We visit with town council president Nancy Crocker to get an update on the newly crafted budget, the state abortion ban effect on tourism, new security cameras, and more.
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: Peak tourism season in Nashville right now - how's it going so far? What kind of crowds are you seeing? How many people are visiting?
Crocker: I'm not sure of numbers but there's a whole bunch of people here. So the weekends especially, I would suggest if people are going to come between now and Christmas, come during the week, if you can, it'll be less busy. But it has been insane. The traffic is back been backed up for miles trying to get into town. All of our hotels are booked restaurants have at least an hour wait. I know the Birds Nest told me one day they had to turn away 50 people, which is heartbreaking but, that's how busy they are.
I've heard a lot that people are spending money. And we so appreciate that because this is small town America. This is our only industry here in Nashville and Brown County. And so we appreciate these people that are spending their time to come here but then their money to help support our community. Because without them we'd be nothing.
Hren: I wanted to bring up something we haven't had a chance to talk about and whether it's affecting tourism. And that's Indiana's near total abortion ban. State economic officials have said it could affect tourism, do you have any thoughts or concerns about that?
Crocker: Well, I have concerns about that policy. Personally, I think a woman should have a right choose whatever she does. I don't think anybody should tell her what to do, especially a man. I don't really see a lot of that here.
That's one thing really interesting about Nashville and Brown County. Yeah, we have our politics and we have both sides of the Republican and Democrat Party are represented here. But no, I don't see a lot of issues concerning that. People are still coming here. And, and I have talked to people Louisville, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Chicago, a lot of people from Chicago are coming down. I haven't really seen it affect us. Hopefully, it won't in the future. But that brings us to another point that people need to get out and vote.
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Hren: Nashville Town Council doesn't have any Democrats or Republicans?
Crocker: We all ran independent. It's not like it's required. It's the way it's always been. And everybody just always does that so that we don't have that conflict on Town Council. We are here to serve the town not here to have an agenda.
We felt like that it opened it up so more people could run for town council. So we did that about a year or so ago. And we got rid of the districts. So we're all at large. So now we have five people running for council and we have three open seats.
Hren: Talking about government, you've all been busy coming up with a budget like everyone else has, how was that gone? What's new, what's different?
Crocker: I don't think a lot is different. Obviously, the police are an issue there. And when I got on council, I was coming in saying we're spending too much money on the police, bla bla bla. And what I've learned is in this town with all the tourism and stuff, we have to spend this money on the police, this chief is amazing. She has created a five year plan now for us. And once we get established and get her caught up, then we can just go forward.
We've started planning, we're continuing to plan we have the ADA plan. Now we're working on the water plan. Now we've got the police plan. So we're going to kind of keep doing that, and then bring them all together into one plan. And that will help us when we do our budget next year to look okay, we've got this five year plan. This is what we have to do this year so that we can keep up with that. Our town clerk is so great. She watches everything and make sure that we do a good job.
We hired a town manager so that's been a huge benefit as far as organizing activities. She and I are planning to do a Community Calendar starting next year. And this is not a calendar for tourism. It's calendar for the community so that we can get all the community activities on this calendar so things aren't overlapping and, if they work together, we want them to overlap.
Hren: I hear security cameras going up in a few places in town. Is there anything that precipitated that?
Crocker: We've had some vandalism at the restrooms. I think it's just kids that are bored. And in one of our parking lots just had some activity that we didn't like down there. Some people say cameras don't stop crime, but they definitely detour criminals, if they look up and see a camera. And if we see that, after a year or two, that these are not necessary, and they're not helping things, then we'll reevaluate at that point.
