From: Kristen Brown
Columbus
City officials need look no farther than neighboring Brown County for a terrific example of a vision and its implementation for improving residents’ quality of life and spurring tourism.
Since mid-2017, Brown County officials have been planning and developing a 2,000-seat indoor music center for live concerts of music of all genres.
Today, the music center is under construction in Nashville and opening in August. Major acts are being booked and tickets go on sale this month. It’s very exciting.
Costs are estimated at $12.5 million, but Brown County taxpayers won’t pay a penny for the venue. It’s being financed not with residents’ income taxes or property taxes, but instead by the music center’s revenue and a portion of the county’s innkeeper’s tax.
Brown County, like Bartholomew County, has a 5 percent innkeeper’s tax paid by visitors who stay in hotel rooms in the county. Brown County’s innkeeper’s annual tax revenue is just over $800,000. Ours is nearly double that at $1.6 million.
The Brown County committee overseeing the music center meets publicly every week.
Compare this project to our officials’ efforts to improve our quality of life and spur tourism: an ill-conceived, $10 million riverfront project financed entirely with property taxes.
Removing the White River’s low-head dam will be a great improvement, but that’s only about $600,000 of the project’s cost and the state readily agreed to that long ago.
The riverfront project features an in-water recreation park with artificial rapids for adults and children to kayak, tube and boogie board in the lethally dangerous river. City officials also planned an ADA-ramp into the river until the state required its removal.
After three years and more than $1 million in property taxes wasted on expensive consultants — double the cost of removing the dam — officials still don’t have a design for the total project that the state will approve.
Therefore, officials haven’t submitted riverfront plans for the necessary permits and won’t for another six months, after Brown County’s music center has opened.
To add insult to injury, our public officials have arrogantly shut the public out of the project. The redevelopment commission disbanded the riverfront citizen’s committee after the Indiana Public Access Counselor determined its meetings, by law, must be public.
In 2014, a Columbus citizen’s committee put forward three proposals to redevelop existing facilities into venues for music concerts: 1. A renovated Crump Theatre; 2. A repurposed downtown Sears facility; 3. A redesigned amphitheater in Mill Race Park.
The city council at the time, which included the current mayor, rejected all three. Music venues, which can be enjoyed by residents/tourists of all ages and abilities, haven’t been considered since.
Hopefully, our officials can look to Brown County’s tourism efforts for a vision that benefits all who live and do business in Bartholomew County and fund it appropriately, with user fees and innkeeper’s taxes.
Until then, we’ll be able to enjoy the benefits of Brown County public officials’ good work and, in return, contribute to their local economy.
