Heiner Unveils "Five Ideas," Discusses Bridges Project Timeline

Republican mayoral candidate Hal Heiner Tuesday unveiled what he calls "Five ideas for Louisville's future."Among them is a plan to revise the city budget process. Budgets are typically built around revenue projections for the next fiscal year. Heiner says he would reduce the city's dependency on those predictions."We are not going to estimate future revenues—we're going to take current revenues and have a real-life budget just like businesses and homeowners how you put your budget together, and not try estimate what those revenues might be in the future. That budget will be capped based on current revenues," he says.Other ideas include: bringing new technology into Metro Government; establishing an energy research center at U of L; building a regional library in southwest Louisville; and beginning construction on an east-end bridge in the next four years.But while the east-end bridge would ease traffic on existing bridges, Heiner says he still wants a downtown bridge to be built."We need a downtown bridge," he says. "It has 130,000 vehicles a day—it was built for 80 thousand. It's unsafe—no safety lanes. It's a choke point. We need to figure out a way to build that through some kind of streamlining process."To cut the cost of the entire bridges plan, Heiner says a downtown bridge could be delayed and a planned rework of Spaghetti Junction could be adjusted. Democratic candidate Greg Fischer says he supports both bridges and wants construction to start as soon as possible. Independent Jackie Green has frequently said the entire project should be postponed while public transit is improved.For more on the "five ideas," visit The Edit.