Bennett says the city hasn't reacted, but has been evolving policing for some time. He prefers Lucy Luck gaming as the city's casino operator. And we get an update on the end of this year's paving projects.
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: A few reports are indicating a decline in COVID cases, but many find it hard to know why. Still so much to learn from the pandemic, what are you hearing and what's the situation in Terre Haute now?
Bennett: Most people said it would be a six to eight week process to hit the peak and then come down. And we seem to be right on that. So that that gives me some confidence in those that predict this kind of stuff and look at the numbers and use real data and use the projected data.
And our numbers have been going down, there for a while they were running over 100 a day. And now we're down, in the 30s and 40s a day and hospitalizations are down. So that's good, the vaccinations are up, all the factors you would hope are happening. What I worry about though, is another variant that comes and dodges the vaccine, you hear a lot of different things. And I just don't know when the end is really the end.
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Hren: Now we're hearing more about the booster shot. What have you heard and what should we know?
Bennett: I always tell people call your family doctor. In Vigo County though, if you want some general questions answered, you can always call the health department and so I'm not hearing a lot about them. But I think the focus right now is just continuing to get people who have not been vaccinated, at least get one shot. And once again, if you're concerned about that, please call your family doctor because they're going to be best to tell you whether you know that they feel it's going to be effective.
So those numbers continue to go up in Vigo County, we're over 50% now. So we've made some progress there. I still say there's a whole bunch of people out there that have had COVID and they got the antibodies. And so they're protected, too. So I think every day, we keep making that general number of unprotected people smaller.
Hren: Are there any city incentives for employees there in Terre Haute to get the vaccination?
Bennett: No, not done that. I'm just kind of waiting to see this rule that comes out from OSHA from President Biden's executive order because obviously we have more than 100 employees. And we're going to have to negotiate with our unions. And I've got some work ahead of me to do on that.
Hren: Are there any city departments hurting with the labor shortage due to contracting COVID, and then having to quarantine?
Bennett: No. Last year, we had a few little cycles, the fire department got hit pretty hard last year, but not in this cycle of this delta variant. We've really kept people apart on the job as much as we can anyway, we don't have them congregating at lunch together. And so I think that's helped a lot. That's obviously harder to do in city hall.
But, we've not had a lot of foot traffic in. I think we're just a little smarter. And we're all taking our precautions, which is keeping that from happening.
Hren: The deadline to apply for the new Terre Haute casino license has passed. Now the state will decide November 17 which which company will get to open that casino. I believe four companies have applied including the Terre Haute based Lucy Luck Gaming. Have you had a chance to look over the four? I know this is not something that you are deciding, but as mayor, you have a very big interest into this. Do any four of those stand out to you? And why?
Bennett: No, I think generally speaking, they're all good proposals. Our preference is just to stick with the local guy, Greg Gibson, who is in a partnership with Hard Rock. That's one of the four. And we just think that's the best fit. One we think the Hard Rock brand is top notch, and to the fact that Greg would be is directly involved with that proposal, because he's just done so much for the community previously and continues to do today.
But as you said, we have very little input into this, the state awards the license for the Gaming Commission. But they know the inside information that we don't know. And so all we know is this is what it would look like if we get the job. We'd love for a first class casino to come here that's going to draw a lot of people and make them money and bring some local dollars back here. We just would like to see this process come to a close.
Hren: I hear the new police station opening or ribbon cutting is Friday, and then they move in Monday. Something we've been covering with Bloomington is what some are calling a dire need for more police officers. Some say that the police department in Bloomington is understaffed, overworked, underpaid. The city says it's hiring more unarmed personnel to help and hiring officers just isn't what it used to be. Can you relate to that at all there in Terre Haute?
Bennett: Our numbers are staying generally the same. We've had a lot of retirements and we'll continue to have retirements in the future. But we bring new officers on, we try to keep our staffing right at about the level where we've had it for over the last five or six years, basically maybe seven years now. So I'm not seeing a big change there.
We're not changing the way we do our police thing, we kind of changed a few years ago. We're not reacting to anything. And I feel that we're staffed about right. We did have to increase the public safety budget a little bit this year to pay for the body cams. We covered the cost last year through some other funding sources, but we put it into the police department budget for this year. And so we had to add an extra $200,000 to the budget to be able to cover those costs.
We bought new police cars and things like that, that we've kind of put off for a while just because of property tax caps and everything else. But we're kind of holding the line on our spending there. And we've increased it just a tiny bit. But I think it's well spent money.
Hren: It sounds like retention is decent there in Terre Haute, you tribute that to salaries? Is it perks?
Bennett: I think it depends on the officer, there's some that having a perk of a having a take home car is a big deal. Others, they'd rather see more money going into retirement or us covering other costs. The younger people the salary is pretty good for them, and we've been able to raise it up some. The older guys and gals that have been on for a long time are happy where they're at, and they're just trying to make that decision when they go.
I do worry about the pool of people coming in the future, though our numbers cycle through every time we put out a call for applicants. And that's been an issue for us. And it was not so bad last time. But who knows what the future holds to replace those officers as they do retire. And we do lose a few to other departments. We get them trained, they go through the Academy, they come here spend a year, and there are some police departments that are paying a lot more than we do. So we do lose a few that way too.
Hren: We are about out of time, but I know there's some paving projects and a READI grant that you've been wrapping up?
Bennett: We're down to the last really two paving projects other than the city hall parking lot. We still have some paving to do - we're going to do South First Street this week. And then next week, we've got a couple of streets in Robinwood where we got a drainage project out there and put in new storm drains and curbs.
So all told, we spent about $2.8 million on paving in the city of Terre Haute this year then we did the $8 million Lafayette Avenue project. But I think we've had a pretty good year on road infrastructure. So I'm happy with that - it's a drop in the bucket in the big scheme of things. We just can't pave fast enough. But we've spent more than we've ever spent in any single year, just on street paving.
The READI grant was submitted back on September 30. It's $300 million worth of public and private projects, economic development activity. And we requested $73 million from the state as the match for that.
So despite of COVID, we're getting a lot of things done here. The budget is passed, nine to nothing last week. We're about $110 million budget, $2 million revenue over expenses. Feel really good about the budget, the council did too, so that's behind us.
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