Indiana State University continues to test students and staff for COVID-19, Bennett has mixed feelings about voting by mail, and the coronavirus tax hit hasn't been as hard on the city budget as thought.
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 we've been reporting at Indiana University and Indiana State University both have been issuing press releases about coronavirus spread in the Greek chapters, the sororities, fraternities. Have there been any other outbreaks that you're that you know, of at Indiana State?
Bennett: No, it's all just been related to people gathering together in large groups and not wearing a mask. You're hearing that nationwide too, you're hearing in Indiana, but it's happening in all colleges and universities, which is unfortunate. I think sometimes, kids think they're invincible, it's not going to affect them. Or if it does, it'll be minor, which might be true. You got to think about who you might be affecting the other places you go, whether you're going to a local restaurant, or a gas station, or wherever you might be going, you're potentially exposing additional people.
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Hren: I know Indiana State didn't require mandatory testing, but are there any precautions or guidelines that are being issued either by the city or the university to try to contain an outbreak?
Bennett: Well, they did a lot of testing. They didn't broadcast that as much, but they did tremendous amount of testing. And I think they're just on top of it on a daily basis. They're looking at the health department numbers, talking to the health department every day, and just trying to figure out that if you see something happening, how do you minimize that trend as much as you can?
I know it sounds reactive, but they know kind of from a proactive perspective, how to attack this. You just got to see what the effects are. So they seem to be doing a really good job of minimizing a lot of this getting people isolated.
Hren: The election is coming up and I asked Columbus Mayor Jim Lienhoop about voting by mail and he was disappointed that Indiana is one of six states that is refusing to expand vote by mail. How about you?
Bennett: You know, I don't know, I've got mixed feelings about that. I hear from both sides and you don't know what to believe in the hype of all that. You know, I'm going to vote in person I always have, I just will. I like to vote on election day. That's just me personally, I think a lot of people like to do it that way.
But we've got to make sure that there's access and so on all about finding ways to have a secure way. I think at the time that the state made the decision, it seemed like we were trending in the right direction. Now that it's picked back up at least in Vigo County. There's people that have concerns about not going to be able to get out and vote. And we don't want that. We want as many people as possible to vote, we probably need to figure out how to make this permanent through the legislature.
Hren: Let's talk a little bit about budget numbers settling in here as we get into September. So you have budgets for current projects and you have payroll. And then of course, new projects on the horizon like the police station and funding for the convention center. Can we get an update about the current budget and how that's holding up and then maybe move along to some of the new projects and if those budget lines are holding up?
Bennett: So this year, we're doing okay, in our NBH and LRS fund is down - that's where you pay your gas tax, people didn't buy gas, they didn't travel, obviously led to a decrease in revenue. Property taxes came in better than I thought they would, still down a tiny bit, but not nearly as much as we thought.
Next year we're going to see the impact. So from this year's budget perspective, we're going to end the year still, in a positive situation. We put as much reserve back as what we thought because of a little bit of loss of revenue this year. All of our projects are happening this year as scheduled, and we're actually wrapped several of them up. We still have more to go.
Next year, though I had to make some reductions in the budget, because knowing that we're going to have a reduced revenue next year, because the state pays us a year behind on things like local options, income taxes, public safety taxes. And so I had to make some budget adjustments to reflect that, so we maintain an overall balanced budget. And some of them smaller projects, just because we're gonna have to set them off until 2022. We need to keep a balanced budget and really, I don't know if this pandemic is going to go on till the end of the year or not, which means we lose even more revenue than what's been estimated. So too many unknowns.
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