Freddie O' Connell

00:00Hear that? That's the sound of busy. To a restaurant, all that shouting and banging might as well be a symphony. It means the long days and longer nights are paying off. Sure, it's noisy, but there's a worse sound. This. Not busy. Busy means business, which is why Toast gives restaurants the tools and tech they need to help them perform under pressure. Sounds pretty good, right? Toast, built for busy. Sharp Yay's Bakery is a locally-owned and family-operated wholesale bakery providing bread to Nashville's best eateries. They have operated in Nashville since 1986. Yes, next year will be 40 years. They're providing high-quality, fresh bread daily for restaurants, catering companies, hospitals, and universities. Their bread is also free from any preservatives and artificial flavors. They're right off of White Bridge Road. Erin Mosu and her team have been doing this for a long time. You know what I love about them is that they're local and they care. They care about your business. That's like the number one thing you're going to hear me talk about is, do they care about your business? And I 100% believe that they do. If you would like to be working with a bakery that cares about your business, give them a call. That's 615-356-0872.

01:29Now, you can always visit them at sharpyers.com. That's C-H-A-R-P-I-E-R-S dot com. And they have pictures of all of the bread that they can have for you and contact information. Go check them out, Sharpie's Bakery. Welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio, the tastiest hour of talk in Music City. Now, here's your host, Brandon Styll. Hello, Music City, and welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio. My name is Brandon Styll and we are powered by Pepsi. We're excited to have you here today. We have got this episode today is with our mayor of Nashville, Freddie O'Connell. Very generous of him to spend almost an entire hour with us on this interview. And this is his second time on the show. And we're really excited to have this conversation with him. Obviously, the property tax situation, things that are going on in Nashville have been a big issue for restaurant owners, independent restaurant owners at that. And I'm going to save my commentary till after the episode to kind of hear my thoughts. But I will tell you the format of this interview because it went kind of fast. You know, the first time that we interviewed the mayor, he was a candidate for mayor. And it was the day after the Covenant shootings. And go back and listen to it because we got to hear a real human side of him, which I think that when you look at politicians, they're kind of piñatas up there. People just take shots at them, their anger. And I got a chance to sit and talk with him. And I wanted to kind of hear what his transition was like. You'll hear this. I wanted to kind of get to know Freddie as a human. And I believe he

03:30deserves that. And I really want to give him the opportunity just to sit and talk. We do get into the property tax situation. We get in to choose how you move in traffic and bike lanes and all the different things. We we talk about those things. And I want to hear your opinion. So please go to our Instagram page. You'll see the post about this episode. Let us know what you think. And if you want to know what the mayor thinks, you can come to our event on September the 1st. If you are a restaurant owner, if you work in a restaurant, if you're in leadership in restaurants, yes, you can come. Freddie O'Connell will be speaking at our event on September the 1st. And he, I think, said, I'm not speaking. I'm listening. I'm going to be talking. He's going to be taking questions. So if you have follow up from this and you want to know more, come to our event on September the 1st. All you have to do is register. It's free at NARA Nashville dot com. We're going to have 37 vendors there, live music, lots of giveaways. It's going to be a lot of fun. And of course, you can do a follow up from this interview if you like with the mayor.

04:33So with not a lot more said, I'm not going to get into a lot more. We're just going to jump in right now with Mayor Freddie O'Connell. You are listening to Nashville Restaurant Radio. Super excited today to welcome. And this is a very special day for me and for Nashville Restaurant Radio. Nashville Mayor Freddie O'Connell is here. Welcome to the show, Mayor. The crowd. Brandon, don't you mean welcome back? Welcome. When I practiced this in the mirror, I said, welcome back to Nashville Restaurant Radio. Yes. The first time you were on was a very unfortunate day. You it was the day after the Covenant shootings. You were running for mayor. And I didn't know if you would show up. And there you were. Yeah, it was it was an unforgettable moment. And I remember reflecting on it with you guys back then. And I feel like I don't know. You know, that was a moment where I felt like with everybody that I knew that was deeply involved in the incident, that we were all kind of where we could be. And I felt like still as as any time I have the opportunity to talk to people, there's never really a time when it's not good to still be able to talk about things. And so it was a really interesting conversation. And honestly, I'm glad we kept it on the books. Me, too. I felt like I needed to talk about it. And I couldn't think of any I felt like I needed to talk about it. And I couldn't think of anybody better to have in that moment to have the conversation with somebody who's going to be in a position to really help make some changes and help understand what's really going on with all of that.

06:27So thank you for that. And welcome back to the show. Very excited. Glad to be back. So there's been a tremendous amount of conversation and media coverage recently around property taxes, the cost of doing business in the future of Nashville. And we're absolutely going to get into that. But before we do, I really want to begin with Freddie the person. I want to talk about what it actually means to become the mayor of Nashville. Nashville had kind of an unusual period of leadership. Megan Barry left office early. David Briley stepped in. Mayor Cooper came in and he was the mayor that had to lead the city through a pandemic. And then, here comes Mayor O'Connell. When you became the mayor, what did you believe you were inheriting? What condition was Nashville in financially, operationally and culturally? Yeah, really interesting question. I think I knew I was inheriting at least a metro in recovery, if not a city in recovery. We had all been on the journey through the pandemic that was not unique to Nashville. And so some of the economic impact of that, the public health impact of that, these were not unique to Nashville conditions. And yet, they definitely had impact on us. They had impact on us physically and emotionally.

07:59And it was sort of like a city coming out of a period of some amount of social isolation, right? And so it was sort of like we were rediscovering each other as a city and what kind of the next chapter of Nashville, including our growth, was going to be like. The good news was Mayor Cooper had done some things, important things, some of which we sought to continue, that really did put us on a trajectory back toward fiscal health after some instability and volatility. We had to manage the city's finances through some of the most difficult economic period, and as you mentioned, some metro missteps along the way. And so I knew I was kind of taking the reins of a mayor's office that had done a lot to stabilize things after a period of dramatic instability. And so I felt like we had been for eight years, really, through both governance and condition through some of the most destabilizing things we had really experienced as a city. And while we weren't all the way back on easy and sure footing, it was good. And I will say Mayor Cooper was not just a gentleman, but a really good partner through the transition process.

09:27And I felt confident about the ability to walk in the door on day one, ready to focus on our priorities, but also having a kind of a blended team where some of his key team members agreed to join us. And then we brought in several people from a transition process, and then we hired several people very quickly. And so I felt like one of the things I had talked about a lot during the campaign was the ability to be ready on day one. And I think we really did a lot of preparation work to ensure that I was and that the city would be ready for some tackling some things that we really needed to tackle. And so we had a very busy and productive first year in office. What was stronger than you expected when you first got into office? When you got in there, what were you like, wow, I didn't expect this? Maybe in some ways, and again, credit to Mayor Cooper and his team. They really did lean into the transition process. So it's not like I walked in the door, somebody just kind of handed me the keys and said, good luck. They worked very closely with me, a couple of our senior team members.

10:40And I'll just say, I think the mayor's office as an institution was ready to continue. And that was a really reassuring feeling. The fact that there was no moment where I literally walked in the door and felt like, oh my gosh, I'm by myself. All of this is just a thing that I have to do for any period of time completely alone. Instead, it was almost immediately a stepping into a workflow and some work streams that were pretty well established. And that was true of everything from having an office manager who agreed to stay with us for a period of time, having a transitional period from a chief of staff standpoint, having a key operational leader stay on. And all of those things were choices that we both made together. And I think it just shows, to me, it was a showcase of what government and especially local government can and should be about, which is being stable and predictable and the focus on governing and not anything else about the kind of surrounding political conditions. And I think our transition process was both a credit to the Cooper administration and I hope from their standpoint, also a sign that we were ready to pick up where they left off.

12:02I love that. So you come in, you've got a team, they're briefing you. You kind of have a, I don't want to call it a training team, but I mean, you're coming into a new role and you're learning a lot. There's a lot of things that were stronger than you expected in that transition. Was there a moment during that time where you were like, whoa, this was way more broken than you had expected? As they're explaining something, you're like, wait a minute, this doesn't add up. Not, not really. I think there's sort of there, you know, you walk in and you find things, I would describe it as more of a process of discovering things that are incomplete, that you knew you were going to have to work on anyway. Right. So, for instance, Mayor Cooper and our planning department led by Lucy Kempf had done an extraordinary amount of planning and design work for the East Bank. They had worked on a big visioning document called Imagine East Bank. But as he was leaving office, we were receiving news of an award of the request for proposals to be the first kind of private sector developer of some of the public area that we were reclaiming from the Titan Stadium deal. And so we knew we were going to be working with a brand new partner. And that Imagine East Bank had, until that point, been an imagination, right? And something that you were dreaming of thinking about. And so we were immediately having to shift into doing it mode, right? Getting the implementation process started thinking about, oh yeah, what framework is best going to let us get to work quickly, but also endure for the entire build-out process of the East Bank. So that wasn't, I mean, it's not a thing that's broken. It's a thing that just didn't exist previously, you know? And so a couple of those where it was process improvements along the way, you know, continuing to focus on how Metro as a local government can

14:04continue to improve upon customer service and, you know, those kinds of things. And I'll say we unfortunately continued to see the regular frequency of severe weather because we hadn't even been in office 100 days when we had to endure the first sign of extreme weather, which was a deadly and damaging tornado that had its greatest impact in the Madison area. And so after a couple weeks in office, having done a tabletop exercise at the emergency operations center and saying, gosh, I hope I don't have to come back here. We were back there within just a matter of weeks. And so, again, that's not a thing that was broken, but boy, it's a thing that it's like, if you're walking in the door expecting and planning to just get right to work, it's just a sign of how quickly you have to start reacting to the things that the world throws at you. How much time do you spend reacting versus proactively getting, I mean, because it seems like every day, it's almost like running a restaurant, you know, where you have a great, you have a great plan, but I didn't plan on the woman to choke in this room. I didn't plan for this to happen plan. And then you have to respond and then you don't get to a lot of stuff.

15:18I guess having a great team helps that. But how much time do you spend doing that? Mayor Cooper, as well as several other mayors of Nashville and mayors from around the country said, hey, there's this really great thing called the Program for New Mayors, strongly recommend you do that. So we did that in the first 100 days and it was really excellent. I mean, I'm in there with a cohort of newly elected mayors from across the partisan spectrum, all kind of learning together. And it was really fascinating because it's about things like scheduling and how you use your time, what the organizational structure of the mayor's office is going to be like, whether it's a strong mayor or council mayor system. It was really and frankly, how you respond in times of crisis or emergency. And so there were a lot of really great early lessons there. And it was really nice to almost immediately have a cohort of peers that I'm still very much in touch with. But one of the things they ask you to do in that exercise is, okay, on day one, we're going to start predicting how you're going to spend your time. And they had a bunch of categories, right? It's like priorities, budget, dealing with your council, all of these things. And they had a category for unplanned events, right? And I will say, and then they said, track it for 100 days. Well, in that period, we had a bunch of legal stuff happen, right? So we had quickly the state Supreme Court returned local authority of our airport to us. We had some complicated overhang of preemption of our community oversight board, some complicated votes that had happened the summer before I took office with the Metro Arts Commission, a tornado, like all of these major things that we were having to contend with in those first 100 days.

17:11And it turns out I did underestimate the value of time I would spend on unplanned events. That's it. For my ADHD brain, that sounds amazing. I love that kind of chaos. It's like a restaurant, like being three deep at a bar. It's something for me, I would thrive on that just personally. I feel like most of those things I would have been happy to not have to contend with. Look, I was very glad to have the courts agree with our Department of Law that the airport was, in fact, still ours. But the other things I would have been happy to have just gotten down to what we came here to do. Well, I have to be honest with you, doing research for this and seeing all of the news articles and everybody, there's a lot of vitriol that gets thrown right at you. And I have to be honest, being mayor doesn't look like a fun job every day. It doesn't look like something that like, man, 49% of people are pissed at me today. And you want to keep doing this. You're running again.

18:18Yeah. I mean, here's what I'll say. Every day, it is so important in this job to know your why. What's your why? My why is to build a Nashville where everyone can move, work and grow. I mean, we want a Nashville where everyone thrives. We are a city uniquely full of creative people. And I want all of those people to both want to be here and to be able to be here. And that's our why. And so build a team around that why and then never read the comments. That's how you do it. I love it. What part of this job just gives you energy? And we're going to move on to all the other stuff, the difficult stuff to talk about that we're going to talk about today for restaurant owners. But I just, I want to humanize you because I think that people see a mayor and you're just up there like a pinata and every decision is scrutinized. And I don't think people are in the room with you in these meetings. We don't have the information that you have.

19:26And I just, I wanted to kind of get to know you a little bit on this side before we jump into this other stuff. Yeah. And it's really hard. I would love to imagine that any given person in the city would feel like they could know, at least from the standpoint of transparency, anything they wanted to know about what we're doing. And there are obvious challenges with that. We only have so many people in our communication staff. Metro is a large enterprise with more than 10,000 people out there every day doing things from picking up our trash to fixing potholes to kind of offering childcare and early childhood education. I mean, there are so many people in different kinds of people in different professions within the Metro workforce. And I want people to know as much as they care to about what we're doing, why we're doing it, and all of those things. And also, I would say it's actually a healthy thing for most people to wake up every day in a city they love, knowing that they can pursue their passion or their profession, raise a family if that's in the cards, be a part of social activities, and not necessarily have to be daily invested in the kind of grind of governing because that's not what we're supposed to do. It's a kind of funny ecosystem, in fact, to sort of have almost everybody feel like we have to be armchair pundits at every moment of our lives to just jump into that stream of information. I don't actually want people to be compelled to be experts on local government so much as I want them to be able to rely on the fact that local government is working for them, and they can and should trust it. I mean, not to say that you shouldn't be skeptical of it or have a trust but verify outlook, but we do want you to be able to find information about what's happening

21:32in our schools, parks, and libraries. We do want you to be able to go take a look at the Citizen's Guide to the Budget where you can find the popular annual financial report and discover not only how we accrue every single penny of revenue but also exactly how every single penny of that is spent on a city that is working for you. Let's jump into that. I think that, first of all, thank you for that perspective. I really wanted to begin there because it's easy to criticize decisions without understanding the person making them or what you've inherited. I think it's important to kind of just talk through some of that, but at the same time, there's been a tremendous amount of conversation in media coverage recently about property taxes, reappraisals, the cost of operating a business in Davidson County. I've spent several of the last days, and I've done interviews with several local restaurant owners, and I've said, look, I'm not that guy. I don't know all this information. Treat me like I'm a four-year-old and tell me what's going on. I got some really great information from some really great intelligent business owners. I want to give you a fair opportunity to explain these decisions that you've made, but I also want to be direct about what these businesses' owners and long-time residents believe is happening to them. Back in 2020, during the Cooper administration, Kerry Bringle, he wrote an op-ed. He wrote an open letter warning that the property tax increase would eventually cost Nashville many of its independent restaurants, and since then, Nashville's lost a number of restaurants and businesses that help define what this city is.

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25:35This is the maintenance solution for every single restaurant. Another no-brainer, really, really cool technology. Check them out at OneTap.com. What you need to do is you need to go to naranashville.com, click on our vendors, and click on OneTap from there. They will also be at the Nashville Area Restaurant Alliance Independent Restaurant Show, which we would love to have you in attendance. We're going to talk about Pepsi. Pepsi has been an amazing sponsor for us. Not only have they been a sponsor for us, they've been a sponsor for independent restaurants. They are offering so much assistance. While you may use the other guys, Pepsi wants to see you succeed. This is so apropos for what we're talking about in this next segment of the show where things are happening and those things are out of your control. This is something that is in your control. You can contact Pepsi today, and they can start offering support when you need it immediately. Let's jump back into this interview with Mayor Freddie O'Connell.

26:42Looking back, do you believe Kerry was directionally right? What did Nashville learn from that warning? I will say this, and let me start here. From the standpoint of restaurants and Music City, a couple things. One, I've been a small business owner multiple times myself, so I do come into this role with a pretty clear understanding of the difficult decisions you make when you start a business, go get your business license, have your mission, and realize that there is so much that goes into running a business that has very little to do with why you got into it. Then, to also understand that as my identity growing up in Nashville, it's like, this is a growing city. This is a city that is actually becoming more vibrant with the years, in fact, offering a landscape of much better food. We have become a true culinary destination among cities, which is really exciting. To know that restaurants offer two key ingredients to everybody who already loves a city, which is food and community.

27:55Those ingredients are really important. I will say, I think Kerry might be overstating it because there is so much complexity in the landscape of not just the food sector and restaurants, but also in small businesses altogether. It ranges from, do I own my property? What are the terms of my lease? What are my overall costs of doing business? How much of the overall cost of my doing business does property taxes account for? What are food prices, transportation prices, all of those things? There are so many ingredients that go into it. In that same time period, we've also watched a number of local restaurateurs and entrepreneurs either start new restaurants, scale new restaurants, grow out an entire family of restaurants from what used to be one so that you can find five-point pizza well outside of Five Points. You can find that Melrose had to rebrand as ML Rose because they're in multiple parts of the city. Eighth and Roast is no longer just on Eighth Avenue. We've got all of these incredible examples of places that have really found ways not just to succeed where they started, but to expand in the town that they started in.

29:14If you look at what Fresh Capital is doing, I could rattle off in just the time I've been in office a number of remarkable expansions specifically just within the restaurant space. I know you know a lot of these people. I will say I think I am very sensitive to the impact that anything we do from revenues including property taxes or any other part of the fees landscape or revenue landscape that affects not just residents but business owners and property owners, residential and commercial, has. We have tried to be incredibly responsible over the past several years for one thing. We took an ordinary appraisal cycle and waited an extra year in that. We went five years on what was supposed to be four years of revenue before we went back to residents and waited until we could get back on cycle for appraisal. Here's what I'll tell you. It is hard to reconcile all the dynamics out there, but I think it highlights the complexity.

30:18One, we have the lowest property tax rate in the history of Metro. Two, among Tennessee's big cities, we have the lowest property tax rate. Among states, Tennessee ranges between 48th and 50th in per capita tax burden. Overall, the cost of living and doing business here from a taxation standpoint is about as low as it's going to be anywhere in the country. Also, Nashville has been growing. The last time property values were assessed in 2021, we had not captured that post COVID boom. It doesn't help your balance sheet to know that you got a discount four years ago, but it does point out how much complexity there is in this. I'll say one of the best messages I give to anybody who loves our local business and local restaurant landscape as much as I do, go there. Go to the places you love. Spend your money there.

31:21When I am talking to our family, when I'm talking to friends, when I'm talking to our team in the mayor's office and anybody ever asks me where I'm going to eat, the places at the top of my list are always going to be places that I know are locally owned and operated. Well, I love that. It's funny you should say that because selfishly, we have a website, naranashville.com, which has a great list of those local restaurants that have banded together. Listen, this is what I do. I help local restaurants operate more efficiently. Let me just go back. Are you saying, hey, look, there's a lot of people that are thriving. We have a low tax rate. If this tax thing is hitting you, that's because you're not operating well. No, no, no, not even close. I'm saying almost the opposite. Guys, we've grown a lot, and we're making tough decisions as a city. All we've been able to do in government to make sure that when ... On your best day to make sure that you've got happy customers that can come in the door and enjoy your food and all that, that the infrastructure worked to get them there, that they could send their kids off to school, all that stuff, and on your worst day, that police, fire, or medical were there within minutes of you calling 911, all we've been able to do in this period of Nashville's extraordinary growth is for us to keep up with the five-year impact of inflation. I'm saying I absolutely get it because we are making really, really tough decisions as a local government every day, and we have had to endure some layoffs we could not prevent. Two out of the past three years, I have had to tell our departments, even though we just went through this, what I know people are experiencing as a property tax increase, I'm going to have to ask you to dig deep and find efficiencies because we don't have room to grow.

33:20We have felt the cost of governing increase the same way that local business owners, property owners have felt the cost of doing business increase, and we know that one of the things ... As we are making trade-offs on our side, we know it's absolutely having real-world impact too, and that's also why we've tried to turn the corner as often as we can and offer supports. One of my favorite stories this past year is the Peachtree Grill, which got started in Woodbine, was able to take advantage of one of our programs called the Property Investment Incentive and get rebated $50,000 in something that let them turn from a walk-up window, if the weather is nice, eat outside kind of place to a year-round, comfortable dining, full-blown restaurant condition. They took total advantage of a publicly available incentive program that only is eligible for small businesses. And does everybody know about this? I mean, how come the Peachtree Grill is the only ... I'm looking forward to talking to you and your audience more about these programs. Okay. Well, I think that if you're listening to this and you don't know what we're talking about, following the 2025 revenue neutral appraisal, Metro increased the property tax rate by 26% in the Urban Service District and 39% in the General Services District.

34:41A lot of restaurants have triple net leases and they pay for ... Oh, go ahead, Freddy. Well, so notice the way that that works. When you say that, that is a piece of the property tax rate actually dropped from 2021 to 2025. The rate came down, but the way that the state forces us to do this means that basically cyclically, every government across Tennessee, if they even want to keep up with inflation, must do something that feels like an increase, which is you are required to equalize. When we go out ... It's really remarkable. If I told you we were going to keep the rate exactly the same and your property value was going to go up 45%, your taxes would go up incredibly. Instead, what we do is we equalize, we appraise, we can't capture any windfall, so the rate is forced down. Then if you want to account for inflation, you basically drop it significantly and bounce it back up just a little bit, but our property tax rate in Metro has been steadily declining.

35:56I'm here to tell you it isn't as simple as just saying we increased everybody's property taxes, because, Brandon, there are people in Nashville, there are property owners in Nashville who over this past year, their taxes went down. Okay. Do you accept that the cumulative property tax burden is becoming unsuitable for some of Nashville's residents and independent businesses? I do. That is one of the hardest things is it is distributed unevenly based on an independent process that we have no control over that is governed, as in all 95 of Tennessee's counties, by county assessors. You mentioned the state. The state tells us ... Who at the state ... Is that an email? How does that come to you? What does that look like? We are required to equalize at every assessment cycle, meaning we can't just peg a rate and then watch property values push that rate up over time. They say, oh, look, property values in Nashville are going up. Therefore, we're going to force you to lower your tax rate correspondingly.

37:12But that's not something that I think is well understood at all. I don't understand it. I still don't understand it. I'm like, how does that make sense? I wish I had follow-ups, but I don't understand it. It makes sense, except that there's no ... Here's what I will tell you. I think it's probably ... It would be even more harmful if people were in business ... If we said, we're just going to fix the tax rate at $3 per millage, whatever, and we're just going to sit it there, but property values in Nashville, we're going to march up over time. We're never going to change the rates. Your property taxes, we're just going to go up inordinately compared with the value of your land. Instead, every time we go out and say, here's what we think your property value is worth, we zero out any increases in revenue. Then, in order to even do inflationary adjustment, we have to go raise property taxes. Yet, after we raise them, the rate, because of property value growth, is inevitably much, much lower as a rate than it was four years ago.

38:27Now, if we were in a shrinking city, it would be a different story. In fact, I think a lot of people don't know this too. Years ago, we approved by charter amendment a cap on our property tax rate. We are very unlikely ever to even come close to that again because the city is growing so much. What do you propose? I'm going back and I'm watching an interview that you had. I know that this is much debated. Tom Morales came out and said, look, I was paying $139,000 last year. This year, I'm going to pay $600,000. That's a $461,000 increase in property taxes. That's not sustainable. I don't know how that's even a thing. When you were asked, I believe Dennis Farrier asked you at a press conference, he played the whole thing. What it sounded like was, hey, look, we're a growing city. If he can't afford that, somebody will.

39:33Yeah. If you look at the entire exchange that Dennis and I have, it is much more complicated than that. It is the case that in some locations, the business environment changes. Think about Broadway itself. It wasn't much more than 25 years ago that there were a handful of honky-tonks in as many adult bookstores and places you could go see peep shows. At the moment you open a business, that landscape changes dramatically. Now, it is full of out of area, capitalized, anybody gets a top 40 hit, they'll slap somebody's name on a bar and they'll pay $50 million for a building. That's an extraordinary environment. Unfortunately, for anybody in that landscape, if you've been operating a traditional business and your goal is not to try to sell your building later for $50 million or you don't own the building and you're just trying to operate the business, that's the hardest thing we have to deal with as a city because we know that the entertainment district on Broadway is not the only place that's happening.

40:47I hear you on the that's not sustainable, but I also look at a landscape where people are paying $50 to $100 million for buildings in that area. I don't have any levers in that environment to control what people are willing to pay for a place like that. Is there any relief you can offer? I think Tom said it really well when he said this is the soul of Nashville. You look at what made Broadway, what makes Nashville special and what is the independent operators. It's Jesse Lee Jones over at Roberts Western World and what they're doing over there. It's Leila Vartanian, Tom Morales. Roberts is expanding. That's the other interesting thing. We still see some of these places as expanding and I think some of it too is the market. One of the other things that we don't have a lot of control over but we see and what is happening in our revenue that puts even more pressure on us is right now people are simply consuming measurably less alcohol. That hurts a place whose business relies on some amount of alcohol sales. That's a challenge. I know that from the business owner perspective.

42:04It is a function of this. If one of the ways you've been earning your revenue, it makes it even less sustainable when the properties around you are incredibly valuable. We're looking at relief. We are talking to the state about they've got a $30 million economic incentive that they provided specifically for the boundaries of the tourism development zone downtown. All of the area businesses down there are going to be able to participate in that. I think the hardest part though is the selectivity of it. It is unevenly distributed. We've known that for years but that's also how cities in the landscape of what we are able to do, the only tool we really have to keep public schools open, to operate a police department, to pick up the trash on a weekly basis is to have that amount of revenue.

43:07Massively in the past three years, we haven't had an explosion of headcount. What we've also experienced is just costs have gone up. Our economic and community development team also works very closely with our business community to understand what are your costs, what are your pressures. Is it just taxes or is it fuel prices, food prices, all of these things? We have as complete a picture as we can so we know what the landscape of relief looks like. We have not just developed that property investment incentive. I'll tell you, we are about to have in front of council an entire package of small and legacy and workforce supports. We're very excited to be working on that. Later this year, we're hoping to have an entire collection of workforce pathways that we are helping Nashvilleians participate in more fully. We're very, very sensitive to the business landscape as a whole and we try to support it as much as we can. I heard John Rich on Fox News the other day say he's going to have to charge $50 a drink just to keep his doors open. Five years from now, what does Broadway look like with no, let's just say it puts Layla's, it puts Robert's Western World, Acme, puts a bunch of these out of business. What does Broadway look like without those independents on it?

44:33We're going to take another quick break before he answers that question and I am going to tell you about a few more sponsors. Now, there's not going to be contact information here. I'm going to direct you to naranashville.com where you can find on our vendor page all of these businesses, contact information and ways to get a hold of them. I want to start off by telling you about R4 Humidity and Cooler Control Solutions. This is a company that will come into your walk-in, they install this proprietary, it's a disc that goes on the top of your walk-in, but it reduces your humidity levels. So what it does, if you're a walk-in, you're a walk-in, there's any kind of moisture in there, it keeps your product fresher longer and it keeps your cooler three degrees colder. It actually reduces the humidity and it is, the ROI is everything on this because your cooler works less, which means it breaks down less and means your food lasts longer. Go to our website to check them out. I also want to tell you about Twine Graphics. They're a local screen printer, embroidery, anything that you need for your business and your merch. If you want to create custom t-shirts, custom hats, all of our NARA merchandise is done through Twine Graphics.

45:48They're local, they screen print right in downtown Franklin. They actually have a retail store in downtown Franklin. Brandon and John are amazing over there. Anybody who gets merch needs to call Twine Graphics. If you're looking at marketing, social media marketing, websites, you need to be talking with Pliny Crane. They're going to be at our event on September the 1st. They're going to be doing headshots. So when you come to the event, dress ready for a headshot. You get a free headshot, free social post. These guys are really, really amazing. They're game changers and if anybody needs help with their marketing, they do consultations. You should definitely get a hold of Pliny Crane. We've got a great THC brand in Wild. Wild THC, they do some really great canned mocktails. Zero alcohol, they've got two milligrams, they've got five milligrams, they've got ten milligrams. They are doing amazing things. Really good flavors, really low sugar. Wild THC, that's W-Y-L-D. Check them out at our website. Another THC brand that we absolutely love is North Canna. North Canna is producing some of the best THC drinks, those and Wild. We've tried so many different brands and these are our absolute two favorites and they want to support your restaurant. They're both going to be at the event. Come try their product but they are definitely, if you're going to be going the THC route, and guys I'm telling you, GLP ones are a real thing. People are eating less and they're drinking less. They're looking for solutions that are not alcohol and THC is a great way to find a solution without the hangover.

47:39The lower doses for your inside your restaurant are absolutely amazing. I want to tell you about Adams Keegan for all your payroll and HR needs. These guys are amazing. They're going to be giving away a chef's knife. I can't think of the name of the brand but it's a local brand. It's a custom knife they're going to be giving away at the event and we're really excited about that. If you don't use a company for HR, they do an amazing job. Let me tell you, it is really important that you have a good HR company. They do fractional HR and payroll. That is Adams Keegan. Finally, I want to tell you about Kitchen Guard. Everybody needs their hoods cleaned. There's a bunch of companies that do it. You need to do this quarterly. Kurt Kowalski and his team at Kitchen Guard do the job right the first time. They are the best. If you're wondering, hey my hood cleaner, I got it done. Kitchen fires are real and you need to have a great company who's cleaning your hoods, going on the roof, taking pictures, cleaning it out so that your restaurant is safe. That is what Kitchen Guard does. They're going to be there at the event with our new fire suppression brand. They're going to be working together. They're going to be giving away a free hood cleaning. Make sure that you come to our event on September the 1st. Register at naranashville.com and go to naranashville.com and you can find all of these brands and more to help you succeed as an individual local restaurant. Let's jump back in right now with Freddie O'Connell.

49:21What does Broadway look like without those independents on it? I'd be really surprised if we get to that point. I think between the state putting some direct economic relief on the table, between a package of things, we spent a good part of this year working with not just Broadway area business owners, but also independent owners in multiple different parts of the county on what a comprehensive toolkit might look like. In some cases, it's things we can do directly and locally. That's stuff we're working on the council with right now. In other cases, we will have to collaborate with the state to change the landscape, but we're looking at everything from can you start to phase some of these payments? Can you start to offer a pathway for historic districts to have maybe some different parameters apply? Can you look at longevity of both commercial and residential ownership and say the curve is a little bit different for how valuation might be considered?

50:27You know, can you allow somebody who is in a triple net lease actually participate in appeal of the assessment process, right? There's a whole series of things that we're looking at that could be potential reforms that help here. Well, that's what I was going to ask. There's been over 15,000 appraisal appeals reportedly filed following the latest reappraisal. Thousands of taxpayers may owe another tax bill before receiving the decision on their previous appeal. Of the first 7,270 reported decisions, 4,252 resulted in some adjustment. That is a significant percentage. Where are we at with the rest of those? So, here's where I will tell you. I mean, this is another complexity of government that is one of the hardest things to grapple with is we have a regular conversation with the assessor's office and our Department of Finance is also in regular conversation with the state comptroller's office, but that is where that interplay happens for the appeals. I mean, one thing we have tried to do is work to ensure that we are putting enough people on the appeals board scenario that are both qualified and can show up, and it is a complicated process because these people go into session and are there for a while, and there is a reasonable expectation that there'd be some kind of compensation for that, but that's about the only thing our office does is we've tried to kind of flood the zone on making sure that people are there to hear the appeals, but everything else that happens there is between the assessor's office's own process of assessment and the appeals board, and then there is a state appeals board as well, and we don't have any say in any of that as the mayor's office.

52:27Interesting. What is your relationship like with the state? I know we have a Republican-led state, and it can be a challenge. How has that been? It's mixed. I mean, I think we've had a very good relationship with the executive branch, and then just depending on what other political pressures and whether they're in an election year, the legislative branch can be sometimes more complicated, but a lot of those important offices that are sort of in between, like the comptroller's office, they work very closely and well with our finance department, and so that's a good thing, and frankly, every now and then, they give us a tool that we immediately put into play. Like for instance, this year, they carved out a pathway for Nashville and Davidson County to be able to participate in grocery tax reduction, and so we immediately put a grocery tax cut into our budget this year, and that's a challenge because basically, in order to do that, I had to go ask every department in Metro to look for efficiency savings to allow households and anybody who's buying groceries to get millions of dollars of tax relief in that regard.

53:46Right now, there's a gubernatorial race. We have Jerry Green versus Marsha Blackburn. What changes? Let's say Jerry Green wins this. You'd be pretty excited about that, I imagine. Why? I think the priorities there, just right now where we are, I think in the governor's race, in Tennessee in particular, I don't know. Maybe the state parties have a platform, but usually, you're going to see the governors out there duking it out. I mean, if you look at where the ads are, you've got one candidate talking about how hard I guess she's going to be on China. She wins the race, which is an interesting position for a governor. I like your response to that, by the way. And then another talking about things like expanding healthcare access, right? And so, sure. I mean, I think there's obviously easier and more difficult candidates to work with, but I don't think it's always even partisan necessarily. We have enjoyed a regular and productive working relationship with the Lee administration, and it's good to know in advance the places where there is clear ideological misalignment, so you can focus on the places where there may be some strategic alignment. All right. I'm going to let you off this hot seat for a moment, okay? And now, I'm going to talk to something that's near and dear to a lot of people. Brandon, can we jump back, though? I mean, you just raised a lot of the people who have been critical, and I'm curious from your standpoint, talking to all these people. What are you hearing from the people who are like, oh, yeah, business is great? Like when we talked to David Andrews at the Andrews Bakery, he's like, oh, yeah, things are great here.

55:40I mean, do you talk to those folks, too? We absolutely do. We have 100 members in the Nashville Area Restaurant Alliance now. Nashville Area Restaurant Alliance was formed to help a lot of individuals, smaller, single-owned restaurants like the Andrews. He's a member of our group, who don't necessarily have the funds to hire a COO or a director of operations. We come in, and we fractionally do that for companies. We have NDAs. We have the whole thing signed with everybody, so we see all the numbers and everything. It's amazing how many predatory vendors are out there, how many people are being taken advantage of. I think that there's a lot of areas of opportunity for us to save those restaurants a good amount of money, which would make up for a portion of that tax. I think there is some operational efficiencies that restaurants could take advantage of. On my side, I see people that are doing well, and I see people that are struggling. We've been able to help a lot of people that are struggling kind of go, oh, man, I've been focused on so many things. I needed this help over here.

56:55It's motivational. It gets their feet back on the ground, and it gets them going again. It's been great. There are a lot of people out there who are doing really well, and then there are people who are struggling, and we try and work with all of them. Mad Fientist So let me make this commitment to you. It's very easy to follow up on this conversation directly with you and the alliance to say, we want to work with your members to ensure that not just the policy landscape, but the overall. You didn't just ask about financial. You asked about cultural. Yes, I am a deep believer that our independent business community here is a part of Nashville's overall appeal as a city. Not only does it make it great to live here, it also makes it enjoyable to visit. We absolutely are intent on keeping that fabric intact, and we want to understand what is contributing to the successes for those that are succeeding. Correspondingly, we want to understand and respond to the challenges that everybody is facing because on the flip side of that tax question is, the only reason we have that stuff anyway is so you can go tracking the PAFR again, exactly where every dollar goes. We are every day doing the same thing you are trying to do. We are trying to help Metro be more efficient and deliver the services that everybody who both lives here and spends money in these restaurants as well as the business relies on.

58:21Is she giving you the high sign? She's giving me the hook, but let's go down the homestretch with the stuff. Well, that's what I was going to say. I could stay here for a really long time because I think you have Starbucks, you have Oracle, you have the NFL, you have all these tax breaks. But I want to talk about traffic for a minute and the Choose How You Move initiative because I know that's something that's big for you, and it's been brought up on the podcast several times about the bike lanes. Restaurant owners hate the bike lanes. Nobody's using the bike lanes. Traffic is getting worse, not better. What do we have going on here? Do we see some relief? Do we know what's happening? Are we getting rid of the bike lanes or are we doubling down? Well, so Brandon, it's really interesting. I think we have not as a city always dialed in to the most strategic deployment of some of our safer infrastructure approaches. We just recently became a member city of NACTO, which is a national organization that focuses on the National Association of County Transportation Officials. We're, in fact, hosting their annual conference in Nashville next year. Here's what I can tell you.

59:33Study after study and city after city, both in North America, including the United States and across the world, shows that if you have a true network of safer infrastructure, it winds up actually producing a better business environment. Very often, that is sidewalks, but in some cases, in fact, in many cases, it can include bikeways or other mobility lanes. Think of the scooters and e-bikes that are out there right now. Honestly, it doesn't matter if you love or hate any of these things. What you can see clearly indicated in well-designed cities is that better overall strategic infrastructure improvements can improve the business landscape. I don't think we have that completely dialed in as well as we should in Nashville, but my hope would be that if we get this right, you should see a mix of opportunities. One, through Choose How You Move itself, which is fundamentally a transit improvement program with corresponding infrastructure investments. Four key principles, sidewalks, signals, service, and safety. We will build more sidewalks.

01:00:49We will modernize traffic signals, which is fundamentally oriented toward giving more green lights to everybody on our roadways, including motorists and transit vehicles. We will expand transit service. We already have four times over since it passed. The entire system should mean if you are a transit user, you understand that there is a safety division focused on you and the safety of your trip from the moment you show up at a bus stop, arrive at a community transit center, and get to your destination, but also that roadway safety improves. If we get this right, we should have fewer crashes and ultimately injuries and fatalities. We should have overall less traffic in the places where we have been able to make improvements. We should have a better business environment. Those are the three biggest metrics we are looking at. I love it. I just know I was sitting on Commerce Street today in front of the Renaissance Hotel. I was stopped and there was this huge bike lane that was an entire lane that there was not one person on. I was like, why the hell is that there? I have told multiple people that my expectation is in order to get through any part of downtown, you have to be able to get to downtown. That has also been a challenge for years. I live less than two miles north of Broadway and the thought for years of even walking to downtown was challenging. It was everything.

01:02:12It was lighting. It was sidewalk availability. It was crossing major corridors. We have made steady improvements to the point where a few years ago, one of my neighbors in Germantown, who started working for Bridgestone, worked with me on some lighting improvements. Suddenly, he was a pedestrian commuter. That is somebody who is now not traffic, not contributing to traffic and has safer passage. That is a good outcome for him. He loves it. We want those kinds of options for more people, but we have to be more strategic in our deployment. We have a new director of our National Department of Transportation starting in September, actually, I guess August 31st. I am looking forward to hitting the ground running. We are walking, biking, driving, and taking transit and further implementation of Choose How You Move in a way that showcases the very best of what this stuff is capable of achieving. If anybody is interested in learning more about that program, just visit nashville.gov. **Matt Stauffer** Thank you very much for your time today. I appreciate you getting on the hot seat, you being willing to come and talk on the podcast. I have been a big fan since the day that I met you in the studio back all those years. I know that this is a challenging job. I know that you love the city of Nashville. I know that you are here. I love your why. I think we all have that same why. I am excited to announce that you are going to be at our Nashville Area Restaurant Alliance Independent Restaurant Show. You are going to be speaking to independent restaurant owners and apparently taking questions, which is exciting. We do not know how long we have for questions at that event. Thank you for agreeing to come and speak to your constituents.

01:04:04It is huge. Let me repeat, listen to. We want to hear from your alliance and your membership and make sure that we are making it as easy as it feasibly can be to operate not just a business, but specifically a restaurant in Nashville. We know very clearly how. Governing, we make tough decisions and trade-offs every day running a business the same way. I am incredible and have the honor of having had the experience to be able to do both. Brandon, I appreciate what you do for our restaurant community and look forward to continuing the conversation. Yes, sir. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day. Again, thank you for joining us today. Glad to do it. Good to be with you again. Take care. Take care. Big thank you to our mayor, Freddie O'Connell, for joining us here on the podcast. Final thought. What do I think about this? Guys, I walked into this conversation really wanting to better understand what is happening with the property taxes in Nashville. After talking to the mayor, I think I do understand it a little better. It is complicated, but I also keep coming back to something much simpler. A restaurant owner has a P&L. At the end of the month, the numbers either work or they don't. Freddie can be correct that Nashville has a historically low tax rate. Restaurant owners can also be correct that their actual tax bill has become incredibly difficult to absorb. Those two things can exist at the same time. What I don't want for this conversation to become is government versus business, or Republican versus Democrat, or growth versus nostalgia. I want the question to be, how do we grow Nashville without accidentally eliminating the businesses that made the people want to come here in the first place? Because

01:06:04Robert's Western World isn't just a business occupying valuable real estate. Layla's isn't just a parcel number. Neither is the neighborhood restaurant that's been serving the community for 20 plus years. They're part of a product we're selling when we tell the world to come to Nashville. One thing I appreciate about this conversation is that the mayor didn't tell us to stop complaining. He said he wants to keep listening, so we're going to take him up on that. September the 1st, he's coming to our independent restaurant show. He's going to be standing in a room full of people actually operating these businesses every day. My hope isn't that everybody agrees. My hope is that we keep putting the people making the policy and the people living with the consequences in the same room. That is how we get somewhere. Look forward to seeing you guys in nine days at the independent restaurant show at Fat Bottom Brewery. It's from three to six. If you are a restaurant owner or somebody who works in a restaurant, you want to be a part of this, go to naranashville.com right now and register. We would love to have you there. Thank you for listening today. Look forward to continuing the conversation with you live and in person next Tuesday. Hope that you guys are being safe out there. Love you guys. Bye.