Alejandra Guardia Muguruza, a Harvard graduate student with the Harvard Kennedy’s Transition Term program, poses a question Tuesday to Terre Haute Mayor Brandon Sakbun about the city during the students’ meeting with the mayor in City Hall. Tribune-Star/Joseph C. Garza
Alejandra Guardia Muguruza, a Harvard graduate student with the Harvard Kennedy’s Transition Term program, poses a question Tuesday to Terre Haute Mayor Brandon Sakbun about the city during the students’ meeting with the mayor in City Hall. Tribune-Star/Joseph C. Garza
• •
Terre Haute Mayor Brandon Sakbun made good on his promise to hit the ground running when he spent a chunk of his first workday in his new position meeting with graduate students of the Harvard Kennedy School.

Those students are in Terre Haute to brainstorm ways to attract young professionals to the area and, just as importantly, ensure that they want to remain here.

Harvard Kennedy’s Transition Term program allows students to apply their interest in government to work with and support newly elected mayors and other elected officials from across the country as they transition from campaigning to governing.

Alejandra Guardia Muguruza, David Clayton and Irum Malik will be in Terre Haute from Jan. 2-17. “They kind of found us, which is incredible,” Sakbun said of Harvard Kennedy, which was led to Terre Haute when it noticed national attention on Sakbun’s race on Politico and other national media sites.

“To be honest, when they first called, I thought it was a joke,” Sakbun admitted. “But university partnerships is part of our branding for this administration. They reached out and said, ‘We’d love to partner with your city,’ and like I say, Terre Haute is open and ready for business. We will seek out every opportunity to improve our city.” He added, “The fact that a top academic university found us through an article about a young elected official selling their city shows just how high we can go with proper branding and a good vision.” Muguruza, who came to the U.S. from Peru a year and a half ago, and Clayton, who earned his undergraduate degree from the University of North Carolina, both admitted they knew nothing about Terre Haute until they started researching the city. Sakbun said the students proved to be quick learns.

“They were pretty well versed for folks coming in for their first time,” he said. “We sent them some of our previous data that we used to draft the ‘See you in Terre Haute’ plan and other community plans — some they even found themselves.”

“It was great to get the information before coming to Terre Haute and look at the websites,” Muguruza said. “Coming here, we went on a driving tour with Josh [Alsip of the Chamber of Commerce], and saw [a lot] of what I didn’t know from those secondary resources, and seeing the city and how well connected it is, how many investments it’s attracting. It was a great surprise.”

Muguruza offered her first impression of Terre Haute.

“I really think it’s a great city,” she said. “It’s very big for what I thought it was going to be. I see a lot of open areas for people to walk around — you have parks, lakes, a river and I think that is something that I would be attracted to, especially after coming from places that are surrounded by buildings. Coming here, it’s great to see that.

“This is not a remote or rural area, you have a lot of businesses around, restaurants, pubs, culture,” she added. “We saw how much culture and history the place has, so I’m very excited to get to know other places in Terre Haute, as well. Those were big surprises to me. You can see nature, but it’s not crowded and there are lots of places to go.”

Muguruza said city park hiking trails and Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology’s high academic ranking should prove appealing to young people. “I would recommend promoting what you have here to get people to know it, and I’m sure they will come,” she added.

“I examined Sakbun’s campaign to see what he’s trying to accomplish so I could be prepared when I got here to help him accomplish that,” Clayton said.

“The first thing you notice is how many universities around here, which offers great opportunity. I love nature and hiking and the fact this is one of the top in terms of most parks per capita, I think that’s great. … There’s a lot of stuff around that can be leveraged.”

“They all have different experiences, running from infrastructure to climate [Muguruza] to a former employee of the U.S. Housing and Urban Development [Clayton],” Sakbun said. “We seek HUD funding literally every year, so what better than to have a former HUD employee here. This will be a good plan and presentation for how we can market to young professionals.” He’ll be taking the students to an Indiana State University basketball game on Wednesday evening. During their initial meeting, “We focused on what the mayor and his team expect from us while we’re here, what we need to focus on, what our end goal is,” said Clayton, who after working in county government and for the federal government, was eager to get a taste of city politics. “We’ll look into what other cities have been doing and how Terre Haute can expand on that and put our own unique flavor on it.”

Sakbun said he’s also working on a similar plan to make Terre Haute more appealing to seniors looking to relocate.

“We can have all the jobs in the world, but if they’re paying a property tax in another city or county, that’s a problem we should work to improve,” he said.
© 2024 Community Newspaper Holdings, Inc.