Ask The Mayor

As legislation season ends and a prolonged construction season begins in West Lafayette, the city faces challenges from multiple sides.

On one side is a bill which would have given cell phone companies carte blanche to put small cell towers almost anywhere they could find a utility hookup.

On the other are small business owners who say the city and Purdue University may benefit from State Street’s overhaul, but they’re being imperiled.

Crawfordsville Mayor Todd Barton has found himself up against some powerful competition recently.

He appears to have prevailed in a battle against the world’s largest company, Wal-Mart, in a battle over a road near the big box chain’s Crawfordsville location.

But he may also be up against several cell phone companies – and the lawmakers they appear to be bankrolling.

This week on WBAA’s Ask the Mayor, we quiz Mayor Barton about what he’s learned from his recent skirmishes. 

The City of Frankfort is touting its ranking as the 50th safest city in Indiana.

But how do the calculations from the National Council for Home Safety and Security line up with the city's own data which showed a 12 percent increase in overall drug violation arrests and a 47 percent increase in drunk driving arrests in 2016?

Also, can the city's focus on downtown revitalization projects, such as a new public open space alongside the proposed Nickel Plate Flats apartments, stimulate needed improvements in other neighborhoods?

Lafayette Mayor Tony Roswarski has been among the chorus of voices saying his city can’t, as the saying goes, “arrest its way out of a drug problem.”

But now that the Indiana General Assembly has made Tippecanoe County a pilot site for a new opioid treatment program, will the mayor be more bullish on that as a solution than he has been on the idea of a needle exchange? We put that question to him this week on WBAA’s Ask The Mayor.

Greater Lafayette residents who complained about traffic snarls last summer are getting their first tastes of what an even more hectic season this summer will be.

This week, construction began on West Lafayette’s State Street and you, the listeners to WBAA’s Ask the Mayor, have many questions. We put all of them that have come in so far to West Lafayette Mayor John Dennis during our next half hour.

This spring is dotted with important meetings in Crawfordsville – meetings which could help decide the near future of the city.

Whether it’s talking with state transportation leaders about how the city fits into the state’s long-term plans or meeting with parents concerned about greater incidence of students taking their own lives, the community has some important decisions to make.

This week on WBAA’s Ask The Mayor, we talk with Crawfordsville’s Todd Barton about the stakes for a town that’s hoping for a rebirth.

A Frankfort manufacturer decided not to expand its existing plant in Clinton County, instead choosing to build a new plant in Anderson, Indiana.

Mayor Chris McBarnes explains why the city lost out on the $100 million investment and the nearly 200 jobs the plant is expected to  create.

This week on WBAA's Ask The Mayor, we query McBarnes on what steps his community needs to take to ensure the city can compete for new employers and the jobs they bring.

It’s always frustrating when looking for a parking spot on a crowded street to notice that one more might have been available had another driver not taken up more than their fair share of space.

The City of Lafayette is trying to combat this road rage-inducing phenomenon with $20 fines for poor parkers. But the move, which is designed to make better use of Lafayette’s limited downtown parking, might have some unintended consequences.

In his state of the city address earlier this year, West Lafayette Mayor John Dennis prodded President Donald Trump. This came after the mayor attended an anti-Trump rally held by women’s groups the day after the president’s inauguration.

Now, it’s not new for the mayor to break with Republican dogma and anger other GOP officeholders – just look at his tiffs with then-governor Mike Pence over same-sex marriage and the state’s so-called religious freedom bill. But pushing back against the president is a different sort of battle.

When Crawfordsville won the state’s Stellar Cities designation a couple years ago, the project was based around a building called Fusion 54, which would bring together many economic development entities in the city and county.

But when that project went out for bid, the price came back at least 50 percent too high. So what will that mean for the rest of the city’s plans?

We put that question to Todd Barton this week on Ask The Mayor.