Twenty-one candidates qualified to run for at-large seats on the Metro Council.
The campaign for at-large is unique. Because the top five vote-getters win, candidates typically remain positive, and surprising candidates can sneak into the winners’ circle.
Early voting for Metro Council and mayoral elections starts July 14, with Election Day following Aug. 3. A runoff, if needed, would come in September.
Our latest Q&A with an at-large candidate is with Quin Evans Segall, an attorney and co-owner of a title company who has been on the city’s Industrial Development Board since 2018. Previously, we spoke with candidates Burkley Allen and Russ Pulley. This interview has been edited for length.
You said in 2021 that Oracle, whose incentive package went through the IDB, “has a much better track record than a lot of other companies.” Do you still feel good about that deal?
We always knew there was going to be a long run-up to build, because Oracle operates a little differently from a typical developer, in that they don't fully flesh out their plan until after they buy the property. Most companies and people do the opposite. We've had some mixed signals regarding how that's going to progress and the state of things given the ongoing lack of presence in commercial offices. I am hopeful that they will continue that deal. The nice thing about that deal is if they don't build the infrastructure, they don't get the tax break. We have protected us from being on the hook for a lot of money if we don't see results. I would like to see those results. Having that extra pedestrian bridge and additional water mitigation factors, as well as the important work of making sure the archeological evidence, to the extent there is any, is handled appropriately, and the landfill is cleaned up appropriately. I think those are all things that would benefit our city.
Why did you draw attention to a proposed pass-through deal for Montgomery Bell Academy?
I think the city has an important role to play with interest rates where they are in serving as a pass-through to those nonprofits who are benefiting our community, because it helps them without putting any liability on us as a city. In that particular instance, we received very little notice. There were many questions that I and others on the board had on the deal. I was not able to get answers to my questions, and there was an assumption that the Industrial Development Board would just do whatever was asked of it. The Industrial Development Board has a really important role to play when it comes to digging into things and making sure they're good deals for the city, that we are open about the details of the deal and that we give Nashvillians time to understand what's happening and make sure they're on board with the deal as well. What we don't want to happen is to pass a bunch of stuff that is opaque, that people don't have a chance to think about and discuss. With that deal we just weren't given that opportunity, which is why it was deferred so there would be more time to consider it, and they chose not to come back.
How should the city, whether it's the IDB or the council or the mayor's office, incentivize development or new business moving forward?
There are a variety of ways to do that. It depends on the deal and what it brings to Nashvillians as to which way makes more sense. Generally we've moved away from job grants and that, I think, is the right decision. Though we really do need to go back to funding job grants for small, local women- and minority-owned businesses. We used to be a lot better at supporting our local businesses than we are today. As Nashville continues to grow more and more expensive, it becomes harder to start and build those really important local businesses. Job grants and other grants have a really important role in helping our local businesses, which we really need. When it comes to PILOTs, we have also moved away from those. There can be a role for those, but it should be limited to what we really consider to be public good. Other counties use PILOTs for things like day care centers as opposed to big businesses. I think there is a role, when we talk about quality of life, to use something like a PILOT for a day care center. I know it is a real struggle for Nashville families. When we look at whether there's any value to PILOT, it makes sense to keep it in that type of context and similar public goods that affect the quality of life of everybody.
How else could the city be involved on child care?
The city needs to take a pretty aggressive role in that. There are a handful of things right off the bat we could do as a city. One would be to work with developers of these centers to help get them built. Other counties in Tennessee do that, so we would not be doing anything that is not standard throughout the state. There are also nonprofit programs available to create child care at reduced rates for teachers. That could be expanded to all Metro employees. There's one operating locally in a charter school, but we need to look at whether there are MNPS facilities where we could also get those up and running. It costs about $600,000 to retrofit a few rooms in a school to a fully functioning licensable day care and to be able to provide a slightly reduced rate to Metro employees and teachers would go a really long way in creating a more affordable city for people while also freeing up day care spaces in other centers for everybody else. Some states have tried things called trishare programs. Those are generally on the state level but they can certainly be done on the local level. They're a real bipartisan solution, so they're not likely to get much pushback from the state. In those, you partner with local employers and you say as a government we will grant one-third of the cost of child care if as an employer you will also grant one-third of the cost of child care. When you do that, you take a $1,200 a month child care bill for somebody down to $400 a month. Saving somebody what works out to $9,600 a year in child care costs, it's an incredible increase in their quality of life. For less than we spend on bike lanes currently in the city, we could pilot a trishare program, expand nonprofit programs, implement a robust PILOT program and we could, within just a few years, open up a thousand affordable spots in Nashville. Is that enough? No. But do we have to start somewhere? Yes. That's a place we can start.
How would you have voted on the Titans stadium deal?
At its very core, a lawmaker's job if you're looking at a deal is to make the best deal you possibly can and then decide if it's a good deal. Unfortunately for the Titans deal, what we saw was everyone came out very early on with a position, and the deal was essentially take it or leave it, which is unfortunate because it could have been a really good deal worth doing. As it was, I would not have voted for it.
What should the city prioritize on the East Bank now that it's happening?
Generally the East Bank plan that has been out there is a plan that can work really well for Nashville with the exception that it does not at all contemplate the future of transit in the way we need it to. We really need to think about if we're going to have multimodal mass transit in Nashville, how will it play in to this East Bank. Really aside from a straight bus line, there has been no real thought into making sure we preserve the ability to put mass transit into the East Bank. I also would hope that we would consider financing mechanisms that don't take from our general fund, and those are certainly available to us. We have CBIDs available to us. We used one out in Antioch at the new interchange out there. The downtown partnership has two. A property tax CBID is an overlay tax, and then those tax funds pay typically for bonds and those bonds are issued to fund the infrastructure. Unlike a TIF or a PILOT, we're not taking money from our general tax base. It's an additional tax on top, and I hope the city is really considering that. What we can't afford to do is give away hundreds of millions of dollars for East Bank development when we cannot pick up trash, when we cannot fill potholes, when we cannot get enough books in our schools.
How would you like to see the conversation about racetrack renovations play out?
I hope the council is able to look at it and say is there a way to make this better that makes it OK. If not, it is what it is. If so, we need to have those conversations. My understanding of that deal is that it's always been based on having a backstop to the general fund like the prior Titans deal. We can't afford to do that. There are other ways to do that, and we've shown with the soccer stadium and with the new Titans deal that we don't have to rely on our general fund to fund sports venues.
Should there be a referendum on transit funding?
Yes.
What would you want that to look like?
What we learned last time is we really have to have a robust conversation with people and make sure folks are really on board with the plan. At a minimum it needs to involve light rail to the airport and the Gallatin corridor. Depending on who is in the mayor's office and the timing at which we can get it done, it should either be on the next presidential ballot or the next statewide gubernatorial race.
Are you supporting anyone in the mayor's race? What do you want to see from the winner?
I have a lot of friends and colleagues running for mayor, and they all have an incredible breadth of strengths among them. I am not supporting anyone necessarily over another. I am supporting all of them and have offered to help all of them in equal ways. What I want to see in the next mayor is somebody who takes transit seriously, takes affordable housing seriously, takes the budgeting process and the nuts and bolts of Metro, which desperately need to be reformed and brought up to the standards of 2023, seriously. I want to see a mayor who is willing to put in the work to collaborate with council and the state of Tennessee. Working with those we agree with is really easy. Working with those we don't always agree with is much harder, but it's really important that we try.
How would you have voted on license plate readers? What are you looking for as the pilot comes to a conclusion?
I certainly always have concerns when we're storing data about people, because there is no way to limit that data to our goals. The state always can reach down and get that. The federal government can always reach down and get that. We just can't prevent that. Certainly storage of data accessible to other law enforcement agencies that don't reflect always the priorities of Nashville is a concern to me. Now that we have them, we need to make sure we are addressing those concerns the best we can and creating the appropriate storage requirements. I do have ongoing concerns about effectiveness versus cost. A friend of my family recently had her license plate switched out on her car. She went home and a Cookeville license plate reader picked up the stolen plate and suddenly a SWAT team was around her house. If that is the result of license plate readers, we can't do that. That's not OK. How do we guardrail it now that the cat is out of the bag is going to be really important.
On your website, it says you want to remove "unrealistic infrastructure barriers placed on developers." What do you mean by that?
Right now, we have two main problems with how Metro operates. One of those is that Metro doesn't have clear guidelines and policies for what is required in situations that are not just building. How do you improve a park? If you want to donate a sidewalk to a city, how do we do that? We really don't have clear plans and policies and guidelines in place for a whole lot of things that come up. We also have a whole lot of outdated policies and procedures that have to be updated. Our zoning code has not been updated in longer than for any other time period in Metro's history. Almost everything has to go and get a variance. When variances are the norm and not the exception, and those variances are also typically granted, that tells us that we have a problem. When we look at building housing, we look at all the things Metro doesn't have a policy for that developers don't alway expect, and so they go to Metro and they're asked to build infrastructure that maybe isn't related to their site or is outside the scope of their work. They don't know to anticipate that because we have no way of communicating beforehand that's going to be there. That messes up the budgeting and you don't get the housing built. If those were there, even if they were large in scope, people could plan around them. You could absorb it a little easier. On the flip side, we're putting developers through a variance and planning process that, because the law does not mostly match the outcome, we're making them fight at every stage for something they're probably going to get anyway. That drives up the cost to build housing. We as a city need to have really clear, defined zoning and planning standards and implement them fairly across the board, which we're just not doing right now.
You also talk on your website about increasing coordination between Metro and private developers to offset costs of low-income housing. How can Metro do that?
In my experience on the Industrial Development Board, internally within Metro and inter-governmentally between MDHA, IDB, Health and Educational Facilities Board and the state of Tennessee, there's very little communication. The Industrial Development Board did a housing development out by Briley Parkway where we issued the bonds to lower the borrowing cost for that development. The state of Tennessee provided support for that development. MDHA did the PILOT for that development. When I showed up to the ribbon cutting for that development, a representative from MDHA said, "What are you doing here?" I said, "Well we did the bonds." The representative said, "We had no idea you were involved in this deal." That is a recipe to get nothing done. If we are not all communicating and working together to get affordable housing built, we will not be able to provide the tools we need to developers to succeed.
