Hamilton says the latest controlled burn lead report is the last test in the area, the city is waiting for finalized remonstration report to determine if legal action is necessary, and the mask mandate is keeping COVID cases low despite the recent uptick.
In 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: Last week was the first time Indiana has reported more than 30,000 cases in a single week since mid January. Monroe County is the only one with the mask mandate. But, what good is a mask mandate if it's not enforced?
Hamilton: If you've traveled to other places, I think you may be shocked at how few masks there are compared to what we have in Monroe County. So I do agree, I urge and wish we had full more full compliance with the mask mandate. But I do think a lot of people are doing the right thing. And I think it's very helpful to have the requirement and to have people doing that.
I know there's problems at basketball games, and there's problems at certain locations. But overall, we have way more masking here going on than in many other places. And I do think that's one of the reasons that our numbers are better than many places around us.
Hren: U.S. Senator Mike Braun said he doesn't support government mandates around the COVID-19 vaccine, including efforts to stop companies from requiring it. What's your response as a mayor who's also trying to get businesses and employees back to work?
Hamilton: I just have a completely different view of this. We're trying to help businesses operate and open and succeed and thrive and vaccines and masking are not stopping businesses from opening and thriving. They're helping them getting more people vaccinated and those who don't vaccinate, requiring they mask themselves is the way businesses succeed.
Senator Braun, I believe unfortunately, is kind of on the political end of this stuff.
Hren: Do you have any information about how the IU Health Bloomington Hospital move went? Or are there any issues that maybe came up with the city?
Hamilton: It was a big day on December 6, and I was at the new hospital on December 7, and did get the reports that while of course, any enormous move like that there's surprises or bumps or whatever, but it really went as smoothly as they could have hoped.
Haven't heard any problems about interactions with the public, there's a new bus route that's running to the hospital. There are new traffic lights. So everybody watch for that on the bypass on the east side.
Hren: A new report came out Friday from the city that said lead levels from the controlled burn are under IDEM limits. Is this now considered closed?
Hamilton: We hired some consultants, third party folks working with the Health Department locally, as well as the Department of Environmental Management. I do think the report that we just released now, weeks later, really helped put a pin in what happened and understanding it that the lead was cleaned up, there were lead paint chips that had been carried in the smoke, that's cleaned up. As far as I can tell, there's no legacy of lead dust.
We actually even did blood testing of firefighters and individuals from the area, none of that showed any lead contamination, the soil has been sampled and showed no lead contamination and such.
I'm sorry, we did it. It was inadvertent. And we followed all the rules. But actually now Chief Moore's getting asked to go up and talk to the state and maybe even nationally about what we learned and help them to show people the right way to do it, and the wrong way to do it.
From our perspective, all the testing that has now been done, and we don't plan anymore, and the third party company said you don't need to do any more this is this is complete and done.
Hren: Remonstration is underway and some residents say they have enough petitions to overturn annexation. The county auditor's office says the city is not following the 2019 waiver law in the remonstration signature count. As we've talked before, they city says that new waiver law is unconstitutional. Ultimately the auditor will release the official remonstrance record, but is the city not following the 2019 law?
READ MORE: Annexation Petitioners Going Door To Door; Mayor Says Remonstration Could End Up In Court
Hamilton: Let me be clear, we are following the law. That decision about whether a waiver is valid is not something the city decides. And it's not something that the auditor decides ultimately, ultimately a court decides that so there can be different views about that. But we're not not following the law in any way. We're following all the annexation law. And we will we will advocate for the city's position in in any legal proceeding to make sure that the city taxpayers who've been paying for all this and this and that utility city residents who paid for all the extensions that they're treated fairly to and not had a had a deal changed after the fact by the legislature.
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