Unknown Speaker
Hello and welcome to Ask the mayor I'm Joe Hren. second week of the month, we're joined by Terre Haute, Mayor Duke Bennett. Hello, how's everything in Terre Haute?
Unknown Speaker
Oh, it's going great, you know, as we continue to get out of this COVID situation, and just, there's just a lot of things going on, I know when you're waiting Mayor can tell you, there's a lot of things going on in your community. But I've not seen a lot of these kinds of things go on in Terre Haute for a very long time. It's just kind of coming together. And as we come out of COVID, more things are starting to happen. And wow, the schedule has been kind of crazy lately, but it's been really fun and exciting things to have to deal with.
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, well, I mean, we will, as always, we usually start the show with the COVID update. And now we're really seeing what a difference a month makes, since we talked even in, in May mask restrictions or their voluntary or just enforced by depending on where you go businesses. Some places I believe, perhaps wanting to see a vaccination card to just wondering like what you felt about that, because a lot of that is also word of honor.
Unknown Speaker
Right? You know, that's the tricky part. Because, I mean, I don't know, I would think most people would want to get vaccinated. But apparently, that's not the case. And so, here in Vigo County, I think we're 40% is what I heard yesterday. So it's gonna be very difficult to get to the 70% that the President was shooting for, for the nation, you know, I, I'm gonna make that here locally, I doubt in another month, or less than a month. So I think people are still educating themselves. And I said this last month, and I'll say it every month back, talk to your doctor, you know, if the doctor says, You're safe to get your shot for whatever your situation is, whatever your underlying conditions are, for the pad COVID or not had COVID. Talk to your doctor. And let's continue to work through this to get to the point where we get it behind us. Having people come in the building, not wearing a mask and not knowing who's vaccinated or not, it doesn't bother me that much. Because I feel like the contamination rate, I think yesterday, we had four in Vigo County, and over the weekend, we had one day with zero. So they're very small numbers. But yes, it's still out there. But I don't want to get into being the mass police kind of stuff or the vaccination card beliefs. And so I'm just not going to do that here. And I don't see anybody else in Vigo county doing that either. And I'm okay with that. Let's just keep talking about the positives of being vaccinated. And continuing just to be smart, you know, make use common sense when, and if somebody's sick, stay home. You know, a lot of times people want to come to work when they're six, whether it's the flu, or COVID, or whatever it might be if you're not sure, stay home. And you know, when you get a task, it's so easy to do that stuff. Now. You can get a vaccination the same day. So everything's available to everybody. We're not wearing masks in City Hall anymore, beginning this week. And except the courtroom, you know, the Indiana Supreme Court still says the courtrooms have to have masks inside and in our buses, you know, because of the federal mandate that President Biden put out about riding on a federally funded bus system. So I feel like every week or every couple of weeks, we continue to make more progress. I just don't we don't know when the end is, you know, I don't really know, when we get there.
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, that just kind of a follow up on that. How do you feel about you know, back to normal in July? Are there still celebrations planned for the fourth? Because that's a big holiday.
Unknown Speaker
And we've been having some things going on really in the month of in the May 1 of June. I mean, this past weekend, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, I personally had nine events and you know, about more than half of those were larger gatherings, you know, bigger groups. And so you're beginning to see that loosening up now. I don't have I don't know what the future holds over the next few weeks. That was just a busy weekend, but it felt like last 2019 you know what I mean? It felt like the old days where I was running around doing a tremendous amount of stuff, which I love. But boy it's been a lot you know, and so I think people feel more comfortable.
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, I've been to one in person and Bloomington press conference and I it was everyone was just standing there was like the good old days everyone was just saying hi and and coming up to each other and it's something to do. Yeah. What about you know, budgets so far this year. I know we've talked about this in the past with other mayor's too and really haven't are not that worried about About this year's budget, but what about what you see coming up?
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, and I still feel that way about this year's budget, I'm not seeing any negative trends at all, everything seems to be back to normal. But then knowing next year, we're still going to wait and see what the usually we in July or so we get an estimate from the state about our local option income tax money at tagit. Public Safety, those when we get those first estimates, that'll really tell me, I'm told by our financial consultants to expect him to 11% decrease next year, as it catches up. You know, it's a lot of ads from last year, it's just on a delayed delivery to us from the state. And so I'll have a better feel for that probably sometime by late July. So from a budget perspective, we're looking at it as just those areas that are probably be affected to watch that a little bit closer, all my other budgets appear to be fully funded, the way we need them to be. So far, you know, where we've been through the first round with each department. For now we're formalizing or putting that budget on one piece of paper. And so I'm feeling pretty good about going into next year. It's not as I was thinking it was going to be worse than what I'm thinking it might be.
Unknown Speaker
And do you feel better knowing that the American rescue plan Act funds are coming to and can some of that help offset?
Unknown Speaker
It helps? Yeah. So I know what you're saying, Joe? Because I don't have all the answers yet. I'm sure as you talk to other mayors, we all say the same thing. Absolutely is going to hell. But if there's not some loosening, or some maybe loosening in the interpretation of the rules by the state, or by the federal government, it could be that it'll be difficult to spend all that money. You know, I mean, we could use it on wastewater. I mean, I could use all of it. So I'm not going to give any back. Let's put it that way. And Cindy, Tara will spend our allotment. But I'd like to do a lot of other things. And so I don't know, yeah, I have some ideas that I'd like to pursue that will take a little bit of a load off the budget. But I'm still not there today, as talking to you. I still can't say 100 per picture, but I can do that.
Unknown Speaker
Now you think you still be able to you still think you'll be able to keep up your street goes? Is it five years now? Have a balanced budget? Yeah, we'll see what tells revenue forecast
Unknown Speaker
comes from the state. But I think that we should be able to do that. So right now, I'm feeling good about that.
Unknown Speaker
How do you feel about the governor's decision to withdraw the state from federal programs that was providing funds to unemployed workers and expanded jobless benefits? No, it cost the state nothing to remain in that federal program. But I think in some people are saying it's the governor's wave saying it's time for people to get back to work.
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, I agree with that, generally speaking. I mean, I think there are some segments of the economy out there, though, it is hard for people to go back for a variety of reasons. Maybe they have underlying health conditions, maybe they're dealing with kids issues, you know, there's no daycare available, people stayed home and the kids went back to school. Now they're at school. I mean, I think there's a lot of turmoil still out there. And not back to a normal routine. And so there may be some people that just can't quite get back to work yet and need that assistance. But I think those numbers drop every week. My guess is there's a lot of open jobs and Taro, anywhere from $13 an hour to probably 20 to $23 an hour and entry level to manufacturing jobs. And we're having trouble filling, these businesses are struggling. So I guess we'll see if that decision has an impact on. I mean, I love numbers and data. So if we see things start improving, after that, it was brilliant. It was the right thing to do. If we still see people struggling, you know, I'll be a little concerned about that. But I think it's the right thing to do. I wish the federal government would have shortened it, and left that money in place that if things change, again, that they can go back to it and turn it on just like that. You know, it took a long time. My wife is self employed. It took us many, many, many weeks to get her first check. And there was no money coming in, you know, she couldn't work. And I think there's people like that out there that need to be we need to be able to respond to quickly if things would take a turn in the other direction. But it seems like to me, things are back and people it's time to go back to work if you can. And if you've got some special situation, those are the ones that that needs to be carved down.
Unknown Speaker
And I believe that I believe that's effective come June 19. But the point of contention is that it's forcing Hoosiers into low paying jobs. You know that that argument that it's not that there aren't jobs, it's at that they're not paying enough for what that job is worth,
Unknown Speaker
I guess. But you know, once again, you can look at the data from lots of different ways and see different things in there. When I look at, I just heard today, and we had an economic development meeting this morning, and we were talking about a local manufacturer, that is their beginning wages, 2175 an hour and high school, you only need to have a they'll train you, they will do the technical training for you to do this. And they're still having trouble filling those jobs. So, you know, when you get up in that range, that's better than unemployment. And these are good long term jobs and benefits. And so I'm just hopeful that people will then on that lower end of the scale, whether they're working in retail, or restaurants are the hospitality industry. You know, some of those folks that have been working, you know, went back to work as soon as they could, maybe they need to move up into some of these better paying jobs and free up spaces for you know, the younger people or maybe some older people who are retired but want to want to work. To me, the system kind of feeds itself. The problem is we don't have a pool is not big enough. I've said that before. We don't have enough people. That's our problem.
Unknown Speaker
casino groundbreaking keeps getting pushed back this time the Gaming Commission. I've read a article Associated Press, though, was optimistic. It was just that the Gaming Commission wanted to be sure that the financial backing or status was sound on that Lucy luck gaming is is that pretty much what what you hear,
Unknown Speaker
you know, they've submitted that a while back, and so they wanted to be freshened up a bit. And, you know, new updated information, I think they're looking for, you know, building costs and things too, because the price of you know, materials have gone up so much. I think they, they just, they really just want updated information in front of them at the next meeting. So I was feeling really good going into last meeting. But so I've tried to be cautiously optimistic every time we have one of these steps in the process. But I just talked to the casino owner this morning, and he feels like they're on track. And I know I've said that multiple times. But if we kind of it's narrowly The path is narrowing where the questions are getting answered, the information they need is being delivered. And now we're getting down to the final. Okay, let's issue the lock, renew the license and let them do the groundbreaking that's kind of where it's at.
Unknown Speaker
And the article said is early I could be as early as the end of this month or July.
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, I'm gonna guess it's probably July but it's you know, it's, we keep inching closer. I know I've said that since last October, but I'm still very optimistic.
Unknown Speaker
I wanted to ask about city water, sewer infrastructure. We covered this so much during this show way even way back in there in Terre Haute remember taking tours of your plant and all the additions that were made. And you know, Bloomington and Columbus Columbus raising rates by about 40% the next three or four years. Nashville's DAX Norton told me that it's the next crisis in cities and towns, water and sewer infrastructure. What's the current situation there in Terre Haute, and what are you working on?
Unknown Speaker
Well, we don't own the water in in American Water provides it here. And they're doing a pretty good job of replacing old pipes and things right now they've made quite a few large investments, he continued to do that. So I'm kind of feeling good about the water side, or rates are still still low here. And they're doing a lot of investments. So I guess we'll see what the Public Utilities Commission does with them down the road for rates. But on the wastewater side, you know, we haven't had a rate increase in several years, we've got the long term control plan that we're renegotiating with IBM and the EPA. So probably later this year, we'll have an idea of what that plan look is going to look like for the next 20 years. And then we're going to be doing a rate study later this year, the first the next year to take a look at with what we have to raise rates again, my goal will be to do something that has an annual increase, maybe that's pretty small. We had to do some bigger ones before because the city had not done it forever. Bill very long time. And so we had to kind of we had to put five in place over a period of years that were difficult. Our bill is still pretty low. The average residential bill is $48 a month. on the high end you know that's the highest we have a third of our people are at the minimum 28. But then when you look at all the residents so the average is about $48 a month. That's still pretty low compared to a lot of communities. Considering we're into our plan. My goal will be to make the any increases the minimum and stretch them out over multiple years. So we just do small increments that are not too noticeable to the
Unknown Speaker
ratepayer. And when you say long term control plan, can you explain what that means to people?
Unknown Speaker
That's, you know, that's dealing with the dirty water that goes into the river. When we have storms, we have a combined sewer and Taro. So we have to do projects that reduces the amount of water that goes into the river, overflows into the river, contain it, capture it, and then clean it before we put it back in. And so, you know, we spent $130 million at the plants, we have a state of the art plant. Now we're beginning to work on the pieces outside of the plant, the collection system, the treatment systems outside. And so you're going to need to spend another 100 and $50 million, probably over the next 2025 years. It'll be significant. But every community, we were asked to do that so we're not unique.
Unknown Speaker
Any city council news, road news, what else?
Unknown Speaker
Well, no, not much did he canceled is there been a lot of rezonings. Lately, it's been kind of interesting. So there's some positive things going on along those lines. So it's been kind of quiet though on that front. They approved a tax abatement last week also for a local company used to be Tredegar announced that they're going to be doing an expansion here to a plastics company. So that was something on last week's agenda. Working on road projects. I've got several paving projects going on. We're doing two and a half million dollars worth of paving this year in the city of Terre Haute and another 500,000 sidewalk work. So really $3 million going into that kind of infrastructure. You know, convention centers on schedule on budget, police stations on schedule, on budget, I'm excited about that. We talked about the casino. All that the projects and things we're working on the jail is on time and on schedule I heard at a meeting this morning. So all of our big projects are doing what we hope they do and get more they need to be. So I don't know, it's this kind of a normal construction season. But things are going well.
Unknown Speaker
Yeah. And while you had an update on that fighter jet training program, I guess, Terre Haute was not chosen? No,
Unknown Speaker
we were not. You know, it started out with 46 locations, which we didn't even know we were one of those beginning. They narrowed it down to five and they selected Fort Smith Arkansas, I forget the name of that air Air Guard Base down there. But, you know, I obviously there's politics at play and PT, you know, people who can help make those decisions. And it didn't end up here. But I think we we really put a good presentation out there, we got a great facility, it scored extremely highly on the Air Force, you know, scoring system, I think it will lead to some other things that would have been huge would have been gigantic, hard to say in any other way would have been a really a big win for Indiana and for taros specifically. But now we're going to pursue some other flying missions and some other activities that we can bolster what we already have out here, which is a tremendous intelligence wing mission now. And so you know, we'll see, I think there's some other things that can complement that and bring more jobs and investment here. So we're gonna, we're gonna keep fighting those battles every day.
Unknown Speaker
Yeah. Well, I'm just under three minutes left. So I'll just leave it up to you. Do you have any other big announcements?
Unknown Speaker
I don't know. We had a great Wabash Valley makes the Wabash festival last week. It's probably one of our biggest ones ever financially for us. Carnival did great. The vendors did great. So that's another sign of that, you know, COVID thing, the fair will be coming up in July. And you can be fair, you know, those kinds of fun things for me that eat in the streets on the first weekends of the month. It's always fun to see people out there doing that. So I guess I'm sensing more people wanting to get out and do some activities, which is good for all of us. From a tourism perspective and a local perspective. We'd love to see people going to events. The mill opened up this past weekend at 6000 people there from an le concert, and everything went great traffic flow, leaving that outdoor facility. It all just worked really well. So that's another thing in our portfolio, if you will, this community is having an outdoor entertainment. Three Dog Night coming up. There's another concert soon. So you know, we're gonna start to see more and more that people come into terror. That's, that's exciting. I don't know, I just I couldn't be any happier where we're at as a community. So Things are going well, I'm just trying to be doing our part here. I'm terrible. How are the cicadas over there? I've not heard one. Yeah, you're kidding me. I've heard out in the county and over West Terre Haute, but in my neighborhood and I live right next to a dense forest park. I've not seen or heard one yet, but that's just me. I mean, I've been all over Terre Haute. Been a big issue here. Yeah, maybe they're still the cow. I don't know. I don't that's the whole thing is is crazy. I don't understand where some places they say. I hear in Marshall level. No, I just across the border from us. You can't hear anything. Yeah. So why are we not where I'm? I'm not not seeing that terror. I don't get.
Unknown Speaker
Yeah. Unbelievable. Quiet. state of nature. Well, I'll say that. Yep. Well, again, thank you very much for your time. If you're listening, don't forget you can always participate. We're at ask the mayor on Twitter and you can submit your question news at Indiana public media.org. Hope to see you in July. Very thanks, Joe. Thank you. Bye bye.
Hello and welcome to Ask the mayor I'm Joe Hren. second week of the month, we're joined by Terre Haute, Mayor Duke Bennett. Hello, how's everything in Terre Haute?
Unknown Speaker
Oh, it's going great, you know, as we continue to get out of this COVID situation, and just, there's just a lot of things going on, I know when you're waiting Mayor can tell you, there's a lot of things going on in your community. But I've not seen a lot of these kinds of things go on in Terre Haute for a very long time. It's just kind of coming together. And as we come out of COVID, more things are starting to happen. And wow, the schedule has been kind of crazy lately, but it's been really fun and exciting things to have to deal with.
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, well, I mean, we will, as always, we usually start the show with the COVID update. And now we're really seeing what a difference a month makes, since we talked even in, in May mask restrictions or their voluntary or just enforced by depending on where you go businesses. Some places I believe, perhaps wanting to see a vaccination card to just wondering like what you felt about that, because a lot of that is also word of honor.
Unknown Speaker
Right? You know, that's the tricky part. Because, I mean, I don't know, I would think most people would want to get vaccinated. But apparently, that's not the case. And so, here in Vigo County, I think we're 40% is what I heard yesterday. So it's gonna be very difficult to get to the 70% that the President was shooting for, for the nation, you know, I, I'm gonna make that here locally, I doubt in another month, or less than a month. So I think people are still educating themselves. And I said this last month, and I'll say it every month back, talk to your doctor, you know, if the doctor says, You're safe to get your shot for whatever your situation is, whatever your underlying conditions are, for the pad COVID or not had COVID. Talk to your doctor. And let's continue to work through this to get to the point where we get it behind us. Having people come in the building, not wearing a mask and not knowing who's vaccinated or not, it doesn't bother me that much. Because I feel like the contamination rate, I think yesterday, we had four in Vigo County, and over the weekend, we had one day with zero. So they're very small numbers. But yes, it's still out there. But I don't want to get into being the mass police kind of stuff or the vaccination card beliefs. And so I'm just not going to do that here. And I don't see anybody else in Vigo county doing that either. And I'm okay with that. Let's just keep talking about the positives of being vaccinated. And continuing just to be smart, you know, make use common sense when, and if somebody's sick, stay home. You know, a lot of times people want to come to work when they're six, whether it's the flu, or COVID, or whatever it might be if you're not sure, stay home. And you know, when you get a task, it's so easy to do that stuff. Now. You can get a vaccination the same day. So everything's available to everybody. We're not wearing masks in City Hall anymore, beginning this week. And except the courtroom, you know, the Indiana Supreme Court still says the courtrooms have to have masks inside and in our buses, you know, because of the federal mandate that President Biden put out about riding on a federally funded bus system. So I feel like every week or every couple of weeks, we continue to make more progress. I just don't we don't know when the end is, you know, I don't really know, when we get there.
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, that just kind of a follow up on that. How do you feel about you know, back to normal in July? Are there still celebrations planned for the fourth? Because that's a big holiday.
Unknown Speaker
And we've been having some things going on really in the month of in the May 1 of June. I mean, this past weekend, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, I personally had nine events and you know, about more than half of those were larger gatherings, you know, bigger groups. And so you're beginning to see that loosening up now. I don't have I don't know what the future holds over the next few weeks. That was just a busy weekend, but it felt like last 2019 you know what I mean? It felt like the old days where I was running around doing a tremendous amount of stuff, which I love. But boy it's been a lot you know, and so I think people feel more comfortable.
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, I've been to one in person and Bloomington press conference and I it was everyone was just standing there was like the good old days everyone was just saying hi and and coming up to each other and it's something to do. Yeah. What about you know, budgets so far this year. I know we've talked about this in the past with other mayor's too and really haven't are not that worried about About this year's budget, but what about what you see coming up?
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, and I still feel that way about this year's budget, I'm not seeing any negative trends at all, everything seems to be back to normal. But then knowing next year, we're still going to wait and see what the usually we in July or so we get an estimate from the state about our local option income tax money at tagit. Public Safety, those when we get those first estimates, that'll really tell me, I'm told by our financial consultants to expect him to 11% decrease next year, as it catches up. You know, it's a lot of ads from last year, it's just on a delayed delivery to us from the state. And so I'll have a better feel for that probably sometime by late July. So from a budget perspective, we're looking at it as just those areas that are probably be affected to watch that a little bit closer, all my other budgets appear to be fully funded, the way we need them to be. So far, you know, where we've been through the first round with each department. For now we're formalizing or putting that budget on one piece of paper. And so I'm feeling pretty good about going into next year. It's not as I was thinking it was going to be worse than what I'm thinking it might be.
Unknown Speaker
And do you feel better knowing that the American rescue plan Act funds are coming to and can some of that help offset?
Unknown Speaker
It helps? Yeah. So I know what you're saying, Joe? Because I don't have all the answers yet. I'm sure as you talk to other mayors, we all say the same thing. Absolutely is going to hell. But if there's not some loosening, or some maybe loosening in the interpretation of the rules by the state, or by the federal government, it could be that it'll be difficult to spend all that money. You know, I mean, we could use it on wastewater. I mean, I could use all of it. So I'm not going to give any back. Let's put it that way. And Cindy, Tara will spend our allotment. But I'd like to do a lot of other things. And so I don't know, yeah, I have some ideas that I'd like to pursue that will take a little bit of a load off the budget. But I'm still not there today, as talking to you. I still can't say 100 per picture, but I can do that.
Unknown Speaker
Now you think you still be able to you still think you'll be able to keep up your street goes? Is it five years now? Have a balanced budget? Yeah, we'll see what tells revenue forecast
Unknown Speaker
comes from the state. But I think that we should be able to do that. So right now, I'm feeling good about that.
Unknown Speaker
How do you feel about the governor's decision to withdraw the state from federal programs that was providing funds to unemployed workers and expanded jobless benefits? No, it cost the state nothing to remain in that federal program. But I think in some people are saying it's the governor's wave saying it's time for people to get back to work.
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, I agree with that, generally speaking. I mean, I think there are some segments of the economy out there, though, it is hard for people to go back for a variety of reasons. Maybe they have underlying health conditions, maybe they're dealing with kids issues, you know, there's no daycare available, people stayed home and the kids went back to school. Now they're at school. I mean, I think there's a lot of turmoil still out there. And not back to a normal routine. And so there may be some people that just can't quite get back to work yet and need that assistance. But I think those numbers drop every week. My guess is there's a lot of open jobs and Taro, anywhere from $13 an hour to probably 20 to $23 an hour and entry level to manufacturing jobs. And we're having trouble filling, these businesses are struggling. So I guess we'll see if that decision has an impact on. I mean, I love numbers and data. So if we see things start improving, after that, it was brilliant. It was the right thing to do. If we still see people struggling, you know, I'll be a little concerned about that. But I think it's the right thing to do. I wish the federal government would have shortened it, and left that money in place that if things change, again, that they can go back to it and turn it on just like that. You know, it took a long time. My wife is self employed. It took us many, many, many weeks to get her first check. And there was no money coming in, you know, she couldn't work. And I think there's people like that out there that need to be we need to be able to respond to quickly if things would take a turn in the other direction. But it seems like to me, things are back and people it's time to go back to work if you can. And if you've got some special situation, those are the ones that that needs to be carved down.
Unknown Speaker
And I believe that I believe that's effective come June 19. But the point of contention is that it's forcing Hoosiers into low paying jobs. You know that that argument that it's not that there aren't jobs, it's at that they're not paying enough for what that job is worth,
Unknown Speaker
I guess. But you know, once again, you can look at the data from lots of different ways and see different things in there. When I look at, I just heard today, and we had an economic development meeting this morning, and we were talking about a local manufacturer, that is their beginning wages, 2175 an hour and high school, you only need to have a they'll train you, they will do the technical training for you to do this. And they're still having trouble filling those jobs. So, you know, when you get up in that range, that's better than unemployment. And these are good long term jobs and benefits. And so I'm just hopeful that people will then on that lower end of the scale, whether they're working in retail, or restaurants are the hospitality industry. You know, some of those folks that have been working, you know, went back to work as soon as they could, maybe they need to move up into some of these better paying jobs and free up spaces for you know, the younger people or maybe some older people who are retired but want to want to work. To me, the system kind of feeds itself. The problem is we don't have a pool is not big enough. I've said that before. We don't have enough people. That's our problem.
Unknown Speaker
casino groundbreaking keeps getting pushed back this time the Gaming Commission. I've read a article Associated Press, though, was optimistic. It was just that the Gaming Commission wanted to be sure that the financial backing or status was sound on that Lucy luck gaming is is that pretty much what what you hear,
Unknown Speaker
you know, they've submitted that a while back, and so they wanted to be freshened up a bit. And, you know, new updated information, I think they're looking for, you know, building costs and things too, because the price of you know, materials have gone up so much. I think they, they just, they really just want updated information in front of them at the next meeting. So I was feeling really good going into last meeting. But so I've tried to be cautiously optimistic every time we have one of these steps in the process. But I just talked to the casino owner this morning, and he feels like they're on track. And I know I've said that multiple times. But if we kind of it's narrowly The path is narrowing where the questions are getting answered, the information they need is being delivered. And now we're getting down to the final. Okay, let's issue the lock, renew the license and let them do the groundbreaking that's kind of where it's at.
Unknown Speaker
And the article said is early I could be as early as the end of this month or July.
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, I'm gonna guess it's probably July but it's you know, it's, we keep inching closer. I know I've said that since last October, but I'm still very optimistic.
Unknown Speaker
I wanted to ask about city water, sewer infrastructure. We covered this so much during this show way even way back in there in Terre Haute remember taking tours of your plant and all the additions that were made. And you know, Bloomington and Columbus Columbus raising rates by about 40% the next three or four years. Nashville's DAX Norton told me that it's the next crisis in cities and towns, water and sewer infrastructure. What's the current situation there in Terre Haute, and what are you working on?
Unknown Speaker
Well, we don't own the water in in American Water provides it here. And they're doing a pretty good job of replacing old pipes and things right now they've made quite a few large investments, he continued to do that. So I'm kind of feeling good about the water side, or rates are still still low here. And they're doing a lot of investments. So I guess we'll see what the Public Utilities Commission does with them down the road for rates. But on the wastewater side, you know, we haven't had a rate increase in several years, we've got the long term control plan that we're renegotiating with IBM and the EPA. So probably later this year, we'll have an idea of what that plan look is going to look like for the next 20 years. And then we're going to be doing a rate study later this year, the first the next year to take a look at with what we have to raise rates again, my goal will be to do something that has an annual increase, maybe that's pretty small. We had to do some bigger ones before because the city had not done it forever. Bill very long time. And so we had to kind of we had to put five in place over a period of years that were difficult. Our bill is still pretty low. The average residential bill is $48 a month. on the high end you know that's the highest we have a third of our people are at the minimum 28. But then when you look at all the residents so the average is about $48 a month. That's still pretty low compared to a lot of communities. Considering we're into our plan. My goal will be to make the any increases the minimum and stretch them out over multiple years. So we just do small increments that are not too noticeable to the
Unknown Speaker
ratepayer. And when you say long term control plan, can you explain what that means to people?
Unknown Speaker
That's, you know, that's dealing with the dirty water that goes into the river. When we have storms, we have a combined sewer and Taro. So we have to do projects that reduces the amount of water that goes into the river, overflows into the river, contain it, capture it, and then clean it before we put it back in. And so, you know, we spent $130 million at the plants, we have a state of the art plant. Now we're beginning to work on the pieces outside of the plant, the collection system, the treatment systems outside. And so you're going to need to spend another 100 and $50 million, probably over the next 2025 years. It'll be significant. But every community, we were asked to do that so we're not unique.
Unknown Speaker
Any city council news, road news, what else?
Unknown Speaker
Well, no, not much did he canceled is there been a lot of rezonings. Lately, it's been kind of interesting. So there's some positive things going on along those lines. So it's been kind of quiet though on that front. They approved a tax abatement last week also for a local company used to be Tredegar announced that they're going to be doing an expansion here to a plastics company. So that was something on last week's agenda. Working on road projects. I've got several paving projects going on. We're doing two and a half million dollars worth of paving this year in the city of Terre Haute and another 500,000 sidewalk work. So really $3 million going into that kind of infrastructure. You know, convention centers on schedule on budget, police stations on schedule, on budget, I'm excited about that. We talked about the casino. All that the projects and things we're working on the jail is on time and on schedule I heard at a meeting this morning. So all of our big projects are doing what we hope they do and get more they need to be. So I don't know, it's this kind of a normal construction season. But things are going well.
Unknown Speaker
Yeah. And while you had an update on that fighter jet training program, I guess, Terre Haute was not chosen? No,
Unknown Speaker
we were not. You know, it started out with 46 locations, which we didn't even know we were one of those beginning. They narrowed it down to five and they selected Fort Smith Arkansas, I forget the name of that air Air Guard Base down there. But, you know, I obviously there's politics at play and PT, you know, people who can help make those decisions. And it didn't end up here. But I think we we really put a good presentation out there, we got a great facility, it scored extremely highly on the Air Force, you know, scoring system, I think it will lead to some other things that would have been huge would have been gigantic, hard to say in any other way would have been a really a big win for Indiana and for taros specifically. But now we're going to pursue some other flying missions and some other activities that we can bolster what we already have out here, which is a tremendous intelligence wing mission now. And so you know, we'll see, I think there's some other things that can complement that and bring more jobs and investment here. So we're gonna, we're gonna keep fighting those battles every day.
Unknown Speaker
Yeah. Well, I'm just under three minutes left. So I'll just leave it up to you. Do you have any other big announcements?
Unknown Speaker
I don't know. We had a great Wabash Valley makes the Wabash festival last week. It's probably one of our biggest ones ever financially for us. Carnival did great. The vendors did great. So that's another sign of that, you know, COVID thing, the fair will be coming up in July. And you can be fair, you know, those kinds of fun things for me that eat in the streets on the first weekends of the month. It's always fun to see people out there doing that. So I guess I'm sensing more people wanting to get out and do some activities, which is good for all of us. From a tourism perspective and a local perspective. We'd love to see people going to events. The mill opened up this past weekend at 6000 people there from an le concert, and everything went great traffic flow, leaving that outdoor facility. It all just worked really well. So that's another thing in our portfolio, if you will, this community is having an outdoor entertainment. Three Dog Night coming up. There's another concert soon. So you know, we're gonna start to see more and more that people come into terror. That's, that's exciting. I don't know, I just I couldn't be any happier where we're at as a community. So Things are going well, I'm just trying to be doing our part here. I'm terrible. How are the cicadas over there? I've not heard one. Yeah, you're kidding me. I've heard out in the county and over West Terre Haute, but in my neighborhood and I live right next to a dense forest park. I've not seen or heard one yet, but that's just me. I mean, I've been all over Terre Haute. Been a big issue here. Yeah, maybe they're still the cow. I don't know. I don't that's the whole thing is is crazy. I don't understand where some places they say. I hear in Marshall level. No, I just across the border from us. You can't hear anything. Yeah. So why are we not where I'm? I'm not not seeing that terror. I don't get.
Unknown Speaker
Yeah. Unbelievable. Quiet. state of nature. Well, I'll say that. Yep. Well, again, thank you very much for your time. If you're listening, don't forget you can always participate. We're at ask the mayor on Twitter and you can submit your question news at Indiana public media.org. Hope to see you in July. Very thanks, Joe. Thank you. Bye bye.
