The mayor’s new proposed budget includes an across-the-board 4% cost of living adjustment for all Metro employees, who have historically been underpaid. However, many city employees say this adjustment would not be enough to keep up with the rising cost of living in Nashville.

These employees came out to share their concerns and ask for a 7% increase at the second reading of the budget during this week’s Metro Council meeting. Cyrenthia Arthur, a 911 dispatcher and union steward with Metro Emergency Communications, was one of them.

“I said it then. And I’ll say it again. And I’ll keep saying it. It’s embarrassing to have that many Metro workers begging — begging for the minimum,” she said. “We just want to be comfortable. We work for this place, and it doesn’t seem like they care enough about us to make sure that we’re comfortable.”

Arthur said the cost of living adjustment is nice, but not substantial enough to make a dent in the affordability issues city employees are facing. She is particularly worried about the high cost of housing in Davidson County, which she said makes it difficult for Metro employees to live in the city that they work for.

“A lot of people that I work with cannot live in the city. They travel back and forth. There’s a lot of people that live in Murfreesboro and Clarksville because that’s the only place they can afford. You can’t afford to live here,” she said.

Arthur added that she believes that lowering or stabilizing rents will be crucial for retaining a strong workforce for the city.

Metro employees have been more or less chronically underpaid since 2008, when the Great Recession shrunk the overall budget, explained Councilmember Bob Mendes.

“Employees were definitely squeezed and compressed on pay,” he said.

This is Mendes’ eighth go-around voting on a Metro budget. He said that these adjustments are attempts to make up ground on employee wages, but in his experience, they have fallen short of fixing the problem.

“We’ve had a few good years of trying to catch employees up, but we still haven’t gotten to a place where our employees get regularly consistent fair pay,” he said.

Mendes added that he believes cost of living increases should be tied to the consumer price index created by the U.S. Department of Labor, which would be about the same or greater than the 7% increase many city workers were advocating for at this week’s council meeting.

“These are the people that pick up garbage and feed our kids at school, our police officers and firefighters,” he said. “Squeezing them on pay is just not a good idea.”

The head of Metro’s Budget and Finance Committee will present a substitute budget with the council’s proposed changes on June 14. If the council does not pass the substitute budget, then the mayor’s original budget will pass automatically.