The town is enforcing businesses that choose to continue mask mandates, water and sewer infrastructure tops the list of town needs.
On this week’s installment of Ask The Mayor, Nashville's Municipal Consultant Dax Norton 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: These last couple months, we've been starting off the show looking back because it's been a year since the coronavirus took hold. What have you taken away from the pandemic for a town such as Nashville?
Norton: We learned that the normal can go away pretty quickly, but what we rely on to feed us and keep the lights on, can go away in a pretty quick flash. And we've got to be prepared for that to happen again, and for revenues to be in place to be able to take care of services and be able to support each other and all the businesses that we have. So that's what I would take away from it just were very good leadership.
Hren: Brown County's in the yellow advisory level. Now there's no state mask mandate, but I believe there's still some restrictions there in Brown County?
Norton: If a business requires masks, the town will back that business up. You can still ask people to leave your business if they don't have a mask on. If they don't, they're trespassing. That's obviously a criminal offense. And so yes, town still is supporting those business owners that want to take a stand and continue to be safe and their employees safe and require masks.
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Hren: I believe Nashville is getting $230,000 from the American Rescue Plan Act, Brown County proposed to get almost $3 million. Has there been any meetings on spending it?
Norton: First off the town passed their ordinance. The state required an ordinance be passed to establish a fund to place those monies into the fund. Monies obviously haven't come to the municipalities yet. And the actual official dollar figures haven't been released by Treasury. So all of us are kind of waiting to see what the Treasury does, especially if there are additional and much more specific guidelines on the use of the spend.
I think that one thing highlighted for the time is water, sewer and broadband infrastructure. That's the thing the town really is looking towards. The town has some significant projects underway to improve the wastewater and water system. And so that's probably what the council is going to be focusing on the county. On the other hand, I haven't heard, but I think it's welcome news that the county can use that for tourism if they need to. We think of the Music Center. Nobody has heard anything what to do. So we're just kind of waiting. All of us are starting to develop spending plans getting prepared, what we need to do is leverage that money for additional federal dollars, my opinion or additional state dollar.
Hren: I covered a Brown County commissioner meeting about a property tax increase that funds buildings, county grounds and IT, does that tie in to the town's goals and planning at all? And is the town looking at any type of tax increase?
Norton: No, I don't think so at this point. Obviously, our levies are controlled by the state. I think they went down a bit last year, if I remember correctly, or they stayed the same. I don't see that changing this year. I don't think we've seen the hit to the revenues as much as was anticipated. A good example is food and beverage tax revenue really didn't decline. You would have thought that it would have but it really didn't. So I you know, obviously we're paying close attention. It's budget time, right? Now it's time to start thinking about those budgets. For right now it looks like that town will still be able to provide services to the residents. Without any significant increases in revenue.
We have about a $6 million project in front of us. We're working very hard with federal and state partners and much of that in grants as we can so that rates will have to increase substantially to get that done, and to have a very good delivery of water to the home and wastewater away from the home.
The next big crisis, Joe, is water and sewer delivery by municipalities to the residents. Think I heard $17 billion with a B, maybe it was million. I can't remember. Just repairs to water and wastewater systems across the state. And in that process with the current infrastructure that we have a great example is from pipes from the federal government that were given to the town in the 40s. After the reduction of Camp Atterbury, the federal government dug those water pipes out of the ground and gave it away a surplus to surrounding communities to Nashville delivering water with a lot of those pipes.
Hren: Did I read that there's also a loss of water in the system that's accounting for that so the income is not replacing that loss of water in the system? And so how much do you spend on fixing that? And does that get your money back?
Norton: 56% water loss is huge in 2019. That has to be fixed. The average I think is between 15 and 20 percent. And that's all leaks in the system. All that has nothing to do with staff. It's everything to do with aging infrastructure that we haven't been able to keep up with, because we haven't done what's necessary to raise the revenue necessary. It becomes a political thing. And people don't want the rates raised. But now we can't afford to keep the infrastructure viable enough to provide that service safely and efficiently.
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