Mayor Mary Ferdon says between federal and state projected funding cuts, it's been chaotic on the local community side. Also the riverfront project is too expensive and is going through a redesign.
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: It's been kind of a whirlwind with news to freeze federal aid and grants. There's immigration issues and I know a church here we just covered, had a what you need to know, for immigrants, so as the mayor of Columbus, how are you handling this?
Ferdon: It's been a chaotic couple of weeks not only with federal government, but also at the state level. Yes, last week was chaotic when the executive orders came out about freezing all federal aid and grants. Our city, like every other city, we get federal dollars, and we didn't know what it meant. So I wouldn't say we were scrambling, obviously, but we were trying to figure out what that meant and how that could impact us.
Most of it is for things like our transportation, but we get quite a bit of money, off and on, for utilities, for we get a Community Development Block Grant every year of about $300,000 we get money from Homeland Security for public safety. So we do get quite a bit of grant money.
And then at the state level, there's a lot of bills out there looking at reducing property taxes, personal property taxes. And so we are working closely with other cities and AIM to try to figure out what that would do to communities, because it could make a significant hit on the city of Columbus. Alot of decisions have to be made in a short period of time, so we are trying to understand the impact and then relay that to the people who make the decisions.
Read more: 2025 Legislative Session - Indiana Public Media
Hren: You're speaking of Senate Bill 1 — aiming to reduce property tax revenue by $1.1 billion in 2026. In Monroe County that could potentially lose around $25 million and that's a lot of money.
Ferdon: Our estimate in Bartholomew County was about $16 million. That is a lot of money, right? And very, very quickly, at the same time, we could be losing federal dollars. I think there's so many bills, it's hard for us to understand what would impact us most. And what options do we have to make up that revenue?
Hren: And this all comes as the city is trying to grow and have strategic planning for the future?
Ferdon: It's called Columbus Downtown 2030, it's geared for five years. It's just the understanding that we wanted to reshape what our downtown looks like, how it's used, what's available. And, you know, we always talk about post COVID, we're five years or four years past, but that did change, particularly in a city like ours, where we have Cummins, right in the middle of our downtown.
And then with the evolution of how people work, it's changed who's here during the day and then who comes in the evening. We have a great design firm called Sasaki out of Boston, who's working with us to kind of rethink and reimagine. This has been fun, and we've had a lot of participation. I think we've had over 1,200 people fill out the survey. So far, we had our first big public session. We hope to have some results that we can start implementing later this summer. And it's about retail and business, but it's also about what do we need to do with our streetscape?
Hren: Well with more people, more events, more parking. A month ago, we talked about the parking commission trying to come up with some new ways to regulate parking. Any updates on that?
Ferdon: We put out an RFP, which means a request for proposal. We've talked with a number of parking companies who have apps used for parking. So I think we've got three or four that are bidding on a new system of parking. So we hope to have that back, I think, in March, and something in play later this spring. So parking will always be an issue, but I think we're moving forward to being able to try to solve it, or at least make it better.
Hren: I know Terre Haute is looking at their riverfront - it's a great amenity to have. There was a plan here that started to have funding issues. And from what I understand, it may be going through a change?
Ferdon: I think going back a number of years, a plan was designed in the 2016-2017 period. Unfortunately, it took us six plus years to get through all the alphabet agencies, right, the permitting from DNR and IDEM and Army Corps. Unfortunately, the cost doubled in that period of time, and actually now it's double plus.
Part of the design was safety issues that we knew we had to fix, which was the dam, and then we have a landfill that needed to be barricaded along the embankment. Then we also were extending our People Trail, and then we were going to do some in water recreation, and that was the piece that the regulatory agencies really didn't like. A lot of back and forth about, when you remove something from the river, what should you put back?
So we finally got to a place late last year we had bid out the project. Yet again, the cost came in way too high, and so we just sat down and said, okay, we've got to rethink this. We need to get the dangerous features taken care of. So yes, we've removed the in water features from the project or having it redesigned.
Hren: And your State of the City Address is coming, what will you be talking about?
Ferdon: Will talk a little bit more about the campus completion we're doing at NexusPark, but we'll give updates on the housing work that we've done over the past year, the homeless work, transportation study, talking a little bit about the 2030 downtown study, updating people on the riverfront.
Our theme is 'Gratitude,' and we're really just wanting to reach out to all the volunteers who make Columbus the great place to live, and just highlight the amount of work that gets done by the volunteers at the City of Columbus on all of our boards and commissions. I don't think people understand when somebody agrees to serve on one that they spend a lot of time and energy helping make decisions which move the city forward.
It's Wednesday, February 19, and we'll hold that over at NexusPark in the field house, right in the middle of pickleball going on and volleyball and soccer and baseball. So I just want people to see how well used that the field house has become.
