Metro Council members on Tuesday set the stage for a final vote Dec. 4 on the more than $60 million in incentives HCA Holdings is slated to get to relocate the headquarters of two of its divisions to the West End Summit complex. In the process of studying the city's package of goodies, Steven Hale writes, several representatives have begun thinking about how small businesses can be given access to similar incentives.

Citing numbers from the secretary of state, Stites said only 12 out of 9,000 for-profit corporations registered in Davidson County have access to similar Metro offers. He granted that incentives have indeed been given to some of the city’s largest employers, but also argued that the amount of jobs created by such deals represent an exceedingly small portion of the county’s overall workforce.

“It’s not sustainable,” he said. “You can’t continue to do that.”