By Ashley Benkarski
NASHVILLE, TN — Freddie O’Connell is looking to turn in his councilman hat for a mayoral one.
During his time representing District 19, O’Connell said he’s aware of the importance of its history and has been intentional about building up the district he serves, noting his campaign banking is done through Citizen’s Bank, located on historic Jefferson Street. He’s also leased offices for his campaign at the Tennessee Tribune’s building.
If elected, O’Connell said he wants to create an office of opportunity that “looks at youth opportunities, workforce development and long-term economic development with a specific focus on local and small businesses that are home grown here in Nashville and with an intent on making sure we’re making it possible for our communities of color to be particularly successful.”
Nashville also has to “Make sure the coverage of Black enterprise in the city is not just restricted to Black media, we need it to be a bigger citywide celebration when we see some of our young Black entrepreneurs having successes,” he added.
Diversity is a priority not just in the representation of the local business ecosystem but also within its political bodies. He’s walking that line even in his mayoral campaign and said that motivation would extend into his Cabinet if elected.
In recent years, there’s been a high turnover rate within the Mayor’s office, particularly of people of color. O’Connell recounted that, just since 2020, the city has experienced civil unrest, Covid, devastating weather, bombing, and a school shooting. These occurrences have added to the list of reasons it’s been more difficult “to maintain positive feelings about what local government was doing, and I think even that project of rebuilding trust from an administration that didn’t wind up continuing in the middle of a term . . .There’s been trust issues and high pressure and it’s very difficult if you’re not strategic about team building on day one.”
He said the next Mayor must tackle both cost of living concerns and quality of life concerns, with one of the biggest missing ingredients being a lack of transit system as a major American city.
As a former chair of the Transit Authority board, O’Connell said he’s better equipped to address that crucial issue.
Driving this campaign is the project of making it easier for Nashvillians to stay, with residents across all backgrounds having told him it’s getting harder for them to stay in the city. In some cases, that flight has been due to the actions of the State. For others, he said, it’s the fact that “the City has failed to invest in us.”
He pointed to his opposition to the recent East Bank stadium deal and his successful lobbying of the reallocation of $12 million from going to a private parking deck at Nashville Zoo to sidewalks and transit instead.
“Those kinds of fights really matter because that is how we make it easier for people to stay,” he said.
O’Connell noted an important property tax freeze and relief program for Nashvillians age 65 and older to “take advantage of . . . so that they don’t feel pushed out by the increase in their property values and they can freeze those tax rates.”
Apply for the program at https://www.nashville.gov/departments/trustee/services/apply-tax-freeze.
O’Connell staunchly opposed the new Titans stadium.The deal totaled $2.1 billion, with $1.26 in public funding, making it the most expensive in Nashville’s history and the biggest public price tag for a stadium in the nation’s history.
“As we think about that misalignment of priorities, this was probably the worst time in the city’s history to engage in a deal that was the largest public subsidy for a stadium in the history of the NFL . . . It’s an unbelievably generous subsidy and especially if you take into account not just the initial cost of construction but the 30 years of this deal, it fundamentally becomes a $4 billion proposition for taxpayers,” he said. “I appreciate the argument that this takes the burden off the general fund for an old stadium but the whole point is, if you do upgrades it’s no longer crumbling. Under the existing deal not only was it possible to redevelop the land under different terms, we also had $400 million of existing revenue sources that would’ve contributed to that upgrade . . . We had the capacity to negotiate a better deal.”
Pointing to Brandon Taylor’s ticket-tax amendment, O’Connell said the stadium deal could have followed the model of the Predators, which has no taxpayer subsidy whatsoever. “That entire present and future of Bridgestone Arena is paid for entirely by user fees as one of the top-ticketed venues in the world.”
The information for the deal is still up on the Metro website at nashville.gov/departments/council.
Many are wary of the tense relationship between Metro and the State, and the next Mayor will undoubtedly be in for some turbulence. O’Connell said, “We watched them take over most of our sports authority, we watched them take over almost all of our airport authority, we watched them try to defund the convention center and they did wind up crippling our ability to use tourism to pay for things like affordable housing. We watched them attack the size of the Metro council and try to disrupt a local election. We watched their legislative responses to a tragic episode of gun violence and a mass shooting … to expel two Black members and then to reduce liability for gun manufacturers.”
O’Connell said it will be important to approach the state with shared priorities, adding the resuscitation of a regional mayor’s caucus could help. Take, for example, transit–”When Nashville isn’t investing in the priorities of keeping people here, people sprawl out into those counties. Our management of our growth has a significant impact on those counties, so we do have some shared priorities.”
O’Connell said, “I expect to stand up and defend the interests and rights of what it means to be a Nashvillian because we are also all Tennesseeans; in fact we are 10 percent of Tennesseans. And that is a big deal in making sure our voices get respected and heard on Capitol Hill . . . Our campaign has tried to give people a reason to come vote for something so I hope we’ve had the opportunity to earn votes from all across our 500 square miles.”
Find more information in Freddie O’Connell at readyforfreddie.com.
Early voting ends Saturday, July 29. Election day is Thursday, Aug. 3.
