The city is cleaning up from last week's winter storm, neighborhood planning forums aim to revitalize the 12 Points area, and the city update is rescheduled for February 24.
On this week’s installment of Ask The Mayor, Terre Haute Mayor Duke Bennett addresses these issues and more on a Zoom interview. 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: Let’s start with our first winter storm of the season, I hear Terre Haute got about 8 inches of snow and we reported Vigo County under a travel emergency for a day or so - how are things now and how did it go?
Bennett: I was posting some stuff on social media and I had a few people push back. Thursday morning the roads were not that bad. But I knew as the day wore on with the wind and the additional snowfall, it would get more difficult.
And I think that's what the commissioners recognize talking to each other and with emergency management, about going into that next level of travel warning on Thursday night because the roads deteriorated later in the day on Thursday.
So I think our conversations were on target - the predictions of the storm, and the timing was pretty much on target. And, we responded to that and got information at the public as quick as we could. But this one was just a little bit different because of that ice underlying and then the snow on top. And if you stay off the roads, we can get a cleaner faster.
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Hren: COVID numbers seem to be plateauing. Do you have anything to report there from Vigo County and Terre Haute?
Bennett: I've not received any reports yet this week, I think because people were dealing with the snowstorm. But numbers were going down last week and I'm certain they will again this week.
The vaccine sites I just got a message about that. They're going to be opening back up this week. So there's going to be plenty of opportunity to still get your vaccinations. The hospitals are standing down a little bit now, and I'm not hearing anything from there that they're overwhelmed like they were a few weeks ago. And so everything seems to be trending in the right way.
Back at the end of December, beginning of January, I said this ought to last four to six weeks. And so we seem to be right on that based on other states and other countries. I worry about the next variant, you hope it continues to water itself down.
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Hren: I was reading about a neighborhood planning forum that was scheduled at the Vigo County Library. I believe it's postponed, can you explain what it is?
Bennett: So this particular one is related to the 12 Points neighborhood. There's been a revitalization project going on up there for the last couple of years. And we wanted to pause long enough to get some other community input. Now that they've seen some improvements, what's your vision for that neighborhood?
And so they had a first meeting at a church, Maryland Community Church, week before last. And then the second meeting was supposed to happen last week when the storm hit. And there's actually a virtual meeting to kind of wrap this up, where we'll get people come share their ideas, their concerns, anything.
So the end of this planning process outcomes and document that will give us some guidance about, here's the target areas, here's the issues, here's the pros and the cons, here's some statistical information, to really see how the city can partner with the private sector to advance that area and build that retail back out and provide a lot of entertainment and just a variety of things.
Over the coming years, we're going to do more of those planning sessions for particular neighborhoods.
Hren: I'm anxious to get any updates on the proposed business personal property tax cuts coming from the General Assembly. I know they're at the halfway mark. You along with Mayor Lienhoop and Hamilton asked for replacement funds if the state's going to cut taxes. It's been a month what's the latest?
READ MORE: Indiana Senate braces for contentious second half
Bennett: So the house moved it along to the Senate. And so my connections in the Senate side are saying slow down here a little bit. Not a budget year. We typically don't deal with revenues or replacement revenues on a non-budget year. So I'm confident, I'm not overly confident, but I'm confident that the Senate is going to slow this down a little bit. I think they'll do something.
And I applaud that I think it needs to be done strategically. Because the problem is you can kind of come up with grand numbers, they say the state's going to be impacted by a billion dollars. Okay. But how does it really go down to the municipal government and county government and the library and all these other taxing entities, school corporations, they'll all be affected by this.
So community like Muncie, Kokomo, the highly industrialized, are going to suffer more than a bedroom community. I'm not picking on Carmel, just saying that there's differences between our communities, and the numbers are going to be different. And, we don't have the ability to recover from that. If we lose another $5 million, which is a rough estimate, that's 20% of our revenue. I mean, that's that's a significant amount of money.
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