Indiana Newsdesk's Joe Hren sat down with Greencastle Mayor Sue Murray and talked about how the city budget is taking shape, the grand opening of the new city splash pad and how owner occupied homes could get free money for home restoration.
Listen to their full conversation above. Here are some highlights:
Hren: What is your role for the city budget and how is it coming together?
Murray: My job is to talk with department heads, listen, we are going to be in the best shape possible if we don't spend out our 2014 budget. We want to have money at the end of the year so we have cash to start with. If we don't have that cash to start with, we painted ourselves in a corner.
Hren: It's been a cooler than normal July, but that didn't dampen the spirits of the official opening of the new Splash Pad last night, how did it go?
Murray: Our infant pool, there have been a lot of new regulations that have been put for safety issues that the state had said are really important but we didn't have the resources to build and make the modifications they had asked for so we had to close down our baby pool a couple of years ago. So a bunch of women got together and came up with the idea of a Splash Park. They applied for a DNR grant which paid for a majority of the Splash Park and a lot of in kind donations and it all culminated last night.
Hren: I read about owner occupied home restoration grants available to Greencastle residents through the Stellar Grant, at least a few weeks ago some of those were still available. What does one need to qualify for financial help?
Murray: The first thing is to identify and remediate lead based paint. But if you own your home and if you meet the income guidelines, then you're pretty free to decide which kind of improvements your house would need. So we had people who have done flooring, bathroom upgrades, kitchens upgrades, roofs, windows, doors, porches, ramps ... a whole variety of things. And people have gotten up to $20,000 to do those improvements.
