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A Few Questions with at-large Councilmember Burkley Allen

BY JUDITH TACKETT

Metro has 35 districts and five at-large councilmembers. Burkley Allen is the first at-large councilmember interviewed for this series and she represents the entirety of Davidson County. Allen is in her first term as an at-large and intends to run for a second term, but prior to that she has served eight years representing District 18.

The Contributor talked with Allen as part of a series called A Few Questions With in which we interview councilmembers about their district’s most pressing issues.

Can you describe the main differences between a district councilmember and an at-large seat?

It breaks down to three big differences. There are faster wins as a district councilmember, like getting a stop sign or a sidewalk. They may seem small, but they’re very tangible and a big victory for people who want them. As a district councilmember that’s an accomplishment that you can make happen on a fairly regular basis and rejoice with your constituents. As an at-large councilmember, the things I’m working on tend to be long-range and more intangible like policy changes. They’re equally important but it just takes a lot more time to get all the pieces and parts lined up.

So that’s one difference. And then, as a district councilmember you pretty much know all your constituents, especially in District 18, which is the smallest district in the city. As an at-large, I continue to meet new constituents everywhere I go all over this very large county.

The third difference is that as a district councilmember you can say that I have this agenda, but you spend an awful lot of time reacting to things that come up and that need to be dealt with, like zoning issues that pop up out of nowhere. As an at-large, theoretically you can focus on longer-term goals and set an agenda and stick to it. Although things come up at the city level that we often have to react to. But we are not necessarily the ones that have to take the lead on those issues.

How do you communicate with your constituents?

I have a monthly newsletter people can sign up for at burkley.org. Email is a [more] common way for people to reach out to me than by telephone these days. I only do a little bit of Facebook and Twitter. It’s not the best medium for discussions, but I may post upcoming events that I’m excited about.

Nashville is such a warm and welcoming place, people come up on a sidewalk or in the grocery store. There are a lot of surprise conversations that pop up wherever I go.

What are your main focus areas and why?

As an at-large councilmember, I’m focusing mostly on housing, because it’s huge and it affects everything, and education, transportation, and environment. Those are the four things that I keep as top priorities. But in terms of the legislation that I’ve been trying to create it’s geared toward creating more tools to build more housing.

Can you give an example of an affordable housing tool you supported?

The PILOT (Payment in Lieu of Taxes) program. Essentially, it’s a tax abatement program. A lot of people who build multi-family housing have said due to the land, material, and labor costs, they simply cannot charge less in rent than the going market rate. Under the PILOT program, the city gives a developer an incentive to make it financially feasible to charge a lower rent to some of their tenants.

On the front end, if the developer commits to a certain percentage of affordability, between 10 and 40 percent of the total units, Metro will agree to reduce the property taxes anywhere from 60 to 70 percent. That results in a huge reduction in operating cost that they can go to the bank with on the front end and get the financing they need. In the end, some of the tenants will pay market rate while some will pay a third of their income.

So that’s a tool that we just passed recently, and the first round of applications is being processed right now and could result in over 450 new affordable units.

As the prior budget chair, you lead a powerful committee. Explain the role of this position.

Largely, the chair oversees the process of putting the budget together. It’s spelled out in the charter how it’s supposed to work.

The Mayor has meetings with the departments and then presents the Mayor’s budget to the Council in early May. It’s the budget chair’s job to ensure that both the Council and citizens have good information so that we can either accept that budget from the Mayor or make tweaks to it that we think are important.

In that process, I think to some degree the budget chair serves as a liaison between the Mayor’s Office and the Council and the things we’re hearing from people that are priorities. Depending on the communications that we have, the budget chair drafts a substitute budget while still keeping a balanced budget and presents that to the Council and works with the Councilmembers to incorporate what additional amendments they want to add to it, and get a final budget passed by the deadline, which is the end of June. If we don’t meet that deadline, then it goes back to the Mayor’s original budget proposal and all that work is for nothing.

This year, we were able to do that I think in a collaborative way and I feel the budget we ended up with is a good reflection of what the city has said is important to us.

What were some of the main changes in this year’s substitute budget that you would like to highlight?

A couple of things. The Mayor was able to give a $91-million increase to Metro Schools and give a big raise to the support staff. Ultimately, because of some changes in how the state was providing financing, we ended up increasing that initial $91 million to $100 million and ended up with a Metro Schools budget of over $1 billion this year. The Council felt very strongly that the raise to the support staff needed to get everyone above a $15-per-hour wage. It was important for us in the city to say, ‘Yes, education is the most important thing we do and we’re going to put our money where our mouth is.’

Then another thing in the Mayor’s budget that was important was $15 million for the Barnes Fund and some additional funding from the American Rescue Plan (ARP) funds that were earmarked specifically for affordable housing and homeless services. I think that was an important priority that was made really plain in the process.

Anything else?

The council really hears the message from so many people in Nashville that they want the city to show that we care about the people of Nashville who are here now. I think that every council member is working really hard to ensure that when we do these big projects that get all this visibility that they’re done in a way that’s paid for by the visitors who are going to enjoy them as opposed to those of us who just want our streets paved and our garbage picked up.

I think that is possible to do and sometimes having some of those things makes Nashville a more exciting city and can make it a better place for everyone to live. But we just have to be really thoughtful that everything we do is done in that framework. How does this affect housing, how does this affect traffic and education and are we making sure that it’s going to be beneficial for those of us who have been here all along, helping the city grow.