Students are moving back to Indiana State University, positive COVID-19 cases are going up, the proposed Rocksino is on track for a groundbreaking this fall, and the mayor says the convention industry will recover.
On this week’s installment of Ask The Mayor, Terre Haute Mayor Duke Bennett addresses these issues and more on a Zoom conference call. 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: What's the city's relationship with Indiana State to keep not only students, but the residents safe as classes begin shortly.
Bennett: Almost seems like every few days, you get some new piece of information. So I think they're on top of it from that perspective of how to protect the students and the staff on the campus. What gets tricky is the unknowns of what's really going to happen. Our numbers continue to go up here, we're up over 700 today and there for the longest time we hovered around 200 and just didn't move much anywhere. And if you look and say, okay, what's changed in that time, not a whole lot.
Now the students are coming back, and I don't know what's going to happen. So my general take is I'm confident that these professionals are making these decisions within these specific organizations. They thought this out and they're thinking, everything they can possibly do to keep their staff and the students safe, is what they're going to do. And then from the city's perspective, we just want to help reinforce the things they're trying to do with their community, if you will, and that have people in our community, then be conscious here on our side that they're going to have students coming in your stores, are going to have students coming in the gas station, whatever, and just continue to wear your mask and do the social distancing.
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Hren: I looked at the numbers there in Vigo County, and you're right. There was a spike in daily cases beginning August 1st - but there's no indication from health officials why that almost doubled?
Bennett: Well, what I'm hearing is it's the younger kids that are going to swim parties, graduation parties, drinking, parties, whatever, where you get a whole bunch of kids together and they kind of think they're invincible. They're not wearing their masks or not social distancing. One kids got it, two kids got it. And next thing, you know, 10 or 20 kids have it, you know, a week later.
So I think that's the big numbers. That's where they're coming from right now. We even had a problem with our Deming Park pool with some of our lifeguards had attended an event and one of them got sick. And so we had to quarantine the rest of them. Only one actually got it. But, you know, I didn't have any lifeguards for a week. So it doesn't take long to go through that process, whether you get COVID-19 or not. If you have to be quarantined that still kind of shuts that whole thing down, or you're waiting to see.
Hren: Let's get an update on the casino groundbreaking, any updates, especially now with the pandemic?
Bennett: It's supposed to be next month still, I'm still hearing that, but I don't have a date yet. So should have a groundbreaking sometime in September. It's moving along. I talked to the owner not too long ago, there's a lot to do there. But that's his goal is to get it started. You know, first of October kind of a thing. So we should hear something very soon on that.
Hren: Are there any plans now to look back at the new convention center design and say, hey, things have changed. Conferences will probably evolve from the pandemic, do we need to adapt? Is anything like that happening?
Bennett: No, because I really believe we'll get back to a pretty normal environment. I really do. And we're not going to be open, you know, for 18 months anyway. So I think that maybe the timing was kind of good. I mean, if it's gonna happen, it's better to happen now than just after we opened it.
Obviously, who knows if there's another pandemic on the rise and out there but, nobody knows what the future holds. But I really believe that there's a lot of value into going to conferences and being around other people and learning new things. I go to conferences several times during the year and I really believe that industry will recover in time and hopefully we will hit the right on the right cycle and we'll do great things here.
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