Hamilton's preference for his successor is no surprise, statehouse legislators say the city misspent food and beverage tax revenues, and why a stop sign has been reinstalled on 7th Street.
In this week’s installment of Ask The Mayor, Bloomington Mayor John Hamilton addresses these issues and more during a Facebook Live interview Tuesday afternoon. 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: Parts of Kirkwood Avenue are closed again for outdoor dining. But not all businesses or drivers are in support. Is it still a good business model despite the worst of COVID being over now?
Hamilton: All of this is really driven by our really close collaboration with the Kirkwood business owners. It's driven by their interest. It is true that they're not unanimous about this, but we always take it to city council which has the ultimate vote. This time we shortened the season a little bit.
But there are a lot of people who really stood up and wanted to say this is a good thing for the community. Not only the restaurants, but a lot of the people who patronize it. We're always monitoring that. But I think overall, there's a lot of positive feedback we get about the partial closure during the good months of the weather to let people enjoy Kirkwood, in a new way.
Hren: We saw some campaign records come out yesterday and you've donated to the Griffin campaign. Are you planning on officially endorsing him or anybody?
Hamilton: I have endorsed Don, it's clear, he was my deputy mayor. I think he's the one who will lead our city forward. Well, nothing against the other two. But I think he is the one who best understands, in my view, how to keep the city moving. It's complicated. You gotta be willing to sometimes do some things that some people don't like, and that's why we have a democracy. But I think it's a very engaged campaign. I hope everybody will get out and vote.
Hren: I saw the high-speed internet installation is available to about 100 homes around the South Griffy neighborhood. Are you briefed on how many subscribers are signed up?
Hamilton: I'm not - I don't have a number other than I know that they're very pleased with the uptake so far. We wanted to let the community know that the first 100 homes were available by the end of next month, it should be about five or 6000 homes that we'll be able to sign up and by the end of next year, every resident in the city.
There's a dashboard, if it's not up, it's going up, that gives that kind of information, how many subscribers, how many of which demographics. This is a $50 million investment by this company, Gigabit Now that's with Meridiam. It's a big investment in our community, from the private sector, we're putting a million dollars on the table to get their 50 million, that helps build that digital equity program to make sure everybody can get good access to it.
Hren: Don writes in, why isn't the city working with other providers in using the same infrastructure for installation - for example, if they're coming through digging, why not put both in? Why do separate diggings for different installations?
Hamilton: It's a great question. And it was really a driving factor in our whole approach to this, which is we wanted to get fiber infrastructure designed and built as infrastructure. So that it's not AT&T's fiber or Comcast fiber - they will all be shared. And with this new Hoosier Fiber Networks, they are installing this and for a few years, it will be only Gigabit Now's access. But within a few years, it does open up to let anybody use the infrastructure. So you don't have to dig twice, you just dig once and you build the infrastructure for the whole city.
Hren: State legislators criticized the county and Bloomington on spending food and beverage tax revenue - about $200,000 during the pandemic for tourism/businesses to stay afloat during COVID. The state is saying that you had to do that with different funds. Was that something that city and county didn't know or check beforehand?
Hamilton: No, we disagree with that. We don't always agree with what the state says. We were very careful with our lawyers, making sure we could use those funds for emergency response to the appropriate entities during the pandemic. These were tourism related and we provided loans. They're getting repaid. We're very comfortable that was all appropriate.
Now, I want the convention center to go ahead, too. I think that's kind of part of the underlying issue that the statehouse is looking at. We're ready to build it. I want to make clear if the county wants to create a Capital Improvement Board, they can do that tomorrow. They don't need my approval to do that.
We have a different approach, we think could work. But I'm still hopeful we can get that construction started.
Hren: A new four way stop is back up at 7th and Dunn Street. It's where the new 7-Line Bike Lane was installed last year. Why wasn't that seen beforehand?
Hamilton: Well, when we created the 7-Line, we took out five stop signs, I think, in order to create a better flow for bicyclists, pedestrians, and buses to use that connection. That's the first part of a much longer trail that we hope to go all the way to 446 on the east side. We got into it, we looked at it, it's working great. The bicycle traffic is way up. It's actually reduced accidents with pedestrians.
But we did see one intersection where despite all of our best efforts, the cars keep banging into each other. So we went through the same process of the pedestrian bike commission and the traffic commission and city council to say, we took out five, we see one of the five looks like maybe it could be useful to put it back. So we're doing that in a emergency order. The city council will have to vote on that in the next six months sometime whether to make it permanent or not. We are always looking, what can we do to improve things?
