ARP Committee 2/9/22

We have received survey response from Davidson County residents informing us of their priorities for ARP funds. 2,116 people took the survey with the highest participants coming from zip code 37211 in South/SE Nashville. Affordable housing is the number one priority for those who took the survey. It’s important to note once again childcare, which was not originally on our draft guide, is one of the top priorities. Another item to note is free legal services funding. We have not had the opportunity to address this yet, but I know there is a coalition of nonprofits and advocacy groups who are currently working on this item. I believe this ties into the overall idea of housing that we see throughout the survey (affordable housing, sheltering and wrap around services for the unhoused, free legal services for evictions).

There was also a section in the survey to input items of importance that might have been missing from the list. There were a little less than 1600 responses for this. I will not attached them because there are many an several are very detailed. Some things that were mentioned consistently that have not been addressed in previous funding were funding for schools (remote learning, counseling, teacher pay, sub pay), immigration legal services, TRANSPORTATION, frontline worker relief, environment (littler, climate change), WALKABILITY, food, premium pay for healthcare workers, broadband, green space, garbage pickup. My favorite response was someone asking for a giant swing between the batman building spires and free ice cream for all residents. I want to highlight two responses. The first who I suspect came from one of my constituents, John, who is a rock star in the homelessness and transportation spaces. Funding for Narcan. The second being immigration legal services. We had a number of people asking for this to be a priority. Other cities have already allocated funding to address this. However, not to be left out are SEVERAL people asking for transportation and sidewalks.

We did begin the conversation about funding childcare at the meeting. I will wait to post about that since they will be back before us with a plan and an ask. We did not make any new additional recommendations for funding yesterday.