Lienhoop says COVID numbers are trending in the wrong direction and will until herd immunity is reached, the city signed a letter of intent to bring high-speed internet to 80 percent of city residents, and city/county bicentennial celebrations come to an end.
On this week’s installment of Ask The Mayor, Columbus Mayor Jim Lienhoop addresses these issues and more on a Zoom conference call. 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: COVID numbers are rising - the state recorded more than 2,000 hospitalizations Monday, that's up from 1,700 recorded last Monday. People are staying indoors increasing transmission. Now there's news of a new variant omicron, have you been briefed about it?
Lienhoop: I haven't received a briefing yet about the new variant, this is going to continue until we reach what they call herd immunity, we're going to continue to deal with variants that just pop up because every time we allow for the virus to transmit from one person to another, it replicates and there's a likelihood or at least a possibility, and strong likelihood that it will mutate into something that we haven't seen before.
So, here locally, our numbers have trended in the wrong direction. The last information I received from Columbus Regional indicated 33 inpatients. A week or two ago, we were looking at 10. And at this point to already be seeing a little bit of a spike is concerning. Because really what we're hopeful is that we do not use up the the capacity at the hospitals.
We encourage everybody to mask up and get vaccinated. I got boosted a few weeks ago, and didn't hurt a bit. They didn't take much time.
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Hren: The city approved a letter of intent with Meridiam for 80% coverage of a high-speed internet infrastructure contract by the end of the year. How did this come about?
Lienhoop: Well, it came about pretty easily. And that was I got a phone call from John Hamilton. And he wanted to know if we'd be interested in participating in this, that the Meridiam people had approached Bloomington and indicated that they were interested in building a network there. But Bloomington wasn't big enough for that, they wanted to make a substantial investment $100 million, or something like that.
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And so they came here to Columbus, I think they also went to Martinsville and maybe Shelbyville and we've been able to work out an arrangement with them, and hopes are we can negotiate and sign contracts by the end of this year.
The county has decided to help fund, part of the construction that would occur outside city limits. But this will be a game changer - not only for education, but for those who wish to work remotely. And the way communities will be judged is their connectivity to the internet.
What they'll do is string fiber optic cable, it will generally follow the electricity provider underground, then we'll rent that space to an internet provider who the public will have an opportunity to interact with. And so we intend to try to nail this down with a contract as to what those charges will be. But the whole notion will be to provide a cost effective option to consumers.
Hren: Meridiam says 80% coverage, but how does the city work with the company to make sure that the other 20% of the city isn't low income?
Lienhoop: Well, I actually think that the low income areas are going to be desirable for Meridiam, because of the the lower price that they hope to be able to offer. They'll get a higher uptake or higher penetration rates in those areas. So I'm a little less concerned about about that. But we'll have an opportunity to audit that. And so if they don't put it where they need to well, we'll have something to talk about.
Hren: I know the Columbus is preparing for READI grants - Terre Haute Mayor Duke Bennett has talked about it too. What's Columbus looking for there?
Lienhoop: We have the in person portion this coming Friday, December 3. And so we've been practicing, they put together a video and little script to try to explain, what we have proposed here locally - big pictures, you could call them paradigm shifts. And a lot of it has to do with electrification, particularly vehicles.
If you think about the the economy in Bartholomew, Jackson, Jennings counties - and that's the region that we put together here. But if you look at those three counties, and you ask yourself, what's the predominant industry, it's either diesel engines or automotive components.
We've got 19,000 people who work in those two areas, and we're worried that we'll lose a substantial portion of those jobs in as quickly as 10 years. And so part of what we want to do is come up with a strategy that will attract other component manufacturers for electric vehicles.
So part of the READI grant proposal is to help fund the construction of a test track out at the Walesboro airport to bring some of those supply or some of those manufacturers of components for electric vehicles to our area, and allow them to grow here.
We here locally have talked about the river front, being able to get into the river and engage it with recreational activities. We ever thought of that when I was a young man, you just never went to the river. We turned our backs to it. And so that's an example of what we might want to approach here for Columbus and Bartholomew County in terms of trying to make this an attractive place for people to move to.
Hren: The end of the city, county Bicentennial is here, and maybe was a little lost during the pandemic but what were some of the key celebrations?
Lienhoop: We will have a celebration here as part of the Festival of Lights Parade, which will be this Saturday, December 4, in the downtown area.
And then we're going to come away with what we call a legacy project, the 1821 Trail - we will extend the People Trail here, behind the jail and behind city hall here on First Street. But people need to realize that there's a whole lot more going on than a trail. We're going to reconstruct both those streets - replace sewer and water lines. The infrastructure here is about the oldest that we have.
But we wanted to have a legacy project, something to point to that said, that's what we did to celebrate our Bicentennial.
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