Consultant recommends moving countywide fire costs to GSD; study could raise GSD property bills, prompts council and legal questions

A consultant report presented to the Metro Nashville Budget & Finance Committee recommended reallocating countywide services, including fire protection, to the General Services District (GSD), a shift the mayor's recommended budget incorporated and that council members said requires further review.

Consultants Melissa Levin and Mike Burton of Raftelis presented the USD/GSD cost-and-revenue allocation analysis and said the presentation is revenue-neutral for the fiscal‑year‑25 dataset they used. ‘‘What we're looking at when you're looking at the slides and the numbers ... is what happens if we shift cost around and how revenues are kinda shifted to recover those costs. But it's revenue neutral,’’ Levin said. The study used FY2025 budget data to model reallocations and noted legal and practical constraints for implementation.

The study’s core recommendation is to treat services that operate countywide — such as police, transportation management and, the consultants argued, fire protection — as GSD-level costs so all property owners in Davidson County…