Nashville residents can call dibs on what should be prioritized in the city budget, but there’s a deadline

Nashville residents have until Tuesday at 4:30 p.m. to sign up for a two-minute talking slot at next week’s public hearing on the city budget.

The meeting is only two hours, so it’s on a first-come, first-serve basis for who gets to speak.

More: Here’s some tips on making your point in two minutes.

“A number of councilmembers and the vice mayor have all expressed a desire to provide more time for the council to respond to public input than is allowed by the Metro Charter budget process that was developed in the 1960s,” Metro Councilmember Burkley Allen, who serves as the budget and finance chair, told WPLN News via email.

The mayor gets more time than the council to work and prioritize what goes into the budget. The council makes small tweaks from his template.

The city’s charter allows only a few weeks for the council to hear from residents before they vote on the final budget.

Think of it as a pre-made pasta dish, where parsley is already tossed in the sauce — so they can’t remove it. But the council is trying to bake in more time, so maybe they can add less parsley and more of your favorite cheese.

This year, the council is getting started early, which also means the mayor will hear from more residents before he presents his ideas. This change comes after advocacy groups pushed for residents to play a larger role in deciding how city money is spent.

Councilmember Allen says this new schedule is the first step that the council hopes to refine in the future.

The special hearing will be held in the council chambers in the courthouse on March 15.

“In addition, we plan to host in-person community meetings in each quadrant of the county in April, and the vice chair of the budget committee, Zulfat Suara, will be hosting Facebook events each Saturday after the mayor’s budget is published to push out information and elicit feedback,” she says. “We know that online events can be more accessible to some, but it is important to provide a mix of in-person and virtual options in a variety of locations.”