Carey Bringle

00:00Reopening your restaurant comes with great responsibility. Are you doing everything you can to keep your staff and guests safe? With Trust20 certification, you and your guests can feel confident you're doing everything you can to keep everyone safe. Trust20 is home to the new standard of restaurant safety and consumer comfort. By becoming a Trust20 certified restaurant, diners will know the practices you follow to create a safe and healthy environment. Have confidence you're going above and beyond minimal requirements. Have comfort knowing your practices have been independently verified. To learn more visit Trust20.co. That's Trust the number 20.co. Trust20 restaurants have access to a suite of resources that include expert led training in four key areas, individual consultants, communication material and signage. Visit Trust20.co and tell them you heard about them on Nashville Restaurant Radio. Trust20, partnering with you to keep everyone safe. Welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio, a podcast for and about the people of the Nashville restaurant scene. Now here's your host, the CEO of New Light Hospitality Solutions, Brandon Styll. Hello Music City and welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio. My name is Brandon Styll and I am your host and we are back baby. Two weeks with no new interviews and we are back with a good one today. Mr. Kerry Bringle took an hour out of his time to really help me understand what the heck is going on with our city. So Kerry has written a couple of pretty healthy op-eds where he blasted the mayor for the 34% tax increase that we were going to be taking. And then the week before last,

02:00Dennis Farrier came out with an article saying that there was emails that were suppressing the counts of COVID-19 and he wrote another call to action. And I just wanted to talk to him to break it down for me because there's so many things going on here that I think that you hear a couple different sides and I just, I really wanted to talk to him. So this is an effort to inform everybody out there. And if you know what's going on, this is a in-depth view of Kerry's take. So Kerry's been very outspoken. He's not super far left. He's not super far right. This isn't a partisan thing that we're talking about here today. I feel like this is just a guy who loves his city and this is the way he knows how to stand up for his rights. And I just wanted to share it. So this isn't a, this isn't a, I just wanted to to learn. So if you are out there and you disagree with what Kerry is saying, awesome! More power to you. I love that. And if you are somebody in the restaurant industry who disagrees or if you're somebody in the mayor's office, somebody who's really intimate knowledge, message me. I would love to have you on the show and I'd love to hear your perspective as well.

03:20This isn't a, I'm not trying to to sell his narrative. If you have a whole other side of this or you want to rebuke some of the things that he says, message me. Send me an email at Brandon at NashvilleRestaurantRadio.com and I will do this exact same interview with you on our show. This interview was meant for anyone who wants to learn in plain language about what's going on in our city. That's it. You don't want to have to read pages and pages of stuff. You want to hear one interview to break it down as to why our city is broke. Some would say our city is broken. Hopefully this interview finds you and you get this, you end this interview and you're educated. I have to apologize for myself. This is on a Friday afternoon. We recorded this and my language is not the best. I drop a couple words. I typically don't. I'm so excited to be back. We have got a huge couple of weeks coming up. This Wednesday we will have, the Nashville scene has a new cookbook called Nourish, which is just a bunch of local chefs with their recipes. So we're going to be interviewing Patrick Rogers and Megan Selling. Selling? Selling? I'm sorry Megan. I will learn it when we do the interview. Patrick Rogers, the editor-at-large at Nashville scene and Megan Selling, who is a writer, food writer. And that episode will come out on Wednesday.

04:57We'll talk all about this new book and catch up with them. Next week we will have new chef interviews. We are going to be interviewing the owner and president of Christy Cookie to kind of hear their story and see what's going on. So lots of fun things on the horizon. I hope that, I hope you guys enjoy this one and please keep the conversation going. Let me know on your, on Facebook and Instagram what you think of this. Let's talk about where you're at and I'm also going to try and post some information, some links to where you can find your your city councilmen, city councilwomen and you can message them and links in order to message the mayor to try and, if you'd like to communicate with them, you like to ask them some questions, you want to see their voting records, I implore you to go check it out. Reminder, this Thursday at 330 we will be releasing the very first edition of the Nashville Hot List, which is going to be our top 10 restaurants in Nashville right now. Delia, Joe Ramsey and I are compiling this list and we are going to be releasing the top 10 best restaurants in Nashville right now. If you have a restaurant you want to nominate or you see something really cool, put a post on Instagram and hashtag Nashville Hot List. We are going to be putting this out monthly and our first installment will be this Thursday at 330 live on the Roundup. So let's jump in with Kerry and it's so good to be back.

06:41Thank you guys for listening. Here we go. We're here right now with Kerry Bringle who's the owner of Peg Leg Porker. Welcome Kerry. Yeah, thank you. Thanks for having me back. Thanks for having me back in your place. We have video this time. Yeah, yeah. So last time we talked it was March the 17th. Right. St. Patrick's Day and your birthday. Yes. You were the second interview I'd ever done. Yeah. And there's a lot of uncertainty. A lot, yeah. A lot of uncertainty and you're gracious enough to listen to me ramble on about all the things we want to talk about this whole pre-interview. But since that time around that day they shut down restaurants. Right. May 11th they kind of reopened with this phase one thing. Phase three starts October 1st. Right. And a bunch of bullshit has happened in between now and you've been a very vocal opponent. I guess would you say opponent? You're not an opponent. A proponent. I've been very vocal about the restaurant community, about how our city is handling this, about transparency with our city leaders.

07:59Yes. Not just on the COVID responses but on our 34% tax increase. On everything. On everything. So. So I read these things. I read you've put out a couple of pretty nice, what would you call it, an op-ed? Just like this. Yeah, an op-ed or editorial or, you know, a sort of letter to my fellow Nashvillians. And you, let's remind everybody who's listening that you are a native Nashvillian. You own the Peg Lake Porker. You have a bourbon. You also have a place in the nations that's under construction. We just started construction. Fantastic. But you own this building. You're a true owner-operator. You are a locally owned owner-operator for this restaurant. And I think that just to give people context as to what we're talking about. I hear all this stuff. I read all this stuff and I don't know 100% all the backstory. So I was hoping today we could talk and you could just kind of as an education to me and my listeners as to what the fuck is going on? Yeah. I'm happy to. So like you said, I'm a native Nashvillian.

09:05I was born and raised here in Nashville. Been here all my life except for when I was in school and then I moved to Memphis briefly after school. I started the Peg Lake Porker. I own it 100%. Me and my family. We own our real estate. We own the real estate in the nations where we're about to build. We don't have any backers. We've got no investors. We have no partners. So I'm as local as you're gonna find and as you know as true of a operator as you're gonna find. And so anything that I do affects me, affects my staff directly. There's nobody telling me to make this decision because they feel like it's right from an investor standpoint. This is you. This is me. Same with our spirits company. One of the few in the state that's independently owned and personally financed. So I look at these issues and I take them very personal because they affect me 100% and I don't have anybody to fall back on. If we go under, I lose everything that I have. My employees are all out of jobs and so it's not I can't go back to an investor and go hey can you give me more money or can you help me make it through this? Everything falls on us. And so because of that I'm very mindful of what's going on in our city, how it affects us, how it affects me personally financially, and how it affects my employees financially. The first thing that I wrote about and and did a call to action on was our proposed property tax increase. And so Nashville over the last 10 years has had the most prosperous 10 years in our city's history. And unfortunately our city is broke. Now you can you don't nobody blames that on Cooper. He came into that mess, it was already there, but everybody expected him to be fiscally responsible and try and solve the issue. But how do we get in that issue?

11:09Because I don't know the answers. You have all this massive growth and just everywhere you go the traffic, all the businesses, Amazon's coming to town, Broadway's just packed our tourism and you hear these numbers in the high billions and you're like we gotta be in just like finally we get 440 paved. Like every road should be lined with gold. What's going on? How are we broke? So we had some overzealous leadership in not only in the mayor's office but also in our City Council. Our City Council is too big. There's too many members of City Council. That makes it very hard to get things done. We have some charter amendments and laws on the books that make it hard to get things done because City Council members cannot meet, like you and I are meeting, two City Council members can't meet and talk about the business of the city without it being a public meeting. There are there are some charter laws. Yeah. And so that makes it hard say for five council members to come together and work on a budget. You have to have all the council members to come together if they really want to hash out a budget. Otherwise it's individual council members that will propose a budget and either the City Comptroller will strike it down and say it's not viable or he'll accept it and then it can get voted on.

12:29We didn't have any great budgets proposed. Steve Glover proposed one that I thought was good. It had a lot of cuts. It had about a 12% property tax increase but then it you know the City Comptroller struck it down. So why would they do that? Well do they get do they have to give reasons as to why they strike down a budget like that? You know I don't know what the reasons were to strike down Glover's budget. I think the Comptroller felt like it was not financially viable. But Glover seems to be the only one that proposed any cuts. So you know the mayor says okay we're gonna have this 32% tax increase. Bob Menendez came in with a budget that's 34% tax increase and it ends up that was the one that got passed. With these overzealous mayors and City Council they gave away property in Nashville at record low prices for what compared to what it was actually worth. They gave TIF financing or tax incremental financing to developers and hotels at properties that never should have received it. TIF financing is meant for blighted areas or areas that need that you want to expand into and so you offer tax incentives for people to go in and develop those areas so that you build and create a bigger tax base. We gave away TIF financing in the heart of downtown in prime real estate. Yeah why would we get like so that's a big thing right there. That is the big question is why? This massive like this amazing property that everybody wants to be on and you're giving it away with amazing where they're not paying. Are they paying taxes or is just an extremely low tax rate? Extremely low tax rate or you know they forgo a certain amount of taxes for a certain amount of time in exchange for them coming in and invest in 200 million in the property. Which injects 200 million into our economy. Yes but these people want to be here anyway.

14:32Okay. So that you know it's like you know it's like a overzealous ice cream shop owner and you're hungry for ice cream and he's the only one in the neighborhood. You're going to get his ice cream. If he discounts that ice cream and gives you a coupon well you're gonna take it because he offered you a coupon. But if he's the only ice cream shop in the neighborhood did he really need to offer a coupon or were you gonna come buy his ice cream anyway? I think that's yeah that's rhetorical. So yeah so that's kind of what we've done and then you know we have we had a bunch of projects and expansions but the bottom line is we have too many city employees compared to a city like Louisville which is a comparable size. They have almost half as many city employees as we have and so we haven't we haven't done the hard work of cutting the budget. Nashville does not have a revenue problem. We've got plenty of revenue. We have a spending problem. We have benefits that the state doesn't have, our city employees have, our City Council has benefits that nobody else in the country has. Yeah. So these are the things that have put us in this hole is that we've spent too much.

15:47We haven't budgeted. We kicked the can down the road and all these programs were able to give us things that we thought we needed or wanted and not have to pay for them until ten years down the road. Well it's ten years down the road and the bill has come due and now it's on the Nashville citizens and the business owners that you know that are weighing the heavy burden of this tax. So the 34% tax increase. That makes sense. Well it makes sense. It makes sense. We expect more from our leaders. Yeah it makes sense on how we are where we are. Yeah. We never should have been in this position. No. We should have cut spending and we should have had a balanced budget and Tennessee has always done that in the past and so this is really a departure from what we have done fiscally you know years ago when we had somebody like Bredesen in. So does the coronavirus when this thing hits and we've got when you shut the whole city down in March around this time we did our last interview this 32% increase he proposed was to bail us out because we didn't have the economic boom from the coronavirus right? So we were already broke. With coronavirus it was making us more broke. Gotcha. The estimation was we were gonna fall short 200 million dollars on sales tax revenue. That was a projection from the mayor's office. Turns out their projection was off by a hundred million dollars. That's it. Now we find that out after the taxes increase is passed and when you go back and you ask the mayor's office in the City Council well now that we know that this was off by a hundred million dollars do we roll back that tax increase to something more reasonable like a 20% and the answer is no we're not going to and

17:47they still have not explained why they're not going to other than they gave raises with this tax increase they didn't cut the budget and so they've just spent more money. Like everybody else is furloughed. Everybody else is not working but not one of them was furloughed. Not one metro employee was furloughed and the fact of the matter is there are as many as 4,000 of them that do not have access to the systems that they need to do their job yet they're still sitting at home and getting paid. Wow. We can't afford it. It's not a matter of hey we want to keep everybody wants to keep everybody employed. The problem is we can't afford it and the thing is if I've got a hundred thousand dollars in the bank here at my restaurant and my payroll is fifty thousand dollars you know and then I've got fifty thousand and overhead a month I've got to make a choice to cut that payroll or I will be out of money in 30 days. That's the hard choice that I have to make on a daily basis. Our city needs to be making that choice. Unfortunately for a city government that can run a deficit you know they just say well we'll spend it and you know we'll figure out how to get it back later and that's what they did with this tax and so my call for a to stand against this tax was a call that is not a partisan one. This affects every Republican and every Democrat in our city. This affects from the rich to the poor. Everybody is affected by this tax increase and except for the big corporations that struck deals that would exempt them from this increase. So that's where we have a big problem. Before this COVID ever hit before the talk of this tax increase ever came about our state comptroller sent a letter to our city comptroller threatening to take over our city's

19:51finances and put us into receivership. The state I give you an idea the state has two billion dollars in debt across the entire state of Tennessee. Nashville has four billion in debt. Just Davidson County. Just our city. So if you want to know how lopsided and how unbalanced it is that's what we're looking at. We have twice the debt that our entire state has just in Davidson County. We got a soccer team. It's a problem. So it's a problem and you know if we can't afford these things we shouldn't be we shouldn't be buying them. So that was my first letter and I got 99.5% positive feedback from it. I did get some pushback and you know they I would guess that some of the a lot of the pushback that I got was probably coordinated. What was the pushback? What would people come back at you and say? What were the negative people? You're rich. You can afford it. You just don't want to pay your fair share. You know blah blah blah and so I would answer that question with do I want to pay more taxes? Hell no. Why the fuck would I want to pay more taxes? I mean I don't I'm not getting incrementally more services for that. I got some people that said you know oh you're in the Gulch and you get your money that you pay in taxes stays in the Gulch. That's a that's not accurate. We have what's called the Gulch Business Improvement District. We actually pay more taxes. So does the downtown business improvement district. We pay more in taxes. That extra amount that we pay in taxes stays in our neighborhood and the rest goes into the general fund just like everybody else's taxes. So that's a misnomer if anybody tells you that hey we're getting a better benefit. Some people said well you benefited from the

21:52city you know developing the Gulch. Let me make it very clear. The city did not develop the Gulch. The city let the Gulch lay barren for tens of tens of years. Private investors developed the Gulch. The city tagged on to it once it was already in development and has benefited from the incremental tax revenue that is generated. We now have over 2,500 homes down here. Yeah so that's a whole another tax base that was not here before private investment made the Gulch happen. And it's restaurants like yours and the companies that have come in and created businesses that draw all of that other stuff. I mean absolutely it's you're creating part of the you are what has created the Gulch. I mean it's restaurants like yours. Not just me but several other people. Restaurants and the different. Restaurants, retailers, hotels and so we've made significant investments in here and and due to that we've drawn a lot of business and a lot of dollars which creates tax revenue sales tax you know liquor tax sure payroll tax everything. We've created personally 50 new jobs that didn't exist. So my call was one of transparency and to say hey look let's fix the budget. I think that if Hank Cooper raised the taxes and slashed the budget and said I've got a plan for in three years us to be out of this hole then I think people would have and then he and then say and then at that time we could look at reducing that tax. I think people would have been receptive to that. I honestly do think that most people would have said okay if you're showing me a plan where you're gonna cut 20% of the workforce from Metro Nashville you're gonna furlough during this pandemic you know and you're gonna put more money into our reserves

23:54and fix our budget then I think Nashvilleans would have said hey we can live with that. Have you ever seen the movie Dave? I have yeah. Where he's like the actor gets to be the president. Yeah. I was talking to Khalil Arnold over at Arnold's and he said I'm just so frustrated that the first thing he goes to is oh we have a problem we'll just we'll just 32% we'll just tax everybody yeah and there's a there's a part of that movie where the guy says you figure out how to get 400 million dollars you can keep your damn program for the kids and he goes okay he calls his buddy yeah and they sit down he's like do we need to pay 20 million dollars for people feel good about their new car purchase he's like you want to tell kids they can't live at home because of that like yeah we didn't see I was waiting to see something like that where it's like we're gonna step outside the box we'll figure out a way to make cuts for our city to work yes so it hasn't happened and I think that's the frustration that nobody is putting in the hard work to sit down get into a room and fix it I don't care if you have to televise it televise the people need to understand and and be aware of how their money is spent because ultimately it's our money it's not our government's money it's our money and so you know I got some resistance and that's you know that's what happens and you put yourself out there and you're gonna get some shit that's okay so the next letter that I that I wrote was about the COVID you know we had some emails come out the other day we came before last we came before last we had emails come out that showed that the numbers were being manipulated and suppressed now the news report that came out said just that unfortunately the social media for that network pushed the words cover-up yes it never was mentioned in the story never

25:57said cover-up in the story their social media said cover-up a lot of people think that story has been retracted it has not been retracted so let me make that very very clear to people who have posted this on my timeline multiple times do you reject you're talking about a you're talking about a fake news story blah blah blah do you retract your statement no I do not the story was never retracted the fact that they called it a cover-up was retracted they apologized for calling it a cover-up that's right that's all they did they apologized for calling a cover-up didn't retract the story so Dennis Ferrier released this last Thursday night right at 517 yes and the man to be fair to Ferrier and you know he never said cover-up in his story and the national news media that took it and ran with it used the words cover-up yes so the national news media took it and ran with it without really watching the whole story and understanding that Ferrier never said cover-up he said misleading and suppressed which if you read the emails you will come to that conclusion very quickly if you watch the press conferences so the emails said 22 cases total in bars and restaurants 19 in bars three in restaurants think about this for three cases traced back to restaurants we reverted back to 50% capacity so we put our foot on the neck of an entire industry over three cases now when they the number was 22 in the emails when he had his press conference he said 30 and then a few days later he said 80 cases so they have don't let anybody tell you they hadn't misled with the numbers or manipulated them to fit the narrative they have and I've seen other emails that show how they were trying to get influence from people to back their strict health guidelines they

28:02were trying to find influencers to get behind them to back their strict health but what do they gain from that like what do they if he closes all the bars is he just pissed off at Steve Smith and wants to show him because he's been vocal proponent of it like it's miss suing him I mean yeah I mean I don't know what I don't know what the end game is this is not a I hate Cooper type thing so this is don't make this illness political you keep saying that you want to base this on science and off the advice of the health department okay the science was not there to shut the restaurants back down to 50% it was not there to shut all the bars down so it just wasn't there they showed 1251 cases on construction sites and took no active measures against those sites so now two days after the story aired they have come back and said oh it was a clerical error there were only 251 on construction sites not 1251 so extra one in the number and 1,000 extra cases don't forget we just learned that the state kept 13,000 cases on their books as active that were not active had not been active for I think 60 or 90 days that error just came out so when we talk about transparency and we talk about truth in government and following the science and following health guidelines if our CDC if our local health department and if our State Department State Health Department are all making these types of errors I mean this is supposed to be a crisis pandemic not saying the virus is not real it's very real but when we can't trust their

30:04numbers and they keep coming back and saying oops that was a clerical error these numbers ought to be checked by 10 people before they ever go out the door we need to know that they're exact the public is counting on these agencies to give us the most accurate information possible we're talking about tens of not hundreds of millions of lives that are being affected we're talking about billions of dollars in economic disaster that's happening because of this and we deserve to know exactly what the numbers are as accurately as possible we need to know real cases versus probable cases versus in contact with you know the way that our state and our city has been counting infections is if you go and you get a positive test that's count as one if you go back a week later hoping you're gonna get a negative test and you get an epic another positive that's now count as two positive cases even though there's only you the one person infected what why do they do that you know this is the way we don't we don't know we don't know what's happening that's that's the frustration is that the numbers are so all over the place and everywhere that it's it's very frustrating for the general public to try and get a handle on exactly what is happening and where and because of that it's made them scared to go out and that's affecting our business whether we open up for 75 percent or not we may still only be at 50 percent because the public is scared they're not getting bars they're not getting information that they can rely on or that they are confident is correct that's the thing that confuses me is I just go I don't understand like you don't think that they would want to say that there's less

32:05cases so that we can if we create a fear then people won't go out and we'll stop it you think they're just genuinely trying to I'm just talking I'm not trying to create some kind of narrative I'm just saying I don't know the answer to this I don't think anybody knows the answer you know and a lot of people say well why would he want to intentionally keep businesses close I don't know you know Brandon I can't give you an answer to that I think that when the national news had video footage of Broadway with people not wearing masks and it looking like it was a super spreader neighborhood I think our mayor was embarrassed about our city when the New York Times wrote an article saying Nashville is gonna be the next super spreading no they call us no mask though yeah no mask Phil yeah I think he was embarrassed and I think he felt like it was hurting our city's reputation as a result of that and his policies we're the slowest growth recovery in the country so it hurts us as business owners it hurts my employees whose hours we've had to cut it hurts all around and so I've just tried to shed a light on that and say hey look we need to come together as a city Republicans Democrats need to come together all business owners and private citizens need to come together and we need to be rational about what we're doing and we need transparency with what's really going on so that we can get back open for business I mean this is a this is the type of thing that can last it can linger for six to twelve months on the business side if we can't start ramping up quickly oh when we talked on March 17th you said in Memphis in May this year we've got this this and this did you have any idea on March 17th here I thought at the time it would last six

34:10weeks yeah remember we were told by all of the government agencies give it two weeks stay at home we'll flatten the curve and we'll be good it's gone from flattening the curve which we have done to now you need to stay at home indefinitely you need to cover indefinitely you would we need to wait for a vaccine do you want to take a vaccine it just got jammed through the FDA I you know what I don't know yeah I it all depends on who it is and what it is and the whole thing with the numbers that they've given you so far and how inaccurate they've been and how many mistakes they've made do you feel confident in a vaccine I can't I don't know I don't know what I feel confident so confused right now by just kind of everything which is a major reason why I want to talk to you because I think that you're you you seem to have a pretty good handle on this as somebody who's all in yes but you said it I am all in there's nobody else behind me I'm this is my company it's my business I own the dirt like I'm all in and when somebody's doing this you've been very vocal and I just I wanted to talk to you and kind of go tell me that I want to I want people that are listening that don't quite understand all the nuances to kind of go oh I see why he's so pissed off yeah I get it so our city's broke I'm pissed off about that it shouldn't be our leaders have not done their job in creating a balanced budget in fact with the COVID response money today these I guess I think the speaker of the house sent a letter to the city controller that they're going to do an audit of how the city has spent their COVID relief money because you know according to Governor Lee the city got 96 million dollars I think but somewhere between 90 and 120 million and they've only spent 5.6 million to help business out of that much money and we bought 25

36:16million dollars worth of laptops for kids who were supposed to do online remote learning but 20% of those kids had never even logged in so you know it's I get it there's needs everywhere we want to try and take care of everybody but let me tell you if you don't take care of the economic engine of Nashville then the city will cease to exist we will be gone we have to put our house in order we already broke the longer we stay closed for business the more broke that will be now people look you know can look at me and go well you just want to be open and damned everybody's health and you just want to make money well I didn't get into this to not make money let me make that clear I've got all of my employees want to be working and they want to be at their full-time hours so that they can feed their family and take care of their families and so if you want to call that greedy or tell me I'm being reckless feel free but I tell you we're losing a lot of people to suicide and to drug overdoses because they're in such despair about the economic position that they've been put in due to this whole thing and a lot of my critics you know have said well we just need to stay closed and blah blah blah blah a lot of those people are backed by multi multi millionaires or billionaires and they've got the luxury of still getting paid while they're shut down and so you know to those people that are still getting paid and want to remain completely closed good for you that you're in that position but you don't speak for me who doesn't have that luxury so if we don't generate business not only do I not get paid my employees don't get paid I have to furlough again and that affects 50 people plus their entire families so it's a it's it's a reality that is the

38:21reality what can we do you know I think you've got to be vocal with your city council member you got to be vocal with the mayor you got to keep pressure on them I'd say pressure the state the only thing that I feel like will get us out of the economic hole that we're in and this is my opinion again is if the state comptroller comes in and puts the city in receivership and renegotiates the deals takes us back to the drawing table sits down with the city works out a budget that's livable works out cuts that are livable and move us forward they have the power to do that we as a city don't have the power to renegotiate contracts that have already been signed so one thing that we've done is there's I don't know the guy or what it is but there have been enough signatures have been created enough signatures that they are going to put on the ballot yes a charter amendment charter amendment yes to repeal the 34% tax increase and put something in place that the you couldn't get more than 2% and without a referendum or without a vote from the people from the people election commission is voting on putting that on the ballot right now as we speak they may have already made the vote I don't know but it's happening today the mayor has already tried to subvert this the City Council is already positioned to try and subvert this they don't want to happen because we're already spending the money the tax bill haven't come in the tax money has not come in it won't come in until February we've already spent it we're already spending it right now and so they know that if this rollback happens we're not only gonna be in the bad position we were in six months ago we're gonna be an even worse position we will really be in a hole that Nashville has never seen so the thing that the thing to do before that before that vote would be for the mayor and the City Council to sit down slash the shit out of the budget start making

40:25massive cuts and furlough employees and get this train back on the tracks they still have not you know as of last time I checked which was a few days ago had not released the August sales tax revenue numbers but they are they haven't publicly announced them let me say that if you go and look on the website we had a 2% increase I think it was 1.96 increase in sales tax revenue this August from last year even in the middle of this crisis so the sales tax crisis was never what it was painted to be and they need to go back to the drawing board and and fix this budget and it sounds easy it's not easy but it's gonna take a lot of hard work or else we're gonna be in a really shitty spot and and what I don't like and one of the ways that they're trying to subvert the vote on December 5th is that they're saying we're gonna have to cut 500 police officers we're gonna have to cut 455 we're gonna cut your teachers and your librarians that is typical scare tactics in a political game all right unfortunately they're playing a political game this is our lives so this is the lives of every Nashvilleian that's being affected and it's not a game it is reality well so what is that so if math doesn't lie and we're in a really bad shape they've already spent the money if he doesn't get the tax revenue although it's this you said it's a scare tactic like I listen to that as a normal just a everyday going around town talking to people like I hear that and I go oh shit I don't want the fire I don't like the fire I don't have half the firemen around town I don't want to lose 500 police officers and I certainly don't want to lose I don't want teachers to make less money I don't want all the libraries to close like we can't do that if he's already spent that money is that

42:28if that's a scare tactic will that not happen no they don't have to cut those essential workers no we've got a whole bureaucracy of employees on the city budget we have pensions that have been promised that we can't afford we've got multiple areas that can be cut so the scare tactic is I'm gonna I'm gonna fire the people that you need the most but I'm gonna leave these folks intact that are part of the bureaucracy where we may have five people doing the job of one I mean listen this is classic political bullshit it is you know hey wait a minute why do you have to cut police and firefighters what other metro employees are you cutting what are you doing about the pension what are you doing about the lifetime health care benefit for the city council members I mean so what are you doing about the tax revenue that you're not collecting from hotel developers that you should have been so if that happens then surely the state is gonna come in and put us in procedure receivership they'll have to so you know people are like well this was so extreme by the citizens I told somebody last night this is the poison pill that the citizens of Nashville are shoving down the throat of our city council members for the way that they went extreme to the other direction so when they went extreme with a 34% tax increase the citizens of Nashville said we can go extreme too we'll limit it to 2% now the truth is that we probably should have landed somewhere in the middle but nobody was willing to do that work and that's the problem well this has been very eye-opening for me I'm not a I don't want to be a political pundit I'm I am a I just want to be active in my community and I want us to have a healthy community I voted for bradison I voted for you know many many on both

44:29sides of the aisle this isn't a partisan argument not a partisan argument the great thing about Nashville is we've never been that partisan you know up until now we never really were that person the pendulum was always somewhere in the middle little leeway on both sides but somewhere in the middle we had rational mayors we had rational governors they were moderate whether they were Republican whether they were Democrat they were moderate in the last ten years that pendulum has swung to a fiscally irresponsible position no matter what party you look at it from it's swung to a fiscally irresponsible way of thinking that needs to be brought back into the middle just to be correct it doesn't matter whether it's a Democrat it doesn't matter whether it's a Republican it's we need that fiscal responsibility all of all of us deserve it and and our city needs to right the ship this tax increase didn't do it so don't let anybody tell you that this tax increase is the thing that's gonna right the ship because it's not and they've proven by the way that they've spent that it's not so everybody in the city is gonna have to pay 34% on their property tax the sales tax property tax property property property tax which trickles down to everybody who lives and everybody who lives here and it's I can't imagine not repealing it hearing all of this is going how would you not do that I mean it's not gonna take away teachers it's not gonna take away firemen it's not gonna take away your police officers but people who are making a lot of money on the government might not make as much money if they have to really do the work well we need to aside from cutting employees we need to audit our contracts we need to audit our programs where is the waste where's the extra spending how do we look compared to other cities I can tell you how we look from a fiscally responsible standpoint we're in damn near last place we rank with New York and Chicago on our

46:33fiscal irresponsibility and our cash reserves we don't have any cash reserves anymore so we don't have the rainy day that other cities have to give you an example Memphis has got and it's raining it's raining it's pouring it's pouring Memphis has at least 25% of their yearly operating budget in rainy day funds Detroit has over 50% if not close to 75% remember Detroit went into receivership they declared bankruptcy they came in they righted the ship and now Detroit is in one of the most financially strong positions in the United States so that's what that process can do for you don't the other argument that you're going to hear is well our tax rate was extremely low and in fact it was lower than it was ten years ago okay well that's fine but tax rate is irrelevant when you talk about appraisal values and when you talk about real dollars so let me give you a prime example of that all right we have close to 12,000 square feet in this building and right now my property taxes I think are at fifty five thousand dollars a year the rendezvous in Memphis is probably a similar size building with their event space and upstairs and everything both in downtown both near convention centers both near sports arenas and and both we're in the same business they probably do a lot more revenue than I do but for all general purposes we are very comparable in two comparable cities their tax bill every year is eighteen thousand minus fifty five thousand now our tax rate is you know what three seven five or now they've raised it I think it's four point one I forget what the exact number is so don't quote me on that number Memphis's is almost double with their county and city tax and so Memphis is up at around seven and a half percent I think close to eight on their rate so there's a prime example of our rate being irrelevant I'm paying fifty

48:38five thousand they're paying eight times even happen their rate is twice our because of their appraisal their value or their perceived value of their real estate okay so they you know and then people will say well Carrie you know you've benefited from your real estate going up in value and your real estate's now worth X number of dollars and so there you go that's why you pay more I understand how taxes work that value is no good to me unless I sell the building which means I have to take my business and move it so me selling is not a that's not an option for somebody that's didn't buy a piece of property to develop it you know if you bought a piece of property to build an essential business to serve your community and you're gonna stay there for life which is what we intend to do then I shouldn't be taxed like I'm gonna sell it for a high-rise property so I imagine John Cooper doesn't make it through the next election I'm just saying I think is I'll be shocked if he does it's political crap feel like right now I mean he could he could make a miraculous they could turn this thing around and just make it happen right who knows but will he go well I guess the logical next question I asked Khalil this question after we got done talk as I said so you have a lot of opinions you seem to be very knowledgeable about all this stuff right barbecues fun it's a hard work what about it you went would you ever vote for him again would you ever do it oh no I don't want no I don't want listen I don't like meetings that much so the thought of about 10 to 15 meetings a day makes my skin crawl I got a business to run and I like being around people here in my restaurant and feeding them and nourishing them but what if you could what if you could change this city what if you could do if you could make if you

50:43could write that shit that they've so the Nashville is so fucked up what if you could come in and fix it and be the savior of this city that you grew up in that all sounds great that's not the reality if you've ever spent any time up on the hill you'll understand that the politics are just it's nothing you want to be around so is part of this maybe he can't get stuff done because of the politics no Cooper's office is making decisions counter active to what the advice he's been being given by the business community by his health department you know Paul Kowarski just came out with a story yesterday that's how you sure that the health department had green lighted you know for the Titans to play at 25% and he arbitrarily took it down to 10% where is the are we taking advice from the health department are we making our own decisions you know so that's the type of thing and let me make this very clear I don't want John Cooper to fail okay so a lot of people want politicians to fail you know you got a lot of people that want our president to fail right now I don't want him to fail I don't want John Cooper to fail I want John Cooper to win and to make our city a better place absolutely I don't think he's doing that now I don't agree with what he's doing that doesn't mean I hate him personally it doesn't mean that I want him to fail I would like him to see the light and see what's happening with our businesses and listen to the community and to the people and say wait a minute maybe I got it wrong let's do something different and let's try and make this right he could make it right by the end of his term but that's the choice that he and his administration have to make how do we as a general public hold him accountable for that what you got to continue to call you got to continue so if I call I call the government if I call the mayor's

52:43office what do I say this guy's an asshole and I'm sick and tired of this bullshit like what do I say to that? I think what you need to do is sit down and define what you think your position is or what you'd like to see happen maybe steps that you think the city can take to do that and then you know forward that on to your city council person and to your mayor's office I think that you need to be active with your city council member and voice to them your just your distaste or displeasure if they don't vote something that you think is going to be better for our community so you know if you've got a city council member that is voting you know or deferring to vote to eliminate their lifetime benefit then I would say you probably have a problem with that and so voice it hey guess what you're you're only looking out for yourself and not for our city that's not why we elected you in either I'm not gonna elect you next time or if if this is your last term and this is the way you're voting this may affect your business down the road afterwards in the fact that I may not want to do business with you or with your company when you go back to normal everyday life because of the decision that you're making right now are you in it to look out for the greater good of Nashville are you in it to look out for yourself all right that's good advice so I think no man it is a heavy one and I you know it's Friday afternoon where it's been it's been a long ass six months and there's been so much and I I was thinking I haven't interviewed anybody in two weeks coming back you're my first like interview back from a two week break yeah and I wanted to come back strong with there's a lot of shit going on there's a lot of things happening in our city right now and I

54:44just I feel confused you seem to know exactly what the hell is going on I wanted to talk to you thank you for taking the time to just say hey this is what it is I love what you're writing out there I mean I I know it's got to be hard for you I mean just the the leadership you're displaying I know I one of the things you wrote was we don't have leadership we have people in charge and the leadership that you're displaying to write that stuff and to say the things you are is is awesome and I appreciate it and it's big I mean I googled Kerry Bringle this morning and you know what popped up on Google what's that Kerry Bringle and said net worth like that's that's the suggested thing that popped up because well when you put yourself out there and you say all this stuff immediately people go what's his net worth like what what is he you could tell what most people have googled because they want to know about you so you're putting yourself out there not caring about that and kind of going hey you know it is what it is I have I gotta make a difference and I've been attacked for these opinions I have been doxxed I've had people publish my address at my addresses of any properties that I own you know it's it's been interesting I've been told that I'm sitting in Belle Meade counting my money and the money that I made off the backs of low-income earners I mean I listen I've gotten it all I'm not reading read it anymore because I tell you I did that one afternoon and read about 400 negative comments about me I think I drank a bottle of bourbon that night I don't know how you do it it's a you know look it's a I'm a happy guy and I've been through a lot worse and I this stuff I can it stinks sometimes but it's if you're gonna put yourself out there you're opening yourself up for that I would encourage more of my fellow business owners to stand up and take a stand and make a statement on their own and don't make it one of hate and don't make it one of partisanship and don't make it one that makes you sound ignorant think about it read it over think about it again read it over think about it a third time count to ten and

56:49calm down and if you got a rational point to make and you think you've got some solutions then voice them and it and it more than likely will be appreciated good news new place give me an update is what's happening with bringle smoke and oasis we just signed with our contractor we've got green lights we are starting construction and we hope to be open in March of 2021 so we're excited about that just in time for spring yeah we're hoping to kick it off with a Billy link crawfish boil straight up from Louisiana wow well I again thank you so much for doing this and I was over here a couple months ago you found a reading a one-star Jimmy's one-star review that is out there right now on our tick-tock page for those of you who'd like to watch it but we sat and talked for like an hour in your office and I was like why didn't we record this so this was good it's very educational for me and I appreciate it thank you I hope they have a wonderful weekend and just thanks for doing this yeah you too thanks Brandon have a great weekend yeah man big thanks to Carrie bringle for taking the time to speak with us on a Friday afternoon you know he's a very busy guy and he's so gracious with his time for us here at Nashville restaurant radio just wanted to give a big shout out and a challenge to you other restaurateurs out there you know we mentioned leadership and the ability just to get out there and say what's on your mind that's just the guy he is but I challenge you if you if you have something on your mind do the same if you want to do it on this show let me know send me an email Brandon at Nashville restaurant radio comm if you are out there and you have something you want to say of a story you want to tell let me know and maybe we can get you on the show we can talk about it together thank you guys for listening we look forward to talking to you on Wednesday it's so good to be back

58:52I hope that you and yours are being safe hope that you're doing well I love you guys bye-bye Titans are 3-0 baby yes