My name is Montory Eguakun. I am a 25-year-old African American male who was born and raised in Nashville, TN. Nashville is home to over 700,000 residents within this city. Recently the city of Nashville was heavily affected by a widespread winter storm that swept the city. This storm has done irreversible damage to so many residents in the city. I say this to highlight a dark reality in this city, people who were/are affected by this situation have suffered for way too long. It has now been a week since this incident has first occurred and we still have over 80,000 residents without power. According to the logistics of these kind of situations the Tennessee State Department handles all inclement weather situation that happen throughout the state of Tennessee. This means that highways, main roads and any road considered a “prioritized road” will receive service. In my opinion this is a flawed method to approach an inclement weather restoration situation. While it is smart to prioritize highways and main roads, residential neighborhoods are often left last to tend to. With a severe situation, as shown recently, you can accidently leave residents hanging for too long of a time waiting for the power to turn back on due to damages being so severe that the linemen workers cannot either reach the light pole or sufficiently repair the utility pole without the repair being disrupted by more environmental damages. Therefore, once main roads get clear it won’t matter because the equipment will not be able to reach the backroads where the residents reside. Alongside with TDOT, Nashville Electric Service with manages all electrical usage and restoration within the Nashville City limits. This means that when inclement weather situation happens NES deploys the resources and services available to be able to restore everyone’s electricity within the city limit. NES has expressed multiple times that this is a situation that was not expected to be this severe and the resources/services required to combat the issue has resulted in such results of the power outages lasting for this long. As a resident of this city this is unacceptable. Not because of the effort, I am grateful for the workers that have stood up for the city and pulled 14–16-hour shifts to ensure they can help the restoration process, but this is a matter of efficiency. In moments of life and death we need results, not excuses. This has to be the standard because every second the power stays down are potentially another live lost, another pet lost, another bank account drained due to having to stay at hotels, another property damage that won’t be compensated for, etc. Ensuring a quarterly contractional agreement with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and The International Union of Operating Engineers will give this city not only the resources, but also the services it needs to be able to combat these severe weather situations. The quarterly contract would ensure that we would have guaranteed services provided by the IUOE and IBOEW during the time of the beginning of November to the end of February. This would allow the city to prepare properly early for all severe weather events and ensure that we have the resources we need to prevent the least number of causalities within the city. It would also provide TDOT with extra resources to clear the road at a faster rate for all roads, including back roads. Also, with the help of the union for the electrical workers this will increase the number of linemen. We will be able to spread more resources throughout the city. This could potentially also mean less overtime because we now have the proper staffing to rotate the shifts properly to ensure worker safety. The goal is to keep the efficiency rate of the city constant even when chaos arises. Money should not be an issue when it comes to securing the lives of the citizens of this city. I hope we can all understand that NES and TDOT have done an amazing job, but times are changing. We as a city need to adapt or else these environmental changes will continue to leave residents in the city stranded for too long when these kinds of situations arise. I thank you for reading this far, I hope this proposal reaches many throughout our city. We deserve to stand together and thrive together. We should not let the decisions of others drive us apart. This is a time where the city needs to stand together. One heartbeat, one sound Nashville.

     Sincerely, Montory Eguakun