The mayor is touting the area in hopes of receiving a $42 million grant for economic development. And the mayor gives us an update on the city budget including how they plan to repay the deficit.
On this week's installment of Ask The Mayor, Mayor Duke Bennett addresses these issues and more. 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.
This conversation has been edited for clarity and conciseness.
Hren: I'd like to start with the city budget that was approved late last week, it includes $3.5 million in cuts and a proposed trash collection fee removed that you say will keep the city moving next year - could you walk us through these items?
Bennett: Finally there's some stability in the property tax cap losses now. We gotta keep moving the city forward so I don't want to go backwards in services, crime rate is down, fire department ISO rating dropped - those are the things that are important to me. The residents expect a high level of service, yet we have $12 million less coming in. Overall, all the funds approved have a $5 to $5.5 million surplus so we'll be positive revenue over expenses so that's the first time we've been able to do that in a long time.
Hren: There's still a city deficit though in the general fund?
Bennett: Yes, we have 82 funds and 6 of them have a deficit. We came into this year with a little more than a $5 million deficit so we still have to deal with that, but knowing that next year that we won't add to the deficit we'll actually begin to subtract from the deficit, that's a real pivotal point in time that I think is the most important thing for people to understand.
Hren: Could you explain the $2 million loan I read about in the Tribune-Star and what that is for?
Bennett: That's a tax anticipation warrant, I guess you can call it a loan, but it's an advance on the property tax so it comes off the next property tax distribution. So what we'll do at the end of this year, we'll pay off the one we have for this year - we used to take $5 million loans out, we're down to $2.7 million this year and next year it'll be $2 million... we'll eventually phase that out. But what you're doing is taking an advance on next December's tax disbursement so you have that money to operate the entire year with. It's called a tax anticipation warrant and so you're borrowing at a very small interest rate.
Hren: I couldn't help but notice the controversy surrounding the timing of the budget to city council members, some of which said they didn't have enough time to look it over. In your mind, was there enough time before it was passed?
Bennett: Absolutely, they got it back in the first part of September. The only thing that they received that night is the updated cuts that we had made from the previous week and so they had asked us to make more cuts. We made $800,000 of additional cuts and we handed that to them that night. So that's an unfair statement to make. It's worked that way for eight years in a row, really no different and so why is this year suddenly a big problem.
