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: It's budget time and I've been reading in the Republic the city council feedback on the proposal over concern that the budget leaned too much on deficit spending, could you fill us in on what council is asking and then how you responded?
Ferdon: A budget is a point in time, and we're also relying on state data, and so we work with what we have. And in the past probably year or so, we've had ongoing conversations with city council about what kind of a general fund reserve we like to keep, and so this year our budget used a little bit more of reserve than council wanted us to, because we always present a very conservative budget with worst case scenario, and historically we've never spent what we've budgeted, and so they had some concerns, and we adjusted.
So I think we're at a good place. We had our city council president resign last week. He had been doing it for six years, and it's a really tough job. So they'll be electing a new president.
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Hren: How hard is it to budget for capital projects with the new state tax changes coming?
Ferdon: It is, and as you know, construction costs have just skyrocketed over the past five to six years. So what you start out thinking that you could build for $7 or $8 million cascades into $12 or $15 million.
We were very fortunate to have a local family, Mark and Wendy Elwood, who are huge supporters of the animal care system, and so they put up a donation and challenge to match that, which they were able to get. So private donors put in over $2 million for a new animal care shelter.
Hren: How much has the federal grant freezes affected your budget?
Ferdon: We really cut out the in-river piece of our riverfront, and so between TIF dollars and we had some local state grants that we were able to get, we're moving ahead on the riverfront.
Where we're stymied is the one piece of the riverfront that was affected by federal funding was removal of the dam. Half of our funding came from the federal government. They're just not paying. They're freezing dollars for whatever reason. So that will be on hold probably for another year, and that's frustrating because it's probably one of the most critical pieces. It's a safety feature, unfortunately, there's a lot of funding that's up in the air right now.
Hren: I feel like almost every other day we see data centers in the news. The city of Columbus is proposing more oversight over data centers. Are there any proposals brewing in Columbus, and what measures are local leaders working on?
Ferdon: City council didn't ban data centers or put a moratorium, but we realized that there was no oversight for any type of data center, and so they passed an ordinance which basically said that it's a permitted use, but it also requires approval by the board of zoning appeals which means that there will be some government body who has oversight of any data center coming in, and the bigger issue is that it allows public input. Because when the board of zoning appeals meets, the public can come in.
There's always developers or people who are citing land who are coming in and talking to the city and trying to find out what land we have available, what's our appetite for a data center... right now we don't have anything in front of us but like I said I've had multiple conversations with people who are interested.
Hren: I see a nearly $6.1 million state grant is facilitating the restoration expansion of the historic Crump Theater. How big is that?
Ferdon: That's a huge win for the Crump. I believe they got the largest grant from the READI Lilly funding. We have had 15 studies on the Crump over the past 40 or 50 years. There's a local board that oversees them. They've done some private fundraising. They've been talking to the city as to what the city funding could be on this. I know they've also been looking at other grants. It's a big undertaking, a 100 plus year-old theater and trying to figure out what it should look like and how you can program it.
Hren: I know this might be a little early, but we're already seeing Bloomington mayoral campaign announcements. Do you intend to run for mayor next year?
Ferdon: It is early, but yes, I will be running for mayor next year. One of our council members has announced that she will be running also, so that unfortunately or fortunately, the season kicked off a little bit earlier than traditional. But yes, I'll be running for mayor in 2027. Hopefully, serve a second term.
