Speaker 1
Hello and welcome to ask the mayor on WFIU I'm Joe Hren, second Wednesday of the month we're on zoom with Terre Haute Mayor Duke Bennett. Hello and welcome. Good to be here, Joe. Hopefully next month I'll get out there and we're trying to get back in action love to see everything going on in Terre Haute. But let's just start with a new superintendent of Vigo County Schools, Dr. Chris Himsel. So have you met him yet is a good fit for the community?
Speaker 2
Yeah, I've not had a chance to meet him. But I've heard a lot about him. I've talked to numerous school board members about just kind of the process. And as they made their selection, they welcomed him last night, I was unable to attend that meeting and another commitment. But so far, so good. Everybody's excited that they finally got somebody selected. And that's always you know, you know, it's never easy when you have that kind of a leadership change, you know, for whatever reason. And so I think there's always a lot of apprehension from some of that. Okay, what comes next? And others are just like, Okay, let's hit the road, you know, let's go do it. And so I think there's just been, it's been an interesting, some challenging times for the school corporation over the last X number of years. And so I think people were looking, you know, there's a lot of expectations here that we're going to get some things go on. And I'm excited about that. I think our schools are critical to sell the community, you know, to have a wide variety of the economic development side, just, you know, producing great students, and hopefully some of them will stay here. I mean, it's such an integral part. It we all kind of live in our little worlds. And, you know, we stay in our lanes, if you will, but I think this one's a critical move, to get somebody in here as quickly as they did and hit the ground running. So I'm looking forward to developing a relationship with the new superintendent.
Speaker 1
I know American rescue plan, money funding allocation meetings are continuing. So I'll report online. Vigo County Commissioner asking the table a request from ISU because the university wants some money for the early childhood learning program. But I think it just shows how much money there is and how vast that the money can be used for. Is the city going through something like that as well?
Speaker 2
Yeah, you know, that particular scenario, the counties committed $3 million for the project, the city's committed 1 million to it, that get some ready money, and of course, their own funds to expand their daycare. Okay, well, we all know here locally that we need to do much more in a daycare area, that's not something that typically government gets too involved with. But when you're talking about economic development opportunities, and bringing business where people have to have a place for their kids to go, you want it to be more than just a drop off daycare, you want it to have some educational components to it. And that's what I see us doing. So part of our overall strategic efforts here would be this particular project. And so we think our professions are a perfect fit for that.
Speaker 1
Where are you in the process right now, with the city,
Speaker 2
we're just continuing to hone in on the final all occasions is probably the best way to put it proposed allocations, the city council will begin to get appropriations for either individual projects or for more of a group thing. And I'll give you an example of that. We have a pool of money for small businesses to support small businesses. So we're going to use the United Way here to facilitate that will develop a application process and a scoring process. And then there'll be an advisory team that will make the final recommendations. So soon, we will bring an appropriation to the Council for money to go to the United Way that then they will allocate through sub recipients. Other things are funded directly some or city projects will be funding ourselves. Other things like this ISU project will be funding directly to ISU. So it's a mix. I feel really good about our pools and what we've decided on. There still be you know, there's still an opportunity for people to apply for funds. But we're beginning Why would say in the next two or three months, most of the formal things will be in place. And we'll be spending money.
Speaker 1
And this the ARPA fund is really a one time thing. So you're really have to make sure that it's something that can be sustained moving forward to right.
Speaker 2
Oh, it's several things there. So you've got ready funds coming in. And you need to match that with dollars. You've got ARPA funds in that there's matches for recipients there, including us as the city. And yeah, when those funds are gone, then you know, there's already two coming but there'll be first different set of projects probably you want to sustain these kinds of things and have funds available. So one advantage we have is the casino right revenues will start coming in next year, that allow us to maintain some of these programs, you know, we're looking at annual help with childcare, and you'll help with housing, you know, just a variety of things that will support the economic growth of our community. So, we'd love to have, it's great having the funds, we love, we have them, but they're gonna, when they're gone, they're gone. And you'll have to find another source in order to maintain these programs. That's exactly 100% accurate, and we're going to find a way to do that.
Speaker 1
And you mentioned the casino, I have to ask really quick, hopefully, I can go check that site out next time I'm up. But how's construction going? Any snags in that process, so
Speaker 2
everything's going great, they're still on track to open up next March. Having a big event this week about setting their final beam in there, you know, a lot of big projects do that. So it is it's kind of amazing to drive by there and see how much progress has been made. And it's a beautiful building a big tall structure in the middle of a cornfield. And it's it's, it really is a testament to what the community was able to do to pull together to get this kind of over the finish line with the legislature and analyse the finished product, a $300 million investment is just it's going to be have a huge positive impact on the community.
Speaker 1
I know Mayor Lindop from Columbus told me about some new census numbers he got last week Bartholomew county city of Columbus saw an increase. Have you seen these new estimates from the
Speaker 2
so I didn't receive I usually get some kind of an email from, you know, the census folks, and maybe it's buried in there somewhere. But I always watch for that, because typically, on an annual basis, they will update at least annually with estimates. And I would love to see that date. I'm gonna have to go search for that, because I do not believe I've received that. That information.
Speaker 1
Well, you know, we were also talking about convention centers. And it's interesting on this show, because three different cities with three different ways to approach things and a lot of likes sometimes too, which is interesting. But you were able to get your convention center often going well before the pandemic. And that really started among other reasons Columbus and Bloomington. How is the I mean, I know it's hasn't even been a year yet, I think since it's open, but so far. This
Speaker 2
year, Luxo has been going great Joe. You know, as I've talked on here on this show before, we need more hotel rooms downtown, but we're getting a lot of conventions, just in the last month or so. We had the firefighters union convention here, Ivy Tech, brought in all their Ivy Tech folks from around the state for a short, shorter conference. We've had the chamber executives conference was here last week, right now the FOP conferences going on. So a lot of these folks have never been to Terre Haute, or their conference ever, because we didn't have any conference space. Then they come in, some of them hadn't been here in years, maybe they went to ISU or, you know, whatever, some another school. But now the feedback has been phenomenal. while they're here, I've usually had some opportunities to go and speak and welcome them to our community. But then talking to people outside of the conference space. Wow, you know, lots of great things happen a chariot, I had no idea. This is tremendous facility, all the kinds of things that make you feel good about what you've done as a community to make those investments that it pays off. And we continue to book more events as we move forward. And we get these other two hotels, roughly 200 rooms, we're going to be able to book, the larger conferences, the multi day, you know, foreign five, day three and four day events. That's where that's where we really want to get to. And so I'm hopeful in the next couple of years, we'll be able to ramp up to the point where we're then booking those larger events. And we're going to see lots and lots of more activity in our community that casino open next year also, that's going to bring that many more people to Terre Haute. So we want to be able to have the facilities, the resources in place to handle these events.
Speaker 1
There was always this concern that you know, when people want in person meetings after the pandemic, and and how do you change conferences to kind of be that afterthought of the pandemic? Have you seen anything like that?
Speaker 2
No, you know, I think things are back to normal, I guess is the new normal. You know, we talked about that so much throughout COVID. What's it going to look like after? Well, it seems like there's a lot more in person meetings, people wanted to do that they wanted to get back together. Yeah, zoom and, you know, Microsoft team meetings still continues. So, you know, I've had, this is my second Zoom meeting today. But I've also had three in person meetings just here locally. And so I think that's the way in the future you're going to have a mix where it's sometimes it's easier to throw a zoom thing together, but people also want to be in the same room. You know, they want to see facial expressions and be able to have those conversations that sometimes it's hard to do when you're doing it over a computer. So I think that will come back to be maybe it's not 100% of what it was before COVID But I still think that you know, what, what it looks like today is still gonna continue for a while into the future.
Speaker 1
While and then you had 1000s in Terre Haute for the annual Special Olympics Indiana, and the ISU campus. This is something that's kind of dear to your heart, isn't it? Yeah.
Speaker 2
You know, they've been here for over 50 years, come into Terre Haute doing their, you know, their annual Olympics here at Indiana State University. It's it's a fun thing to go to anyway. And before I became mayor way back, when, when I was officiating high school sports, I volunteered to referee basketball that they played. And it was it was such a positive experience for me to give time to something like that, because it's just so much fun to watch them play, you know, basketball, I love basketball anyway, but it's just it's a different experience when you're watching Special Olympians play and the excitement they have about the game. And that was kind of my first taste of that, I guess. And then when I was at Hamilton center, of course, we, you know, dealt with people with developmental disabilities and tried to do a lot of things to be supportive of, of those folks and Special Olympics as part of that. And then that was made. And you know, we host it. And it's an honor to do that. We want that to be a continuing growing activity when you have hotel rooms filled and buses running around town, moving people from venue to venue and, you know, these large outdoor parties. It's just it's a really fun several days. And so I attended the opening night VIP dinner and that kind of thing met with the CEO, the new CEO, we just wanted to let them know that we really appreciate them coming to Taro. We want to keep them for the next 50 years and do everything we can to be supportive of Special Olympics.
Speaker 1
We may have heard someone in the newsroom said, Hey, asked me Are bandied about the Larry Bird Museum is gaining some momentum. You have some new info.
Speaker 2
We've selected all of the vendors that will do the build out inside all the display cases and the videos and all the things that go along with this. It's been a challenge just because the NBA controls all of this, you know that all these things, Larry Bird owns his own stuff. But you got to get approval from I mean, it's it's kind of maddening in a way of how much legal work goes into this, to get things agreed to to be able to actually open a museum like this. And so that's been the challenge we've had for the last year or so am now what's happening, we've hired the companies and we're still shooting for first of the year, kind of a thing. I don't know if we'll make it we'll give more updates as we get closer. But it's real now where it's happening, things are being built and things will be start to be installed over the coming months, and it'll start taking shape. So we're really excited about that. That's going to be a huge draw to there are a lot of labored fans, a lot of NBA, Boston Celtics fans, people call and contact us all the time in some way to say when's it going to be open, we want to travel from Boston or wherever mean people from Denver called recently. It's going to be it'll be a big hit. And so we want to do right. And that's been the goal all along. But you got to work through the legal challenges to get it just right. So everybody's happy
Speaker 1
to see the state we reported on the state building a $53 million welcome center off i 70. I don't think that's too far from Terre Haute. That'd be a you got to be thrilled about this project.
Speaker 2
Yeah, it's just down the street here really from City Hall, you know, down on i 70. But just over the river and on the west Terre Haute side, you know, it's good that they're making those investments, you know, rest stops are important. I mean, when I travel, we utilize rest stops. And you remember the ones that are very nice and you know, welcoming and clean and modern. I think all across the United States. A lot of these are getting older now. And that's the same thing has happened with a lot of Indiana's restless we want this to be if you come across the Illinois State Line. I'm just thinking of people who are traveling to the east. And you stop at this wonderful facility and you it sets an impression about Indiana about Terre Haute and Vigo County. I think it's great that they're making those kinds of investments. They've been needed for quite some time. And so we're excited about that. Just another piece of the puzzle here.
Speaker 1
And I believe it'll feature exhibits on the Indianapolis 500. So it's also can be looked at as a destination
Speaker 2
to I mean, I think that would be a draw for people to want to pop in there. But you know what a great connection with Noblesville. 500 So made perfect sense. We were just excited that they were gonna make that large of an investment.
Unknown Speaker
How about any budget update?
Speaker 2
We're working on the budget. So I just came out of a budget meeting a few minutes ago, actually, you know, revenues are where they ought to be so far this year, our expenses are in line where we hoped they would be at this point. And we'll be building next year's budgets looking at that data as we move ahead. I think there's going to be some tweaks to property taxes next year. So we don't know what how that's going to affect us. You know, how that's going to play out with what the legislature did, and what will happen in the future. But we're on solid ground, it's just there's always every year, there's always some new challenges about when we got these expenses, I mean, our costs continue to go up. Inflation is just, I mean, it's, it still continues to be bad. Gas prices have moderated a little bit. But you step back and look at this. And it's like more things are going up, nothing's going down. So when the revenues don't go up, it makes it difficult. So each year we go through that zero budgeting process. I think this year's budget is going to be solid, we're going to have be more balanced, obviously, we'll have excess revenues. Next year could be a little bit more of a challenge, but not too bad. So I'm not worried about it. But we'll have to make a few adjustments. The difference is we have new casino revenue coming in. So we have something that more a lot of other communities don't have was a new revenue source of significance that, you know, we're thankful for that that'll be able to help address any issues we have.
Speaker 1
Well, I know we're short of time, but I would like to leave the last minute for you any announcements, anything you'd like to say?
Speaker 2
Um, I would like to applaud Indiana State University's baseball team, they had a very successful season, you know, we ended up being the 14th ranked team in the nation at the end, we made it to the Sweet 16, if you will, that super regional level. They lost at TCU lost a couple of games, which is unfortunate, but boy, it was exciting here we hosted the MVC tournament and then have the regionals here, NCAA Regionals and, you know, there was just a buzz in the community, everybody was really back in the baseball team. So that's been a lot of fun. The last few weeks, I really enjoyed that ride. You know, having the Special Olympics in town was good. And all these conventions I've been talking about just over the last month even. It really feels like, you know, we're making some major, major progress here as a community. And so that's what's exciting to me. And I'm hearing that from people who visit us I'm hearing that from people who live here. So we just got to keep the pedal to the metal, you know, as a community, we got to keep stepping up and doing these things. And I'm excited about where we're heading.
Speaker 1
But I've had to ask you really quick too, because we've seen in Bloomington where some of the retailers are saying they're losing about 40% of their of their business. Because summertime and I you a lot of classes are now virtual during the summer, they're not having that they've thought back to in person for summer. And I'm wondering if Terre Haute is seeing that that same thing to
Speaker 2
not seeing that big of a drop. I don't have any actual data yet. But I talked to people we're seeing just the typical summer, you know, basically is what it looks like here. And so, you know, some of the restaurants downtown, things like that are a little slower, some of the retailers. But it's typical. I mean, it's very cyclical here with the students going away. And so, you know, you got three universities bringing a lot of people from elsewhere and they all go home in the summer the majority of them and that's always a challenge for us. But then when August comes that everybody comes back, it's like we're bursting at the seams so I shoes enrollments been down a little bit which has kind of had an impact on some things too. But hopefully we'll see some increases this fall there because they're the biggest player like in Bloomington. I mean, IU is the you know, that's that drives everything when it comes to that here is us the biggest but you know, we have two other, you know, universities that bring people and of course we have Ivy Tech. And the summers are just they slow down. You know, that's just the nature of the business here. It's always been that way.
Unknown Speaker
Thank you so much for your time. We'll see you next month.
Unknown Speaker
Okay, Joe, thank you
Hello and welcome to ask the mayor on WFIU I'm Joe Hren, second Wednesday of the month we're on zoom with Terre Haute Mayor Duke Bennett. Hello and welcome. Good to be here, Joe. Hopefully next month I'll get out there and we're trying to get back in action love to see everything going on in Terre Haute. But let's just start with a new superintendent of Vigo County Schools, Dr. Chris Himsel. So have you met him yet is a good fit for the community?
Speaker 2
Yeah, I've not had a chance to meet him. But I've heard a lot about him. I've talked to numerous school board members about just kind of the process. And as they made their selection, they welcomed him last night, I was unable to attend that meeting and another commitment. But so far, so good. Everybody's excited that they finally got somebody selected. And that's always you know, you know, it's never easy when you have that kind of a leadership change, you know, for whatever reason. And so I think there's always a lot of apprehension from some of that. Okay, what comes next? And others are just like, Okay, let's hit the road, you know, let's go do it. And so I think there's just been, it's been an interesting, some challenging times for the school corporation over the last X number of years. And so I think people were looking, you know, there's a lot of expectations here that we're going to get some things go on. And I'm excited about that. I think our schools are critical to sell the community, you know, to have a wide variety of the economic development side, just, you know, producing great students, and hopefully some of them will stay here. I mean, it's such an integral part. It we all kind of live in our little worlds. And, you know, we stay in our lanes, if you will, but I think this one's a critical move, to get somebody in here as quickly as they did and hit the ground running. So I'm looking forward to developing a relationship with the new superintendent.
Speaker 1
I know American rescue plan, money funding allocation meetings are continuing. So I'll report online. Vigo County Commissioner asking the table a request from ISU because the university wants some money for the early childhood learning program. But I think it just shows how much money there is and how vast that the money can be used for. Is the city going through something like that as well?
Speaker 2
Yeah, you know, that particular scenario, the counties committed $3 million for the project, the city's committed 1 million to it, that get some ready money, and of course, their own funds to expand their daycare. Okay, well, we all know here locally that we need to do much more in a daycare area, that's not something that typically government gets too involved with. But when you're talking about economic development opportunities, and bringing business where people have to have a place for their kids to go, you want it to be more than just a drop off daycare, you want it to have some educational components to it. And that's what I see us doing. So part of our overall strategic efforts here would be this particular project. And so we think our professions are a perfect fit for that.
Speaker 1
Where are you in the process right now, with the city,
Speaker 2
we're just continuing to hone in on the final all occasions is probably the best way to put it proposed allocations, the city council will begin to get appropriations for either individual projects or for more of a group thing. And I'll give you an example of that. We have a pool of money for small businesses to support small businesses. So we're going to use the United Way here to facilitate that will develop a application process and a scoring process. And then there'll be an advisory team that will make the final recommendations. So soon, we will bring an appropriation to the Council for money to go to the United Way that then they will allocate through sub recipients. Other things are funded directly some or city projects will be funding ourselves. Other things like this ISU project will be funding directly to ISU. So it's a mix. I feel really good about our pools and what we've decided on. There still be you know, there's still an opportunity for people to apply for funds. But we're beginning Why would say in the next two or three months, most of the formal things will be in place. And we'll be spending money.
Speaker 1
And this the ARPA fund is really a one time thing. So you're really have to make sure that it's something that can be sustained moving forward to right.
Speaker 2
Oh, it's several things there. So you've got ready funds coming in. And you need to match that with dollars. You've got ARPA funds in that there's matches for recipients there, including us as the city. And yeah, when those funds are gone, then you know, there's already two coming but there'll be first different set of projects probably you want to sustain these kinds of things and have funds available. So one advantage we have is the casino right revenues will start coming in next year, that allow us to maintain some of these programs, you know, we're looking at annual help with childcare, and you'll help with housing, you know, just a variety of things that will support the economic growth of our community. So, we'd love to have, it's great having the funds, we love, we have them, but they're gonna, when they're gone, they're gone. And you'll have to find another source in order to maintain these programs. That's exactly 100% accurate, and we're going to find a way to do that.
Speaker 1
And you mentioned the casino, I have to ask really quick, hopefully, I can go check that site out next time I'm up. But how's construction going? Any snags in that process, so
Speaker 2
everything's going great, they're still on track to open up next March. Having a big event this week about setting their final beam in there, you know, a lot of big projects do that. So it is it's kind of amazing to drive by there and see how much progress has been made. And it's a beautiful building a big tall structure in the middle of a cornfield. And it's it's, it really is a testament to what the community was able to do to pull together to get this kind of over the finish line with the legislature and analyse the finished product, a $300 million investment is just it's going to be have a huge positive impact on the community.
Speaker 1
I know Mayor Lindop from Columbus told me about some new census numbers he got last week Bartholomew county city of Columbus saw an increase. Have you seen these new estimates from the
Speaker 2
so I didn't receive I usually get some kind of an email from, you know, the census folks, and maybe it's buried in there somewhere. But I always watch for that, because typically, on an annual basis, they will update at least annually with estimates. And I would love to see that date. I'm gonna have to go search for that, because I do not believe I've received that. That information.
Speaker 1
Well, you know, we were also talking about convention centers. And it's interesting on this show, because three different cities with three different ways to approach things and a lot of likes sometimes too, which is interesting. But you were able to get your convention center often going well before the pandemic. And that really started among other reasons Columbus and Bloomington. How is the I mean, I know it's hasn't even been a year yet, I think since it's open, but so far. This
Speaker 2
year, Luxo has been going great Joe. You know, as I've talked on here on this show before, we need more hotel rooms downtown, but we're getting a lot of conventions, just in the last month or so. We had the firefighters union convention here, Ivy Tech, brought in all their Ivy Tech folks from around the state for a short, shorter conference. We've had the chamber executives conference was here last week, right now the FOP conferences going on. So a lot of these folks have never been to Terre Haute, or their conference ever, because we didn't have any conference space. Then they come in, some of them hadn't been here in years, maybe they went to ISU or, you know, whatever, some another school. But now the feedback has been phenomenal. while they're here, I've usually had some opportunities to go and speak and welcome them to our community. But then talking to people outside of the conference space. Wow, you know, lots of great things happen a chariot, I had no idea. This is tremendous facility, all the kinds of things that make you feel good about what you've done as a community to make those investments that it pays off. And we continue to book more events as we move forward. And we get these other two hotels, roughly 200 rooms, we're going to be able to book, the larger conferences, the multi day, you know, foreign five, day three and four day events. That's where that's where we really want to get to. And so I'm hopeful in the next couple of years, we'll be able to ramp up to the point where we're then booking those larger events. And we're going to see lots and lots of more activity in our community that casino open next year also, that's going to bring that many more people to Terre Haute. So we want to be able to have the facilities, the resources in place to handle these events.
Speaker 1
There was always this concern that you know, when people want in person meetings after the pandemic, and and how do you change conferences to kind of be that afterthought of the pandemic? Have you seen anything like that?
Speaker 2
No, you know, I think things are back to normal, I guess is the new normal. You know, we talked about that so much throughout COVID. What's it going to look like after? Well, it seems like there's a lot more in person meetings, people wanted to do that they wanted to get back together. Yeah, zoom and, you know, Microsoft team meetings still continues. So, you know, I've had, this is my second Zoom meeting today. But I've also had three in person meetings just here locally. And so I think that's the way in the future you're going to have a mix where it's sometimes it's easier to throw a zoom thing together, but people also want to be in the same room. You know, they want to see facial expressions and be able to have those conversations that sometimes it's hard to do when you're doing it over a computer. So I think that will come back to be maybe it's not 100% of what it was before COVID But I still think that you know, what, what it looks like today is still gonna continue for a while into the future.
Speaker 1
While and then you had 1000s in Terre Haute for the annual Special Olympics Indiana, and the ISU campus. This is something that's kind of dear to your heart, isn't it? Yeah.
Speaker 2
You know, they've been here for over 50 years, come into Terre Haute doing their, you know, their annual Olympics here at Indiana State University. It's it's a fun thing to go to anyway. And before I became mayor way back, when, when I was officiating high school sports, I volunteered to referee basketball that they played. And it was it was such a positive experience for me to give time to something like that, because it's just so much fun to watch them play, you know, basketball, I love basketball anyway, but it's just it's a different experience when you're watching Special Olympians play and the excitement they have about the game. And that was kind of my first taste of that, I guess. And then when I was at Hamilton center, of course, we, you know, dealt with people with developmental disabilities and tried to do a lot of things to be supportive of, of those folks and Special Olympics as part of that. And then that was made. And you know, we host it. And it's an honor to do that. We want that to be a continuing growing activity when you have hotel rooms filled and buses running around town, moving people from venue to venue and, you know, these large outdoor parties. It's just it's a really fun several days. And so I attended the opening night VIP dinner and that kind of thing met with the CEO, the new CEO, we just wanted to let them know that we really appreciate them coming to Taro. We want to keep them for the next 50 years and do everything we can to be supportive of Special Olympics.
Speaker 1
We may have heard someone in the newsroom said, Hey, asked me Are bandied about the Larry Bird Museum is gaining some momentum. You have some new info.
Speaker 2
We've selected all of the vendors that will do the build out inside all the display cases and the videos and all the things that go along with this. It's been a challenge just because the NBA controls all of this, you know that all these things, Larry Bird owns his own stuff. But you got to get approval from I mean, it's it's kind of maddening in a way of how much legal work goes into this, to get things agreed to to be able to actually open a museum like this. And so that's been the challenge we've had for the last year or so am now what's happening, we've hired the companies and we're still shooting for first of the year, kind of a thing. I don't know if we'll make it we'll give more updates as we get closer. But it's real now where it's happening, things are being built and things will be start to be installed over the coming months, and it'll start taking shape. So we're really excited about that. That's going to be a huge draw to there are a lot of labored fans, a lot of NBA, Boston Celtics fans, people call and contact us all the time in some way to say when's it going to be open, we want to travel from Boston or wherever mean people from Denver called recently. It's going to be it'll be a big hit. And so we want to do right. And that's been the goal all along. But you got to work through the legal challenges to get it just right. So everybody's happy
Speaker 1
to see the state we reported on the state building a $53 million welcome center off i 70. I don't think that's too far from Terre Haute. That'd be a you got to be thrilled about this project.
Speaker 2
Yeah, it's just down the street here really from City Hall, you know, down on i 70. But just over the river and on the west Terre Haute side, you know, it's good that they're making those investments, you know, rest stops are important. I mean, when I travel, we utilize rest stops. And you remember the ones that are very nice and you know, welcoming and clean and modern. I think all across the United States. A lot of these are getting older now. And that's the same thing has happened with a lot of Indiana's restless we want this to be if you come across the Illinois State Line. I'm just thinking of people who are traveling to the east. And you stop at this wonderful facility and you it sets an impression about Indiana about Terre Haute and Vigo County. I think it's great that they're making those kinds of investments. They've been needed for quite some time. And so we're excited about that. Just another piece of the puzzle here.
Speaker 1
And I believe it'll feature exhibits on the Indianapolis 500. So it's also can be looked at as a destination
Speaker 2
to I mean, I think that would be a draw for people to want to pop in there. But you know what a great connection with Noblesville. 500 So made perfect sense. We were just excited that they were gonna make that large of an investment.
Unknown Speaker
How about any budget update?
Speaker 2
We're working on the budget. So I just came out of a budget meeting a few minutes ago, actually, you know, revenues are where they ought to be so far this year, our expenses are in line where we hoped they would be at this point. And we'll be building next year's budgets looking at that data as we move ahead. I think there's going to be some tweaks to property taxes next year. So we don't know what how that's going to affect us. You know, how that's going to play out with what the legislature did, and what will happen in the future. But we're on solid ground, it's just there's always every year, there's always some new challenges about when we got these expenses, I mean, our costs continue to go up. Inflation is just, I mean, it's, it still continues to be bad. Gas prices have moderated a little bit. But you step back and look at this. And it's like more things are going up, nothing's going down. So when the revenues don't go up, it makes it difficult. So each year we go through that zero budgeting process. I think this year's budget is going to be solid, we're going to have be more balanced, obviously, we'll have excess revenues. Next year could be a little bit more of a challenge, but not too bad. So I'm not worried about it. But we'll have to make a few adjustments. The difference is we have new casino revenue coming in. So we have something that more a lot of other communities don't have was a new revenue source of significance that, you know, we're thankful for that that'll be able to help address any issues we have.
Speaker 1
Well, I know we're short of time, but I would like to leave the last minute for you any announcements, anything you'd like to say?
Speaker 2
Um, I would like to applaud Indiana State University's baseball team, they had a very successful season, you know, we ended up being the 14th ranked team in the nation at the end, we made it to the Sweet 16, if you will, that super regional level. They lost at TCU lost a couple of games, which is unfortunate, but boy, it was exciting here we hosted the MVC tournament and then have the regionals here, NCAA Regionals and, you know, there was just a buzz in the community, everybody was really back in the baseball team. So that's been a lot of fun. The last few weeks, I really enjoyed that ride. You know, having the Special Olympics in town was good. And all these conventions I've been talking about just over the last month even. It really feels like, you know, we're making some major, major progress here as a community. And so that's what's exciting to me. And I'm hearing that from people who visit us I'm hearing that from people who live here. So we just got to keep the pedal to the metal, you know, as a community, we got to keep stepping up and doing these things. And I'm excited about where we're heading.
Speaker 1
But I've had to ask you really quick too, because we've seen in Bloomington where some of the retailers are saying they're losing about 40% of their of their business. Because summertime and I you a lot of classes are now virtual during the summer, they're not having that they've thought back to in person for summer. And I'm wondering if Terre Haute is seeing that that same thing to
Speaker 2
not seeing that big of a drop. I don't have any actual data yet. But I talked to people we're seeing just the typical summer, you know, basically is what it looks like here. And so, you know, some of the restaurants downtown, things like that are a little slower, some of the retailers. But it's typical. I mean, it's very cyclical here with the students going away. And so, you know, you got three universities bringing a lot of people from elsewhere and they all go home in the summer the majority of them and that's always a challenge for us. But then when August comes that everybody comes back, it's like we're bursting at the seams so I shoes enrollments been down a little bit which has kind of had an impact on some things too. But hopefully we'll see some increases this fall there because they're the biggest player like in Bloomington. I mean, IU is the you know, that's that drives everything when it comes to that here is us the biggest but you know, we have two other, you know, universities that bring people and of course we have Ivy Tech. And the summers are just they slow down. You know, that's just the nature of the business here. It's always been that way.
Unknown Speaker
Thank you so much for your time. We'll see you next month.
Unknown Speaker
Okay, Joe, thank you
