State of Metro Address
By Mayor Karl Dean
May 13, 2008
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Vice Mayor Neighbors, members of the Metropolitan Council, members of the Judiciary, Constitutional Officers, members of the General Assembly, members of our Board of Education, mayors of the satellite cities and surrounding counties, and distinguished guests.
We come together 45 years after the creation of our Metropolitan Government to talk about the current state of our city and our government. Today I will also take this time to talk about our future – where Nashville is headed. But before we do either of those things, I first would like to reflect for a moment on the past.
On this day in 1780 – more than 200 years ago – the settlers of Fort Nashborough came together and signed the Cumberland Compact, the first articles of self-governance for what would become the city of Nashville.
Written above the signatures of 256 colonists and among pages of text describing a rudimentary rule of order was this phrase: “We think it our duty to associate and hereby form ourselves into one society for the benefit of present and future settlers.” One sentence and a reminder to us today that the decisions we make now, the paths that we forge, the priorities that we set, create the city that future residents will live in tomorrow.
I want to extend a special welcome to several guests whose work has made Nashville the city we know now. If you will please stand and be recognized: Mayor Richard Fulton, several of the founding fathers of our Metropolitan Government – Carlton Tarkington, Tandy Wilson, Charles Howell and Cecil Branstetter. Thank you all for what you’ve contributed and continue to contribute to our city and thank you for being here today.
I also want to recognize the heads of the various departments of Metro Government that are present. Thank you for your service to our city.
I’d now like to ask you to pause with me for a moment in memory of David Scobey, who served our city with distinction as vice mayor for 24 years and passed away over the weekend.
I took office almost eight months ago with a clear set of goals – to make our streets and neighborhoods safer, to bring more and better jobs to our city, and most importantly, to improve our schools.
We got straight to work, holding the first in a series of Town Hall Meetings on Education at Pearl-Cohn High School on my first full day in office. Last night I was at Whites Creek for my ninth Town Hall Meeting. By the fall, I will have held a Town Hall Meeting in each of our 11 high school clusters, so parents, teachers, and students in every community will have a chance to talk to me directly about what they see happening in our schools.
We formed the Project for Student Success, a 40-member taskforce focused on how we can get our students engaged in our schools, so they’ll stay there and graduate. We’re learning a lot about what causes students to dropout of school. The taskforce will report its findings on June 25th.
In my first 200 days in office, I’ve visited 45 schools, seeing for myself what resources schools have, what resources they need, and how our students are spending their day. I taught a class at Maplewood High School – a school that deserves a lot more credit for the good things that are happening there.
For example, the Maplewood Panthers outplayed all but one other class 4A football team in the state this past year. They made it to the championship game. I asked the Panthers team captains Chris Simpson, Tyrone Vanlier and Lester Blanton to join us here today, along with Head Coach Ralph Thompson, Assistant Coach Brandon Woods and the principal of Maplewood Dr. Julie Williams. Please stand and accept our congratulations for a great season.
Public safety must also be a focus of our government. Our city is safer than it has been in 17 years. Crime has been down for four consecutive years and so far this year the trend continues. Public safety is something we have to stay focused every single day. And the men and women who put their lives on the line to keep us safe know this better than anyone.
For their benefit and the benefit of every Nashville neighborhood, we must have a fully staffed police force and I am pleased to tell you that we are very close to reaching that goal. Our next class of police recruits begins training on June 2, and if the turnout is as large as we’re expecting, when they graduate in October, our department will be fully staffed for the first time in 5 years.
Here in Nashville, not only do we have police officers who are highly skilled at their jobs, but we have police officers who represent the spirit of our city – a friendly, compassionate city. David Washington and Jamell Randall from the East Precinct are two officers who went above and beyond.
Over the Thanksgiving holiday these two officers stopped to help a family with a flat tire. They were traveling through town on their way home to Illinois. They had no spare tire or the resources to buy one. Officer Randall found a hotel willing to offer a discounted rate, and Officer Washington returned with a tire and tools while off duty the next day. Please join me in thanking these officers and all of our Metro Police officers for their service to our city.
When crime does occur, those officers deserve to have the best resources available. In today’s world, the best resource for solving crimes – from homicide, to sexual assault, to burglary – is DNA testing. Since I’ve been mayor, DNA testing has been responsible for identifying suspects in at least two high profile cases.
Our police department currently relies on the TBI for this service, but so does more than 400 other state, county and municipal law enforcement agencies in Tennessee. While the TBI continues to be a tremendous partner for our police department, they simply cannot do it all. I believe with our own DNA lab, more criminal suspects will be identified and arrested, making our families safer. So I am pleased to announce here today that I will be proposing, as part of the capital budget, funding for a DNA lab.
A safe city means less crime. It also means fire protection and knowing when someone in your family needs emergency medical services that there’s enough ambulances on our streets to get them help in time. I’ve proposed funding in the Fire Department budget for three additional ambulances and the EMS personnel to staff them.
Education, public safety, and the third leg of the stool – economic development. Those are the issues that are most important. After taking office we held a Small Business Summit on the campus of David Lipscomb University. More than 200 small business owners and entrepreneurs came out that day to learn more about the climate for small business in our city and how to interact with Metro Government as it relates to running their business.
We also began work on making the process for doing business with Metro more fair across the board. Working with the Council, we passed an ordinance that will help level the playing field for women- and minority-owned businesses competing for Metro contracts.
We are working closely with the Chamber’s Partnership 2010 initiative to recruit new companies to our city, and to help grow and nurture our entrepreneurs.
On thing you may not have heard about this past year, but I think is a reflection of our economic development success was Nashville becoming one of only 15 U.S. cities home to a Consular Office of Japan. The Consular Office is here to serve the needs of the growing Japanese population. It is a tremendous honor for our city, and one that we take great pride in. I want to welcome here today Chief of Mission and Consul Koichi Funayama.
It’s no secret that we have some financial challenges as we move ahead. Two months ago I presented my first budget to my colleagues in the Metro Council for the coming fiscal year. While I am proud of the budget we have put together – it’s reflects our city’s priorities and does so with no new property taxes – I can tell you that the decisions we had to make were not easy. All of the departments of Metro government, except education, will have to operate with fewer funds than they had this year.
Although times are tight, we know that will not always be the case. To take a line from our governor, “the business cycle has not gone away.” We may not be able to do everything we want now, but with smart fiscal management, we will have the opportunity to do them tomorrow.
Ladies and gentlemen, as we approach the mid-point of 2008, the state of Metro is good.
If you’ve spent any time traveling around town this Spring, you can’t help but feel good about where we are as a city. We have one of the most beautiful park systems in the country, and a Greenway system that is coming into its own. Just over a week ago, I helped dedicate the new Cumberland River Pedestrian Bridge that connects Shelby Park with Opryland and Two Rivers Park, and it was amazing to see how many people are already taking advantage of that great resource. Other sections of the Greenway – downtown, along Richland Creek and along the Harpeth River – are being completed or close to it, and the Greenways master plan is being updated now.
I am equally enthusiastic about our Plan for Sidewalks and Bikeways, which will further connect the neighborhoods of Nashville. That plan will give us the blue print to follow so that decisions about where to repair or build new sidewalks will serve the areas most in need.
It’s all about Nashville being a livable city. Livable cities are walkable. They have open spaces. They also have clean air, clean water, transportation infrastructure and an energy use profile that allows us to maintain our quality of life and pass it along to future generations.
I’d like our government to set an example for the rest of the city when it comes to the environment. As a start, we’ve proposed in-house recycling in all Metro departments and for recycling to be available at large public events. I’ve called for cost saving, energy efficient measures to be implemented in all Metro buildings. We’ll be carefully reviewing our Metro fleet policy in the coming months. And we need to do more. I’d like to see individuals and businesses across Davidson County become more environmentally conscious, and the best thing Metro can do is lead by example.
Our libraries, under the direction of Donna Nicely, are another incredible resource for our city. That is one of the reasons I wanted to meet today in this room, to showcase what I believe is one of the grandest spaces in our city. Our libraries serve a growing number of our citizens every year. Our library system is a true gem that we must continue to support.
Sports is another thing that is generating excitement in our city. Watching the Titans go to the playoffs. Watching Vanderbilt compete at the highest levels in baseball and basketball. Watching the incredible Battle of the Boulevard rivalry between Belmont and Lipscomb in basketball. Watching the inspiring Belmont/Duke NCAA game.Watching a TSU cornerback be the first pick for the Arizona Cardinals in the NFL draft last month – something that hasn’t happened to a TSU Tiger since Ed “Too Tall” Jones was picked by the Dallas Cowboys in 1974. Watching Nashville’s own Brandt Snedeker compete in the Masters.
This has been a great year in Nashville if you’re a sports fan, but I don’t think anything got us as excited as watching the Preds come back from incredible adversity to have a story-book season. Having new, local owners now in control and steadfast fans that love hockey and love having hockey in Nashville, has been one of the best things about this past year. And I’m delighted to note that Predators Coach Barry Trotz is here today. Thanks Coach, for a great year.
We have started our pre-development work on a new downtown convention center. Phil Ryan and his staff at MDHA are working hard to bring together a team that will design and build our new center – a center that will create thousands of new jobs and bring hundreds of thousands of new visitors to our city every year.
As you think about Nashville, think about this … in just a few short years we will have a new convention center south of Broadway. A visitor it brings to our city will walk out its front doors. They’ll turn left and see ahead of them the Country Music Hall of Fame, the Schermerhorn Symphony Center, and maybe one day a new Gospel Music Hall of Fame. They’ll walk down the street, head towards the river and come upon Riverfront Park, recently expanded – full of children playing, walkers and joggers on a floating boardwalk, boaters and kayakers. And possibly, in the distance, they’ll hear a crowd cheering at an afternoon double-header.
If that same visitor came out of the convention center and headed south toward the Gulch, they’ll see people, hundreds of them, living there and shopping there. Perhaps they’ll see my daughters in Urban Outfitters.
Our urban core is becoming more interesting and diverse. And we’re attracting the types of people – young people, creative people, smart people – that want to live in a city like Nashville and that will bring the energy, the talent and the resources Nashville needs to continue to succeed.
It’s something that we don’t acknowledge enough – that these are the types of people that have made us known as Music City U.S.A. and as the healthcare capital of the world. We attract entrepreneurs and artists full of intellectual capital. They’ve given us our heritage, our diverse economy. We need to recognize that and nurture it.
Let me stop for a moment and recognize some other people who are listening to this speech today. They’re not here in this room, but they’re watching … students in their classrooms at Hillsboro, Antioch, Hillwood, Pearl-Cohn, Whites Creek and Stratford high schools. Among them are many seniors. And I want to give sincere congratulations to the graduating class of 2008 – the students who are now within days of finishing their high school careers. Many of you will go on to further your education, others to the workplace, all of you have made us proud.
Education is my top priority. It’s the top priority for the Metro Council. It’s the governor’s top priority. When you think about it, that’s a pretty amazing fact, that we all share the same top priority – education. Why is that?
The answer is those students in their classrooms today. Each of them deserves the best shot possible at a successful life. And more than that, the welfare of our city is dependent upon them becoming contributing members to our society.
Research shows that a high school dropout will make on average 17-thousand-dollars a year … while a college graduate will make 57-thousand-dollars a year. It’s simple math – more kids graduating would have a huge economic impact on our city.
There are many, many good things going on in our schools today. We have improved our graduation rate from 58 percent several years ago to more than 70 percent today, and that number could go up again as we approach this year’s graduation.
More than 90 percent of third graders are reading at grade-level, which is the most important predictor of future success in school. Those are very real and tangible accomplishments.
But our challenges are just as real. Not long after taking office, I sat down with a group of students who had either dropped out or thought about dropping out of our public schools. Two of their stories really touched me.
I met a young woman whose mother had died while she was in high school. She wasn’t close to her father and as she was going through the grieving process she began to miss a lot of school. She thought about dropping out all together. But a teacher took notice, and gave the student the support she needed to stay in school.
I don’t know who the teacher was that reached out to that student, the young girl. But I want to say thank you to her. We have more than 10-thousand people working in our school system, more than half of them are in the classroom, and I want to say thank you to all of the teachers in our schools working every day to make a difference in our young people’s lives.
Another student I met, a young man, began to miss school. His mother got a few notices, but nothing came of them. He eventually dropped out because no one asked him to stay, no one seemed to care.
The young man who dropped out, he told me he knew he had made a mistake. But the amazing thing about young people is that they will always strive to meet the expectations that are set for them – no matter how high. The challenge we face as a community is to tell every one of our students that we do care, that we do want them to stay. And not only that, but we want them to achieve the highest level of academic success.
The next two years are critical. Under No Child Left Behind, if we don’t show significant improvement by 2010, the state will be required to take over our school system. And that is not something we want.
To know why it is that we’re not meeting all of our children’s needs, we need to understand how we are going about educating our children. The Town Hall Meetings, Project for Student Success, the visits I regularly make to our schools – these are the tools we’re using to listen and to gain that understanding.
We have to provide adequate resources. I have proposed a fully funded budget for Metro Schools – more than 600-million dollars, including the additional money requested by schools for teacher salary increases and other improvements. That’s nearly half of our entire budget.
I included in our budget this year funding for a new attendance center, a place for early intervention for students not coming to school – students like the ones I just told you about. The attendance center will be a safe place for those students to get the help they need to return to school and to do so successfully.
Improving our schools is going to take the involvement of the entire community. I just don’t believe we can expect teachers to be on the front line of this effort without giving them as much backup as possible. And I don’t believe that the nine members of the school board – no matter how hard they work and how committed they are – can make our schools great by themselves.
But this is how Nashville is different. We’re different from other urban school systems facing the same challenges because we can make our school system great. We have a community – from nonprofits, to the business sector, to the many universities that call Nashville home – ready to step up and make our schools a model of innovation and reform.
Today I am happy to announce, that because of that community support, because we have all recognized that this is our issue and this is our time to do something about it … Nashville has been selected to partner with the National League of Cities’ Institute for Youth, Education and Families and a consortium of youth development organizations to bring a network of high school alternatives to our school system.
What does that mean? It means options. Options for our students who are clearly not succeeding in a traditional high school environment. This partnership will bring additional smaller-learning communities to our district, like the Big Picture School that started this year. It means we will be taking a positive step toward meeting more of our students’ needs.
Data compiled by the U.S. Conference of Mayors in 2000, estimated that there are 5,000 young people in our city between the ages of 16 and 24 who are not working or are not in school and who do not have a high school diploma or GED.
Nashville has some great schools. Two of our schools – Hume Fogg and MLK – are ranked among the best in the country. And when the students of those schools graduate this year and go on to the best universities in the country, that is success. When our most at risk students – like the young girl whose mother passed away, or one of the 5,000 in our city with no direction in their lives – return to school, find a reason to stay and get an education that will better their lives. That is success too.
The opportunity to reach those young people is what this partnership provides and it didn’t come our way by chance. We are one of only two cities that were chosen through a highly competitive process. And I want to acknowledge Vice Mayor Neighbors, who played a critical role in making this opportunity possible for our city. Thank you vice mayor for your work over the past several months and your commitment to improving our schools going forward.
This partnership is an opportunity. But I want to be clear, it is not a panacea. We need to continue to look for ways to innovate and to challenge the status quo.
We need to be exploring opportunities to bring the best and the brightest teachers to our schools most in need. I’ve talked a lot about how Nashville is a great city, a livable city, with so many exciting things on our horizon. We are a city that should be attractive to young, energetic, smart people who want to bring positive change to students’ lives. Teach for America is one such program making this happen in other cities across the country, recruiting college graduates from all majors who have that desire and passion. We need such a program in Nashville.
And when highly-trained teachers take on the toughest assignments, we need pay them for doing so.
When it comes to the success of our kids, I believe everything should be on the table.
Forty-five years ago at the creation of Metro, the leaders of this community, and everyone else in the community, came together and changed the way we govern our city. They took the government of Nashville and the government of Davidson County and merged them into one.
That was a community-wide effort. It ultimately required the support of many people who perceived their own personal interest would be hurt if it passed. There were entrenched fiefdoms that depended on the old order of things for their very existence. And yet, through an extraordinary exercise of commitment and political will, it happened.
Other cities across the country faced the same set of circumstances and settled for the status quo. But Nashville and Davidson County did not. And all of our lives are better for it today.
Today, our schools require the same kind of commitment and innovative thinking and political will, if we are going to make them great. We need to recognize that the way our school system looks and works today, the way it has worked in the past, may not be the way it needs to look in order for all of our schools and all of our students to succeed. Other cities face the same challenge and many of them will settle for the status quo. But we are a city that can take on this challenge and win.
My commitment is to continue to look for ways to help and to rally the community behind our schools. Each of you have roles to play, whether you have children in our public schools or not. And I won’t stop thinking about the innovative ways that we as a community can approach this challenge.
Wayne Gretzky, a noted philosopher and also a pretty good hockey player, once said “You Miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take.” The greatest regrets you have in life – that we must not have as a city – are opportunities missed and chances not taken.
Just as the settlers of Fort Nashborough came together more than 200 years ago, just as the founding fathers of Metro Government came together 45 years ago, now is our time as leaders, as a community, to come together – the Mayor’s Office, the Council, the school board – and to choose bold action over complacency, to choose selflessness over self-interest, to find the right path, together, for our city.
The path we take will not be easy. But today, as we consider the current state of Metropolitan Nashville and Davidson County, know this: The destination our city arrives at will be great.
Thank you very much.