Nashville’s mayor has had his hands full with an emergency budget shortfall, and the situation has slowed some of the progress that John Cooper had started to make toward his campaign promises.
WPLN News is periodically checking on a list of 34 commitments and finds movement on a handful in the past month. But most of the mayor’s biggest goals have not seen much movement, including anything related to more spending on city schools.
But the mayor couches the recent weeks under his broad pledge to fix the city’s finances.
“It was frustrating but necessary to focus first on our finances,” Cooper said in a statement. “We are advancing the upcoming budget process to more quickly address the needs of our city and fulfill campaign promises.”
More: Nashville Mayor John Cooper Made Many Policy Promises — You Can Track Them Here With WPLN
On one front, Cooper has gone backward. Instead of doing more for affordable housing, he postponed a chunk of the city’s housing grants. That move drew demonstrators to Public Square this month, with several building their critiques around Cooper’s own words.
“We remind this mayor of his campaign pledge to make this a city that works for everyone,” said Monica Rainey, a leader with the progressive group Nashville Organized for Action and Hope. “We remind this mayor of his campaign pledge to make affordable housing central to everything we do.”
The mayor did make progress on one key part of his platform: to bring the city more money from the tourism industry. The Nashville Convention and Visitors Corporation reminded city leaders that it had accumulated more than $3 million in reserves, which the CVC is handing over to help fill the budget shortfall.
Cooper’s office notes that about 80% of the money that’s plugging the budget hole is from new revenue sources.
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