Thinking Differently About Taxpayers

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Thinking Differently

Earlier this week seven mayoral candidates participated in a forum for the Nashville Child and Youth Collaborative hosted at the Honey Alexander Center.

Several questions came up that brought to mind the importance of understanding our past to chart, together, a future.

Childcare Affordability is a major issue for our city - and to be a family friendly city means ensuring we are doing all we can to build daycare capacity to support working families. History reminds us this is not a new moment - and, importantly, that government alone won’t solve this challenge. Notably, Corporate Child Care (what would later merge with Bright Horizons) was founded in the 1980s by Marguerite Sallee, Honey and Lamar Alexander, and Bob Keeshan (also known as Captain Kangaroo).

History reminds us that it is in our DNA as a city, and a state, to figure out solutions for working families. What can we do - at the city and the state level - to step back and look at the permitting and approval process for child care facilities? How can we turn the tools in our economic development toolkit to encourage companies to see access to quality childcare as important as access to a healthcare plan in attracting and retaining workers? Knowing that we cannot create more land or more time - how do we incentivize our land-rich non-profits, faith, and education entities to prioritize space for building weekday child care centers for working families?

When there are three-year waiting lists at child care facilities, we know there is demand. How are we making it harder - or easier - to build supply? This is a problem we can solve.

Not surprisingly, almost every forum seems to suggest ways we should be spending more taxpayer money - but very few ask the question of how, and from whom, we will raise the funds.

This is another place where knowing our history, and how to work effectively with our neighbors, matters tremendously for our next Mayor.

To manage growth we must better capture the cost of growth at the site of growth. Our neighbors in Williamson County do this well - you see new schools being built without taxes constantly going up. Why is that? The county charges what is known as an “Impact Fee” on new development to fund schools and infrastructure. This helps capture the cost of growth at the site of growth. However the 2006 Naifeh County Powers Act has kept county governments from changing their impact fee structure - making it difficult for many fast growing counties to capture the cost of growth at the site of growth.

This is the moment where the politically connected are forwarding this with a note “not possible, can’t be done’ – but before you do that - consider this lesson. It took us nearly three years to finally wear out the 30+ lobbyists for AT&T to enable rural electric co-ops to be able to pull fiber, and to bring broadband internet access to more parts of the state. So I’ll offer this – pay attention to which candidate has the support of the taxpayers union (that’s me) and which candidate has the support of special interests intent on keeping control of City Hall. The next Mayor of Nashville needs to be on the side of citizens, not special interest groups in joining with other Tennessee county mayors interested in rethinking this law.

Second, we’ve got to work with other county and municipal mayors to reconsider the 2002 austerity measure that shifted more sales tax to the state. That was a time of tremendous challenge for the state budget - and we understood the needed shift.

But today, the state is not in an austerity position and it is a conservative position to match the cost of service at the site of service. When sales taxes are collected in our city, it is our roads, our police, our trash service - that bear the cost of delivering that service. An adjustment to reset the split from the 2002 “austerity position” to increase the share to local governments will help us match the costs we incur at the site the taxes are collected - namely, our city.

So what does understanding history and needs we share with other neighbors have to do with your decision of who to elect as our city’s 10th Mayor?

Well, If we keep electing the same people we’ve elected for the last 20 years, we cannot expect a different result. If working with our state and region is important to you to solve challenges - I invite you to consider how sending me to City Hall will usher in a new era for how we approach problems, and get results, for our citizens.

Watch a clip on the topic from a recent forum, here.

I hope you’ll join us in thinking differently about how to solve problems and get results.

Sincerely,
Alice

P.S. I’ll need your help to get our message out - click here to make a contribution to the campaign to help us advance our message.

Girl Scouts Know Best

WPLN-NPR This Is Nashville host Khalil Ekulona led a great forum earlier this week at the Honey Alexander Center. Students from the Mayor’s Youth Council asked questions and one framed his question as considering goals for the city as Girl Scout Badges. Lucky for me, my fifth grade teacher, Sarah Ann Ezzell, was in the audience. She’s known me since I was a Girl Scout and it probably surprised no one that the badge I will earn is getting our city’s fiscal house in order. We have more debt service than the entire state of Tennessee, combined - and it is no badge of honor that we are ranked a Sinkhole City by Truth in Accounting. As your Girl Scout Mayor I’ll be sure the hand-in-the-cookie-jar crowd starts paying for their cookies!

The Week Ahead

Thursday, June 29, 8:30 - 10:30 am: ULI Forum at Belmont University
ULI Nashville: 2023 Mayoral Forum. Tickets are required, register here.

Saturday, July 1, 8:30 - 10am: Bellevue Breakfast Club at the Plantation Pub
8321 Sawyer Brown Road.
Following the Club Meeting we will have yard signs and will be door knocking afterwards.
Contact Casey to join us for walking after the club meeting!
[email protected] or 724.762.9715

Saturday, July 1, 7 - 8 pm: Mayoral Candidates Open Mic at the Wedgewood-Houston Art Crawl at The Packing Plant (507 Hagan St.)

Tuesday, July 4: Whitland Parade & Constitutional Challenge
We will walk from Craighead to the parade around 10:45 AM - see you there in your Red, White & Blue!

Thursday, July 6: Final Televised Mayoral Debate - Tennessean and Channel 5
Details forthcoming from the Tennessean