Ferdon says the new airport control tower should be done by fall 2025, the security breach didn't compromise bank data, and the budget is being laid out differently this year.
In this week’s installment of Ask The Mayor, Columbus Mayor Mary Ferdon addresses these issues and more during a visit to Columbus City Hall. 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: Let's start with something I know former Mayor Jim Lienhoop worked on, and that was grant money for a new control tower at the airport, and it sounds like things are finally starting to come together?
Ferdon: We worked with the FAA for years to get a new control tower. The current one we have, I think, is about 70 feet high. And so we finally got money from the FAA as well as the city, the airport's kicking in money too. And so we were fortunate. We were able to use the Cummins grant program that they have to bring in some really great architects. And so we had our choice of, I think, three or four architects and and chose Marlon Blackwell out of Little Rock Arkansas, and so they've got this amazing design for a tower. I think it's about 100 feet.
It will definitely be on our architectural tour. I think the bids start probably late this year or the first of January. We'll bid that out and get that going. And hopefully by the fall of 2025 we may have a finished project. I know we'll be groundbreaking it next spring. So that'll be huge for the community, because the current control tower was built back in the 1940s.
Hren: Wanted to bring up the data breach I think just a couple weeks ago. You know what happened or if you've learned anything new after our reporting?
Ferdon: We joined a club that we didn't want to join, right? We had a cyber attack, a data breach. It happened Wednesday, actually, two weeks ago, and so we have spent the past two weeks working very hard to get everything back and running. I would say we're about 85 to 90% of the way there. We have a great team whose IT team has been working through with it. This past year, we had hired our director of security and risk, who was a former police chief for the city, and so he's been great.
So at this point in time, we're still investigating how it happened and making sure that we didn't lose or what we may have lost. But we, as a city, we don't keep credit card data, we don't keep bank data in our system. So none of that was lost. And we had cyber insurance, which is, I would say, any city that's watching or listening, you should have it.
We hired a forensic IT team that has come in and is working hand in hand to help us identify so we know exactly why it happened, where it happened, and then what we can do in the future, what technology we need to use more of and then how we can be more secure with more authentication.
It happens everywhere. Someone reminded me that the Pentagon got breached at one point in time, but that it really can affect the service that you provide to the community. So it's very important that we learn from what happened.
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Hren: We're getting into budget season with all the mayors now this, of course, will be your first as mayor, how are you tackling it?
Ferdon: We went from class three to class two, so we added two more city council members. We recognized up front that four of our city council members are brand new to the position. So we recognized that we had a lot of educating to do. We also, last year, hired a new controller in anticipation of getting to this class of city, and so last year was actually her first budget.
Even though it's technically the mayor's budget that city council has been involved from the very beginning. So that when we present capital, that they understand the capital needs and how we prioritize them. So that has been worked out really well. So I think when we get to the actual budget sessions, city council will be probably better informed than maybe they have been in years past, and be able to feel more confident in voting on the budget.
Hren: I know the city is working on a 2030 downtown project master plan, does that look at things like, density, utilities, climate change, post COVID, and so forth?
Ferdon: A little bit our housing study is the one that looks more at housing density, right? Because most communities don't want to go out because you don't want sprawl. So you really only have two choices, which is infill, and the City of Columbus really doesn't have much infill left. So then your third choice is really the density into going up. And so that's like constant tension and balance.
And then also, what kind of zoning changes that could happen that would make it more favorable to build, because every community has zoning restrictions, and some are easier to get around than others.
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Hren: We've reported on this, but some of the money is starting to come out now to local officials from the national opioid settlements. Do you know how much Columbus is getting, how that's being spent, who's overseeing it?
Ferdon: Yeah, that's a little bit of a sore subject. So the bulk of the money coming to Bartholomew County is actually going to the county, the City of Columbus is getting very little, maybe $20,000 a year, but Bartholomew County is getting hundreds of thousands a year.
But the good news is the county has indicated that they're going to continue to spend it on addiction related services. So we have an organization, kind of an umbrella organization, in Columbus and Bartholomew county called ASAP, right? And so it deals with all kinds of programming that helps people who have a substance abuse disorder. And so we have a jail program, we have a court program, we have a hub where people can go and get all kinds of information and get referred out to treatment centers. And so the county has indicated that they're going to use the same process with the opioid dollars that we use for the to fund ASAP, ASAP is a joint split between the city and the county. So I think we will see that most of the dollars that they get will go toward that.
