The Brown County Playhouse has been upgraded, tourism dollars don't fund town infrastructure, a human rights ordinance gets a first reading, and most storefronts are full despite COVID.
On this week’s installment of Ask The Mayor, Nashville Town Council President Nancy Crocker 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: We are on location in Nashville at the Brown County Playhouse, a huge part of Nashville history - I remember when IU held summer theater here, but it's held it's own?
Crocker: We have a bigger stage, we have new lighting, we have new sound system. We have lots of bells and whistles that we can offer people when they come here. In fact, we had a Acrobat team not long ago hanging from the rafters. We have a partnership with the art associates that we also have an art gallery.
I think it's now 75 years old, started with Andy Rodgers vision. And it was a stage and dirt floors, people would bring their chairs to watch. And it's evolved now into this, which is a staple part of the tourist industry here, which is our only industry.
We've got this huge tourism community, but really the money that it generates doesn't do anything to help the town. Now, there are some taxes like the lodging tax. But it goes to promoting the tourism. The food and beverage tax goes into supporting the restrooms and the parking lot for the tourists. So we really would like to urge the legislation of the state of Indiana to look at towns like ours, and be creative about how things are taxed. We don't have enough money.
Hren: What's your reaction to the fact that the state is trying to cut taxes, there's a billion dollar surplus, and people are getting refund checks, but towns are struggling?
Crocker: Absolutely. They renewed our food and beverage tax for I think 20 years. We appreciate our lobbyists that helped us do that. It feels like the small towns are not appreciated in the political realm of Indiana. And, again, John Cougar (Mellencamp) talks about the small towns in Indiana, and they are important to Indiana. Our problem is, the people of this town want to keep it a small town, they love their small town. But unless we grow or unless we do something creative to bring money, we don't have enough money to support the infrastructure for a small town.
Hren: I did see Brown County Commissioners received $3 million through the American Rescue Plan Act, the town is getting some too, has that been allocated?
Crocker: Yes, that's gonna go right to our wastewater treatment upgrade to fix and repair. We've got some things that aren't really up to code. We just hired a new utility manager, which is a game changer to help the actual workers out there, take some burden off their backs so that they can actually work.
Hren: You said earlier you wished you had a public safety tax. It reminds me of last month, when we were talking on Zoom, there was a fire downtown and volunteer fire department that happened to be at the fire department. I remember you said how lucky the town was. What you could use in the fire department?
Crocker: Money. We could use more workers. I think just recently, we have gotten a bunch more volunteers trained. If we could switch over to a fire territory, that would enable us to bring in some money and so that we could possibly have a paid Fire Department. But, again, a public safety tax, a tax on cars going into the state park, that would be specifically used for public safety or infrastructure or whatever. That would be really great and really helpful to be able to have something like that.
Hren: Any town council meetings coming up, what's on your agenda?
Crocker: We did have a first reading of a human rights ordinance. I'm very excited about it, we had five people on an advisory committee look at everything that they could possibly look at, I got in on some of those meetings, and they were fabulous. So what the ordinance has in it is very simple. It says, all people should be treated equally, no matter what, with a lot of words that say that.
But then their job is if there is a complaint, they would be available to direct that complaint to the state of Indiana to the civil rights organization in the state of Indiana, they would not be doing any counseling, we can't train people. You know, it just isn't feasible for us as a small town to do that.
And then the other one is just to be aware of the changing environment. And if new things that come up, to educate the Council on things that are happening in the environment, educate them about, you know, different holidays. For instance, Junteenth. I'm going to be honest with you, as a white woman living in Indiana, until two years ago, I had never heard of that holiday. And that's terrible.
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The bottom line is, there have been some things in the past that haven't looked pretty for Nashville and Brown County, and the town wants to make a stand and say, we want to make sure people know that's not what's going on here as a whole.
As long as we get good feedback, then we'll pass it at the next meeting.
Hren: This is my first time back here in a while and driving around it looks like storefronts are full, the town hasn't lost too much to COVID?
Crocker: Oh, my gosh, it was like craziness. It was like, Okay, you can come out of your house now. Our hotels were full the next weekend. Like it was, and it's been that way. I think people have just realized that you don't have to travel miles and miles to have a good time. It doesn't have to be that far away from home.
And we've got an amazing community of bikers. Now we have a great bike shop over here that they've really kicked up the notches on to bring bikers into the community. We also have a great community of bikers too that spend their money here, and we appreciate that too.
