Councilman proposes $8.6M budget reductions — to service city's debt

Metro Councilman Sean McGuire released an alternative budget on Friday afternoon, but it didn’t involve lowering Mayor Karl Dean’s originally proposed 53-cent property tax increase.

McGuire, who also chairs the council’s budget and finance committee, suggested about $8.6 million — or 4.5 cents per property owner — in cuts from Dean’s budget. However, he recommended transferring the money to debt service, rather than chopping it from the budget.

“While some might prefer that we simply reduce the tax levy by $0.045, I believe that the taxpayer is better served in the long run by our being fiscally responsible and putting the money away for a rainy day,” McGuire wrote in a letter to his colleagues [1] on Friday.

McGuire’s alternative budget includes a $3.5 million cut to Dean’s $720 million schools plan, which is much less than the $23 million Metro Nashville Public Schools Director Dr. Jesse Register feared [2] some council members would propose.

Pulling nearly $1 million in subsidies from the Nashville Farmers' Market, Tennessee State Fairgrounds and Municipal Auditorium was also on McGuire’s list of cuts.

“We do not need to keep incentivizing these enterprises to continue to underperform; rather we can put this money aside and let them come back to the council at some point in the future,” McGuire wrote.

McGuire didn’t make any cuts to Dean’s Davidson County Sheriff’s Office’s proposed budget plan, which Sheriff Daron Hall bashed [3] in budget discussions earlier this week.

Dean’s approximately $168 million allocation to the Metro Nashville Police Department was cut only by $211,900 in McGuire’s alternative budget.

The council’s budget and finance committee meets on Monday at 4 p.m.