A new ordinance will hold subcontractors accountable for natural gas line strikes, eclipse planning is in full swing, and the casino is set to open April 5.
On this week’s installment of Ask The Mayor, Terre Haute Mayor Brandon Sakbun addresses these issues and more Tuesday from city hall. 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: Everyone's talking about the solar eclipse. It's coming up - less than a month away. And cities and towns have been preparing for years. What's Terre Haute doing?
Sakbun: So we've got our own website on TerreHaute.com. There's a solar eclipse section. Tons of community events here in Terre Haute. From a public safety standpoint, we are prepared our police, fire, street department, highway department, the county sheriff's department, you name it. We are making preparation for an influx of visitors. We're gonna have a downtown festival and I encourage folks to come out to that, and a lot of our city parks as well. Camp space is getting booked up, hotels are booked up, and we are looking forward to a great weekend in Terre Haute.
Read more: Eclipse 2024 (WFIU/WTIU coverage)
Restaurants, grocery stores, gas stations, this affects everyone. School Corporation has the day off. We're doing a half day for our office staff and most city employees. Obviously public safety will be out the entire day.
Hren: I hear a new clubhouse is coming to Rea Park?
Sakbun: Yes. So Rea Park is in great shape. They continue to bring in revenue. They have a little bit of debt right now about a million dollars, but each year they're bringing in hundreds of thousands to pay off that debt. This is a facelift to the clubhouse, but it is only phase one of our Rea Park makeover. We're looking to add some small playground equipment, tennis courts, pickleball, making that a community park not just for Terre Haute but southern Vigo county as well.
Hren: Let's talk a little bit about landlords, negligent landlords I should say. Terre Haute is a college town, this is an issue in Bloomington too being a college town. Sometime residents they don't have enough protections against negligent landlords?
Sakbun: No, and we have some of the worst tenant friendly laws in the country. In other levels of government, when you look at the comparisons here locally, we have started to do some procedural changes, a grass cutting fee that negligent landlords really honestly abused city employees. Street department, code enforcement, wastewater, they are not a lawn care service. So we have increased our grass cutting fee for a lot of those owners who put that on the city. Let's just the start. We are going to look at our building code or building permits.
Hren: Let's talk about the city council news. This new ordinance just passed and hold subcontractors utility providers accountable. Can you talk a bit about how that came about?
Sakbun: I had close conversations with our city engineer during the transition when we started that legislation in November. So finally after a couple of months fine tuning it, we got a city council member to carry that legislation. It received unanimous support and so good to see that happen for the city of Terre Haute. We were number one in the Midwest for telecommunication strikes on gas lines. This allows us to implement some state code that had already been passed about finding locates pausing work when needed and assessing finds if needed.
Hren: Does this impact the advancement of getting broadband and technology to neighborhoods?
Sakbun: It will not, so working with those utility providers. They are not the issue, it's some subcontractor concerns. So we're very clear on that. We appreciate our utility providers and we simply ask that we hold subcontractors to a standard that is expected in our community.
Hren: Housing stock is one of your your primary concerns. We're seeing vacant lots now being either taken over by the city more because it's not just about infill or building new apartments it's about taking over what's already in the city.
Sakbun: It's really a two phase operation, bifurcated out city and county and then just city. So on the city side of it, we had 119 vacant lots on January 1 that are deemed buildable. This means they kind of meet that 40 foot width requirement. We're at almost 40 vacant lots that have now moved towards some stage of development and the goal is to get that list to zero. We get new homes in our community because our housing shortage is very clear based on studies data and incoming jobs. We need quality housing fast.
A lot of these homes are priced at a great price range. Our infrastructure grants through Thrive West Central helped make this list a reality. On the other side of the fold, we have started to work with the county to receive lots that have cleared the tax sale multiple times that the county has possession now that we would like the city to have possession of, to start increasing the inventory for developers, and I appreciate our county commissioners, they've been great to work with. So looking to add to our list as we continue to push it out to get developed.
Hren: How do you feel about density in neighborhoods and adding plexes or more than one household in a home?
Sakbun: So it's dependent on the neighborhood and the situation. There's the political answer, but here's my personal answer. Cities like Terre Haute have got to chase density and urbanism. Can you eat live work play all within a mile? Are you walking distance from a grocery store? That's why I'm happy to support a $500,000 program, funded through American Rescue Plan Act funds to help solve the food desert problem in Terre Haute, Indiana with groups like Terre Foods and Catholic food charities. We've got a food desert problem. Our community right now is not as walkable as it should be. And infill housing density urbanism helps bring that to the city of Terre Haute and solve some of those problems.
Is it going to happen overnight? No. Is it going to happen over four years? Well, I certainly hope so. And if it doesn't, what we are going to do is create an environment where it can happen for years and years and years down the road.
Wait a second. RETWEET this one million times. Cities like Terre Haute must chase density and infil housing. We must create an eat, live, work, and play mindset all within a mile. https://t.co/vVXRG8bBhx — Brandon Sakbun (@BSakbun) March 10, 2024
Hren: I saw you retweet and ask everyone to retweet it a million times about how towns or cities are built around the automobile and not around people. And that really resonated with you.
Sakbun: It did, if we're looking at the change in municipal governments, city services, as well as urban planning over the last 100 years, we spread out, that puts a strain on your infrastructure, a strain on public safety costs, instead of being more dense. We need more governors who have municipal government experience because he said they can relate and understand and those comments echoed to me because, I would just ask the state and the federal level, other folks in government to think in terms of what is the mayor and city council charged with.
Our uniform police division works so hard to be village vigilant and present in the community. But conversations like annexation from decades ago, set us down this path where we're so wide. Now, let's build up. We don't need to build out we can only build up and you're looking as society starting to push back towards bicycles, towards walking to and from public transportation. And it provides a community that is not just modern, but a community where families, Hoosiers, can walk to a pharmacy, can walk to a grocery store, can walk to a park with their dog with their kids and enjoy the city of Terre Haute.
Hren: The casino is looking close to complete, April 5 is coming up.
Sakbun: We're gonna roll the dice, that will be our our hard launch. I am looking forward to it. Is it going to bring in some increased taxes? Yes. Will there be some traffic concerns, safety concerns? Gambling is the second highest addiction in the United States of America. Well, sometimes with problems becomes new solutions. So we are looking at conversations within DOD, conversations with redevelopment on how we can look at the East Side transportation infrastructure focus.
We do work closely with police and fire in the casino to ensure that it is a safe environment for all Hoosiers. Those that live here and those that visit.
