Unknown Speaker
All right, it's the second week of the month, August 2020. I'm with Terre Haute, Mayor Duke Bennett for another Ask the mayor, thank you so much for having us. I know you're really busy.
Unknown Speaker
It's great to be here too. I enjoy this show and get a lot of positive feedback from it. So I really like doing
Unknown Speaker
good. You know, it's back to school month.
Unknown Speaker
And we've been talking a lot in Bloomington, too, with john Hamilton because you've got public schools going back and college students returning a lot of concerns. I feel like our newsroom and I'm sure you're hearing the same lot of emails coming in from residents saying what's going to happen Why is this being allowed to happen? We'd love to get your perspective and on the city's relationship working with ISU to keeps not only students but the residents. They're safe this month.
Unknown Speaker
You know, that's just been a big topic of discussion with the K through 12. And with our colleges and universities that What's gonna happen when all these students come back to Toronto? You know, I think I issues specifically, obviously, they're the big player in the game here with the majority of people. You know, they've done a good job too. And they even rolled out some new information yesterday about how they're going to isolate students and things like that signing up to have fall sports, they continue to evolve their plan. almost seems like every few days, you get some new piece of information. So I think they're on top of it from that perspective of how to protect the students and the staff on the campus. What gets tricky is the unknowns of what's really going to happen. Our numbers continue to go up here, we're up over 700 today and there for the longest time we hovered around 200 and just didn't move much anywhere. And if you look and say, okay, what's changed in that time, not a whole lot. Now the students are coming back, but now you're really gonna have a lot of turning of people being interviewed. Gold here, and I don't know what's going to happen. So a lot my general take is I'm confident that these professionals are making these decisions within these specific organizations. They thought this out and they're thinking, everything they can possibly do to keep their staff and the students safe, is what they're going to do. And then from the city's perspective, we just want to help reinforce the things they're trying to do with their, their community, if you will, and that have people in our community, then be conscious here on our side that they're going to have students coming in your stores are going to have students coming in the gas station, whatever, and just continue to wear your mask and do the social distancing. And we'll get through this just fine. I it's easy to say that but I guess we'll see whether the numbers really go up higher, because right now, the big numbers we're seeing is in that 20 to 29 age group, which is, you know, just out of high school and college and young adults. That's where the spread is really the biggest and so on. I'm going to guess that that's going to continue to be that way for at least the next few weeks or months.
Unknown Speaker
I want to get your quick take there. You mentioned about the masks. I think the state mandate came after we talk last time. How do you feel about the whole come statewide mask mandate?
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, I think he probably should have done a little sooner. You know, that's just my position. I had lots of conversation with his staff about that. Just because people were looking for something like that, you know, when they were leaning on me in a way so and we are wanting to do the executive order. Well, problem is that only last seven days, then you have to go to the city council. And if the county doesn't do it along with you, it's really awkward to say we have Wareham in the city, but you don't have to run the county. And it just wasn't that easy. When the governor comes out with an overall order, then everybody can play by the same rule. I think people have done very well. I get calls every day in the office saying, I just went somewhere and nobody's wearing them out. But all the places that I go, the vast majority of people are and I understood And why they haven't maybe some personal health issues or other reasons why they don't want to wear a mask. And you know, that's their choice. But at least think about everybody else you come in contact with, you may have it, you may have COVID-19 and don't know it. And that way you're not spreading and release hope you're not spreading. So I'm glad he did it. And I think it just made it a little easier for all of us to have one uniform, you know, request that people wear masks, and I don't know, I think it's working. Now our numbers are going up. But you know, that kind of some of this stuff was happening prior to the mass thing. So we'll see what happens in the next few weeks.
Unknown Speaker
Oh, yeah. And I, of course, looked at the numbers there in Vigo County, and saw that it seemed like August 1, you're right. There seem to be a spike in daily we're no 1822 and then never ever. Yeah. And then it went up to about 44. And but there's no indication from health. tissue there why that almost double? Hmm?
Unknown Speaker
Well, what I'm hearing is it's the younger kids that are going to swim parties, graduation parties, drinking, parties, whatever, where you get, you know, a whole bunch of kids together and they kind of think they're invincible. They're not wearing their masks or not social distancing. One kids got it, two kids got it. And next thing, you know, 10 or 20 kids have it, you know, a week later. So I think that's the big numbers. That's where they're coming from right now. We even had a problem with our dimming Park pool with some of our lifeguards had attended an event and one of them got sick. And so we had to quarantine the rest of them. Only one actually got it. But, you know, I didn't have any lifeguards for a week. So it doesn't take long to go through that process, whether you get COVID-19 or not. If you have to be quarantine that still kind of shuts that whole thing down, or you're waiting to see and so we're actually seeing some positive cases, though with the judge. People are making those numbers. Well,
Unknown Speaker
what about enforcement there for not just masks and social distancing, but large groups of people? I know some cities are just to just call the authorities some have a special phone number hotline to call, what's the Toronto, Vigo county way with dealing with enforcement of these issues?
Unknown Speaker
You know, we don't have any special things set up. They can just call the police department if they believe that's the case. They called Central Dispatch, and call my office and that's what some people do. I really haven't had much of a problem though with large gatherings. I think people are adhering to that the churches especially they're still doing, you know, things over the internet doing some kind of virtual presentation, Facebook or whatever it might be. The smaller churches seem to be meeting but you know, there are fewer people they have plenty of room to space out. A lot of the big events. I know there's some weddings and things that have gone on but people from what I've heard, they've been very very cautious to try to protect everybody that's attending these things. But I assure I can assure you that if somebody sees that event going on, and they think they're not following the guidelines, they're going to call and we're not going to go out, we're not going to arrest anybody, we're just going to tell them, you're in violation of this. You know, you need to break it up, whatever it might be. We just want to work with people and have a nice little common sense with it. I don't want to be punitive, because I really don't have that enforcement side of this. It's very difficult. We can go out and we can do some enforcement. But we're not going to write people tickets or throw anybody in jail for violating those things. We just want him to stop and you know, and go back home, whatever you need to do, but break up the crowd. And we really haven't had much of that at all. Most of the complaints I get, you know, I was at Meijer and nobody had somebody didn't have a mask on or I saw somebody at the park, and they didn't have masks on that kind of stuff. And so we just try to remind people when we see him, please wear a mask. Keep fix Pete Everything will be fine.
Unknown Speaker
You know, we reported this past weekend ISU announced no football, at least for this fall. And now there's all this news about big 10 other conferences not having football and you know, it's just rippling effect. You know now, I think Terre Haute businesses, other these college towns, were looking forward to that little boost of economic spur and of activity. And now that is going away to what what do you say to those businesses that were looking forward to all that football revenue this fall?
Unknown Speaker
Well, my I'm hopeful that we'll have a spring football season so that would be kind of different, but at least you would be able to still have a season and then this wouldn't be the same fiscal year for them. But at least they'd be able to do that. So maybe next year, they would have two football seasons. I don't know how that how that might work. I guess we'll see. But it is really significant. A lot of our restaurants, bars you know, most places all do very well on game day or whatever. You know, whether it's football or basketball or whatever the more attended sports. But, you know, it's I think everybody understands it's just what's really hurting small business is this keeps on going on and if there was some end in sight where business could get back to normal, so at least their income is somewhat normal, and then bring the football and basketball who knows what's gonna happen the basketball but bring those nights and days back again that will help them catch back up with a revenue. problem is you don't know when that's going to be will there be spring football? Who knows? And so you can't count on anything or think okay, if I can just make it six more months I'll be fine. Some of these businesses are stretched pretty thin right now.
Unknown Speaker
We know a lot of controversy to over opening schools what what's the situation like there for public schools and guidelines for K through 12. And, and is that starting to move smoothly to
Unknown Speaker
you know, when they first announced that a couple weeks ago Everybody was going to go back to school, and then it got moved back a week. But they said it wasn't COVID related. There were some other technical issues. And so starting school next week, but then just this week, then the last few days, they changed a little bit. Again, we're now first part of the alphabet goes two days, and then three days the following week, the other half of the alphabet does three and two. And so they're trying to reduce the number of students in the school in the classroom. So whether it changes again before next week, I don't know. But I think they're really trying to be cautious, yet get kids back, you know, get them back in school, but do it in a way that the safest you can be. So some of the feedback I've heard their teachers that are concerned about that are parents that are concerned that they just don't want their kids, they're bringing it home, possibly, but I have other parents saying, Yeah, I want my kids go to school, but I can't get daycare for three days, one week and two days, the next week, systems not set up that way and so on. Most of these daycares are already full, or you know, have, if they got a space, they got five days spaces, they don't have two and three. And so I think that's going to be a real challenge for families is how you make this new hybrid schedule work. You know, some kids are going to be working remotely, some kids are going to be in school, and it's just gonna be I mean, I really feel for all those people are involved. Luckily, I don't have any kids in K through 12 anymore, but my grandson is he'll be in first grade this year. And so it's just interesting. He's ready to go back. He wants to do, but we're all like, Well, you know, I think it's safe. But who knows where this is going to go if the numbers continue to go up, and teachers start getting sick. You know, you can't teach so I'm just not sure anybody knows the answer to these questions. It's just doing everything you can today what we know today to make it as best we can for tomorrow, and then deal with when tomorrow come.
Unknown Speaker
Before we go, I just had a few other
Unknown Speaker
questions. Is this about the casino? groundbreaking? I think you were hoping for that. What about this time of year? Are there any updates on that?
Unknown Speaker
It's supposed to be next month still, I'm still hearing that, but I don't have a date yet. So shouldn't have a groundbreaking sometime in September. It's moving along. I talked to the owner not too long ago, when he's just still there's a lot to do there. But that's his goal is to get get it started. You know, first of October kind of a thing. So we should hear something very soon on that.
Unknown Speaker
But same plan, same design, same every time. Yep. Okay. Um, you know, and we talked so much too, about the new Convention Center, Larry Bird Museum, that was pre pandemic. Are there any plans now to look back and say, you know, hey, things have changed. You know, conferences will probably change, do we need to adapt? Is anything like that happening?
Unknown Speaker
No, because I really believe we'll get back to a pretty normal environment. I really do. And we're not going to be open, you know, for 18 months anyway. So I think that maybe the timing was kind of good. I mean, if it's gonna happen, it's better to happen now than just after we opened it, obviously, who knows if there's another pandemic on the rise and out there but trying to be negative, but nobody knows what the future holds. But I really believe that there's a lot of value into going to conferences and being around other people and learning new things. I go to conferences several times during the year and I really believe that industry will recover in time and hopefully we will hit the right on the right cycle and we'll do great things here And Taro
Unknown Speaker
Then how about anything new on the new police station?
Unknown Speaker
We will start having on will be on the agenda in September to begin the process. So very specific formal information soon to arrive at the first meeting will be discussed in some form will be the second meeting in September.
Unknown Speaker
And before we go, is there anything else any announcements, road construction, things you'd like to give us an update on?
Unknown Speaker
Well, we completed our community crossings projects, now we're doing some smaller paving projects. TSX was coming through town replacing repair road crossings. And, man, it's a mess because we have a lot of cross things. And they're working on a lot of them at the same time. So that's kind of a public's not happy about that. But we'll have good crossings when they're completed. You know, things are, it's been kind of a quiet year. From that perspective. We've done everything we said we were going to do, but it's, we're losing some revenue. So I have to be careful about doing some extra projects at the end. So we're still trying to sort through that. We still want to pave a few more streets. I haven't made those announcements yet, just because I really don't know how much money I'm gonna have. So we're just trying to commit follow through with our commitments, and we had a pretty good year.
Unknown Speaker
All right, well, Thank you very much for your time and it's City Hall open.
Unknown Speaker
Well, we're not open to the public except report. But if you need an appointment, we'll meet you outside or we can bring you into a room here if you have some critical business, so we're not totally open. We're partially open. Right?
Unknown Speaker
Okay. Well, we'll see how it goes next month. And, again, appreciate your time. Okay, Joe, thanks. Thank you very much.
All right, it's the second week of the month, August 2020. I'm with Terre Haute, Mayor Duke Bennett for another Ask the mayor, thank you so much for having us. I know you're really busy.
Unknown Speaker
It's great to be here too. I enjoy this show and get a lot of positive feedback from it. So I really like doing
Unknown Speaker
good. You know, it's back to school month.
Unknown Speaker
And we've been talking a lot in Bloomington, too, with john Hamilton because you've got public schools going back and college students returning a lot of concerns. I feel like our newsroom and I'm sure you're hearing the same lot of emails coming in from residents saying what's going to happen Why is this being allowed to happen? We'd love to get your perspective and on the city's relationship working with ISU to keeps not only students but the residents. They're safe this month.
Unknown Speaker
You know, that's just been a big topic of discussion with the K through 12. And with our colleges and universities that What's gonna happen when all these students come back to Toronto? You know, I think I issues specifically, obviously, they're the big player in the game here with the majority of people. You know, they've done a good job too. And they even rolled out some new information yesterday about how they're going to isolate students and things like that signing up to have fall sports, they continue to evolve their plan. almost seems like every few days, you get some new piece of information. So I think they're on top of it from that perspective of how to protect the students and the staff on the campus. What gets tricky is the unknowns of what's really going to happen. Our numbers continue to go up here, we're up over 700 today and there for the longest time we hovered around 200 and just didn't move much anywhere. And if you look and say, okay, what's changed in that time, not a whole lot. Now the students are coming back, but now you're really gonna have a lot of turning of people being interviewed. Gold here, and I don't know what's going to happen. So a lot my general take is I'm confident that these professionals are making these decisions within these specific organizations. They thought this out and they're thinking, everything they can possibly do to keep their staff and the students safe, is what they're going to do. And then from the city's perspective, we just want to help reinforce the things they're trying to do with their, their community, if you will, and that have people in our community, then be conscious here on our side that they're going to have students coming in your stores are going to have students coming in the gas station, whatever, and just continue to wear your mask and do the social distancing. And we'll get through this just fine. I it's easy to say that but I guess we'll see whether the numbers really go up higher, because right now, the big numbers we're seeing is in that 20 to 29 age group, which is, you know, just out of high school and college and young adults. That's where the spread is really the biggest and so on. I'm going to guess that that's going to continue to be that way for at least the next few weeks or months.
Unknown Speaker
I want to get your quick take there. You mentioned about the masks. I think the state mandate came after we talk last time. How do you feel about the whole come statewide mask mandate?
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, I think he probably should have done a little sooner. You know, that's just my position. I had lots of conversation with his staff about that. Just because people were looking for something like that, you know, when they were leaning on me in a way so and we are wanting to do the executive order. Well, problem is that only last seven days, then you have to go to the city council. And if the county doesn't do it along with you, it's really awkward to say we have Wareham in the city, but you don't have to run the county. And it just wasn't that easy. When the governor comes out with an overall order, then everybody can play by the same rule. I think people have done very well. I get calls every day in the office saying, I just went somewhere and nobody's wearing them out. But all the places that I go, the vast majority of people are and I understood And why they haven't maybe some personal health issues or other reasons why they don't want to wear a mask. And you know, that's their choice. But at least think about everybody else you come in contact with, you may have it, you may have COVID-19 and don't know it. And that way you're not spreading and release hope you're not spreading. So I'm glad he did it. And I think it just made it a little easier for all of us to have one uniform, you know, request that people wear masks, and I don't know, I think it's working. Now our numbers are going up. But you know, that kind of some of this stuff was happening prior to the mass thing. So we'll see what happens in the next few weeks.
Unknown Speaker
Oh, yeah. And I, of course, looked at the numbers there in Vigo County, and saw that it seemed like August 1, you're right. There seem to be a spike in daily we're no 1822 and then never ever. Yeah. And then it went up to about 44. And but there's no indication from health. tissue there why that almost double? Hmm?
Unknown Speaker
Well, what I'm hearing is it's the younger kids that are going to swim parties, graduation parties, drinking, parties, whatever, where you get, you know, a whole bunch of kids together and they kind of think they're invincible. They're not wearing their masks or not social distancing. One kids got it, two kids got it. And next thing, you know, 10 or 20 kids have it, you know, a week later. So I think that's the big numbers. That's where they're coming from right now. We even had a problem with our dimming Park pool with some of our lifeguards had attended an event and one of them got sick. And so we had to quarantine the rest of them. Only one actually got it. But, you know, I didn't have any lifeguards for a week. So it doesn't take long to go through that process, whether you get COVID-19 or not. If you have to be quarantine that still kind of shuts that whole thing down, or you're waiting to see and so we're actually seeing some positive cases, though with the judge. People are making those numbers. Well,
Unknown Speaker
what about enforcement there for not just masks and social distancing, but large groups of people? I know some cities are just to just call the authorities some have a special phone number hotline to call, what's the Toronto, Vigo county way with dealing with enforcement of these issues?
Unknown Speaker
You know, we don't have any special things set up. They can just call the police department if they believe that's the case. They called Central Dispatch, and call my office and that's what some people do. I really haven't had much of a problem though with large gatherings. I think people are adhering to that the churches especially they're still doing, you know, things over the internet doing some kind of virtual presentation, Facebook or whatever it might be. The smaller churches seem to be meeting but you know, there are fewer people they have plenty of room to space out. A lot of the big events. I know there's some weddings and things that have gone on but people from what I've heard, they've been very very cautious to try to protect everybody that's attending these things. But I assure I can assure you that if somebody sees that event going on, and they think they're not following the guidelines, they're going to call and we're not going to go out, we're not going to arrest anybody, we're just going to tell them, you're in violation of this. You know, you need to break it up, whatever it might be. We just want to work with people and have a nice little common sense with it. I don't want to be punitive, because I really don't have that enforcement side of this. It's very difficult. We can go out and we can do some enforcement. But we're not going to write people tickets or throw anybody in jail for violating those things. We just want him to stop and you know, and go back home, whatever you need to do, but break up the crowd. And we really haven't had much of that at all. Most of the complaints I get, you know, I was at Meijer and nobody had somebody didn't have a mask on or I saw somebody at the park, and they didn't have masks on that kind of stuff. And so we just try to remind people when we see him, please wear a mask. Keep fix Pete Everything will be fine.
Unknown Speaker
You know, we reported this past weekend ISU announced no football, at least for this fall. And now there's all this news about big 10 other conferences not having football and you know, it's just rippling effect. You know now, I think Terre Haute businesses, other these college towns, were looking forward to that little boost of economic spur and of activity. And now that is going away to what what do you say to those businesses that were looking forward to all that football revenue this fall?
Unknown Speaker
Well, my I'm hopeful that we'll have a spring football season so that would be kind of different, but at least you would be able to still have a season and then this wouldn't be the same fiscal year for them. But at least they'd be able to do that. So maybe next year, they would have two football seasons. I don't know how that how that might work. I guess we'll see. But it is really significant. A lot of our restaurants, bars you know, most places all do very well on game day or whatever. You know, whether it's football or basketball or whatever the more attended sports. But, you know, it's I think everybody understands it's just what's really hurting small business is this keeps on going on and if there was some end in sight where business could get back to normal, so at least their income is somewhat normal, and then bring the football and basketball who knows what's gonna happen the basketball but bring those nights and days back again that will help them catch back up with a revenue. problem is you don't know when that's going to be will there be spring football? Who knows? And so you can't count on anything or think okay, if I can just make it six more months I'll be fine. Some of these businesses are stretched pretty thin right now.
Unknown Speaker
We know a lot of controversy to over opening schools what what's the situation like there for public schools and guidelines for K through 12. And, and is that starting to move smoothly to
Unknown Speaker
you know, when they first announced that a couple weeks ago Everybody was going to go back to school, and then it got moved back a week. But they said it wasn't COVID related. There were some other technical issues. And so starting school next week, but then just this week, then the last few days, they changed a little bit. Again, we're now first part of the alphabet goes two days, and then three days the following week, the other half of the alphabet does three and two. And so they're trying to reduce the number of students in the school in the classroom. So whether it changes again before next week, I don't know. But I think they're really trying to be cautious, yet get kids back, you know, get them back in school, but do it in a way that the safest you can be. So some of the feedback I've heard their teachers that are concerned about that are parents that are concerned that they just don't want their kids, they're bringing it home, possibly, but I have other parents saying, Yeah, I want my kids go to school, but I can't get daycare for three days, one week and two days, the next week, systems not set up that way and so on. Most of these daycares are already full, or you know, have, if they got a space, they got five days spaces, they don't have two and three. And so I think that's going to be a real challenge for families is how you make this new hybrid schedule work. You know, some kids are going to be working remotely, some kids are going to be in school, and it's just gonna be I mean, I really feel for all those people are involved. Luckily, I don't have any kids in K through 12 anymore, but my grandson is he'll be in first grade this year. And so it's just interesting. He's ready to go back. He wants to do, but we're all like, Well, you know, I think it's safe. But who knows where this is going to go if the numbers continue to go up, and teachers start getting sick. You know, you can't teach so I'm just not sure anybody knows the answer to these questions. It's just doing everything you can today what we know today to make it as best we can for tomorrow, and then deal with when tomorrow come.
Unknown Speaker
Before we go, I just had a few other
Unknown Speaker
questions. Is this about the casino? groundbreaking? I think you were hoping for that. What about this time of year? Are there any updates on that?
Unknown Speaker
It's supposed to be next month still, I'm still hearing that, but I don't have a date yet. So shouldn't have a groundbreaking sometime in September. It's moving along. I talked to the owner not too long ago, when he's just still there's a lot to do there. But that's his goal is to get get it started. You know, first of October kind of a thing. So we should hear something very soon on that.
Unknown Speaker
But same plan, same design, same every time. Yep. Okay. Um, you know, and we talked so much too, about the new Convention Center, Larry Bird Museum, that was pre pandemic. Are there any plans now to look back and say, you know, hey, things have changed. You know, conferences will probably change, do we need to adapt? Is anything like that happening?
Unknown Speaker
No, because I really believe we'll get back to a pretty normal environment. I really do. And we're not going to be open, you know, for 18 months anyway. So I think that maybe the timing was kind of good. I mean, if it's gonna happen, it's better to happen now than just after we opened it, obviously, who knows if there's another pandemic on the rise and out there but trying to be negative, but nobody knows what the future holds. But I really believe that there's a lot of value into going to conferences and being around other people and learning new things. I go to conferences several times during the year and I really believe that industry will recover in time and hopefully we will hit the right on the right cycle and we'll do great things here And Taro
Unknown Speaker
Then how about anything new on the new police station?
Unknown Speaker
We will start having on will be on the agenda in September to begin the process. So very specific formal information soon to arrive at the first meeting will be discussed in some form will be the second meeting in September.
Unknown Speaker
And before we go, is there anything else any announcements, road construction, things you'd like to give us an update on?
Unknown Speaker
Well, we completed our community crossings projects, now we're doing some smaller paving projects. TSX was coming through town replacing repair road crossings. And, man, it's a mess because we have a lot of cross things. And they're working on a lot of them at the same time. So that's kind of a public's not happy about that. But we'll have good crossings when they're completed. You know, things are, it's been kind of a quiet year. From that perspective. We've done everything we said we were going to do, but it's, we're losing some revenue. So I have to be careful about doing some extra projects at the end. So we're still trying to sort through that. We still want to pave a few more streets. I haven't made those announcements yet, just because I really don't know how much money I'm gonna have. So we're just trying to commit follow through with our commitments, and we had a pretty good year.
Unknown Speaker
All right, well, Thank you very much for your time and it's City Hall open.
Unknown Speaker
Well, we're not open to the public except report. But if you need an appointment, we'll meet you outside or we can bring you into a room here if you have some critical business, so we're not totally open. We're partially open. Right?
Unknown Speaker
Okay. Well, we'll see how it goes next month. And, again, appreciate your time. Okay, Joe, thanks. Thank you very much.
