opinion

Mayor Megan Barry to Nashville: I want to earn back your trust

Editor's note: We asked the Mayor's Office if she would be willing to share her views in a guest column. She agreed and this is her response.

To the people of Nashville:

It’s quite a thing to enjoy popularity and good will, to be given the privilege of leading a terrific city on the move, and then come crashing down in the space of a week into a tangle of scandal because of my own poor judgment.

That last sentence doesn’t even do justice to the despair I feel, for the voters of Nashville whose trust I sought and coveted, for the staff whose loyalty I cherish, for the husband whose love and devotion through highs and lows have defined my adult life for a quarter-century, and for the other family I’ve devastated.

Failure may be “instructive,” as John Dewey famously said, but frankly in the moment and in public it’s just humbling and humiliating, and the only thing a person who has disappointed so many so quickly can do is merely to ask with all my heart for your forgiveness. And so I do.

The opportunity to see the worst parts of one’s personal and professional life on full public display is, of course, not why anybody enters public service, but a low moment like this is exactly the right time to take stock of why I did.

Campaigns are about issues, and the issues I ran on — education and transit and affordability and public safety and inequality and social justice — matter deeply to me.

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Like so many Nashvillians, I want to live in a city with a vibrant economy that educates its kids, cherishes its neighborhoods, treats everyone fairly, is safe and welcoming, and, yes, is easy to get around.

But I didn’t enter public life because I happen to have strong opinions on these issues — lots of us do, including me — but because I came to realize that I didn’t just want to think and talk about how we improve our city and community; I wanted an active, engaged role in actually making it happen.

For all that we love about Nashville, we confront the same realities as every city: education is difficult, transit is complicated, crime and safety and inequality are daunting.

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No city is immune to these challenges. I didn’t seek office because I had all the answers, but because I knew that if I really want my city to be a better place, I have to put my time and energy and heart and soul into finding them.

Being mayor means not just participating in crucial conversations about our city’s future; it confers the opportunity to steer them. It means not just identifying solutions; it imposes the obligation to implement them.

It means not just talking about what a great city we have; it generates the responsibility to make sure it stays that way. All of this is not the work of one person; far from it.

I am astonished every day by the energy and talent and dedication of the staff I am so lucky to have around me, of the elected and appointed officials who bring their best every day to our council and courts and agencies, and of the department heads and city employees who make it all go all the time.

When I succeed in this role, it is in no small measure because of all those around me who succeed as well. It is our work, not my work.

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I never thought this job would be easy, and I have no illusions about the fact that it has just become a lot harder. In the near term, my work is complicated by the various inquiries under way, and I welcome their scrutiny. I meant every word when I pledged full transparency and cooperation, and my staff and I are following through on that.

The philosopher Martin Buber said, “We can be redeemed only to the extent to which we see ourselves.” Believe me, I see myself, with all my flaws, all too clearly. I also see myself as someone who loves her job and her community, whose dedication to the city’s progressive future hasn’t wavered, and who very much wants to continue to serve.

If you’ll have me, people of Nashville, I’d like the chance to work my heart out to earn back your trust, and I plan to do that the old-fashioned way: with honesty and humility and hard work so that we can continue with the challenging and wonderful work of this city we love.

Megan Barry is the seventh mayor of Nashville-Davidson County.