Ferdon said this won't be a year for a whole lot of new projects due to state budget cuts. She said the city is in a wait and see attitude right now.
In this week’s installment of Ask The Mayor, Columbus Mayor Mary Ferdon addresses these issues and more 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: Are you starting to get a better picture for the 2026 budget? And what are you learning?
Ferdon: We are starting to get a better picture. We're actually, as most cities are, we're in the planning stages, looking at capital and personnel requests, and so, we think that we're going to take a little bit of a hit, so we're going to be careful, but we're part of it.
It's always a little bit of a guess that we get numbers from the state this year, we do expect a decrease from property taxes, and so we're just going to be a little bit more judicious as we budget, and, you know, try to allocate some reserve dollars for capital as we need it. But this, this won't be a year where we'll be able to start a whole lot of new projects. We'll just kind of, we're kind of in a wait and see attitude right now.
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Hren: I see Columbus city utilities is looking to a rate increase. What's the financial situation?
Ferdon: I think both water and sewer systems are probably close to $100 million of capital needs over the next 10 years. We still have some of the lower rates in our city our size in the state, that doesn't make it easier for a property owner or a business owner, but it's really important that the utilities keep up with new technology and making sure that they repair all of the equipment that they have out.
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We try to be judicious so that it's over time, and letting people know and there are some ways that both residents and business owners can conserve water. And so just educating them on and how to do that, when to irrigate, when to fill their pool, that kind of thing. So it's an unfortunate fact of life. Everything's gone up right now.
I think we had a public hearing, I think two weeks ago, which was required. I think it's a 30 day comment period... don't quote me on that. We had two different open houses and letting people come in and speak, but the water rate increases have been in front of city council on numerous meetings, and so that's really where people tend to come and speak more than at public hearings.
Hren: The city is acquiring the former Sears building, which started last summer, but city council is approving funds for expenses now. What's the process going on there?
Ferdon: The first meeting was a lot of questions that really relate back to whether or not a city should be acquiring property as well as then having to pay for the consequences of a water leak. Unfortunately, we don't have any control over that, but city council understands that by and large, we own that property, so we have to pay taxes, we have to fix the water leak.
We were in the middle of a 2030, downtown study, which actually will be presented in July to the redevelopment commission as well as city council. And part of that goal, then is that some of the property that we own, we get that in the hands of developer, once we get a better feel for what would be good for the city? Everybody has an idea of we need restaurants, we need retail, we need housing. No, we don't need housing. We need a lot of housing.
Then we kind of pass it to experts who've studied what works in other communities, and so they're going to come back with some recommendations.
Hren: You mention the downtown 2030 study, and we were talking in Terre Haute with their Riverfront master plan, but reminds me of Columbus. Is the river part of the downtown 2030 survey?
Ferdon: The riverfront project is moving forward. We actually put an RFP for some bids, I think a week or two ago. So that project is part of the downtown study in the understanding that, yes, it's going to be completed and then helping us understand the connectivity from the downtown to Mill Race Park and to our riverfront, and how important that is.
But what do we need to do to make that connectivity happen right through trails and way finding and things of that nature? You know, unfortunately, our downtown is cut up a little bit with State Road 46 running through both directions and that makes it a challenge to get people across those streets. And so what can we do to make make it so attractive on the other side that that you do want to go over there, and then to make a way that people can safely get across there.
We're putting some bump outs. We're reducing the width of the lanes, and so the goal is to slow down traffic. We're adding some parking along.
We'd originally had some in river recreation piece, but we've totally removed that out of the project. Unfortunately, just because the cost was so great, and we just can't go another five to six years trying to figure out.
Hren: NexusPark recently hosted the big event, but there was some parking and traffic issues in that area with businesses and residents. So what happened and what's the plan moving forward?
Ferdon: We had one business in particular that some of our event attendees parked in their lot. And so we're creating signs to put up to kind of guide people, please don't park here, or please park here. We've talked with some neighboring landlords who've agreed to loan us some parking space when we have some of the larger events.
Part of the difficulty is that we have about 100 parking spaces that haven't gone online yet. There was an area of the campus that we have just added parking spaces. And there's another area that's immediately adjacent to the park that we'd had to close off because of construction traffic. So by mid to end of June, those parking spaces will all be open. We have areas where there's no parking striping, if that makes sense. And so people just kind of park however they choose to. So we believe that by the next big event, that we'll have some things in play that will significantly cut down on the parking issue.
