Wilson County Is Growing Fast. Who Is Paying for It?

If you live in Mt. Juliet or anywhere in Wilson County, you already feel the answer in your daily commute. You feel it every morning when you sit in traffic on I-40, on South Mt. Juliet Road, on Central Pike. You feel it when a new subdivision goes up on what used to be farmland, and nobody has explained who is going to pay to widen the road that now serves twice as many cars. You feel it when the sewer system groans under the weight of ten years of growth that infrastructure planning never fully anticipated.

Wilson County is one of the fastest-growing communities in one of the fastest-growing states in the country. That growth brings opportunity, but it also brings a price tag. And right now, too much of that bill is landing on the backs of the families who already live here.

"The population has nearly doubled the last 12 years. A lot of the traffic that we see, not everybody is living here. Some of it is coming from outside cities, outside counties.", Justin Beasley, Communications Director, City of Mt. Juliet

The Numbers Behind Wilson County's Growth

Wilson County's population growth is not a rumor. It is one of the most documented demographic stories in Tennessee.

169,095  Projected population of Wilson County in 2026, up from roughly 113,000 in 2010, a growth of nearly 50% in 16 years. (U.S. Census Bureau / Cubit Planning, 2026)

3.2%  Wilson County's current annual population growth rate, one of the highest of any county in Tennessee. (Tennessee Demographics, 2026)

16.2%  Wilson County's population increase from 2019 to 2024 alone, during just a five-year span. (U.S. Census Bureau ACS, 2024)

$2B+  Estimated infrastructure needs in Wilson County between 2024 and mid-2029, according to a state report. (WKRN / Tennessee Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, 2026)

$1B+  Transportation infrastructure needs in Wilson County alone, as documented by state research. (Tennessee Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations)

30.1 min  The average one-way commute time for Wilson County residents, and growing every year as roads fail to keep pace with development. (Data USA, 2024)

Mt. Juliet currently has 19 road improvement projects in the pipeline. The city has put more money toward infrastructure than ever before. But when a county's population nearly doubles in twelve years, no local budget can keep pace on its own. Right now, what is giving is the quality of life for the families who live here.

The WeGo Star: A Solution That Is Not Being Used to Its Full Potential

Wilson County has something most fast-growing suburban communities in the South do not have: a commuter rail line directly connecting Lebanon to downtown Nashville. The WeGo Star, formerly known as the Music City Star, runs 32 miles along the Nashville and Eastern Railroad corridor, stopping at seven stations including Riverfront in Nashville, Hermitage, Mt. Juliet, and Lebanon.

That train ride from Mt. Juliet to downtown Nashville takes approximately 26 minutes. The same trip by car during rush hour can take well over an hour. For commuters, the math is obvious. And yet the WeGo Star is operating far below its potential.

What the WeGo Star looks like today:

• 32 miles of track, 7 stations between downtown Nashville and Lebanon

• Six daily round trips on weekdays only, with no evening service and no weekend service

• Two of those six round trips only go as far as Mt. Juliet, not Lebanon

• The last train departs downtown Nashville at 5:55 PM, leaving anyone who works late, attends an evening event, or runs an errand with no train option home

• No Sunday service except for special events like Tennessee Titans games

• Ridership in 2025 was 153,900, still well below pre-pandemic levels of more than 200,000 per month

• The line runs mostly single track, limiting how frequently trains can run in opposite directions

  
  

The Regional Transportation Authority has acknowledged these limitations and is exploring improvements, including evening and Saturday service, but those changes could take three to five years to implement and require funding that has not yet been secured. The estimated cost of expanded service is between $9 million and $10 million. That is a meaningful investment, but consider: Wilson County residents currently lose more than $1.7 billion annually in productivity to traffic congestion statewide. Getting even a fraction of those commuters onto a train pays for the expansion many times over.

A 26-minute train ride versus a 60-plus minute drive. The WeGo Star already proves commuter rail works in Middle Tennessee. The question is why we are not doing more of it.

What expansion could look like:

• Evening service: allowing commuters to attend meetings, events, or dinners in Nashville and still get home

• Saturday service: opening Nashville's cultural and economic activity to Wilson County residents without adding a car to I-40

• Expanded frequency: moving from 6 to 10 or 12 daily round trips to reduce the pressure on road networks

• Six additional planned lines: expansion plans call for routes to Gallatin, Columbia, Murfreesboro, Dickson, Springfield, and Clarksville, connecting all of Middle Tennessee in a regional system

• Double-tracking key segments: eliminating the single-track bottleneck that limits scheduling flexibility

The WeGo Star was conceived from the beginning as a starter system, a proof of concept that commuter rail could work in Nashville's metro. It has proven exactly that. But a starter system that never grows into a full system is a missed opportunity. Middle Tennessee is growing too fast to leave this tool sitting on the table.

Why Corporations Are Coming to Middle Tennessee: Who Is Paying for the Welcome Party

Tennessee has become one of the premier relocation destinations for major corporations in the United States. The state's pitch is compelling: no personal income tax, one of the lowest per-capita tax burdens in the nation, a central geographic location, and a strong workforce. Companies like Oracle, Starbucks, Amazon, and dozens of others have moved significant operations to Middle Tennessee in recent years, bringing jobs and investment.

But the full picture of how Tennessee attracts those corporations is one that many taxpayers do not know, and would likely have questions about if they did.

Tennessee's corporate incentive programs:

• FastTrack Jobs Training Grants: reimburse companies for the cost of training new employees, paid by state taxpayers

• FastTrack Infrastructure Development Grants: state-funded public infrastructure built specifically to support a new corporate arrival

• Standard Job Tax Credits of $4,500 per job created, offsetting the company's state tax liability

• Sales and use tax exemptions for industrial machinery, data center equipment, and warehousing operations

• Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT) programs at the local level, letting corporations pay reduced property taxes for years

  
  

In the past eight years alone, Tennessee handed approximately $758 million to roughly 570 companies through the FastTrack grant program. That is taxpayer money going directly to corporations, many of which are already among the most profitable companies in the world.

Consider two specific examples. Tennessee gave Oracle America a $65 million FastTrack grant in 2021 to relocate its global headquarters to Nashville, with a promise of 8,500 jobs. Oracle subsequently announced tens of thousands of layoffs nationally. The state has not pursued clawback action. Tennessee also gave Starbucks $30 million in taxpayer funds to open corporate offices in the state, a highly successful, multibillion-dollar company that chose Nashville because it is a desirable place to be, not because it needed a government check to make the math work.

"On the back end, when companies do well and do meet those expectations and grow and thrive, taxpayers don't get a cut. It's really a one-way deal for taxpayers.", Justin Owen, Beacon Center of Tennessee

Meanwhile, the infrastructure that supports those corporations: the roads their employees drive to work, the sewer systems that serve their facilities, the transit options their workers need, is funded almost entirely by existing taxpayers and local governments already stretched thin by rapid growth.

The corporations get the welcome mat. Wilson County families get the traffic.

What Other States Are Doing and What Tennessee Could Learn

Tennessee is not the only fast-growing state wrestling with how to fund the infrastructure that growth demands. But other states have developed smarter tools that make growth pay for itself rather than passing the bill to existing residents. The most widely adopted of these tools is the development impact fee.

What is a development impact fee?

A development impact fee is a one-time charge assessed on new development, whether a new subdivision, a corporate headquarters, or a warehouse and distribution center, to help fund the public infrastructure that development requires. Roads. Water and sewer systems. Traffic signals. Fire stations. Parks. The principle is straightforward: if your development creates the need for new infrastructure, your development helps pay for it, rather than leaving existing taxpayers to absorb the cost.

More than half of U.S. states have explicit enabling legislation for development impact fees. They are used successfully in Texas, Georgia, Florida, California, Colorado, Virginia, and more than two dozen other states. They are not a new or radical idea. They are a proven, bipartisan infrastructure financing tool used by communities across the political spectrum.

How Texas does it:

• Texas adopted its general impact fee enabling law in 1987 under Chapter 395 of the Texas Local Government Code

• Impact fees can fund roadway, water, wastewater, and stormwater drainage infrastructure

• In Austin, commercial impact fees range from $3 to $5 per square foot, generating tens of millions of dollars annually for infrastructure

• Fort Worth has used impact fees since 1989; transportation impact fees now fund approximately 1.5 miles of new arterial roads annually

• The law requires fees to be proportional: new development pays its fair share, not more

  
  

How Georgia does it:

• Georgia's Development Impact Fee Act requires that new growth pay its proportionate share of public facilities costs

• Eligible facilities include roads, sewers, parks, water systems, and public safety infrastructure

• Local governments calculate fees based on comprehensive capital improvement plans

• The law ensures that existing residents are not charged twice; fees are credited against future tax revenues the new development will generate

  
  

What a Tennessee impact fee framework could do for Wilson County:

• Require new residential subdivisions to contribute to the road and sewer capacity their development demands

• Require major corporate facilities to offset the traffic, utility, and public safety strain they place on local infrastructure

• Generate a dedicated revenue stream for the $2 billion in infrastructure needs Wilson County faces through 2029

• Reduce the burden on existing property taxpayers who currently subsidize growth they did not create

• Create predictability for developers, who would know upfront what their fair share of infrastructure costs will be

  
  

Tennessee currently does not have a statewide enabling framework for development impact fees comparable to Texas or Georgia. Some localities have implemented limited versions, but without a clear state framework, the tool is inconsistently used and often legally vulnerable. Establishing a clear, fair, and proportionate impact fee framework would be one of the most fiscally conservative moves Tennessee could make, because it requires growth to fund itself rather than passing the bill to families who were here first.

What Matt Burchfield Believes and What He Will Fight For

Matt Burchfield does not believe that growth is the problem. Growth brings jobs, opportunity, and vitality to communities. Mt. Juliet and Wilson County are desirable places to live precisely because of the community that existing residents built here. That is worth protecting.

What Matt believes is that growth must be managed responsibly. That means making sure the infrastructure keeps up with the population. That means ensuring that the people and companies driving that growth contribute their fair share to the community they are joining. And that means making smarter use of the transportation assets we already have, starting with the WeGo Star.

• Invest in and expand the WeGo Star commuter rail service, including evening and weekend service, to reduce traffic pressure on Wilson County roads and give commuters a real alternative to I-40

• Advocate for a Tennessee statewide development impact fee framework that requires new development, both residential and commercial, to fund its proportionate share of the infrastructure it demands

• Reform Tennessee's corporate incentive programs to require enforceable accountability: if a company does not create the jobs it promised, taxpayers get their money back with no exceptions

• Fight for the full $38 billion in statewide transportation improvements Tennessee needs, starting with the roads and corridors that Wilson County commuters depend on every day

• Ensure that infrastructure planning in Wilson County is coordinated with land-use decisions so that roads, sewers, and public services are in place before development happens, not scrambling to catch up after the fact

• Pursue public-private partnerships that require large corporate arrivals to contribute to the transit and road infrastructure their workforces will use

  
  

Wilson County families have built something special here. They deserve a representative who will fight to make sure the growth that is coming makes this community stronger, not one that leaves existing residents stuck in traffic and stuck with the bill.

Growth should pay for itself. Wilson County taxpayers have already paid for the community that makes this place worth moving to. New development and new corporations should contribute their fair share and not leave working families to absorb the cost.

---

Sources & Further Reading

WKRN News 2: State report shows Wilson County's infrastructure needs are in the billions (February 2026)

Tennessee Demographics / Cubit Planning: Wilson County Population Projections 2026

Wikipedia / WeGo Public Transit: WeGo Star commuter rail overview and expansion plans

NewsChannel 5: WeGo Star expansion considered for evenings and weekends (August 2025)

WPLN News: Middle Tennessee's only commuter train may soon add evening and weekend service

Fox 17: Onboard the WeGo Star: Nashville's only limited passenger rail line (November 2025)

Trains Magazine: Nashville-area transit agency considering changes to commuter rail service (August 2025)

NewsChannel 9 / The Center Square: Tennessee's $30M subsidy to Starbucks puts clawback record under scrutiny

Tennessee ECD: FastTrack Incentives and Grants overview

Federal Highway Administration: Impact Fees FAQ and Development Impact Fees Fact Sheet

Georgia DCA: Development Impact Fees and Capital Improvements Planning

Texas Municipal League: Impact Fees under Texas Local Government Code Chapter 395 (2026)

Pew Charitable Trusts: State Strategies for Paying for Infrastructure Vary (December 2025)

Data USA: Wilson County, TN profile (2024)