Voting closes today for the city’s latest round of participatory budgeting, an initiative first piloted by the Cooper administration in 2021. The $10.7 million project underwent abrupt leadership changes twice in five months, losing steering committee chair Whitney Pastorek in May followed by the October departure of Fabian Bedne, who headed the project from the mayor’s office. After Bedne’s departure, the project has been overseen by deputy director Mary Jo Wiggins of the Metro Finance Department.
The 35 proposed projects — one for each council district — reflect unaddressed neighborhood needs across Davidson County. The projects include improvements at 15 local parks, 12 requests for pedestrian safety infrastructure and five updates at local libraries and schools. The top vote-getters will be funded from a pot of $10 million with a spending cap tied to each area’s Social Vulnerability Index, a number from 1 to 4 that approximates hardship within a community. Areas assessed as the most vulnerable, like Bordeaux and Antioch, have a $4.5 million spending cap; those assessed as least vulnerable, like West Meade and 12South, have a spending cap of $1.5 million.
Projects range from $50,000 for traffic calming on 24th Avenue North to $1.75 million for a turf dog park at the Smith Springs Community Center. Nine projects cost less than $100,000; four come in over $1 million. The 30 least expensive proposals could be fully funded with $9.5 million, and all could be funded for just over $16 million. The city awarded a contract to local PR firm Hall Strategies to increase public engagement in the voting process, with $600,000 in funds going to Hall for ads and other expenditures.
Pastorek resigned from her position as chair of the participatory budgeting steering committee in May. In an interview with the Scene, she characterized the process as a bureaucratic distraction from systemic underinvestment by the city in Nashville neighborhoods.
Bedne recently took a job at architecture firm Moody Nolan and declined to speak with the Scene on the record. The mayor’s office directed the Scene to Wiggins, who did not immediately return a request for comment.
