TERRE HAUTE —
After four years of shrinking budgets and a slow economy, Terre Haute is “moving in the right direction,” Mayor Duke Bennett said Tuesday morning in his first “State of the City” address since being re-elected by Terre Haute voters in November.
Difficult financial and political battles are largely in the past, he said, and now the city can start moving forward in ways not possible in the past four years.
“The next four years, we’ll be able to do a tremendous more amount of work than what we’ve done in the past four years,” Bennett told about 60 people in the lobby of the Vigo County Public Library. “We’ve kind of got through a lot of the obstacles and road blocks and some of the political things you deal with on a regular basis. I feel really good about where we’re at as a community.”
The city spent about $706,000 less in 2011 than was called for in the year’s budget, Bennett said. “Last year was our tightest budget,” he said.
The city’s projected 2012 budget is currently $65 million. However, Bennett said that figure is likely to fall after the spending plan is examined by the State Board of Accounts. The 2011 budget was $63.6 million.
The city’s “rainy day fund” has about $3.9 million, Bennett said. “That’s not where we’d like to be in the rainy day fund, but it’s much, much better than the position we were in four years ago,” he said.
Bennett also announced Tuesday that the city has stopped working with Vigo County Community Corrections to clean up illegal trash dumping sites. Instead, the city is now working with volunteers from the minimum security camp at the U.S. penitentiary.
“Late last year … we decided to discontinue it the way it was because a lot of the people in the Community Corrections program didn’t want to go out and pick up trash,” Bennett said. “That’s kind of what it boiled down to. We didn’t get enough people on a regular, weekly basis who were willing to go out in bad weather and other situations.”
Now the federal penitentiary is providing volunteers one day a week all year, Bennett said.
“We’ve been doing this [with the federal penitentiary] for about a month and the impact has been tremendous,” the mayor said. “We’ve made tremendous progress in the past few weeks in cleaning up multiple dump sites.”
Bennett also announced the city appears to be very close to a final deal with the Clay County YMCA to open a Vigo County Y in Fairbanks Park. The Clay County YMCA board approved last week an agreement with the Terre Haute Parks Department to lease the former Family Y building and the Terre Haute Parks Board could vote to ratify that agreement Thursday.
“Once that lease is signed, hopefully that will be Thursday, then the Y should open probably within 45 to 60 days,” Bennett said. It will be a full-service Y serving Vigo County, he said.
The city also plans to repave a large section of Wabash Avenue this year, the mayor said. The project will be “slow and tedious work” and “very expensive” because there are inter-urban railroad tracks buried under the street that must be removed and the center of the roadway must be rebuilt, he said. The project will cost about $70,000 per block repaved, Bennett said. “We will do a very big section this year and do the majority of the rest of it in 2013,” he said.
Bennett also said the city hopes to begin design work this year for a new police station in the area of 12th Street and Wabash Avenue. “We’d love to break ground next year,” Bennett said. “It will depend on the funding.”
“I really believe that Terre Haute is moving in the right direction,” Bennett said at the conclusion of his 65-minute address. “The economy has been so poor, yet look at all the stuff that’s happened. We’ve had a tremendous amount of building permits … considering how bad the economy is. … We’ve held our own. … I really believe our better days are ahead yet.”
Arthur Foulkes can be reached at (812) 231-4232 or arthur.foulkes@
tribstar.com.
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