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Ask The Mayor: Terre Haute's Bennett On Food And Beverage Tax

Terre Haute Mayor Duke Bennett (Joe Hren, WFIU/WTIU News)

The county and city will move forward on a new downtown convention center, city leaders are crafting next year's budget, the dance permit is now called the special event permit and a downtown city landmark building is being donated to a local museum.

On this week's installment of Ask The Mayor, Terre Haute's 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. 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: We've talked before and know you're behind the food and beverage tax to help fund a new convention center?

Bennett: We've been planning this for four or five years. It originally started with ISU and the Hulman Center project and we kind of split apart on that which is fine, but we didn't want to turn away on the idea of a convention center.

A convention center gives us another destination in our community.

We turn away a lot of conventions every year. I have people ask me, who's going to come to Terre Haute to go to a convention. Well I travel all over the state to go to conventions in much smaller cities and so they will come here and our studies have shown that. It gives us another destination in our community.

We needed a food and beverage tax to seal the deal. It provides an ongoing revenue stream that will help us to operate the facility and down the road we can do other projects that lead to tourism.

Hren: What other funding does the project need to move forward?

Bennett: The city has committed $10 million, the county has commited $10 million and the convention and tourism bureau has committed $5 million. I'd guess we'd get $2 million a year from the food and beverage tax.

We're going to have a third hotel and a parking garage and this facility for sure so it's a public private partnership, we'll own the convention center component, but the hotel will be owned by private entity and we'll have enough hotel rooms within a block of each other to support this.

Hren: Between Kokomo's announcement of a conference center, Bloomington is moving forward, Columbus is in the planning stages and now Terre Haute, does the influx of these centers worry you at all?

Bennett: No it just means that everybody wants to do something that creates a destination. There's all kinds of small conventions from 50 to 300 people that love to travel around to different places in the state. We don't have that space, Kokomo didn't and Bloomington needed more space and Columbus is saying hey, we can do the same thing.

Hren: I have to ask the other side, what about those that wonder why Terre Haute is adding another tax when the city is trying to recover from a deficit?

Bennett: We need this kind of money because the people who are going to travel to our community will help pay for this, the burden will not be on all the locals. There's 28 other communities in the state that's already charging it so that's just the nature of the business.

Hren: Let's talk about budgets. The Tribune-Star reported this week that the city will have a $4 million surplus in accounts related to property taxes. Is that fair to say?

Bennett: I think it's pretty accurate. That was a number that a city councilman came up with based on his numbers. We're working on those numbers now. I think we'll be close to that, maybe exceed it a little bit. It depends on what happens the last half of the year.

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