Mayor Jim Lienhoop says leaf collection begins in a couple weeks, the city 2024 budget has some larger than normal employee salary increases, and NexusPark won't just be used for bookings.
On this week’s installment ofAsk The Mayor, Columbus Mayor Jim Lienhoop addresses these issues and more. Listen to the full conversation withIndiana Newsdeskanchor 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: Any updates on leaf collection this year?
Lienhoop: We will start about the middle of October, I want to say October 16 Monday, and then we will run until I'll say about December 16, which should be a Friday. We will do weekly leaf collection. We just ask people to get their leaves to the curb, and we'll come along and dispose of them for you.
And we ask people to keep the leaves out of the gutters. Because if you put them in there, they tend to get into the sewers - the stormwater drainage. And they'll not only plug it up down below, but they'll plug up the surface drains and so you can get some minor flooding, if you get a heavy rainstorm. So just want people to put the leaves on the grass. And we'll come by and pick them up, take them out to the recycling center and turn them into mulch.
Hren: October is known for budget approval, is the hard part over or is it yet to begin?
Lienhoop: We'll let you know a little bit more about that, say 7:30 this evening, we start our budget process. We started in May. It's a really long, lengthy involved process where we polled various departments that we have here at the city and try to determine what their needs are both for personnel and for capital. And then we try to distill that into a proposal.
That proposal was put forward at what we call budget hearings, which happened back in August, we presented to the city council, but we're also really preparing and presenting it to the community. And so we've had a few back and forth with some of the individual council members and I think we put together a proposal that will pass this evening.
We've got about $12 million worth of capital expenditures. That includes some new equipment for the Fire Department and the Department of Public Works for the police department. We've got some significant salary adjustments, particularly for our first responders. We find ourselves in situation where we feel compelled to respond to what the Indiana State Legislature did with respect to the Indiana State Police and so we will be requesting Council to approve a 16 and a half percent raise for our sworn officers. We are in a similar situation with respect to firefighters.
These are numbers that are just unprecedented, just unheard of, in municipal government. But we want to be able to maintain some comparability to those people who we compete with personnel. The remainder of city employees, we're looking at a 5% raise for them.
The cost of health insurance just continues to grow. We've got a few tweaks that we put together with respect to the plan that we offer in our trying to encourage our employees to switch from a PPO to HDHP, which is a high deductible health care plan. And we believe that long term that will help us minimize the health care costs for the city.
At the same time, we are proposing a clinic modeled sort of after what Bartholomew Consolidated schools does, this is a clinic that would result in no additional charge for our employees who utilize it. The city will pay a flat fee to Columbus Regional Health to administer the clinic. For this year, we're looking at maybe a 20 to 21% increase in healthcare costs. And it's driving a big portion of our budget.
Rendering of NexusPark Columbus (City of Columbus)
Hren: I know we've talked about many other projects, the conference center, NexusPark appropriations - did those have a major effect with this upcoming budget?
Lienhoop: There's some money in there for NexusPark and none in there for the Hotel Conference Center. For NexusPark, what we propose to do is to establish what we call a non reverting fund, that will administer the activities out there and provide a little bit of seed money. We've requested $500,000, but I anticipate that being paid back.
We've begun to book events for the second quarter of 2024. Our consultants indicate that we'll make money at NexusPark and so that'll give us the opportunity to pay back the funds that I mentioned. One of the things that we've learned, in terms of talking to people in the community - that there is a little bit of concern about just how busy the place will be. We've kind of maybe oversold it a little bit, the sports tourism angle of this. There will be plenty of opportunities for locals to participate in events at NexusPark. We're going to follow a model very similar to what we do at our softball and baseball and soccer complexes.
Yeah, we'll have some tournaments, ticketed events on the weekends, but during the week, local organizations, local leagues, local clubs will be able to to use NexusPark. By being able to use it as a training facility or a practice facility for them, and I'm sure we'll have other uses from time to time. We'll have two high school sized basketball courts and two collegiate sized basketball courts. So there'll be plenty of opportunity for locals to enjoy NexusPark.
Lienhoop on 'Ask The Mayor' in September of 2018. (Joe Hren, WFIU/WTIU News)
Hren: We're down to three months left as mayor, what projects are you hoping to push through? Do you feel like you're starting to wind down a little bit?
Lienhoop: No, it feels like you're speeding up. I keep looking for the glide path and I just can't find it. But we've got a few things. I mean, obviously NexusPark is pretty dear to us. We continue to try to see some progress on the riverfront. I'm hopeful that we can put that out to bid yet this year. Over just east of here, what we call The Taylor, that project will start leasing here within I think the next two months and we're still looking for a grocer for that component of that facility. We've talked at length about a Hotel and Conference Center, the cost estimates that we've been working with are way up, are a little eye popping, so I don't know that we're going to be able to move on that anytime soon.
But at the same time, we continue to want to spend a little time with Mental Health Matters, which is a more recent initiative that we have put together with a hospital in the county, and in trying to find some kind of effective response for homelessness.
With respect to folks who ever find themselves in a tough spot, housing is expensive, find themselves unable to afford it. We've got some some meaningful options to help them get back on their way. I don't know that we ever get it solved. We just find hopefully find more responsive actions that we can take.
