Nashville councilman says meeting was 'hijacked' by people calling to defund police
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WZTV) — A Metro councilman said the people of Nashville "got cheated" as members only heard from six people before passing a massive 32 percent property tax increase during a nearly 11 hour meeting.
Metro Councilman Steve Glover said the marathon meeting was "hijacked" by members of the public calling to defund the Metro Nashville Police Department.
The Tuesday meeting didn't adjourn until about 6:30 a.m. Wednesday as the sun began to rise. Countless citizens who called and showed up to City Hall Tuesday and early Wednesday overwhelmingly said the city could find some of that money by cutting the funding of the MNPD, which is set to get nearly $500 million in the proposed budget.
"Not in my lifetime and don't tell me that's what people in Nashville want to do is defund our police. Given all the activity that's happened over the weekend, given the fact that we couldn't cover it anyway, we're so short on police officers right now. We're 108 police officers short and now we want to defund our police department? I don't think so," Glover said. "We don't defund our police department, we don't defund our fire department, we don't defund our first responders. We have too few of them as it is right now."
As Glover said the meeting was "hijacked" by numerous people calling to defund police, he said only six people against the massive 32% property tax increase were heard from before the budget passed on second reading.
"I think the people of Nashville got cheated tonight," Glover said in an interview with FOX 17 News. "I'm extremely concerned about the length of it because here's what happened: All the people who did want to speak about it, oh they have jobs, so they were getting up and having to go to their work today, or they stayed up as long as they could. I can't tell you how many messages I got with people saying, 'I give up, I'm going to bed.'"
Metro Councilman Bob Mendes said the meeting ended up being more about the protests than the budget.
"It did strike me that it was more of a protest than a budget conversation which is awesome…again, really inspired when people came to speak their mind," Mendes said. "We didn't really get concrete budget suggestions from the group, but I really appreciate people showing up and talking to us."
https://fox17.com/news/local/people-of-nashville-got-cheated-metro-councilman-heated-after-32-tax-increase-passes