Metropolitan Council - Regular Meeting

I know being in the, it feels more formal being in the chamber where work sessions are supposed to be informal. This is an opportunity for us to discuss with department heads, department representatives, with community members about wishlist items that the council members have submitted. That information helps us to work better together as council members in determining what wishlist items are actually viable. And once we determine which ones are viable and make sense, then we can try to look at funding sources so that we can try to fund some of these items. And it's the same process as yesterday. We have several department heads, department representatives, community groups, here to speak on, to help provide some information on council members' wishlist items. We should have a representative from the Entertainment Commission. Do we have someone? Okay. Office of Family Safety.

We'll skip over that.

We do? Oh, okay. I just didn't see it. Ella's House. All right. Mary Paris Center. The Weaver Center. Fantastic. The Contributor. Fantastic. Office of Homeless Services. Fantastic. Sexual Assault Center. And I know there's a time constraint there, so I'm aware of that. Parks. Fantastic, I see you in the back. MMPD. I see you back there. Library. Gotcha, the branch, and the mayor's office, I see you. All right, so we can go ahead and get started. And I am, colleagues, I am looking at the most recent funding request by appropriations handout. And I am on page two, and I'm gonna go ahead. We do have someone from Office of Family Safety. Are they running late? Was that the one that was running late? Okay, we'll skip over Ella's house, Hold tight, we will come back to you. Looking at, Mary Perry Center's also putting those funds with the Office of Family Safety, so we will hold off on that one as well. Let's go with the Entertainment Commission. And so that allocating funds for the entertainment commission was on several council members wishlist. I am scanning the room and I am going to look at you council member Evans. Can you talk a little bit about the $300,000 allocation for the entertainment commission? And then I'll ask for that representative to come and give us some information.

Council Member Evans. Thank you, Chair. So the $300,000 request was to restore the funding for the Entertainment Commission for physician and administrative assistant and then their fringe benefits because of the extended amount of time it took to get to the point where there was opportunity to post the position. The commission was in the process or had made recommendations to the mayor's office of two candidates with a recommendation for one in particular. And so then that time period essentially kind of lapsed when I went to the mayor's office and then the budget did not have funding for the commission in the mayor's budget.

Okay, and there are a few funding sources listed, and one is the mayor's office, and before we get to the representatives here for the mayor's office, can I get the representative from the Entertainment Commission? Yep, you can come to the back table if you can introduce yourself, and then you are recognized. Just to shine some light on this $300,000 request, what that covers, and... any background information that you could provide.

Sure, thank you so much for having me. I'm Stephanie Silverman. I am a member of the Entertainment Commission. We're a commission of 15 citizens who've been doing a lot of work over the last three years to stand up this commission. An Entertainment Commission is really a workforce development engine for a city that is about keeping a creative workforce working. It's a thing that most of our peer cities, frankly, already have in existence, and it's something that I think Nashville really needs, we have of course seen some fantastic productions. We have an incredible music industry here, but both of those industries need to be sort of shepherded along. There needs to be more intentional recruitment of work to the city so that Nashville's talent, we have decades of talent, My colleagues from IATSE and SAG-AFTRA and the Musicians Union are all members of this commission who represent a huge amount of the workforce in the city. We know what we see is a very competitive landscape where cities who are doing more production are peeling away Nashvillians to work in these other cities We need to be making sure this work is consistently in our city. We, this in February undertook a long search for a potential executive director candidate. We ended up with two fantastic candidates after a thorough process that the commission led with some support from human resources, One of those candidates has now taken another job, but one candidate is still available. That candidate walked in the door with a one-year plan on what she was ready to do on day one. So what we are hoping to do with this $300,000 is pay that executive director, pay an administrative assistant, It would only allow for very meager startup costs, but we, these commissions in other cities are not huge. They're very efficient. They're very focused on workforce development. And it is, you know, this, this legislation stood up this commission now three years ago. So it feels really like the time The present time is a time of action and we hope and really request your support at least for the 300,000 to allow us to move forward with some staff. Right now it's 15 people only doing this work through public meetings. We would love staff. And I'd be happy to answer any questions.

I'm gonna turn to the representative that we have from the mayor's office and I turn to you. and I'll let you introduce yourself and you'll have the floor. But one of the funding sources listed for this 300,000 is the mayor's office. But I also know that that office of entertainment is housed within the mayor's office, if I'm correct. And so even if it was funded from somewhere else, that funding would go, I presume, to the mayor's office in order to fund that particular office. And so if you could speak to, one, the $300,000 coming out of your budget, and two, if that $300,000 comes from another source, is this something that the mayor's office would take on so that the Entertainment Commission, from what I'm understanding, can continue their work in hiring an executive director?

Thank you, Chair. Masami Tyson, Chief of Staff to Mayor O'Connell. Let me take those questions in order First, my understanding is that per the legislation that created this position, the position would not be housed in the mayor's office. And so to that end, and for our budget constraint reasons, we would not be able to fund the $300,000 out of our budget. Does that answer your question or is there another question that I?

The second question, well, Since it's not, it's currently not in the mayor's office? I don't remember where it is. So it's a standalone office? Okay, okay. So there's not sufficient, well, you're saying that there isn't sufficient room in the mayor's budget to take out the $300,000. Okay, then you don't. Since it's a standalone office, there's no need to answer the second question. Any questions from colleagues? Council Member Coopin.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Stephanie, for being here. Can you speak a little bit, and I talked about kind of what the, I guess, the fiscal benefit to the city is of having these TV film productions here and kind of what, I mean, it's a $300,000 spend, but what could we see as that return from that investment?

Sure. You know, I have some examples, I think, from sort of peer cities that are relevant. You know, At Fort Worth, for example, established a film commission in 2015. The result has been over a billion in economic impact and 50,000 jobs with a documented five to one return on every dollar invested. San Antonio, another peer city, saw 165% increase in film permits after they committed to their commission. That didn't happen because of the state incentive. It happened because someone was doing the work, building San Antonio's reputation with studios as a destination, was helping to scout locations, was helping to recruit larger entertainment projects to that community. And to be honest, most of these departments in other cities, Seattle, for example, has two staff members, are not huge labor reliant departments, but it is about personal relationship building that attracts productions here. I think the other thing that is critical, especially when we're talking about how this serves citizens is attracting that production and we're attracting productions is one thing, but making sure that the Nashville residents are hired when it arrives is another. And that really does require a commission. with workforce development and its mandate. So Seattle and Dallas have both built local higher requirements and crew pipelines programs directly into their commission structures. This is the kind of work that a commission like this can begin doing. We have the workforce here, but. We have to make sure that we have the productions that are here today. We have the productions that are shedding their schedule for next year for the following year for the year after Kentucky. I just learned, um, is setting up some pretty, pretty insight and enticing incentives. And so they're going to begin to be in direct competition with us for productions just down the road and they have more state money than we do. So to, I think we're at a critical juncture where we have become an attractive place to shoot, but we have to do the recruitment work and the boots on the ground work to make sure our workforce is the first workforce doing this creative economy work.

Thank you, and it sounds like you feel like there's a strong local worker impact to this. Oh, profound, absolutely. And it sounds like also you feel like that even with a staff member or two, you could really do some real impact.

Yeah, because we're seeing, ideally, frankly, the first round that we put in and worked with finance on had four staff members, but two is a start, and this work is a little overdue, to be frank. We had, in the Bredesen administration, a department of four doing this work. Over time, it sort of disintegrated, I think it's time again to have a real focused vision on this workforce and to make sure that we create constant workflows for them so that they can stay in Nashville, living in Nashville, paying taxes in Nashville, and helping to make this city what the Super Bowl wanted to come and celebrate us for.

Thank you. I'll just wrap up real quick by saying I'm hugely in support of this. I've worked in the TV film industry in a number of different capacities since my days at Belmont. And I think one of the most important things to have a thriving TV film economy is consistency and project generation that, you know, a workforce can't, you know, it needs to go from production to production. And we're starting to see that where crews that work on, you know, worked on National 9-1-1 were able to seamlessly transition into Scarpetta, which is back to National 9-1-1 Season 2 and Scarpetta Season 2. And there's a number of other productions that are coming here. And it's a huge impact. I know speaking to the CVC, One of the huge impacts of national 911 was that that production put billboards all over the country spending millions and millions of dollars a billboard saying Nashville Nashville Nashville Nashville again driving people here, but also so there's a tourism impact, but there's also a. you know, again, a local workforce impact, letting people have positions even as runners and PAs. And we talk a lot as a council about, again, making sure that there are good jobs here and good local jobs. And I think this is a really, you know, $300,000 to me is a small investment that I think we will see a, you know, multimillion dollar return off of.

Council Member Spain.

Thank you, Madam chair. Could we hear a little bit more from the mayor's office on the logic behind eliminating this funding in the, in the proposed budget? Was it just that it didn't belong in the mayor's office or was, is there a logic that the positions is not needed in the larger sense?

Thank you for that question. So, The position is not in the mayor's office, so it was not, it does not make sense for the budget, the funding to come out of the mayor's budget, which is already very tight, as I had the opportunity to explain to this body several weeks ago. As far as the position itself is concerned, well, I just wanna make it abundantly clear that we support the commission. There is no messaging here that contradicts that. And I wanna make that abundantly clear on behalf of the mayor and this administration. When the mayor had contemplated the spending and allocations for this coming fiscal year, there were many competing interests and not enough money to go around. And there were decisions that had to be made. And in that context, this was one that we were not able to allocate monies for. Having said that, I wanna repeat again that it is not that we did not find or the Mayor did not find that the Commission to be a valuable entity or that any of the things that were mentioned by the Entertainment Commission today are untrue. So where that decision was made was as follows. Now I was not here, as my colleagues know, when this... position was created several years ago, and it was contemplated for this to be a standalone office, again, outside of the mayor's office, and allocate two positions is my understanding. And I think that there was discussions that were had that contemplated a different model to have not a standalone office, but perhaps something that were to be incorporated within the mayor's office or elsewhere. And the Mayor does feel that he would love to engage in a conversation with his body and the Entertainment Commission about a different setup. And if the funding can be sourced, and again, I'd like to repeat that it is not possible, unfortunately, for it to be sourced by the Mayor's Office budget to be distinguished from the Metro budget overall. if we can collectively find a pathway forward in which the setup, the process of this entertainment commission and the administration of the commission is workable, we are very happy to engage in that discussion.

Is that a discussion that's gonna happen within the next three weeks as we're working through this budget process, or are we talking about a longer term? And I ask because they've got a viable candidate for the position sort of in hand, so I'm just wondering what you envision the timeline for that being.

Again, because it would not be coming out of the mayor's office budget, that funding source would have to be elsewhere. And so to that extent, the mayor's office itself does not have control over when that conversation can happen.

Thank you for that. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Go ahead.

Council Member Suarez.

Thank you, Chair. I just wanted to, I had this on my list as well, and while I was never on TV or anything like my colleague, Council Member Coopman, I think I stayed at a holiday inn too, so maybe that, qualifies me as one. But one of the reasons why I put it on there is that For me, as we look at budget, I look at it as another class of residents and workers in the city that this position supports. And for $300,000, I felt like these are another pool of our constituents that gets help with this, that this position helped make their work better, their earnings better. And if all that we are doing to invest in this small pool of small businesses is 300,000, I thought it was worth it. And so that's why I put it on my wishlist and I hope we can find the money to support it. Plus it's a very new thing that we just did. We spent a long time creating this commission. Those of us that are second time, I took a long time to get here. And so to finally get here and then to go away, just felt like all of that work that we did is going to waste and I will hate to see that. So I hope we can find some money somewhere to support it. Thank you, Chair.

Thank you. I'm scanning the Councilwoman Evans.

Thank you, Chair. Our Chief of Staff had given me a letter from Council Member Stiles that she asked me to read. Can I read that? Yes. Okay, and before I read it, I will say that what I'm about to read is not necessarily reflective of my opinion. I am the messenger. It says, dear colleagues, I'm writing today about the restoration of funding for the Nashville Entertainment Office. As Music City, our identity, and our economy are built on the backs of creativity, it is time this government stops failing our artists and starts providing the structural support that they deserve. The funding in question is a modest $300,000, yet its impact would be transformative. This allocation covers the hiring of an executive director and a coordinator, as well as essential operational tools like Real Scout, a vital platform that helps industry professionals scout filming locations in our city. For the last three years, this commission and its members have faced unnecessary hurdles from the current administration. The entertainment commission has endured administrative interference through the placement of individuals on the commission who were openly opposed to its very creation. HR also posted an incorrect job description even after the commission provided the requirements. efforts to wrest control of the executive director selection process away from the commission, and most recently, removing all funding as a result of providing a tax break only after the commission successfully moved two qualified candidates forward to the mayor's office. While doing all of the above in the last three years, the administration has allowed the creation of two other non-revenue generating offices. However, the entertainment office is designed to be revenue generating. By facilitating film, music, and digital media production, we bring outside investment and jobs directly into Nashville. The situation has already had a chilling effect. One of the two finalists for the director position has already withdrawn. We have one remaining candidate. If the funding is restored, the mayor simply needs to make the announcement and this office can finally begin the work it was created to do. I guess I'll add from my vantage point that I attended one of the commission meetings because I was asked to attend, really just to kind of get a lay of the land of what were the circumstances and things that the commission members were dealing with. And it felt, and also in my continued ongoing follow-up with some of the commission members, it has felt, first of all, like an indictment of, some of our implementation processes. And I will say this by saying that you can tell, and we've talked about this a little bit yesterday, you can tell when people are not in support of a program because the action is the message. The message is not necessarily the message, it is what steps we are taking to facilitate bringing things to a conclusion. And in this situation, I believe that the actions have indicated that this commission has not had the support that it has needed in making that bridge between the mayor's office and the commission members. which I hate because I think that that is an important part of implementing any program. And so when we think about this commission and the folks that have invested the years and going back to also what we talked about yesterday, when we were at National League of Cities in Atlanta, while Chair Toombs and Council Member Gamble and I were at the planning conversation and the housing discussion, other members went to this discussion about how Atlanta invests in film and television and music kind of in their community. And so I think that that, I don't remember necessarily the genesis of this commission if it was as a result of those conversations, but I know it played a role in it. And so when we think about the time it took last term, the conversations that were had with members who were in opposition to this commission being created, but the majority of the body passed it, I think it really illustrates that things can still go sideways. And I think that this has gone sideways as a result of some of those transitions. And also like when you're passing legislation towards the end of a term, that there is no guarantee it's ever going to come to fruition. And I can think of several other examples to support that. I think in this situation, we have a lot in addition to the, um, the, the lack, the revenue kind of conversation. I think we also have a big reputational risk because we are putting professionals on commissions who are investing their time and their energy when they could be out making money for themselves. to invest in our city. And I would like to see this funding restored simply to bring this to a conclusion and let them go so that way we can see how this office will operate, the opportunities it can bring, and also how it can benefit residents. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member. I don't see any additional hands. I will ask one additional question to the mayor's office, because I believe the actual hiring of the executive director is kind of a joint thing between the commission and the mayor. If this were to be funded, would the mayor's office be willing to move forward with the hiring of the executive director? And if you don't have an answer today, that's fine, but that is a question, because I think that it would be pointless if we were to fund the entertainment commission, but then the hiring of the executive director still be stalled.

Thank you for that question chair. The answer in a vacuum is yes. However, as I have mentioned already before, I think that the mayor's office would like to engage in a discussion with the entertainment commission and this body about how to best set up the leadership of the Entertainment Commission. I also would like to add, if I may, Chair, that to the extent that the communication between the Mayor's Office and the Entertainment Commission was lacking, I had a conversation with your colleague, and I apologize for addressing directly the Entertainment Commission, Chair, I had a conversation with Mr. Max Butler about this. I have been involved in this matter just recently, but I would like to say to the Entertainment Commission and to this body and Chair Toombs that the Mayor's Office would like to reconvene and re-engage in discussions with the Entertainment Commission about how to best move this forward should these positions be funded. And I personally as Chief of Staff would like to own that process and I do apologize for any gaps in communication while the Entertainment Commission and its professionals engaged in this process only to come to this result. And so again, I would like to repeat that this is a very important initiative and an important body of folks that are really what makes Nashville Music City And so to that end, it is extremely important to Mayor O'Connell. Council member had mentioned that actions speak louder than words. And I would like to ask that if I may engage in conversations with the Entertainment Commission going forward to that end. Thank you.

We would welcome that.

Thank you. Any additional discussion on this wishlist item? Thank you, Ms. Silverman. Thank you so much. All right, so next we're gonna do the Sexual Assault Center. If you turn to page 17, colleagues, you'll see that wishlist item from Council Member Evans, and it's an $87,000 item. Council Member Evans, if you could just briefly explain what the request is, and then we'll hear from the Sexual Assault Center as to where that $87,000 calculation comes from.

Thank you, Chair, so Sexual Assault Center, you may remember from several years ago when we were going down the path of bringing on funding for the Safe Bar Program that was targeting, of course, bars, getting restaurant employee, bar and restaurant employees trained about how to identify when Someone has had their drink drugged. So we went down a path several years ago for that. And so the funding, there has been funding included in the mayor's office specific to the Sexual Assault Center because sexual assault is, to my understanding, the only crime in Davidson County that is still up. And so essentially Sexual Assault Center wants to regain this $87,000 to be able to target using the areas of town where sexual assault is higher than others to focus their kind of retraining efforts and engagement efforts, more laser focused in those communities. And so that's what the request is related to.

All right. And can we get the representative from the sexual assault center at that back table? If you could introduce yourself and you'll have the floor. If you could just tell us what the $87,000 would go towards.

Yes, definitely. Thank you so much for having me, Councilwoman Evans. Thank you for the support. My name is Rachel Freeman. I'm the CEO of the Sexual Assault Center. As Councilwoman Evans said, the only crime in Davidson County that increased in 2026 so far is sexual assault. that points out the significant need to continue to fund these services, at least at the way they've been funded. We just trained our 100th Safe Bar because of the support of council and the mayor's office. And that's a tremendous feat, and we're thrilled by that. One of the reasons why we think sexual assault has reports have increased is because of the public awareness, community awareness, and the prevention efforts that we've poured into the city. So we don't wanna see that decline, especially as the incidents have continued to rise. So the 87,000 would allow us to continue to do the Safe Bar Program, to expand it more widely, and to work on other prevention initiatives across our city so that we can more strategically address this public safety and public health crisis and decrease the incidence of sexual violence in our city.

All right. Any questions from colleagues around the $87,000 allocation to the sexual assault center? I don't see any. Well, thank you so much, Ms. Fragment. I appreciate your time.

Thank you so much. And thank you for the continued support of the council and the mayor's office. We're very grateful.

And just to clarify, Director Wilson, if our budget officer Pratt, if funded, the sexual assault center, that's a direct appropriation, right? That's not going through a department?

I would have to look that up. Erin Pratt, budget officer. I'm currently looking that up right now, but I do believe it's through OFS currently right now.

Okay.

Yeah, it is a direct appropriation for OFS. Okay, it goes through OFS, okay.

And is there already a proposed amount going to them? How much is that?

Council Member, the Mayor's proposed budget has a grant to the Sexual Assault Center Safe Bar Program for $175,000.

Council Member Evans, is this 87,000 on top of that 175?

Well, I think it's on top, but honestly, I thought it was, there may be a discrepancy in that amount because I think I had in my notes 120 was what was funded, and so I would need to double check Ms. Freeman, you have something to add?

I can just answer that question, if that's okay. The $175,000 is what has been granted to us through the Office of Family Safety. The $87,000 was an additional amount that the Women's Caucus and all of Council elected to give to us last year to be able to do the Safe Bar program. So the $175,000 we already get supports the Sexual Assault Forensic Exam Clinic where we provide rape exams on our campus and helps provide therapy and advocacy to victims and survivors of sexual assault. And then the additional money helps support the prevention efforts of Safe Bar.

Okay, thank you for that. Any questions based off that additional information, colleagues? Did you have something to add?

No, I was just waiting. Okay. Thank you, Ms. Freeman. I appreciate it. Thank you so much.

All right. Is there someone here for Office of Family Safety? I couldn't remember what time they were supposed to get. Okay, great. So there are several items under the Office of Family Safety. So I just want to make sure we're all on the same page in terms of the wishlist items that council members have requested. You can come on to the back table. So we have red frog frogs and most council members have requested that that go under the office of family safety. I know at least one council member thinks it should go under the beer board. So I will turn to that outlier. Council Member Kufan.

Chair, I think you just gave me another title, the outlier. Thank you, Chair. Yeah, and I was just trying to try to square up with the special counsel. I think there might've been some transference going on because the wishlist had indicated beer board, but then somewhere maybe it became Office of Family Safety. To clarify, the Office of Nightlife is housed within the beer board, just from a logistical perspective. So when it says beer board, that's the only way we can indicate. office of nightlife. So my understanding was that one place to put, to put red frogs would be with office of nightlife, which was in general and getting them established downtown. I know that some representatives are from red frogs here that could speak to kind of what they do and the work that they do. But I'm open to it being an office of family safety as well. Just that's kind of where originally I thought it was going to go.

And how is that decision made? Where, where it goes, director Wilson or budget officer Pratt, Is it just whichever department wants to take it or.

Aaron Pratt, budget officer. It's been with office of family safety as submitted in one of the substitute budgets, I think was last year's 2025 office of family safety was best suited for the program. And I think at that time they were the only one who was requested to have the program. Okay. Oh, sorry. Red frogs. Yeah.

I think family safety put red frogs into their budget.

I know. I was still thinking of sexual assault center. Sorry. Sorry. I'll have to look that up. Yeah. Red frogs. I think has come up a couple of times in the current budget and as requested by office of nightlife beer board.

Okay. So that may be a better fit. I see a head nod in the back. Okay. So let me, pause on Office of Family Safety and bring up the Red Frogs folks to talk about that request because the amounts requested from council members are different. Most are requesting $250,000, but there is one that is requesting $100,000. So if you could talk about the program and then talk about what the actual financial need is.

Yeah, wonderful. Well, I'm Dan. I'm the CEO of Red Frogs USA. And firstly, thank you. It's an honor to be here and to be in this room. And I know there's been a lot of support and groundswell around Red Frogs. And I think it's a big need downtown. For those that are not aware of what Red Frogs is, it's a volunteer-driven support network. And so we say that we're the fence at the top of the cliff, not the ambulance at the bottom. And so we've been operating on Fridays and Saturday nights in the downtown district, setting up chill-out zones. And so it's been something that we've been doing the past couple years, but then also big events like CMA Fest, which we're about to head into next week. We will have about 100 volunteers across the four days. with three different chill-out zones that are gonna be greeting and welcoming and taking care of the hundreds of thousands of people that'll be in the downtown district. But then also 4th of July, New Year's Eve, and then as we head into the growth periods of the next couple of years with the Super Bowl in 2030. You know, Red Frogs, we exist as early intervention and harm minimization. And so we've done some studies in how we prevent, you know, it's early intervention, not risk mitigation. And so it's about preventing incidents from taking place. Not reactionary, but pro-actionary. And so the whole idea behind it is we have these chill-out zones and volunteer-driven. We're charging somebody's phone. It can be a very dangerous thing when somebody visits Nashville and their downtown, whether they're from the area in Davidson County or they're spending tourism dollars into our budget. And so they're visiting the downtown district, they don't really know the way around or how to get back home safely, back to their hotel, accommodation, or Airbnb, in which so much of the tourism happens in the downtown district. And so what we do is we have free phone charging stations. And so at CMA Fest, we're gonna charge about 2,500 phones across the four days with about 60,000 cups of water. And for us, every cup of water is a moment where someone can press pause and take inventory on how their night is going. And so our volunteers are out there from 8 p.m. to 2 a.m. every Friday and Saturday, then obviously the big events, where we're looking after people. We're taking care of people. We're doing everything we can to help make sure that people get home safely. And so whether that's ordering an Uber, where we pay for it, we track people's location. We've already got an established relationship with EMS and MMPD. It's already something that's been happening. And so it's just supercharging it And and be able to get behind it and it's a proven model right around the world We have ten countries in which red frogs operate in looking after about 2.2 million people face to face every single year And so we say we prepare for the crowds But we have eyes for the one and so we train all of our volunteers to make sure that we take care of people 99% of time people come to Nashville. They're gonna have a great time We want to make sure that 1% chance doesn't take place. And so this funding this ask is I know that there's been many different people that have been asking for it. And I think it's something that the people of Nashville and also those that come and visit have been wanting for a long time. This peer-led, peer support. It's not private security. It's not police. You know, it's not ambulance or MMPD. We work together in collaboration with those partners. But it's a volunteer-driven-led organization to take care of people and make sure they get home safely. And so this ask would help. establish in 2027 the ability to have this program downtown Fridays and Saturdays, but then also expand the footprint already working with the Preds who gave us a grant just recently and the Titans and all the different people. So we're able to work together to keep Nashville the safe place for many people to come and visit for many years to come. But happy to answer any questions that you may have, but I appreciate you, yeah.

So what is the financial ask?

I mean, I would love to ask for $250,000 dedicated funding to, you know, to supercharge the Red Frog program downtown to continue it into 2027 every Friday and Saturday.

Council Member Coopin. Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Dan, for being here and all the great work you do. Can you share, so let's say for a Friday night, for the 52 weeks, the whole year, about how much does that cost you for one evening for a year?

Yeah, one evening we've mapped it out to be about $100,000. We break our budget into a couple different categories, 30% wages, 25% operation expenses, 25% our equipment, 10% is like an emergency fund, and then 10% we're trying to expand to be able to do other locations, downtown.

And where does the funding come in from currently?

So far, the Detweiler Foundation was very generous in being able to sponsor the program to expand to Saturday nights for the rest of, you know, for 2026. But it's people, we run a Friend of the Frog program where people donate, community, you know, just people who just love the work that we do and are supporting it. And they often ask, they say, hey, is Metro involved? Is Metro, you know, funding it? I'm like, well, you know, not quite yet. And so, You know, people, they get behind it. Every different Friday and Saturday night, a bar sponsors our volunteers dinner. And so the community support behind it has been quite phenomenal. And I'm very honored, you know, by that support. But I think that we can do more together.

And I'll just be brief chair. I can't say enough how important this, this is to downtown, but we'd also love to see it in other neighbors, neighborhoods throughout the city. Red frogs was brought to me early in my, in my term. And it, but it wasn't until we sadly lost Riley strain downtown where this became a topic of conversation to bring to our city. And the challenge was that we had folks coming, drinking, having a good time and it's hard to tell who's out there having a good time and who's at a place where they really need some help. And there wasn't that kind of middle ground and Red Frogs has come in and done that for so many people. And I've heard countless stories of folks who's got home safely and might not have otherwise because of them. And my concern is that they continue to do great work finding funding sources or finding grants or finding one-off things and kind of piecing it together. But as we know with ARPA and other grant-funded programs without being regular grants, that funding can disappear. So I think it's really important to get them some sort of a consistent funding source. And again, they take burden off police, they take burden off EMS, they get locals involved in volunteer work. They do incredible, incredible work for our city. And so I think it's really important as a government, if we're here kind of for Nashville, by Nashville to do things to protect people here. And so really just ask my colleagues to support this request.

Council Member Evans. Thank you, I just have, I have two questions for you. One, how do you measure your success and then also can you explain from a diversion perspective like how you engage with people and then if they are having a serious issue, like what's that connection point look like between EMTs or police or however that looks.

Yeah, we'll go to the second question first in regards to that we have a great partnership in collaboration with the different stakeholders downtown. And so whether that be EMS, Chief Tidwell, so he will refer, we say we're a referral-based agency. And so we have our training to be able to I think inventory on how a person's doing and whether they need extra help. And so we don't try and become EMS, we refer to EMS. And then same likewise, Chief Tidwell refers people to us, where he says, hey, this person just needs to sit down for a minute and I can't babysit them for the next couple of hours because my ambulances need to be able to, my staff need to be able to do the work that that he does. I know Chief Drake spoke about Red Frogs, I mean, just last week, I believe, in one of the hearings, as we work together in collaboration. And so there's that direct line of open communication. But then also, you know, we have our Red Frogs number, which our goal is to create that as into a hotline, like we do in other countries around the world, where someone can text that to get a walk home. We had a call through the other night. We walked someone home at one o'clock in the morning because their friends had left them. And we were able to, you know, and I could go into that whole story, but able to get that that young lady back home to her, her car, and then safely back on to, you know, further. So, so how we work together is so important. We can't do this alone. We need to do it together. And so we have that direct line of communication in, in regards to how do we determine success every Friday or Saturday night, our team do team leader reports. And so they document the statistics. And so I have a whole report about how, you know, we were able to, if someone, a little bit intoxicated, we're able to walk them back to their hotel. Working with the concierge services to be able to get them back into their room, that for me is a success. We say that every number has a name, every name has a story, and every story is important to us. And so how we measure success is through those stories. And so it's so important. I mean, you know, if we had more time, I could share the amount of stories that we get every single Friday and Saturday night. I estimate it's about 10 to 15 emergency services trips we stop from going to hospital, just because of our team were able to be there. And same, likewise with MMPD, where they're able to refer to us, and you know, there's a few times that somebody's gone a little bit too far, and so we refer back to them, and so sometimes there is that time that the safest place for someone to be is actually in the care of MMPD, and not by themselves. And so it's just, we can't do this without partners and doing it together. Yeah.

Council Member Porterfield.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you for being here and for what you do. I think that that's an amazing service that you provide. My question is, has there been any conversation with the Downtown Partnership to get funding from the Downtown Partnership?

There's been a little bit of conversation. I've got a lunch with them next week, but it's still early stages in regards to that conversation.

Thank you, I appreciate it. I think that it is a really important service. I think that... It's great to be able to provide this service for people. As Council Member Coopin said, sometimes you don't know if someone has been over-served or sometimes people don't quite know their own limits. So I think it's great that we are able to provide this to keep both residents and tourists safe. I also think that this is something that is directly benefiting downtown, and it would be amazing if Downtown Partnership was able to fund this. So I 100% support it being funded by Downtown Partnership, and I hope that that works out. And we'll see how it goes, but just echoing and putting it in the ecos and in the atmosphere that it will be amazing if they're able to fund that.

Thank you, Council Member Ewing.

Thank you, Chair. What an amazing program. I'm, I'm a huge fan. Um, and, uh, I think it's so important to do this proactive prevention, um, so that we stop problems before they even have a chance to, to start. Um, my questions relate to, um, statistically like, uh, it's, it's clear that Fridays and Saturdays would obviously be the, the, hottest period for people overindulging and going out on the town and everything. But statistically, like you had said, you're adding in Sundays, which is excellent, or trying to add in Sundays.

We just added Saturdays. You added Saturdays, okay. But we would love to be on Sundays. I'm getting pushy now. It's my southern accent.

Right. So... Statistically, looking at the whole week, aside from adding Sunday, are there any other days where you see clusters of things happening and you wish that you could add that in?

Yeah, great question. Yeah, I think, you know, anytime in the downtown district, you're going to find... many people who need the help of our services. And so there's strategy behind obviously what we do, and with more resource, we'll be able to expand over to more nights, whether it be Thursday all the way through to Sunday, or whether it's a Wednesday night pop-up celebrate the Super Bowl coming to Nashville if we would able to have the resource we're able to be agile to mobilize people at the moment it's all volunteers which creates volunteer administration volunteer services to be able to coordinate to train and to recruit people and so I think what would be so amazing is if that we have this consistent funding and whether that comes from Metro or downtown partnership I think that it actually helps everyone and and whether that is somebody who is a local, we're able to keep Nashville the place that people want to live and actually be here and enjoy the city and all that it has to offer. And I think that's where we come in that culture transformation. So I think if we had Red Frogs down there seven nights a week, they would be busy. And we would love to be able to create the lower end of Broadway, but then also at Bridgestone Plaza, to be able to get both sides. At the moment, we just have one on Second Ave, Second and broad and so we'd actually love to expand the the frog print To be able to get get to some more places to have more chill out zones.

Well that leads directly to my my last question which is We have a problem with with Sexual assault on many college campuses. Yeah, have you have you thought about do you have? ambitions to to spread

Yeah.

To campuses, maybe do training the trainers.

Yeah. That type of thing. That's a great question. So we actually are speaking with Vanderbilt. We actually did their Rites of Spring Music Festival. We did it a couple years ago. We just did it then. We're doing the EDM Festival in September. You know, we've been talking with Belmont. We actually have a partnership, you know, where people from the Pharmaceutical College of Belmont come and do practical hours with us. So we're actually looking after, you know, there's that direct relationship in there. So we have some really great inroads in how we can work together with the universities in this area. And it's where Red Frogs thrives, right around the world in that college space. And so I'm really excited that with some funding we'll be able to expand through the Vandy Games on Saturdays, to do activations in that fraternity sorority area to keep the noise levels down and to be able to have a peer support network for these college students as they go through. We have a whole education arm of Red Frogs. We have freshman orientation, how to survive your first year of college. We have transitioned from grade 12 senior year to college. And so we have student leadership training around there. If we would truly, which is what we are, is early intervention, we need to start early. That's why if there's any confusion of the ages, we say 13 to 30 is our lane because we have to start when somebody's in grade nine. We have to start when somebody's early. When they're making decisions about their future, these people are the leaders of tomorrow. They're the people that are going to be sitting in these seats in just a couple years' time. And so that's where we focus and supercharge a lot of our energy is in that college space. That's excellent. Thank you. Thank you. All right.

Council Member Nash. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'll be brief. As a former police commander, I... What a great program it would have been if I was still employed there. Just love it. And you mentioned your southern accent. Can you tell us from the south of where?

Yeah, yeah. So look, Nashville is home, and Nashville is the home of Red Frogs for America. This year I'll become a U.S. citizen, which I'm excited about. But I am from my birth country of Australia. And so I've been here five years, but will become a citizen this year. I'm in the whole process of that. So Nashville's home. Well, welcome. Thank you.

Do we have a sister city in Australia?

Tamworth. Wow. We have a great Red Frogs presence at the Tamworth Country Music Festival.

Oh, great. Thank you so much. Thank you, Madam Chairman.

Council Member Coopin.

Thank you, Chair. And I'll be brief. And I appreciate what my colleague Councilman Porterfield elevated. And I wanted to step in as well and say that I've also been having conversations with National Downtown Partnership as far as other initiatives, downtown and safety initiatives that they can be investing in that benefit my downtown constituents and their downtown constituents. So I do think that's a conversation that's actively happening. But as you heard Dan talk about, there's a lot bigger need within downtown and outside of downtown. Just this last weekend was enjoying myself over in district five and six over in East Nashville. And so I think there are areas outside of downtown that also would benefit from programming like this and from safety like this. So I don't want, just because the pilot has been in downtown, I don't want to get stuck as just a downtown initiative. So I think that NDP is a great place to talk to you about some funding, but I also wouldn't wanna preclude Metro from supporting this. I think this is something that, again, supports not just downtown, but all of Nashville.

Council Member Suarez.

Everything has been said. I think it's on my wish list and I support it too. The points I wanted to make is just what Council Member Cooping just said. I think I support Downtime Partnership paying for it, but during the budget hearing, This is one of the program that Chief Drake touted or told us will be alternatives to police in downtown. And I think it's one that allows for us to have less crimes and before it becomes a bigger problem that they step in and do that. So I just wanted to push that. Yes, the first place to go for me and I agree should be downtown partnership, but we should not let that stop us from having Metro step in. I actually think, I hope that maybe it's even something that they can work with MMPD as well to be able to find funding because it's helping with overall security. So thank you.

And the $250,000, is that funding the entire program? Is that just a contribution to a larger budget?

That's gonna fund Fridays and Saturday nights is the strategy from the workshop that we've had together for 2027. But that's just to keep the services going. But we would like to expand through, you know, other people in the city, whether it's downtown partnership or, you know, or.

So an allocation of less than $250,000, you wouldn't be able to fund Friday and Saturday night?

That's correct. Okay.

Any additional questions? Thank you very much. It's an honor, thank you. And Council Member Coopin, have you had a conversation with the Office of Nightlife, this is something they would take on?

Thank you, Chair, yes. I've talked to them about this and they would be willing to take that on. Okay.

All right, colleagues, we will move on to, I'm gonna try to get my nonprofits out of here, the branch. And Council Member Rutherford, do you want to give us some information on the branch and what the ask is?

Thank you, Madam Chair. Yes, the branch... provides a very valuable service throughout Southeast Nashville and really some beyond as well for that matter. They're known as a food bank, but they really do so much more in terms of providing various educational opportunities and equipping neighbors. And also providing English classes and older care as well. I came to know them through the pandemic and worked very closely with them because frankly, they helped me to be able to provide services to constituents who were impacted that Metro just could not keep up with. So essentially they're able to help take a relief pressure, if you will, off of certain services to Metro, because if we're helping to fund them, then they're providing services that is then helping to relieve that pressure from Metro so that Metro's funding then can go further. The ask is $100,000. We provided funds to them last year for the first time for a nominal amount, and their CEO is here And I think she can explain what they did with last year's funding, what they expect to do with this year's funding, certainly a lot better than I can. And so I would ask that we hear from her and give her that opportunity to provide those answers. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member. If you could introduce yourself and you have the floor to. answer Council Member Rutherford's questions that he put out there.

Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Rutherford. And thank you guys for the opportunity to present this request. I'm Melissa Thomas. I'm the CEO of the branch of Nashville. We are a community resource center in Southeast Nashville. And the funding that you gave us last year allowed us to provide food for about 700 families over the course of two and a half weeks. These were one-time incidences of each of those families receiving food. That is about 48% of the families that we serve in April alone. And only 4% of the families we serve annually. What we have experienced since last year is obviously we all have been victims of the decrease in federal funding. That has indirectly begun to affect that second harvest. That means the donated foods we receive from second harvest Amazon and even grocers have decreased. That has caused the branch to have to move into space where we are increasing, seeing significant need to increase our spending budget to provide food for families. And just so you know, in 2025, we served 16,444 families with food support. 42% of those are seniors who lived on fixed income. So, Not only do we provide food, but we come around our families as we are able, as we are able to interact with them with the comprehensive care program that we have at the branch to help families move into self-sufficiency so that they can get to a better place down the road where they can provide for their own families. So we're not just looking at a moment in time, although that moment in time is very important. We would certainly appreciate your support, $100,000. dollars would help us to provide food to 2,000 families. And that is at a cost of about $50 per cart of food valued at 350 to $400 that we put in their car, goes to their table and in their belly. So we would appreciate your support if you can find the room to put it in the budget. Any questions?

Council Member Porterfield.

Thank you chair. I don't have any questions. I just rise in support. I'm sitting here getting teary eyed hearing about the work. It is an amazing return on our investment where you're talking about $50 to get almost $400 worth of food. I wish I got that type of return on investments on the things that I invest in. But you know, we saw that the data was showing that food insecurity was going to get worse. and that this is an issue that is continuing to get worse. So last year, I know we put extra money in the budget for social services to support food pop-ups. And one of the things that we wanted to do was to specifically give money to the branch for the work that they do. And I think it has to be a both and situation. I think we have to, figure out how to give social services money so that they can continue the work that they do while also providing this vital service to our residents in Southeast Nashville. And I want to add that they also provide those services. For some people, it's a little bit harder. We are working on improving our transit plan. We are excited about transit getting better in our city. But for some of our residents in Southeast Nashville who are so far away, sometimes they're really far away from transit lines and sometimes they don't have the ability to get to Second Harvest and some of these other places, they have been able to go out into the community and provide these resources and to be able to provide those resources with dignity. And I think that's just really, really important. And then lastly, I'll say just the resources that they provide to help families to get back on their feet. And I think I've seen firsthand the work that they've done for years in the Southeast community. We're very, and beyond Southeast as well. So they do service people outside of Southeast, but I've seen firsthand the work that they've done out there and we really appreciate the support.

Council Member Nash.

I don't want to repeat everything that council lady Porterfield mentioned, but I second it all. I too have seen their work and we're very fortunate to have them in our community at Seth.

And council director Wilson, our budget director Pratt, is this, will this be a direct appropriation? Is this tied to any department? Do you remember if it was last year?

Yeah, I've,

Council Member, last year, this was added to the substitute budget and it was allocated to social services.

And it was on the wishlist for Council Member Rutherford and Evans. Do either of you know what is in Porterfield? Sorry, in Council Member Mazzaro, sorry about that. Do either of you know if social service is willing to take it on again to be the conduit for that money? Have you had a conversation with the social services director?

I have not had such a conversation. I can't speak for the other members, so I do not know. Okay.

Councilman Porterfield. I've not had a conversation, but I'm happy to get that answer for you and report back as soon as possible. That would be fantastic. Thank you.

And thank you for coming, fantastic program, I agree with that. There's one quick wishlist item for parks, and that was regarding wave country. And I know we had discussed possibly putting that as a 4% request, but I don't know where wave country is in terms of priorities for the Parks Department. So if you all could come to the back table, the council member whose list that is on is Council Member Gregg, who is not here. So I will pretend to be him and get that information. Cause when we're trying to figure out like how to fund wishlist items, if we can identify other funding sources, other, then we try to do that. And it was mentioned about possibly using a 4% allocation, but can you talk about where the way, and I'll read to you what the wishlist item is. Page 13. All right. Wave Country could be a great third space for families and young people. Many of the needs such as updated bathrooms and a new kids area are expensive for the 26-27 budget year and given the budget restraints, start with a small need. Remove the old sand volleyball court and replace with a covered seating area creating a vibrant shaded area for all to enjoy. So that is the wishlist item from Council Member Gregg. Can you talk about kind of where Wave Country is in terms of priorities for the Parks Department and whether or not you all would be open to looking at a way to fund it?

And if you could introduce yourself and you have the floor. My name's John Holmes, I'm Assistant Director over Revenue Producing Facilities. As far as where Wave Country is, as far as priority within the department, I'm not sure I can speak to that for the department. I can speak within my division. It is a high priority. Wave Country has not had a new feature or anything added in over 15 years. And for a water park, that's difficult to continue to operate. I was asked to give some suggestions on what's needed out there, and that's where we said redo the old bath house, add a serious kids play area with a giant dump bucket, and also the speed slides, have that redone and put in a new slide, or some type of a new slide feature for that. Those are all fairly high dollar ticket options. The one that's on your list, on the wishlist, the covered pavilion, what that would be very ideal, the sand volleyball pits are not used at all anymore. They just sit there, they're in a corner of the park, and they're just there. Especially after the ice storm, we lost a lot of, we didn't have a lot of shade there before, but because of some tree damage, now we have even less shade. what normally happens on the weekends, we get a lot of families, a lot of reunions, they'll go over and they'll rent picnic pavilions in the park and in the walkover. To have something in the park that they could use right on site, that would be very convenient. It would make it more appealing within the park. On days where we're not using it for an actual reunion or something like that, it would provide additional shade structure within the park. So it would just enhance the... and it would enhance the park and take a part of the park that is not used currently and make it much more usable.

And Council Member Gregg has on his wishlist a cost of 400,000. Does that sound accurate?

That was the quote I was given through our maintenance division. That would include the concrete slab as well as the structure. That's about what it would cost to put up what you see as a standard picnic shelter that you see out in the parks.

Okay. And so if you were to receive the funding for it, it would be a priority to move forward and do the covered pavilion, covered seating area?

Yes, ma'am. Okay. What we do is we build the pavilion and then we put picnic shelters, I mean picnic tables underneath there for gatherings.

Okay. Any questions, Council Member Evans?

I just wanted to ask you, so is that something that can be a 4%?

Is that something that could be 4% budget director Pratt?

Um, yes, for the most part, what it sounds like most of it could be 4%, but we want to definitely look at the items to make sure that all the items are 4% eligible, but it sounds like because of the maintenance repair, it's 4% eligible.

And, and question for, uh, you, uh, budget director and probably Ms. Wilson as well. you know, as we go through these wishlist items, and if we identify things that can be 4%, that, you know, kind of gets it off of trying to put it in the substitute. But if we are saying, oh, this is 4%, and you agree that it's 4%, is it going to like disappear into a black hole or will it be on the next 4% allocation?

Well, luckily enough, the 4% is in charter. So I guess it can't disappear. Um, we actually do have a prioritized list of, uh, items already. Um, just because of the funding we have to earn the revenue, we'll be able to, actually put it into 4%. So we have been taking count of 20, 27 budget items that were already moved off of the modification reports for departments to put into the, the, the first 4% we would file, for instance fire, the supplies, medical supplies that that's a huge need. So this sounds like something that's nominal enough to be able to be on the list. We do prioritize parks getting 4%. So we can definitely make sure that, you know, the 4% that they would get it, it would be up to their prioritization.

Okay. Council member Suarez.

Just a question for the finance team, considering the amount also, and the fact that it's a fixed asset in Asia, can it also be in the CIB?

Yes, it is possible. Um, but it wouldn't have to make sure that if there's a 27 C I B that correlates to wave country or the general maintenance for parks. Um, and then from there, um, when we do the 27 C S P, if it makes it to that level. Yes. Yes. Thank you.

Council member Porterfield and I see you council member Evans.

Thank you. Just standing in support. I think this will be a great investment, especially since it's something that has not been invested in in a while. And I know that this is a great resource for people in the community. Anytime I've gone out, just the joy that that brings to families to be out there. I think it is a great, a great asset. And I want a second council member sores. I love the, creativity of trying to figure out where we get it from. I'm just going to say, I don't care where we get it from. We just care that we get it. So we trust the experts to figure out how to make that. And then lastly, I just wanted to say that director Pratt did say that she was in support of allowing the funding to go through her to the branch. And I did show that to Mr. Wilson so that it was verified. So.

Thank you, Council Member Evans.

Trust but verify, I like it. I guess I wanted to understand, well, who on the 4% conversation, so does the Parks Department, do they prioritize their 4% list for submission? Is that how that works?

Is that a department?

Is that a department prioritization? Is that a mayor's office prioritization?

Hi, Kristen Wilson from the mayor's office. The departments do prioritize and we take that into account. One thing I will note though, is things change throughout the year, right? So a great example would be for parks, you know, we had some challenges with roofing and some community centers and we worked with them both on some appropriate CSP categories for them from past allocations, as well as 4% allocations. So I also do want to note that those priorities can change over the course of the year. And it's partly why along with, the way the funds have to be accumulated to spend them over the course of the year, why there's not just one paper, but there's multiple papers over the course.

Council Member Evans. But harassing former Council Member Kevin Roten is still appropriate regardless, right? Always. Okay.

Definitely.

Any additional questions regarding wave country? I don't see any. Thank you so much. I appreciate you.

Thank you for your time.

All right, next up, let's do the, I'm thinking the Weaver Center. Office of Family Safety, if you could come on up, there are several items under your umbrella. and just kind of hang out back there, because there's a few nonprofits that council members are wanting to allocate funds to, and then put it under Office of Family Safety. And one of those is Ella's house. And this is a women's caucus slash Council Member Evans asked for $30,000 Ellis House through the Office of Family Safety for housing for pregnant students so they can finish school. So I'm gonna let the representative from Ellis House explain the program. And then we can discuss whether or not that is something that the Office of Family Safety is willing to take on. and be a conduit for those funds. And then we'll take any questions from colleagues. So if you could introduce yourself and then you have the floor and explain what Ella's House is and what is this $30,000 ask?

Absolutely, thank you so much. Thank you guys for having us. My name is Elise Jenkins. I am the executive director at Ella's House. We are a nonprofit here in town and Middle Tennessee's only nonprofit that serves pregnant and parenting collegiate students. We do that through a lot of different initiatives. One of our most expensive, as you can imagine, is housing for our pregnant and parenting scholars. Scholars who find out they're pregnant in school are no longer able to live in the dorms. And with Nashville's rising housing costs, oftentimes apartments aren't in the cards for them. So we have houses that we're able to house these mothers and their children as they continue their education. This comes with everything from counseling to doula and lactation services, community educational events, mentorship, budgeting, et cetera. This social housing initiative, like I said, is the first of its kind in Middle Tennessee to serve these pregnant and parenting students. We know that education is a pathway out of poverty. These single mothers with a degree earn over 270,000 more in their lifetime than those with just a high school diploma. So we're excited to be here. This 30,000 would be just around a sixth to a seventh of our housing budget line item. That is just for housing. That does not include the groceries that come with it, the counseling, or any of those extra social support services that we provide.

And you said, I'm sorry, the 30,000 just pays for the housing?

It would cover one sixth of our proposed housing budget for 2026.

And how many students are you planning to house for 2026?

Ideally, we would love to house 10 students and their children for 2026, as well as providing support to them. And that's not including the community moms that we're able to serve.

Okay. And is this, this will be the first time receiving Metro funding? Yes, ma'am. Okay. And turning to the office of family safety, because this is where everyone has suggested putting the funds. Is this something that you all could, could take on would be willing to take on to, to pass basically, I guess it would just be passing the funds through to Ella's house. If you can. opine on that. And if you don't know today, that's fine.

But yeah, I mean, y'all have done that before where you have found funding for, let's say Casa and ran it through our department. We can certainly manage that. I've got to say, I'm honestly shocked that these young women can't live in their dorms. I did not know that till I was standing right here. And it sounds like a really interesting program, but yes, if that works with the council that you have a funding source, that you would like to run through OFS to help them, that is fine with us. Seems possibly appropriate for health department also. But we'll leave that up, obviously it's up to your discretion. But we can handle it.

Okay. Any questions from colleagues about Ella's House? Well, I don't see any. Well, that was short and sweet. Thank you so much for coming. Amazing, thank you so much. All right, we also have the Mary Parrish Center.

Making her way up here, I do want to say that our closest partners, the Office of Family Safety, are sitting all clustered together, and I think that's a really unique thing about our nonprofit partners and community is how much we all work together, root for each other, and want what's best for our city as a whole.

Thank you. All right, so I see two separate requests for the Mary Parish Center. So one is for $220,000 for transitional housing in partnership with the Office of Family Safety. And then there's another one for $85,000. Uh, council member Evans, can you kind of clarify what those two requests are?

Yeah. So this is a one when I was doing my entry that was going back and looking at my information. So this is the one I was thinking about before about the 120 and when we were having the other discussion about sexual assault center that I wasn't certain at the time if the request, uh, was for the two Oh five, in total or if it was an additive 85 to an existing appropriation. So that was my kind of confusion and the other submission was for 220.

Okay, if you could introduce yourself in the back and then you'll have the floor and if you could tell us what you do and then also clarify what the financial ask is. Perfect, thank you so much.

Thank you all so much for having us here this evening. It really is an honor. I know there's so many wishlist items. And so just to be able to talk to you about the Mary Parish Center and what we do and be considered truly is so appreciated. So my name is Mary Catherine Rand and I'm the executive director at the Mary Parish Center. And we really have three kind of core housing programs or housing related programs that we do. So we have, we support survivors of interpersonal violence and their children through individualized housing and compassionate care. And so we have our flagship transitional housing program and that is a 10 unit clustered site property and we provide housing at no cost and provide support services like case management, therapy, financial assistance to survivors and their children for up to a year. And then we have a rapid rehousing program, which is permanent housing. And so we help survivors find an apartment in the Nashville area and we pay rental assistance and provide all those same support services for up to a year. And then kind of our third core program is domestic violence coordinated entry. Many of you are probably familiar with general coordinated entry that runs through the Office of Homeless Services. And we operate the domestic violence coordinated entry. And so that is just a way to get survivors who are in need of housing connected to a housing program and support services as quickly as possible. So kind of this need, so I mean, we have 358 households on that domestic violence coordinated entry by name list. So that is 358 survivor households that we know of who are in need of housing. Through the Office of Family Safety, when they have survivors coming in to get an order of protection or something like that, always in their top one and two request for services that they need outside of that is for housing. We know that domestic violence is a leading cause of homelessness for women and their children. And we also know that more than one in three survivors will experience homelessness at some point in their lifetime due to fleeing that violence. So we did receive direct appropriations two years ago and that was because we had a ARPA grant that was ending for a therapist. And so thankfully you all put us on the wishlist for that and we were awarded that funding and that was 120,000. So with that, we actually had a little more than we needed, which was amazing. And so we had been having partner meetings with the Office of Family Safety and something that always came up was housing. They are experts at crisis intervention They are experts at case management. We are really experts in housing. And so we formed a partnership with that extra money that we had. And through that collaboration created this housing navigation partnership. So Shelters Save Lives, Transitional housing is longer term, that gives people the time they need to rebuild their lives. Permanent housing is the goal for everyone. But many survivors don't need some of those other housing interventions and they really just need assistance getting into a house. So relocating away from their abuser, you know, getting into a place quickly. And so that's what this program does. So we have a housing navigator who finds housing, you know, in partnership with the survivor. And then we pay that security deposit. We pay that first month's rent, possibly the last month's rent if they need it. And then the Office of Family Safety, their case management team continues those ongoing case management services. And so it's been a really effective model, not only for just how that works, but also cost. Transitional housing is extremely expensive. It's about $34,000 per household. Rapid rehousing is close to six. This model so far has been around the $3,000 mark per household. So we're able to serve so many more survivors with this model. And so what we're asking for this year is an increase in that direct appropriation. an increase of 85,000, so that total would be 205. And I do believe that the 120 was put in the Office of Family Safety budget, so this would just be that additional 85,000. And so this is so we can serve more households. Again, knowing there's 358 households on that by name list and there is such a need, it truly is lifesaving. And so this would take us from serving about 35 households per year, 80 survivors and their children, all the way up to 85 households, almost 200 survivors and their children. So we would be able to do so much more and really help relocate folks, be able to prevent homelessness and be able to help reduce strain on some of those other housing systems like our domestic violence coordinated entry and those longer term housing programs.

Okay. Any questions on the Mary Paris Center?

Council Member Evans. I don't really have a question. I'll just make a comment that when I was public health and safety chair, I had the opportunity to go and visit. the housing that Ms. Rand is talking about. And it is really impressive and kind of in the same way that the Office of Family Safety is, like very intentionally designed, so is this housing. And it's just a vast difference probably from other kinds of housing programs that I have seen in Nashville. And it's just impressive. And I think that they're great stewards of Metro dollars and great partners in this working relationship in the community and would really love to see them supported this way. Thank you.

All right, I don't see any hands. Thank you very much. Thank you so much. All right, also under the Office of Family Safety, we have the Weaver Center.

While she's coming up, I do want to say the Mary Paris Center is the sole source provider of that type of transitional housing.

Okay.

And I also see two requests for... for the Weaver Center from Council Member Gamble and Council Member Gadd. Gamble's request is for $100,000. Funding request will enable Weaver to add one case manager and one crisis call advocate. Each additional case manager enables Weaver to serve an estimated 30 to 40 additional victims per year, directly reducing the 433 people currently turned away from their crisis line. And then Council Member Gadd, her request is for 250,000. So if you could tell us a little bit about the Weaver Center and what your financial ask is.

Absolutely. Good afternoon, counsel. Thank you for opportunity to speak on behalf of the YWCA Dashville in Middle Tennessee. My name is Latrina Adams. I am the Chief Financial Officer, Chief Operating Officer at the organization. I want to first say that Sharon Roberson, our President and CEO, extends her apologies for not being able to attend. She's currently at the YWCA CEO Summit in Arizona. So on behalf of the organization, the Weaver Center is a 70 bed domestic violence emergency shelter, the largest provider of domestic violence services in the city. Our services provide trauma-informed services in a safe space for women and children to heal from domestic abuse. The YWCA provides essential tools for independent safety and success, both professionally and professionally. I can go into the two different ask if you like me to, okay. So the $100,000 ask was to support two key positions, a case manager and a crisis advocate, a crisis center advocate position. I do want to just elaborate on the roles, if you will. So when we say case management, this is not your typical case manager. These are case managers handling emergency crisis cases. And what I mean by that is that they are serving individuals and families who often come to us already unhoused as in immediate emergency situations. Our staff are working under urgent timelines to help survivors and families secure safe, stable, and sustainable housing as quickly as possible while addressing safety planning, basic needs, and crisis stabilization. Speaking more of the crisis call staff, our crisis call staff serves as the frontline response team for the Weaver Center and often the first point of contact through the individuals and families experiencing a crisis, fear, and trauma. Our crisis center line operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I'm sorry, seven days a week, 365 days a year. Ensuring that support is always available when help is needed the most. The team responds to emergency calls and referrals from multiple sources, including Nashville Police Department, victim survivors seeking immediate assistance, hospitals, healthcare providers, and community partners. Unfortunately, at the pace that we are at, we're on track to exceed our, calls from last year, about 20%, thus the need for additional support in our crisis office. I do want to say of those calls, 73% of those calls are from the lethality assessment program. These are your most severe cases. And these are calls are directly from the police department. So that's just a high level of the two positions that will be funded under this ask.

Go ahead. So, you know, you've, When you said, or someone said at the beginning, might have been you, Aaron, that interpersonal violence is not one of those crimes as a whole going down. It's actually staying the same or going up. And our domestic violence homicides are staying around the same, actually pretty high from last year. So, and we did have one homicide where there just wasn't available shelter bed and she was later killed. So, Any priority with YWCA funding, I think it's really important that we direct that to maximizing the use of and availability of their shelter beds and making sure that they are able to run at full capacity. So as many beds that can be used as possible because turning victims away when they wanna get to safe shelter can be a deadly decision. I do wanna just say that, all these nonprofits that came up, again, Sexual Health Center, Mary Paris, YWCA are our closest partners that our clients rely on and our staff rely on. It is very hard to do this work and hit dead ends. And we don't hit dead ends because of these types of partners. So knowing that, I just wanna make sure you all understand, it's clear that our budget, OFS, everything is allocated. We cannot go beyond that 1.5% cut. We took everything we can from below the line and any other cut for any money for any of these purposes would require us to let staff go. So we're hoping that if these are supported that there is an alternative funding source outside of our office, but they're all providing essential life saving services, very close partners to our city.

And before I call on colleagues, I will say that all of these wishlist items, none of them are suggesting taking funding from the Office of Family Safety. They're suggesting cutting all kinds of other things, but not the Office of Family Safety. Councilwoman Suarez.

Thank you, Chair. I just want to, I did not know if this asked on to the first budget session, and as soon as Councilmember Gambo started talking about it. I updated my wish list because I do think it's very critical. There's a lot of statistics out there and most women that are in abusive relationship, one of the reason why they couldn't leave is because they don't have any place to go. They cannot stand on their own and so and we know that tenancy is very high in cases of death and abuses in domestic violence situations. this is another program that is very critical, that is helping our citizens in so many ways, and all of them are, but I wanted to uplift all of them, but most importantly, the Weaver Center. It's been a program that's done wonders and continue to do that, and so I'm grateful to these women standing up, and the ones that spoke before them all the work that they're doing. As a government, we're not able to do everything, but with this investment, we're able to partner with organizations that have better reach, and are doing all this work, and so kudos to all of you, and again, I've added this to my list, and Chair, I hope we can find the money for all of these great things that are happening as citizens, thank you.

Council member Evans. Thank you. I just, I wanted to know what is the census or the shelter space? How many beds do you have? We're a 70 bed shelter at full capacity. Yes. Oh, okay.

That doesn't necessarily mean 70 people. It all depends on the configuration of the family side, but we're, we have 70 beds. Yes.

70. Thank you.

Not, not currently, not currently, but they, we have, it's peaks. We're, so we're a 90 day shelter. So it just goes with, you know, ins and out right now. With this additional funding, it will allow us to staff and build that infrastructure to support the unfortunate increase in services needed.

Council Member Evans. And so the case management, so basically you can't necessarily always be at capacity because of the ebbs and flows of people coming in and out over the 90 days, and then you don't have case managers to support the transition timelines?

Absolutely, yes.

Okay, thank you.

So this will stabilize the staff and to allow that additional case manager. And again, that additional support in the crisis center, which is our, is the heart of the Weaver center.

Okay. So the a hundred thousand dollars is for the case manager and crisis call advocate that's in the crisis center.

Yes. Okay.

And then the 250,000 assists with what need?

So the 250,000 would also include those two key positions as well. In addition to those two key positions, it would help fund operational costs of the agency, I'm sorry, of the shelter. Again, the shelter offers rate, 24, 365. So costs, as we all experienced, have gone up significantly. Unfortunately, funding has remained the same over the years or either decreased. So that additional funding outside of the staffing needs will help support those operational costs to run and operate the shelter.

Okay. So at a minimum, you're trying to get the 100,000 for the two positions. Correct. But if you can get the 250,000, you can get those two positions. and address some of the needs in the shelter. Okay, got it. Got it.

Councilwoman Evans. I'm just trying to process all this because I have not gotten to have a tour of the Weaver Center. I missed that opportunity whenever it was last offered. So I just haven't been. So basically then if there is no space available because of staffing or if beds are occupied, then I guess what happens? Where do survivors go?

So right now, we unfortunately have to turn away calls. So we could rely on our community partners and relationships within the community to find the resources and services that they need. If we had, you know, the infrastructure, which, you know, was more sustainable, then we could otherwise receive those clients at our Weaver Center. But because We've turned away clients, unfortunately.

Okay, and then I guess on the OFS.

Yeah, for our referrals, we are having to refer out of county a lot, not ideal when you have children's schools, but we are also having to refer more than ever to the mission, which is the wrong place for a domestic violence family or individual to need to go and Sometimes we had money from ARPA to be able to do some hotel nights, hoping something would come available, but that's coming to a conclusion, and staying in your car is, if you have a car, sometimes is the only option. Thank you.

Any additional questions for the YWCA? Seeing none, thank you. Thank you for your support. And Director Lance, there is one other wishlist item, and I don't know if you've had an opportunity to discuss it with Council Member Huffman. I believe he was just trying to find a location for it, but he is wanting to use $60,000 to fund public service announcements that highlight ways that the Office of Family Safety can help victims of domestic violence, human trafficking, these PSAs will be installed in all Metro public bathrooms. If we were, I don't know, are you familiar with that idea?

Yes, he's been talking to our office and all of these partners that you saw here and beyond. And we are, you know, working with him in his hopes to be able to do that in the public bathrooms and just basically drive people to the services they need. One of the things that I would say is hardest in my work is when I reviewed the domestic violence homicides and how the vast majority were not connected to any services. And our city has good strong services and we're networked pretty darn tightly. So just making sure people know what we're here and what we're here for was one of the things council member Huffman was hoping to do with that campaign.

So if you were to receive that funding, that is something you could take on and assist him in getting that off the ground.

Yeah, of course we can do that. We've been working with him trying to see his vision to reality. Also Casa was on here with our name. And I mentioned earlier that, that, you know, we've ran through our department, I think last year, which is fine. I think they enjoy working with us, but it is definitely more into juvenile court terrain than ours. But if you wanted me to still stay for that, I will.

Okay. I believe they presented yesterday, but there was like, cause it was, some had it in juvenile court, some had it with office of family safety, but you're fine either way, even though it's more.

Whatever works best for those that needed to go someplace. Appreciate your team spirit. Thank you so much.

All right. Uh, next up we will do, um, library. And you can come to the back table. There's just a couple of wishlist items that Council Member Allen had on her list. And I believe they were actually, may have been two of your budget requests. I know at least one was. So there are two items. One is for $135,000 that deals with the parking, with the fire in the library garage, library staff is required to park offsite. For some, this is a safety issue after dark, and for others, it is an access issue. And then the second one is for $105,000. The Oasis Center Mayor's Youth Council and College Connection connect MNPS students with elected officials, inform government policies from a student perspective, and give low-income, new American, and first-generation MNPS students college access through admissions, financial aid, and scholarship guidance. This is also... It's also support summer programs and the mayor's power youth program. Is that a library program? It is.

Okay.

All right. So if you could just speak to those two items, I know you did during your, at least with the parking garage one during your budget hearing, but if you could just give us a overview again, that would be great.

Yes, ma'am. Susan dry assistant director, Nashville public library. 135,000 when the garage sustained the fire in June of 2025. Of course the garage has been shut down. We had to find alternative parking for staff, and we were lucky to work with PMC. We have spaces at the Fourth Avenue garage, but it's half a mile away. Walking to and from, especially in the winter months, been somewhat of an issue, but we also have staff that have mobility issues and just walking that far is very difficult. So we have been paying for a shuttle service, but we don't have that in our budget. So they pick staff up at the 4th Avenue garage between 6.30 and 8.30 and then between 4.30, I think it's 4.30 and seven o'clock now. So twice a day, when most staff are coming and going, and we just requested the funding for that service that we're having to provide our employees because they can't park on site. And for the Oasis Center, that is a program that actually started in the mayor's office under Carl Dean, I believe. And when he was leaving office, it transitioned to the library. And it's been a part of our budget since 2000, fiscal year 16, so since 2015. And in those 10 years, there has never been an increase and cost to OASIS has gone up. So they asked that we put a modest increase for our budget to help them with some of their costs.

And I know during your budget hearing in regard to the parking, you had mentioned that you all were going to absorb that cost into your budget. Is that still the plan?

If we don't get the funding, yes. We will just make sure that it happens because we feel like we need to provide that for our staff.

Any questions from colleagues? Councilwoman Suarez?

I don't have any question. I just wanted to put in a word to Madam Chair and Finance and anybody looking for money for the OAC Center. The Mayor's Youth Council is an incredible program. We talk about youth not being engaged or not civically engaged. When you look at the voting turnout and things like that, the participation by youth is very abysmal. And so getting them involved in government teaching them about government is what the OAC Center does. And I've been to a lot of their conferences, the annual conference, and those kids are just amazing. And so for what they're asking, I think it's something we should continue to support because it's helping shape the minds of tomorrow's leaders. So thank you.

Council Member Evans. Thank you. I may have missed it. How many employees does the shuttle support

I believe we have between 130 and 140 parking over there right now.

Oh, okay. And then who is operating the shuttle today? The downtown partnership. Oh, the downtown. Okay. Okay.

The yellow shuttle. Yeah. Okay. And it costs that much for them to do that? Yes, ma'am.

All right. And I guess kind of piggybacking on that, is there any remedy on this parking garage situation that yet? No. I'm seeing your head shaking. Okay, I just didn't know if there was an update that I've also missed, so thank you.

I don't have an update for you, Council Member. And I'm seeing no help to the right of me, so. Any questions? I'm scanning the room. I don't see any. Well, thank you so much for coming down. I appreciate it. Thank you. All right. Council Member Suar, you had the museum study on your wishlist. Are you aware that there is money in an admin account for the museum study that is being carried forward to fiscal year 27? That is right, right? That's what I was, okay. So. Okay, so check. I think I see Ms. Riley from internal audit, if you could come up. And I meant to send you some questions ahead of time, but you're good with thinking on your feet. So there's just one wishlist item related to internal audit and it is a request from Council Member Spain to do a comprehensive audit of MNPS. And there's a $1 million cost attached to that, but I also, I'll turn it over to Council Member Spain, but also wanna put it out there, because you do audits all the time. Like, is this something that you could do within existing resources? But I'll let Council Member Spain go first.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I won't restate the case for this, but just to sort of give a little background on how we got here. This doesn't originate as a budget request. This conversation started when Metro Audit was coming up with the audit plan for this year and our audit team was coming up with that plan and taking input from council members and Metro employees and public and whomever else. And Auditor Riley and I had the first conversation about this and I don't want to put words in your mouth, but basically it couldn't be done internally because of the scope that an audit like this would take. And it's outside the funding they have available for their outside, I'm not sure if you call them on-call contractors, but whatever the term is. And so that's how we get to this point.

So if you can introduce yourself, and I'll give the floor over to you, but if you can speak to whether or not that is something, if funded, that you would be willing to, I guess, facilitate it happening, and then also just kind of, I know Council Mayor Spang just touched on it, but just fleshing out more of why that couldn't be something that you could take on as the Audit Department.

Thank you, I'm Lauren Riley. I'm the Metropolitan Auditor with the Office of Internal Audit. So the audit that's been requested, with our resources, I'll say why we couldn't do it internally. We do do performance and operational audits of all of Metro. However, the scope of this one, with our limited resources, we only have 13 people, 13 FTEs for all of Metro, MNPS, General Hospital, as well as other component units. We don't have that many resources for that. The last audit like this that was done was in 2014. It was also a council request for similar reasons to Council Member Spains. And they looked at comprehensively all of MNPS. And they looked at 12 different areas, they did focus groups, they did benchmarking, they did other studies, came up with 129 recommendations for MNPS related to this. And they're looking at it with much more expertise in that area than we have. And so that's why what would happen is we couldn't do it internally, we're gonna still continue to do our small performance audits of different processes. But they would be looking at it much more comprehensively. And so we would need to outsource that. And when we did it in 2014, we outsourced it to a consultant that was actually, I guess their expertise was more school systems. I mean, they looked at everything related to school systems. And so that's what we would have to do. We'd have to go through the RFP process for that again. The price tag that we put on it when discussing it with Council Member Spain, when we did this back in 2014, it was about, about 600,000, taking into account Metro's growth as well as consultant fees going up, it would probably be, that's why we had said around a million.

Okay, any, Councilwoman Suarez?

Thank you, thank you for being here. I just wanted to be able to explain it so that in layman terms so people understand that are watching, MNPS does go through an annual financial audit. And so this is something that looks at the number, but what this is proposing is not so much as looking at the spending or the financial piece of it, but more performance and operation, would that be correct? That's correct.

This would be more about their strategies. If they have certain initiatives, what are their strategies? What are their performance measures? Where do they fall in line with other school systems as far as human capital or Safety transportation it's looking at the actual processes and making sure that their processes are not just achieving their own internal goals, but they're also putting them up against best practices. To make sure that they're meeting those best practices early striving that's where a lot of those recommendations came from was to strive to meet best practices to even improve efficiencies and effectiveness.

And ultimately, hopefully those improvement in efficiencies could also lead to financial savings or budgetary savings for those that are looking at the money piece of it. That's correct.

Many of them, with the last one that was done, they tied all of the recommendations kind of to a number about how much they would either save by doing this or what effect it might have. Some had zero, some maybe a few thousand, couple hundred thousand like that.

Thank you, and then the question for, and I just want to put this question on the record, through finance, I'm sorry, I have a very bad headache, so that the expectation is set, would finance speak to the, I'm sorry, the continuity of operations, the word is escaping me now. the maintenance of effort for the school as it ties to their funding and their money and all of that. Because what I don't want is for folks to think that with this audit, then automatically we're cutting money or something like that. So I just want to make sure that that is answered, the maintenance of effort piece is answered, the fact that his operation is tied in there so that at least while this is done, there's a good expectation of, I'm sorry, thank you.

Go ahead. Budget Director Pratt, yes, you're right on that.

Thank you. So I think first I probably would have to state that because the source is schools funding and it's wanted to be taken from schools and put into schools, GG or general government, it can't be done. That's not a valid funding source because you can't take from schools because it's already been allocated to the mayor's recommended budget under 35131, their school's fund, and it cannot be moved to the general fund, fund 10101.

So once the mayor proposes an amount for schools, That is, we can't reduce that amount?

It has to stay within the fund. Schools fund can fund schools things, but if you're, since it's already been allocated, we've already did the tax levy certs, it cannot be moved from one fund to the general fund, our general fund 101-01. Okay.

Council Member Evans. I was just gonna say that I thought that Council Member Spain made a compelling case for having an audit, especially given the amount of time it's been since the last one. So what's the remedy then if you can't make recommendations based on schools funding allocations? I would assume it would be taking money from somebody else and potentially trying to drive that outcome That way, what other options are there other than resolution, strongly worded letter? I'm looking for your feedback on solutions and next steps.

I would assume that if we cannot take the money from the school's budget, it would have to come from the general government's budget. or a strongly worded letter to schools to tell, to strongly suggest that they fund it, that would be the only two options, right, budget director Pratt?

Yes, but the only way to completely do it is to undo the budget we currently did, redo all the tax-related research, reshuffle all the money back around and submit a whole new substitute budget that changes all the allocations and everything we've just submitted in the mayor's recommended budget. That's technically the only way to really do it.

Yeah, I'm not trying to have you waiting outside my house to fight me. No, thank you.

Council Member Coopin. Thank you, Chair. That sounds easy, Budget Director Pratt. That sounds like it'd take just a few minutes. No, appreciate all the work you guys do. Is it something that, I know we're increasing the allocation to schools potentially in the Mayor's proposed budget. Is that something perhaps we can get prior to the budget passage, maybe an agreement from schools to take this up?

I think that would be on us, me. We'll have some further discussion to see what a viable option is in light of the information that we can't take from their budget. And it's not reasonable to do all the things that budget director Pratt listed. And I apologize, council member Yuen, I skipped over you. Oh, okay. Council Member Porterfield, did you have your hand up?

Thank you, Chair, and thank you to our auditor. Good to see you in a different light today. I guess the same light, but just like under, not in an audit meeting. I have a few questions. How often do you recommend an audit of this nature? So obviously you do audits, right? An audit that this seems to be pretty extensive since it goes beyond what your office does So what would you say is like industry best practice to do this level of an audit?

I honestly can't give you a number The one that we did of schools in 2014 was the first one I think that we'd ever done so in our office was set up around 2008 I think and So I think that that magnitude is not something that's done routinely. We do our small audits, our little process audits. What actually came out of it in 2019, we almost put two auditors at schools that were reported up to our office. to give us more coverage so that we could do almost more of an ongoing thing, but with COVID and the economy, that didn't happen. So I honestly can't give you a recommended number because I don't know.

Is that something that may exist somewhere? Like, is that something that maybe you could like research and get back to us on? I can do that. Thank you. And then my next question is, you mentioned that the audit that was done cost about $600,000 and the recommendations had some $0 savings, some, you know, 100,000 here, 100,000 there. Overall, do you know about how much savings were discovered from that audit?

I do not, it was pre my time. And then that's also I will say, that was prior to us doing follow up audits. So we didn't go out and check the recommendations to make sure that they were implemented. So everything that's in that report was kind of a guess of how much the savings would be. We never went out and actually verified implementation or that any savings were recognized.

Okay, do we still have access to that audit? Yes, it's on our website. Okay. Is there a way that we can see not, not the actualized savings, but just with the recommended savings where, and my thought around this is we don't want a situation of, you know, we pay $600,000 for an audit to get $300,000 in recommendations. And now we're looking at paying a hundred, excuse me, a million dollars for an audit and get, you know, 400,000 in recommendations. Right. So if it's, if it wasn't prudent then, not saying that it was or wasn't, because I have not seen the report, but I just would love for us to have that data point in order to have that. And then one, I guess, kind of final question and then maybe a comment. Does the entity that does this audit, are they looking at, like are they, education industry experts? Like are they looking at like best practices and academic performance and things of that nature?

Yes, the ones that were engaged in 2014. That's the reason we've always had consulting contracts that are just general consulting contracts for our audits. We did a special RFP for this one to make sure that they had the expertise in school systems and all of best practices.

Okay. Thank you. I appreciate this. All my questions cheer.

Council Member Spang, you should have your hand up.

This is all new information that I'm gonna have to put some thought into. I maintain that it's, a glaring omission that we have an entity that we give over a third of our budget to on an annual basis, that we're not taking an in-depth, thorough look at how that money is spent. And just by nature of this process, we had MNPS here for an hour, an hour and a half for their budget hearing, and we spent the whole time talking about the 55, $56 million addition proposed in the mayor's budget, which is what we're supposed to do. We don't really have the chance to talk about the other 1.45 billion or whatever that number is. And it makes it difficult to, as Council Member Suarez said, we don't want anyone thinking that we're talking about taking funding away from MNPS. It also makes it hard to justify adding additional funds to MNPS if we can't show the return on that investment for lack of a better term. So I still think it's a great need. Obviously, we're gonna have to think about how we make it happen. But I appreciate the thought and the discussion and to be continued.

Council Member Ewing. Changed my mind. Just building on what Council Member Porterfield was asking about. So it's been a minute since that last audit and 129 recommendations and we didn't have at that point the ability to follow up on the fate of those 129 recommendations. So I'm assuming in theory, if we were to somehow magically find the funding for this audit, that the audit team could do some forensics on those 129 recommendations, find out what happened to them and build upon that, right?

That's correct. We do those in audits too, even if Metro, if we didn't follow up on things. Great.

Any additional questions for Ms. Riley? All right, seeing none, thank you. Thank you. All right, we are down to our last two, which are MMPD and OHS. We'll do MMPD first, because there's just a couple of wishlist items related to MMPD. And you'll find those on page 14 and 15. And I'm glad Council Member Ewing is here, because they're both hers. Okay. So as Deputy Chief is coming to the back table, Council Member Ewing, if you can talk about your items.

Yes, just one second because I'm going to that page and I don't think I'm looking at the wrong one perhaps.

Funding requests by appropriations. Do you have that packet?

Well, sorry, hang on one second.

And this starts at the bottom of page 14. A copy is coming your way.

My apologies, I'm so sorry. Okay, from the MMPD presentation, there were two things I took away. I realized there were a lot of other items as well. But the things that I fixated on, one of them stemmed from my time with General Services and it pertained to the maintenance of fleet vehicles. And so I, wanted to just hear that you had said that you would appreciate 150,000 to add to that budget. And so realizing that that is probably not enough to really do the entire job, how effective would that be in at least shoring things up?

Sure, thank you. Chris Gilder, Metro Police Department. So the $150,000 that we asked for that you're referring to is for our vehicle retention program. So as you likely know, having worked over there, fleet vehicles have a certain life, certain age, and certain mileage that they're allowed to reach before they're taken out of service. Some of those vehicles are still in decent shape. And what the retention program does is we take them off of fleet's budget, put it on our operating budget to pay for the maintenance and ongoing cost of those vehicles. this 150,000 would be for 62 vehicles that are on average around 14 years old, but have about 100,000 miles. So there's still life left in these cars and they would still be useful. And given the shortage of vehicles, it would be a tremendous asset for us to have. And we've been utilizing this program for the past couple of years as a way to ensure we have enough cars available for our officers.

Okay, thanks. I appreciate that. The second item was the secondary employment unit adding 279,000 to that line item to allow MMPD to scale infrastructure, to meet increasing demand for secondary employment services. And I wonder if you could just speak to what impact that adding that in would have in theory.

So the, I don't have the item in front of me, but a secondary employment is the unit that, where if you need to hire off-duty law enforcement, whether you're a church, needs traffic control, you're Metro Water and you're trying to do road construction and you need an officer there to help and direct and control traffic, that is the service that's available. They have set rates. They engage in these contracts to have officers, whether you need a car or not, and it's a self-sustaining program. So they charge a rate, that rate gets collected, and so that money gets sent back into the general fund. So we're expending those dollars to provide that service, but then we also need to get that money recouped back to continue to be able to provide that service. And so if they're short in their budget area, then that limits their ability to continue to provide secondary employment services. And that cuts down on requests for on-duty resources. So if Metro Water's having to block a road to do a repair, oftentimes initially there's an on-duty resource that's there because the water main's busted and it's an emergency response, so a patrol officer comes. But if they have to sit there for six, eight, or a longer number of hours, then that takes them away from their ability to answer calls for service. So that's where secondary employment becomes extremely important.

Okay, so that's what I thought, that it'll allow us to have active duty officers not taken away for non-emergency efforts.

Correct.

Okay, thank you very much.

Council Member Porterfield.

Thank you, Chair. And thank you, Deputy Chief Gilder. Question for you. The rate that we charge entities to provide this service, is that enough to take care of the program or are we needing to supplement that?

Nope. the rate I believe is appropriate and it's based not to make money, it's based to cover the cost of the service that's provided. The issue is that rate gets collected, goes into a fund, but then it's kind of like special events too. We provide resources, there may be funding that reimburses that, but that doesn't come back into the MMPD operating budget. So we're trying to make sure we're getting that money back into our budget to continue providing that resource.

Okay, so MMPD provides a service to an entity. The entity pays for the service. The funding goes to the city, but the money doesn't go back to MMPD, but MMPD had to pay for the entity to provide, to pay for the officers to provide the service.

Correct. Normally that it does get routed back to us, but when it doesn't, then we have a shortfall.

In what instance would it not get routed back?

Well, we asked for in the budget, like we look at our bill, our hours, and we say, this is the money that we've been billing. This is what we anticipate to work. This is what we need to continue operating this service, whether that's special events or SEU. And then if that amount is not sufficient, then that's where the shortfall happens.

So- If what amount isn't sufficient? I'm sorry, I don't understand. Can you say that again?

Yeah, sure. Let me find the SEU request here. Okay, so for secondary employment, we had $919,700 in total that was not, that was requested. That's what we anticipate needing to operate for the upcoming fiscal year. It increases needed for SEU flat rate and overtime expenses. We anticipate having 140,000 billable hours. And so that's the money that we would need to get into our operating budget because that's the money we expect to expend paying our officers to work these jobs.

Okay, did you just say, and I got my pen late, so I didn't write it down. Can you just say it again?

The total amount?

Those two numbers and what they were.

In total, what we asked for that was not approved was $919,700. Okay, and then what was the 140,000? Billable hours.

I guess I don't understand. So if the billable hours are 140,000, why is the ask 919,000? Why wouldn't you ask for 140? Because we don't charge a dollar an hour. I'd have to look up the...

The rate for an officer, it's something around 50 something dollars an hour for an officer.

The 140,000 was hours, not dollars? Number of hours worked, yes, I'm sorry. I see, okay, I thought that was dollars, my bad. I wrote down billable hours, but my bad. Okay, I guess my next question would be for Budget Officer Pratt. I guess I'm trying to understand, that seems like a, system issue, like that, I don't understand. That doesn't make sense to me. So I don't understand, because it seems like if we're giving more money, that feels like we're almost like supplementing the entity to be able to get this service. So can you speak to like why the money flows in this way?

Um, to be honest, I would probably, so I was actually trying to research it just now. Um, I would probably have to come back with a more explicit answer. Um, the way the process currently works, um, even with other departments, when we do the bunch process, then they give us their revenue, especially, um, secondary employment unit. They give us the revenue, they give us the projected budget. And that's exactly what we put into the, you know, recommendation. Uh, we don't change it because they are the ones who set the rate and we, the finance director approves the rate. I think, um, when police was here, they, they just talked about the rate being approved. Um, so we just got that, but I would have to figure out what that Delta and that shortfall is, um, and figure out from that rate set, what, what, what it is.

Okay, if you could get there for us, that would be really helpful. Thank you. Thank you, Chair.

Council Member Preptik.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Deputy Chief Gilder. I wanna talk about the vehicle retention program, or vehicle, yeah, we'll call it a program, and the fleet maintenance program. From what I recall in previous years is that part of the fleet maintenance program Part of the way that that's administered is that MNPD has a contract with Firestone for maintenance on fleet vehicles. Am I correctly remembering that?

Well, MNPD didn't have a contract. General Services had a contract. I think they have started shifting away back to conducting their own maintenance. I know for a fact that we are doing a lot more maintenance there. Whether they still retain a contract with Firestone, I don't know the answer to that. General Services will tell you.

you anticipated what my next question was gonna be is whether or not general services or any other metro agency provides that direct service to MNPD for that particular maintenance level. And I guess, with it becoming more in-house and more than okay if you don't have this readily available, but what percentage of, or rather what categories of maintenance jobs are done internally versus done through Firestone? So like an oil change, is that something that General Services does or would that go through Firestone?

I would... direct you to general services to let you know what they're currently doing. You know, years ago they did almost everything. And then there was a shift to kind of outsource that work. And now they've been doing, bringing it back in. I know for sure that they do oil changes, but beyond that, I COULDN'T TELL YOU WITH ANY LEVEL OF CERTAINTY AS GENERAL SERVICES WOULD HAVE TO TELL YOU.

OKAY, PERFECT. AND ONE OTHER THING, MADAM CHAIR, NOT NECESSARILY A QUESTION, AN IDEA THAT I LITERALLY JUST HAD WHILE SITTING HERE AND THINKING ABOUT THIS, AND IT WOULDN'T NECESSARILY BE THE MOST EFFICIENT IDEA, BUT FOR LIKE LOWER MAINTENANCE THINGS LIKE AN OIL CHANGE OR needing to replace a tire or a brake job. I think that that's something that MNPD could partner with MNPS and sort of like have a shop class do that one semester or something. Again, not necessarily the most efficient, but provides a service not only to MNPD, but our students as well. So I have musings all the time that I share with you. I'm sure we'll discuss it at a later date, but yeah, I just wanted to share that here today. But those are my questions. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, any, oh, on the vehicle maintenance, is that something that is 4% or is that an operating expense? Is that something that could be 4%, the vehicle retention is operating? Okay, okay.

Council Member Porterfield. Thank you so much. I forgot I had one more question. I know we're now discussing possibly giving money to MMPD, but in the spirit of give and take, a little bit ago we had a conversation around the services that Red Frog provide. I think it's called Red Frog. The services that they provide downtown and there was some conversation about if some of that funding could come from the downtown partnership. Is there a way that since they are providing like a public a public safety service, is there a way that MMPD could help subsidize that service and help support some of the funding for Red Rock?

Well, I would have to refer back to what Chief Drake said to the budget committee the other night, which is that we understand it's a difficult budget year and that we're having to take the 1.5% cut like all the departments are having to take. And it's not going to be easy, but we are committed to making that cut work. What Chief Drake did say though was any further cuts to the department would have a negative effect on the ability for us to provide services. So, you know, I understand there's a lot of worthwhile entities out there, so I'm not, you know, casting any, you know, opinion on to the worthiness of that. I'm just purely looking at it from a budget perspective and what we have to have to operate. And so I'd have to, you know, again, remind y'all that that was Chief Jarek's opinion that we just can't take any further cut to the budget.

Understood. What's the total police budget?

The total budget? I have all the breakdowns. I don't have the total number in front of me.

Let me. 346 million. That's. All right. So, um, I, I, I hear you. I appreciate all y'all do. I am so. ecstatic about the fact that crime is down in all areas, except for one, I believe is what council member Evans told us. And I think that 360, 346 million is, is a big, big allocation. And I would just challenge you to look at it, not so much as a, $200,000 cut, but as maybe like a reallocation. So just leaving that there for y'all to consider again, just putting it out there in the atmosphere for y'all to consider and would just appreciate the consideration. Thank you.

Council Member Coopin.

Hold on. Thank you, chair. And thank you, deputy chief. And I just want to second that, that my colleague council member Porterfield, I know that obviously we've had these conversations, it's tight budget and everybody's kind of looking in couch cushions and other places. But I do, I do especially the deeper I've gotten into representing downtown and appreciate chief Drake elevating red frogs at the, at the council meeting, and I think that it, you know, there may be hopefully space to look at it as a, you know, reallocation of resource. You know, again, Red Frogs arguably will take calls for service off the table, which frees up officers to do other things, and so there's kind of a cascading money fungibility, I think, thing going on, so not asking you, of course, to commit to anything right now, and I know there's a lot of conversations going on, and we're all kind of trying to shrink the budgets down and figure out where we can cut, but just something that I think whether in this particular instance or in general, looking at ways that we can allocate some funding for community safety, things like Red Frogs, like other programs that take some of the weight off of PD, but also, again, exist in that lane of public safety and keeping people safe. So appreciate, just wanna elevate, appreciate that conversation.

Yeah, and I totally understand and I appreciate that. I would keep in mind that the entertainment district unit, for example, isn't funded. That's a $4.9 million cost that if we're gonna continue, we have to absorb and find funding for that. The school safety initiative where officers provide overtime or working overtime shifts at elementary schools isn't wholly funded. So we're gonna have to find, I forget the number, I think it's around one, 1.1 million to continue to fund that at the level it is at. So there's a lot of things that we are having to dig deep on that we're already engaged in and doing. So while I understand the number there is not a particularly large number, there's already, there is a large number of things that we are trying to make sure we continue to fund. So thank you.

Any additional questions? Thank you, Deputy Chief.

Thank you.

All right, last but not least, Office of Homeless Services. Oh, the contributor, that's right. Yes, because that's related to the SOAR program. That's right. So if our representative from the contributor can come up and talk about the SOAR program, because several council members put that as a wishlist item. So if you could introduce yourself. And then you have the floor to explain what that program is. And I believe the cost that everyone has put is $350,000. So if you could talk about that as well.

Yeah, thank you. My name is Will Connolly. I'm the executive director of the Contributor Happy to be here, it's been an inspiring night listening to you all and all the other nonprofits and all the work that's being done in the city. Many of you all, or a lot of folks know us because of the newspaper. We also have started providing housing and healthcare services over the last few years, thanks to a number of agencies that are in the room, especially the Office of Homeless Services and MDHA and the Health Department. This program for $350,000 serves people that are unhoused and uninsured and have a health condition that is expected to last a long time and prevents the person from working. So we... We work with people to help them apply for disability benefits, SSI and SSDI benefits from the Social Security Administration. This program would work with people who are patients of Nashville General Hospital who wind up in the emergency room and staff from Nashville General reach out to us to do that benefits advocacy work. So we basically do what an attorney would do when they take on a disability claim, but we do it on the street and we expedite the service and we are non-attorneys. We are actually peers with lived experience who know how to do this well and know how to like speed it up. Thanks to the leadership of the Office of Homeless Services, we have been operating this hospital collaboration over the last couple of years, and it's been a pilot project. We are hoping to continue this program. The contributor is currently funding it off of reserves right now since our grant ended last month. and the health department seized the vision and the outcomes of this program and included it in their budget, but it wasn't included in the mayor's budget ordinance. So very thankful for the seven council members who included it on their wishlist. Some of the ROI information for this project, Just for the 64 people that we got approved on SSI and SSDI, that brought in about $1.3 million in federal money. So we got about $700,000 in grant money to do this over the last couple of years. So basically for every dollar invested, we get $2 back in federal funding. Also hospitals, before they reach out to us, they're serving an uninsured patient. And after we work with that patient, they get on Medicaid or Medicare and are now an insured patient. So the hospital can then bill Medicaid or Medicare to provide more services. So anyway, that's the program in a nutshell, and I'm happy to answer questions.

And what is the 350, like what does that pay for?

Yeah, thanks. So $350,000 is for three and a half FTEs at the contributor, and then we also have in the budget money for medical evaluations. Usually... When people apply for disability benefits, or always, the Social Security Administration asks for medical evidence to back up their claim, and often people who are unhoused or even housed folks don't have that information. So we often pay for medical exams to build the case So there's funding for that. There's also funding for move-in costs because we work in a housing focused way and try to get people housed as well. We don't just try to help them get on disability. We see it as a pathway to housing. So there's funding for like security deposits, first month's rent, utility deposits, transportation for clients, things of that nature. Okay.

All right. Questions from, I see council member prep team.

Thank you, madam chair. Not necessarily a question, but just a comment, um, on, on this particular agenda item, a wholeheartedly support this allocation. Um, cause not only as the executive director stated that for every dollar spent within this program brings $2 worth, of federal benefits for folks who participate. But beyond that, this $350,000 will create more value than this allocation for folks here in Davidson County, particularly as it relates to getting them housed, providing those services. and providing a sense of stability as well. And also directly view this as a public safety issue, because if we're able to provide these resources, it alleviates those economic conditions that are oftentimes are drivers of criminalized activity. So wholeheartedly supportive of this and just wanted to lend my voice to that. Thank you.

Council Member Evans. Thank you. I really appreciate the work on this and I really appreciate the effort with Metro General, the ER side kind of, connecting people and that's the way, you know, services like this should be. And I'm curious with health's interest in adding it into their budget originally, is there, has there been vision or is there a vision around like connecting the health resources to this partnership from like an epidemiology perspective and like kind of more of the data driven side that, and I'm just thinking of like, you know, as you speak about patients who end up getting like 10 care access and you know, that's a, could be potentially a really powerful story about the impact on Metro general. And as they continue to see patients that maybe have been successfully advocated for as part of your program. So I guess, is there anything, are you guys having discussions about like that kind of future?

Yeah, thanks, it definitely came up in some initial conversations with Dr. Areola, and that's partly, part of the reason why we got so excited about it being in their department was because of the other resources and skills that they had there, especially around data, yes.

Council Member Suarez.

Thank you, Chair. I just wanted to add that I actually had a conversation with Dr. Arreola about this program, and I just wanted to have it on record that he said it's something that he's very passionate about and he saw the need in it and would love the opportunity to be able to do this however way we can make it happen.

Did you have something to add?

Yeah, sorry. One thing I failed to mention is just when someone who's unhoused applies on their own, they have about a 10% chance of getting approved, even if they're eligible, because of all of the paperwork and just the way that Social Security communicates with people, usually by phone or mail, which is tough. It's tough to have a consistent phone or mailing address when you're unhoused. So when you connect with our staff or people that are trained in this particular way of helping with disability benefits, it goes from a 10% approval rate to over 65%. We're over a 70% approval rate on an initial application right now. So I just wanted to mention that as well.

Thank you. And Director Calvin with the Office of Homeless Services, can you come up to the table because it was my understanding that there was some other funding for SOAR. Can you provide some input on that? Is there some grant funding that your office has applied for or received? Can you give some explanation, please?

Yes. Hi, April Calvin, the Director of the Office of Homeless Services. I hear that there's been a lot of confusion on what's going on with the SOAR program. Our office is quite the opposite. Not that we've applied for federal funds or any funding for SOAR, is that we've deployed those funds. We had a procurement process through finance where there was two organizations that applied, and one, we fund Park Center to the tune of about $860,000 to do SOAR.

And where is that funding coming from? It comes out of our Metro budget. Okay, okay. And is the Park Center, providing a similar service as the contributor?

They provide SOAR, which is the same service. The difference would be, I think you heard the CEO, president, director, will kindly say that they're looking to partner within the hospitals. I think that would be the difference.

Okay. Okay.

Okay.

All right. Any additional questions for the contributor? All right, thank you so much, I appreciate it. And Director Calvin, you can stay right there. Let's see, let me go back to my notes. Okay, I see, oh, I'm sorry, Council Member Porterfield.

My apologies, I'm translating for the sick and shut in over here. She had a question. She had a question about the contributor amount being, one amount being for I think 800,000, one amount being for like 300,000. So if we could get some clarity on the two amounts, the discrepancy in the amounts. She said, are they two different programs?

So the only amount that I see related to the contributor is the 350,000.

To SOAR, my apologies, was it to SOAR?

Yeah, which the contributor does the SOAR program in conjunction with Nashville General. And then there's some funding from Office of Homeless Services that goes to the Park Center that also participates in SOAR. So it's two different programs. Well, two different entities during the same program. At two different entry points. Thank you, Councilwoman Evans. Does that make sense?

Does the Office of Homeless Services have funding for the contributor SOAR? Does the Office of Homeless Services have funding for the contributor SOAR?

Director Calvin, is that something that the Office of Homeless Services could fund a $350,000 for the contributor to continue doing SOAR?

So I'll start with, we like all of the interventions. We as a department strive to have innovative, progressive type of programs and are always looking to continue to source things like that. I think that with this year, there's multiple things that come to mind. A tight budget year, there's already a 1.5%, possibly 2% cut in our budget. on top of federal funds that may or may not be deployed here in Nashville. And so I fret to have more designated line items than we have right now, just because we need to be able to remain nimble and flexible, depending on what happens with the federal front.

Thank you. I think I heard a very diplomatic no.

Well, and also we are currently with ARPA funds, is that what you're mentioning? With ARPA funds, we have funded, and Will said that, that we funded his SOAR program and that we funded additional, oh, that's Park Center. So we have funded the program until last month where it just ended. That's what he said, isn't it?

Thank you, Chair. And for the viewing audience, did we say what SOAR means? SSI slash SSDI Outreach Access and Recovery. So it's helping folks get those benefits, correct? Correct. All right. Correct. All right, we have on page 13 of your packets, colleagues, a request from Council Member Coopin for the hospitality hub. Going to the Office of Homeless Services, and that is a whopper of a request, $3 million. And I will let Council Member Coopin, I'm just messing with you, Council Member Coopin talk about his wishlist item.

Thank you, Chair. Well, Council Member Spain was making very small requests, so I figured someone had to go big. That was a throwback to a couple days ago. I guess to Director Calvin, I'm hearing kind of different numbers thrown around, so my understanding, or can you speak to Hospitality Hub and what they do here and what the costs are and what was funded and not funded?

Yes, and we have Jared here, the CEO of Hospitality Hub out of Memphis. They've been here for about a year and a half now providing services at the interim housing option, which we call Roadway. It's over off of Harding Place. They accept individuals that as we look to do housing surges from encampments, they've been a great partner accepting the individuals there. That opportunity was run by the Salvation Army early on in the last 18 months they've operated it. Initially the request was $2.5 million and the mayor's budget that was submitted, all of the requests that we asked for were the top three priorities, which were ARPA fund replacements. So we are grateful for those because it allows us to not have a huge gap in service delivery as it relates to ARPA funding. I think the difference that why requests needed to be a little bit more maybe what you're asking for Councilman Coopin is it in the past we've used also supportive services by way of like step up or another agency having boots on the ground there. And then also meal service that was provided through those other agencies. But that's why that increase that I think you guys have discussed is important.

Thank you, and if the additional funding, if no additional funding is allocated, will Hospitality Hub continue to operate roadway or what's gonna happen at that point?

So I'm gonna let him speak for the organization. But for myself, I would say there's creative solutions that we're looking into, whether it's supportive services, helping to assist or other funding opportunities that may come by way of the federal NOFO and other things like that. But I will let him speak because it's a bird in the hand is different than two in the bush.

If you could introduce yourself and you have the floor.

I am Jared Bingham. I am a proud graduate of Vanderbilt Divinity School. I cut my teeth here at Room in the Inn at Edge Hill United Methodist Church, and Pastor Barnes at my ordination gave me his cross from his neck, and I wore it for 14 years of pulpit ministry. I'm really glad to be back with you guys, and just some little brief context since I've got the floor. The COVID pandemic changed social services. not only did the suffering on the streets go way up and the economy and pockets of our communities hasn't recovered, but also there was this flow of capital. So in our context, for example, we ran two gigantic, non-congregate shelters during COVID. One was 400 people in a roadside hotel and it was bedlam. You could have made all kinds of movies about it. And the other was a downtown luxury boutique and the Marriott brand had just opened it. And we advocated for them to give us third floor of that for unhoused women in Memphis. And we moved all the unhoused women that we had in Memphis into the third floor of a luxury boutique hotel with king size beds and Brass rain shower fittings. And everyone for whom this was an offering accepted it. One person left in a day. She had very low IQ and her protector was a very burly man and they were dear to each other and she could only make it a night without it. But everybody else stayed. 11% of our people left for opioids or narcotics. 11% is the general population's dependency rate. 11%, right? Nobody else left. 22% of our people at the luxury boutique hotel needed some kind of medication management in order to stabilize. 22%. These experiences flew in the face of the traditional knowledge that people who are unhoused are addicts and they're mentally ill and they need enormous interventions by gigantic structures. What we learned is you need a place to heal from the trauma of being on the streets. The trauma is somatic. And if you can create that environment, people get better. If you can keep the care from being transactional, people get better. The federal government's terrible at non-transactional care to get SSDI our policy in Memphis, which is like the world's leading at homeless agency is to fail the SSDI application because then legal aid will pick it up, you know, because it's so hard to, to be compliant, um, to be transactional. Anyway, I say all that to say, um, we came out of that in Memphis and built a real, a really beautiful thing. And I was, I've been so interested in being able to come and share some of the work we've done in Memphis. And so when, um, April called me and invited me to come up and look at the roadway project. We jumped at the chance to try this non-transactional trauma-informed stabilizing transitional housing model at a project that was already established here in Metro. And so I beg you to keep it going. Let us do the work we're doing and we'll bring over time enormous partnerships and collaborations. We already work well with everybody. You know, it's all siloed and everybody's supposed to hate each other, but that's just not been the case since we've been here. We work with Open Table and we work with Room in the Inn and we work with, this is the first time I've ever been here when there weren't detractors in the audience waiting to speak against April, but we even work well with them. You know what I mean? So I'm honored to be here with you guys. And I hope to get to know all of you over time. And I ask you to honor this. If it's solid in the budget, then I don't have to fight the board and get it shut down. But if it's not solid in the budget, then I've got lives that have been uprooted to move up here. And I have to pull people back home and I have to do what the board wants, which is gonna be to protect the organization. But anyway, so Hospitality Hub Nashville, come on, let's do it.

Council Member Copen. Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Pastor Jared, for that. And April, maybe you can answer, and I know Jared just sat back down, but bare minimum of dollar amount of fees that we have to have this amount just to feel comfortable at least for this next year that we don't have to close up or go home, is that the... Like what's that bare minimum number?

It was 2.5 until we lost meals. And the reason meals are important is because, you know, trauma is somatic, right? So you have to learn to trust where you are before you can become optimistic. And if you serve people terrible food, they do not trust you. So we spend about $20,000 a month on meals, and that's a pretty significant lift. So yeah, 2.5, if we're gonna do meals and the pieces that help people's lives feel better, then three's the minimum. And yeah. And then the other piece I'll just go ahead and say is y'all have a really complicated contracting thing that goes on, right? And so when I come back and say we have to get the contract moving, please help with that. Thanks. Thank you.

Okay, any, Councilwoman Evans.

I guess I feel like what was the amount that was funded in the budget versus what is the difference? Like I know that, Council Member Koopens asked is 3 million, but was there anything funded in the budget? I think I'm unclear.

Yes, 1.25 is funded in the budget.

And that basically just includes what operating a physical structure and like having people there, but it doesn't include any of the services that come along with it.

It would be up for them to make that budget or even scaling back, utilizing less of the units. Like they'd have to get super creative, not being able to run it at full capacity. as they have. I got it.

Okay. Thank you.

I do want to clarify. I'm so sorry that council ladies off. That's not feeling well. And I think that the Porterfield council, a portfolio tried to translate as best as she could. I just did not want it to sound like I was saying, no, I did not want the contributor additional funding to be put into our budget. I was just saying at what we have right now, I did not feel comfortable with designating.

Any additional questions about the hospitality hub? All right, we will move on to the next request, which is from Councilwoman Suarez. She may need Councilwoman Porterfield's assistance, that's fine. Expansion of Villages at Glencliff Housing Program from 12 units to 24 due to increased demand. This request is a prioritization request to the Office of Homeless Services to support the expansion of an effective existing program. REQUEST IS BASED ON UNSPENT FY26 BUDGET, AND THE REQUEST IS FOR $250,000. COUNCILWOMAN PORTERFIELD.

SO WE WOULD LIKE DIRECTOR CALVIN TO SPEAK TO THIS. THIS IS A GREAT PROGRAM THAT PROVIDES, THAT HAS HISTORICALLY PROVIDED RESPITE CARE FOR INDIVIDUALS THAT ARE UNHOUSED THAT NEED MEDICAL RESPITE CARE. AND I'M GOING TO TURN IT OVER TO DIRECTOR TO SPEAK TO IT.

Yes, once again, all of the interventions are needed. I would like to say that all of the interventions are needed. We fight to have or advocate to have innovative processes, you know, Murph or Metro rapid response funding is just one of those. My fear is dedicating funding that we already have in our budget to projects like this would shave off all of the flexibility that we have not knowing what's happening with the federal government. We work well with the villages. They have a total of 12 units currently right now. They designate three of those for Metro under our current operations. And I think that's a sole source through, that's a sole source through the Metro central finance.

Any, okay, Councilwoman Porterfield.

Thank you, can you speak to the tying up or losing of flexibility? Because I don't know if I'm hearing it correctly, because it sounds like to me that it, it seems like to me that it will be better to know and we're dedicating it to something. So could you speak to that a little bit? Thank you for that.

So right now, probably tonight, is tonight the 29th? No, the day is the 28th. Tomorrow at midnight, we expect a federal notice of funding to be released. It's gonna look totally different than what our community has been used to. And we, in the past, have kind of set aside some of the Metro rapid response funding just in case if those agencies for FY25, if those agencies had any concerns, thanks to Wally Deets, Derek Smith, John Whitaker and Metro Legal's team, they were able to get full funding for this year. So all four quarters will be funded, but this new notice of funding is going to, there's language there to walk back from permanent housing into transitional housing. There's a lot of language there that will undo some of the permanent housing that we have and agencies that's been heavily rooted in permanent housing may have concerns and we may need to dedicate some of the Metro rapid response funding to those organizations in those units. Very fearful right now.

Thank you, that sounds terrifying. If I'm understanding correctly, you'll know that by tomorrow night though? Federal government, you wanna say it?

Allison Cantway with the Office of Homeless Services. I've been like living, breathing federal government funding changes for the last over a year. What will drop tomorrow is the notice of funding opportunity basically saying this is how much, these are the sort of projects that HUD will fund, right? We expect that to be massively different than it's been for years past. And so obviously like our community will apply and then we won't find out like how successful that application was and how much funding we get until the end of this calendar year.

Okay, thank you.

And if I could just add one thing about the Village at Glencliff, they have, their model is wonderful. They provide respite care in tiny homes. It's a comfortable place for folks to recover from whatever it is that they've gone through. They have 12 tiny homes. Right now, Metro, through our office, through that procurement contract, we fund three of the 12. But my understanding is that they stay pretty full up in those 12 units, and so while I'm very supportive of that program, and clearly we funded them for, I think this is the third year, I think they're already running at capacity as far as what their physical, how many homes that they have. I think to do more, they would have to build, and that's whenever they were here a month-ish ago for the last contract, they were talking about how they're gonna start a capital campaign to move in that direction.

Councilwoman Svara.

Thank you. Just for clarification, they have 12 units already in existence. Metro is using three of those units. The villages would like to keep six for the hospitals and other entity, but there's three that is available now for Metro to use. So the three that we're using serves about 12 individuals in a year on a rotating basis. And there's an extensive conversation between myself and Reverend Ingrid and Ms. Calvin, Director Calvin. And so they do have that three available if we want it. So they do have 12. And so they're open to us taking three more. There is a need for it. I remember that a customer was talking about somebody that needed something. So there is a need and the unit is available. and they've agreed that it's available. What Director Covington and I was talking about is that since this is a good program, my suggestion was that once everything settles and you get the federal stuff and all of that, that you're able to find money to extend or expand it going forward. And so, but I wanted to at least make that clarification. They're not building more right now, but they have units that we can use right now and so. Thank you.

And I have a question on that Councilwoman Soro because the request is saying expansion of villages at Glencliff housing program from 12 units to 24.

So that is in talking to Director Calving. It's three units to six units, but each unit has the capacity for 12 people. So when I was putting, it was 12 people to 24 people, not units. So the units that I'm asking to expand into is to increase it from three units to six units, which will allow us to serve 24 people instead of 12. So when they spoke the last time, each person goes an average of 90 days. And so it's one person in each unit, but because it's rotating, it has the ability to serve, throughout the year, 12 people. And so that's four in each unit, each of these. So I hope that clarifies it. I confused Director Calvin too, because I kept saying 12 unit 24, and she was like, what are you talking about? So no, it's 24 individuals, but it would be six units.

Director Calvin, can you speak to that?

Yes, I know she's not feeling well and I'm sorry that we're here this late. So they have a total of 12. They do have a large footprint there. Currently they have a total of 12 units, single, they're tiny homes. So single room occupancy, nice homes, beautiful. They have a total of 12. We secured three by way of Metro funding and she's correct in saying but typically the average stay is 90 days, but they keep people there until housing is made available. So they won't exit anyone back to the street. And with that turnover four times a year, it will go from three to 12 if the turnover is quarterly for every 90 days. And that's what she's speaking on. And so she's saying that if we get six of the units, then that would have a four times multiplier as well. As long as everyone's moving in and out at the 90 day rate.

And the cost of getting those three additional units is 250,000.

And I'm not sure if that was an additional cost or if that was collective between the two.

So the last socials that we did which was extending or renewing the current three for one year was about 200 and something thousand. And I just wrapped that to 250. So we did the current unit for one year for about 200 and something. And so that's where that is coming from. That if we had another three units for a year will be about that price.

Council Member Nash.

Thank you, Madam Chairman. I think it's important that we also realize that places like Hospitality Hub, places like Strobel House, where they're well-managed and they give people a chance to get homed, get the services they need, save the city money in ambulance runs, police calls for service, we get money back that we may not be able to actually count, but it is happening. A study that was done in Portland or Seattle, I can't remember, several years ago, they saved several million dollars. I've shared it with the finance department before. There are real savings generated by these facilities when they're well run. And so just keep that in mind too.

Any additional questions on the villages at Glencliff? Any additional questions for the Office of Homeless Services? Seeing none, thank you, Director Calvin and everybody. Have I forgotten anybody? Is there anybody sitting back there saying she did not call on me? Okay. Okay. So colleagues, we have gone through our, all of our wishlist items. I hope the past two days have been informative in terms of helping us to identify which wishlist items are actually viable. There are a couple such as increasing the grocery tax reduction that is something that I will continue to work on with my fingers crossed with the finance folks to see if that is a viable option, but we've gone through everything else next week. We have a public hearing during our council meeting on the second. And then we do have a work session the following day that Wednesday, June 3rd at four 30 back in the jury room. A revised wishlist are due Wednesday, June 3rd at 1159 p.m. And we have a work session the following day, June 4th at 430 p.m. in the jury room. We will be diving, next week we will be diving into funding sources. So we will have some great input from budget director Pratt next Wednesday and start looking, really diving further into you know, what we can actually realistically fund in the substitute. So thank you and have a good evening.

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