Mayor Austin Bonta has made it official. He’s running for re-election next year.
Bonta announced on social media after meeting people during Tuesday’s primary election.
“After a third person says, hey, I didn’t see you on the ballot. What’s going on?,” it became time to clarify why, he said.
His post drew strong positive responses.
“I’m glad that nobody was groaning or anything,” Bonta said. “Social media gives you an idea of how people are responding to things in the community.”
So many volunteers have responded, including people excited about getting a sign. They’ll have to wait.
“Next year’s election season really starts in the fall of this year,” said Bonta, a Republican who will be seeking his second term.
“I’ve been maintaining my campaign finance records even while serving as mayor,” but he hasn’t been aggressive in seeking donations. That is about to change.
Bonta figures he’s accomplished a lot, but there’s a lot left to do.
One of his campaign issues in 2023 was that the city’s comprehensive plan was well past its expected expiration date. There’s progress on that front. The steering committee has held an initial meeting, with another planned next week. Bonta hopes that a charette, at least, will be held this summer to kick off the public input process.
He’s also excited about progress being made in creating the city’s downtown, something previous mayors have also talked about.
“We’ve been the third-largest city in the region for at least the last 20 years,” he said, and people want a walkable downtown in the middle of the city.
That hasn’t been the case, especially since the east side of the former Portage Mall was torn down.
People are going to the area already, however. A recent car show brought in over 2,000, and concerts and markets at Founders Square are popular. “That brings a muscle memory of our people, knowing there’s a downtown you can go to for events,” Bonta said.
Bonta’s team has spent the last two years working with Portage Mall owners to make it the starting point of the city’s transformed downtown.
“We had a parking lot that was a handshake deal years ago,” with the result that no one owner really could fix it. The answer isn’t to fix the parking lot but to remove it.
“It’s integral to build the kind of city we want to be,” Bonta said.
The first step is to build an alley behind existing businesses so they can finally have deliveries in the back. Creating a city street in front, with parking on both sides of the street, will create more parking than the current lot, he said.
“It makes it a smoother trip to those existing businesses,” Bonta said, and opens up the east side for future development, creating the first block of the new downtown.
“We’re moving to have that done beginning at the end of this year,” with completion of the infrastructure work finished next year, Bonta said.
The east side development could take four to five years.
“I definitely want to be the mayor who’s building that process,” Bonta said.
East of there are baseball diamonds that will be relocated to another part of the city within the next year or two.
The Halas Harbor site – the city is still calling it that, at least for now – drew a lot of attention to the city.
“If you look at the history of Portage, we’ve been growing south and to the east,” Bonta said.
Rather than sprawl out, Bonta wants to attract more development to the north.
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The 300-acre Halas Harbor site offers proximity to Burns Waterway and Lake Michigan as well as to highways and the South Shore Line. “We feel it’s a great spot for transit-oriented development.”
“It’s going to be a little while for that area to grow and be what we want it to be,” but Bonta and his team are working on it.
Building a bridge across the waterway is key to unlocking its potential.
“Most famously, we made our pitch for the Bears,” Bonta said. “We had 30 million-plus people across the country see our pitch,” and more importantly, they saw the potential that area offers.
Lou Weisbach, who had offered to help the city get financing for the stadium, hasn’t given up hope yet for the stadium. If the Bears ultimately decide to go with Hammond or Arlington Heights, the two front-runners, Weisbach said Portage could attract a baseball team and concerts.
“We are definitely looking for an anchor,” whether music-based or sports-based, Bonta said. “I think we’ve got a lot of attention. I’m looking forward to what comes of that.”
A big challenge facing Portage, as well as other cities in Indiana, will be to make the city financially sound in the wake of Senate Enrolled Act 1, which threatens to put municipalities on a starvation diet.
“The challenge is heavy, but we’ve already begun working on how we’re responding to it,” Bonta said, including consolidating departments and making other cost-cutting moves.
“I certainly think we’ve begun the process of figuring it out,” he said.
The state law passed in 2025 pushes cities to enact an income tax. This year, the legislature gave municipalities a one-year extension, to 2028, before being required to vote on it after losing a share of the county income tax.
“It’s one thing for the state to allow cities to create an income tax. It’s another thing to create a law that requires a city to have an income tax vote,” Bonta said.
He’s hoping to postpone the income tax for Portage as long as possible.
Even with the maximum income tax rate, some cities across the state would still have less money than before, Bonta said.
“I don’t think that forcing cities to be in the position that they’re forced to enact an income tax makes sense,” he said.
As newly elected chair of the Northwestern Indiana Regional Planning Commission, Bonta is advocating on behalf of all local governments in the region, not just Portage, in trying to persuade the Indiana General Assembly to reconsider SEA 1’s provisions.
“It might have had good intention, but I don’t think it created good results,” he said. “If a mistake was made, there’s two years to fix it.”
Doug Ross is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.