Your town
Cannelton voted 71 percent to keep its school in November 2025. A town this determined should not have to keep proving it deserves to exist.
In 2025 a state bill named Cannelton City Schools on a list of districts to dissolve, and a new law forced small districts to win a referendum just to keep their operating levy. In November 2025 this town answered: 71 percent voted yes, on a measure the superintendent designed so it would not raise taxes. In June 2026 the school board committed to meeting the state minimum teacher salary.
One of the poorest cities in Indiana defended its school with a supermajority. I take a simple lesson from that. Communities know what they value, and a legislature that keeps making river towns beg to keep what they built has its priorities upside down.
The state's 2025 road funding law ties new state road dollars to whether a city adopts a wheel tax, and the 2026 gas tax holiday pulls over half a billion dollars from the road funds that cities draw on. Either way, small cities pay. Cannelton should not have to choose between a new local tax and falling further behind on streets.
In April 2025 the Ohio River neared 49 feet at Tell City while the levee and the pump stations held. Flood protection is old fashioned government work, and Cannelton depends on it as much as anyone on this stretch of river. Keeping that infrastructure funded and inspected is exactly the kind of thing I will show up for.
Tell City gets most of the county's attention. This page exists because Cannelton should not have to route its needs through anyone else. Housing, blight, the school, the riverfront: you rank them, and I will work the list in that order.
What am I missing?
I need to hear more from Cannelton than any statistic can tell me. What should the state actually do here first? Be specific, and I will answer the same way.
Page last updated July 18, 2026.
