The mayor speaks on the state of the coronavirus recovery effort, Big Ten Football possibly starting, and why a local income tax increase is needed during a pandemic.
On this week’s installment of Ask The Mayor, Bloomington Mayor John Hamilton addresses these issues and more during a Facebook LIVE Zoom event Tuesday. 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. Here are some highlights.
This conversation has been edited for clarity and conciseness.
Hren: What are you thoughts on Big Ten football starting up in October, would be a boost for the economy, but tailgating, parties, fans, … how will that go over?
Hamilton: Well, issues like should we open the schools? And how should we open the schools? You really need to combine the best science advice that you can, really weighing the risks and rewards. The rewards of opening up schools and returning to education for our K through 12 is very real and big to be able to do that.
It's a different calculation of rewards for operating a football season. There are some economic benefits but it's also a real risk of as you mentioned, the kind of gatherings that can happen. These are very complex decisions. I do appreciate and strongly hope that the focus is on science and health.
The professional athletes have figured out some ways to do it in a bubble. But you can't do that with college students and student athletes and multiple campuses and all that stuff. So it's a really difficult choice, I think.
Hren: Any thoughts on how Halloween could proceed?
Hamilton: We are thinking about Halloween. I know there are groups and institutions and people who have events related to Halloween. We actually talked about it yet this week, trying to think about that now. The city has some involvement in Halloween, but of course individuals can choose what they think is right for them.
One of the advantages of Halloween is it's mostly outdoors, and small groups, and traveling with your family and that's safer. On the other hand, we don't want to have a lot of germs passed back and forth at doorways. So we actually have started to think about Halloween like a lot of cities around the country.
Hren: County officials, Ellettsville officials, there’ve been letters to the editor in the paper - not happy about the 0.25-percent income tax increase as part of your 'Recover Forward Bloomington' proposal. A vote is set for city council Wednesday, you still want to see this pass?
Hamilton: Well, there are a lot of people with different comments. These are projects that are really important for the future of the people of Bloomington. And my job is to try to advocate for the programs and the projects that will help our people thrive and climb out of this challenging time.
It is important to note that both the county and the city would agree, we would prefer that the state legislature would give cities authority to manage our own finances and to impose our own taxes. We're not allowed to do that. We've been asking for many years and the state legislature has declined to do that. So the only way a city can generate more revenue is through a county wide tax and the state legislature sets up pretty complicated voting rules for that, but we will follow all those rules and if a majority of the votes are cast, then the county receives a new income tax.
Hren: Even though it’s a county tax, city council makes up the majority of vote – there is some state legislation next year that may change that. Do you think the process to vote on the tax is fair?
Hamilton: Well, we've advocated that the city ought to be able to impose a tax on the city's residents. City Council can and should be able to say we want and we need revenue to approach these challenges and impose that tax the state does not let us do. We are a creature of state law. The state has instead decided all income taxes are imposed at a county wide level. And they've bounced back and forth on how you impose those countywide taxes.
Currently, it's a complicated formula of the different jurisdictions. Each member of the different jurisdictions get a certain percentage of the vote, reflecting the population. The theory is that of people representing more than half the people in a community vote for it and the majority is in favor of it, that should go into place. But it's not ideal. And we would absolutely support a change in that in the state legislature hope they'll do it.
Hren: You've said Monroe County’s tax rate is lower than surrounding counties as a reason for the tax too – but are other factors being taken into consideration like, Bloomington is one of the most expensive places to live in Indiana, housing is very expensive… and residents want low taxes, so is that a compelling reason to raise them?
Hamilton: No, it's not the reason to raise the taxes, the reason to look at raising taxes is to provide services. And absolutely one of those services is to support affordable housing and to help people who are in housing to have lower cost of living by helping invest in solar panels and energy efficiency to lower their energy costs.
But I think it's important to note, for example, that the basic services of government are paid for through an income tax and if our income taxes are half of Brown County or Morgan County, that means government has much less revenue to provide the services to sweep the streets and to pick up trash and to patrol the streets and to improve the parks. All those things depend upon revenue.
Julie (email): Why is Monroe County, Indiana being held in a state of no progress of recovery for so long? What happened to 2 weeks to flatten the curve?
Hamilton: There's a lot of things we could talk about how we should have had a national mask order, we should have had much more testing going on nationally. There's a lot of things that nationally should have happened and statewide. We do what we can locally but part of the reality too is when we have 35,000 students coming to town from all over the state in the country, we're gonna see changes in the numbers.
We we know hospitalizations continue to be stable. We're not as high as we were in the spring. We can beat the disease but we have to keep doing what we're doing which is really controlling the spread with with masking, distancing, good hygiene, don't gather in big groups and continue to take these smart steps until we get a vaccine.
Dan (email): I've read many articles about Hoosiers disregarding state, county, city, campus and company COVID-19 policies, but no consequences. Why not?
Hamilton: Well, these public health orders are meant to protect the public health. They are not meant to be punitive or criminal statutes that are meant to catch people not doing the right thing. They're designed to encourage compliance and to protect public health.
There are consequences if people violate orders. We've had institutions like restaurants and bars that have not complied with the orders and they've had been cracked down on and made clear if you do not comply immediately, you risk closure and we would close them down. We haven't had to, but we've had some very serious conversations.
The individuals who work for the city, we have rules on mask wearing and on distancing, and we have very strong compliance overall, but occasionally we'll have an individual or a circumstance where there's not compliance and we make clear to that person that needs to get better and it will.
I know Indiana University has had some very direct consequences to students who didn't comply with rules.
Marc (email): Can you get a test of you're not from Indiana?
Hamilton: The short answer is, you can be a resident of Indiana or a resident of Monroe County or Bloomington, yes, there are many options. If you're purely a visitor coming through, there are not nearly as many options but the testing protocols really focus on people who are in the community who were trying to to identify if there's been an infection and therefore do the contact tracing to find out where who else might have been exposed.
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