Next year's budget is approved and now the city turns to allocating ARPA funding, a workforce development plan, 12 Points area rezoning, and housing strategies.
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: The city's 2023 budget is approved, I'm sure you're really glad to have that off your back for now.
Bennett: The budget process is pretty intensive for a city of our size, it's a multi month process. And to get to the end of that and get another unanimous vote, I think that's five years in a row of having a unanimous vote from the council. It's our eighth straight year of having a balanced budget, went up about 8% over last year, we'll give 4% raises to our employees, and then our supply costs for diesel, unleaded fuel, utility costs, those are kind of the big areas that went up in the budget.
Now how do we finish strong for the rest of this year financially and making sure we're doing everything we need to do to collect all the revenue we can and make sure we're only spending the things we need to spend on so we have a great finish to this year.
Hren: Something you said really struck me last month, you said Terre Haute had their biggest tax cap impact over $15 million that the city couldn't collect in an approved budget because of the tax caps. How big is the budget?
Bennett: We get about $25 million a year in property tax revenue. So for all of our funds that get property taxes, if you had that extra $15 million, you'd have $40 million you're collecting. Assessed values have been going up a little bit finally, in Vigo County. But that doesn't mean you collect more tax money. It just means the calculation may show you owe more, but then the tax caps kick in. And so you get a credit, and you don't have to pay all of that. So when you kind of look at our general operating funds, overall, you're talking about that $25 million being a pretty significant portion of that revenue. And yet you're leaving $15 million on the table.
The entire city budgets about $105 million, and so we get $25 million in revenue out of that.
Hren: So we can see why every year when we talk about the Indiana General Assembly thinking about cutting taxes or cutting the business personal property tax, that could be another $5 or 6 million a year out of you budget?
Bennett: That would be devastating to us, we've survived the property tax caps. And even though they're the biggest number that we've ever had since 2009, we've balanced the budget. But if we take another hit to business personal property tax with no replacement revenue, I mean, you're talking about now having $20 million, or a little less a year to fund a budget like that, versus $25 million - that would just be very devastating to all municipalities and counties, too. It would be a shockwave.
Hren: You touched upon last month, a Workforce Development Plan. Can you tell us what that is and what you're aiming to do with that?
Bennett: I hear from mayors and others all across the state all the time about how we don't have enough people to take the jobs that we have open. Here in west central Indiana, really just about a four county area, we've probably got 1500 jobs that are available - a lot of in manufacturing, some healthcare and others that need to be filled. And yet, we're not getting that to happen.
So our local people who would normally be in that pool are choosing not to take those jobs. So we've got to make the pool bigger, we need to bring people into our community. It goes back to life quality, place, access health care, housing availability, all those pieces are kind of part of that workforce development puzzle.
There's the job training component and getting people prepared for these jobs. And so we're trying to look at it from a holistic perspective. I brought a group of people together a few weeks ago, our college and university presidents, our workforce development team or economic development folks, our commissioners, county council, city council representation, and myself and said, listen, we got to do something. We can't just keep doing the same things we've always been doing because the pool is not getting bigger.
We're gonna have a second meeting with all of our manufacturers here before long and find out what their needs are overall, find out where the priorities are, and we're going to figure out a way to help partner with them and fund these things to make it easier for them to recruit and retain employees. So I think it's going to be a long term efforts, not just a drop in the bucket.
Hren: This takes us to the 12 Points area, to some people may not be familiar with that who don't live in Terre Haute, can you give us a brief background on that, and especially now because City Council is looking to change the area's zoning to try to attract more businesses.
Bennett: It's a an area on the north central side of the city that used to be a bustling retail area back in the day, as people like to say it's seen a resurgence of small business come in there. It's had a lot of hits over the years. But it's seen a lot of energy, the passion from a group that is up there, the 12 Points revitalization committee, the city is partnered with them and I hired a local firm to develop a strategic plan that will become public here in the next week or so that we're excited about to kind of take us what the next five years might look like.
And one of the pieces of that is should the zoning in that area up there mirror what we have in downtown, there's some certain restrictions and some certain things you need to do. But at the end of the day, it provides some guardrails, I guess is the best way to put it,building up to the sidewalk as an example or meeting a variance to not do that. Putting some things in place that will make it a more develop the way we want our downtown to develop.
We're good with it from the city's perspective. And hopefully this will be another tool to encourage development but be responsible development in that area.
Hren: Have you heard anything about the Larry Bird Museum in the convention center?
Bennett: We continue to work with Larry Bird's agent to get the materials all identified and what's going to be in it. The build out is underway. We hope to open it next year. But I don't want to pin ourselves down. Because it seems like we run into a little obstacle every time we do that.
