No Property Tax Increase After Dramatic Council Budget Vote

NASHVILLE, TN -- Tuesday night's Metro Council meeting stretched into the wee hours of Wednesday morning, climaxing with a dramatic vote requiring a rare tiebreaker.

Just after 12:30 a.m. - some five hours into the meeting - a proposal, spearheaded by At-Large Councilman Bob Mendes, to raise Nashville's property tax by 50 cents, deadlocked 19-19 - there's no District 1 councilmember at the moment - forcing the council's presiding officer, Sheri Weiner, to use the casting vote.

Weiner, who is acting as vice mayor after David Briley's election as mayor and is running to officially succeed Briley in August's election, voted no to defeat the plan.

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Under Mendes' plan, a long-promised cost-of-living increase for Metro employees and the full amount of Metro Nashville Public Schools' budget request would have been funded. Without it, the council passed a substitute budget carried by Budget Committee chairwoman Tanaka Vercher which largely mirrored Briley's status quo funding plan. It does not provide the raises - the council had to formally reverse the Metro pay plan and did so in a vote rife with abstentions - and only adds $2 million more to the MNPS budget from Briley's first proposal.

In large part because Briley's predecessor, Megan Barry, declined to raise property taxes ahead of last year's reappraisal, Nashville - lauded as a booming economy nationally and the subject of much boosterific backpatting locally - found itself up against a fiscal wall. MNPS felt the crunch doubly after a shocking and unforeseen decline in student enrollment - unexpected in growing Nashville - resulted in the concommitant dip in state funds.

Because state law bars local governments from collecting more in property taxes solely as a result of the scheduled reappraisal, Metro has, historically, raised property taxes in the year ahead of the reassessment, a precedent to which Barry did not adhere. With a significant number of Nashvillians and businesses winning appeals of their assessments, what was already shaping up to be a tight budget year became even tighter.

With elections looming just a few months after next year's budget season, politically it's unlikely neither the council nor Briley, who is expected to seek re-election, will seek to raise property taxes in 2019.

Briley, who openly opposed the proposed tax increase, praised the council.

"My message has been clear from the start. It is just not the right time to impose a property tax increase on our citizens, particularly the lower-income residents who saw large increases in last year’s reappraisal. In the morning we will roll up our sleeves and work together to move our great city forward," he said in a statement.

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