KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — Knoxville City Council will meet on Tuesday for an agenda that includes its first consideration of the city's budget for July 1 through June 30, 2025. Mayor Indya Kincannon revealed her $461.6 million budget proposal during the annual State of the City address on Friday.
The budget includes $7 million in the budget for parks and recreation improvements, which would include money to design a new canopy for the amphitheater. It also includes $3.9 million in pay increases for Knoxville Police Department officers and $8 million for affordable housing in the city.
Tuesday's city council meeting also includes a proposal to enter into a $230,900 agreement with a tech company, Rimini Street, for two years of software support, and $134,300 for a third year of support. The agreement would provide support for the city's Oracle Software Products.
The proposal sparked plans for a demonstration from pro-Palestinian activists calling for the city to divest from Rimini Street and Oracle due to the companies' ties to Israel.
More information about the budget and other proposals is available below.
$461.6 million budget proposal - Passed on first reading
Knoxville's budget proposal will be discussed on the first reading on April 30. It needs to pass on a second reading before becoming official, allocating millions of dollars for the city's variety of departments, initiatives and services.
It's a bigger budget compared to last year's $433 million proposal and does not include any new property tax increases. It includes $7 million for parks and recreation improvements, including money to design a new canopy for the Tennessee Amphitheater. It also would go towards money to pay for improvements to Lakeshore Park and Williams Creek Golf Course, and work on a new Lonsdale park.
The budget includes around $3.9 million in pay increases for Knoxville Police Department officers. The money would increase the starting pay for new officers to $56,000 and boost pay for experienced officers to "keep their salaries and benefits competitive with law-enforcement agencies that currently pay better than KPD."
It also includes funds to increase stipends for advanced EMTs to $3,750 a year, and $8,000 per year for paramedics. The budget also aims to bring in new firefighter recruits and pay for a 2.5% salary raise for all general government employees. City first responders would also see step-level raises.
Around $3 million in the budget would go to a new fire station in East Knoxville's Burlington community. Another $4 million would be committed to the project in the following budget.
It also allocates $8 million for affordable housing in the city, $2.4 million to support the creation of a new rhino habitat and floating boardwalk at Zoo Knoxville, $2.7 in public safety grants, and $11.7 million for road and bridge improvements. The city said $4.2 million in affordable housing funding would go to the "Transforming Western" redevelopment project in the Western Heights community.
Around $3 million would go to economic partners in the city such as the Knoxville Chamber, Visit Knoxville and Centro Hispano.
More information about the budget proposal is available online. After the first reading on Tuesday, a public hearing will be held on May 16 and the final vote will happen on May 28.
City leaders proposed spending up to $230,912 for two years of support on its Oracle Software Products. It would also spend $134,312 for the third year of support when the city plans to transition to cloud-based Oracle products.
According to the city, the proposal is designed to save Knoxville money. Currently, it works with Mythics on support for its Oracle software. The agreement would effectively transfer support services from Mythics to Rimini Street — entering a less expensive agreement with the stipulation that the city could not upgrade to newer versions of Oracle software.
"Over the next few years we will transition our existing Oracle on-premise software to new Oracle cloud based software packages. We have no plans to upgrade any of our on-premise Oracle products before the move to the cloud," the city said.
The support agreement would come at half the cost the city is paying now.
However, Rimini Street has also been recognized as a fast-growing IT company in Israel. It is headquartered in Las Vegas but has an EMEA location in Israel — along with several other countries across the world.
Oracle has also issued several pro-Israeli statements as the Israel-Gaza Crisis continues in the region.
Pro-Palestinian activists quickly planned a demonstration calling for the city to divest from Oracle and to reject the proposed agreement with Rimini Street. About a dozen people showed up at the Knoxville City-County Building Tuesday evening.
More than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since Oct. 7, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza. Israeli officials said around 1,200 people died in the Oct. 7 Hamas-led raid in Southern Israel, and some 570 Israeli soldiers have reportedly been killed since.
The ongoing Israeli offensive has also been internationally condemned, and the International Court of Justice called for Israel to prevent death and destruction after South Africa filed allegations that the country committed genocide in Gaza.
Across the U.S., protests at college campuses have also flared to show support for Palestine.
Knoxville activists have repeatedly organized demonstrations calling for the city council to pass resolutions showing support for the Palestinian people. Twice, those resolutions failed for lack of a second.
"From Kincannon's Israel tour to the utter rejection of a purely symbolic ceasefire resolution, their position is made clear. Not only will our honored council defend and stand in solidarity with genocidal actors, but they will expand surveillance tech in doing so," organizers said in a flyer for the demonstration.
During the meeting, a few demonstrators spoke on several resolutions and advocated to generally support Palestine. Several shouted, "Free Palestine," and "Ceasefire now," at different moments. The meeting slowed as Kincannon held several speakers out of order. One speaker asked for clarification on the agenda item she was speaking on and was held out of order.
As each speaker stopped talking on different items, a crowd would chant pro-Palestine slogans. One speaker was ruled out of order after being called to the podium to talk about the city budget proposal.
"I believe this is an opportunity to reassess the city's priorities and take steps towards addressing one of the pressing issues that the city has created, and that is homelessness," the speaker said. "We know that in these conversations about the city budget, it's not just about balancing the books. It's about balancing the priorities of the city. So we are left to wonder why when the city is wondering what to do with $79 million, its priority is policing the streets and not offering a helping hand to those people who are living on the streets. And I would like to add also is what's missing from any conversation about our city budget, is that as we speak here, our tax dollars are being used to fund the indiscriminate bombings of homes, hospitals, and civilian infrastructure in the Gaza Strip."
Tommy Smith said the person's comments were not germane to the topic and Kincannon held the speaker out of order. Police were then seen at the podium as the speaker tried to scream comments to the turned-off microphone. Police then escorted the speaker out while Kincannon said they would be arrested.
A spokesperson for the Knoxville Police Department said the speaker was taken out of the meeting but was not arrested.
The city said in October 2023, leaders adopted a six-month moratorium on Personal Delivery Devices — autonomous robots that usually pick up food from vendors and carry it to customers. They are mostly used on the University of Tennessee campus as a means of food delivery.
"As new technology starts to exist in different cities, we look at what's happening in other cities and say, 'Oh, that's a technology that could be coming to Knoxville,'" Carter Hall previously said, the director of Strategic Policy and Programs of Knoxville.
During the moratorium, the robots could operate on campus but couldn't be operated in other parts of the city. On April 16, the city took a step towards permanently banning the robots on Knoxville's streets, sidewalks and right-of-ways.
"The sidewalks tend to be significantly narrower than you might see with newer sidewalks or sidewalks on UT's campus," Hall said. "Those are also parts of town where we have a lot of cutouts for things like patios, tree planters, or streetlights that are actually embedded into the sidewalk."
The city said during the moratorium, city staff researched how the robots operated and assessed whether they would fit with the city's existing infrastructure. The city said staff consulted with businesses, UT, and the Mayor's Council on Disability Issues about the delivery robots.
"After this research and discussion, City staff members have concluded that the existing infrastructure in areas most likely to be used for PDD operations is not appropriate for PDDs to be safely and conveniently operated. As such, the recommendation is that an ordinance be adopted to prevent PDDs from being operating on City ROW to prevent infrastructure impairment and pedestrian issues," the city said.
A proposed ordinance effectively banning the food delivery robots on Knoxville's sidewalks and streets passed on the first reading on April 16. On Tuesday, the city council will consider it for a second reading. If passed, it will then go into effect.
Hall said there are other ways the city has tried to make it easier for people in Knoxville to have food delivered.
"We have spots that are designated for somebody to be able to pull up, just put their flashers on, run in, get their food and come back. Delivery drivers can utilize that," Hall said. "If we didn't move forward with a prohibition on the books, we kind of have the Wild West, regulatorily. So we felt that it was important to move forward with this now. But, we do want to be open for that in the future."
