Impact of I-69 Section 6, city budget goals, 200 day plan outline and Fourth of July festivities.
On this week's installment of Ask The Mayor, Martinsville's Shannon Kohl addresses these issues and more. 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.
This conversation has been edited for clarity and conciseness.
Hren: You're in your first term as mayor after serving a couple years on City Council and you've had some time to get your feet wet and make this job yours, what's it been like?
Kohl: This past year we've focused a lot on I-69 and the budget. We are balanced for the first time since 2005. We under-spent a deficit budget last year by almost ten percent.
Hren: The big news is planning the final leg of I-69 Section 6 from just south of Martinsville to Indianapolis. Has anything new happened on that front?
Kohl: We're communicating with those businesses that will be affected by the interstate and we're also proactively trying to find them a new place to move. The only thing that has affected us is the traffic from the construction in Bloomington mostly because of IU basketball games, IU graduation... that's been something we've had to deal with. Other than that, it's still not here yet, so that's what we're dealing with.
Hren: And we just heard word on Monday that the stretch under construction in Bloomington has another delay – almost 2 years now, currently there's no funding plan for section 6 here, does that concern you?
Kohl: I've been pretty proactive with INDOT and have a good relationship as far as communication. My hope is I can do the best I can to keep it going, but even with the section in Bloomington, really the mayor has no control over how the construction goes. So my hope is maybe there has been some things that they've figured out with Bloomington that they'll do differently here.
Hren: As you go through this process on building an interstate through a city, how do you keep it from dividing your city?
Kohl: I'm sure when State Road 37 came through Martinsville years ago they were worried about the same thing and I don't think that divided us. I think it was key for us to get the interchanges that we needed. I hired HWC Engineering Company to do a market analysis on how it would affect us if we didn't have those key interchanges. There were always going to be some adverse effects, but we wanted to minimize them as much as we can and capitalize on the positives.
Hren: I see you have a 200 day plan posted on the city website that's divided into 5 areas, number one is crime reduction and public safety. I was interested about the "Operation Sheepdog" program about drug and alcohol arrests, how does the operation work are there results?
Kohl: Yes, we are seeing results. We've taken quite a few people off the streets selling narcotics. One of the things we've noticed is that we get a lot of traffic that meet here to do the drug deals. Like we might get someone from up north who's selling to someone down south, but Martinsville is the place to meet so we're working on how to limit that.
Hren: I hear the city is having their first July 4th parade this year, is that true?
Kohl: I think the veterans that were planning that are going to wait until next year. But we've given other events back to the fire department to run, because in previous years we had an individual who graciously gave his time for that and decided he wasn't going to do that anymore. So we have an all day event at Martinsville City Park with fireworks on top of the hill.
