ARPA funds are helping to bring a downtown hotel and parking garage near the convention center and renovate City Hall. And the FTC is urging the state to deny the Terre Haute hospital merger.
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: Budget hearings are just getting started this week here in Terre Haute. Are you ready to go?
Sakbun: I think so. We're not gonna take on any debt next year, which is a good change for Terre Haute, Indiana. We do need to get going on some sewage and storm water projects. Those have been around for a couple of decades, right? So our proposed budget is $127 million, excluding some redevelopment funds, but focused on wastewater sanitation. $127 million in expenses. Of course, we never get 100% on expenses, and $115 million in revenue.
Lot of folks ask, where's that $12 million coming from? It is a cash balance within our Sanitary District and within our EDIT fund, economic development income tax fund to start and finish some longer projects that had previously been started. So you're balancing, Brown Stormwater Project, we've got to upgrade some main lift stations. So little bit of everything is starting to come and hit us in terms of infrastructure.
We do think in 2026 those numbers will stabilize a little bit better.
Hren: You were talking about cash balances. Just to be clear, does that leave any cash balance for next year, or is this instilling a budget that will need to find other revenue next year.
Sakbun: There is still a cash balance in the Sanitary District. We will continue to invest from the Sanitary District over the next three years a public utility like sewage. We are not Duke Energy or Indiana American Water. We are not in this to get profit. So the money that we do get that covers expenses needs to be reinvested back in the community in a smart, deliberate way.
What we do know is our long term control plan, which is our 25 to 30 year plan to update sewage and storm water within our community. That's a $300 million price tag. But before we start looking at any sort of long term financing, we are going to use a cash balance to get started and show some progress towards that.
Secondly, every community has got to evaluate revenue sources, the property tax caps - some homeowners are saving and there's a cap, and then they do inhibit local growth for some communities. There are some creative ways capital stacking, looking at state and federal programs, really combining public private partnerships, and the goal is to increase population and increase median income. To do that, it takes quality of life investments.
Does the casino help? Yes, but can you bank for long term casino funding? So those are the interesting problem sets presented to local government.
Hren: I hear you bring up the casino revenue a few times. Do you know how much you're getting and when that's going to come in?
Sakbun: We have an account of what we've gotten through last August. Different individuals in different communities partake in different activities, and then ebbs and flows, as the economy does so your 2025 projection might not be your 2026 projection, and that might not be your 2027 projection. So figuring out what projects you're going to fund from that can always be an interesting problem set.
What we are looking to do is some sidewalk improvement, a lot of parks improvement. We are looking to purchase some equipment for city employees to make them more efficient on the job and help them out, because some of these departments have been working with equipment that is older than you or I, but we're also looking at investing in our YMCA in partnership with hopefully a Lilly Foundation grant.
We are looking at starting to address the Deming Park pool. And those are problems that every mayor has had since before I've been born, right? And these are really good opportunities to begin to dabble into some of those projects, but also use that cash on projects that are completed within one year.
Hren: City council allocated ARPA funds with $14 million in total, I believe 3 million for a new downtown hotel complex and parking garage - but when people think, oh, is the city giving $3 million to a hotel developer?
Sakbun: So that project all started with READI 1.0, right? And when the state allocates READI funds, it expects a return on investment, and that project was delayed a little bit. It should have been passed, honestly, a year and a half, two years ago, different kind of frustrations emerge. And long story short, we said, hey, look, we got to get this project off the goal line. It's got a potential to be a $70 million investment, and bringing more hotel rooms plus first floor commercial opportunities to downtown. Refurbishes a parking garage, has not one but two pedestrian bridges connecting different elements of our downtown.
Also in that American Rescue Plan Act funding that was passed, I believe, in March or April. Brown Stormwater project, the 13th and 8th overpass, not to mention sidewalk projects. We gave money to small businesses and nonprofits through the local United Way, allowing entrepreneurs a chance to apply for some of those federal funds, we've helped our park system. So all those dollars are really being leveraged. They've got strong match from other groups, non profit for profit entities really pursuing that public private partnership, capital stacking mindset.
Hren: Want to get your feedback about the Federal Trade Commission saying it's urging the Indiana Department of Health to deny the merger of Union Health and the Terre Haute Regional Hospital. They claim the merger could lead to higher costs, declining health care, lower wages. You've said you were in support of the merger.
Sakbun: We usually do see that the FTC does issue a similar opinion for most medical mergers. But it's important to know that is why the state legislator passed the COPA to have clear guardrails established for price increases at the end of the day. There was not interest in other hospitals to purchase Regional and this was the deal that was presented to keep not multiple hospitals, but multiple medical facilities under one umbrella functioning.
We'll let the state give it a look, and if they need to go back and try to find more buyers. And that's on the private sector and them to negotiate, but at the end of the day, this was the option that was presented to us. I wish the medical community the best, and certainly hope there's a way to come out with a deal on top to hopefully bring more high paying jobs and investments to our community and Union Health is not stopping their growth.
