In this week’s installment of Ask The Mayor, Columbus Mayor Mary Ferdon addresses this issue and more at 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: What are you looking at right now in August, as you start heading into getting a little deeper into the budget discussions?
Ferdon: In fact, as we start our budget hearings in a couple of weeks, we've done our calculations of how much that the city will lose in new new revenue. And so we're in a fairly good position in 2026, not as bad as we thought it would be, but we will be dipping into our reserves to make sure that we have a balanced budget.
And we've not heard back from the state on the final numbers, so we'll wait to hear that. But, yeah, we're trying to be very careful. Obviously public safety is always at the top, and I'm trying to make sure that staff is able to be fairly compensated, and that you've got money to maintain your buildings and keep your streets going and on and on, right? So 2026 is kind of a trial year, in 2028 is when the income tax changes happen. So hopefully, between now and then the state legislature will be able to, kind of will get more clarity on that, because that'll be a huge shift to tax revenues for municipalities.
Hren: Wanted to talk about annexation, because it's such big news in Monroe County, Bloomington, almost eight years of discussion litigation with an involuntary annexation, annexation. I see Columbus City Council enacted ordinances for annexation. Can you tell us a little bit about where it is, how large, and what the public reception has been?
Ferdon: It's property out on the west side of Columbus. It's on State Road 46 and it's a voluntary annexation. So that's obviously much easier. It's in an area where we currently have a long-term care facility, but it's also directly across from an area where Bartholomew County School System will be building a new school over the next couple of years and so one of the largest concerns with his annexation for housing development was around traffic safety.
So part of what the developers were in the process of doing is getting a traffic study done, but we anticipate with the incoming traffic, both from the school and from a housing development that it could use a traffic signal. And so as part of the annexation and the housing discussion, the city and BCSC and the developers agreed to partner together and pay for a traffic light there.
Our housing study showed, like so many communities, we lack housing, and we need about 300 units a year. And so this development, I think, is 100 acres, will certainly help.
Hren: I see the Downtown 2030 Plan was unveiled. Was it full of pomp and circumstance? This has been a long-time planning.
Ferdon: We have been talking about for a year. We struggle trying to get people back after the pandemic and particularly having the headquarters of a Fortune 200 business in our community, such as Cummins, they've had a lot of remote workers, and so we've seen a clear downturn in both Day and Night activity in the downtown.
So last year, we hired Sasaki, which is a firm out of Boston, and we've got some great financial help with another firm. They put together an amazing plan with a lot of recommendations, a lot of community input. We had about 3000 people that we calculated weighed in Columbus. Columbus residents like to do that right? Everybody's got an opinion, multiple interviews with stakeholders, several public sessions, and so we're really pleased with the recommendations.
There are many of them, 50 plus, but what we think was really helpful as we put together an implementation team. So we have a steering committee and several activation teams around infrastructure, around the buildings that we want to fill differently and around programming and activation.
Hren: And then there are other big initiatives that have been going on for so long, like the "Our River, Our Riverfront" project, and I know that bids have opened?
Ferdon: It is right. We've got to move forward, because this is really first and foremost, it's around safety. We've got an old dam that has to come out, and then we really need to barricade the river banks. And so we went back, we pulled out the in-river piece, which a lot of people were excited about. But you know, you just got to move forward. And so we were able to kind of regroup and start over.
Milestone Contractors won the bid, I think, a week or two ago, and we're on target to start doing work. The dam probably won't come out until next spring, but we're going to get started on some of the riverbank work. And unfortunately, we've got to take out some trees, but we'll be replacing those trees.
Hren: Exhibit Columbus opens the 15th and 16th. For those outside Columbus, what is this and what's in store this year?
Ferdon: I think we're in the fifth iteration of it. It's temporary exhibits that happen every two years, and so this happens to be that year and runs basically for three months. There's 13 installations throughout the city of Columbus. They're all free. They're all outside to wander around and just kind of look the theme this year is "Yes and" and it's kind of like, what are the possibilities for a community and for a city?
They're created by leading architects and designers in collaboration with community partners. So there's a lot of city involvement, there's a lot of volunteers. There's also a lot of donors, because it's very expensive to put on every year.
