If declining COVID trends continue the mask mandate could end, the city is using some of the food and beverage tax dollars for pandemic assistance, and there's still a long ways to go before annexation is finalized.
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: We've had a little bit of good news, COVID numbers are declining, but still have to remember that the case count is still pretty high. Some news that the county mask mandate could expire in March when the governor ends the state of emergency. Is that what you're hearing?
Hamilton: Well, we've always followed the science and our Board of Health. Our local County Board of Health has been the entity that's put that into place. We've had it for quite a long time. And I think most of us involved in watching this feel it's been very helpful to our community, we've had really good experience compared to a lot of our neighbors and other Indiana counties.
It is our hope that these numbers will continue to come down such that could be lifted, it'll be up to the Board of Health, which I think we'll meet very early in March right before the governor's order extends. We do have authority to keep that in place. But if the trends continue, my expectation is the mask mandate may go away.
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Hren: Ann emails in and asks, "The city is spending $800K to provide a more equitable tree canopy. Areas for trees at no cost to homeowners were allegedly chosen based on median income and percentage non-white residents. How did Hoosier Acres, one of the wealthiest, whitest neighborhoods, get included?"
Hamilton: That's part of our Bicentennial Bond program. Back in 2018 we financed and the city council supported what we called trees and trails. And one of the things we wanted to do was look at the public tree plots, that is places where the public owns - usually the strip between the sidewalk in the street, and where we need trees and where they can go.
We did a real push this time to look hard at places that were under lower tree canopy. But we also have to look at where you actually can plant trees. There's a lot of things that go into it, including infrastructure or utilities beneath the tree plot. So there's a committee, I didn't decide it. But the committee that looked at how do we maximize the equitable justice as well as getting tree canopy. So it was a range of neighborhoods, I'm really proud and pleased.
Hren: Quick follow up from Ann, "Was Green Acres chosen based on the median income of the landlords or of the student renters in that neighborhood?"
Hamilton: We'd look at the median income of the residents, I think that's how median income is generally calculated. It's kind of a mix. It's not a mathematical formula, but it's trying to measure different factors. It is trying to remedy what I think was a problem in the past, which is, there was maybe a tendency to put public trees in areas of neighborhoods that were the most active or are loud about asking for them. And we've tried to remedy that with a more systematic look at where the tree canopy should go.
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Hren: Any update on a permanent location for the downtown fire station headquarters after last year's June flood?
Hamilton: Well, that's a sticky, sticky problem. We're still in temporary quarters. And thanks to the department, they've done a great job, responding downtown, finding a location, a plan for a downtown headquarters, whether we rebuild where we were, without a basement, whether we look at a different facility. We're still, frankly, struggling to figure out how to do that. We're looking at a few options, but I don't have anything decided yet.
Hren: Let's move on to annexation. The city released annexation numbers about a week or so ago, I see two sets of numbers, those that include all the waivers as the city sees fit. And those that don't include waivers older than 15 years as part of that 2019 state law that we've talked about many times on this show. If you don't count all the waivers only area 1B would be annexed. So those waivers do make a big difference, don't they?
Hamilton: Well, yes, Joe, the waivers matter a lot. And as you indicated, if they are recognized, which we believe they should be, the vast majority of this annexation goes through automatically, because most of the parcels in these areas agreed to be part of the city in the past years.
One thing I'll just remind people to keep breathing - there's a legal process for all this. It's not just the waivers. There's also really detailed rules about signatures and how they get counted. And whether they're notarized or whether they're not and the timing of them. And if somebody collected the signatures was it done correctly, and the state sets up sets out a very specific way to do it and a very specific process to review it.
So we're in the sixth or seventh inning, I guess, of the game, but we're not not down to the bottom of the ninth or anything. So let's just let the process run.
Hren: Last month, we talked about the convention center expansion on hold due to the pandemic. The county is collecting a food and beverage tax for the project since about 2018 - about $12.5 million through 2021. In 2021, the city took about $3.2 million, the county $443,000. So where's that money going?
Hamilton: I know we and I believe the county are using the food and beverage tax proceeds for helping people get through the pandemic. We ran a multimillion dollar very favorable loan program to help businesses who needed to who are losing business. I'm a strong advocate for the convention center. I hope we can move forward with it. There's not a meeting of the minds yet on that.
We have just seen the food and beverage tax rebound. So just late last year, it came back to the levels it was before. And as a practical matter, you do have to see a pretty stable revenue source before you can use it to finance long term construction like that. So that money is still dedicated to a convention center and it'll actually just help us borrow less money when it's time to build one.
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