Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell announced in his first State of Metro address on Tuesday that his Choose How You Move mass transit plan passed a required independent audit.
O’Connell’s mass transportation plan Choose How You Move includes public transportation available 24/7, almost 600 upgraded traffic signals, 86 miles of sidewalks, and other features, all proposed to be funded by a half-cent sales tax. The plan must meet certain requirements under Tennessee’s IMPROVE Act, like the independent audit, before being considered by Nashville voters on a November ballot.
Fox17 News live-streamed O’Connell’s address on X:
WATCH LIVE: Mayor Freddie O'Connell delivers his first State of Metro address. https://t.co/pVrZGHhujB
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KraftCPAs, a Tennessee public accounting firm, approved the financial plan for Choose How You Move, stating that the plan complies with state law and is financially feasible. In the coming weeks, the Nashville Metro Council must approve the plan as an ordinance. Then, voters will decide the plan’s fate in November.
Choose How You Move has been consistently criticized by Nashville Tea Party Founder Ben Cunningham, who called the $3.1 billion plan an “absolute ripoff of the taxpayer” on Tuesday’s episode of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show.
If implemented, Choose How You Move will inevitably increase property taxes, Cunningham said. He has also argued the plan is not legal because the IMPROVE Act, the state law O’Connell is using to propose and fund the mass transportation plan, is meant for shared transit services like buses, not sidewalks and traffic signals.
Metro’s Department of Law told The Tennessee Star Choose How You Move “complies in every way with state law.”
O’Connell held his address at the Nashville fairgrounds not because the location itself was important for the mayor’s speech but because the WeGo bus display that served as O’Connell’s backdrop would not fit into the historic courthouse or council chamber, Vice Mayor Angie Henderson joked before introducing O’Connell. Another vehicle was parked in the building off-stage to O’Connell’s left with the words “Choose How You Move” written on the side.
O’Connell made the main portion of his speech into a pitch for Choose How You Move.
“More people deserve to have an option to get home on the bus when their late shift ends sometime after midnight,” O’Connell said. “More people deserve to come to the fairgrounds without fighting traffic just to fight for a parking space. More people deserve to walk to the schools and small businesses around the corner without being in a ditch or on a shoulder. And more people deserve to catch greenlights more often when there’s no traffic coming the other way.”
“These are the things Nashville residents have been asking for,” O’Connell continued. “They’re the things we know we need.”
O’Connell also cited the East Bank Development project, which includes a government-planned neighborhood complete with affordable housing, as evidence that Metro’s current state is “strong.”
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Matthew Giffin is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Matthew on X/Twitter.
Photo “Freddie O’Connell” by Freddie O’Connell. Background Photo “Freddie O’Connell” by Freddie O’Connell.
This plan is nothing but a money pit as most Transit plans in this country are. Transit plans look for population density in order to be anywhere near successful and that doesn’t exist in Nashville. In fact The increase in density within the Nashville downtown corridor has led to all the traffic congestion and not made things better for Nashville as a whole. Melissa Mayer is a loon if he thinks people are going to ride the transit system around Nashville more so than they do now because that is not going to happen. There’s too much crime associated with those areas and people will not feel safe on this bus system. Also riding public Transit is not feasible for families. You can’t do something as simple as shopping for family of four for groceries. Where are not and do not want to be New York City so these city planners can take their grandiose plans and just leave Tennessee all together.
This guy is loonier than he looks.
they have been saying they would upgrade the traffic lights for years. I am not for this attempt to get more buses on our streets. Build some parking garages downtown. Metro has the land available.