Ask The Mayor

It’s no secret the city of West Lafayette aims to look significantly different in the next few years.

The State Street redesign gets underway in earnest this year, with a major portion of the road set to close this summer. But what about the buildings along the road?

City leaders have approved several new mixed-use developments – some of them so tall they may need special clearance from the Federal Aviation Administration before ground is broken.

When the head of the budget-writing House Ways and Means Committee is from your city, there’s the temptation to ask for some carve-outs – hometown perks, if you will – in the state’s spending plan.

On a day with a sub-zero wind chill factor, a frigid breeze is a topic for discussion.

But in Frankfort today, it could be the wind itself that gets the cold shoulder at a meeting deciding the future of alternative energy in Clinton County.

Despite objections from Lafayette Mayor Tony Roswarski, the Tippecanoe County Commissioners have voted to move ahead with trying to create a needle exchange program in the county. This week, on WBAA’s Ask The Mayor, we ask Mayor Roswarski if there’s a way his community can fight both the spread of communicable disease and the rise in drug-related crime it’s seen in the past couple years.

West Lafayette Mayor John Dennis and Lafayette Mayor Tony Roswarski talk frequently about how well they and their two cities work together.

It’s a key selling point for Greater Lafayette, in fact.

But on the county’s proposed needle exchange program the two appear far apart.

This week on WBAA’s Ask The Mayor, we talk with Mayor Dennis about a notable disagreement between the two administrations.

Also on this week’s show, what will West Lafayette’s reaction be to the type of white nationalist rhetoric that showed up in posters on the Purdue campus this week?

When we spoke last month with Crawfordsville’s Todd Barton on Ask The Mayor, we parsed a proposed ordinance cracking down on bad behavior by landlords.

But in the intervening month, a WBAA investigation has uncovered even more fraud than the mayor or county officials appear to be aware of.

Also on this week’s program, nearly half of all Montgomery County voters chose the straight-ticket voting option at the polls in this year’s general election.

The city of Frankfort long ago identified State Road 28 as an area of concern.

The state department of transportation gave the road a topcoat of asphalt not long ago, but didn’t fix the underlying problems, pushing them off until 2019.

Now the city is trying to plan for that construction, but should it be worried the state will again kick the can down the pothole-laden road? We put that to Chris McBarnes on this edition of Ask The Mayor.

It’s been a week Democrats in Tippecanoe County and around the state would like to forget.

But pundits say there’s not much of a left-leaning pipeline of young candidates being groomed to run in future elections.

This week on WBAA’s Ask The Mayor, we ask one prominent Democrat – Lafayette Mayor Tony Roswarski – whether he sees a coming generation of politicos in his party or whether more disappointment is in store.

The mayor ruffled some Republican feathers a year ago by endorsing a couple candidates who weren’t Republicans.

This year, a state house race covering his city is one of the most watched in Indiana. Find out who the mayor has endorsed and why.

Like a lot of college towns, Crawfordsville has a high percentage of rental properties – almost half the town’s residences are landlord-owned.

Also like a lot of college towns, the city sometimes has to crack down on owners of derelict properties which see more than their fair share of police calls.

This week on Ask The Mayor, we talk with Crawfordsville’s Todd Barton about how he’s trying to tackle that problem.