SEIU Local 205 issued the following statement in response to Mayor David Briley's "State of Metro" address and his proposed budget for Metro Government in Nashville for 2019-2020:

Mayor Briley’s State of Metro address outlined a budget that is an improvement from last year. We are thankful the Mayor has prioritized fulfilling the commitment of a cost-of-living adjustment for Metro employees and for extending that to Metro Schools employees. We are also encouraged that Mayor Briley is supporting a $15/hour minimum wage for Metro employees, something our union fights to achieve for all workers.

Despite these hopeful signs, there are a lot of details about this budget and the city’s revenue projections which are still unknown. We do know that our public schools will remain underfunded, as Mayor Briley acknowledged in his remarks today. The MNPS School Board requested much more than what Mayor Briley is proposing and our teachers, paraprofessionals, and other school support staff - many of whom work two or three jobs just to get by - literally can’t afford to wait for the “multi-year, long-term approach” that Mayor Briley recommended. We hope the Metro Council will fully fund the school board’s budget request.

We share many of the goals Mayor Briley laid out in his State of Metro address, but we do not believe his vision for Nashville can be accomplished without addressing the core revenue issue that our city faces. If the mayor is correct and Nashville continues to grow, so will the demand on our schools and public services. Metro will struggle to meet these challenges until we directly confront the structural revenue problem created by Mayor Barry and the Metro Council adopting the lowest property tax rate in the history of Metro Government. That decision in 2017 was effectively a large tax cut that disproportionately benefited developers and commercial property owners and is at the root of all of Nashville’s budget challenges.

Brad Rayson President, SEIU Local 205