The city is status quo on COVID-19 cases and doesn't see the need for more restrictions, the balance of annexing more people into a city, and a few interested casino operator parties have contacted the city.
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: The state went from recording 200 positive COVID-19 cases a day to well over 2,000 last week, Vigo Co. is in the yellow advisory state metric level, yet no restrictions or mask mandates in effect, why?
Bennett: The commissioners decided they were not going to masking - no mandates from the commissioner's office. I want to remind everyone that if I did a mask mandate, it would only last seven days, and then I have to go to the city council. So that's not something that I'm going to do, the commissioners need to do that because they can handle that through their legislative and executive process.
The school corporation is deciding to mask the younger kids and, the high school kids in certain environments. So I think it's an evolving situation. I talked to the health department, hospitals, the commissioners almost on a daily basis, at least every other day, about where's this is going. We hope it's only a few weeks of this and not months of this. So right now we're just kind of status quo.
But we're not requiring masks in City Hall or anywhere else in the city at this point without a governor or Commissioner directive.
READ MORE: Health Officials Report More Than 2,000 New Cases For Second Time Since April
Hren: Then what's your metric for more restrictions? How are the hospitals there? Monroe Co. is seeing the highest hospitalizations since February.
Bennett: I think my guess is that one of the key triggers will be hospitalizations, if people are getting sick, that's kind of one thing. And hospitalizations are going up where you go back in time and the kind of the numbers that everybody was talking about using to take it to the next level, if you will, that's what's going to drive me I think more than just people getting the COVID.
I didn't have a chance to look into it before this call. But they're pretty manageable right now. But you know, I think that could change. In 24 hours, it could be a totally different picture.
Hren: I wanted to bring up annexation because we've never talked about it and it's becoming a big story in Bloomington. I see Vigo Co. population is 107,000 and Terre Haute has about 61,000 - have you ever thought of taking in growing surrounding parcels?
Bennett: I personally believe that in past annexations, that the city is known for still not providing the full level of services that they need in that area, mostly infrastructure, stormwater drainage, and those kinds of things. We're delivering trash and public safety and all those things. But there's some roads that need to be improved that I would feel imperative to make some major progress against that before we did any additional annexation.
I think there's areas that make perfect sense to be in the city because they can be better served with especially public safety. But you know, on the other hand, the commissioners, not just here, but anywhere I hear this conversation for mayors all over - that commissioners don't want to give up the tax revenue for the county. It's like, are those people going to be better off?
You have to really look at smaller pieces of it to make that determination. You know, some mayors just want to annex because they want to increase the population, or they want to increase the revenues coming in. But you've got to really look hard at that delivery of services and what it would take, some of it's easy, and some of it's very inexpensive, other pieces of it can take on a pretty big dollar amount. And so I've never pushed it.
READ MORE: Bloomington's Annexation Proposal A Hard Sell For Some Non-City Residents
Hren: The Indiana Gaming Commission has opened up Terre Haute casino license applications, is the city receiving any interest?
Bennett: Nothing other than there are some casinos that are interested in bidding. They've reached out to us - about four or five so far. September 22 is the deadline for them to submit applications. So I guess maybe we'll hear more in the coming weeks. We'll find out if Greg Gibson's going to reapply or not. But I haven't heard anything from Indianapolis. That's just all been just local conversation because people know it's open. I think there'll be several proposals.
Hren: How about an update on the American Rescue Plan Act funds and general budget hearing preparations?
Bennett: We'll advertise the budget this week. Hearings for us will be in September. So I feel pretty good about the budgeting process. So far, revenues look good, our expenses are manageable. I mean, we've had some increases, but I'm feeling good about the budget right now.
And then on the ARP funds, we've not spent anything yet. We've received half of our allocation, we'll get the other half next May. We're working on a budget or an appropriation for this year, to take care of a couple things - last year's revenue loss and some other projects... things we had in the hopper that we're kind of already committed to and were held up because of COVID. And then we're going to pause on that a little bit and have our committee that we put together begin to really work through how we want to spend the vast majority of the money. So we have our first meeting recently, kind of develop some guidelines for the group, we're going to open up some opportunities for communicating with the public and get feedback from them. So it's going to be a ongoing process over the coming months and probably a year.
