Megan Barry's first 100 days: transit, housing, schools

Her message was consistent throughout the long campaign, but it's one that won't be easy to execute: Continue Nashville's economic momentum by tackling three of the city's most challenging issues of the day — transit, affordable housing and public education.

Now, as Megan Barry prepares to take office Friday as Metro Nashville's seventh mayor and first woman in that seat, those three areas will be the focus of her first 100 days in office.

The 52-year-old Barry, who beat David Fox comfortably in Nashville's mayoral runoff election, will set the tone for her first few months in office in her inauguration speech Friday. In an interview with The Tennessean's editorial board this week, Barry said the main pillars of her campaign platform will get attention early in her administration.

"We talked specifically on the campaign trail about some very specific issues: public education, transportation, affordability," Barry said. "And for the first 30, 60 and 100 days of my administration, those are the pieces that we will be laying down and looking at what we need to be doing to turn that out."

Williamson senator targets Nashville local-hire measure

But a fourth issue will take on immediate significance in Barry's mayor's office as well. State Sen. Jack Johnson, R-Franklin, recently filed legislation that would nullify a new Metro charter amendment approved by Nashville voters — one supported by Barry — that set new local-hire requirements for Metro-funded construction projects.

Most believe the state bill will gain traction in the Republican-dominated state legislature next year. Barry said her goal is to accomplish the objective of creating more local jobs on Metro projects even if the local-hire ordinance is overturned.

"I look at this as, whether or not the state moves forward in saying they're going to throw it away, I really believe that the voters sent a message to say there's a problem out there and we want you to solve it," Barry said.

"There's a lot of conversations right now that's happening," she added.

Megan Barry picks Charles Robert Bone to lead transition team

To help guide her first few months in office, Barry has assembled a 42-member transition team led by former mayoral candidate and attorney Charles Robert Bone. The group, which held its first meeting Tuesday, is tasked with identifying early opportunities and challenges for the new mayor and helping with personnel decisions.

She's already made one major personnel move. Barry announced the appointment this week of Metro Finance Director Rich Riebeling, a top aide of outgoing Mayor Karl Dean, to fill a newly created chief operating officer position. Deputy Finance Director Talia Lomax O'dneal has been promoted to acting finance director.

"I ran the whole time talking about the record I shared with Mayor Dean," Barry said. "So, it should come as no surprise that part of my transition looks like a continuity of that."

Rich Riebeling named Megan Barry's chief operating officer

And yet when it comes to her priorities over her first 100 days, Barry will look to begin a path toward solutions that proved elusive for the departing mayor, particularly when it comes to transit and affordable housing.

Here's a larger look at each of those issues, their challenges and how Barry plans to address them over the coming months.

Transit

Barry enters the mayor's office less than a year after Dean retreated from his proposed bus rapid transit project known as the Amp, proposed to go from West End Avenue, down Broadway and across the Cumberland River to East Nashville. Dean had secured federal funds to help pay for the project, but resistance locally and from state lawmakers was too much for him to overcome.

The Regional Transit Authority and Metro Transit Authority, both led by MTA Executive Director Steve Bland, are in the middle of a 20-year strategic planning process called nMotion 2015 that will identify ways to improve existing bus service. A recommended plan is scheduled for release in March.

Nashville chamber seeks to avoid Amp missteps

Meanwhile, the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce, which helped lobby for the Amp, recently launched a new transit initiative called Moving Forward, billed as a grass-roots approach to engage business stakeholders around the goal of mass transit. The initiative includes reaching out to people who led the opposition to the Amp.

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Barry has talked about the need for a regional transit plan that would connect outlying communities with Nashville and to also make it easier to move people around within Davidson County.

An early goal for her will be to install a new transit director in the mayor's office, which she campaigned on over the past year. Barry also figures to become the key figure on the Middle Tennessee Mayors Caucus, which was created around regional transportation.

"It's all about community engagement," Barry said. "I heard this on the campaign trail all the time. People have lots of ideas, but what we don't want to do is not engage the community. We've seen how that goes.

"The regional focus is part of that," she added.

Affordable housing

Perhaps no single issue took off during Nashville's mayoral race more than affordable housing — the push to create new housing options for the working and low-income residents and to preserve existing affordable housing stock.

Barry probably will seek to balance concerns from developers who are wary of new housing policies and advocates who are pushing Metro to take action.

Metro Council approves affordable housing bill

Despite opposition from the chamber and others, the Metro Council in July approved an ordinance that directed the Metro Planning Department to draft a mandatory inclusionary zoning housing proposal for later consideration. Such a policy, utilized in numerous cities, would require that a certain percentage of units in new residential development be priced as affordable or workforce housing. The ordinance advises the planning department to set a goal of 14 percent.

Barry was among the 31 council members to vote for the legislation. The council could vote on the planning department's proposal this spring.

"The devil is in the details," Barry said. "But clearly, creating the opportunity to not just have low-income housing, but also having that workforce housing — where you are housing police officers, firefighters and teachers — is critical."

Asked whether she would support a mandatory inclusionary zoning policy as mayor, Barry said she's "much more about carrots" that offer developers incentives to pursue affordable housing. "But let's see what the planning commission identifies as best practices in other cities and what works in other cities," she said.

Education

Barry's move to the mayor's office comes after the Metro school board was unsuccessful in its search for a new superintendent to replace Jesse Register, who retired in June. The school board tried to hire Williamson County Schools superintendent Mike Looney, but Looney reneged on a letter of intent to head to Nashville, returning the school board to square one.

Barry has said she wants to be a partner with the oft-factious school board as it restarts its superintendent search. As a gesture to that end, Barry intends to visit the board during its annual board retreat this Saturday morning. The board extended her that invitation.

She told The Tennessean that she sees her role as someone who can target and recruit schools director candidates with proven track records.

"I think there's a difference between a search and a recruitment," Barry said. "In a search, you throw it out there and maybe lots of people apply. But in a recruitment effort, which I see my role as helping with, is to say, 'Who are the top 10 superintendents in the United States, and who do we want to go after? They might not even think they are even interested in Nashville, but we want them to think about being interested in Nashville."

Megan Barry, David Fox trade jabs over public education

Barry, despite being supported in her election by the school board's charter school critics, managed to stay out of the city's contentious charter school fight that has raged for the past few years now. That line might become more difficult during budget season when she could be asked to increase the size of Metro's budget to pay for new charters.

Another education budget issue will be prekindergarten. Barry campaigned on funding universal pre-K to ensure seats to all 4-year-old children in Nashville. The cost and timeline to phase in that type of expansion are unclear.

"The budget always reflects the mayor's priorities," she said. "Clearly, the challenge is to say where are we going to find new revenue streams while also keeping our taxes low?"

Reach Joey Garrison at 615-259-8236 and on Twitter @joeygarrison.