In this week’s installment of Ask The Mayor, Terre Haute Mayor Brandon Sakbun addresses this issue and more at 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. Here are some highlights.
This conversation has been edited for clarity and conciseness.
Hren: It's been cold and we've been through snow events already. What all goes into putting out a fleet of snowplows?
Sakbun: it's kind of a four-phase operation. Phase one occurs about 72 hours prior to a snowfall. We have what's called liquid brine trucks, and that's when you see about four to five lines on each lane. That is a salt style solution to help it stop from sticking. Also in that phase, our regular 10 to 12 plow fleet, we do the salt and sand mix. We get all the vehicles ready, gassed up so when our B shift call goes, they're hopping in, turning on their vehicle, and they're going.
The second phase is we call in our employees if it's the weekend or if it's overnight, and then about an hour to when snow starts, we deploy that fleet out to drop more salt and sand mix, but now you're dropping it everywhere.
Phase three is you want that salt seed mix to really begin to work before you start just plowing away. Because, if not, you're just plowing what you just dropped on the street, right?
And then phase four, you gotta immediately reset your equipment. Some of those same trucks are used for leaf pickup, which we're still doing.
Hren: I see you had to address warming centers in the city, how they're run, who runs them, seems like there's a little bit of misunderstanding?
Sakun: I think a lot of folks assume that it's a municipal run organization, and while the city historically has helped them get into operation, the nonprofits run them. They set the schedule; they set the time.
What I have done as mayor is I've said, your current guidelines, which is zero to five degrees is, frankly unacceptable. And I've asked them to be open for longer hours, and I've offered to pay. I go in front of the county council to ask them for some financial assistance as well.
It's a joint effort with funding to help them get the staff to be open more frequently on a regular basis.
But we gotta do better as a community. We cannot accept the status quo, what has been going on the last decade. We can't accept that. We've gotta find a way to do better.
Hren: I saw there was a bomb threat at Third St. and Ohio. People may want to know what happened? And how was it resolved?
Sakbun: It was an individual who's got a legal history with some challenges when it comes to incidents like that. And I think it serves as a very big reminder that in today's day and age, unfortunately, in the political realm, I'll say on a scale of one to five - five being severe, one being not, you got to treat them all the same.
We're going to integrate ISP, their bomb squad. We're going to cordon the area and really take it from a tactical lens.
Hren: Let's get into redistricting. It passed the House. It now sits in the Senate, if it passes, how it would affect Terre Haute and Vigo County politics?
Sakbun: There are so many younger politicians 40 and under who grew up seeing John McCain versus Barack Obama debates, where they're having intricate discussions about national policy to advance the betterment of the United States of America. And here we are, a decade later, and I would remind the audience that every congressional member pre this election had the opportunity to vote to ban gerrymandering, right?
I don't care what party you're in. People should choose their representatives. It is not the other way around. What's even more frustrating is, we go through this mess, where was the special session to address these out-of-control utility bills from private companies. Energy is going to really hamper our state's economic development. The price of energy continues to go up.
I think as a state, we have really implemented poor public policies to help them accomplish their goals, which is bringing more energy to the state of Indiana. Young people can't afford to buy a home, right? Millennials and Boomers need to find homes to downsize too. Where's the special session on that? Right? Where is the special session to address the fact that, you know, in public education, and frankly, even in private education, in the state of Indiana, we've got to do more to invest in our kids.
I see hours of committee meetings. I see so much interest from national groups that are DC based that want to post my state senator's address and phone number all over Twitter. And to me, that's wrong. I just I cannot comprehend how we're not going through this level of conversation for some of the issues that I've already brought up.
Hren: We're getting to the end of the year; you posted on social media that there's no end of year additional appropriations. I see some cities are spending what's left over for those unexpected end of year expenses, but that's not happening in Terre Haute. Why?
Sakbun: Because we believe in fiscal responsibility, and I know other cities believe in it as well, but we're also hyper aware of the impacts of Senate Enrollment Act One in 2028 there's going to be budget challenges. So we have to grow our surplus. This is back-to-back years under my administration that the city of Terre Haute will spend less than what they budgeted for. That's what we're supposed to do.
Wwe've increased demolition, we've increased road paving. We're building more homes than we used to, and we're trying to redo as many of our parks as possible, but we're doing all of that and increasing support for public safety. We're doing all of that through the lens of fiscal responsibility.
We're not doing any bonds tied to property taxes. Are we going to have to explore those in the future with some of our large sewage projects? Likely? So, let's spend a few years getting our financials in order to prove to the banks that we know what we're doing when it comes to budgeting.
