Metro Public Courthouse
The Metro Council officially approved Mayor Freddie O’Connell’s 2025 Capital Improvements Budget Tuesday night without fanfare at a special-called meeting. The budget, which includes $18.3 billion in total requests, functions as a planning tool for facility and equipment upgrades eyed by the city over the next six years. School expansions and renovations, new and improved libraries and park land acquisition make up the bulk of the budget.
City officials describe the annual CIB as Metro’s running “menu” of upgrades. A line item can sit here for years or receive direct funding via intermittent Capital Spending Plans, which green-light priority projects roughly every year. O’Connell’s most recent CSP came in January.
Most new requests added to a long list of school expansions and renovations on the horizon for Metro Nashville Public Schools. Those includes $535 million for HVAC updates, $176 million for elementary schools in Cane Ridge and Antioch, and $6.3 billion for “district-wide projects” and “school renovations.” Park maintenance, greenway land acquisition and community center improvements claim another $2 billion. The CIB also includes various other small-dollar projects, like sidewalks and crosswalks, that typically come from district councilmembers hoping to secure funding for their neighborhoods.
O’Connell can choose to elevate any of these projects onto the next CSP. Most are funded by general obligation bonds, which allow the city to borrow against its tax base on the bond market.
