Unknown Speaker
All right. Hello and welcome to ask the mayor on WFIU. I'm Joe Hren second week of the month, second week of the year. And as always, we find ourselves in Terre Haute with Mayor Duke Bennett. Hello, welcome. Happy New Year to you.
Unknown Speaker
Happy New Year YouTube. Joe. Glad we're back for another year. So I'm excited about 23. And, you know, it's here last year, really fast. I don't know if it did for you. But it did for me.
Unknown Speaker
It's It's unbelievable. Not only the year, the months go by really fast to amazing. Feels like we were just talking I was just over there. And that's been a month ago. And and then we actually we talked last week, though, because you had a big announcement that we did a story on already, but want to talk a little bit more on this show that you're running for reelection and be your fifth term?
Unknown Speaker
Yep. You know, I put a lot of thought into it like you do every four years, every politician you get elected to spot and you think, okay, am I still doing what I need to do? Is this still what I want to continue to do. And there's a lot of Mater's dropping out, I've noticed over the last, you know, year, you kept hearing more and more of that, but I can't feel like I really think I want to do it again. But I didn't make the decision till just most recently, where I just evaluated everything, what we've accomplished, and what's still laying ahead. And I really feel like there's a lot more work to do. So I'm excited about jumping in the fray again. And, you know, we've built the foundation of things here in our community. And now we're starting to reap the benefits of that, and having revenues and some new revenues coming in through ready and ARPA, and the casino, and, you know, our budgets in great shape, I really feel like we have an opportunity to invest in ourselves more than we ever have. And I really want to be a part of that. So decided to take the plunge and go again. And hopefully the voters will have me back. And we're just going to keep moving the community forward and keep the momentum going.
Unknown Speaker
In terms of being mayor, what's your favorite part? Is it the working in City Hall working with people? Is it the politics? Is it the campaign?
Unknown Speaker
No, not the campaign. That's never, that's always a challenge. You know, you have to raise money, you got to do a lot of things in campaign years. But I think what's the most rewarding to me, is taking care of people. And so, you know, everybody thinks the mayor can fix everything or help with anything. And I get it. I mean, I understand they run out of options sometimes. But when they call our office and talk to us about you know, street condition or sidewalk, you know, that's a little easier to deal with. Sometimes, it may take us a little bit to get it done. But then they call me and say there's a drug dealer that lives down the street, or somebody's harassing them, or they've just lost a relative, and they have no money to pay for a burial. I mean, you name it, we get it in the office. And I really enjoy helping people as much as I can pointing them in the right direction, to the right source of help, or we can fix it ourselves. And at the end of the day, that's what it's all about, is it serving everybody to the best of our ability? It's hard. And we can't always be as timely as some would like, but you really need to help them get, get get an answer, get a solution, wherever that may need to come from.
Unknown Speaker
So if elected and you serve this next full term, that would be about 20 years in office, what do you say to those who think oh, that might be too long for someone to hold that position. I
Unknown Speaker
look at lots of other politicians and served much longer than that, including mayors all across the state of Indiana. We've had another five turn mayor in our community. You know, I think the key is, is are you getting things done? Are you moving the community forward? You know, we've built relationships with the governor's office, I've worked with three different governors, we got great relationships with our two senators and our congressmen and other Congress, people, all of our local elected officials, the administration, I mean, we're, we have it's seamless right now. And we're getting a lot of benefit from that in through grants and other things, positioning ourselves well. So I look at that, and it's like, Man, I you know, I want to continue that relationship, and I want it to be strong. So whoever does follow me that what we've established will continue and so some of that is newer, and I think that I feel like government moves slow in general, you know, the first few years were really slow, but we've accomplished some things by getting an overpass mill. We're gonna get a second overpass build. Now we're going to work on the third one downtown. Those are things that take many many years and Um, I really feel like in another four years, we can accomplish most of the goals that I set out in the very beginning.
Unknown Speaker
You know, one of the biggest challenges you said was recovering from those state property tax caps. I believe you said borrowing up to $9 million back in 2017. Cut that down to 1.5 million for this year hoping for zero in 2024. Why did Terre Haute have so much trouble with that maybe compared to some other cities, although Terre Haute certainly wasn't alone in that, oh,
Unknown Speaker
it was most of the older manufacturing type communities that had older housing stock, older buildings, assessed values just weren't going up. And so you know, when the tax caps come in, if your assessed values don't go up, you can never capture any more new money. And so people are paying a lot less in to run local government. Okay, that's great. But where do we come up with revenue? Or how do we solve that problem, and when our assessed values are not going out, that has since improved in a variety of capacities, lots of investment and things here in our community. And we've learned to live with the tax caps, you know, they still continue to be significant for us. I mean, our largest one was last year, we'll see what 23 holds. But we weren't able to collect $15 million that we were approved to collect, you know, last year. And so that's a lot of money for the general fund, basically, that's, you know, to operate the city. And so we've all had to hunker down, every community's had to figure out the ones that were hit hard, and figure out how we overcome that. And we and we've all found a way to do it. It's just been a challenge. And it doesn't happen. You can't fix it overnight. Some people like oh, just you know, tax caps. That's That's old news. It's not old news. It continues to affect us, and other things the legislature knew could affect us more in the future that can, you know, take us back to those tough times. But I'm hopeful that doesn't happen. I feel like we're on solid ground. And I'm hopeful the other communities in Indiana that were in the same boat, have done the exact same thing. Because you feel you know,
Unknown Speaker
yeah, I know if you mentioned the new police station Convention Center. What are some of the challenges though, yet still to be done? If you were to be reelected for the next four years,
Unknown Speaker
two of the focus areas are going to be workforce development and housing. There's other things we need to do infrastructure and in a variety of other things that we've been working on. We gotta continue that, but we have got to assist our local manufacturers, our retail sector or healthcare sector, we don't have enough people to fill the jobs, tons of jobs open, and we don't have the people. So how do we recruit people to come to Taro, you work on the quality life projects. We're not a healthy community, we need to improve on that mental health addictions and just general health of people. So those are going to be investment areas. And then housing is really the next biggest one, because in order to bring people here, they have to have somewhere to live. And a lot of our housing stock is old. We need new single family houses, we need new townhouses and multifamily units. So we were building that plan right now we're going to use ARPA funds and the county is going to do the same thing. We're going to build a having a builder incentive program, do some projects on our own, you're gonna see an across the board attack to work on the quality of life, including housing, and then help that workforce development side to meet the needs of our employers.
Unknown Speaker
So as we begin a new year, no matter what you have one year left, despite any election talk, so let's let's just start with 2023. What are you diving in with this year,
Unknown Speaker
as I mentioned, the housing and the workforce development is something I'm personally working on following the community plan. All those are components of that. But then, when you drill it right down to the city itself, what our focus is, is we got a million dollars for community crossings excited about that. So that means we do $2 billion with the paving on some major streets, then we've got other dollars set aside to do additional paving projects. We've ramped up sidewalks and ADA compliant ramps this year again, we added another $100,000 to that pool. We're working on a major improvement to Ray Park, to Fairbanks Park and to hertz rose Park has three specific parks. And then we're going to put some splash pads in a couple of other inner city's parks. So when it goes back to that quality life component, that's the focus. We've got to continue to push forward on the two new hotels and small parking garage downtown to support the convention center that's going to be a city led project are another CIB related thing is our athletic facility and outdoor waterpark that we want we're pursuing. We've hired a firm to do that feasibility study that we'll be getting back in May, that we can share with the community how we move forward with that large quality life project here. So The overpass will get started construction will start later this year on the first of next year at 13th and Eighth Avenue. And we're getting beginning preliminary discussions about the third one downtown.
Unknown Speaker
Indiana Senate Republicans are prioritizing health care issues in 2023. The General Assembly is underway. Lawmakers will craft to your state budget this session. What are you looking at as Mayor of Terre Haute?
Unknown Speaker
So I think a couple of things always keep an eye on business personal property tax, you know, that's a annual conversation, always look and see if they're doing anything with TIF districts and tax increment financing districts excited about ready, you know, two or 2.0 that appears that they're going to find, you know, another big pool of money for that. So I'll keep a very close watch on that. And I guess just Yeah, health related things, mental health and addictions, money and then just us helping to be whatever can help us be healthier. So when you look at our community plan, some of those things match up directly with what the state's doing, we all recognize we're not real healthy here. And we're going to have to invest some dollars in that to turn the tide. So I guess that's the big areas, I'm not sensing any other things that are, you know, catching my attention at this point. So I'm hopeful that it'll be a fairly quiet session, I'll get a budget bill, and help us with some health related dollars and some ready dollars.
Unknown Speaker
I believe I heard there's an effort will most likely return on sunsetting the food and beverage tax although that would be you know many years down the road. But many counties use that and I believe Vigo does to to help fund the visitor Bureau, the convention center and so forth. Are you hearing anything on that?
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, you know, I heard a little bit last session, there were some that want to just kind of get rid of it and others that want to sunset it, you know, with a lock everybody in which you know, I I get the fact that we're trying to reduce taxes, but those are dollars that you choose to span, you go by something you go out to eat, get something to drink, you're paying a small tax. So for over $25 are paying a quarter into the system here locally, that allows us to do projects like the convention center, and hopefully this athletic facility and waterpark and other projects that we have ideas about. I think it's a great revenue source. And I'm not sure what the reluctance is on some legislators to want to get rid of it. I think it's a fair use or tax, if you will, versus making somebody pay for something they may or may not use are good.
Unknown Speaker
So just so that we understand here and are and if they do an act something or sunset that does that mean that Vigo county can no longer use the food and beverage tax.
Unknown Speaker
Well, we wouldn't collect it if the whole tax sunset. So in our case, we already have a date in our bill that was passed by the legislature. But I know there's others that don't or they've extended it, you know, whatever their circumstances are I forget how many there are now but there are multiple communities that have it. And I think they're trying to rein it in a little bit because probably some places have not spin it on what the purpose was, well don't penalize everybody because somebody didn't follow the guidelines. We're doing it. Ours is only going to the convention center right now. And any future projects that fit the criteria that's in our bill that the legislature passed.
Unknown Speaker
And of course, you mentioned we've always talked about the business personal property tax. And Chris, earlier in this show, you talked about how difficult it was for Terre Haute to recover from the state property tax caps. Are you hearing anything about business personal property tax right now
Unknown Speaker
what I'm hearing, it's it's discussed in every session, but what I'm hearing is in the governor's on board with the two to find us a replacement revenue stream. So if they take that away from cities and counties and other taxing entities, there'd be some replacement revenue. I'm not sure where it would come from, but they seem to be committed to find that so we won't just lose the money forever, like we did put the property tax caps. And I know you've been following that law. But I want to be clear about that. The real problem, the real estate person versus the business personal property portion.
Unknown Speaker
Right. And I know you have been instrumental with state legislature, you you've been there, you've been going there you've been kind of leading that charge to be able to to make that happen if business personal property tax has been
Unknown Speaker
yet the fact that we want to be low tax state to draw people here completely support that concept. We're pretty low. Now we're in the top five and some and others were in the top 10 For sure of all the states of being the lowest tax. And so if you eliminate something like that, I'm not sure that's going to bring business in here. It might I mean, you know, it's better than having a tax. But when that money goes away, those are the services we provide to these businesses and all the people that live here so, you know, we're losing we lost 50 think million dollars last year to property tax gaps. If we did the business personal property tax, that's probably another five or 6 million a year. So that would be devastating when we've recovered from the original thing. So I think the legislators and the administration are on board with helping us to find giving us some replacement revenue. So it's a wash for us. We don't care. It's fine.
Unknown Speaker
Well, I know we're out of time. I was like to leave the last question for you. Any announcements? Anything from City Council we need to know about?
Unknown Speaker
You know, I don't think so. You're started off pretty quietly here. But you know, here we are already into the second week. It's going to be a busy year. So I you know, so far it has been a lot of projects, a lot of things going on are really ramping up our community plan. So I think people are going to start to see more things happening. We've been planning for this and now it's time to execute. So I expect it to be a very busy year around here and look forward to. Alright, thank
Unknown Speaker
you so much for your time. We'll see in February.
Unknown Speaker
Okay. Thank you, Joe.
Unknown Speaker
Thank you
All right. Hello and welcome to ask the mayor on WFIU. I'm Joe Hren second week of the month, second week of the year. And as always, we find ourselves in Terre Haute with Mayor Duke Bennett. Hello, welcome. Happy New Year to you.
Unknown Speaker
Happy New Year YouTube. Joe. Glad we're back for another year. So I'm excited about 23. And, you know, it's here last year, really fast. I don't know if it did for you. But it did for me.
Unknown Speaker
It's It's unbelievable. Not only the year, the months go by really fast to amazing. Feels like we were just talking I was just over there. And that's been a month ago. And and then we actually we talked last week, though, because you had a big announcement that we did a story on already, but want to talk a little bit more on this show that you're running for reelection and be your fifth term?
Unknown Speaker
Yep. You know, I put a lot of thought into it like you do every four years, every politician you get elected to spot and you think, okay, am I still doing what I need to do? Is this still what I want to continue to do. And there's a lot of Mater's dropping out, I've noticed over the last, you know, year, you kept hearing more and more of that, but I can't feel like I really think I want to do it again. But I didn't make the decision till just most recently, where I just evaluated everything, what we've accomplished, and what's still laying ahead. And I really feel like there's a lot more work to do. So I'm excited about jumping in the fray again. And, you know, we've built the foundation of things here in our community. And now we're starting to reap the benefits of that, and having revenues and some new revenues coming in through ready and ARPA, and the casino, and, you know, our budgets in great shape, I really feel like we have an opportunity to invest in ourselves more than we ever have. And I really want to be a part of that. So decided to take the plunge and go again. And hopefully the voters will have me back. And we're just going to keep moving the community forward and keep the momentum going.
Unknown Speaker
In terms of being mayor, what's your favorite part? Is it the working in City Hall working with people? Is it the politics? Is it the campaign?
Unknown Speaker
No, not the campaign. That's never, that's always a challenge. You know, you have to raise money, you got to do a lot of things in campaign years. But I think what's the most rewarding to me, is taking care of people. And so, you know, everybody thinks the mayor can fix everything or help with anything. And I get it. I mean, I understand they run out of options sometimes. But when they call our office and talk to us about you know, street condition or sidewalk, you know, that's a little easier to deal with. Sometimes, it may take us a little bit to get it done. But then they call me and say there's a drug dealer that lives down the street, or somebody's harassing them, or they've just lost a relative, and they have no money to pay for a burial. I mean, you name it, we get it in the office. And I really enjoy helping people as much as I can pointing them in the right direction, to the right source of help, or we can fix it ourselves. And at the end of the day, that's what it's all about, is it serving everybody to the best of our ability? It's hard. And we can't always be as timely as some would like, but you really need to help them get, get get an answer, get a solution, wherever that may need to come from.
Unknown Speaker
So if elected and you serve this next full term, that would be about 20 years in office, what do you say to those who think oh, that might be too long for someone to hold that position. I
Unknown Speaker
look at lots of other politicians and served much longer than that, including mayors all across the state of Indiana. We've had another five turn mayor in our community. You know, I think the key is, is are you getting things done? Are you moving the community forward? You know, we've built relationships with the governor's office, I've worked with three different governors, we got great relationships with our two senators and our congressmen and other Congress, people, all of our local elected officials, the administration, I mean, we're, we have it's seamless right now. And we're getting a lot of benefit from that in through grants and other things, positioning ourselves well. So I look at that, and it's like, Man, I you know, I want to continue that relationship, and I want it to be strong. So whoever does follow me that what we've established will continue and so some of that is newer, and I think that I feel like government moves slow in general, you know, the first few years were really slow, but we've accomplished some things by getting an overpass mill. We're gonna get a second overpass build. Now we're going to work on the third one downtown. Those are things that take many many years and Um, I really feel like in another four years, we can accomplish most of the goals that I set out in the very beginning.
Unknown Speaker
You know, one of the biggest challenges you said was recovering from those state property tax caps. I believe you said borrowing up to $9 million back in 2017. Cut that down to 1.5 million for this year hoping for zero in 2024. Why did Terre Haute have so much trouble with that maybe compared to some other cities, although Terre Haute certainly wasn't alone in that, oh,
Unknown Speaker
it was most of the older manufacturing type communities that had older housing stock, older buildings, assessed values just weren't going up. And so you know, when the tax caps come in, if your assessed values don't go up, you can never capture any more new money. And so people are paying a lot less in to run local government. Okay, that's great. But where do we come up with revenue? Or how do we solve that problem, and when our assessed values are not going out, that has since improved in a variety of capacities, lots of investment and things here in our community. And we've learned to live with the tax caps, you know, they still continue to be significant for us. I mean, our largest one was last year, we'll see what 23 holds. But we weren't able to collect $15 million that we were approved to collect, you know, last year. And so that's a lot of money for the general fund, basically, that's, you know, to operate the city. And so we've all had to hunker down, every community's had to figure out the ones that were hit hard, and figure out how we overcome that. And we and we've all found a way to do it. It's just been a challenge. And it doesn't happen. You can't fix it overnight. Some people like oh, just you know, tax caps. That's That's old news. It's not old news. It continues to affect us, and other things the legislature knew could affect us more in the future that can, you know, take us back to those tough times. But I'm hopeful that doesn't happen. I feel like we're on solid ground. And I'm hopeful the other communities in Indiana that were in the same boat, have done the exact same thing. Because you feel you know,
Unknown Speaker
yeah, I know if you mentioned the new police station Convention Center. What are some of the challenges though, yet still to be done? If you were to be reelected for the next four years,
Unknown Speaker
two of the focus areas are going to be workforce development and housing. There's other things we need to do infrastructure and in a variety of other things that we've been working on. We gotta continue that, but we have got to assist our local manufacturers, our retail sector or healthcare sector, we don't have enough people to fill the jobs, tons of jobs open, and we don't have the people. So how do we recruit people to come to Taro, you work on the quality life projects. We're not a healthy community, we need to improve on that mental health addictions and just general health of people. So those are going to be investment areas. And then housing is really the next biggest one, because in order to bring people here, they have to have somewhere to live. And a lot of our housing stock is old. We need new single family houses, we need new townhouses and multifamily units. So we were building that plan right now we're going to use ARPA funds and the county is going to do the same thing. We're going to build a having a builder incentive program, do some projects on our own, you're gonna see an across the board attack to work on the quality of life, including housing, and then help that workforce development side to meet the needs of our employers.
Unknown Speaker
So as we begin a new year, no matter what you have one year left, despite any election talk, so let's let's just start with 2023. What are you diving in with this year,
Unknown Speaker
as I mentioned, the housing and the workforce development is something I'm personally working on following the community plan. All those are components of that. But then, when you drill it right down to the city itself, what our focus is, is we got a million dollars for community crossings excited about that. So that means we do $2 billion with the paving on some major streets, then we've got other dollars set aside to do additional paving projects. We've ramped up sidewalks and ADA compliant ramps this year again, we added another $100,000 to that pool. We're working on a major improvement to Ray Park, to Fairbanks Park and to hertz rose Park has three specific parks. And then we're going to put some splash pads in a couple of other inner city's parks. So when it goes back to that quality life component, that's the focus. We've got to continue to push forward on the two new hotels and small parking garage downtown to support the convention center that's going to be a city led project are another CIB related thing is our athletic facility and outdoor waterpark that we want we're pursuing. We've hired a firm to do that feasibility study that we'll be getting back in May, that we can share with the community how we move forward with that large quality life project here. So The overpass will get started construction will start later this year on the first of next year at 13th and Eighth Avenue. And we're getting beginning preliminary discussions about the third one downtown.
Unknown Speaker
Indiana Senate Republicans are prioritizing health care issues in 2023. The General Assembly is underway. Lawmakers will craft to your state budget this session. What are you looking at as Mayor of Terre Haute?
Unknown Speaker
So I think a couple of things always keep an eye on business personal property tax, you know, that's a annual conversation, always look and see if they're doing anything with TIF districts and tax increment financing districts excited about ready, you know, two or 2.0 that appears that they're going to find, you know, another big pool of money for that. So I'll keep a very close watch on that. And I guess just Yeah, health related things, mental health and addictions, money and then just us helping to be whatever can help us be healthier. So when you look at our community plan, some of those things match up directly with what the state's doing, we all recognize we're not real healthy here. And we're going to have to invest some dollars in that to turn the tide. So I guess that's the big areas, I'm not sensing any other things that are, you know, catching my attention at this point. So I'm hopeful that it'll be a fairly quiet session, I'll get a budget bill, and help us with some health related dollars and some ready dollars.
Unknown Speaker
I believe I heard there's an effort will most likely return on sunsetting the food and beverage tax although that would be you know many years down the road. But many counties use that and I believe Vigo does to to help fund the visitor Bureau, the convention center and so forth. Are you hearing anything on that?
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, you know, I heard a little bit last session, there were some that want to just kind of get rid of it and others that want to sunset it, you know, with a lock everybody in which you know, I I get the fact that we're trying to reduce taxes, but those are dollars that you choose to span, you go by something you go out to eat, get something to drink, you're paying a small tax. So for over $25 are paying a quarter into the system here locally, that allows us to do projects like the convention center, and hopefully this athletic facility and waterpark and other projects that we have ideas about. I think it's a great revenue source. And I'm not sure what the reluctance is on some legislators to want to get rid of it. I think it's a fair use or tax, if you will, versus making somebody pay for something they may or may not use are good.
Unknown Speaker
So just so that we understand here and are and if they do an act something or sunset that does that mean that Vigo county can no longer use the food and beverage tax.
Unknown Speaker
Well, we wouldn't collect it if the whole tax sunset. So in our case, we already have a date in our bill that was passed by the legislature. But I know there's others that don't or they've extended it, you know, whatever their circumstances are I forget how many there are now but there are multiple communities that have it. And I think they're trying to rein it in a little bit because probably some places have not spin it on what the purpose was, well don't penalize everybody because somebody didn't follow the guidelines. We're doing it. Ours is only going to the convention center right now. And any future projects that fit the criteria that's in our bill that the legislature passed.
Unknown Speaker
And of course, you mentioned we've always talked about the business personal property tax. And Chris, earlier in this show, you talked about how difficult it was for Terre Haute to recover from the state property tax caps. Are you hearing anything about business personal property tax right now
Unknown Speaker
what I'm hearing, it's it's discussed in every session, but what I'm hearing is in the governor's on board with the two to find us a replacement revenue stream. So if they take that away from cities and counties and other taxing entities, there'd be some replacement revenue. I'm not sure where it would come from, but they seem to be committed to find that so we won't just lose the money forever, like we did put the property tax caps. And I know you've been following that law. But I want to be clear about that. The real problem, the real estate person versus the business personal property portion.
Unknown Speaker
Right. And I know you have been instrumental with state legislature, you you've been there, you've been going there you've been kind of leading that charge to be able to to make that happen if business personal property tax has been
Unknown Speaker
yet the fact that we want to be low tax state to draw people here completely support that concept. We're pretty low. Now we're in the top five and some and others were in the top 10 For sure of all the states of being the lowest tax. And so if you eliminate something like that, I'm not sure that's going to bring business in here. It might I mean, you know, it's better than having a tax. But when that money goes away, those are the services we provide to these businesses and all the people that live here so, you know, we're losing we lost 50 think million dollars last year to property tax gaps. If we did the business personal property tax, that's probably another five or 6 million a year. So that would be devastating when we've recovered from the original thing. So I think the legislators and the administration are on board with helping us to find giving us some replacement revenue. So it's a wash for us. We don't care. It's fine.
Unknown Speaker
Well, I know we're out of time. I was like to leave the last question for you. Any announcements? Anything from City Council we need to know about?
Unknown Speaker
You know, I don't think so. You're started off pretty quietly here. But you know, here we are already into the second week. It's going to be a busy year. So I you know, so far it has been a lot of projects, a lot of things going on are really ramping up our community plan. So I think people are going to start to see more things happening. We've been planning for this and now it's time to execute. So I expect it to be a very busy year around here and look forward to. Alright, thank
Unknown Speaker
you so much for your time. We'll see in February.
Unknown Speaker
Okay. Thank you, Joe.
Unknown Speaker
Thank you
