Ben Cunningham, founder of the Nashville Tea Party, said not only does Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell’s $3.1 billion transit referendum, which is expected to be presented to Davidson County voters on the November ballot, appear illegal under the 2017 IMPROVE Act, but its implementation would inevitably raise property taxes for residents.
O’Connell unveiled his transit plan, “Choose How You Move: An All-Access Pass to Sidewalks, Signals, Service, and Safety,” last month.
The plan – which comes with a price tag of $3.1 billion in initial costs and $111 million in recurring costs – would be funded through a half-cent increase in the city’s sales tax to construct miles of new sidewalks, bus stops, transit centers, parking facilities, and upgraded traffic signals.
The mayor has also said he plans to leverage federal funds to help pay for elements of the plan:
On the federal level, Nashville has a finite and unprecedented opportunity to bring more federal tax dollars back to Music City if we act now. Dedicated funding would provide the matching funds needed to leverage over $1.4 billion in future federal dollars to invest in transportation and improve access over the next 15 years.
Cunningham said O’Connell’s plan to leverage federal funds for the project, if successful, would lead to residents’ property taxes being raised as the federal funds would eventually “run out.”
“This raises another can of worms that we should be talking about. They talked very specifically about using this dedicated funding to leverage federal grants. They’re going to get federal grants,” Cunningham explained on Tuesday’s edition of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show.
“Now, what’s going to happen when they get a billion dollars to run the bus system and that billion dollars runs out? We have seen time and time again across the country. It’s called a fiscal cliff. When these cities stop getting this federal money, they fall off this physical cliff. It happened in New York. It happened in Chicago. The transit people say, ‘Oh my goodness, we’ve got to raise local taxes because we’ve got to fill up that deficit.’ That’s what’s going to happen. Not only is this proposal about the half-cent sales tax increase, it’s about huge future property tax increases that are going to be triggered by this,” Cunningham added.
In addition to the likely raised property taxes due to the transit plan, if voters approve it, leveraging federal funds, Cunningham also stressed that Nashville property taxes will be raised next year, as it is a reappraisal year.
Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
Photo “Freddie O’Connell” by Freddie O’Connell, Mayor of Metropolitan Nashville & Davidson County.