Unknown Speaker
Welcome, everybody to the first week of August, where with Mayor Jim Lynam from Columbus, Indiana via zoom again, you know, we might start Well, I mean, we'll have to see how it goes. I was gonna ask you, but maybe next month we'll start back with in person visits. It depends what your setup guidelines are there. And of course, we feel here. But, you know, we haven't been to Columbus since April, I believe. And it'd be nice to see a lot of the stuff that's going on over there. And you want to have
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, I don't know how well how I look with, you know, the mask on but my guess is that a month from now, it's not going to be much different than it is right now. Yeah. Yeah. The situation that we're facing, right. So so we'll just wait and see. But yeah, we welcome you back to welcome you back to Columbus.
Unknown Speaker
So, you know, of course we haven't talked to you in about a month hospitalizations are going up cases are up. Testing is up to what's your number one concern right now in Columbus?
Unknown Speaker
Well, the number one concern is when school reopens whether or not we'll get a rekindling of the disease here. You know, we've been very fortunate in Columbus as a community, we've posted some pretty good numbers. I mean, we've had some people get sick, we've we've had some deaths and, and so to say that we've had good numbers, it's a little bit of cold comfort to those who've lost a loved one. But from a community's perspective, it's really turned out reasonably well. One of the metrics that we watch most closely is the number of inpatients at Columbus Regional Health. And those numbers have been pretty good. We've had a high of 20 back in April. The last number I got was much closer to five, it's been as low as zero. So you know, I'd say right now we're in pretty good shape, but we know that with school and school sports and some other activities that typically ramp up in the fall with those coming on, you know, we're a little concerned about that. And so we'll be paying pretty close attention.
Unknown Speaker
I know in Bloomington IU health is starting to see much higher hospitalizations. And most of it though, the concern is you can only really have one person per room. And so they're starting to fill up the hospital. And I assume that you know, the same would be a Columbus Regional and others are you're not or it doesn't sound like you're in that phase where you're starting to to worry about moving people to other hospitals yet are, you
Unknown Speaker
know, not yet. You know, again, we sort of leave that up to the folks at CRH. But, but no, we've not, not stressed their capacity to that point.
Unknown Speaker
And you mentioned schools too. I was going to ask you about that. How much have is the city or county been involved in reopening schools and just for those who don't know we're listening from outside of Columbus. What is the in brief the reopening plan for schools there?
Unknown Speaker
Well, in general, they'll be open, there'll be an E learning option available, the school administrators have told me that they expect about one third of the students to take the elearning option. But that might be a little high, maybe a quarter. But there isn't, that option will be available for those families that want to pursue that. Those folks who do go to school every day, and this would include the teachers and the administrators will have a screening process that they have to go through. So there will be a temperature check, either when they enter the building or when they get on the bus. There will also be some screening questions about what's going on with the health in your family, you know, today. And the whole notion is to try to identify those people who are most at risk either because of their temperature spike or because of something else that's going on in the household, and, you know, sort of pull them out of the queue and, and give them a little bit further screening. Again, the whole notion would be to try to identify early, the places where we have issue and to begin to do some kind of contact tracing with respect to where those people have been and who they've been in touch with, so that we hopefully can get, I don't want to say encapsulate, but, you know, try to get our arms around, you know, their exposure to the disease. And it occurs to me that, you know, we've got about 11,000 students within bcse, Bartholomew consolidated schools, we've got a couple thousand teachers and administrators. If you've got 80% of those who show up, you might have nine to 10,000 a day, who get tested. And so I think that's a pretty good number. I mean, I think that's a pretty good swath of the local population. And it'll not only tell us what's going on with that individual, but what's going on in that individuals family. So our expectation is that we have some issues we should know sooner rather than later we'll know sooner when they begin to develop like say a fever, or somebody in the family has a, you know, some kind of symptom that they district despite and hopefully will be Be able to get onto that little sooner than, like I say sooner than later. And you keep in mind too, that a lot of the larger employers are doing similar kinds of screening. So our expectation is that when school resumes, even though we've got heightened risk, because there will be, you know, greater proximity for a big number of people, the number the amount of screening is going on in the county is substantial. And so our expectation is that if we develop a problem, we should be able to find out early.
Unknown Speaker
You mentioned contact tracing more I read about it, the more important that is, is there a threshold for schools there where you start to, you know, you see the one positive case and then maybe you've seen this in Major League Baseball, where a whole team has been quarantined for you know, a few weeks or even football practices at Terre Haute and Bloomington. Is there a certain threshold where it gets shut down?
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, the school Corporation's developed a list of metrics and I just can't keep them stuff off top my head. But if you go to their website, you can access that pretty easily yourself. And, and yeah, it takes into account the number of positive test results and the results of their screenings and so forth numbered kids are people out on, you know, corrente and if they get enough factors that are flashing red, you know, then they'll react to that. And, and, you know, we'll just pay attention and, you know, play it as we see it.
Unknown Speaker
Mm hmm. I know many city and county officials were debating the mask or coming up with some type of mask guideline for their city or county and then it did because it didn't look like governor Holcomb was going to enact some type of statewide mandate and then all of a sudden, the statewide mandate came out. How did you feel about that and the city residents and what is the participation like in the mask mandate?
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, well number I'll start with the end first. We've been very pleased With the compliance with the mask mandate, you know, from my own perspective, if I go to one of the big box retailers, which is really where most of our concerns were, I see people in the parking lot without a mask on, but they got one in their hand, you know, and as they walk up to the to the door, they put it on before they go inside the building. And that's the kind of compliance that we're looking for. Again, and when I go in, and I'm just walking up and down the aisles, just checking to see what people are doing and I were in the high 90s. In terms of percentage of compliance. It's, it's really kind of heartening. When we first began to talk about a mask mandate here. Law enforcement was very concerned that we would be overwhelmed with calls that you know, there's a guy in Aisle 12, who doesn't have a mask on and so you need to come out and deal with that and, and we just haven't had that. I mean, since governor Holcomb came forward with his announcement, I think we've had three calls to the 911 Center. And so that's the kind of stuff system that we're looking for. And in my mind, it just indicates that people get it. I mean, they understand that this is an airborne pathogen and the best way for you to protect yourself your loved ones, and, you know others is to wear a mask and and so, no, it's not fun. It's pretty inconvenient. I don't have my glasses on right now because I'm getting used to not wearing them. But But people are people are compliant. I mean, you're doing what they need to do. You know, we had one of our, our County Health Officers stood up at I think, was the last school board meeting and said that the city and he were in conversations about putting together a mass quarter for the city of Columbus, and that generated a fair amount of discussion. And and he and I and several others. This one, the two of us, but, you know, spent a fair amount of time trying to figure out what that should look like. We took a look at the orders that had been put forward by Indianapolis whatever excuse me for Marion County and Monroe County, as well as a couple others, you know, different places and Evansville, I think we looked at that one as well. And, and, you know, based on those came forward what with what we thought would be a reasonable set of guidelines for Columbus. And we were in my office at the table behind my head here and prepared to sign when somebody stuck their head in the door and said the governor just announced a statewide order for for Indiana. So, from that perspective, I felt a little bit vindicated because we had a number of folks who had challenged us on, you know, why we would do this and, you know, whether it was really the smart thing to do or the thing to do, and so it was kind of heartening to see the governor come forward with pretty close to what we were thinking about. I mean, you know, we read his order and realize that there was really nothing that we needed to add. But, but yeah, we were we were prepared to go go forward with the mask quarter and he sort of I don't know what you want to call it came to the rescue cavalry right there.
Unknown Speaker
And just really quick, is there any type of I know he left it up to City County to enforce that? Is there a special number people call? Are you telling law enforcement to, to enforce this,
Unknown Speaker
what we do is we're keeping track of the calls and routing all this through the county health department. And the notion is that we try to draw a distinction between events and a pattern. And if you've got an event, you got a guy or a person out at, you know, I guess, convenience store who goes in to get a, you know, soft drink, and doesn't wear a mask and you know, by the time we would get there, he'd be gone. And that's an event and and so, we really are not going to try to respond to those. On the other hand, if we get, you know, two dozen calls that at a particular convenience store at this particular location. The The employees are not masked up, and there's nobody, you know, asking customers to put on a mask, well, then yeah, we're going to go out and we're going to visit that place. I mean, and so again, what we're trying to do is just identify locations that need a little bit of attention. And when we, when we find one of those, again, what we'll do is go out and have a conversation and it won't be any really different than what the county health department already does, with respect to their inspections of restaurants and grocery stores and, you know, other food type places. I mean, now, they'll go out and you know, check for compliance and when they don't see it, and, you know, there's a little protocol that they go through that starts with conversation about, you know, how do we get to where we need to be?
Unknown Speaker
Columbus,
Unknown Speaker
we've just not had an issue. Mm hmm.
Unknown Speaker
Columbus has been the recipient of some transportation cares act money. It came in two different announcements. It was 2.3 million a few weeks ago than 140,000. Just this past week. wide. Why were there two different songs?
Unknown Speaker
Oh, I,
Unknown Speaker
you know, they, they, I couldn't tell you why I came in, you know, in two installments. But we were, we're pleased to receive. And, you know, the first thought was that we would put that money towards buses. But, you know, the truth is that we, we bought new buses a couple of years ago, and these buses have a 10 to 15 year life. I mean, it's not like they're in the need to be replaced. And so we're taking a look at some alternative uses. And, you know, it's you basically have to go back and reread the rules and see what else is permissible. And so we're in the process of doing that. And it's going to take us another month or so to sort of sort through, you know, what we could spend the money on that would be meaningful to us. Like I said, I don't know that we need any more buses right now, but, but we'll try to put the money to good use.
Unknown Speaker
And a lot of that goes for screen like pandemic things that You don't think about on a bus cleaning? What Plexiglas things like that, right?
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, part of what we're trying to do is provide some protection first for the driver. I mean, the drivers in the bus for, you know, however many hours it is that they get out and take a break from time to time, but they're pretty much continually exposed to whatever's going on in there. And obviously, we're concerned about the writers and exposure that comes from proximity to another writer. But we've been able to distance out the buses. I mean, this is not the seating I should say, on the buses, and I feel like that's pretty well. Pretty well taken care of. But, but yeah, it's a challenge because, you know, you've got some people who come on to the bus with where they have the mask, but some don't. Some understand the, the seating guidelines, some don't. And so it's up to the driver to try to educate the riders with respect to that. It's challenge But so far like I said, we've we've had very few complaints, mostly mostly all compliance.
Unknown Speaker
What's a paratransit bus?
Unknown Speaker
I would think that that's for somebody who has some kind of disability, okay? paraplegic kind person and and we have we typically have, I can't say the word I want to use but it's a gate with a lift that allows wheelchair or scooter type access. And then the bus driver will help lock that vehicle in play or lock that wheelchair for example in place I see are on the road. There are not seatbelts, but I can't think of the word one.
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, I just saw that in the release as part of something that that this would be for. So I know what that was. Other other parts of the city budget I mean, this is transportation which is important to them, not as many people probably using it, but it definitely helps but that gets really gets hit. With the pandemic, I mean, we're in month five right now, are there any other like, trouble areas that the city is worried about? Well, we're
Unknown Speaker
always worried but
Unknown Speaker
property taxes are by design a fairly stable revenue source for local governments. And, and so we think that is a good thing. Other than, you know, if you've got a business is suffering a thought to pay the property tax, and so it becomes a little bit of a problem from that perspective. But we're, we're going to see a significant increase, or excuse me a significant decrease in our local income tax revenues. We don't know yet. You know, how much a million, you know, maybe two, it's just really hard to say, and it's probably not going to hit us until 2022. The funding formula that the state of Indiana uses is very involved, but it's more like a what I would call a rolling average. And in essence, before you feel the pain, you have to wait for a couple of years. Good years to drop off, and a couple of bad years to work at their work their way into the formula. And so if you think of it in those terms, and you think that 2020 is going to be a bad year, and 2021 will be a bad year, we're probably not going to feel that until 2022. And so, you know, our expectations are that 2021 2021 revenues will be relatively flat compared to 2020. But we are going to try to get all of our capital needs, or at least the significant ones that we can identify taking care of in 2020 in excuse me, in 2021 in anticipation that 2022 is going to be a tough year.
Unknown Speaker
I know some cities are dipping into a rainy day fund. Is that something that Columbus has,
Unknown Speaker
we have a rainy day fund and I want to say the balance is around 5 million. We've also got a pretty healthy general fund and I want to say the balance there's 22 million so you know, we're we're well capitalized. I mean, that's I don't think we're going to have that kind of an issue in terms of writers running out of money. I mean, that's not going to happen. But it's still, that's sort of the last case scenario for us. I mean, we really do want to pay as we go and not dip into our reserves and see if we can't make that work. But at the same time, we all know that that roads and streets deteriorate whether the economy says it's okay to do so. And so will will continue where there are pavement and overlay programs simply because if you don't I mean, you just defer the capital projects and maybe you don't not spend it, you just defer it. It comes due at some point. But but but we will want to try to get get that covered without having to get into our reserves. But again, if we have to, that's what they're there for. I mean, it has to be able to provide some kind of cushion during difficult times. And, you know, I don't know how long you would expect diminished revenues to exist. If would go into 2023. It might be hard to say yet, but my guess would be that if 2022 is affected 2023 will also and so you're thinking about trying to find some money for a couple of years and we're able to do that. I mean, we've got the funding to do that if we need to.
Unknown Speaker
Well, I know we're about out of time, but I just wanted to get maybe an update. I know there's, there's a lot of other things that we always talk about the railway overpass, I hear Fair Oaks has a master plan and the hotel conference center even is still making some progress despite a pandemic Do you want to kind of pick one and give us an update?
Unknown Speaker
Well, we were always willing to talk about the overpasses going and and our expectation here is that by the middle of August we'll be driving both ways into town and out of town and north and south. I mean you know there's some other ramps there and and you know, some people have called me and told me it's a lot like roller coaster that they just really enjoy driving thing, it's kind of anything new, you know is fun to start with. But it really is an improvement in with respect to safety. And we're quite convinced that once the economy picks back up the level of training traffic is is going to increase as well. The railroad is working on a sighting north of us up in Johnson County. And when that is done, they will then have two sightings one down around Scott County in addition to the one north of us, and that will allow trains to pass and we will begin to see we believe, pretty heavy two way traffic. Right now most of the traffic runs northward northbound when I say traffic, the the Big Trains the 10,000 foot ones. But once those sightings are completed, we should see, you know, train traffic, 10,000 foot train traffic in both directions. So we're really excited to get that behind us and see that kind of an improvement to safety and just transportation in and out of our community. You mentioned fairoaks we're gonna Put that on pause because of some of the revenue issues that we talked about a moment ago, the hotel conference center, it's going to go forward but on a slower schedule. We have really, we started viewed it as one project, North a second Street and then a mixed use development South a second Street. We've D linked those. The mixed use development south of Second Street will continue pretty much on schedule, we hope to have a shovel in the ground in March of 2021. Because those kinds of developments don't seem to be affected too much by the by the economic issues that we're facing, but the hotel conference center will clearly be delayed for at least a year if not a little longer. They're just going to have to wait for the lenders to get comfortable with that kind of investment again, but the developer that we've worked with spreads and with their contacts at Marriott they continue to be excited, you know about the project and wanted to go forward. They just need for the the economy to Sort of rebound. But But yeah, it's a fun time. It's still a lot going on. And we've got, we've got plenty to manage. So it's all good.
Unknown Speaker
And you're getting some money for to clean up the gas station at the site. Yeah, I
Unknown Speaker
forgot to mention that. A little bit east of where I sit. There's a former convenience store had been owned by the local farmers cooperative. We bought it all say a year ago. And did we knew when we did, we knew that there were some underground storage tanks there that would have to be removed, we were hopeful that they would not be a real problem. And to date, that's the way it's turned out. I mean, all the environmental testing that we've done, there has been what they call non detect. But thankfully, we applied for assistance from Indiana's Posey fund, and that's an acronym and don't ask me what it stands for. But they've agreed to remove all the tanks there are 11 underground storage tanks, so they will remove those and they'll remove whatever portion of the superstructure The concrete the building whatever they have to to get to those. So we're hopeful that when they're done, they'll be very little left for us to to take care of.
Unknown Speaker
And what does the city want to do with that land?
Unknown Speaker
Well, in the short run, we'll just put some dirt on it and, and some grass. And long term, it will continue to be a portion of the Second Street development. I mean, from my perspective, I'd like to see us develop Second Street all the way down well out to the hawk Creek and you know, hop that and go on out to high school, but it'll just become part of that when the time comes. A big part of what that does for us is it reduces the number of property owners in that area, to essentially in the area that I'm thinking of. There's only two areas ourselves, the redevelopment commission, which owns this ground, some of which will be part of the mixed use development we talked about a moment ago. But then there's another, you know, privately owned property just further east out to the hawk Creek and the point is, is instead of dealing with four or five People that you've got to deal with if you want to develop that ground, now you're down to two. And one of those is the city, you know. And so we just think it facilitates whatever, whatever might come next. It just makes it feeling a little bit easier to do.
Unknown Speaker
All right. Well, thank you very much for your time. I appreciate seeing you in August already.
Unknown Speaker
It's hard to believe we're here already, but but you're welcome. And yeah, look forward to September. Okay, thank you. Welcome.
Welcome, everybody to the first week of August, where with Mayor Jim Lynam from Columbus, Indiana via zoom again, you know, we might start Well, I mean, we'll have to see how it goes. I was gonna ask you, but maybe next month we'll start back with in person visits. It depends what your setup guidelines are there. And of course, we feel here. But, you know, we haven't been to Columbus since April, I believe. And it'd be nice to see a lot of the stuff that's going on over there. And you want to have
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, I don't know how well how I look with, you know, the mask on but my guess is that a month from now, it's not going to be much different than it is right now. Yeah. Yeah. The situation that we're facing, right. So so we'll just wait and see. But yeah, we welcome you back to welcome you back to Columbus.
Unknown Speaker
So, you know, of course we haven't talked to you in about a month hospitalizations are going up cases are up. Testing is up to what's your number one concern right now in Columbus?
Unknown Speaker
Well, the number one concern is when school reopens whether or not we'll get a rekindling of the disease here. You know, we've been very fortunate in Columbus as a community, we've posted some pretty good numbers. I mean, we've had some people get sick, we've we've had some deaths and, and so to say that we've had good numbers, it's a little bit of cold comfort to those who've lost a loved one. But from a community's perspective, it's really turned out reasonably well. One of the metrics that we watch most closely is the number of inpatients at Columbus Regional Health. And those numbers have been pretty good. We've had a high of 20 back in April. The last number I got was much closer to five, it's been as low as zero. So you know, I'd say right now we're in pretty good shape, but we know that with school and school sports and some other activities that typically ramp up in the fall with those coming on, you know, we're a little concerned about that. And so we'll be paying pretty close attention.
Unknown Speaker
I know in Bloomington IU health is starting to see much higher hospitalizations. And most of it though, the concern is you can only really have one person per room. And so they're starting to fill up the hospital. And I assume that you know, the same would be a Columbus Regional and others are you're not or it doesn't sound like you're in that phase where you're starting to to worry about moving people to other hospitals yet are, you
Unknown Speaker
know, not yet. You know, again, we sort of leave that up to the folks at CRH. But, but no, we've not, not stressed their capacity to that point.
Unknown Speaker
And you mentioned schools too. I was going to ask you about that. How much have is the city or county been involved in reopening schools and just for those who don't know we're listening from outside of Columbus. What is the in brief the reopening plan for schools there?
Unknown Speaker
Well, in general, they'll be open, there'll be an E learning option available, the school administrators have told me that they expect about one third of the students to take the elearning option. But that might be a little high, maybe a quarter. But there isn't, that option will be available for those families that want to pursue that. Those folks who do go to school every day, and this would include the teachers and the administrators will have a screening process that they have to go through. So there will be a temperature check, either when they enter the building or when they get on the bus. There will also be some screening questions about what's going on with the health in your family, you know, today. And the whole notion is to try to identify those people who are most at risk either because of their temperature spike or because of something else that's going on in the household, and, you know, sort of pull them out of the queue and, and give them a little bit further screening. Again, the whole notion would be to try to identify early, the places where we have issue and to begin to do some kind of contact tracing with respect to where those people have been and who they've been in touch with, so that we hopefully can get, I don't want to say encapsulate, but, you know, try to get our arms around, you know, their exposure to the disease. And it occurs to me that, you know, we've got about 11,000 students within bcse, Bartholomew consolidated schools, we've got a couple thousand teachers and administrators. If you've got 80% of those who show up, you might have nine to 10,000 a day, who get tested. And so I think that's a pretty good number. I mean, I think that's a pretty good swath of the local population. And it'll not only tell us what's going on with that individual, but what's going on in that individuals family. So our expectation is that we have some issues we should know sooner rather than later we'll know sooner when they begin to develop like say a fever, or somebody in the family has a, you know, some kind of symptom that they district despite and hopefully will be Be able to get onto that little sooner than, like I say sooner than later. And you keep in mind too, that a lot of the larger employers are doing similar kinds of screening. So our expectation is that when school resumes, even though we've got heightened risk, because there will be, you know, greater proximity for a big number of people, the number the amount of screening is going on in the county is substantial. And so our expectation is that if we develop a problem, we should be able to find out early.
Unknown Speaker
You mentioned contact tracing more I read about it, the more important that is, is there a threshold for schools there where you start to, you know, you see the one positive case and then maybe you've seen this in Major League Baseball, where a whole team has been quarantined for you know, a few weeks or even football practices at Terre Haute and Bloomington. Is there a certain threshold where it gets shut down?
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, the school Corporation's developed a list of metrics and I just can't keep them stuff off top my head. But if you go to their website, you can access that pretty easily yourself. And, and yeah, it takes into account the number of positive test results and the results of their screenings and so forth numbered kids are people out on, you know, corrente and if they get enough factors that are flashing red, you know, then they'll react to that. And, and, you know, we'll just pay attention and, you know, play it as we see it.
Unknown Speaker
Mm hmm. I know many city and county officials were debating the mask or coming up with some type of mask guideline for their city or county and then it did because it didn't look like governor Holcomb was going to enact some type of statewide mandate and then all of a sudden, the statewide mandate came out. How did you feel about that and the city residents and what is the participation like in the mask mandate?
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, well number I'll start with the end first. We've been very pleased With the compliance with the mask mandate, you know, from my own perspective, if I go to one of the big box retailers, which is really where most of our concerns were, I see people in the parking lot without a mask on, but they got one in their hand, you know, and as they walk up to the to the door, they put it on before they go inside the building. And that's the kind of compliance that we're looking for. Again, and when I go in, and I'm just walking up and down the aisles, just checking to see what people are doing and I were in the high 90s. In terms of percentage of compliance. It's, it's really kind of heartening. When we first began to talk about a mask mandate here. Law enforcement was very concerned that we would be overwhelmed with calls that you know, there's a guy in Aisle 12, who doesn't have a mask on and so you need to come out and deal with that and, and we just haven't had that. I mean, since governor Holcomb came forward with his announcement, I think we've had three calls to the 911 Center. And so that's the kind of stuff system that we're looking for. And in my mind, it just indicates that people get it. I mean, they understand that this is an airborne pathogen and the best way for you to protect yourself your loved ones, and, you know others is to wear a mask and and so, no, it's not fun. It's pretty inconvenient. I don't have my glasses on right now because I'm getting used to not wearing them. But But people are people are compliant. I mean, you're doing what they need to do. You know, we had one of our, our County Health Officers stood up at I think, was the last school board meeting and said that the city and he were in conversations about putting together a mass quarter for the city of Columbus, and that generated a fair amount of discussion. And and he and I and several others. This one, the two of us, but, you know, spent a fair amount of time trying to figure out what that should look like. We took a look at the orders that had been put forward by Indianapolis whatever excuse me for Marion County and Monroe County, as well as a couple others, you know, different places and Evansville, I think we looked at that one as well. And, and, you know, based on those came forward what with what we thought would be a reasonable set of guidelines for Columbus. And we were in my office at the table behind my head here and prepared to sign when somebody stuck their head in the door and said the governor just announced a statewide order for for Indiana. So, from that perspective, I felt a little bit vindicated because we had a number of folks who had challenged us on, you know, why we would do this and, you know, whether it was really the smart thing to do or the thing to do, and so it was kind of heartening to see the governor come forward with pretty close to what we were thinking about. I mean, you know, we read his order and realize that there was really nothing that we needed to add. But, but yeah, we were we were prepared to go go forward with the mask quarter and he sort of I don't know what you want to call it came to the rescue cavalry right there.
Unknown Speaker
And just really quick, is there any type of I know he left it up to City County to enforce that? Is there a special number people call? Are you telling law enforcement to, to enforce this,
Unknown Speaker
what we do is we're keeping track of the calls and routing all this through the county health department. And the notion is that we try to draw a distinction between events and a pattern. And if you've got an event, you got a guy or a person out at, you know, I guess, convenience store who goes in to get a, you know, soft drink, and doesn't wear a mask and you know, by the time we would get there, he'd be gone. And that's an event and and so, we really are not going to try to respond to those. On the other hand, if we get, you know, two dozen calls that at a particular convenience store at this particular location. The The employees are not masked up, and there's nobody, you know, asking customers to put on a mask, well, then yeah, we're going to go out and we're going to visit that place. I mean, and so again, what we're trying to do is just identify locations that need a little bit of attention. And when we, when we find one of those, again, what we'll do is go out and have a conversation and it won't be any really different than what the county health department already does, with respect to their inspections of restaurants and grocery stores and, you know, other food type places. I mean, now, they'll go out and you know, check for compliance and when they don't see it, and, you know, there's a little protocol that they go through that starts with conversation about, you know, how do we get to where we need to be?
Unknown Speaker
Columbus,
Unknown Speaker
we've just not had an issue. Mm hmm.
Unknown Speaker
Columbus has been the recipient of some transportation cares act money. It came in two different announcements. It was 2.3 million a few weeks ago than 140,000. Just this past week. wide. Why were there two different songs?
Unknown Speaker
Oh, I,
Unknown Speaker
you know, they, they, I couldn't tell you why I came in, you know, in two installments. But we were, we're pleased to receive. And, you know, the first thought was that we would put that money towards buses. But, you know, the truth is that we, we bought new buses a couple of years ago, and these buses have a 10 to 15 year life. I mean, it's not like they're in the need to be replaced. And so we're taking a look at some alternative uses. And, you know, it's you basically have to go back and reread the rules and see what else is permissible. And so we're in the process of doing that. And it's going to take us another month or so to sort of sort through, you know, what we could spend the money on that would be meaningful to us. Like I said, I don't know that we need any more buses right now, but, but we'll try to put the money to good use.
Unknown Speaker
And a lot of that goes for screen like pandemic things that You don't think about on a bus cleaning? What Plexiglas things like that, right?
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, part of what we're trying to do is provide some protection first for the driver. I mean, the drivers in the bus for, you know, however many hours it is that they get out and take a break from time to time, but they're pretty much continually exposed to whatever's going on in there. And obviously, we're concerned about the writers and exposure that comes from proximity to another writer. But we've been able to distance out the buses. I mean, this is not the seating I should say, on the buses, and I feel like that's pretty well. Pretty well taken care of. But, but yeah, it's a challenge because, you know, you've got some people who come on to the bus with where they have the mask, but some don't. Some understand the, the seating guidelines, some don't. And so it's up to the driver to try to educate the riders with respect to that. It's challenge But so far like I said, we've we've had very few complaints, mostly mostly all compliance.
Unknown Speaker
What's a paratransit bus?
Unknown Speaker
I would think that that's for somebody who has some kind of disability, okay? paraplegic kind person and and we have we typically have, I can't say the word I want to use but it's a gate with a lift that allows wheelchair or scooter type access. And then the bus driver will help lock that vehicle in play or lock that wheelchair for example in place I see are on the road. There are not seatbelts, but I can't think of the word one.
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, I just saw that in the release as part of something that that this would be for. So I know what that was. Other other parts of the city budget I mean, this is transportation which is important to them, not as many people probably using it, but it definitely helps but that gets really gets hit. With the pandemic, I mean, we're in month five right now, are there any other like, trouble areas that the city is worried about? Well, we're
Unknown Speaker
always worried but
Unknown Speaker
property taxes are by design a fairly stable revenue source for local governments. And, and so we think that is a good thing. Other than, you know, if you've got a business is suffering a thought to pay the property tax, and so it becomes a little bit of a problem from that perspective. But we're, we're going to see a significant increase, or excuse me a significant decrease in our local income tax revenues. We don't know yet. You know, how much a million, you know, maybe two, it's just really hard to say, and it's probably not going to hit us until 2022. The funding formula that the state of Indiana uses is very involved, but it's more like a what I would call a rolling average. And in essence, before you feel the pain, you have to wait for a couple of years. Good years to drop off, and a couple of bad years to work at their work their way into the formula. And so if you think of it in those terms, and you think that 2020 is going to be a bad year, and 2021 will be a bad year, we're probably not going to feel that until 2022. And so, you know, our expectations are that 2021 2021 revenues will be relatively flat compared to 2020. But we are going to try to get all of our capital needs, or at least the significant ones that we can identify taking care of in 2020 in excuse me, in 2021 in anticipation that 2022 is going to be a tough year.
Unknown Speaker
I know some cities are dipping into a rainy day fund. Is that something that Columbus has,
Unknown Speaker
we have a rainy day fund and I want to say the balance is around 5 million. We've also got a pretty healthy general fund and I want to say the balance there's 22 million so you know, we're we're well capitalized. I mean, that's I don't think we're going to have that kind of an issue in terms of writers running out of money. I mean, that's not going to happen. But it's still, that's sort of the last case scenario for us. I mean, we really do want to pay as we go and not dip into our reserves and see if we can't make that work. But at the same time, we all know that that roads and streets deteriorate whether the economy says it's okay to do so. And so will will continue where there are pavement and overlay programs simply because if you don't I mean, you just defer the capital projects and maybe you don't not spend it, you just defer it. It comes due at some point. But but but we will want to try to get get that covered without having to get into our reserves. But again, if we have to, that's what they're there for. I mean, it has to be able to provide some kind of cushion during difficult times. And, you know, I don't know how long you would expect diminished revenues to exist. If would go into 2023. It might be hard to say yet, but my guess would be that if 2022 is affected 2023 will also and so you're thinking about trying to find some money for a couple of years and we're able to do that. I mean, we've got the funding to do that if we need to.
Unknown Speaker
Well, I know we're about out of time, but I just wanted to get maybe an update. I know there's, there's a lot of other things that we always talk about the railway overpass, I hear Fair Oaks has a master plan and the hotel conference center even is still making some progress despite a pandemic Do you want to kind of pick one and give us an update?
Unknown Speaker
Well, we were always willing to talk about the overpasses going and and our expectation here is that by the middle of August we'll be driving both ways into town and out of town and north and south. I mean you know there's some other ramps there and and you know, some people have called me and told me it's a lot like roller coaster that they just really enjoy driving thing, it's kind of anything new, you know is fun to start with. But it really is an improvement in with respect to safety. And we're quite convinced that once the economy picks back up the level of training traffic is is going to increase as well. The railroad is working on a sighting north of us up in Johnson County. And when that is done, they will then have two sightings one down around Scott County in addition to the one north of us, and that will allow trains to pass and we will begin to see we believe, pretty heavy two way traffic. Right now most of the traffic runs northward northbound when I say traffic, the the Big Trains the 10,000 foot ones. But once those sightings are completed, we should see, you know, train traffic, 10,000 foot train traffic in both directions. So we're really excited to get that behind us and see that kind of an improvement to safety and just transportation in and out of our community. You mentioned fairoaks we're gonna Put that on pause because of some of the revenue issues that we talked about a moment ago, the hotel conference center, it's going to go forward but on a slower schedule. We have really, we started viewed it as one project, North a second Street and then a mixed use development South a second Street. We've D linked those. The mixed use development south of Second Street will continue pretty much on schedule, we hope to have a shovel in the ground in March of 2021. Because those kinds of developments don't seem to be affected too much by the by the economic issues that we're facing, but the hotel conference center will clearly be delayed for at least a year if not a little longer. They're just going to have to wait for the lenders to get comfortable with that kind of investment again, but the developer that we've worked with spreads and with their contacts at Marriott they continue to be excited, you know about the project and wanted to go forward. They just need for the the economy to Sort of rebound. But But yeah, it's a fun time. It's still a lot going on. And we've got, we've got plenty to manage. So it's all good.
Unknown Speaker
And you're getting some money for to clean up the gas station at the site. Yeah, I
Unknown Speaker
forgot to mention that. A little bit east of where I sit. There's a former convenience store had been owned by the local farmers cooperative. We bought it all say a year ago. And did we knew when we did, we knew that there were some underground storage tanks there that would have to be removed, we were hopeful that they would not be a real problem. And to date, that's the way it's turned out. I mean, all the environmental testing that we've done, there has been what they call non detect. But thankfully, we applied for assistance from Indiana's Posey fund, and that's an acronym and don't ask me what it stands for. But they've agreed to remove all the tanks there are 11 underground storage tanks, so they will remove those and they'll remove whatever portion of the superstructure The concrete the building whatever they have to to get to those. So we're hopeful that when they're done, they'll be very little left for us to to take care of.
Unknown Speaker
And what does the city want to do with that land?
Unknown Speaker
Well, in the short run, we'll just put some dirt on it and, and some grass. And long term, it will continue to be a portion of the Second Street development. I mean, from my perspective, I'd like to see us develop Second Street all the way down well out to the hawk Creek and you know, hop that and go on out to high school, but it'll just become part of that when the time comes. A big part of what that does for us is it reduces the number of property owners in that area, to essentially in the area that I'm thinking of. There's only two areas ourselves, the redevelopment commission, which owns this ground, some of which will be part of the mixed use development we talked about a moment ago. But then there's another, you know, privately owned property just further east out to the hawk Creek and the point is, is instead of dealing with four or five People that you've got to deal with if you want to develop that ground, now you're down to two. And one of those is the city, you know. And so we just think it facilitates whatever, whatever might come next. It just makes it feeling a little bit easier to do.
Unknown Speaker
All right. Well, thank you very much for your time. I appreciate seeing you in August already.
Unknown Speaker
It's hard to believe we're here already, but but you're welcome. And yeah, look forward to September. Okay, thank you. Welcome.
