Ask The Mayor

The City of Frankfort recently received half-a-million dollars in donations for a park that Mayor Chris McBarnes hopes will revitalize downtown and bring new, long-term investment to the area.

But some detractors at a recent meeting say it’s as though the mayor is trying to buy a new car at a steep price when he could have fixed up the existing vehicle – the city’s other parks that some see as run-down – for far less money.

State lawmakers recently passed a bill allowing municipalities to regulate room rentals on websites like AirBnb.

That came after the City of Lafayette passed an ordinance with very similar language making people who rent their rooms on such sites pay a registration fee.

This week on WBAA’s Ask The Mayor, we’ll find out from Lafayette Mayor Tony Roswarski how many people have already registered and how the city plans to track down those who don’t pay the fee.

West Lafayette Mayor John Dennis – who had seemed ready to step away from the mayor’s office after this term, now says he’s leaning toward running again in next year’s election.

However, he might differ on a major topic of conversation from from one of his key allies, who’s running for election this year.

This week on WBAA’s Ask The Mayor, Mayor Dennis talks about the need to better regulate guns – a topic current police chief and sheriff candidate Jason Dombkowski has spoken somewhat differently about.

What may have started as a dispute with a Frankfort City Council member has become a letter-writing campaign for Mayor Chris McBarnes.

Frankfort’s chief executive is trying to both combat what he sees as false rumors about possible debt the city will rack up in his last two years in this term of office and speak openly about the problems the city faces.

In his state of the city address this week, Lafayette Mayor Tony Roswarski mentioned that drug arrests were way up, year over year.

Any time there’s such a large change in a number like this, the question becomes: was there more crime, were police focusing more effort on rooting it out, or both?

In college communities, there are often undercurrents. Frequently, it’s antagonism toward a rival school or a subtle desire to be more like another school’s town that's admirable in some way.

But in West Lafayette, it’s becoming increasingly clear there’s another, less savory undercurrent: bigotry.

In the 21st Century, it’s a bit of an open question how small-to-midsized Indiana cities will attract industry or grow their population base.

Gone are the days of a railroad or a new university creating a boomtown, so what’s a place like Crawfordsville to do?

The answer is probably not going to be “build a windfarm,” so perhaps instead of trying to grow the permanent populace, the city can try to attract visitors on more weekends.

On what seems like an increasingly frequent basis, Frankfort Mayor Chris McBarnes’ name is mentioned for other positions than the one he currently holds.

McBarnes declined to run in the special election for the Fourth Congressional District seat in 2016 when Todd Rokita ran for governor, couldn’t find much support from GOP leaders and then scampered back to his current job.

He wouldn’t enter the race to succeed Rokita as the congressman now seeks Joe Donnelly’s Senate seat.

There’s a meeting scheduled for later this month in Lafayette to talk about the city’s drug addiction issues. Registration to speak was so popular the venue had to be changed to accommodate more people.

This week on WBAA’s “Ask The Mayor,” we chat with Lafayette’s Tony Roswarski about what that says for a city that’s struggled to even keep drug use from growing in recent years.

West Lafayette Mayor John Dennis has talked frequently about how what he calls “market forces” dictate which stores and shops locate in his city, more than any recruitment effort ever could.

So as the city council tries to grapple with the impending closure of the only full-service grocery store on the Purdue campus, we’ll ask Mayor Dennis what that says about an area whose economy is supposed to be booming.