Unknown Speaker
Hello and welcome to ask the mayor on WFIU I'm Joe Hren this week we're in Terre Haute on zoom with Mayor Duke Bennett. Hello, and welcome.
Unknown Speaker
Hello, it's good to be here again and always look forward to this. So you know, here we are in July already. I know we say that all the time. But the years and months and months and years has passed by so quickly and this year is no exception.
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, and I know for some time, some people may think summer is slow. In some regards, it may be but there's always a lot going on, isn't there?
Unknown Speaker
There is for us if you know construction season road projects and variety of other things. And you know, right now we're in the middle of the budget. So as we prepare for 23. You know, we have to get our budget approved in October. So it takes multiple months to put that together and you gotta budget. And so one of our busiest times really is the summertime.
Unknown Speaker
Just want to remind everyone listening, you can submit your questions to news at Indiana public media.org or on Twitter at Ask the mayor just wanted to start with the some of the biggest news since we last talked and that was the ground broken on the new casino off the interstate there. We did have a reporter there and reported on that. But this is something I've been asking you about almost every month, I feel I feel like for for quite a while and it finally happened.
Unknown Speaker
No, it's a great feeling. I mean, you know, I reflect back a lot on this because it's still a surprise, to me, a pleasant surprise that we're able to get it through the legislature that ended up being what seems like the easy part of this, then it got very difficult after that, and dealing with the Gaming Commission and what the previous HardRock. And then now with Churchill Downs, I mean, every challenge you can kind of imagine for itself in the way of the sand to now get through all that and get, you know, I tried my there and I see him moving dirt. It's like finally, you know, it's real, I knew it was gonna happen. But I it was just so frustrating go through that process. And, and now we're moving is happening and people drive lines. Really, you know, we're gonna get a casino? Yes, we are. And it's really a positive addition to our community. I know there are some against gambling, I always say this, you know, but it's going to bring a lot of resources and meet a lot of needs for the community.
Unknown Speaker
Now, you talk a lot about the economic development, but there's a lot that the city, and I don't know, if the state still has to do as well, you talked about roads, and I'm sure there's some infrastructure improvements as well.
Unknown Speaker
Out there, you know, it's the traffic flows. So the original casino was to be a little further to the east and a little bit to the north not far. But it would have been a different way to be the prime entrance, you know, to the casino. Now that they've moved down on Margaret Avenue itself, traffic has to flow in off the interstate, the majority of it and will get off there Margaret Avenue, which creates a bit of a bottleneck a different type of bottleneck than we thought we would have. So we're still working through that dots got a couple of plans. And Churchill Downs is working with them to select that. But then we'll have some longer term in the next few years and improvements that we're going to make. They need to take that first step and determine how the state wants the traffic to flow. And then we'll then make some improvements to the existing roads in the coming years once the casinos open, that will deal with the adjustment in the traffic flow. It's all based on estimates. And so I want to be careful that we the hours that we invest are ones that we know will solve any issues that we might have.
Unknown Speaker
And I believe it takes what a couple of years to build.
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, well, they're telling us that our plan is to get it open by the end of next year. But 18 months. You know, it's an aggressive schedule in today's environment, it just is. But I think they can get it done. And I guess we'll see. Probably in about six months, we'll see if they made the six months or the progress that they had hoped that they would i They're pretty confident so I'm gonna be comfortable with them. So I just hear horrible stories out there about supply chain issues and labor, you know, having enough people and you know, all those things that we all hear about on a regular basis. It's going to have some impact on the casino. There's no question
Unknown Speaker
you have some time to before it's officially opened. But is there some plan or is the city trying to figure out how to best take advantage of that economic development of keeping people shopping downtown and stopping Doing things, eating at restaurants and not just a pass through going to the casino and heading somewhere else.
Unknown Speaker
That's a valid point. Because you know, a lot of folks just come to the casino and they turn around and go home, we get that we'll just see some economic development out there in that 4640 corridor, just because of the volume of traffic already seeing a lot of interest with a developer who owns most of that property out there, where a lot of you know, retail kind of things. Hopefully, some sit down restaurants, that's one thing, we're kind of missing out there, besides what the casino is going to bring, I think those things will happen. But there's already discussions and we're trying to figure out how to get people from the convention center downtown, out to the casino, you know, that kind of a thing. So have some regular transportation options to make that happen. It's really just kind of that's what we're working on now is figuring out how to kind of integrate everything, and you're still gonna have those people that are coming and go. But there's all these people are going to be staying overnight periodically. They're here for another reason. And they're going to come out and visit the casino. So they're already here. How do we increase that also. And that's all part of our strategic plan or community plan or tourism component, really, things are going very well there. As I mentioned before, we've never been known as a tourism community that's not been Terre Haute saying that with the Griffin Bikepark and St. Mary of the woods College and the casino and the convention center. And, you know, goes home and all these places bring people here anyway, for a variety of reasons throughout the year. But now we're trying to tie it all together in a way that we're selling it that way, there's a lot of things to do, you're not just coming for graduation, you're not just coming to go to the bike park, you're not just coming to New, certain thing, there's all these other things to do. So make a day, make two days of it. And that's our push with a tourism group, or convention tourism bureau with our community plan with our chamber of commerce. Really, it's all coming together like we'd hoped it would were just a little bit behind on the casino. But we're gonna get there. So just gives us more time to plan and figure out how to integrate these destinations into, you know, something that people might want to do two or three things instead of one.
Unknown Speaker
the Wabash River Regional Development Authority is dedicating $4.3 million for downtown hotels and a parking garage projects. I believe it's a public private partnership, who's all involved in this connection, and is this in dealing with the new convention center as well,
Unknown Speaker
it's directly connected to the convention center. From the perspective, we knew we had to existing hotels about 200 rooms downtown. And to get to utilize the convention center to its full maximum capacity, we need 400 rooms, a minimum of 400 rooms downtown. So we've always known that we're going to be additional hotels. One is what we were thinking are originally, which was a little bit larger one but then tindora and Craig Gibson who own those two existing hotels have proposed two hotels on the former school corporation property with a small parking garage kind of in between them, It'll kind of be forced to save for, you know, whatever, it'll it'll save on that property and leave the middle open. And that's where the parking garage would be. So the public private partnership component will be on the parking garage, they'll build the hotels will probably do the parking garage, either through the city through the Department of redevelopment or through the CIB that we have that runs the convention center, and will own that portion of it, at least for some period of time, in order to get that filled as part of a somewhere between 50 and $60 million total project downtown. Well, I'm excited that they're willing to you know, move this to the next step that funding helps tremendously. We're looking at some other funding sources, and we've got cash on hand and the ability to bond through the Department of redevelopment. So we're gonna we're working on those logistics of that now, what that financial package would look like. And hopefully soon they'll they'll, you know, make the decision to move ahead with their architectural work designed, finished out, hopefully start construction by the end of next year. That's the goal that I would like to meet. Mostly it's up to them. It's a private project, you know, already grant requires a private investment. So it's coming together the way the IDC intended it to be. And it's also meeting our downtown needs with the convention center. Bring those additional 200 Plus hotel rooms.
Unknown Speaker
And as you mentioned, this is all part of the ready grant funding and I know we were in Columbus a few weeks ago where they Governor kicked off that program, giving Nexus Park some money there for the City of Columbus. And I'm sure there's many other things that you're working on with ready grant funding?
Unknown Speaker
Well, and so, you know, we had asked for 73 million, that we weren't probably going to get that. But I thought we get 50 million. Well, we ended up with 20. So a little disappointment there. But we're able to advance a lot of these projects anyway, not all of them. And then we're looking at other funding sources to help begin to move some of those projects, as we think all the projects that are in there are really good for West Central Indiana. And then there'll be another ready grant round, we hear we're beginning, you know, hear those rumblings within the legislature that they're going to set aside another $500 million for next year. So we're gonna go back with the ones that didn't get funded this time and hopefully get them funded, you know, as we move into 43 and 24.
Unknown Speaker
Just a couple of the big projects that the city of Terre Haute is looking at funding now with that money that's coming in?
Unknown Speaker
Well, you know, the biggest one obviously, is these hotels. I mean, that's, that's the most critical one. And that's why it got funded. We're looking at an athletic facility of some sort, not like Westfield not trying to recreate rampart, nothing of that magnitude, but a facility that would have multiple ball fields on it, a new baseball stadiums, a rec stadium that we'd like to have, and bringing private dollars to the table for that big portion of that, and then an outdoor quality segment that would be co located on this property. So that's probably the other great big one, if you will, you know, major project, but I've got some smaller ones, like the rehabilitation of the Deming Park, cool, we still want to be able to do that, and have that available for people in our community. Just a variety of things. So you know, I feel good about getting what we got out of the 20 million because you know, add to be shared with multiple counties, and in their projects are great, too. I mean, it's all about building West Central Indiana, that we have many more things in the pipeline that we want to get funded. So we're going to find other sources moving ahead. And hopefully, we'll get more ready grant money next year to be able to build them out in the coming year,
Unknown Speaker
when we get to talking a lot about ready but maybe forget a little bit about ARPA funding to and that's something that you're also looking at,
Unknown Speaker
yes, we've spent about 4 million of our 36 million allocation. And we're working on an appropriation for the remainder of the year here. And then building a budget for next year. It's a mix of things where we want to utilize some of it for our parks, we can use it in the low income areas of the city that the Orca rules allow you to help boost activities in some of those areas. So we're going to be using some funding for housing, in through some of our parks and other infrastructure in some of the inner city areas, that's going to be a really positive thing. We're going to use some funds for wastewater related stormwater things to help keep our bills down for a little bit longer. To pay for a few projects out of that, we're going to invest some money back and creating some pools of money for people to be able to utilize to improve their businesses, small businesses, specifically, minority and women owned businesses will be a target for us. For not for profits, we're not going to try to, then we're not going to spend the money in a way that you're spending it all. And it's just kind of gone. We want to do things that are more capital related projects that they need to do. So we can invest in that, but want to get into operations with that money, because you know what, maybe they operate for a year, and then they go away. We want to be real strategic with these. Some of them can be used for match ready, some of it can depends on what the project is. So we're just trying to leverage the dollars to make them go as far as they possibly can. So we're not removing intentionally slowly on the ARPA funds, because I continue to hear that the rules might loosen up a little bit more because not everybody's spending their money. And so let's make sure we can have the most flexibility with those dollars as we can and so that's kind of where we're at. Planning continues but now we're ready to announce any project quite yet.
Unknown Speaker
I hear you talk about pools, outdoor pools and I know story we're working on this summer to about the shortage of lifeguards is our things okay over there.
Unknown Speaker
We did really good this year and we we raised her hourly wage for them a little bit but the last two years. It's been awful. I mean, 2020 with the pandemic was bad. At one point we got they all got COVID I mean when subs pull down for a week because they all have it, and there's just no other people to get I mean, you're just you have no choice than last year. We had a shortage of them because everybody else was raising mean rallies and McDonald's was paying 1415 bucks an hour. So we got priced out of the market. We didn't react to that. This year, though, we raised the rates a little bit, not a lot. So we're more competitive. But we had an abundance of people. I wouldn't say we had too many supplied, the people were able to select gave us all the resources we need. So we had any issues this year, what the future holds, I don't know. But after two really bad years, that's been a non issue for this year. It's awesome.
Unknown Speaker
Now, as you mentioned, you're crafting the budget for next year, what are some of the challenges you're looking at right now?
Unknown Speaker
You know, one is the state hasn't put any revenue estimates out yet, we're told that some of them will begin to roll out at the end of the week. So that drives everything, you know, I mean, we can build our we know what our expenses need to be. But until we get those revenues from the state, it's hard for me to say, Okay, this budget looks good, this budget looks good, because we have no idea. I'm I'm hopeful, though, that, you know, the last couple of years, we got really, you know, everybody was like, oh, revenues are gonna be down, you know, because of COVID People might go back to work, it's gonna affect the local option income tax, we saw a little bit of a drop in 2028 recovered at the end of the year, it started recovering, and then 2020, one's pretty normal. And so I would expect a not a lot of changes. But still, until you actually see those from the state, I have no idea what to what to think. So, so far, our budgets are gonna allow us to give raises to our employees next year, it looks like and we'll be able to do a few more capital projects, purchases, vehicles, things like that, that we've been putting off. But I'm gonna kind of hold the line on that because fuel prices are up. We're here natural gas prices are gonna go up dramatically for heating this winter. You know, I got still got to build those things in there. And all I can do is guess added at this point, I have no idea how long prices are going to stay up. So there's a lot of unknowns in this budget cycle that you know, are not typical.
Unknown Speaker
I didn't notice press conference you attended, displaying Naloxone vending machine. For those that don't know it's nasal spray that reserves the effects of an opioid overdose. And we've covered something similar in Monroe County, and I believe it's there at Union Hospital, it's free. And I believe this might have some of that stigma problem, you know, you hear about maybe needle exchanges that officials are aiding in the addiction. But that's not what these vending machines are for. Correct. Right. I've
Unknown Speaker
never been supportive of the needle exchange program. That's just me personally, I just, I don't know, I struggle with that one. But this is different. Because, well, let me just take one step back, you know, I immediately got reaction from people saying, Oh, this is great, you know, this is perfect, could have saved lives that it absolutely will, that's why Union Hospital agreed to do it, they're in the business of saving lives. But it's sad that we have to have it, you know, that's, that's the part that there's so much addiction out there. And people are who patients may math, or an overdose of opiates, whatever it may be. Half the time you don't even know what you're taking. And that's what's sad about the whole epidemic of this. But there is a place now that at least you can go and you can save a life, if you've got a buddy in a car that's done it, you know, he's done it, he's unconscious, they don't want to call an ambulance, which, you know, is sad, too. They can go there and get it and you can save somebody. It's just unfortunate that a society that we have to have those kinds of things, you know, the drugs are riskier talking about doing this in multiple cities all across the state of Indiana. Everybody wishes we didn't have to do that. I'm glad you and hospital stepped up. It's available to people in Lincoln Center also has a system behind city hall here smaller one, but they provide some free access to and also. So I just think that's the that's the world we live in today. That, you know, it's an unnecessary, it's unnecessary. It's just you wish it was unnecessary. That's the best way to put it. I wish we didn't have to be talking about those kinds of solutions to save people lives. I would just wish they would be open to systems to help them get off that addiction. And I know it's difficult. I'm not saying it's easy, but I'd rather focus in that area, but you got to cover both sides
Unknown Speaker
of it. Yeah, I'm just curious if you wanted to maybe elaborate a little bit more on your because you said needle exchanges are different. You're you're not so much.
Unknown Speaker
I just think giving you know, the ability to for people to do drugs is a bit much for me personally, you know I've worked at Hamilton center and looked at how addictions affected people for many years, and, and I see stories now nationally where they go and have these needles here come to get a needle and do your drugs. It's not making things better. I don't see it at all, I and I'm willing to be educated on that. But I failed that Scott County thing for several years and really tried to learn from that, because there was some discussion about kneeling in Vigo County. And I just didn't see others buying into it either. They had the reasons down there and more power to him. But I don't see how that reduces the amount of dependency on drugs. I I'm just not there. So that's just my opinion. I'm not speaking as you know, anything other than just That's my personal viewpoint, of seeing the destruction that drugs do, both in Hamilton center and and in my in my job as mayor, I think we got to help people, we need to fund programs to get them off of it, and not do things to encourage
Unknown Speaker
just a good discussion. To have. I think a lot of that, though,
Unknown Speaker
I don't want to be it's not anything other than I really spent. I did a lot of research on that. Because I thought it was coming here. And I wanted to be prepared for that. But they decided not to and it never happened. I mean, never got real serious. But it was discussed. And I but I've not seen other counties do it either. So I wonder what people are thinking today? Or is there an effort going on? Or maybe we're going to hear more of that. Looking out there in California and other places where I see it on the national news. It's not making things better, their numbers are not going down. It's not helping people are not transmitted diseases. So
Unknown Speaker
yeah. And I think the main point was the increase of HIV, yes, as well on so
Unknown Speaker
HIV, all those things. But in those places, it seems though the numbers aren't going down. Now, if that means there's more users, maybe some people are getting better, but there's new users, I have no idea. I'm just, I just think that something like this is a lifesaver. The needles are not lifesavers to me.
Unknown Speaker
So we have two minutes left those like to leave that time up to you. Any city council news or anything else that announcements you'd like to make?
Unknown Speaker
No, I would just say, you know, you've asked me this last few months about city council business, it's still been pretty quiet a lot of rezonings. You know, it's the last meeting, the council approved this new project that taking over the old parallax plant that recycles tires. And they're going to have the largest plant in the United States here taro to do that recycling. And that's exciting for us that that's so that was a bankrupt, you know, entity that never got off the ground, these folks came in and acquired that. And now they're ramping it up and you hire 60 people, and have a very large presence here from that perspective, that there'll be some other spin off jobs, we believe from that. So that was a good, you know, something that kind of came out of nowhere over the last few months, it's very positive, taking something negative, and turning it into something good. The council's going to be looking at EMS rate increases this week, and our costs are going up dramatically to provide services to our community medical supplies going through the roof fuel costs, as you can imagine, so we're making the first proposal since 2012, and increase our ambulance fees. Discussing that this week. You know, I think we're in pretty good spot of when the budget will be the next big thing and some ARPA appropriations. But you know, we're in a spot where we're talking about investing in doing good things we're not struggling with, you know, things from our past. And I feel really good about the relationship with the administration and the council. And we're getting a lot of things done and just there hasn't been any big new things the last few months, but everything is going very smoothly. So things are things are well, you know, here in the middle of the summer, it's been hot, but you know, things are going great.
Unknown Speaker
Boy, it's been hot, hasn't it? And I assume there's some places people can go if they can't find a cool place. So
Unknown Speaker
we've had a couple of different times they opened up but you know, it's just been hot early. That's the thing, you know, usually expected in the middle late July and August. came in June. So maybe we'll have it. I don't know. And we'll say I never know what to bet on the weather.
Unknown Speaker
Well, thank you so much for your time and hope to be back there in Terre Haute and see you in August.
Unknown Speaker
Very good job. Thank you. Thank you
Hello and welcome to ask the mayor on WFIU I'm Joe Hren this week we're in Terre Haute on zoom with Mayor Duke Bennett. Hello, and welcome.
Unknown Speaker
Hello, it's good to be here again and always look forward to this. So you know, here we are in July already. I know we say that all the time. But the years and months and months and years has passed by so quickly and this year is no exception.
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, and I know for some time, some people may think summer is slow. In some regards, it may be but there's always a lot going on, isn't there?
Unknown Speaker
There is for us if you know construction season road projects and variety of other things. And you know, right now we're in the middle of the budget. So as we prepare for 23. You know, we have to get our budget approved in October. So it takes multiple months to put that together and you gotta budget. And so one of our busiest times really is the summertime.
Unknown Speaker
Just want to remind everyone listening, you can submit your questions to news at Indiana public media.org or on Twitter at Ask the mayor just wanted to start with the some of the biggest news since we last talked and that was the ground broken on the new casino off the interstate there. We did have a reporter there and reported on that. But this is something I've been asking you about almost every month, I feel I feel like for for quite a while and it finally happened.
Unknown Speaker
No, it's a great feeling. I mean, you know, I reflect back a lot on this because it's still a surprise, to me, a pleasant surprise that we're able to get it through the legislature that ended up being what seems like the easy part of this, then it got very difficult after that, and dealing with the Gaming Commission and what the previous HardRock. And then now with Churchill Downs, I mean, every challenge you can kind of imagine for itself in the way of the sand to now get through all that and get, you know, I tried my there and I see him moving dirt. It's like finally, you know, it's real, I knew it was gonna happen. But I it was just so frustrating go through that process. And, and now we're moving is happening and people drive lines. Really, you know, we're gonna get a casino? Yes, we are. And it's really a positive addition to our community. I know there are some against gambling, I always say this, you know, but it's going to bring a lot of resources and meet a lot of needs for the community.
Unknown Speaker
Now, you talk a lot about the economic development, but there's a lot that the city, and I don't know, if the state still has to do as well, you talked about roads, and I'm sure there's some infrastructure improvements as well.
Unknown Speaker
Out there, you know, it's the traffic flows. So the original casino was to be a little further to the east and a little bit to the north not far. But it would have been a different way to be the prime entrance, you know, to the casino. Now that they've moved down on Margaret Avenue itself, traffic has to flow in off the interstate, the majority of it and will get off there Margaret Avenue, which creates a bit of a bottleneck a different type of bottleneck than we thought we would have. So we're still working through that dots got a couple of plans. And Churchill Downs is working with them to select that. But then we'll have some longer term in the next few years and improvements that we're going to make. They need to take that first step and determine how the state wants the traffic to flow. And then we'll then make some improvements to the existing roads in the coming years once the casinos open, that will deal with the adjustment in the traffic flow. It's all based on estimates. And so I want to be careful that we the hours that we invest are ones that we know will solve any issues that we might have.
Unknown Speaker
And I believe it takes what a couple of years to build.
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, well, they're telling us that our plan is to get it open by the end of next year. But 18 months. You know, it's an aggressive schedule in today's environment, it just is. But I think they can get it done. And I guess we'll see. Probably in about six months, we'll see if they made the six months or the progress that they had hoped that they would i They're pretty confident so I'm gonna be comfortable with them. So I just hear horrible stories out there about supply chain issues and labor, you know, having enough people and you know, all those things that we all hear about on a regular basis. It's going to have some impact on the casino. There's no question
Unknown Speaker
you have some time to before it's officially opened. But is there some plan or is the city trying to figure out how to best take advantage of that economic development of keeping people shopping downtown and stopping Doing things, eating at restaurants and not just a pass through going to the casino and heading somewhere else.
Unknown Speaker
That's a valid point. Because you know, a lot of folks just come to the casino and they turn around and go home, we get that we'll just see some economic development out there in that 4640 corridor, just because of the volume of traffic already seeing a lot of interest with a developer who owns most of that property out there, where a lot of you know, retail kind of things. Hopefully, some sit down restaurants, that's one thing, we're kind of missing out there, besides what the casino is going to bring, I think those things will happen. But there's already discussions and we're trying to figure out how to get people from the convention center downtown, out to the casino, you know, that kind of a thing. So have some regular transportation options to make that happen. It's really just kind of that's what we're working on now is figuring out how to kind of integrate everything, and you're still gonna have those people that are coming and go. But there's all these people are going to be staying overnight periodically. They're here for another reason. And they're going to come out and visit the casino. So they're already here. How do we increase that also. And that's all part of our strategic plan or community plan or tourism component, really, things are going very well there. As I mentioned before, we've never been known as a tourism community that's not been Terre Haute saying that with the Griffin Bikepark and St. Mary of the woods College and the casino and the convention center. And, you know, goes home and all these places bring people here anyway, for a variety of reasons throughout the year. But now we're trying to tie it all together in a way that we're selling it that way, there's a lot of things to do, you're not just coming for graduation, you're not just coming to go to the bike park, you're not just coming to New, certain thing, there's all these other things to do. So make a day, make two days of it. And that's our push with a tourism group, or convention tourism bureau with our community plan with our chamber of commerce. Really, it's all coming together like we'd hoped it would were just a little bit behind on the casino. But we're gonna get there. So just gives us more time to plan and figure out how to integrate these destinations into, you know, something that people might want to do two or three things instead of one.
Unknown Speaker
the Wabash River Regional Development Authority is dedicating $4.3 million for downtown hotels and a parking garage projects. I believe it's a public private partnership, who's all involved in this connection, and is this in dealing with the new convention center as well,
Unknown Speaker
it's directly connected to the convention center. From the perspective, we knew we had to existing hotels about 200 rooms downtown. And to get to utilize the convention center to its full maximum capacity, we need 400 rooms, a minimum of 400 rooms downtown. So we've always known that we're going to be additional hotels. One is what we were thinking are originally, which was a little bit larger one but then tindora and Craig Gibson who own those two existing hotels have proposed two hotels on the former school corporation property with a small parking garage kind of in between them, It'll kind of be forced to save for, you know, whatever, it'll it'll save on that property and leave the middle open. And that's where the parking garage would be. So the public private partnership component will be on the parking garage, they'll build the hotels will probably do the parking garage, either through the city through the Department of redevelopment or through the CIB that we have that runs the convention center, and will own that portion of it, at least for some period of time, in order to get that filled as part of a somewhere between 50 and $60 million total project downtown. Well, I'm excited that they're willing to you know, move this to the next step that funding helps tremendously. We're looking at some other funding sources, and we've got cash on hand and the ability to bond through the Department of redevelopment. So we're gonna we're working on those logistics of that now, what that financial package would look like. And hopefully soon they'll they'll, you know, make the decision to move ahead with their architectural work designed, finished out, hopefully start construction by the end of next year. That's the goal that I would like to meet. Mostly it's up to them. It's a private project, you know, already grant requires a private investment. So it's coming together the way the IDC intended it to be. And it's also meeting our downtown needs with the convention center. Bring those additional 200 Plus hotel rooms.
Unknown Speaker
And as you mentioned, this is all part of the ready grant funding and I know we were in Columbus a few weeks ago where they Governor kicked off that program, giving Nexus Park some money there for the City of Columbus. And I'm sure there's many other things that you're working on with ready grant funding?
Unknown Speaker
Well, and so, you know, we had asked for 73 million, that we weren't probably going to get that. But I thought we get 50 million. Well, we ended up with 20. So a little disappointment there. But we're able to advance a lot of these projects anyway, not all of them. And then we're looking at other funding sources to help begin to move some of those projects, as we think all the projects that are in there are really good for West Central Indiana. And then there'll be another ready grant round, we hear we're beginning, you know, hear those rumblings within the legislature that they're going to set aside another $500 million for next year. So we're gonna go back with the ones that didn't get funded this time and hopefully get them funded, you know, as we move into 43 and 24.
Unknown Speaker
Just a couple of the big projects that the city of Terre Haute is looking at funding now with that money that's coming in?
Unknown Speaker
Well, you know, the biggest one obviously, is these hotels. I mean, that's, that's the most critical one. And that's why it got funded. We're looking at an athletic facility of some sort, not like Westfield not trying to recreate rampart, nothing of that magnitude, but a facility that would have multiple ball fields on it, a new baseball stadiums, a rec stadium that we'd like to have, and bringing private dollars to the table for that big portion of that, and then an outdoor quality segment that would be co located on this property. So that's probably the other great big one, if you will, you know, major project, but I've got some smaller ones, like the rehabilitation of the Deming Park, cool, we still want to be able to do that, and have that available for people in our community. Just a variety of things. So you know, I feel good about getting what we got out of the 20 million because you know, add to be shared with multiple counties, and in their projects are great, too. I mean, it's all about building West Central Indiana, that we have many more things in the pipeline that we want to get funded. So we're going to find other sources moving ahead. And hopefully, we'll get more ready grant money next year to be able to build them out in the coming year,
Unknown Speaker
when we get to talking a lot about ready but maybe forget a little bit about ARPA funding to and that's something that you're also looking at,
Unknown Speaker
yes, we've spent about 4 million of our 36 million allocation. And we're working on an appropriation for the remainder of the year here. And then building a budget for next year. It's a mix of things where we want to utilize some of it for our parks, we can use it in the low income areas of the city that the Orca rules allow you to help boost activities in some of those areas. So we're going to be using some funding for housing, in through some of our parks and other infrastructure in some of the inner city areas, that's going to be a really positive thing. We're going to use some funds for wastewater related stormwater things to help keep our bills down for a little bit longer. To pay for a few projects out of that, we're going to invest some money back and creating some pools of money for people to be able to utilize to improve their businesses, small businesses, specifically, minority and women owned businesses will be a target for us. For not for profits, we're not going to try to, then we're not going to spend the money in a way that you're spending it all. And it's just kind of gone. We want to do things that are more capital related projects that they need to do. So we can invest in that, but want to get into operations with that money, because you know what, maybe they operate for a year, and then they go away. We want to be real strategic with these. Some of them can be used for match ready, some of it can depends on what the project is. So we're just trying to leverage the dollars to make them go as far as they possibly can. So we're not removing intentionally slowly on the ARPA funds, because I continue to hear that the rules might loosen up a little bit more because not everybody's spending their money. And so let's make sure we can have the most flexibility with those dollars as we can and so that's kind of where we're at. Planning continues but now we're ready to announce any project quite yet.
Unknown Speaker
I hear you talk about pools, outdoor pools and I know story we're working on this summer to about the shortage of lifeguards is our things okay over there.
Unknown Speaker
We did really good this year and we we raised her hourly wage for them a little bit but the last two years. It's been awful. I mean, 2020 with the pandemic was bad. At one point we got they all got COVID I mean when subs pull down for a week because they all have it, and there's just no other people to get I mean, you're just you have no choice than last year. We had a shortage of them because everybody else was raising mean rallies and McDonald's was paying 1415 bucks an hour. So we got priced out of the market. We didn't react to that. This year, though, we raised the rates a little bit, not a lot. So we're more competitive. But we had an abundance of people. I wouldn't say we had too many supplied, the people were able to select gave us all the resources we need. So we had any issues this year, what the future holds, I don't know. But after two really bad years, that's been a non issue for this year. It's awesome.
Unknown Speaker
Now, as you mentioned, you're crafting the budget for next year, what are some of the challenges you're looking at right now?
Unknown Speaker
You know, one is the state hasn't put any revenue estimates out yet, we're told that some of them will begin to roll out at the end of the week. So that drives everything, you know, I mean, we can build our we know what our expenses need to be. But until we get those revenues from the state, it's hard for me to say, Okay, this budget looks good, this budget looks good, because we have no idea. I'm I'm hopeful, though, that, you know, the last couple of years, we got really, you know, everybody was like, oh, revenues are gonna be down, you know, because of COVID People might go back to work, it's gonna affect the local option income tax, we saw a little bit of a drop in 2028 recovered at the end of the year, it started recovering, and then 2020, one's pretty normal. And so I would expect a not a lot of changes. But still, until you actually see those from the state, I have no idea what to what to think. So, so far, our budgets are gonna allow us to give raises to our employees next year, it looks like and we'll be able to do a few more capital projects, purchases, vehicles, things like that, that we've been putting off. But I'm gonna kind of hold the line on that because fuel prices are up. We're here natural gas prices are gonna go up dramatically for heating this winter. You know, I got still got to build those things in there. And all I can do is guess added at this point, I have no idea how long prices are going to stay up. So there's a lot of unknowns in this budget cycle that you know, are not typical.
Unknown Speaker
I didn't notice press conference you attended, displaying Naloxone vending machine. For those that don't know it's nasal spray that reserves the effects of an opioid overdose. And we've covered something similar in Monroe County, and I believe it's there at Union Hospital, it's free. And I believe this might have some of that stigma problem, you know, you hear about maybe needle exchanges that officials are aiding in the addiction. But that's not what these vending machines are for. Correct. Right. I've
Unknown Speaker
never been supportive of the needle exchange program. That's just me personally, I just, I don't know, I struggle with that one. But this is different. Because, well, let me just take one step back, you know, I immediately got reaction from people saying, Oh, this is great, you know, this is perfect, could have saved lives that it absolutely will, that's why Union Hospital agreed to do it, they're in the business of saving lives. But it's sad that we have to have it, you know, that's, that's the part that there's so much addiction out there. And people are who patients may math, or an overdose of opiates, whatever it may be. Half the time you don't even know what you're taking. And that's what's sad about the whole epidemic of this. But there is a place now that at least you can go and you can save a life, if you've got a buddy in a car that's done it, you know, he's done it, he's unconscious, they don't want to call an ambulance, which, you know, is sad, too. They can go there and get it and you can save somebody. It's just unfortunate that a society that we have to have those kinds of things, you know, the drugs are riskier talking about doing this in multiple cities all across the state of Indiana. Everybody wishes we didn't have to do that. I'm glad you and hospital stepped up. It's available to people in Lincoln Center also has a system behind city hall here smaller one, but they provide some free access to and also. So I just think that's the that's the world we live in today. That, you know, it's an unnecessary, it's unnecessary. It's just you wish it was unnecessary. That's the best way to put it. I wish we didn't have to be talking about those kinds of solutions to save people lives. I would just wish they would be open to systems to help them get off that addiction. And I know it's difficult. I'm not saying it's easy, but I'd rather focus in that area, but you got to cover both sides
Unknown Speaker
of it. Yeah, I'm just curious if you wanted to maybe elaborate a little bit more on your because you said needle exchanges are different. You're you're not so much.
Unknown Speaker
I just think giving you know, the ability to for people to do drugs is a bit much for me personally, you know I've worked at Hamilton center and looked at how addictions affected people for many years, and, and I see stories now nationally where they go and have these needles here come to get a needle and do your drugs. It's not making things better. I don't see it at all, I and I'm willing to be educated on that. But I failed that Scott County thing for several years and really tried to learn from that, because there was some discussion about kneeling in Vigo County. And I just didn't see others buying into it either. They had the reasons down there and more power to him. But I don't see how that reduces the amount of dependency on drugs. I I'm just not there. So that's just my opinion. I'm not speaking as you know, anything other than just That's my personal viewpoint, of seeing the destruction that drugs do, both in Hamilton center and and in my in my job as mayor, I think we got to help people, we need to fund programs to get them off of it, and not do things to encourage
Unknown Speaker
just a good discussion. To have. I think a lot of that, though,
Unknown Speaker
I don't want to be it's not anything other than I really spent. I did a lot of research on that. Because I thought it was coming here. And I wanted to be prepared for that. But they decided not to and it never happened. I mean, never got real serious. But it was discussed. And I but I've not seen other counties do it either. So I wonder what people are thinking today? Or is there an effort going on? Or maybe we're going to hear more of that. Looking out there in California and other places where I see it on the national news. It's not making things better, their numbers are not going down. It's not helping people are not transmitted diseases. So
Unknown Speaker
yeah. And I think the main point was the increase of HIV, yes, as well on so
Unknown Speaker
HIV, all those things. But in those places, it seems though the numbers aren't going down. Now, if that means there's more users, maybe some people are getting better, but there's new users, I have no idea. I'm just, I just think that something like this is a lifesaver. The needles are not lifesavers to me.
Unknown Speaker
So we have two minutes left those like to leave that time up to you. Any city council news or anything else that announcements you'd like to make?
Unknown Speaker
No, I would just say, you know, you've asked me this last few months about city council business, it's still been pretty quiet a lot of rezonings. You know, it's the last meeting, the council approved this new project that taking over the old parallax plant that recycles tires. And they're going to have the largest plant in the United States here taro to do that recycling. And that's exciting for us that that's so that was a bankrupt, you know, entity that never got off the ground, these folks came in and acquired that. And now they're ramping it up and you hire 60 people, and have a very large presence here from that perspective, that there'll be some other spin off jobs, we believe from that. So that was a good, you know, something that kind of came out of nowhere over the last few months, it's very positive, taking something negative, and turning it into something good. The council's going to be looking at EMS rate increases this week, and our costs are going up dramatically to provide services to our community medical supplies going through the roof fuel costs, as you can imagine, so we're making the first proposal since 2012, and increase our ambulance fees. Discussing that this week. You know, I think we're in pretty good spot of when the budget will be the next big thing and some ARPA appropriations. But you know, we're in a spot where we're talking about investing in doing good things we're not struggling with, you know, things from our past. And I feel really good about the relationship with the administration and the council. And we're getting a lot of things done and just there hasn't been any big new things the last few months, but everything is going very smoothly. So things are things are well, you know, here in the middle of the summer, it's been hot, but you know, things are going great.
Unknown Speaker
Boy, it's been hot, hasn't it? And I assume there's some places people can go if they can't find a cool place. So
Unknown Speaker
we've had a couple of different times they opened up but you know, it's just been hot early. That's the thing, you know, usually expected in the middle late July and August. came in June. So maybe we'll have it. I don't know. And we'll say I never know what to bet on the weather.
Unknown Speaker
Well, thank you so much for your time and hope to be back there in Terre Haute and see you in August.
Unknown Speaker
Very good job. Thank you. Thank you
