Nashville’s new mayoral administration is wasting no time. A transition team met this week to start crafting recommendations on how the city “moves, grows, and works.”
The transition work will be carried out by an 18-person cohort from all corners of Nashville. There’s a state senator, various nonprofit leaders, businesspeople and even a high-ranking executive for the Tennessee Titans.
They’re divided into three groups and will be led by attorney David Esquivel, public health expert Alex Jahangir, and author and consultant Christy Pruitt-Haynes.
Their task? Draw on their expertise to produce three reports about the mayor’s pillars of move, grow and work.
In his remarks, O’Connell spoke to the group about their charge:
“So, the goal of these committees is not to … reinvent ideas or wheels,” he said. “It’s, as much as anything, to take a look, take stock of where we are, clear obstacles and prepare for future successes by accelerating the things we know we need to do.”
Yet, for Bellevue resident Karen Baggett — who was one of the few members of the public to attend their opening meeting at the Bellevue branch of the Nashville Public Library — the transition teams were missing something.
“It would have been nice to have, like, some average citizens on, too,” Baggett said. “To give, like, that Nashville, just average citizen idea.”
The committees are on a tight timeline: They have until Nov. 21 to deliver. Each committee is expected to produce a three-to-five-page report, accompanied by a summarizing graphic.