In just a couple weeks, motorists will be able to drive both ways over the new railroad overpass on State Road 46, school reopening is the mayor's number one concern during the pandemic, about 90 percent of Columbus residents are wearing masks, and the city is getting millions of dollars for it's transportation system.
On this week’s installment of Ask The Mayor, Columbus Mayor Jim Lienhoop addresses these issues and more. Listen to the full conversation with Indiana Newsdesk anchor Joe Hren by clicking on the play button above, or read some of the questions and answers below. A portion of this segment airs 6:45 and 8:45 a.m. Wednesday on WFIU.
This conversation has been edited for clarity and conciseness.
Hren: We hear about higher COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and testing - what's your number one concern right now?
Lienhoop: The number one concern is when school reopens - whether or not we'll get a rekindling of the disease here. We've been very fortunate in Columbus as a community, we've posted some pretty good numbers. I mean, we've had some people get sick, we've we've had some deaths, and so to say that we've had good numbers, it's a little bit of cold comfort to those who've lost a loved one. But from a community's perspective, it's really turned out reasonably well.
One of the metrics that we watch most closely is the number of inpatients at Columbus Regional Health. And those numbers have been pretty good. We've had a high of 20 back in April. The last number I got was much closer to five, it's been as low as zero. So you know, I'd say right now we're in pretty good shape, but we know that with school and school sports and some other activities that typically ramp up in the fall, we're a little concerned about that. And so we'll be paying pretty close attention.
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Hren: I know many city and county officials were debating some type of mask guideline because it didn't look like Governor Holcomb was going to enact some type of statewide mandate and then all of a sudden, the statewide mandate came out. How did you feel about that and what is the mask mandate participation?
Lienhoop: We've been very pleased with the compliance. From my own perspective, if I go to one of the big box retailers, which is really where most of our concerns were, I see people in the parking lot without a mask on, but they got one in their hand. And as they walk up to the door, they put it on before they go inside the building. And that's the kind of compliance that we're looking for. We're in the high 90s in terms of percentage of compliance. It's, really kind of heartening.
When we first began to talk about a mask mandate here, law enforcement was very concerned that we would be overwhelmed with calls and we just haven't had that. Since Governor Holcomb came forward with his announcement, I think we've had three calls to the 911 Center.
We were in my office at the table when somebody stuck their head in the door and said the governor just announced a statewide order for for Indiana. So, from that perspective, I felt a little bit vindicated because we had a number of folks who had challenged us on why we would do this and whether it was really the smart thing to do or the thing to do, and so it was kind of heartening to see the governor come forward with pretty close to what we were thinking about.
Hren: Columbus is the recipient of some transportation CARES Act money. It came in two different announcements. It was $2.3 million a few weeks ago then $140,000 just this past week. Why were there two different announcements?
Lienhoop: I couldn't tell you why it came in two installments. But we're pleased to receive. And the first thought was that we would put that money towards buses. But, the truth is that we bought new buses a couple of years ago, and these buses have a 10 to 15 year life. And so we're taking a look at some alternative uses. And, you know, it's you basically have to go back and reread the rules and see what else is permissible. And so we're in the process of doing that. And it's going to take us another month or so to sort of sort through, you know, what we could spend the money on that would be meaningful to us. Like I said, I don't know that we need any more buses right now, but, but we'll try to put the money to good use.
Hren: So this helps your transportation budget, which is important, but with the pandemic, we're in month five right now, are there any other trouble areas that the city is worried about?
Lienhoop: Property taxes are by design a fairly stable revenue source for local governments. And, and so we think that is a good thing. Other than, if you've got a business is suffering to pay the property tax, and so it becomes a little bit of a problem from that perspective. But we're, going to see a significant decrease in our local income tax revenues. We don't know yet. It's just really hard to say, and it's probably not going to hit us until 2022.
The funding formula that the state of Indiana uses is very involved, but it's more like a what I would call a rolling average. And in essence, before you feel the pain, you have to wait for a couple of years. Good years to drop off, and a couple of bad years to work at their work their way into the formula. And so if you think of it in those terms, and you think that 2020 is going to be a bad year, and 2021 will be a bad year, we're probably not going to feel that until 2022. And so, our expectations are that 2021 revenues will be relatively flat compared to 2020. But we are going to try to get all of our capital needs, or at least the significant ones that we can identify taking care of in 2021 in anticipation that 2022 is going to be a tough year.
We have a rainy day fund and I want to say the balance is around $5 million. We've also got a pretty healthy general fund and I want to say the balance there's $22 million so we're well capitalized. I mean, I don't think we're going to have that kind of an issue in terms of running out of money. I mean, that's not going to happen.
Hren: I know we're about out of time, but I just wanted to get an update on the railway overpass?
Lienhoop: Our expectation here is that by the middle of August we'll be driving both ways into town and out of town and north and south. There's some other ramps there and some people have called me and told me it's a lot like roller coaster that they just really enjoy driving thing, it's kind of anything new, you know is fun to start with. But it really is an improvement in with respect to safety.
And we're quite convinced that once the economy picks back up, the level of training traffic is going to increase as well. The railroad is working on a sighting north of us up in Johnson County. And when that is done, they will then have two sightings - one down around Scott County in addition to the one north of us, and that will allow trains to pass and we will begin to see we believe, pretty heavy two way traffic. Right now most of the traffic runs northward, the big trains - the 10,000 foot ones. But once those sightings are completed, we should see, train traffic, 10,000 foot train traffic in both directions. So we're really excited to get that behind us and see that kind of an improvement to safety and just transportation in and out of our community.
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