NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — How should Nashville spend billions of your tax dollars? Metro Council members heard hundreds of answers Tuesday night, as it held public hearings on the Mayor's 2024 budget proposal.
Lisa Bubert, the Madison Library Children's Librarian, relayed several comments from co-workers.
"Being married is the only way I can afford to keep my job in this city," Bubert said, reading a comment from a different library employee who runs the summer reading program in Nashville. "I have a roommate and no car, that's how I'm getting by. I've dropped my hopes of getting an MLIS, that's the master's degree you need to be a librarian."
That was the theme heard throughout council chambers: that this city is getting too expensive to live in, with Metro employee wages not keeping up.
This year's proposed operating budget from Mayor Cooper is $3.2 billion, a 6% increase from last year.
That includes a 100 million dollar increase in funding for Metro Public Schools.
It also includes money to increase pay for police officers and firefighters, and for all Metro employees including Metro Schools, it includes a 4% Cost of Living Adjustment, known as COLA.
And for folks who've worked in their jobs so long that they can no longer get step-based merit raises, it's that COLA increases they're really pushing for.
"If you fund COLA, people at the top of their ranges can get salary increases, if you give us a 5 percent COLA increase, the top of my range and everyone else's ranges in Nashville goes up," said Jenny Ellis, a Nashville Public Library librarian.
Metro council has until July 1 to approve the budget. If it doesn't, the mayor's version of the budget goes into effect.
