Mayor Brandon Sakbun says the city is moving quickly on demolishing condemned properties, opening bids for more housing, and working on a $5 million YMCA renovation grant.
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: Here we are six months into the year and I know it might be too early to really talk about goals. But still a milestone, are the tides turning into your vision?
Sakbun: Absolutely. So from a housing perspective, one of my long term goals was to double previous year construction on new housing units, whether through rehabilitation or new construction. Folks we're six months in and we're getting close to tripling previous year numbers.
One number I always like to tout - we built 122 new homes or new housing units in 2022. We're currently at about 315 into 2024 with of course, several large projects that we're looking forward to announcing in July and August. Now, it's not just new construction, part of new housing is restoration of blight properties. We've seen good progress. There are programs with Thrive West Central Indiana and the Homes for the Future program continues to see a lot of interest from local builders and other builders from across the state of Indiana as we bring folks in here and to invest in the housing stock.
Hren: So if housing is such a need, why aren't developers seeing this private need and doing it on their own?
Sakbun: A lot of development is coming naturally. But we use funds from the American Rescue Plan to help close the gap. We recognize construction costs have gone up, lumber has kind of decreased to about 2019 levels, but for quality housing builds, some of those prices have gone up. That's just supply demand, COVID supply chain networks. So we said, okay, how can we close the gap in terms of infrastructure so that the grants that we are giving go to infrastructure for housing projects, that's sewage, that's water lines, that's utilities, and what that does is it helps connect our infrastructure network for the community at large.
So we are seeing very large interest for development projects, for example, the old police station project. That's a dilapidated building. So hey, if we're to take that down, which we're planning to using pre site development funds to demo it, we submitted an RFP through our Terre Haute redevelopment office to say what developers are interested in Terre Haute, Indiana and what is our expected public private partnership match?
We saw one of the projects or future projects got like a 33 to one match. So for every dollar that we put in, we get $33 of private investment. Again, and I've used this analogy in the past, I'll keep using it. If we got a return on investment like that in Wall Street, we would be on the cover the New York Times, but instead we're doing it in government in through the lens of community development.
Hren: You touched upon something Mayor Thomson in Bloomington just said last week, it's all part of an ecosystem - you can't talk about jobs without housing. Live, work and play.
Read more: Blomington's Thomson on council resolutions, Trades District hotel, jail
Sakbun: I'm smiling that you mentioned Mayor Kerry Thomson because her experience as the Community and Rural Affairs over at Indiana University really is showing and how she's governing as a mayor and looking at these problems. I mean, I do call her as well as I call several other mayors for feedback for thoughts and I say, hey, that seems to be working.
We're developing a 10 year sidewalk plan. So we can say, how can we connect some of these neighborhoods, some current housing, not even future housing, how can we get them connected to our parks to our grocery stores. The city council voted, and I'm happy they did and they supported the administration and a $250,000 grant from American Rescue funds to the Goodwill center that's focused on adult education.
We're all working towards the same goal of growing not just Terre Haute, Indiana, but West Central Indiana at large. It's a regional battle. We've got to uplift the entire region being the largest city when you look in Brazil, Sullivan, Clay County, Vermillion, Parke, Putnam. I mean, we love working together because a strong Terre Haute and a strong Sullivan that means a strong west central Indiana region.
Hren: Two grants - $5 million Lily gift proposal for a renovation of the YMCA and then another grant, you're going to pitch to the Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg?
Sakbun: We were fortunate to make it to the final round with the Lily gift - it's gonna be about a $9 to $10 million project. But we're gonna apply for about $5 million from Lily Gift Aid to renovate our YMCA on the banks of the Wabash, but the YMCA folks think, oh, you have to have a membership. They do so many community projects with local nonprofits focused on child care focused on quality education outside the classroom and summer programs. That's elevating our entire community.
And we are looking at the long term operational costs and the capacity of a new facility and how it will pay itself off over time and continue to grow not just through membership, but through services offered. Not just that, but it's in Fairbanks Park on our river. We're finishing up a Riverfront Development Study.
So we did apply for a RAISE grant, we are looking at about four or five others that we're going to apply for or have applied for, to really bring in not just quote, infrastructure improvements, but that includes pedestrian safety, quality, right of ways, quality sidewalks, new improvements, not just the downtown Terre Haute but across the city at large. They're also part of our planning cycle with our long term control plan, which is the government way of saying we want to make sure that our stormwater and our poop water is all separating all of that.
Hren: How about a quick update on budget numbers six months in - especially now that you've had a more time with the numbers, a new set of eyes, what are you seeing?
Sakbun: Absolutely. So, our sanitary balance is very healthy. But we did spend a couple of weeks with the auditor reviewing, why was this transfer? Or why was this bill being paid out of the general fund, not the sanitary fund? So, bottom line, we have five budgets that have a negative balance, right, so your yearly budget can be balanced.
So you can say in 2024, we spent less than what we took in, but if you still have negative line items, on the books, not in the bank account, but on the books, then that shows that, hey, you've got to have policies and plans in place to correct that. So we are looking at our group health, our health insurance plan, our trash fleet, we had to make a very hard decision and increase the trash fee to cover that because it hadn't been increased in years.
We have two municipal golf courses. Habitually across the United States, not just Indiana municipal golf courses, have struggled to turn a profit, Rea Park is doing very well and Hulman Links is doing well, but their profit isn't high, because our operating costs are higher. So do we need to have the conversation of private management of a municipal owned public course. And that's a conversation we're having now.
So overall, our operating balance looks higher than it is because American Rescue Plan funds are in there. So we'll use some casino dollars to build our cash reserves closer to about 15 to 20%. With our our goal should be 25% but we're not going to get there overnight. So how can you use casino dollars to build that cash reserve, but also finance some projects like a new YMCA, of course the Deming Park pool.
