Mayor Indya Kincannon is nearly halfway through her second term leading the city of Knoxville. Since entering office in 2019, she has prioritized infrastructure projects that she says will help improve quality of life for citizens as the city continues to see record growth. Many of these projects have been made possible by a surge in sales tax revenues driven largely by inflation and an increase in consumer spending after the COVID-19 pandemic.
But Kincannon’s 2025-2026 budget warned that sales tax growth has stagnated, and it isn’t expected to rebound any time soon. This prompted her to propose a 0.5% increase in the city’s sales tax rate, excluding groceries, gas and utilities. The increase would generate about $47 million in city revenue annually.
Ahead of Knoxville City Council’s workshop meeting Thursday night where they will consider the sales tax proposal, WUOT News interviewed Kincannon to discuss some of the details about next year’s $477 million budget and how the sales tax raise might help the city undertake expensive infrastructure projects.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Pierce Gentry: We're talking about your budget proposal today, which was recently accepted by city council. In that budget, you highlighted lots of success stories for the city, one of them being that violent crime is down for the third year in a row. And your new budget does boost funding a bit for police and emergency responders in the city. Last year, you also increased funding for the police, and you said that that was because you were trying to keep pay for our emergency responders competitive to try and help boost staffing in the Knoxville Police Department. Has that worked? And are we seeing an increase in staff at KPD?
Indya Kincannon: When people call 911, they expect someone to respond quickly and professionally. So it's really important that we pay our first responders fair market wages, and this budget that was just passed includes raises for all our first responders that will be effective July 1, and a particular investment in our firefighters who are below market.
And the good news is it's working. We have two full academy classes happening right now, and we are getting back up to full authorized force.
So what are those numbers like right now?
I think right now, we're maybe at around 340 to 350, and our full authorized force is 416. But we have two classes at about 35 recruits in each class, and one will graduate in July, and the next several months after that. Then they have six months of field training. But with these classes coming on, we expect to get up closer to 400 this calendar year.
The city has enjoyed a lot of successes in the past year that you mentioned in your budget. What are you excited about in the city right now?
Well, I'm really excited about breaking ground this summer on the first new fire station in over 30 years. It's going to be in Burlington. That's one of many efforts to revitalize East Knoxville. We are going to do Burlington streetscapes and a new fire station. So I'm really excited about that. This budget also includes $7 million to completely renovate the Tennessee Amphitheater in World's Fair Park. It's falling apart. It's deteriorating, and we want to fix it before it becomes unfixable.
There are a lot of infrastructure projects in the works. In your budget, you include $3 million for parks and $12 million for other infrastructure projects. But you've also said that the city continues to face a lot of infrastructure needs, including a predicted $800 million for stormwater infrastructure. Can you talk about those challenges and how you're preparing to face them in the future?
Well, every year we have a balanced budget, and this year is no exception. But also every year, the people of our city have said they want more greenways, more sidewalks, more paving. So this budget contains investments in all those areas. But, you probably heard, I announced a proposal to increase the local option sales tax by half a cent so we can better meet those needs, because we're growing. We're growing fast. Our infrastructure is aging. I believe the city of Knoxville has just crossed, or is about to cross, the 200,000 person threshold.
In the last five years, we've added about 15,000 to 20,000 people to just the city of Knoxville, and the area as a whole is growing fast. So we need to maintain our infrastructure so our quality of life remains high.
How do you plan to spend those dollars [from the tax increase] to help address some of these needs?
Well, we're not planning to start any new programs or to hire any new people. What we would use that money for is for investments in quality of life, neighborhood improvements that the people of Knoxville have asked for and need and deserve. So that's things like … paving our roads, sidewalks, traffic calming, affordable housing and then other infrastructure needs. And I hope that we can get city council to agree to put it on the ballot and let the city of Knoxville voters decide if they're willing to invest more in those areas.
Some county residents have expressed a little bit of skepticism, saying that they come into the city to do business and to buy goods. Why should they – residents in the county – have to pay more in sales tax to help city projects?
Well, the city of Knoxville is part of Knox County, and when you use parks or sidewalks or pave nicely paved streets … I mean, why shouldn't everybody who uses those have the opportunity to contribute to it? It helps preserve everybody's quality of life. And also, I think it's important to know that when you shop in surrounding areas – Pigeon Forge, Oak Ridge, Anderson County, Sevier County, Grainger County – all of those communities have already raised their sales tax to this exact same level decades ago. So we're not doing anything unusual. We're just trying to keep up with our neighbors.
Tennessee law does give counties 40 days to decide whether they will match a city sales tax increase. So if this proposed city tax were to pass and be matched by the county under the current law, more than half of it would go to Knox County Schools, I believe, not to city projects. So how are you reconciling that possibility with your plans to use the increased revenue for city projects?
First of all, my proposal would have no impact on the city's really good, generous contribution to Knox County Schools. I'm a big supporter of our public schools. And if this is adopted in the city only, that additional half cent would just stay for city projects.
When – and if – Knox County adopts it as a whole, then 50% of that increment, that new amount, would go to Knox County Schools. But you'll note that the proposed expenditures are all capital in nature, and so if we give 50% of it to schools in the future, then we would just have to reduce the pace of improvements in that area. So we wouldn't have to be cutting programs or cutting people. We would just do maybe, you know, 10 miles of pavement a year instead of 15 or something like that.
So let's talk a little bit about another kind of issue that's facing the city that your budget does allow for. You add $350,000 to help add warming shelter beds for the homeless in the city. So homelessness is up 66% since you took office in 2019. Of course, that's attributable to a lot of things. But what else is the city doing to help people get housed and stable?
Well, the housing crisis is real, and we're tackling it in many different ways. And the number one reason that people are homeless is because of lack of housing. There's other contributing factors … mental health issues, substance disorders and that sort of thing. But the lack of housing is the main challenge. So first and foremost, we're helping contribute to the construction of more affordable housing. We have an affordable housing fund. We committed to contributing at least $5 million a year towards that in local city dollars, and every year we've exceeded that.
Also, we're contributing to permanent supportive housing, because there's some people that, due to mental health issues and trauma in their lives, will always need some kind of support from social work case managers to stay stable. And so since I've taken office, we have helped various entities open up permanent supportive housing.
I want to move back to infrastructure just a little bit – any updates on repairs for the Gay Street Bridge?
Well, the good news is that repairs have begun. The city has gone ahead and funded up to $2 million for those repairs, and we hope that they'll be completed this calendar year.
Are there any developments as far as plans on replacing the bridge down the line or anything like that?
We did have some engineers give us a range of potential costs, and it's considerable. It depends on how fancy the bridge replacement would be. It would range from either maybe $60 million for a very modest, plain bridge that's functional but not that pretty, to up to $200 million for a more iconic bridge.
So this is something that we're going to have to, you know, have a financing plan for. This is not something the city can pay for. We need the federal or state help, just like we do for other major infrastructure projects like that. But the good news is that the current bridge will be able to reopen safely for pedestrians and bikers, which is similar to what its original intent was back in 1898 when it first opened.
Your term as mayor does end in a couple of years. Do you have any plans for political aspirations after that?
I'm really happy being mayor of Knoxville. I love this job. I love our city. There's a lot of positive things happening, and that's what I'm focused on right now.
