Biography
Mayor Karl Dean
Karl Dean is the sixth mayor of the Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County. He was elected on Sept. 11, 2007. Dean’s priorities as mayor are education, public safety and economic development. He also works diligently on efforts to sustain and improve Nashville’s high quality of life.
Education
During his two years in office, Dean has acted as a strong advocate for education reform in Metro Nashville Public Schools. In both years, he fully funded the budget for Metro schools despite cuts in most other departments. He formed the Project for Student Success task force to find innovative ways to increase student engagement and reduce high school dropouts. And he has focused on initiatives related to teacher recruitment and school choice
As part of the Project for Student Success recommendations, Dean allocated funding in the Metro budget for an Attendance Center run by Juvenile Court, which provides case management for students chronically truant from school. He also began work on developing a system of quality after school programs for middle school students in Nashville. In May 2009, Dean announced the Nashville After School Alliance, a partnership with Metro Nashville Public Schools to create after school zones throughout Davidson County.
In the areas of teacher recruitment and school choice, Dean raised private funds to bring two national teacher recruitment organizations, Teach for America and The New Teacher Project, to Nashville starting in the 2009-10 school year. And Dean was a vocal proponent of charter school legislation passed during the 2009 session of Tennessee’s 106th General Assembly. The legislation greatly expands charter school enrollment eligibility in Nashville.
To further draw community support for education reform initiatives, Dean helped create the Education First Fund through the Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee. Contributors to date include individuals, foundations, and faith-based organizations.
Public Safety
2008 marked the fifth consecutive year of overall crime reduction in Nashville. To help the Metro Nashville Police Department continue its progress, Dean is working to see more police officers protecting our streets. While Dean has been in office, the police department has recruited and trained nearly 200 new sworn police officers. The department now has the largest number of sworn officers in five years.
Dean also included in the 2009-10 capital spending plan funds to begin planning for two additional police precincts and has encouraged the police department to seek a federal COPS grant to grow the police force.
Economic Development
The first economic development initiative Dean undertook as mayor was to help women- and minority-owned businesses receive a fair share of Metro Government contracts. Dean formed the Mayor’s Minority Business Advisory Council and began work on legislation to address the findings in two disparity studies conducted by Metro over the past 10 years. An ordinance creating the Procurement Non-Discrimination Program was passed in April 2008. The program is administered out of a new Office of Minority and Women Business Assistance in the Department of Finance, which has worked to significantly increase the number of companies approved for Metro’s small business program and the number of minority-owned business registered with Metro.
Since taking office, Dean has also strongly supported the development of Music City Center, a new downtown convention center in Nashville, which will attract hundreds of thousands of new visitors and generate millions of dollars in local and state tax revenue. Early in his administration, Dean appointed the Metropolitan Development and Housing Agency to oversee the project and received unanimous support from the Metro Council to fund predevelopment work. During the spring of 2009, the Council approved funding to begin property acquisition for the project. The Music City Center is scheduled to open in early 2013.
Livability
In the spring of 2008, Dean formed the Green Ribbon Committee on Environmental Sustainability and set a goal to make Nashville “the greenest city in the Southeast.” The committee completed its work in April 2009 and presented a summary report with 16 goals and 71 recommendations. Dean is now working to prioritize and implement the initiatives. Those already underway include planning for mass transit in the Middle Tennessee region and developing an Open Space Plan for Davidson County.
In effort to expand transportation and recreation options for residents, Dean formed the Bicycle Pedestrian and Advisory Committee, which works to further make Nashville a bicycle- and pedestrian-friendly city.
Dean also addressed Nashville’s need to improve water, sewer and stormwater infrastructure through the creation of the Clean Water Infrastructure Program.
Background
Dean first held public office when he was elected as Nashville’s Public Defender in 1990, a post he was re-elected to in 1994 and 1998. Dean served as Metro Law Director from 1999 to January 2007, when he resigned to run for the office of mayor. Dean completed the program for Senior Executives in State and Local Government at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard in 1999. He has also served as an Adjunct Professor of Law at Vanderbilt.
Dean is married to Nashville native Anne Davis, who he met in law school. Anne practiced civil and criminal litigation with Bass, Berry & Sims and Neal & Harwell. She has taught at Vanderbilt Law School for nearly two decades, including courses on white collar crime, trial advocacy and legal writing. They have three children: Rascoe, age 22; Frances, age 15; and Wallen, age 14.