Your tax refund probably won't fix Nashville traffic

Look, man, everybody's talking about these bigger tax refunds this year, how it's fixing to put a little extra jingle in folks' pockets. And don't get me wrong, that sounds mighty fine on paper. But when I think about that money hitting bank accounts here in Nashville, I just gotta wonder: what's it really gonna change?

You see, a few extra dollars in the pockets of folks from Antioch to Hendersonville, it ain't gonna make the I-24 crawl any faster. It ain't gonna magically build the public transit system we desperately need to connect North Nashville to downtown, or keep Broadway from becoming a total logjam by 11 AM. We got folks down in Williamson County trying to pitch ideas to fix roads statewide without raising taxes, bless their hearts, but a tax refund, even a big one, feels like putting a band-aid on a bullet wound when you're talking about the growth pains we're feeling. That's the real Nashville, y'all — before the neon and after.

A little extra cash is always nice, and I hope it helps folks grab some Prince's Hot Chicken, maybe catch a show at the Ryman. But for the big picture, the stuff that truly moves Nashville forward, we're gonna need more than just a tax refund.

Darius Caldwell, Nashville.

Man, Keith and the whole Morning Wire crew got a lot to say about this. You gotta tune in live at mornings.live.