Live from Music Row Monday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed Metro Nashville’s City Council Member-at-Large Steve Glover to discuss Nashville’s budget timing and pointed out a recent Wall Street Journal article signaling Nashville’s fiscal trouble.
Leahy: In studio with us, Metro Council member at large, Steve Glover. But Scooter has a weather update for us. Lots going on out there. Scooter, Speaking of troubled weather and storms, there’s a fiscal storm going on in Nashville. It has for some time. We’re talking about that here with Steve Glover, Metro Council member at large, The Wall Street Journal pointed it out in a devastating article that is entirely counter to the way that Mayor Cooper presented the State of Metro on Thursday.
Glover: The sad part is, is the way that the State of Metro was presented. Then Friday, the joke of the way the budget was presented.
Leahy: Let’s stop and talk about it. Let’s be clear about how this works so our audience can understand. On Thursday, it was a press conference. Yackety yack.
Glover: Thursday was the State of Metro right at that point. And I’ve not known this to be the case that once the Mayor hands the budget over it’s the council’s budget.
Leahy: Got it.
Glover: And I didn’t see it handled that way number one.
Leahy: Part of the State of Metro is to present the budget. Correct?
Glover: Well, you don’t know. Not necessarily. Normally, once the State of Metro is completed, then they come in with the budget. But they waited a day and just said there wasn’t enough space. That’s malarky. Malarky. They could have adjourned upstairs, come down to the Davidson Ballroom, or whatever where desks were already set up for the Metro Council.
And they could have done a budget and a Council meeting and gone ahead and done it. They just chose not to. It’s just another way the legislative body just keeps giving up more and more power to the executive branch. And The Wall Street Journal article that you first started talking about in this segment is exactly right. And this is why we’re in the predicament we are in right now because the executive branch does whatever the heck it wants to. And the legislative branch says okay.
Leahy: Where’s my rubber stamp?
Glover: Doh dee-doh dee-doh… And they can get mad at me all they want to. I don’t care, because, you know, the thing that drives me the craziest is we are elected by the people who represent the people, and they have abdicated that to one office downstairs in the executive branch. The legislative branch, our forefathers had a great reason for the way they set up our Constitution and the way our government is supposed to work in America.
The Wall Street Journal article talking about Nashville being one of the five worst cities fiscally it should have been, and I think the article pointed it out, we should have been literally at the crest of being the best because we had every opportunity in the world.
Leahy: Nashville has everything going for it except for a very bad, reckless Metro government.
Glover: Yep. And as I said on Tucker Carlson about six months ago, whatever it was, it’s a lack of leadership. That’s our problem in Nashville. A lack of leadership. And whenever you have that kind of void, this is what happens. Oh, well, just like you’re talking about the American whatever, blah, blah, blah. They give them all these names and whatever.
They’re going to throw all kinds of money at things. And they’re not going to fix anything. And that’s been our problem. We keep throwing money, throwing money, throwing money. And we’ll talk about some of this as we go forward here on where I think we’re throwing money in all the wrong places.
Leahy: Wasting money.
Glover: In my opinion, it’s beyond wasting. And we’re not really focusing on where we need to be spending the money. The Wall Street Journal was exactly right. They come out last week and they said, oh, no, we fixed it. Everything’s golden. No, it’s not. Don’t think it is. And I’m not saying the sky is falling, the sky is falling. I’m saying that it’s raining pretty hard outside and you better get a frigging umbrella.
Leahy: And it’s mostly it’s largely these unfunded health care liabilities for retirees.
Glover: Well, the op-ed. So what they’ll talk about on that is that they fixed that and they’ve removed one point one billion dollars off of the financial sheets because they’re going to shift everything to this Medicare advantage thing. So we’re going to move it from the local government to the federal government. Yeah, that will fix it.
Leahy: That’s a joke.
Glover: So way to go, Metro. Oh, my gosh. You guys are just tremendous.
Leahy: This is very much how Liberal Democrats pretend two ‘solve problems.’ They just move the accounting for it from one side to another side or try to.
Glover: Let’s make sure we give credit do where it’s supposed to all be given. Don’t forget now and I think it was last hour or whatever you were talking about the George W. Bush thing.
Leahy: Oh, yeah.
Glover: He’s the one who did the Medicare Part D. And Clinton gave us Medicare Part C, which is Medicare Advantage. And then George W. gave us Medicare Part D, which is prescription drugs and has been a fiasco ever since. And so what we’re doing in Metro, apparently and I haven’t read the whole thing so it’s hard for me to tell you exactly what it looks like right now.
If you’re 65 plus, you have to go on Medicare Advantage. That means now you will have to take Medicare Part B, which is 136 or 140 or whatever it is a month that you’ll be required to pay. And so what my question is, well, okay, if you’re doing that and how much are you still going to have to pay off the insurance? I know people grind the axe on the Council members, but you got to talk about the retirees. We’re talking about folks who gave years about years upon years upon years of service.
Leahy: And there’s unfunded healthcare liability for those retirees.
Glover: Yes. And there is across the entire country. It’s not anything unique only to Metro.
Leahy: It’s just worse here apparently.
Glover: It is.
Leahy: Like, by a lot.
Glover: Well, it’s because we like to buy new, shiny toys every Christmas, as opposed to buying one toy every Christmas and making sure the toys we bought in the previous Christmases are kept operational, functional, and serving the purpose.
Leahy: This budget document you’re talking about that was not presented along with the State of Metro address, but was delivered separately.
Glover: Friday. It always is. That’s the way the bill is always filed on Friday.
Leahy: So it was delivered on Friday. And this is for what budget period?
Glover: Well, it will be for the FY ’22.
Leahy: And when does that begin?
Glover: July one.
Leahy: July one of this coming year?
Glover: Yes. July 21 of 2021.
Leahy: Until June 30th of 2022.
Glover: Correct.
Leahy: Now, how many pages is this budget?
Glover: I don’t know the number on the orders.
Leahy: A lot?
Glover: You got to look at the budget book. The ordinance only spells out the legalities.
Leahy: The budget then.
Glover: The budget book typically is about 1,000 pages.
Leahy: Are you going to read every page of that?
Glover: Pretty much.
Leahy: You’re kidding me?
Glover: No.
Leahy: That’s a lot of work.
Glover: I always do that. That’s what I do.
Leahy: You always do it. How many Metro Council members read the 1,000-page budget book?
Glover: I don’t know. I mean, you could ask each one of them. They could tell you whatever.
Leahy: So after the Mayor submits the budget, it goes to a committee in Metro?
Glover: It goes to the whole Council. The Budget and Finance Committee, which I’m a member of, we will take it, and we pretty much so do what’s going to be the hearings. But what I found most interesting is this year our chair, and look, she’s a nice person. Nothing personal here. It’s just the fact that only going to be one substitute. You can do amendments, blah, blah. Once again, we’re abdicating our responsibilities.
Leahy: So let me ask you this. The Budget and Finance Committee of Metro is very important. And you’re a Metro Council Member-At-Large.
Glover: Correct. I represent the whole city.
Leahy: But you’re not the chair of the committee.
Glover: No, I’ll never be the chair. If I was the chair, we’d start fixing things.
Leahy: You’re not the chair of the committee because…
Glover: I’m a Republican.
Leahy: Who picks the chair, the vice Mayor, the Vice Mayor. And how many people are on the committee?
Glover: I think there’s 13, 14, 15 of us.
Leahy: Wow, that’s a big committee.
Glover: That’s a huge committee.
Leahy: I think you’re having a meeting today?
Glover: Yes. At four o’clock. Four or four-thirty. Something like that.
Leahy: Tell us what is going to happen in that meeting.
Glover: Well, you’ll go through this week’s agenda and that’s what we’ll talk about. But we’re going to be convening this coming Thursday to talk about the budget. So here we are one week later, and we’re gonna start talking about the budget. We won’t be talking about it today or tomorrow. We’re going to wait until Thursday because no need to talk about something that’s kind of spinning out of control.
Listen to the full second hour here:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Live from Music Row Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed Metro Nashville’s City Council Member-at-Large Steve Glover to the newsmakers line to discuss the State of the Metro Address and his dismay for the Mayor Cooper’s decision to raise salaries of teachers only.
Leahy: We are joined now on the line by our very good friend, Metro Council Member-at-Large, Steve Glover. Good morning, Steve.
Glover: Good morning, Sir. How are you?
Leahy: Well, I’m about to find out what you thought of Mayor John Cooper’s State of Metro address yesterday.
Glover: You’re about to. A lot of people are about to. (Chuckles) I think the fire department, I thought that was a great move. 40 new suppression. 20 new EMTs and OEM. And it was good. I think that 40 new police officers were about half what it should have been. Maybe only 40 percent of what it should have been. I want to be very clear about this, Michael.
If you’re going to give teachers that massive raise that you gave them and you don’t do it for everybody else in Metro, that’s wrong in a million different ways. Because if people think over the last year that Metro National Public Schools have done a good job of educating children, they’re wrong. Now that’s going to make a lot of people mad.
And if it does, I don’t care because it’s wrong. Our teachers work hard. I’m not upset about our teachers. I’m upset about the administration because they singled out the teachers and gave them a massive raise. Our police, fire, and all our other employees in Metro got a two percent cost of living adjustment.
Leahy: And how much was the raise for the teachers?
Glover: $6,900. and something on average is the way I read it. I haven’t seen the actual budget yet to be able to understand exactly where we landed with everything. I don’t have a beef with giving a raise to teachers or others. You can’t name one group and then literally annihilate the other group and pretend like you did a good job.
That’s one thing I get really sick of. I get really sick of the administrations in Nashville pretending like they’re doing this great thing. And I get really sick of when they say Nashville for everyone. No, it’s not obviously a Nashville for everyone.
Leahy: And now this particular thing, the plan to make Nashville teachers the state’s highest-paid is interesting because I’ve looked at the numbers in terms of the performance on standardized tests of kids in Nashville and there are like 142 school districts, they call them local education administration agencies I guess.
There are 142 or so of them. And Metro Nashville schools are either at the bottom or next to the bottom at 140 or 142 in virtually every rating in terms of math proficiency and reading proficiency. So why such a big raise for teachers?
Glover: That’s the point. Again, I want to emphasize this is not directed at teachers. They’ve done what they could do over the last year. The administration has kept them out of the classroom. I have a lot of friends that are teachers. They are just as upset about the fact they couldn’t be in the classroom because they know that our children have been let down over the last year. And we as Nashvillians, if we think it’s been okay to do what we’ve done to our children, we are sadly mistaken because it is not okay. I don’t know how we make this ground up, frankly.
Leahy: The other thing about this to me, Steve, this looks like a pure political play for the support of the teachers’ unions by Mayor Cooper.
Glover: Yep. MENP doesn’t like me and I don’t really care for them. I don’t really care if they like me. I’ll tell you what I do like. I like my grandchildren. In fact, I love my grandchildren and I don’t like the fact that my grandson wasn’t able to go to kindergarten this past year because somebody on Branford Avenue made bad decisions.
Leahy: Here’s the story from wsmv.com. It’s about three paragraphs. Let me read it and get your reaction. Under Mayor Cooper’s plan, the average Metro teacher salary will jump by $6,924 annually. Educators with eight to 15 years of experience will receive a $10,880 increase.
The proposed $81 million Mark Nashville’s largest operating ‘investment’ in education. And then the director of Schools, Dr. Adrian Battle said the following ‘throughout my career at Metro schools, I’ve never seen such a strong commitment and support from a Mayor for our public schools and the teaching profession.’ Now, to me, this doesn’t look like support for public schools. This looks like support for the Teachers Union.
Glover: That’s exactly what it is. And that’s one reason I’m saying, look, teachers, don’t be mad at me. I’m not upset with you. I think you’ve been placed in bad positions, just like our children have been placed in bad positions over the last year. Our police, our fire, and our first responders, you want to talk about stressing out the workforce over the last 12 months.
I’m not going to pick one against the other. Our police officers, our firefighters, our EMTs, OEM, and the Water Department. We can go down to public works. Because I defined first responders to everybody who needs to get out on the front line when we have something bad that happens in Nashville. They got slapped in the face yesterday when the Mayor had the audacity to do this with the school board that has done a lousy job, by the way, of pretending like they’re leading and then does it to our first responders with a two percent cost of living.
Added firefighters. Absolutely. We’ve needed that forever. It’s still not enough. Pretending like we added police officers. He said we’re going to put 40 new officers in order to staff the Southeast precinct. They need a minimum of 66 officers for a new precinct.
Leahy: Good point.
Glover: Here’s my thing. And I said it last night late on my Facebook page. If we don’t wake up and if we don’t start demanding and we don’t start getting upset about this stuff, then we deserve whatever’s going to happen to us in Nashville. At what point do we wake up and say we’ve had it! Enough is enough. We’ll pay our taxes but in return, if you’re going to do an investment, do a real investment.
Leahy: Yeah, exactly. Not a payoff to the Teachers Union, which is what this looks like to me.
Listen to the full first hour here:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Live from Music Row Monday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed Metro Nashville’s City Council Member-at-Large Steve Glover to the newsmakers line.
During the third hour, Glover reflected on Mayor Cooper’s dishonest pledge to be fiscally conservative if elected and his 180 degree turn. Later on in the segment, Leahy suggested that Glover create a committee confirmation requirement that would make sworn statements mandatory.
Leahy: We are joined now by our special guest and our very good friend Metro Council Member-at-large Steve Glover. Steve, Mayor Cooper when he was before when he was campaigning he said he would be open to everybody and wanted to hear all sorts of ideas when last we talked he wasn’t really open to your ideas. Has he changed in the past several months?
Glover: This question will take about four seconds. No.
Leahy: Yeah. What happened to the guy?
Glover: You’ll have to ask him. I’m still the same person. You’ll have to ask him. You know he sure is, I almost said a bad word. I’m sorry. He sure as heck enjoyed getting our vote in order to get elected. Obviously, we got scammed. And so here we are. The sad part is he really could care less what most anybody has to say quite frankly. So I don’t feel personally discriminated against.
He’s been that way with a lot of folks. It’s unfortunate because I think he’s made some very poor decisions. And I’ll tell him to his face if I ever get that opportunity again that he’s made some very poor decisions. I think what he’s done to our downtown business community is unforgivable. There are still thousands of people who are financially hurting in our city that should not be. When you look at our revenue, here’s the other thing that really irritates me to no end. We had options on this capital spending plan. We could have looked back, and we could have paid maybe 50 percent…(Line disconnects)
Leahy: I’ll just continue on that. We’ll get Steve right back here.
Cunningham: And it’s amazing mayor Cooper actively probably more than any other mayoral candidate that I could remember, actively courted conservative voters.
Leahy: I will listen to you. (Chuckles)
Cunningham: He said I’m a new kind of Democrat. I think that was his appeal. And on the council, he had been and had moments of fiscal sanity.
Leahy: Well he’s a commercial developer. He knows money.
Cunningham: Yes and investment guy. He clearly knows money.
Leahy: He doesn’t care and he doesn’t want to hear from anybody.
Cunnigham: COVID came along and he turned into a dictator.
Leahy: Actually the actual description is a tinpot dictator. (Laughter) We’ve invited them on the show. I don’t know why he isn’t showing up at all to talk about it. I suppose if I call somebody a tinpot dictator, and promise to be polite they might not want to come on the program.
Cunningham: Well, if he’s that thin-skinned, it’s problem. He did court conservative voters. He said I’ll be your fiscal conservative.
Leahy: He’s not at all.
Cunnigham: He absolutely blew it completely.
Leahy: Steve you’re back and we were just singing the praises of our favorite tin-pot dictator Mayor John Cooper.
Cunningham: Steve, is it fair to say that he actively courted conservatives probably more than any other mayoral candidate in quite a while?
Glover: It’s beyond fair. We did a bench together and there were a lot of things that we did. I really thought that we had a good opportunity to work together up until you know all of this began in March. And then when he threw the, and I’ll just call it the bombshell, the 32 percent property tax increase when he did that things started going south.
I never want to speak on behalf of someone else but I’ll say this to you. He felt like it’s his responsibility to worry about everything and I said, what do you think I’d do? I’m elected by the entire city just like you are. And let me just say this Ben. And anybody that doesn’t believe this then they need to go look at the numbers. Had he not had the moderate conservative vote out there, remember I got roughly 38 percent of the vote, roughly 38 percent of the vote in the same election, and he got elected and he beat Briley by what 39, 40 points?
Leahy: All your people voted for him it looks like.
Glover: That’s what I’m saying. And at the end of the day for him to turn his nose on us and literally just walk away from us is unforgivable. It will never happen again I’ll tell you that. If he’s going to run again I will work diligently to make sure that we don’t vote for him because we have to have someone. While we may not be in a majority, we certainly have a strong enough voice that we can have a say in the city and we must demand that we have a say in the city.
Leahy: Steve, we broke a story on Friday and I’d like to get your reaction to it. This community oversight board, which is turning out to be a real travesty passed by the voters 58 percent in 2018, and they have 11 members and an executive director Jill Fitcheard who is their executive director. The 11 members, all seem pretty lefty to me and pretty anti-police. one of them a fellow by the name of Ovid Timothy Hughes who last week resigned suddenly.
And people wonder why Why did he resign suddenly? Our own Corinne Murdock has written several stories about and it turns out Ovid Timothy Hughes appears to be a convicted felon. Convicted in 2008 of mail fraud by the U.S. attorney’s office here. He served apparently a year plus a day in prison. Never revealed that. He was nominated for this by the NAACP of Tennessee.
Apparently the Tennessee state law you have to be a registered voter in that jurisdiction to serve on a community oversight board. He was asked at a committee meeting by David Rosenberg, are you a registered voter? He said yes. Well, we asked the Secretary of State here in Tennessee, and turns out he was removed from the voter rolls in 2008 because of his felony conviction. My question to you is what kind of vetting process is the community oversight board doing?
Glover: Well, apparently none. It’s not something that I supported. And I’ve told the community that I don’t support it because there’s already enough oversight for our police. What’s sad is supposedly these folks aren’t vetted. I feel doubtful that I voted for him in order for him to be on it because normally I will vote for the Moderate and that middle-of-the-road voice.
And that never happens, not this group we’ve got because they don’t want to actually have a fair and balanced version of what’s going on in the city. What I would say is that we probably need to get our act together better which goes without saying. We just need to do our job better and we need to make sure before we put somebody on a commission or a board that in fact they are registered etc.
Leahy: I’ll make a suggestion for consideration. For any nominee who is presenting himself as a candidate for the community oversight board if the city council would require that they make a sworn statement in writing and be sworn in before they testify in their interview before the rules confirmation committee chaired by Dave Rosenberg by the way.
That they make a sworn statement as to whether or not they are registered voters or not. Ovid Timothy Hughes on February fourth, 2020 went before that committee and was asked by Dave Rosenberg, are you a registered voter and said yes. That appears to be an obvious lie. but apparently not subject to perjury charges because he was not sworn in before that committee hearing was heard. What’s your thought on making it a requirement to serve on the board and that submit a sworn statement about your qualifications and you are sworn in before you testify before the rules confirmation committee as to your qualifications.
Glover: I think given the gravity of that particular commissioner board or whatever you want to call it I think that’s an absolute wonderful idea. I’ll have to check it because I’m not an attorney. I’m certainly not a constitutional attorney and I will need to check on that. But that’s a pretty easy ask right there. I’ll go to work on it. Let me see.
Leahy: Well thank you for considering it. I appreciate it. Can I tell you what my prediction is? My prediction is the mayor will not pay any attention to it and that Dave Rosenberg who chairs this committee will not pay any attention to it either. But I’d be delighted to have you come back and tell me otherwise.
Glover: I’m not certain if he’s still the chair of that. I don’t remember who all the chairs are for every committee. They change every year. The bottom line is that I want to get into the police issue on this.
Leahy: Let’s do that in our next segment. We got about three minutes here. Ben has a question for you. Then we’ll come back after the break.
Glover: Okay.
Cunningham: Well, well this may not be enough time for this. Steve, there are so many folks out there that are mad as hell and they want to do something. Well, we’ve only got a minute. What do you say to people who want to run for the council or school board or these local offices? What are they do because so many people are they just need that first step. They just need somebody who’s been there to give them a little bit of direction. And I just wanted you to address that because I get messages every day from people who want to do this. But their threshold of action has to be lowered enough to for them to take action.
Leahy: When we come back with Steve Glover, Metro Council Member-At-Large will talk about the police issues here in Metro Nashville. And then also what should people do who want to run for office.
Listen to the third hour here:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Live from Music Row Monday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed Metro Nashville’s City Council Member-at-Large Steve Glover to the newsmakers line to discuss his view on public safety spending and how to get involved in local politics as a fiscal conservative.
Leahy: We are joined by our good friend Metro Council Member Steve Glover. Steve, you want to talk a little bit about some police issues.
Glover: I want to talk about public safety very quickly. I know we’re going to be limited here. I ran into an officer last night, not literally in a wreck, but happened to see him and I stopped and spoke with him. I said man that car looks rough. He goes. Yeah. It’s got well over a hundred thousand miles on it. And I said what? And we just kind of spoke about that.
And it just churned back up the fact that that we just approved a new police precinct in South East Nashville. Now no one’s saying we don’t need it. But what I’m saying is we’re not staffed for it. We have enough staff right now. We’re somewhere between 150 and 200 officers short right now today. We’re somewhere between 50 and 85 firefighters short today.
We’re somewhere between seven and 10 stations for fire departments that we need in order to accommodate all the growth that we’ve had. But yet we spend money because of one particular union and we know who that is, they want it going into the public education for those buildings. I’m not saying we don’t need those buildings. I am saying that we have not gotten our priorities inline still in this city. And our police and our firefighters are so far behind right now, they’re running ragged because we’re running them ragged.
Leahy: What’s going on with morale among the police department and the fire department with all of these terrible budget decisions that are hurting them?
Glover: You know, what’s amazing? It’s unbelievable to me the positive attitude that they all still display. I don’t know how they do it. But thank God they do. Thank God, we’ve got men and women that get up every day and are willing to come out here and stick their neck out on the line for us and protect us. The least we can do is turn around and say let’s at least make your conditions better and give you enough staff.
Let’s put you where you need to be. We need to start focusing on our priorities and quit wasting money. Now, I keep saying it over and over but this is where I come back and Ben I’m going to parlay into your question. This is where I keep saying we’re 100,000 plus strong. In that commercial break right there heard somebody talking about women who are running. and look at what’s happened in the Republican Party.
We’ve got some phenomenal women who have run and they worked hard and they were ferocious. They went out there they won the seat and they’re doing a phenomenal job. Same thing here. You’ve got to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. And when I say it and when I heard that I went wow, that really summarizes it right there. So how do you run for local office? I’ve done the school board, as you know, Ben and I’ve done the council.
I’ve done them both and I won when everybody said I couldn’t win for the at-large. I won because we went out and we worked and we worked collectively. The conservatives came out and voted. Thank goodness. The same thing happens here. We’re 100,000 plus strong. I’ve got districts identified that we actually could win those seats with a moderate candidate. You don’t have to be a staunch Republican.
But a moderate candidate could win 12 to 15 seats in this city. We certainly could occupy three four five of the school board seats. And that desperately is needed because Lord knows that’s just dwindled down to almost nothing and our children are the ones who are going to pay the price and our city is going to be financially hurt. It’s going to be devastating in the decades to come.
Cunningham: Steve, I think a lot of people think that requires hundreds of thousands of dollars to run for office, but these local offices you can make a good dent with 10 or 15, or 20 grand. And if you’re opportunistic like you say if you identify those districts, perhaps even less.
Glover: Yep. I’ll tell you the real thing Ben and you know the answer here before I say it. The real thing on those local elections in those district elections is foot power. You got to be on the ground. You’ve got to go talk to people and you have to have a conviction. You’ve got to believe what you’re saying. And when I say and then that I mean, I’d that may sound trite but it’s not. You have to be convicted.
You have to have an inner personal conviction that what you want to do is good for the community. It would be good for you but it has to be good for the community. And if you have that desire, I promise you I can help connect you with a network and will help get you elected because Nashville needs really strong independent thinking people. And fiscal conservatives. Whether you’re Republican or not.
I’m a Republican and darn proud of it. You don’t have to be a Republican. You can be independent and you can be a moderate. But if you are a fiscal conservative then collectively we could work to where we start bringing the ties back in and hopefully slow down the hemorrhage because that’s what we’re doing. We’re hemorrhaging right now and pretending like everything’s okay. Our debt to operational ratio now has climbed to 15.95 percent Ben. You know that has got red flags flying up everywhere.
Leahy: Yeah, and that’s a very good point. I mean what would be the ratio that would be prudent for that ratio to be?
Glover: You need to be in the 10 to 12 percent range.
Leahy: So we’re going in the wrong direction.
Glover: Almost 50 percent if you look at the 10 percent range. 10 percent is somewhat comfortable. 12 percent is getting a little uncomfortable. Almost 16 percent is getting there. And you’re going to find it out in the next swing where they want to raise taxes. And that’s where you need to make sure you sign the petition to where it limits what we can raise taxes too.
Leahy: Last question for you. So somebody listening to this is saying, yeah, I’d like to run but it’s an awful lot of work and it looks like I don’t wouldn’t have a chance. What do you say to that person? Got about a minute left here.
Glover: Call me. I’ll give everybody my number. It’s 615-481-4277. I love this city. I’ve got four grandbabies that whether they realize it or not are counting on me to work hard every day to try and give them a life in America and a life in this city that God granted me to have. And so, therefore, I do have a passion for this. There is no doubt about it.
Leahy: And we can feel that passion here Steve. Thanks so much for joining us today.
Listen to the full third hour here:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
