Mayor Dean chooses to burn Metro cash reserves rather than to raise taxes during his reelection year

Apparently, the boldest plan Mayor Karl Dean proposed in today's "State of Metro" agenda is to use federal funds to motivate Nashvillians to stop eating to extremes. But aside from acting the Diet Tzar over money headed in from elsewhere, the Mayor, who intends to keep his office for a second term, has no intentions of raising revenues before the election to fill the expanding chasm between income and expenses:

Nashville Mayor Karl Dean is choosing to dip into the city’s reserve fund to balance next year’s budget .... to avoid a property tax hike.

“The alternative of asking our citizens to pay more in property taxes while they struggle to make their own ends meet would not have been the right thing to do. This year, our approach to the budget will be the same. We will not raise property taxes.”

Asked if the city could go another four years without a tax increase, Dean – who is running for reelection – said he wouldn’t speculate.

I have seen nothing to indicate that the Mayor has plans for Metro to pay what amounts to a self-loan back to the schools' rainy day fund in the future.

Live Tweets from the Mayor's State of Metro Address

Tennessean reporter Michael Cass is live-tweeting Karl Dean's SOM address so that you don't have to.

For those interested in the Riverfront Development Plan, Cass tweets that Dean is committing to spend $20 million on "both sides of the river." The Mayor has been ambiguous and controversial on whether he would change the plan to start on the Downtown side rather than the East Bank as originally envisioned.