Bennett says the state is doing the best it can do despite rising COVID numbers, the city would welcome any Afghan refugees to live and find work, and he doesn't believe the census numbers are correct.
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: We were under much stricter restrictions last year, is the governor doing what he can do to keep the spread of COVID down? It's a tough situation, how would you say the governor is doing right now?
Bennett: I think he's still doing well, you know what I appreciate it, what he's done all along, I understand why we had more restrictions. Last year, there were so many more unknowns, and try not to overwhelm the systems all that made perfect sense. Now, here in round two, with the big peak, he's decided to let local municipalities make those decisions.
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So instead of having just come from above, knowing that rural counties weren't hit as hard as the metropolitan areas, or at different times, they were hit that way, it took a while for it to get to those more rural areas. So it does make sense to me to leave it up to county commissioners, health department, school corporations, I mean, mayors are pretty limited in their power. I can only do a short term thing for the city, that doesn't do me any good to put some mandates in place just for the city, and not be in the county.
One thing for everybody that typically doesn't always work.
Hren: We had a good talk last week with Columbus Mayor Jim Lienhoop on the 5,000 Afghan refugees coming to Camp Atterbury. He saw this as an opportunity as business leaders asking about helping to fill jobs. Your take on the Afghan refugees coming to Indiana, and would the city welcome them once they're free to go?
Bennett: I'm all about immigration once that's done legally, I'm fine with all that. I didn't know anything about these Afghan refugees until last week and have seen several reports about that since I've not had an opportunity to reach out to the governor's office or anybody else to say, what's the vetting process?
We have plenty of jobs that are open for all the people that are already here plus anybody else that might come in, because we're having a difficult time our employers fill these jobs. And so I want the pool to be bigger our overall statewide pool and our Terre Haute pool. And so whatever mechanisms we can use to make the pool bigger, I am good with.
Hren: Bloomington Mayor John Hamilton told us that he didn't believe the U.S. census numbers were true - that they were taken during a pandemic, in a college town that told that population to leave. What's your take?
Bennett: I don't believe them. I didn't expect any big increase, I expected it to be pretty flat. I would agree that it happened during the pandemic. So I don't think the door to door activity and counting on everybody to mail it in was what we normally go through every 10 years.
I guarantee you our university population didn't get counted properly. I mean, we have ISU that has 14,000 students give or take, and Rose-Hulman that has a couple of thousands, St. Mary of the Woods. I know we're talking about a lot of folks that weren't here, and so couldn't have participated in that.
When I look at our sewer bills our numbers are actually up a little bit as in a few more accounts and more usage. So that tells me we didn't go from a lot of four person households or whatever to one person households, the household number stayed about the same with a slight increase. And our usage is up. And so those people are still here, they just didn't get counted. So the difficulty is fixing that because it's nearly impossible. I guess you could sue the United States government. But that's not effective. I don't know what the answer is, but I definitely believe we were undercounted, I think that we are pretty small growth flat-line situation and not a drop.
Hren: How about a casino update? Lucy Luck Gaming is seeking an appeal to the open the casino license there. And I know September 22 is the deadline. Do you have any updates? Are you hearing any other applicants?
Bennett: The only two updates I would give is that there is a hearing this week for Lucy Luck, kind of like an arbitration, I don't think they're gonna solve it on Friday, but they'll have a chance to present their cases. Then on the 22nd, the Gaming Commission will have both of these things going on at the same time, what's going to happen with Lucy luck, what's going to happen with these people who are then putting a bid in - I don't know how that process will shake out.
My guess is and kind of what I've heard behind the scenes, they'll have to resolve the Lucy Luck thing before they're going to award a new license. That doesn't mean they can't move down the path parallel. But there's not going to be a final decision made until we see what happens with Greg Gibson's proposal. And what they're going to do with that before they award somebody else something, and that's the way it should be, they need to get that resolved.
Hren: When will the new police station be ready?
Bennett: Moving along, we had a little bit of a delay on carpet, you know how that market is out there when you order things right now, and sometimes it takes a while to get it. And so we're going to move in on October 18. That's our date right now. And I think that's a firm day, we're going to actually have some people in and out of the building prior to that, but we're going to move in on that day.
It looks great, I'm very happy with it, I get a lot of positive feedback from the public, they love the deal that we were able to make on that and get more space for less cost than what we were going to have to pay to build something bigger. And just that it's going to be a state of the art facility with everything brand new, and all new furniture and all new technology.
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