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: The city's 2027 budget passed last week - how do you feel about it?
Sakbun: Unanimous budget decision from the city council. Really want to thank them. That's three years in a row that we've worked together. The budget does go up by 4.37% approximately. However, about 60 to 66% of that increase was my administration's decision to use some cash reserves to finish a couple of projects and really start some projects. So that way, we have to do zero bonding when it comes to quality-of-life projects.
Hren: When you say zero bonding, just explain to our listeners what that means for the city when there's zero bonding.
Sakbun: So to folks out there who have bought a home before, or maybe they've done a large renovation on that home, you go to the bank, you pull out a loan, you do that project, and over time you pay that loan back.
So how municipal government finance works as cities and towns and counties will pull a bond. They'll say, hey, we have a revenue source to pay off this bond, this loan, for lack of a better term. A revenue bond can be sewage related, sanitary district related, special tax related, or they can do a general obligation bond, which is a property tax bond, which says, hey, there's a rate on your taxes minus the circuit breaker that we'll then use to pay off this bond.
Fancy way of saying here in the city of Terre Haute, we got a lot of work going on, right? We're improving the Deming Park pool, the Deming Park playground. The YMCA is under construction. We're going to renovate the Booker T. Washington Community Center. We're going to spend $4.1 million on street paving, as well as another $15 million on infrastructure improvements, and we're doing it by keeping our tax rate flat and capturing some of that growth.
Hren: Indiana State is coming off homecoming weekend. I see you suspended the DORA district that was put in place a few weeks ago. Could you just first explain what DORA is for those that don't know, and then what was the reasoning behind that?
Sakbun: DORA stands for Designated Outdoor Refreshment Area. Basically, allows if you're 21 years and older to drink outdoors in a confined area and a specific cup. We did suspend that for the homecoming festivities. I don't know when you went to college, but when I went to college, and what a lot of the kids still do to this day, this thing called Darty. Darty is a day party, and Darty does involve some outdoor drinking during the day. With an influx of family, friends, and alumni for Indiana State University, in consultation with the university, we decided to kind of pause that outdoor drinking downtown as much as we could.
Hren: I want to revisit Flock cameras with you on this episode. We've been seeing more cities starting to move away from them due to misuse and public outcry. Last month, five Indianapolis police officers were charged for misusing Flock.
You've chosen to stay on with Flock, and I've seen some social media posts generating quite a response a little bit ago. What's your stance now?
Sakbun: We continue to work with organizations like the ACLU, the Police Chief Association of the State of Indiana, and Accelerate Indiana Municipalities, also known as AIM, to develop the most concrete and strict Flock camera policy in the state of Indiana. That is my goal, and it has been as mayor.
Flock is just like body cameras, a vehicle, a weapon, or body armor, or even a pen and a pencil — it's a tool. Any tool can be abused. So what we believe in is strict safeguards in place. We don't do data sharing with other state and federal law enforcement offices. They have to request to access our data and access our cameras. We keep our data for 15 days, and then it's wiped. We don't use any AI any AI tools.
I point all this out because Flock has absolutely been abused across the United States of America, and many of the cities and towns that it's been abused in fail to implement concrete safeguards. A conversation I've been having with legislators is: if a law enforcement officer abuses Flock cameras in the state of Indiana, their police credentials should be removed for life. Several police chiefs stand by it as well and have endorsed that thought. We will continue to work with the legislator on a common-sense approach to this tool.
Hren: Is this policy that you're helping to craft something we'll see in this upcoming legislative session?
Sakbun: That is the goal to take a product and give it to the state legislator and really help potentially guide them. And if they say, "Hey, you know, thanks, better luck touching the sun. We want to do something else instead." That's the way it works, right? You got a local, state, and federal government. We'll continue to have conversations with all those levels, and most importantly, residents in our community who have shared some concerns.
Hren: I saw in the Tribstar that Terre Haute is being sued for not releasing Flock records. Are these public records, and if so, why aren't they being released?
Sakbun: The harsh reality is we have some members of the community who submitted over 175 written questions through the Freedom of Information Act, really purposely to bog down our staff. We spoke with the Public Access Council of hey, a lot of what they're asking for is either already online or it's not relevant. Like some of it we don't even have because we aren't using the system in this way, and so we have gotten legal counsel to advise us in that situation.
And while we're fully supportive of the Freedom of Information Act and providing accurate and transparent information, when you have individuals who are almost on a daily basis submitting requests, with the end state being to bog down municipal government staff, it has to be addressed.
Read more: Election Coverage
Hren: And early voting is open. So, go vote, right?
Sakbun: Absolutely. We've seen a pretty good boost in numbers so far, currently here in Vigo County, and I encourage everyone to get out and vote. Ask yourself: Are you really satisfied with some of the stuff that's going on at the state and federal level? Well, I'm happy the gas tax has been kind of paused. I'm not happy that interstate construction continues to revolve around the conversation of tolling, which is another form of a tax.
I'm not happy looking across our state, I feel like we're not doing enough to promote economic development in communities outside of the Donut County. I'm not happy that as we continue to talk about property tax, we've yet to pass meaningful legislation that affects the root of the problem, which is assessments. And I'm also not happy that at the federal level, we seem to continue to enter forever wars. And we seem to have realized that for some odd reason, a public execution is what our current presidential administration wants to talk about. You know who does that?
