Mayor Mary Ferdon said the main streets are clear while crews are working on side roads. Paid downtown parking might be coming this year. And the mayor has a full slate on her agenda for 2025.
In this week’s installment of Ask The Mayor, Columbus Mayor Mary Ferdon addresses these issues and more during a visit at 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: When you're looking at almost a foot of snow over a couple of days, what's the city's strategy in getting out to clean streets?
Ferdon: We spent a lot of time kind of talking that through. On Friday, my team of public safety and department of Public Works met Friday afternoon, and then on Sunday morning, they started putting some salt out. I think our snow started in about noon on Sunday and so they had guys in Sunday afternoon, and then they pulled them out, pulled them back home, I think about 10 o'clock or midnight on Sunday evening, and then brought them back Monday morning, starting of four came in in different shifts.
The great thing about nowadays with Zoom and WebEx that the teams are able to talk a lot about what's going on. Life is pretty much back to normal, but it'll take a couple days.
Read more: Live updates archive: Jan. 5-6 snow storm
Hren: You want to keep people safe, but also keeping people in hurts downtown businesses. So it's kind of a balancing act, isn't it?
Ferdon: We talked about that yesterday, because as the county commissioners, along with our emergency management director, they're the ones who ultimately make the decision about what travel level advisory they should call. They actually moved from a red level to an orange level last night to be able to bring the third shift crews back into our manufacturing plants, which is great.
You're making decisions all the time and trying to keep people safe, but also understanding that every day that the roads are closed, that business isn't happening. And it hurts the small business owners. It hurts the manufacturers. And then there are people who just don't get paid if they can't go to work.
Hren: The last time we talked about the new DORA district, I think that was last fall, it had to go through state approval. Did anything change?
Ferdon: Yeah, it was approved in 2024, so I believe we'll see it start being used probably this spring of 2025. As you know, you have to have a specified area. You have to get a certain number of signatures. Not only the tenants, but you have to have sign off by any churches or school buildings in the area or close to it, which we have. You have to have special glasses, which I think those have been made already.
Hren: The Columbus parking commission wants to suspend enforcement of the three hour time limit downtown? But the city really isn't on board with that. So can you give us an update?
Ferdon: The parking commission recently approved an RFP to go out for a parking app, and feel really comfortable that that's the next phase. They also made a recommendation that the city suspend our parking enforcement for the next couple of months in the downtown area. Last week, the Board of Works took that up. We only had three out of the five members, and so the Board of Works voted that up to approve the RFP, but it voted down the request to stop all parking enforcement until we can get the full Board of Works contingent, which I think will happen next Tuesday.
And so it wasn't so much the city disagreeing with it. It's just that it's a big move. You have to be careful when you have one commission who's making a recommendation before you vote that down, you want to make sure that the board that's doing that, or in this case, the Board of Public Works, understands the implement implications.
Hren: Are those spots already have kiosk paid parking? Or is this expanding the paid parking in downtown Columbus?
Ferdon: We don't have parking meters and we don't have kiosks right now, all the parking enforcement is done by an individual who keeps track on a specific piece of software, but it's basically walking around the designated areas that have the three hour times, and that's what has created a lot of the controversy. So I don't think there's a perfect way to do parking, quite frankly, but we're going to keep trying.
The nice thing about this app, just like the current parking we have, which is always the first hour is free, so we can choose to make the first hour free or the second hour free, but just because the hour is free doesn't mean it wouldn't count into that three hour parking time. So that'll change up a little bit with the app.
We want to keep those parking spaces open and moving so that somebody coming into the downtown who wants to run in and meet someone for a cup of coffee for an hour can come and go with reasonable distance. We don't want employees who are there for eight or nine hours to use the parking spaces. By the same token, we have also a number of parking garages. So it includes helping people understand the value of a parking garage, which allows free parking.
Hren: Here we are, 2025. What are your major points of interest this coming year?
Ferdon: We'll continue to work on housing. I think you and I have talked in the past. We've got some housing projects moving forward. Excited about that. We are finishing up the campus at NexusPark, so we've got a lot of the landscaping done, and we hope to have probably our kind of last ribbon cutting there later this spring, April or May timeframe.
Also working on long term strategy around our Animal Care Shelter. Want to replace that. The one that we have is just not usable. It's just too small, and it needs to be set up differently. So we've spent a lot of time in 2024 doing research. So we hope to move forward with that. In 2025 as you know, our aviation tower will move forward, and so we hope to break ground on that this year.
And then we're also working on a new accessible ramp for City Hall. We also should get the report out on the Columbus Downtown 2030 study as well as our transportation studies. So really have a lot on our plate, which is pretty exciting, and then it's the unknowns, the unforeseen, right? That'll always take up a lot of time, so you just go with the punches with those.
