Evans, if you wanna talk about your 75,000 for a mental health care professional.

Sure, so the 75,000, which I know several other members have requested, would be to expand the REACH program, specifically to have a mental health care professional that would be working Thursday to Sundays, specifically in the entertainment, the EDU.

Okay, and Mr. Young, if you could speak to that.

Yes, ma'am. Mark Young, National Fire. I think first, I think we should understand how we, how our presence of the fire department and our EMS division is in the downtown area on Thursday through Sunday. Unlike the police department, we don't have a full-time unit staffed there. Our presence is staffed by overtime. And anywhere from 20 to 26 people would be from the fire department there on a daily basis, Thursday through Sunday. And no same person would work any days other than one. They wouldn't work two days of the four. It's just too heavy of a toll on that shift THURSDAY THROUGH SUNDAY WITH THEIR DAY WORK THAT THEY'VE ALREADY DONE BECAUSE WE'RE THERE ON OVERTIME. SO WHAT THAT IS MEANING IS IT WOULD BE VERY DIFFICULT FOR US TO STAFF A REACH PERSONNEL. YOU'D NEVER STAFF IT WITH ONE. YOU WOULD ALWAYS WANT TWO THERE. IT'S UNHEALTHY NOT TO HAVE TWO PRESENT. YOU WOULD, OUR PROBLEM WITH THAT WOULD BE IT WOULD TAKE ABOUT FOUR TO FIVE PERSONNEL ACTUALLY TO STAFF THAT. NOW THE WISH ITEM IS GREAT. I UNDERSTAND EXACTLY WHY THE REQUEST IS HERE. but the allocation of funding is probably about 10% of where it needs to be. And even, I mean, I think of Councilman Coop and even has a match or asking for a match from the downtown partnership, which would be great, but we would need four to five to really staff that because of, the hours and you know, you got your vacation time that you gotta consider, you've got to, you know, other things that's gotta be in consideration. However, I do think that this is something that we should continue discussing and figure out how We get this in place. I do believe, and many of Chief Swann and many of the leaders of the department believe that this is something that needs to be continued in the conversation to see how we can actually get this in place. But we, we're way off on the funding request to get it done.

So Mr. Young, is the, was the additional personnel part of the modification request from the fire department? Is that in your budget request that you submitted to the mayor's office? Cause I'm asking. For reach? Yes.

No.

Okay. So you didn't request, y'all didn't request additional staff for REACH?

No.

Okay, y'all just asked for equipment, right? Is that right?

Well, no, there's a few administrative spots. I don't have that request in front of me, but there was some, I know there's some administrative spots, some equipment. Looks like maybe some help in our air services department. Yeah. Building maintenance equipment. A few administrative positions. Yes.

Which page? Quante. Yes, Council Member Webb.

She's saying that no, the reach is on there. I gave him my sheet so I can't look for it. But the dollar amount was $803,000, not $75,000. Okay. To your point.

So what was submitted is... Five paramedic FTEs, one paramedic captain FTE, one Tahoe, and one wheelchair accessible van are needed to provide uninterrupted 24-7 mental health response coverage. These additions address the identified gap in response coverage caused by insufficient response capabilities. Yes, it's $803,600. I'm sorry.

Council Member Webb. Reading that, I just want to point out like the van, during the ice storm, we didn't have that. So anytime they came to get somebody, they were picking up, they had to send a whole engine. I just didn't think, I didn't think about that. I didn't say that on the list actually, but I can see where that would even, you know, we talk about how we put the mileage on these engines. Well, I could see where they would need that because during the ice storm, when they went to pick up people, they had to send a whole engine. I just wanted to make that comment. Thank you.

Um, So would this 75 do anything for you?

No.

Council Member Coopman? Thank you, Chair, and I appreciate it. So help me understand, Sue, what would you need four to five FTEs for to run a REACH program in downtown?

We would need five paramedics, We would need to also involve health department for the clinician, the van, the transport, and that's about it.

And currently, Thursday through Sunday, if there's an EMS call, let's say Thursday, nine o'clock at night, I call and there's an EMS call that requires mental health, is there any REACH professionals that are on staff at that point that would respond to that call downtown? Yes. So how does that work currently?

Right now we're running two reach units. If they're available, they would respond. But the initial response to that call would come from, we got two units down there. One of them's called a fire cart and one's called a med cart. The initial response dispatch would come from the fire cart. And then a MedCart would be along with them and then they could make a determination based on what they see if they want to dispatch reach or if it's something they want to go ahead and transport.

So then they would dispatch reach and where is reach staging waiting for those calls?

They could be at Special Operations Center over at 5th and Fotherland. They could be at a fire hall. They could be in the city, placed throughout the city.

And are there more reach calls than you have people for on Thursday through Sunday? Or do you feel like those calls are, you know, are they sitting around waiting or are they always kind of on calls in the weekend evenings?

I DON'T BELIEVE, OKAY, SO A LOT OF THE 911 CALLS THAT COME IN FROM THE THURSDAY THROUGH SUNDAY IN DOWNTOWN DON'T REALLY COME IN IN REAL DETAILED INFORMATION LIKE IT WOULD BE IF SOMEBODY WAS AT HOME BECAUSE A LOT OF TIMES IT'S JUST SOMEBODY WALKING BY 911, HEY, THERE'S A MAN DOWN. where at home you say, hey, my so and so is here and he's got mental health issues. Dispatch knows, so a lot of times we don't know the nature of the call until we actually get on the scene other than man down. Man down is a lot of calls that come in Thursday through Sunday in downtown. Now, once we get there and we find out this is, man down with some mental issues that needs mental health and not emergency room, that's where reach would come about.

And so with those calls where REACH, you get manned down, there's dispatch, and then they say we need REACH, is REACH always available? Or are there times that REACH is reached for and then not available?

No, no, it wouldn't be always. REACH is making, since REACH has been implemented, they're busy.

So with that being the case, if there was an additional reach person focused for to give extra support Thursday through Sunday, maybe not just dedicated to the downtown box, would that be helpful?

Yes.

And would that be something that, so it sounds like maybe that could be something that was operational, not just in the downtown core, but with the existing infrastructure.

Yeah, I was talking this weekend, I was talking with some paramedics up at special operation about the conversation that was going on during the downtown people's budget hearing that questions it was coming from them about this and there was some we was having some great conversations and they was thinking about how to make this work they know the need is there and and one of the paramedics is like, you are onto something. He was setting up that we needed a clinic. We actually need a clinic to handle this type calls downtown that we can get the patient to a triage type place, assess the patient, and then move that patient to where they need. and not take this patient to an ER when they don't need to get an ER. The last thing someone needs in this condition is a bill from an ambulance service and a bill from an emergency department when they did not even need that. That's another stress level that's put on them that is unnecessary. Sometimes that's your only option.

So it sounds like having a clinic or some space would be also helpful to bring someone to kind of in a triage capacity.

A clinic with a clinician or maybe two that can triage the care and, you know, it may be just a ride back to the room in the end or something. It could be something that simple. But transporting somebody to an ER when that's not where they need to be is not healthy.

Absolutely. And so what would be, what would, if we were going to kind of refocus this as adding a REACH clinician Thursday through Sunday in the existing infrastructure, what would the cost of that be?

I'd have to get with all of the divisions and come up with that, but I DO BELIEVE THAT THIS CONVERSATION NEEDS TO START. JUST LIKE THE LAST PRESENTER, YOU KNOW, WE'RE BEHIND. WE NEED TO GET HERE. I THINK IT DOES NEED TO START AND I THINK WE NEED TO PUT THIS IN PLAY AND SOLVE THE PROBLEM. I KNOW, YOU KNOW, THE COUNCILMEMBERS DON'T HAVE RADIOS IN THEIR HAND AND LISTENING TO THEM STARTING ON THURSDAY NIGHT UNTIL SUNDAY NIGHT. The call volume is unbelievable of fire carts and med carts, and that's the reason they're down there. If they wasn't there getting heavy equipment and big equipment into downtown, it would be very troubling. However, call volumes Thursday through Sunday is very high in the area. The nature of the mental health cause is there, it's there, but I think we need to start a discussion how we approach it.

Sure, thank you. Council Member Nash.

Thank you, Madam Chairman. I'm a little bit confused in why we're taking people to emergency rooms. when you have the mental health co-op that is basically a clinic where they will do some of that triage and take them in. And I know as a police department, we've always taken people to the mission or to Father Strobel's. So why are we going to emergency rooms if we don't need to? Well...

I mean, I guess they could take them to the places that, here's my experience. My experience in this is a lot of times they go to jail. I've seen that. Sometimes it's a jail emergency room. It depends on the nature of the call. It depends on what took place here. Sometimes somebody can be very agitated, very aggressive. Someone that's very aggressive, you don't just take them to the room at the end and they get there and they're being aggressive to that staff. It all depends on the nature of the call.

Council Member Ewing. Thank you, Chair. Thank you so much. I just wanted to drill down just a little bit on understanding that this is, you know, a little far down in your priority list. However, in that line item where it talks about the REACH program, you talk about one wheelchair accessible van being needed. So right now, am I to understand we don't have any wheelchair accessible transportation vehicle? Okay. If we were somehow to be able to find money just for that one thing in that line item, how much would that cost do you think roughly? Or do you have a ballpark?

Probably between 125, 150,000.

Okay. And what kind of difference do you think that would make to the calls you're receiving? How many times have you had instances where you haven't been able to properly transport people because they have a disability and you're just not equipped to provide that assistance? Or where more resources had to be mobilized that constituted just sort of overkill because we didn't have any other choice.

You're talking about the non ambulatory patient. I don't have the numbers on the transport that we've had to actually call a ambulance because they're non ambulatory. I don't think that's a big number. but it's enough that we do pull an ambulance, not out of service, they're in service, but they're somewhat out of service because now they're just transporting a non-emergency situation. But I don't think it's a huge number, but it's something that would definitely keep ambulances in service two or three times a day maybe.

Thank you. All right, any additional questions related to the wishlist item? Sounds like either, well, we have to figure out how to fund this stuff, but sounds like we're either looking at what Council Member Evans has put forth, maybe something related to that vehicle, or looking at that total request, which is huge.

Council Member Evans? So some of what Captain, and I'm sorry, District Director, I can't remember your new title, what you were talking about, I think fits into another potential project, I think there needs to be some more offline conversation, because I'm part of a little project team, and I don't know that everybody's informed about this project team yet, and it's not my project to be delivering any information, but there's some synergy that I think should be explored, and I'd like to help bring people together on that. Okay, Council Member Coopan.

Yeah, real quick, just thank you, Chair. Yeah, I'd love to explore this further as that's looking at it as an additional staff member to kind of take that burden on Thursday through Sunday in a maybe broader capacity. Yeah.

And so there are a couple other items for fire that I think may be covered under the 4% fund that's on the agenda for next meeting. There's one from Council Member Spain for additional funding for medical supplies for $395,700. And then Council Member Webb, your 1.5 million, I believe it was for PPE. And there are a couple of requests. There's like $4 million in the 4% fund legislation that's before us next week. for fire. And I know it's PPE and it's medical supplies. Budget Director Pratt.

Yeah, so the 4% that you'll guys see next week does include medical supplies that fire needed as portion of, you know, what was requested in this budget that we couldn't fund and also what they needed to have for the rest of this year.

So does there need to be any further discussion on those wishlist items or if there's any wishlist item that I am overlooking for fire? I don't see anything. Thank you, Mr. Young.

Thank you.

All right, so we have several more and I'm trying to stick to the seven o'clock. So I'm gonna pick folks that I think aren't gonna take that long. I think we had someone for pet community. If you could come on up. And there are several wishlist requests from council members regarding $60,000 for additional spay and neuter services. So if you could just speak to the additional services that you could provide and if that $60,000 amount is accurate.

And introduce yourself, yes. Thank you, everyone, and thank you, Council, for having us and for considering this. I'm Brandon Dice. I'm the CEO at Pet Community Center. And just quickly, if you're not familiar with us, we are Nashville's largest nonprofit veterinary clinic, so we focus on prevention, prevention of... core illnesses in dogs and cats, prevention of pet homelessness, and prevention of pet overpopulation. So we work very closely with MAC on the outdoor cat program. We think they are the unsung heroes of our community. One of the things we know that could help them most is certainly our county is growing, one of the things we wanna see not grow is our pet population. Because right now, one of the key ways that we feel like we can help MAC and help the citizens of Davidson County is just to prevent fewer stray, unhoused or homeless animals in our community. So for this $60,000, what we would be able to do is right now we're seeing A lot of calls. We have a program called Snap Program. So anyone in our community in Davidson County that qualifies for any form of government assistance, they can get a spay-neuter surgery at our clinic for $15. Right now, we are... filling that need but we are hearing from a lot of county residents who make a little more than they need to to qualify for any form of assistance or we also have members in our community who cannot qualify for those programs but still need that support for that discounted surgery. So we would be able to pretty much fill, our demand is down about 20 appointments a week. So we are hoping to use this additional funding to broaden that SNAP program so that more of your mid tier or mid income households could qualify for a reduced surgery price. And so that 60,000 would effectively allow us to perform those additional thousand surgeries over the next year.

Any questions regarding pet community? And my understanding is this is a direct appropriation to the pet community. So it wouldn't go through any particular department. All right, I don't see anything. Thank you.

Oh, well, thank you.

All right, Nashville General Hospital. Do I need something?

Okay.

Good afternoon or good evening.

Good afternoon. So there are several council members put on their wish list providing additional funding for Nashville General Hospital. I believe during their budget hearing, they spoke to a $4.3 million deficit. I know there's been some recent conversations with the finance department to identify perhaps some line items that could be put in 4%. So if you can just update us on where you are in terms of needing additional funding? Because I think the primary concern, well, I know the primary concern is making sure that those promise raises get to employees. And so if you can update us on where you are in terms of your financial need.

Sure. Thank you so much for recognition of the employees and the other unfunded items. So we have met with Metro. Introduce yourself. Good evening, and I am Kimberly Blackledge. I serve as the Interim's Chief Financial Officer at Nashville General Hospital.

Veronica Elders, the Interim Chief Executive Officer and Chief Nursing Officer at Nashville General. Thank you.

All right, we have met with Metro Finance and we have identified a list of items that are eligible for the 4%. And just to expand and speak a little bit about those items, these are items that are based on our actual spend. for this current year of 26. And so we've received a document that notifies us of what is eligible, what is not eligible. And when you think of supplies, I'm happy to share some examples, but when you think of supplies, we use a large amount of medical supplies. We also have pharmaceutical supplies. A couple of those items will include as examples, like a balloon pump, a surgical bed, workstations on wheels so when we go into the patient rooms and we're discussing financial items with them or engaging in any activity we use scopes we use echo units they look like little hand ones but they really kind of take pictures and outline the heart so those are just a few examples so we will be able to submit the list our intent is to get that list over We're trying to get it over as soon as possible. We have a team working on it now. So we'll get that list over. It will be vetted by Metro Finance and through their channels. And we believe that that would be appropriate to fund the 4.3 outstanding and others.

Any additional questions for our representatives from National General Hospital? Council Member Gamble.

Not a question. I just want to add that I didn't have that on my list because I knew our wonderful chair, budget chair would have that on her list, but I totally support it and think that this is a great step forward to continuing to make the hospital whole. So I just wanted to add that little tidbit.

All right, and you know I will be following up just to make sure, just to double check that those numbers line up, but happy to hear that you all were able to get together and figure that out. Well, thank you, Council Chair, and thank you, Council Members, for this evening. Thank you. Any additional questions? Oh, Council Member Allen.

Thank you. So there was another line item that Council Member Suarez put in that was $7.8 million to do the 2% retroactive pay.

which i don't know if we'll that that was part of their total budget request and then that was the 4.3 million dollar deficit so that'll get you whole and that will make us whole cool correct thank you thank you anything else thank y'all appreciate you thank you guys have a wonderful evening all right we do have i see one item for the health department there has to be more than that Okay, okay. Well, I think the only thing left that's still under Health Department is the Antioch Health Study, and that was submitted by Councilmember Stiles. Are you familiar with that?

I am not. Jim Diamond, I'm the finance director of health department. And I did discuss this with Dr. Areola this morning. We were unaware of this. This wasn't one of health's asks. So we did just see that in the request list. But we don't have any information. Dr. Ariella hadn't had any discussions with the council member or I'm not sure if she did with any of our other staff, but I'm here to claim ignorance.

I know it has to do with a feasibility study. And I know council member Evans, you've been council member Stiles proxy. Do you have any notes on this one? If not, we can save it till tomorrow. Okay, we'll just save that. Oh, Council Member Allen.

Not on this one, but before we end up with health, I do want to raise one question. To circle back around to the contributors SOAR program, which is taking people from emergency rooms and stabilizing them and hopefully connecting them with SSI. That seems to be listed under nonprofit, which is why I couldn't find it. But I had put it under health, again, because things need to be in some department to make sure they happen. All the other ones are somewhere. Is there another department that is gonna claim that if we should be able to fund that or would that come under health and would health support that?

This was put in as a request from health this year. It was not funded in the mayor's budget, but we, Dr. Areola and Kristen Zack, who's his executive administrator, we're in conversations with the contributors. So this was one of our asks this year.

Because I think there are about five council members that asked for that. And I believe this is where it belongs.

Okay. And you're one of those council members? And I'm one of them. For the view and audience, if you can explain what that is and the cost.

The contributor had asked for $350,100, I think, dollars. and that would enable them to catch people as they are being released from both National General and some other place, other hospitals. They have several specific hospitals that they have done this successfully last year and both help work in housing navigation and also in connecting them with social disability, social security disability, which can then enable them to hopefully stay in housing and be independent. It's been a very successful program. Their rate is much higher than other volunteers that are not as knowledgeable about how to navigate that system.

So I'm looking at that and I saw it. Yeah, it was under the nonprofit bucket because it actually mentions Nashville General Hospital. So is this a program that is out of the emergency room at Nashville General? Yes, Chair. Okay. And as well as one other emergency room.

In the proposal that we have, it only had general, but I'm not discounting the fact that some others probably did.

Is it administered by the health department?

That was the proposal. Yes. The funding would flow through us. We would analyze the data coming from the contributor.

Council Member Evans.

Thank you, I was just gonna, Council Member Allen asked about the other hospital. The other hospital program doesn't exist anymore, and my understanding is it's only Metro General. Okay, thanks for that clarification.

Could you repeat what you just said, Council Member Evans?

Sure. Um, council member Allen had asked about, was there another hospital involved? And originally I think when the pilot first started there was, uh, but then that program ceased to exist and the only program that remained up until April was the Metro general program. Okay.

But just to be clear, it, um, health is asking for the money so that health can administer the program.

That's right. I was more answering council member Allen's question about who else was involved other than Metro general.

And we'll, uh, this will come up again tomorrow cause, um, I think there's this also a program that, uh, OHS is looking into. So it's a little bit of, I know I see the confused look that I am also confused in terms of, of this item. Um, I'm getting some information that OHS is also doing some work around this SOAR program. So we can have additional discussion about it tomorrow, but we do know today that it is an item that health has requested, $350,000. That was in health's budget request? Correct. Okay, all right. Any additional questions for our health department representative since we have him here in front of us?

Okay.

Well, thank you. Sure. Appreciate it. All right, let's bring up Metro Action Commission. Good evening. So there are several requests related to Metro Action Commission. Raphael Institute couldn't be here, and I know one of those requests is related to their program. So there's $660,000 for training home-based child care providers. I believe that's Raphael Institute. women's caucus continuation of the restorative therapist position that we first funded in 2022 and a study of its effects. Um, you also have that request council member Evans. Do you want to give a little bit more information and then we will, um, turn it over to our interaction commission, um, director. You, you basically read.

So basically back in, um, 2022. So we had, uh, worked with Rafa Institute on looking at childcare facilities and how to kind of do a pilot to scale childcare facilities. Well, one of the things that also came out of that conversation was kind of the supports needed for childcare, workers and home-based providers. And so there was funding allocated for therapists that was specifically dedicated to folks who were going through that process. And then there has been subsequent conversation to what does that look like continuing? And then also what does it look like or what would it look like to actually determine is this an effective practice? are these child care providers getting something out of this, the supports that they're receiving? And so then the request, you know, was Women's Caucus discussed the idea of having a study that would be, you know, part of Metro Action Commission. And so that's where the ask came from.

And are these programs we've done through Metro Action Commission before? If you can introduce yourself and then you have the floor, sorry.

That's okay. Hello to everyone I haven't met yet. I am Jamaica Baez, the executive director of Metro Action Commission. So yes, the program, the therapist program started in 2022 in a partnership with United Way and RAFA. And so in 2022, we received $50,000 in funding over a two year period. However, that funding did not sustain the entire program over that term. And so Metro Action Commission has supported the program in the absence of the funding. We discussed with the Women's Caucus that that program, because it is an outward facing program and doesn't necessarily support Metro Action Commission internally for our programs, that that program was not something we were able or had the capacity to continue without the funding to support it. In that conversation was the discussion about the child care centers to scale up when the program initially started in 2022 was for those child care providers because they did not have the funding to support the program themselves would be able to scale up with the support of RAFA. However, over the time period, there was some, I would say, miscommunication or misalignment. And so we've just continued the program through MAC, but without the funding to support it.

And we continued the restorative therapist program?

Correct. They're the same. Yes, the child care therapists and restorative therapists, they're the same. I think they're just defined as two different purposes.

Okay.

So we call it community counseling.

Okay. Mm-hmm. So there is a $660,000 ask for training home-based childcare providers. And then there's $153,000 for the continuation of the restorative therapist position. You're saying those are the same?

No, I'm saying the two that's listed as 153 is the same program. I am assuming the 660 and the 659 are the same program. This is the first we've seen it, so I'm assuming it is the purpose of ROFA as pass-through funds to support their program. Yes, okay.

Are you familiar with the training, the home base, that 660, are you familiar with that program?

I am familiar with the information we had in 2022. It is my understanding that it is a continuation. We do have some concerns about the funding based on its based on our history with the initial funding, the initial funding back in 2022, what that would require from MAC in terms of oversight for the program.

Okay. So what responsibility MAC would have for the use of the funds?

Correct. Gotcha.

Okay.

and to distribute the funds to the organization, what would need to be defined as part of that or report to ensure the accountability of the funds.

Gotcha. Okay. But with the restorative therapist program, that's something that you all are already doing. And so that 153 would help Mac continue that program. You wouldn't have to, would you have to pass those funds through to Raphael? Would you, continue to do the program yourself?

No, so when MAC received the funding in 2022, we hired a staff person for that, that they provide assistance to child care, community child care based programs where we just provide the support to those workers. But it doesn't support Metro Action as an agency. We are supporting the community through the program to help child care providers. And so the program is expected to end at its June 30th date without the funding to continue it.

Gotcha. Okay. And you all would continue to support the program even though it's not really an extension of any of the services you provide as a department?

Correct, and that was our conversation with Women's Caucus with the also addition of doing a study to determine if the program is viable to those childcare providers that it is currently providing services to, which has increased really just from 41 to 46, but again, it was not able to be scaled because of the funding that was associated with it from 2022 and MAC's ability to have to support the program moving forward.

And I may have missed it. What does the restorative therapist actually do?

So they actually provide counseling, emotional therapy, and support to the childcare providers that are either home-based or community-based. So they go out into the centers if there's anyone that's a childcare provider, as we understand that it is a very stressful job. So if they want to have the opportunity to speak to someone, go through counseling, We do have a licensed counselor who provides that services and provides group therapy to those individuals, but it is a community facing program.

Okay. All right. Thank you. Any, um, additional questions on the restorative therapists? Oh, council member gamble.

Thank you and thank you for being here and thank you for all you're doing in this role as a new person in this role. I just, I had a question and I'm not sure if you can, you can probably answer it. The 2022 funding, did that, that came out of ARPA funding, if I'm not mistaken? I KNOW THE COVID-19 COMMITTEE DID ALLOCATION TO UNITED WAY TO DO, TO INCREASE HOME-BASED CENTERS AND ALSO REGULAR NEIGHBORHOOD CENTERS. AND RAFA GOT A PORTION OF THAT FUNDING. SO I'M NOT CLEAR IF THAT WAS THAT FUNDING OR IF IT WAS ANOTHER FUNDING.

No, I do believe that it was a part of the ARPA funding, but I can always go back and look at that. But I do believe it was part of that because it was partially funded for those two years.

Right, right. Okay. So, and I remember your presentation at the Women's Caucus, and I think you did show that there was some value in the therapists. the one thing we, one question we had, and I wish we had still had somebody here from the health department, because there was a question at that meeting about if the health department provided these kinds of therapeutic services, and maybe if that was a better place or a more suitable place to funnel that funding, if we're going to continue it, to funnel it through the health department because they already have therapists as opposed to putting it on Mac who doesn't even do that program. And then the second thing, the other request, the 600,000, I'm not, did we talk about that?

Are we talking about that now too? We need to get a representative from Raphael Institute to come talk about that.

Thank you.

Any additional questions for Director Weiss? Thank you. Thank you. All right, next we have, let's see, MAPS or NDOT. Let's go with NDOT. All right, so there are several requests from council members related to NDOT and additional FTEs for TLC. I'm looking for where it is in my packet.

It should be pages 10 and 11.

Let's see. Well, I'll just, none of those council members are here from what I can see, but staff endot to staff support the Transportation Licensing Commission with two positions focused on micromobility. Did you want to speak to Council Member Cooper?

Thank you, Chair. I can kind of jump in since the TLC does quite a bit in my district. And I spoke to Deputy Director Rooker today as well. So my understanding is that there are some concerns from commissioners on the TLC that there's not enough staff to specifically address concerns around things that they oversee, party buses, records, taxis, et cetera. My understanding of my conversation with Director Rooker is that it wasn't an ask from NDOT per se, but it's something that, you know, wouldn't say no to the help. Could you speak a little bit to what those FTEs, what they would do and how that would impact kind of the current enforcement or increased enforcement?

Kristen Kumrow, NDOT Assistant Director of Finance. The positions that are referred in these asks, these wishes, would be primarily for compliance inspection. So they would go out and they would make sure that they're complying with all of the regulations, policies related to transportation licensing. We do have support staff in the office that helps to issue the permits and handle any questions that come in. And we do have compliance inspectors already that go out and do that. One of the things we would like to say though, since this wasn't an ask from NDOT, is that there is the opportunity to cover these positions with the upcoming fee increase legislation. In the fiscal year 26 budget, we actually received five compliance inspector positions that have been pulled back. if the fee increase actually passes council, then we can request those positions back through a supplemental. So we would definitely support and appreciate the two FTEs unfunded at this point. And then if the fee legislation passes, then we could get the funding for those FTEs. So we would actually have a total of five, including those.

Thank you. And would, would, um, would these compliance inspectors be able to issue things like noise violations for, for party buses if they were, would they be driving around and if they heard a violation, they could issue that?

Yes, they would be out in the community looking for noncompliance. Okay.

Just for context, one of the challenges that we have with party bus noises is that either a compliance officer has to witness it so that they can then take it to the TLC for a violation, or a member of the public has to witness it, document it, and then be willing to come to a TLC hearing, is my understanding, to address it. So that's obviously hard to do, to get a member of the public to do all those steps. And so it is something that I know some folks would be interested in.

Any additional questions around this wish list ask? Hearing none, thank you. All right, last but not least is, oh. One moment.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

All right, so a little bit of confusion. So I hear that the Office of Homeless Services is here. I had y'all down for tomorrow. But if you're willing, I know you've been sitting and you're looking at me like I will hurt you. But if you're willing to stick around for a few extra minutes, I don't know how long MNPS will take, maybe not that long. And we will go ahead and address the wishlist items tomorrow. Okay. Okay. So it's fine for y'all to just go tomorrow, right? Okay. Cool beans. Problem solved. All right. MNPS, come on down. Last but not least. So colleagues, correct me if I am mistaken, the only wishlist item that I see, and many council members put it on their wishlist, is regarding the environmental stewardship program. Most folks have 580,000 listed. I think Councilwoman Allen, you had 270,000. If you could speak to where you got your number from.

Yes, that's acknowledging savings from not having as many dumpsters be empty because they would be composting it. So that's an operational savings from that.

It's your front loading savings.

Right. OK. So that was the 580 minus the 210.

Councilwoman Porterfield? 310.

Thank you, Chair. If I could, shall I direct the question to you or to Council Member Allen? I don't know how formal we are today.

We're all in community together. Thank you.

I appreciate that. Council Member Allen, are you saying to allocate $270,000 to MNPS to make sure that they can benefit from the savings? I'm trying to understand the number.

So the total 580,000 was to cover the cost of the program and some staff and some educational materials and things like that. But it also acknowledged that they would be saving $110,000. I gotcha. Okay. That was the difference between the two.

Thank you. I have my numbers backwards. Thank you.

And where did that 310 come from? So we'll come back to you, Councilmember Allen, once you have that answer, but I will turn over to MNPS, and if y'all can introduce yourselves before you speak. But I believe most of the funding sources were MNPS's own operating budget. So can you all speak to this program? Because I know it was part of your, I believe your aspirational budget. Can you speak to whether or not MNPS could absorb this cost within your existing budget?

Good evening, Jorge Robles, Chief Financial Officer for Metro Nashville Public Schools. It is not considered in our operational budget. So right now, the budget includes all of our continuity of operation items, so all the $56 million that were allocated in the ordinance. HAVING DISTRIBUTED ABOUT 70% OF THOSE GOES TO ALL THE COSTS ASSOCIATED WITH INVESTING ON THE EDUCATOR. SO THE STEP INCREASE, THE COLA, AS WELL AS THE INSURANCE PREMIUMS INCREASES. AND IN ADDITION TO THAT, WE ALREADY CONSIDERED IN THE BUDGET budget efficiencies approximately for 1.5% of vacancy rates, and we still have to reduce by $3.6 million, which is the cost of the pass-through metric charges that we have been informed for next year. So in short, that is not something that we currently can fit within our operating budget.

Okay, questions from colleagues? All right, Council Member Porterfield.

Thank you, Chair, and thank y'all for what y'all do. I'm a former MNPS teacher, former MNEA member, and a proud parent of an MNPS graduate who is excelling in college right now. So thank you for everything that y'all do for our students and our city. My question is, I understand you're saying that y'all cannot absorb it, but my question is, if you had to, where would that money come from? So like what would be cut if y'all had to kind of sacrifice something in order to be able to fund the program?

We would have to essentially go back to the drawing board. We went through a pretty exhaustive process in identifying all the things that we wanted to budget for next year and we would have to essentially identify what would be one of the priorities that we budget for that we would cut. So I couldn't tell you at the moment without considering all things since there are different implications that budget items have for the day-to-day operations of our schools.

Council Member Evans.

Would this be an appropriate time for me to ask kind of a finance operational question, but it's related to what I saw on the MNPS website about their budget? Or do you want me to save that? Because it's not specific to this item, but it's kind of a little related.

If it's a little related, I'll allow it. Okay.

Well, I was just, because, you know, in the budget presentation, you know, the reference to, you can go to our website and look at the document that is on the MNPS website. So I went and looked at it. And so I was really more interested in, you know, these, I would say, like interdepartmental fees and charges, like IT is an example, because I recall looking at, there was an IT line item and it looked like it was kind of Metro IT or their IT, and I guess we can pin it for later, but it's just more like a holistic question around what departments are we assessing fees to that then they are paying for that may kind of, where we go is another example. It's like where are we being, we meaning Metro, charging departments for things instead of just making like all of IT a loss leader and that it's just there and we pay them directly and then they support all these departments. So I won't take any time really getting an answer now, but I think it's just something to talk about, about why we do it like that.

Council Member Cash.

Thank you, Chair. So roughly that we're talking about that the MNPS budget is like around 1.3 million, I mean billion this year, is that?

1.4.

1.4 billion. And then Council Member Allen's figure, there was 580 and yours went to... 270? 270. OK. I'm like, that's below 0.02% of the budget. Like it just seems like there should be some easily found wiggle room there to, and we've gotten a lot of emails about this. Like I know, let me ask this, cause I've been curious about this since I stopped teaching right before COVID. Like when, in your budget, like is this a year for a specific textbook adoption? Is that one of the things in your budget? One year it's social studies, one year it's English. And I'm just wondering, since we've, I mentioned COVID because we had to do virtual and so a lot of, there was a lot of online platforms that were invested in. We bought a bunch of Dell computers. And so I'm just wondering, are we continuing to buy the big thick, you know, like textbooks, hardbound textbooks at the same rate when we have so much more in the last decade or two, you know, like online, which should be cheaper. I'm just wondering if like, I remember when I was in Metro schools, it was, and was a part like, Council Member Porterfield was an MNPS teacher, MNEA member, and I have a proud graduate that is thriving. And I just remember that when we, those MNEA members and other teachers were organizing to get a pay raise or get something that we wanted out of the budget, it was like, really look at stuff. Don't cut positions, because we need those people helping us, but really look at... And so I would ask that you take another look at the stuff and see this. We've got a lot of, and I don't think it's just a program. I think it'll be educational for a lot of students and beneficial for our community. I kind of wanna ask another question, if I may, that is not about an item on here, but it's something that we have gotten some emails about. May I do that?

We're at 7-0-1. You will be the final question, council member.

We are continuing to get emails from Metro teachers who seem to be under the impression that we are the ones that give them their raises. And I find that it's just, and it's been a number of years. And I believe that that wasn't the case back when Tennessee allowed collective bargaining. I think it felt more like we knew that the ask of the council was the amount that they gave the school board, the school system. And now it seems like they believe that we are actually the ones that are supposed to give them raises. Why is that? I don't know who, that might be a better question.

Yeah, sure. So we don't try to position it as you necessarily give raises. What we have talked about over the last several years is we've tied a large percentage of our COLAs to the Metro's pay plan.

And so we work with the mayor's office, we provide an aspirational budget. we have to submit a budget document before the mayor actually considers the budget.

And so what we do is we provide what the cost of a cost of living increase will be every 1%. We include in our operational budget and our continuity of operations budget, the step raises. So for every step increase, which is if a teacher moves from one year to the next, they get a step increase if they haven't topped out. So we include that into that pay plan, but then we provide that flexibility in terms of what the cost of living increase will be based on what the mayor's allocation will be in the budget. And so the mayor in the state of Metro and the release talked about items that they wanted to fund with that. And so we look at those numbers and then we have gotten additional funding from the Metro Council in the past. to further increase that when, for instance, they increase the Metro employee pay plan. So if there was an effort to increase the employee pay plan for Metro, we would certainly appreciate a commiserate increase in order to do that cost of living increase. And so ultimately, The Board of Education, after the Metro Council adopts their budget, will take another look at the budget and then they'll make their determination. So to the questions about policy, any time, the budget is a policy, right? So we cannot sit here and say we're gonna take money from this policy and give it to that policy. That's ultimately a board decision and working with the superintendent. but certainly we advocate for additional funding and I know, I'm sure the Service Employees Union is advocating for additional funding for the, for Metro and Metro schools employees as well.

And I guess part of my part of my ask here is that I understand what you're saying. And it does seem we've kind of gotten into a system of that we try to align on the call on the cola, right? I think what would help some is and maybe it's happening, I'm just not as aware of it is if there's a little more engagement with the with the especially leadership of the groups, but in other other employees about, here's what we're looking at, right? I think that would be helpful. Thanks. Thanks, Chair.

And Madam Chair, I found this information. If I might do that. So we, during the discussion, we were told that the dumpster cost savings would be between $178,000 and $270,000 in landfill cost. So that was the, actually my math was incorrect, but hopefully that's close enough that they could work with it. So I would just again say many, many people were very grateful for what the schools, the 11 schools that participate in that pilot. My grandson tells me all about how to compost because he's learned at school. So it is teaching both the youngest generation who will then teach their parents. That's part of Nashville Zero Waste Master Plan. So I would love to push for this just as a sustainability thing, could be a cost saving. So my question to you would be, if we were to give you additional money in your budget, can you at least acknowledge that we went on record asking you to use it for that?

And I think that's been part of the aspirational budget process in the past is that when the Metro Council has funded specific items, we've gone back and added those in there. So that's something that we always look at. Not being able to commit to what the board is going to do, but generally they have been amenable to when the Metro Council makes a specific request, they try to fulfill that request.

Thank you very much.

And we did have another wishlist item, and my apologies for that, because Council Member Spain had a wishlist item related to MNPS, which was for the comprehensive audit. We can briefly discuss it now, internal audit. We've requested that they come tomorrow. So if there needs to be some further discussion from that perspective, we'll have that tomorrow. But Council Member Spain, if you wanted to kind of briefly touch on that.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I'll just quickly, we talked briefly about this yesterday, but the request, we haven't done a comprehensive operational audit since 2015 of MNPS. And so the request was to update that audit since in that time our student count has gone down by, from 86,000 to around 81,000. The budget has essentially doubled from 750 million to one and a half billion. So I'll just leave it there to ask if you wanna comment on that.

Sure, in terms of, there's two parts to that question. One was removing a million dollars from our operating budget to fund that. That would require a million dollars worth of policy changes and reductions and other programs in order to fund something like that. and you're talking about recurring funding source for one-time funding sources, what I believe you're looking to do, which is to, unless you're looking for a million dollars annually for Metro audit, I'm not sure. But in terms of the audit, we participate in annual audits with Crossland, We participate in specific audits at the request of Metro Audit. We try to be very responsive with those. Looking at the, for instance, the 2015 audit that they did was a comprehensive audit. You saw recommendations. I think they did a district organizational study and their savings was a million dollars a year for coupon books. It was outsourced bus drivers, outsourced cafeteria workers, outsourced facilities. that's the type of thing you might get with an audit of that nature, depending on how you would frame the scope of that. And so it might be a policy conversation as to what the Metro Council wants in that, because while an auditor or a finance person might say, yeah, you can save a lot of money by outsourcing transportation, from a school's perspective and having that internal perspective. We know that having our own bus drivers and paying them well is really important to provide safety for our students as well as we've heard plenty of horror stories about transportation outsourcing. I'm not saying that's necessarily where this would go. That's one of those things to be considerate of when you talk about the comprehensive audit of those natures.

yeah sure i i appreciate that and i'm i know you participate in regular financial audits i think i'm more interested in the in the performance aspects that we would talk about and and proficiency levels um we of course all aware what's going on with memphis shelby county schools you know the state has taken a great interest in their proficiencies or lack thereof and have did their own audit, a very extensive forensic audit and used that as a basis to take over their school system at this point. None of us wanna see Metro Nashville Public Schools in that boat. So I feel like it behooves us to make sure that our own house is in order before someone else tries to do that for us.

I do, yeah, just in terms of proficiency, what we've seen is year over year increases in proficiency above what the state has done in terms of our students performing. We've seen the highest two graduation rates in the last two years. The Metro Council and the Mayor's Office along with the Board have invested significantly into student support services and positive school supports. We've seen a significant reduction in behavioral incidents as a result of those investments. the investments that the Metro Council and the city have made have seen actual results for our students. And so it all kind of ties back to the conditions for teaching and learning and making sure we're improving those. So, you know, unfortunately the budget process doesn't align with TCAP. So, you know, I believe we're gonna have some positive results coming out of it. it's embargoed until the state releases it. So we can't really talk too much about that. But I think we've seen those investments tied to that. And so, and then just in terms of, you know, where MNPS lands as a percentage of the overall Metro budget in terms of revenues, we've seen that decrease over since let's say 2017, 2020, it's decreased. Not to say that they haven't invested considerably in MNPS, as a commiserate share of the overall share of revenue within the city, there has been a bit of a reduction in that. Over sort of a eight, 10 year span, this particular budget year, there's a slight increase in that. So we appreciate the city putting that investment in there. So just wanted to kind of put it in that context, but the city council or the Metro council, the mayor, they've all been very supportive of increasing employee pay. And so the vast majority of our increase goes to that, just like the vast majority of the Metro government increases going to the pay plan and benefits, the same is true for MNPS. It's going to fund those. It's going to fund those internal service fees and a variety of other continuity funding.

And if I may add, that makes a tremendous difference in our ability to actually recruit and retain quality teachers. And as we have seen the needs to support students with exceptional needs, you know, multilingual learners. It's paramount that we actually are competitive and we offer, you know, a way to actually attract educators that will actually provide the services that then translate into the results and outcomes that Sean was referring to.

I don't want to get into a running thing about this. I appreciate all that. I think we ought to be able to show how those increased investments over time are driving student outcomes and helping us recruit the best and brightest and all that sort of good thing. I don't think it's unreasonable to take a look at that at least once every 10 years for a department that does still constitute more than a third of our budget annually. As far as the funding source, I understand the concern there. It is a one-time ask. And we had talked some during your budget hearing about you have a targeted amount of savings for salaries. I think it was 1.8%, which I think you said for this year was like $18 million. I don't know if that's a viable source for something like this or not.

That is already included in the budget. It's considered as part of what helped us essentially meet the allocation. So as Sean referenced, an additional taking $1 million will be a change in policy that we would need to essentially work with the board to figure out what would need to be reduced. Thank you for that. Yeah.

Council Member Porterfield, did you have something?

I had a clarifying question. Did I understand you correctly? Like, were you saying that the percentage of the budget that goes to MNPS is what has gone down over the last 8 to 10 years?

If you look at all the revenue sources, so the big $3.7 billion number, I think it is, you know, as a percentage of that, the MNPS debt service and the MNPS operating budget has gone down since, let's say, 2017, 2018, et cetera. So that's where...

The percentage and the overall...

of overall revenue share, the MNPS budget, we have definitely seen an increase in actual revenue from the city, let me be clear. And we've also seen an increase in the percentage of our budget that is funded by Metro. So yes, to that point, the state, level of funding has gone down over those last five years, whereas the city's percentage of investment in our schools as a per pupil basis and as a budget basis has certainly increased as a result. I think we've gone from, we were looking at the numbers, we were at 30% maybe 2019. It's about.

58% local, 38 state to now it's like 74, 18. Yeah.

But, and, and, but to be clear, year after year, Metro government has been given more to MPS, right? And I just wanted to like name that for the record, because like for the constituency that may be watching that language may be a little confusing and thank you for naming the, you know, the city has gone up, the state has gone down. And I think that that becomes a point of, um, tension for, for us. And just frankly, a point of, of tension, like nobody wants to throw anybody under the bus. So it shouldn't be like council members versus school board members, but it is literally tension. And the fact that we have a $3.8 billion budget and we have to fund the whole city with $3.8 billion. So when we're giving like 1.4 billion to schools, like we have to do debt services and everything is left. We have to do the whole city. So it's like, we want to be able to give more. And we know that our students are our greatest asset. And we want to continue investing in schools and giving y'all more and more and more. And also like recognizing that it's really the state that needs to be given more. And it puts us at a point of tension of y'all are having to make really tough decisions. And we're also having to make really tough decisions. So I just wanted to like, name that I'm also one of the people that supports the sustainability, supporting you all finding it within your own budget. Cause like we have to find it within our own budget when we're like, that's literally the point of this work session is like, we're trying to figure out how do we find in our own budget to fund the stuff that's a priority for us. So like, I would just advocate for if there is a way to find it, to find it because we are like doing the best we can. We're also robbing Peter to pay Paul. I know that's what y'all are doing. So I just want to name that. I feel like that's the elephant in the room and nobody's saying it, so I'll say it. That's just the point of tension.

All right, and I think that is a good place to end. Thank you all for your patience. We will be here again at 4.30, and we have some other departments and organizations that are coming tomorrow as well.

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