New year, new Nashville? Here are your resolutions for the city in 2023

It’s a new year. Over the past few weeks, you’ve surely seen dozens of articles encouraging you to live your best life in 2023 by making resolutions.

The This Is Nashville team decided to switch up this time-honored tradition by asking listeners for their 2023 resolutions, not for themselves, but rather for our city. And we invited community members to join us for an episode in December to weigh in.

So here are your resolutions for Nashville this year.

Improved infrastructure

Quite a few of the submissions we received were about public transportation, like this resolution from listener Peter Robison:

Make a dedicated funding source for public transportation.We are the largest city in America without a dedicated funding source for transit. Traffic is only going to get worse, and if we’re ever going to make it more affordable to live in Nashville and get to work or school or medical appointments, we need consistent funding to WeGo.

. . . in a similar vein . . .

Build more protected bike lanes and sidewalks.

A lot of people could easily get where they need to go by walking or biking, coupled with transit, but they don’t do it right now because Nashville’s roads aren’t safe. We have a lot of room for improvement here.

On the topic of city infrastructure, former guest Rachel Kestner wants to see the city become more accessible to people living with disabilities. She wrote,

Make sure more events and spaces are accessible for all, including disabled residents.
Access does not begin and end with wheelchair ramps and an automatic door.
Access is printed materials in Braille, Spanish, Hebrew, Kurdish, French and/or audio recordings of same.
Access is an American Sign Language interpreter on staff and present at events.
Access is unisex bathrooms.
Why this resolution? Because no human being is second class.

Respect for our neighbors

Listeners and guests on our December resolutions episode emphasized how residents need to accept and care for one another other, regardless of our differences. Listener Mary Buckner left a voicemail to say, “We (should) resolve to love and care for everyone in our Nashville community. Every income level, every skin tone, every gender, every religion or non religion, every language, every political party, every personal style, every one.”

David Dark, author and religion professor at Belmont University, took Mary’s resolution one step further during our show. Aside from love and acceptance, he called on the city to challenge bigotry.

“My hoped for resolution is to love, specifically to show more courage, candor and conscience in our spaces in terms of advocacy and being an ally. I do think that often we play along to get along. We avoid conflict, and in truth, we coddle bigots instead of confronting bigotry,” he said.

When it comes to confronting bigotry, drag queen Veronika Electronika has a specific resolution for Nashville’s leadership.

“We need to have a clear voice from the mayor’s office, from all county officials, as well as the Metro Nashville Police Department (on a proposed state bill targeting drag shows). If this does pass the state legislature, which it easily could, … the city leadership needs to make very clear that no matter what state regulation may or may not be passed, that they will support LGBTQ businesses and its citizens and entertainers to make sure that we are not improperly imprisoned,” she said.

Prioritizing people over tourists, business

Any local response to state legislation will depend on who is leading the city.

“For me, the most important resolution … is to elect an authentically progressive Metro Council,” said Nashville Scene columnist Nicole Williams, who closely follows the Metro Council. “I think in 2019 we heard a lot about how this Metro Council was supposed to be the most progressive council ever, but they’ve actually turned out to be one of the most pro-business, pro-police councils we’ve ever had in the history of Nashville.”

The mayor, vice mayor, five at-large Metro Council seats and Metro Council seats for Districts 1 to 35 will be up for election in August 2023.

The future of the Titans Stadium will continue to be a hot topic in 2023, and listener resolutions reflect how there is strong support for and against the stadium.

“Get the new stadium, improve transit, and straighten out Lower Broad,” wrote listener Bo Roberts. 

Meanwhile, Carri Gervin shared, “Refuse to build a new stadium. Because that’s the last thing [the city] needs to spend money on.” 

This Is Nashville guest, activist and author Phil Michal Thomas expressed concern about a proposal to fund the new stadium by raising hotel taxes, which the Metro Council passed in late December.

“When I when I heard that supposedly the Nashville taxpayers would not be paying for this, except for the tourists coming down there with the hotel tax, I’m thinking about the people that actually live here in the city that can’t afford apartments or homes, that are actually living in the hotels. It’s not fair for them,” he said.

Cecilia Prado, director of Workers Dignity, echoed similar sentiments.

“Nashville keeps giving handouts to corporations, to a fancy stadium, to private interests. At the same time, we completely lack the infrastructure that we need to take care of our people. We are lacking not just the investment in affordable housing, but even the patterns of investment are not centered in long-term affordability,” she said.

For 2023, Prado said she’d like to see the city prioritize the working class.