Paperwork is moving forward to get Brown County State park on the town's water/sewer system, the human rights ordinance is ready for a second reading, and a new art display is scheduled to be dedicated Friday.
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 sitting in Coachlight Square watching visitors shop and walk around. I see all these small businesses and wonder, how did they survive COVID-19?
Crocker: There's a couple that we lost, but the ones that we lost for the most part had been considering retiring, anyway. And honestly after we opened up, people flocked here, and some of these businesses had their best year ever that year. It's crazy. But people think of Brown County and they think we're a safe little community. And even with COVID, they still felt like this was a safe place to come. And plus, they didn't want to fly anywhere. They didn't want to drive a long distance. So we got a new surge of people. I've seen a lot more families, I've seen more diversity. I've seen a lot of things since we reopened.
Hren: Any progress with the DNR and Brown County State Park becoming a bigger customer for your water and sewer treatment plant? We've talked about a bigger customer means more money to the town.
Crocker: We're progressing, we're signing papers, we're exchanging things. Again, this project is the state parks project, not the town's project. But the state park is a state entity, it can't borrow money from the state. The town is borrowing the money and so we're kind of the funnel. But it's it's close to getting started.
We negotiated rates with them, their rate is different than a resident, obviously. But it's not that much higher. That was a long time ago. We've already figured that out. And again, that's where our utility board was so important, because the utility board did a lot of research and tried to figure out a good number.
I would guess it would be done within a year. At least getting our part over there. But who knows? Nothing changes quickly.
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Hren: I know municipal consultant told us in January that the town's number one priority is upgrading water and sewer, it's May - how is that process moving forward?
Crocker: We've already started a master plan for the water. For me, I like to take one thing at a time, I don't want to have a whole bunch of stuff going at the same time. So sewer is the priority. The good thing about the sewer too, I just learned, they're not going to be ripping up streets and roads, they can do something where they push things through the pipes to stabilize them for the sewer rehabilitation part of it.
Hren: We talked about the human rights ordinance that's being worked on had one reading. What's the next step?
Crocker: We were going to do a second reading at the last town council meeting. And in the last hour, a couple of groups that had questions and had initially said they were against it, met with some people, another council person and said, you know what, we've kind of reconsidered this. And we kind of would like you to just pause a minute for us to kind of get together and talk about it.
So we're really, really hopeful that we can talk to them and help them understand how this is a good thing for our community. So we'll do hopefully, a second reading at the next meeting. And again, this isn't an emergency. So we'll do a second reading in the June meeting and then we'll have a vote on it then. That's at least the tentative plan at this point.
Hren: We're sitting next to a new art installation. What is it and how did it come to be?
Crocker: I'm a little proud of that. The art commission asked for ideas of something to put here. And I already had an idea in my mind. And so I submitted an idea to them. The problem was because I'm on town council, the council can't pay a council member. So I kind of handed it over to Brad Cox.
So this is our honoring Marie Goth, she is one of the founding artists of the art colony. And there's a beautiful black and white picture of her out in the woods sitting on a little stool painting. And so you can sit on the stool behind me. And somebody can get in the picture frame and it'll look like you're painting them. And then there's other frames just to have fun with family.
Brad Cox is the fabricator of the installation, and he's one of our amazing metal artists that we have in the county. He put that together and made it something a little bit different than I had in mind, which is good. Because it's kind of cool to tell somebody an idea, and then have them take off with it.
Hren: Dax and I talked about a noise ordinance a little while ago. I think it works both ways, some residents don't want to hear loud music at a venue late at night, but some venues want permission to have concerts?
Crocker: It is still being talked about, but because we have a new police chief that came on, and she's fabulous, by the way, and she's really working hard on creating a stable environment for the police. So we don't lose police officers so often. So she's looking at all of that and thinking long range. But she's working with Tyra Miller, who is another council person, and our lawyer.
They have recently met with Hard Truth, they're meeting with several other We have another town hall meeting coming up a week from this Thursday. And we're considering having a discussion about that at that meeting. But again, anybody that has an opinion about any of these things that we talked about can always email me and tell me what you think. And we take all that into consideration.
