Ferdon calls federal funding freezes and cuts, "very concerning." The city's broadband installation is about 85 percent complete. And the city will debut its DORA district Thursday.
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: I know we talked a couple months ago about some of the funding cuts, some freezes, reviews of grants, federal funding for health, nonprofits, education. And this trickles down to local cities like Columbus, what are your concerns right now?
Ferdon: Like every other community, we're paying as much of attention as we can. We do get quite a bit of federal grant money and for the transportation system. We get some for utilities. We get a lot for our metropolitan planning organization. We're continuing to hear that we're getting that grant money.
My concern is actually even greater than Columbus, because we have a lot of our businesses here in town who get significant amounts amounts of funding from the federal government for research. Some have been in a freeze, and so they're kind of waiting to see what the next steps are. So yeah, it's very concerning. The best that we can do is watch at this point in time and hope that as a new administration gets people on board and they understand the grant process and how local governments and local businesses have built budgets and rely on that, that will continue to see grant money come through.
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Hren: Bloomington and Columbus are working on installation of fiber broadband thinking of it as a utility, making it more equitable. It's a long process, I know Bloomington had some hiccups along the way, and I've heard there might be some contractor issues in the county here? How's it going in the city?
Ferdon: The city, I believe, is about 80 to 85% completed, so we don't have as many issues. Yes, one of the local subcontractors who was actually laying the fiber has declared bankruptcy as my understanding. And so the Hoosier Fiber Network is looking for new contractors. So it really is affecting Bartholomew county more than it is the city.
Hren: Is some of that fiber through the city available for customers and is it being used?
Ferdon: Yeah, we've already had many people who've been able to sign up, I think it's Gigabit Now. The city did not have to pay anything. This is something that was done basically free for us. The county, I think, used three to $4 million worth of the American Rescue Plan dollars.
The tipping point is obviously when we feel like we can get it to the people who haven't had access. And businesses, that's important. And then we have remote workers, but I think for our educational system, making sure it gets to not only city, but our county school kids who more and more fall behind if they don't have access to the internet. We've got to get it completed.
Hren: Can we get a DORA update? That's the designated outdoor recreation area which allows municipalities to designate an outdoor area to allow the transfer of alcoholic beverages. I know Columbus was approved by the state.
Ferdon: Events are beginning to start. Our local Board of Public Works just approved today, an application for a temporary permit for an event so it will be the first one in Columbus, Thursday night, April 3. It's on Sixth Street, so feel free to come downtown and enjoy, and we'll see how it works.
I think the downtown community has been very, very supportive. We worked through the process making sure that all the stakeholders are involved, understanding what it means. You have to have special cups made so that you can't have people bringing in alcohol from the exterior area.
Hren: I understand there's a proposed mixed use development for the corner of 11th and Washington streets downtown, but a tax increment district didn't pass city council. So first, what's planned for that area, and then what happened at city council?
Ferdon: Developments like that go through the plan commission. They sometimes they have to go through Board of Appeals. They also go to city council, because of, in this particular case, redevelopment was giving them funding to help with the project. So we did end up with a development we're excited about. It's a housing development. It has 120 units of housing. I think 10% are designated for low income.
A TIF allocation area around that development would help us recoup the $6.4 million of redevelopment dollars over the life of the TIF. Unfortunately, some members of city council chose to vote against it, but the city administration and the redevelopment commission felt like it's been a long process. We desperately need housing downtown, so the redevelopment is moving forward without recouping the $6.4 million.
We've got a great city council. Some of our members did not support that because they wanted more low income housing. And so I could suppose that maybe that was part of it, but it's really hard for me to guess what was behind their vote.
I want to assure people that it's not that the developer won't pay taxes. It's just, instead of coming back by the TIF to go for other developments, it will go back to the city and the county and the schools.
Hren: Any quick update on the conference center proposal?
Ferdon: That is something that we'll see probably show up in the Columbus 2030 plan. We've got a firm within that plan that's developing a lot of numbers and data points which make it very, very critical to understand putting one in. We felt like we had one pre-COVID, and not so sure anything's changed. But, we talk at the federal level with the tariff conversation, it's really hard to understand how that might affect construction.
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