Nashville Spending Vastly Outpaces Growth
💸 The city's balance sheet bloat · Protesting tunnel talks · Pushback against Nations upzone · BNA the next ATL · Rumor mill · The week in culture · Much more!
Good afternoon, everyone. Nashville's annual budget is increasing much, much faster than its population... People protest the tunnel talks... Upzoning in the Nations gets some pushback... BNA grows... The rumor mill... And the week in culture.
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Austin Justice is a great X account that posts about issues endemic to Austin, Texas, such as crime, homelessness, and reckless government spending.
Yesterday, he posted about how the city’s budget has swelled by 116 percent over the past 14 years, while the population has only increased by 25 percent.
“City Hall is spending twice as much to serve only 1.25x the people,” he writes. “Does the city feel twice as well-managed?”
I ran the same numbers for Nashville, and here’s what they look like:
Nashville’s budget in 2010 $1.54B
Nashville’s budget in 2024 $3.28B
Population growth +16%
Spending growth +113%
Spending per resident +83%
We should ask ourselves the same question: Does it feel like Nashville is twice as well-managed? DAVIS HUNT
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🖋️ Edited by Megan Podsiedlik.
🪧 Activists Protest Tunnel Talks This morning, the State Building Commission Executive Subcommittee considered a temporary lease on a parking lot that The Boring Company plans to use as a construction staging area. Activists and state Democrats used the meeting as their own staging area to express opposition to Elon Musk’s underground tunnel connecting the airport to downtown.
Members of Shift Nashville, including the Equity Alliance and Stand Up Nashville, along with the East Nashtivists were vocal throughout the proceedings. Stand Up’s Executive Director Odessa Kelly warned state officials against voting to move the Music City Loop project forward.
“For every one of you, there's 10,000 of us,” said Kelly. “I'm getting sick and tired and I'm about to make everybody very active. It's a lot of people that are at work today. You think that you can get them not to go to work? I can, and we will have everybody down here the moment that we need to have them down here.”
Ultimately, the commission approved the lease. Sidenote: Can someone please check on Representative Shaundelle Brooks (D-Hermitage)? While reading her speech in opposition to the legislation, she appeared to struggle getting the words out. At several points, it seemed like she might cry or be sick.
🗺️ Organized Pushback On Nations Upzone During last week’s Planning Commission meeting, Irene Kelley, a resident and real estate agent in Davidson County, pointed out that Nashville doesn’t have a housing inventory problem. In fact, there’s more inventory than ever: available housing inventory has increased by 22 percent, thousands of rentals remain vacant, and the number of days properties remain on the market has increased year over year.
Kelley dismissed the notion that Nashville neighborhoods need more density to tackle affordability issues as misleading and attended the meeting in opposition to Councilmember Rollin Horton’s proposal to upzone The Nations. “Forty units on one acre is huge, and I keep hearing, as a real estate agent, about the housing crisis,” said Kelley. “We have almost a five month supply of inventory! There's not a housing shortage.”
Opposition to Horton’s plan appears to be growing. Not only did several residents speak against the legislation during last week’s public comment, but Nextdoor is flooded with conversations identifying the RS-40 zoning change as “NEST on steroids.” The Coalition For Nashville Neighborhoods has been circulating information about the proposals, and a group called Voice of the Nations has cropped up in opposition to the bills.
✈️ Is BNA Being Groomed As An Alt For ATL? Nestled conveniently in a central location, Nashville International Airport has been upgrading its facilities and expanding its non-stop flight list. Given all the hype surrounding the underground Music City Loop project, Metropolitan Nashville Airport Authority President and CEO Doug Kreulen threw out some interesting statistics regarding daily operations.
A day in the life of the airport includes the movement of 70,000 passengers, 35,000 vehicles, and 800 aircraft. “In the last 12 months, we've had 12,727,152 vehicle trips to and from the Nashville International Airport,” said Kreulen during Monday’s announcement. “Each day, when those 70,000 passengers arrive, we have 34,868 vehicles we have to worry about arriving and departing or about 17,043 vehicles every hour, 20 hours a day.”
Two weeks ago, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was at the Nashville airport hyping up BNA’s facilities as well as sharing some security upgrades to make air travel a more pleasant experience. Noem mentioned that TSA has ended the shoes-off policy. She also shared the added benefits military families can apply for, as well as the creation of dedicated check-in lanes for families traveling with children.
DEVELOPMENT
- Former Donelson hospital site eyed for massive new development (NBJ)
- California beer garden, sports bar plans East Nashville location (NBJ)
- Seafood restaurant slated for Germantown (Post)
- Donelson-area site eyed for mixed-use project (Post)
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✹ RUMOR MILL
The Boring Co. is already hiring in Nashville, much to the chagrin of the Complainicans like John Ray Clemmons and Aftyn Behn, who can’t fathom why bringing jobs to town would be good for the city //// NBC broke a story that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has talked to people in Tennessee about a run for governor… Separately, in private correspondence, I heard that Hegseth is on the outs with the Trump administration, and in order to diminish the impression of a “crash out,” has been offered the Trump endorsement for a gubernatorial run in Tennessee… A Pentagon spokesperson said the story was made up… I’ve invested zero spiritual energy in this story… Could just be a media campaign to undermine the administration, but the rumors are circulating nonetheless.
✹ THIS WEEK IN CULTURE (July 31st)
WATCH
Hot Ticket: The Naked Gun Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson star in a reboot of the classic 80s cop movie sendup. Turns out, the guy behind Popstar: Never Stop Popping and SNL’s last good year may well have resurrected not only a moribund franchise but Neeson’s career and the big-screen comedy to boot. Opens today in theaters.
Pamphleteers’s Pick: Together Real-life couple Alison Brie and Dave Franco star in a body horror opus featuring a rural location, a primal entity, and an ingeniously executed allegory that gives a whole new meaning to the seven-year itch. Now playing in theaters.
For a complete list of upcoming titles, check out the 2025 Film Guide.
STREAM
The Addams Family (Prime) While everyone else is bingeing Jenna Ortega’s latest stint as Wednesday on Netflix, go back to the macabre original series that never got enough credit for its delicate balance of championing and subverting the 60s suburban family ideal.
The Phoneican Scheme (Peacock) Wes Anderson’s latest charts the waning days of Zsa Zsa Korda (Benicio del Toro), a global industry titan hoping to raise money for the project that will define his legacy with assists from Tom Hanks, Benedict Cumberbatch, Michael Cera, Scarlett Johansson, and 10,000 others.. As we said upon its release in June, “It’s a movie about where we are now..that does the business of art in a way most of Hollywood abandoned a decade ago.”
READ
Polybius The debut novel from entertainment writer Collin Armstrong is a riff on the urban legend about a demonic video game, an 80s-set homage to John Carpenter’s worldbuilding, and a horror yarn that rivals the best days of Stephen King. But it’s also an empathetic examination of America’s vanishing small town values at the hands of Big Tech’s insatiable appetite that will especially haunt the dreams of pre-It City Nashvillians.
LISTEN
More Pulp. Nearly a quarter century after the release of their last record, Brit Pop’s working class kings came out of nowhere with the album of the summer. Thanks to the clever nods to their 90s heyday in tracks like “Farmers Market” and a melodic blend of electronic beats and orchestral musings, one can almost transport themselves to the halcyon days of the Thatcherite hangover.
THINGS TO DO
View our calendar for the week here.
📅 Visit our On The Radar list to find upcoming events around Nashville.
🎧 On Spotify: Pamphleteer's Picks, a playlist of our favorite bands in town this week.
👨🏻🌾 Check out our Nashville farmer's market guide.
TONIGHT
🎸 Trulah & Cole McSween @ Analog at Hutton Hotel, 8p, $15, Info
🪕 Pitney Meyer @ The Station Inn, 8p, $20, Info
🪕 The Po' Ramblin' Boys @ 3rd and Lindsley, 12p, $18.58, Info
🍀 Live Irish Music @ McNamara’s Irish Pub, 6p, Free, Info
🎸 Kelly’s Heroes @ Robert’s Western World, 6:30p, Free, Info
🎸 Open Mic @ Fox & Locke, 6:30p, Free, Info
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Today's newsletter is brought to you by Megan Podsiedlik (Nashville), Jerod Hollyfield (Crowd Corner), Camelia Brennan (Local Noise), and Davis Hunt (everything else).