In this week's installment of Ask The Mayor, Indiana Newsdesk's Joe Hren visits Greencastle's Sue Murray downtown at City Hall. The mayor talks about her frustration with unfunded city mandates, a potential grant to help renovate the fire station and July 4th activities in Greencastle.
Listen to their full conversation above. Here are some highlights:
Hren: This is a holiday week, but still very busy in that I heard you mention a public meeting is scheduled Friday so you discuss a grant application. What's that about?
Murray: We're applying for a Community Development Block Grant for some restoration on our fire station. So we're asking for $450,000 to help shore up the fire station and make some modifications in the second floor living space. So we needed to have another public hearing now that all the plans are done and the budgets are ready to be submitted. Over this 30 year period of time, there perhaps are some things that weren't looked at the same way in the 1970s.
Hren: What's the total cost of the fire station renovations?
Murray: Total cost, I think to do the project the way it was originally written, we'd probably be talking about $600,000. The city has in-kind dollars we've put toward the project already and we'll be doing some things internally to cut down costs in terms of finishing and what kind of beds we're able to put into the new space, but it's really reliant on the grant to get it up and off the ground.
Hren: I wanted to get your reaction from Chiyoda's expansion plans revealed a couple weeks ago that would create more jobs in Greencastle?
Murray: It's a substantial expansion project. They're not going to quite double their space, but they're going to put a really large addition on operational by next March. It also means the need for about 200 more employees. I think it's getting to be that point in time where it's becoming a concern, on part of our local business and industry. The people they're interviewing are coming from a farther and farther radius.
