Good evening.

And welcome to our public works communic committee meeting for August 14th, 2025.

We will begin with introductions of counselors at on the bottom row to my left.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Mike Dilk, District 24.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Josh Bain, District 21.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Brian Mowry, District 25.

Thank you, Chairwoman Andy Nielsen, District 14.

Thank you, Madam Chair Nick Roberts, District 4.

Madam Chair, Ron Gibson, District 8.

Thank you, Chairwoman.

Jessica McCormick.

District 16.

Good evening, Chairwoman Jones.

Krista Carlino, District 11, West Side.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Dan Boots, District 3, Washington Lawrence Townships.

Thank you, Madam Chair, Councillor Jarrett Evans representing District 17.

Thank you.

And I am Kristen Jones representing District 18.

With consent, I would like to hear proposals number 247, 246, 247, and 248 together.

Good evening, Nathan Sheets, Department of Public Works.

And I've got uh 10 proposals before you this evening.

Starting with proposal number 246, 2025.

This authorizes intersection controls at 56th Street and Haverford Avenue, District 7.

Proposal number 247, 2025 authorizes intersection controls at Lynnhurst Drive and Mooresville Road, District 21.

And proposal number 248, 2025 authorizes a change in intersection controls at the intersection of Acton Road and Southeastern Avenue, District 25.

And if you have questions about those three proposals, I'll be happy to try to answer them.

Any comments or questions from counselors?

Anyone in the public who wishes to speak on proposals number 246, 220, 247, or 248.

Councilor Bain.

Thank you, manager.

Uh I motion that we move proposals 246, 247, and 248 to the full council with a do pass recommendation.

Okay.

It's been moved and seconded to send proposals number 246, 247, and 248 to the full council with the due pass recommendation.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Opposed say nay.

The ayes have it.

With consent, I would like to hear proposals 249 through 24 255 together.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Proposal number 249, 2025 authorizes a speed limit reduction to 25 miles per hour.

In the Canterbury neighborhood, that's District 7.

Proposal number 250, 2025 authorizes a speed limit reduction to 25 miles per hour.

In the Forest Hills neighborhood, district seven.

Proposal number 251, 2025 authorizes a speed limit reduction to 25 miles per hour.

In the Buck Creek Village and Cedar Park subdivisions, that's District 22.

Proposal number 252, 2025 authorizes a speed limit reduction to 25 miles per hour.

In the Diamond Place subdivision, that's in District 1.

Proposal 253, 2025 authorizes a speed limit reduction to 25 miles per hour.

In the Boulevard Manor Subdivision, District 3.

Proposal number 254, 2025 authorizes the speed limit reduction to 25 miles per hour in the Kessler Park neighborhood.

That's District 11.

And proposal number 255 2025.

But I can assure you the ordinance is correct.

This would actually authorize a speed limit reduction to 30 miles an hour between state and Emerson Avenue along Michigan and New York Street, and that is District 13.

And if you have uh questions about those seven proposals, I'd be happy to try to answer them.

Thank you, Nathan.

Any comments, questions from counselors?

Anyone in the public who wishes to speak on proposals number 249 through 255 Council Roberts?

Madam Chair, I move you send proposals 249 to 255 with the full council to do pass recommendation.

Second, it's been moved and seconded to send proposals number 249 through 255 to the full council with the due pass recommendation.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Opposed say nay.

The ayes have it.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Nathan.

Up next is our 2026 budget presentation.

The floor is all yours.

Sam and Director Wilson.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, members of the committee.

And I'm talking now.

Thank you, uh Madam Chair.

Thank you, members of committee.

Todd Wilson, Director of Department of Public Works.

Um, I'm very excited to um present the 2026 uh DPW uh budget.

This will be my first budget, obviously.

Um, and um there was a lot of work that went into to the development of this budget.

Um, as you all know, um the uh format in which we uh deliver the budget, it's changed a little bit this year.

So um although it's new for me, it's new for uh many of my staff as well.

Um in the audience, I won't ask them to stand because 98 percent of the folks here are my staff, um but I'd like for uh to recognize all the hard work that uh our staff does, the um Ask for You Ask Me Local 725 and the Engineering Department, the uh fleet services policy and planning and operations.

Um special thanks for the development of our uh fiscal package or our budget presentation, our CFO uh next to me, Sam Barris, our assistant CFO Margaret Wilson, um, Deputy Director of Administration, Lauren Stevenson, happy birthday, Lauren.

Uh Deputy Director of Engineering, Nathan Sheets, Deputy Director of Operations, Lacey Johnson, Deputy Director of Solid Waste, Sean Brock, and Deputy Director of Policy and Planning, the new Deputy Director of Policy and Planning, Daniel Stevenson.

Uh special thanks also to Council Liaison, Zach Adamson for all his help, uh Controller Abby Hanson, and the mayor's office for all their help in developing this year's uh budget.

And also like to thank uh members of this council for the time spent in meetings before this uh explaining what we're doing and getting feedback from from all of you for the last month, month and a half.

So thank you very much.

Um so for I know uh everybody in this audience understands the department as a whole, but for uh those who are on on uh watching abroad, I would like to kind of explain the agency uh in a whole.

Um we have our engineering division, which is responsible for the implementation of our uh one billion dollar capital plan, which includes streets, our stormwater conveyance systems, bridges, multi-use paths and trails, also our traffic control systems and lighting of of these assets.

Um we have our operations, DPW operations department responsible for street maintenance and repairs, street sweeping, levees and dam uh upkeep, forestry work, storm response, mowing, and trail maintenance of uh things that they do, along with uh um the what we call uh other duties not assigned event support as well.

Um we also have solid waste um responsible for the uh solid waste collection and disposal.

Um that's a residential and heavy trash pickup, leaf collection, curbside recycling, um, and we also do a Saturday trash drop-off at the Citizens Transfer Station.

Our fleet services are responsible for procuring, maintaining, fueling, monitoring, and repairing all of our city-owned vehicles and equipment.

Um keeping in mind that uh fleet services is funded through a charged back model through other city agencies, um, and then our final uh division within DPW's policy and planning, including finance, our legal functions, public information office, uh also houses the uh Office of Sustainability and the Office of Disability Affairs.

So this year is uh been a successful year as far as staffing goes.

Um you can imagine with uh 810 budgeted positions.

Uh this slide changes uh daily.

This uh information is two weeks old.

Um we are 88 percent uh filled positions uh out of the 810, and uh that is up from 84 percent filled just last year.

Um there are no new positions considered in this budget, but lines move uh between operations divisions, which uh shows a great example is how DPW has the ability to adapt to the needs of our our uh that uh of our our our uh community.

Um seeing knowing that 75 percent of our positions are union, um you know we've increased 10 percent in our union uh force for operations from eight 385 employees to 425 employees, and uh uh on our fleet side, we've increased 8.2 percent from 85 employees to 92.

And this is a direct reflection of the CBA uh salary increases.

Um our solid waste is from uh has 103 filled is uh slightly down from last year, 112.

Um, and right now we're saying 44 field positions out of uh which were 50 field positions in our engineering department last year.

Next slide.

And um, so this is another slide that just depicts the uh success of the uh collective bargaining agreement negotiations and and and the impact of that.

This graph shows the increase in filled positions for the uh with the new rates, uh a significant increase in DPW staff levels uh and the candidate pools in 2025.

Um also like to point out that salary increases will be uh going up annually by three percent uh between 2026 and 2028.

There's a lot going on on this slide, uh, but uh we're talking about staffing uh by demographics, and this is demographics by race.

There's an increase of 7.9 percent of black Hispanic and multiracial managers this year.

Um I'd also point out on the bottom left of this sheet there are four columns or tiers as a result of the collective bargaining agreement.

There was a fifth tier there, it was a lower tier that dropped off.

Um, and that salary range was from $15 to $19 an hour.

So that's a very, very positive outcome from the uh the collective bargaining agreement.

I'd also like to point out that 8 to 9 percent increase percentage in black Hispanic and multiracial employees uh are in those two highest tier brackets there on the uh bottom left.

The next slide will talk about the demographic demographics by gender.

Um of the things I wanted to note on this one is that uh of non-management staff, female uh employees average a higher salary than males on this one.

So I want to highlight some of our recent programmatic and and fiscal successes uh with this presentation as well.

You know, operations we we uh are planning to invest in our snow response uh as we will uh give you a full report here later this fall.

Uh and I don't know our spring fiscal implementation.

We uh are dedicating that funds for uh procurement of snow trucks.

Um those are the smaller uh five F550s, well, could do uh more uh narrower roads, the residential uh roads, collector roads, and also uh in non-snow season, they can be used for other operations like uh pothole filling.

Um I would like to point out that our street maintenance uh crews are growing to to match the growth of our trails.

Um the ASME uh collective bargaining agreement renewal in effect, and it's improved our staffing levels a great deal.

Um we are making also investments in our facilities.

We have a 1.5 million dollar uh influx of money, which uh includes you know uh some HVAC repairs, electrical, mechanical upgrades, uh new garage doors and training centers, plumbing upgrades, and bathroom remodels.

Um, and we still have uh some site visits planned to prioritize and allocate the additional funds for that.

In engineering, we want to um you know celebrate the record uh MPO and federal grant fundings we got.

Um most recently the MPO awarded the city of Indianapolis 35 million dollars.

Um I also want to highlight some of the uh construction in this season to highlight the 30th Street and Dr.

Andrew J.

Brown drainage project.

Uh we'll definitely impact that area with new roads and new sewer systems.

I also like to highlight the Madison Avenue Reconstruction Project with the multimodal elements on that one as well.

Um projects that are nearing completion here in 2025.

Uh the Nickel Plate Trail uh is on the verge of completion, and we've just opened up the New York Street and Michigan Street one-way to two-way conversion just this week uh for for that major project on the east side of Indianapolis.

Um, I like to highlight uh solid work uh solid waste.

There are all new contracts for solid waste this year, so that's a huge feat for that division, and we're we're happy with the outcomes.

We're also in the midst of building a new solid waste garage.

We're planning on moving in by the end of the year or Q1 of 2026.

Some of the things in that new solid waste garage that uh are exciting and important.

You know, we'll have locker rooms for our for our uh staff, training areas and offices.

Also, inside that uh solid waste facility is a truck wash uh bay, which uh will keep our our quick equipment um cleaner and help it last longer.

Um, and I know our folks at Solidways are very excited to be driving around with uh clean trucks.

Um policy and planning.

We want to uh we'll we'll highlight later the community powered infrastructure program, um, technology improvements and uh community engagement efforts uh that they've done.

As far as uh Indianapolis Fleet Services, uh we've been named in the top 50 uh fleets in North America, and I believe that number is around 25.

So, congratulations to our Fleet Services Department for that accomplishment.

Um, with that, not only operations uh experience some uh increased staffing levels, fleet services as well uh in regards to their collective bargaining agreement.

Um, on this slide, I want to point out too that I know it's near and dear to all of your uh your minds is the uh council request improvements for 2025, um, and we have selected three contractors for that work.

Um, we are currently negotiating with them, and we're planning on yet this month taking those contracts to the board for a work.

Um, and the contractors are are are very eager to get on the streets and get that work done.

Um, and they're gonna try to get a lot of it done here in 2025.

Um, and also want to point out you know um the efforts for you know fatal crash review.

Um we have implemented uh our myovigant technology and uh the uh vision zero program or task force uh will help out tremendously with that uh effort.

We're gonna talk about Indianapolis road funding investments, and you know, we got on the left all the investments that the administration had made since 2016.

Uh but to date year 2025, year to date, we've uh done 26 lane miles of resurfacing to note 3.4 miles of sidewalks, three miles of new trails, and uh successfully bid out four residential resurfacing packages in the last month.

Um they have been under design for uh a little over a year now, so we're excited about that work to start um here in the fall as well and continue in through 2026.

Community powered infrastructure.

What is it?

Umfrastructure is a 50-50 cost-share partnership program between the city of Indianapolis and neighborhoods.

Um there are three types of projects in the community powered infrastructure.

We're talking about tactical urbanism, art and a right-of-way, and Indianapolis neighborhood infrastructure partnership.

You may have seen these colorful and well thought out installations around your communities.

Um, those are in place for us to do some uh data collection and to see if uh those safety improvements are something that we would like to implement.

And I wanted to point out the community heights neighborhood organization did a technical urbanism uh project, and we are now in a design phase for that.

Um, this uh location for the community heights neighborhood organization is on 10th Street between Emerson Avenue and Arlington Avenue, and this project is uh well underway in design.

I also like to point out in the technical urbanism uh world is we we've developed what is called a lending library of items that uh residents can check out for free to use to uh implement these safety uh recommendations and in between 2022 and 2025, there were 10 technical urbanism and art in a right-of-way projects installed just in 2025 alone.

We've installed 11 projects and it's growing, and that um program will close on August 31st.

So uh we have a couple more weeks left in that program and it is very popular.

This year we received 14 applications for uh Indianapolis neighborhood infrastructure partnerships, and we were able to award 10 of those.

So we're excited about the ability to uh transform some of those neighborhoods as well.

Um a part of the community power infrastructure program is education, and we're develop developing a new three-part education series for the community powered infrastructure program here in 2025.

Our mayor's neighborhood advocates teams have already completed training, and further training will go out to city departments to commence this fall in 2025.

There's also a brand new community powered infrastructure resource guide.

It's gonna be it has been developed and it will go live here in the fall 2025 in advance of our next round of applications.

Moving on to community engagement and outreach, uh, you know, is very important uh engagement.

So our our greenway strategy implementation plan.

We've had folks at public meetings in May.

We've had folks at the Indiana State Fair promoting the uh greenways program, and also at our local farmers market here down on the circle.

Um so we're very proud about that.

Another uh opportunity for public outreach and engagement was uh definitely been on the Henry Street Bridge project just this July.

Um we had our fourth public meeting that uh on the Henry Street Bridge project, and that work is uh progressing quite well.

Um pointing out the Vision Zero uh program in late June.

We had our second Vision Zero Task Force uh meeting.

That's when the uh the action plan was presented, um, and then there was a period of public comment between July 1st and July 31st that has closed.

Um those that public feedback will be utilized to make changes to the action plan going forward.

Um also with that we've done community pop-up events where our Vision Zero consultants held 19 pop-up events in nine townships, and they received hundreds of citizens' feedbacks on infrastructure and safety improvements.

Part of uh our capital funding opportunities that we presented is uh for uh pavement marking abilities, so that will also support the vision zero uh program and uh much needed safety improvement at our intersections and our roadways, and then solid waste transition and recycling education.

Um this has been a huge year for solid waste again, and we're preparing our mayor's neighborhood advocates for outreach related to the new cart deployments or the the trash bins.

Um and uh we also are doing education outreach for our uh upcoming recycling curbsite recycling program.

Let's talk about 2026 goals, priorities, and outcomes.

You know, um programmatically uh we had a successful rollout again of our solid waste contracts, implementation of our new snow fight plan, and we're gonna jump start the design of our projects that will utilize the new state road funding in 2027.

We also always top of mind is uh safety and implementation of that vision zero action plan and the expanded scope of our fatal crash review team.

Um we are actively working on projects that were um that we received uh influx of money here for the spring fiscal on that technology is always uh top of mind as well.

I want to highlight our DOT software and ESRI.

The ESRI software is used for uh calculating impervious surface for our um stormwater uh collection fee and the DOT software we use for um modeling of our roadway networks and options on uh how we are to deliver our capital plan and different methods and budgets uh that apply to that facilities and equipment.

Uh we're gonna like I said move into our new solid waste of garage.

Um we'll have improved quality of workplace in our operations garage with the the help of our team doing those remodels and uh we're also replacing aging uh equipment and operations and this slide, you know.

Um there's a we're talking about looking forward to the transportation of our infrastructure in Indianapolis.

Um House Bill 1461 was a huge deal for the city of Indianapolis, and uh we're gonna have historic amounts of funding.

As soon as we uh found out that we had the opportunity to um spend this kind of money, we hit the ground running on you know what does that look like going forward.

Um so our folks have been working for the last two and a half, three months on our our capital plan, um, other ways of doing pavement preservation, um, and then you know, utilizing that data and creating scenarios uh on how do we present this and how do we uh get the best bang out of our book.

How you do that?

You you also do alternative delivery methods, and we'll talk a little bit about all of these bullet points here later on in the presentation.

Um I will turn this over to Sam, who's gonna talk more about the budget itself.

So thank you.

Yeah, thank you so much, Director.

Um Sam Barris, Chief Financial Officer for the Department of Public Works, gonna be giving an overview of our 2026 operating budget from both a revenue and expense standpoint.

Um, because we are a dedicated fund agency.

I always like to start with revenue.

Uh, but when I say dedicated fund agency, what I mean is we have specific revenue sources that are kept in their own funds and can typically only be used for um certain purposes defined by state law or local ordinance.

Um and so our revenue forecast is very important because the amount of revenue growth we have directly informs how much more money we have available to spend in our next operating budget.

And so what you can see on this slide here is a list of some of our most important revenue sources.

This is obviously not a comprehensive list, but um these are the biggest sources of revenue for the department.

The next couple slides go into a little bit more depth on some of these, so I'm not gonna dwell on it, but the big picture is if you add up the the changes from the 2025 adopted budget, the increase here is about five and a half million dollars.

If you factor in some of the other smaller revenue sources not listed here, you get up a little bit above six million.

And so that is our constraint when we're looking at our 2026 budget and and how we can uh build a budget that is balanced around those revenues.

So our most important source of revenue is MVH LRS distributions, more commonly referred to as gas tax.

This slide tracks um our 2025 collections against what we received in 2024.

As you can see, it's it's higher, it's higher by about three and a half percent or 1.7 million dollars.

Um this is important because that informs what we're forecasting for 2026, which you can see on this slide.

So going left to right, we received 73.5 million dollars in 2023.

There was a significant jump into 2024 resulting from Senate Bill 283, which corrected a an issue with Indianapolis's population count in the state road funding formula.

So when we talk about residentials funding and the $8 million, this was the basis of that.

And then in 2025, we're trending for eight towards $84.3 million, that's above our original $83 million budget, and we're forecasting $86.4.

Um, part of the reason you can forecast growth is due to the um gasoline excise tax and special fuel excise tax um rate increases pursuant to state law that go into effect uh July 1st um each year.

The solid waste user fee.

This is a $32 a unit user fee that is uh added to uh payers' tax bills.

Uh this fee is maintained.

The database is maintained by the department and we continuously update it throughout the year.

You can see uh since the pandemic, we've made significant efforts to make sure that that database is capturing uh especially new units coming online.

Um this is a year-round effort.

I'm really proud of our team's work in keeping this up to date.

The stormwater uh user fee, another departmental administered user fee.

This is based off of impervious surface area, so we measure how much impervious surface area each parcel has, uh, turn convert that into a um user fee amount.

Most payers pay it through their tax bill.

If you don't get a tax bill, you get a manual bill in the mail.

Um as you can see, the revenue growth has been fairly stable from this revenue source.

Uh we are uh constantly looking for ways we can improve our measurement, so we are incorporating some new technology into the process this year, which we hope will further refine what we're measuring and hopefully lead to a uh more perfectly up-to-date um uh counting of impervious surface area.

So, with that said, uh jumping into our expense budget, and and like the director mentioned earlier, there's some changes to the way uh this information is presented based off of uh we are as the controller mentioned during her remarks earlier this week.

Um we are uh pilot agency for program-based budgeting, so you'll see some breakdowns in this section that you're not used to from prior years.

Um that is a work in progress.

We're happy to have the conversation here tonight, and it's something that we think we'll continue to get better at going into the uh future, especially with feedback uh from tonight and and onward from this council.

So, with that said, there are dozens of different ways you can slice or dice uh our budget.

Um, each tells a slightly different story.

So, what you see on this slide is a comparison uh between the 2025 adopted budget and the 2026 introduced budget by major fund grouping.

Um I chose this way because it's helpful for me to understand our budget, and I hope it's helpful for you too.

So that first line, our operating funds, that's that's our funds we normally talk about with you, like transportation, parking meter, solid waste, stormwater, etc.

These are funds where most of our personnel expenses are paid.

They're subject to lapsing at the end of the year, so if money doesn't get used, it typically reverts to fund balance.

These are uh our most standard funds.

Um within that group, we have $6.2 million of projected growth.

Um there's some bullet points there.

I'm gonna go into more detail, so I'm not gonna talk them to death here, but the the broad strokes, $2.2 million for character one, 1.3 million for fleet charges, that's fuel, that's maintenance.

Um million dollars for contractual increases, that's existing contracts with uh rates that that escalate that we can forecast.

Um then there's a 1.4 million dollar increase for operations capital that I'll obviously talk about in more length, and a $300,000 increase to the Tox Drop program specifically, which I will also hit on here a few slides down.

Fleet services, this is it, as the director mentioned, a chargeback uh funded funding source.

So the total top line budget numbers can kind of be confusing to look at, like it says that's adopted budget is 2.89 million dollars.

I broke it out on the line below so you can see the cost without the chargeback distorting things.

So you can see we're spending um or planning to spend $36.9 million on fleet services characters one through four.

Increases are driven by um character one and uh ISA building authority charges.

Uh next you have capital improvement funds, and I want to be very clear there's capital spending happening in other funds here.

These funds are specifically set up to manage our transportation and stormwater capital plans that we'll talk about later.

That is their exclusive use, there's no character one costs in here there for the capital program.

You see a $10 million increase that's driven by a local income tax appropriation included in this budget.

Uh that is for us to get a jump start on planning for the uh aforementioned legislative change that we're going to talk about a little bit further down in the presentation.

Um and then on the last line, you'll see grant and federal funds.

And I I break these out here because they can have a distorting effect on how you look at our budget.

These funds are hard to budget for because they're based on specific projects, bid time timelines, reimbursement schedules, and so they can kind of base up or down based on your forecast of which projects are going to be reimbursed in which years.

Uh to me, this you know this is also our our second year of budgeting for the state exchange program, which is really kind of more of an accounting difference in how we receive funding from the MPO.

Um so this this negative 4.6 million, I just want to say, as the director mentioned, our last MPO funding round was our biggest ever.

We're still managing several very large federal grants.

This reflects more of a budgeting process and accounting difference than it does a real change in any federal policy landscape or anything like that.

Next, you have our budget, total budget broken down by character.

Once again, you can see that the numbers the same: 257.4 million dollars, net change of 10.8 million.

Uh the the reasons for the change are the same as what I talked about on the last slide, so I'm not going to dwell on them, but just with the character one, uh that includes both fleet services and changes for DPW operational funds.

The character one changes driven by 2.6% cost of living adjustment for bi-weekly employees, uh contractual bargaining agreement adjustment of 3% for union employees, health care costs adjustments, and for the first time, um DPW's explicitly budgeting attrition in our budget.

This is a very common practice for other city agencies.

This is our first year doing it.

Um the collective bargaining agreement that was signed late last year was agreed to after the 2025 budget was adopted.

Um so at the time we knew we could afford it because of historic analysis of our underspend.

So we were informally using attrition in the 2025 budget.

In the 2026 budget, we're formalizing that on paper in the budget.

So the whole CBA is now actually officially accounted for in this budget that we're asking you to approve.

So from here on out, what we have is a slide or a couple slides for each division.

The director mentioned were made up of five different divisions.

And what we've done here is we've we've showed each division's budget by character and program.

And this is a different display than what you're used to seeing in previous years.

And so I expect you'll have questions about it, and that's that's a good thing.

And I don't think anybody wants that.

But I will try to hit on ones that I think are warrant some more explanation.

And so capital planning and administrative, that's our personnel cost for engineering, internal chargebacks, software licenses, community-powered infrastructure.

We talked about that earlier.

I think people are used to hearing about that program.

You have stormwater and transportation capital.

Those are catch-all for our road and stormwater capital programs.

You have the downtown one.

I some of the labeling of this, I think I foresee making changes to going forward.

That is funding associated with parking meter funds.

So technically broad ripple would fall into that umbrella too.

Um things like the Monument Circle Brick Repair contracts are paid for out of that program bucket.

Um and then grant making, uh that is a uh contract that actually DMD holds with downtown Indie Inc.

for some uh programming uh taps into the parking meter fund as a a uh funding source, and um that is why it is reflected on our budget, not DMDs.

In terms of new stuff for engineering in the budget, I already talked about the 10 million dollar local income tax appropriation, and and the director is going to talk about preparation for new road funding in the capital section, so I'm not gonna dwell on it here.

Not included in these numbers would be the 10 million dollar supplemental appropriation that would go alongside the budget to supplement our strip patching effort.

So just want to be clear, that's still happening.

It's addressed in the capital plan later.

It's not in the operating budget numbers because it's not part of the budget ordinance.

So, but just wanted to call that out here specifically.

Um, and then I already talked about the grant uh adjustments.

Uh DPW operations, total budget of 68.17 million dollars.

There's a lot of different functions within DPW operations, and I think that the program codes actually are a useful way of seeing what all of those different things are.

I will note that again, this is our first year of doing this.

In some cases, it was easy to categorize costs this way, in other cases it was not.

So, just to give you an example, street sweeping includes the cost of the people that actually sweep the streets, operate the equipment.

Um, special events, snow response, uh, those do not.

So those those personnel are broadly included in that street maintenance and administrative category.

Um, and the confusing part here is of course the same people that help uh facilitate special events, plow the streets, fill potholes, um, those are the same people.

So there are ways that we can, I think, peel back the curtain on showing how their time is allocated, and I think this has been a useful uh first step in that conversation, but it's only a first step, and it doesn't tell the full picture of how much is really going into those specific categories.

Um the snow response one just for reference, since I mentioned it, that's mostly made up of uh salt salt costs, um, contractor uh money, and again, um no actual personnel in that number.

Um as I mentioned, the the biggest ticket item here in a lot of cases is excuse me, personnel uh increases, and so you see the cost for the new CBA, you see fleet chargeback increases uh included in their budget.

And then before I get to equipment, I did just want to mention um there are while there are no new FTEs in the budget, that doesn't mean that we're not recalibrating things on a rolling basis, and and director Wilson alluded to this earlier.

Um, through a couple reallocations of previously vacant lines, operations has supplemented two different groups that we think are important and responsive to current needs.

So one is the trails maintenance team.

Um, in light of investments by council through Circle City Forward Phase 3, grants from the Lilly endowment, there's been a lot of investment in our trails network and from the MPO, I should mention.

And so maintaining that is as a high priority.

The stuff's only good as it can be maintained.

And so the graph on the right shows uh I think a helpful story.

When we were presenting this budget a year ago, that team was currently seven FTEs.

Three positions were added through the 2025 budget process, bringing it to 10, and now through through line allocations, um that team will be up to 14 FTEs.

Um, and and we think that that is a very important allocation of resources to make.

Second, the pavement markings team, this is a direct response to our ability to respond to things like high injury network, Vision Zero type recommendations where having a team be able to go out, put pavement markings out like crosswalks or stop bars is very helpful.

These folks actually can utilize one of these like one-ton type pickup trucks that we've uh outfitted for Snowfight.

They can use it for the rest of the year to haul pavement marking equipment.

I think both these are really good examples of DPW operations' ability to adapt to current needs and meet the moment using resources that they have.

And next, I I want to talk about operations equipment budget.

And before I get into the details here, I just want to say I'm really excited to talk about the information that you see on the slide.

This is an important budget for the department from a road funding perspective and in terms of new capital projects.

Equally important to that is our ability to maintain our streets.

And this is a direct response to the need to accelerate our ability to do that.

And so what you have here is a 1.4 million increase in operations character for budget in their operating budget.

For specifically equipment, there is a small portion of this funding that will be tagged in 2026 for some stuff related to the Tox Drop program that I'll talk about in a second, but the vast majority of it, 1.2 million is for equipment needs.

This will allow us to go out and because it's in our budget on an ongoing basis, actually put more pieces of equipment on realistic replacement cycles, go out and do capital equipment leases where we can pay back the cost over several years, get more bang for our buck.

We think this is a really important investment.

This would include things like snow trucks, uh pavement marking equipment, like paint liner trucks, uh vehicles needed for special events, and of course, street maintenance equipment, like for what the work that D4 does on residential streets.

So that's an important investment, but alongside that, um, I did just want to note the $2 million from the spring fiscal, which this council allocated to the department.

We've ordered 14 one-ton snow trucks with plow packages and salting capabilities, like you can see on the top of the top right corner of the slide here.

We hope and expect those will be available to us for the winter season this year because of the timing in which we got them ordered.

That will approximately double the number of these type of vehicles we have in our fleet.

These are what we use to plow things like uh bus lanes, um, in some cases bike lanes, and importantly, our connector network of streets.

So we think this is a really important investment that will expand our capabilities and give us more options when it comes to winter weather season.

Next, as the controller mentioned in her remarks earlier this week, uh there is money uh earmarked from a general obligation bond issuance for the department for equipment needs.

Again, the the main idea here is larger snow trucks, street maintenance equipment, like the larger snow trucks, like you see on the bottom right corner of the screen.

Uh the the investments you see here on both an ongoing and one-time basis are an ideal combination to be able to quickly catch up in terms of vehicle replacement.

Um, I mentioned um maintenance costs a couple times in this presentation.

This is this is how we address those costs.

I mean, when you have old pieces of heavy equipment that have been on the road for well past their useful life, those are obviously expensive to keep on the road.

Um, this is a direct response to that, and and hopefully with your support, we can get this done and make these important investments.

And since we're talking about snow, I do just want to add our snow response plan uh will be brought before our board of works this fall.

Um this committee will hear that plan later on this year as well, prior to the winter weather season, we'll address how we're planning to handle weather events this winter and going forward, and we're excited to have that conversation with you as well.

Solid waste from a program perspective, the biggest program here is residential waste collection.

Um that makes sense.

It's our main contracts for picking up trash, it's most of our employees.

Uh, that admin category, I think we can probably find better ways to allocate that.

That's covering the reason it's so big is that our our maintenance costs are in there, and we've got you know almost 80 large trash trucks, those are expensive.

That includes things like fuel, those could probably be mostly allocated to residential waste collection.

Um you also see um like things like leaf collection, the recycling program broken out, um, downtown litter pickup by the teams that go out there and do that work.

Um in terms of the 2026 budget, the main change going on is we have a lot of new contracts, and we've talked, I I presented um to this committee back in March on the new contract selection for residential trash.

But there's other smaller contracts that were recompeted as well for things like condo pickup, pickup of containers at recycling drop-off centers, all sorts of things.

And so the 2026 budget obviously needed to be built around those new contracts.

On the right, this slide was included, that graph was included in what we presented back in March.

But the new contract with LRS for residential trash pickup is considerable savings to the city on trash collection.

The gray bars show the projected annual savings growing from seven to ten million dollars by the end of that 10-year contract from what we would have paid if the old contracts would have just been continued on in perpetuity.

So obviously this is a budget hearing, but we're very comfortable and happy with how those transition conversations have continued to go.

And as mentioned, there's a big public outreach effort underway about informing people about cart changes and things like that.

Oh, I should also say not included as a budget increase, but there is uh because we have trash trucks funded on these lease repayment cycles, we do have funding freed up from an old lease to go out and procure some more solid waste vehicles, and we'll do that in the next six months as well.

Policy and planning, this is our our own kind of internal services agency.

There's a lot going on under the hood within policy and planning that I don't feel like is completely captured here.

Um policy and planning includes the director's office, uh communications team, uh Office of Sustainability.

It includes DPW finance, and of course, our our core policy and planning team that manages uh technology implementation projects, department wide strategic efforts.

As Director Wilson mentioned, we have a new deputy director of policy and planning, Daniel Stevenson.

We're very excited to have him on board and in that role.

Um, and the other thing that policy and planning includes in the budget is the Toxdrop program, which you can see here broken out.

Um the note of the tox route program.

We've heard consistently um loudly and clearly that the current schedule of tox drop days is insufficient.

Um so we made uh getting additional funding in this budget for the Toxdrop program a priority.

It includes an additional $300,000 in ongoing funding for uh staffing and disposal costs related to those events.

That's enough for an additional 12 events per year, supplementing the funding that we already have.

And in addition, the operations capital budget, part of that uh uh one to two hundred thousand dollars of that will be used for one-time setup costs associated with developing a new site on the east side to replace the one that went out of uh offline late last year.

That process could take a little bit given the fact that you're using the site to deposit hazardous waste, and there's some procurement um things you have to go through first.

But in the meantime, any additional funding that's approved would be used to supplement days at the existing locations to hopefully alleviate some of the traffic and congestion pressures we're seeing at those sites.

Um, and so we hope you'll uh we'll have your support on this expansion as well, and we're we're happy that it's included in the introduced budget.

Fleet services, um, again, I kind of talked about this earlier and the chargeback structure.

That administrative and other category, again, caveat, work in progress.

Uh that includes the personnel that work for fleet services, so all the people actually working on vehicles are rolled up into that total.

Um other things like building authority charges, ISA charges, stuff like that as well.

Uh commercial, you're seeing uh contractual vendor-based repairs parts, pretty self-explanatory.

Um that's the end of the divisional section.

Just to touch on grants, because I brought them up earlier.

There's a number of large federal grant opportunities or external grant opportunities contemplated in this budget.

They're listed here.

We've talked about many of these at our committee presentations, so I'm not gonna dwell on each one, but I wanted to note that these are our have the budget is oriented around these dollars.

And just to note this, grant funds are subject to council appropriation.

That's why they're in the budget, um, even though they're tied to specific project work.

Um on the DPW capital improvement plan.

I'm gonna I'm gonna cover a few of the standard table slides that we we always present, and then Director Wilson's gonna talk about some stuff that we're doing, looking forward to get the most out of our money.

Um, so first and foremost, uh I apologize for the sizing of these slides.

These are always hard to convey in presentation format.

Uh, hopefully you can see it in front of you.

The transportation capital plan includes 1.087 billion dollars of funding.

That is a uh approximately 230 million dollar increase from the equivalent document that we presented to you a year ago.

The reason it's bigger is because this explicitly incorporates the additional uh state funding, the $50 million a year into this plan, as well as additional revenue commitments from the city to match those funds.

The reason it's not a clean $300 $30 million bigger is because you're comparing different years.

It's 2025 through 2029 instead of 24 through 28.

Um if not for some of that additional funding, 2029 would have been a smaller year than 2024.

So I just wanted to clarify that that is reflected in this plan.

Um this table shows a breakdown of uh expenditure categories.

This are are rolling up a lot of different things, obviously.

Um I'm not gonna go through each one, but of course, we're happy to answer questions about any of these expenses.

Um the stormwater capital plan seen here, 156 million dollars of funding over a five-year period.

Um this is this is a little bit lower than the plan we presented last year.

Of course, the a big difference is that um ARPA funds uh were eligible to be used for stormwater projects.

There's still a little bit of lingering project work happening there for money that was obligated, but um for the most part that's why you're seeing a slightly scaled down version, although it's it's not drastically reduced.

I did just want to note that there is a um there are numbers in here on the line of credit line reflecting a new planned $50 million bond issuance.

That's not a new feature of the capital plan.

I just wanted to convey that it's still included in here.

And then you have your same expenditure breakout by uh by category for the stormwater capital plan as well.

Um we included our XBE spending data like in previous years for comparability.

I'm not going to dwell on the information here, but of course, we're happy to answer any questions you have about the data.

Um then this graph is a graph that we typically include in this presentation as well.

I think a version of this showed up in the controller's presentation the other the other evening.

You can see the trend.

Uh, this is this is showing um planned capital funding in the first year of the capital plan over time and the growth from 123 million dollars in 2017 through 279 million dollars in this year's capital plan.

So um we think this is uh a really remarkable accomplishment um working together with with this council in making these investments.

We're excited about the future and our ability to grow these numbers further.

Um I will just note that that that final out year, 2026, is the hardest to forecast for because we typically only include things for like TIFF when the funding's locked in.

So when we presented this same graph last year, that 2025 number was uh closer to 260 million, so it tends to grow um once the numbers are updated in real time.

Uh so with that, I'm gonna turn it back over to the director.

Thank you very much, Sam.

So I guess this is where the rubber hits the rope.

Um, I uh I would be remiss if I didn't mention that, you know, uh having an opportunity to take the job as a director of our department of public works.

I had a big focus on the uh engineering side of things and the capital plan uh and our infrastructure and how that's uh how how we manage that.

Um very very pleased to, you know, a couple months after starting this, have the opportunity to uh experience as historic amounts of funding, like I said earlier in the presentation.

Um I'm gonna point out that on a map that you see here uh we started development of uh this uh capital plan from 2027 to 2029, shortly after we you know uh got word of the new developments with the state where they reformed the community crossings and matching grant program and and and kind of siloed the city of Indianapolis out of the state uh where we are eligible for $50 million as long as we match that with new revenues of $50 million for a total of $100 million each year going forward starting in 2027.

Um and then also in 2027, the states uh adjusted the funding for uh the distribution of money for lane miles lane miles.

Um this map also shows a potential emergency strip patching um locations in response to additional funds allocated for our budget of 10 million dollars starting uh in 2026.

Uh these uh potential emergency strip patching locations were derived from not uh projects that we don't currently have uh planned in our our our our capital plan.

Uh we've also used data to uh figure out where those locations are.

Um we've used pothole data and PCI data.

Um so uh very excited to deliver uh this uh capital plan for the city.

Now moving on to resid our residential program.

I'm proud to say that you know we've invested 103 million dollars in our residential uh program since 2022.

Um and that also includes uh recent bids that we received here in the last month.

We've uh uh bid out four uh residential uh construction uh packages, and um that's gonna include about 75 street segments around the county.

Um and we'll have uh a couple of those, two of those resurfacing packages awarded by the Board of Public Works yet this month.

Um I also like to know the uh led service line replacement program that CEG is uh mandated by uh the federal uh government.

Um we are collaborating with citizens energy group to um get the most bang for our buck on both sides.

Um to kind of explain what I mean as far as collaboration when the utilities are working in our right-of-way, um, if they disturb so much of the the roadway, they're responsible to repave that lane.

So let's say uh CEG goes in and replaces all this led service lines in the neighborhood, they will only be responsible for the lane that they disturb.

So now we can go in and actually partner with CEG.

They spend half their uh they spend their money on one half of the road and we spend money on the other half in a row, that will make those neighborhoods whole when we talk about resurfacing those roads.

Um that's this that's a game changer, if you will, um, for us.

Um it's it's gonna make uh give us opportunities to stretch those dollars much farther than they have in the past.

Um and you know, uh we also like to talk about um pavement preservation and how we are determining you know our data-driven approach to our selection of our our our projects.

So our next slide will talk about um that data-driven approach.

Um we use the DOT software, it's called decision optimization technology.

Um it's tailored for public sector asset management planning.

Um it allows for asset lifecycle modeling, project prioritization, scenario planning, uh predictive forecasting, and budget optimized optimization.

Now utilized in that uh data uh decision optimization technology or the D DOT software.

Um we we've inputted what we call a pavement prioritization algorithm.

That includes not only PCI data that we typically would use for our decision making process when we select our our our plan, but it also includes uh roadway traffic volumes, it includes mayors action center complaints, pothole data, and it also includes uh crash uh data as well.

Um those are all data points that are we are using now to come up with our capital asset management plan going forward.

Um also you know what types of uh treatments are we gonna use on our roadways.

Um, you know, in the past we had a select uh let's go to the next slide, please.

In the past, we've we had uh select uh options, and it's mostly on the left side of this this uh screen here.

The mill patch and overlay, the structural mill and patch and overlay, the full depth reclamation, uh, all the way to crack slow and those are the things that were in our are in our toolbox that we currently do.

Um we are looking at other things to put in our toolbox like micro-resurfacing, those are thin overlays, uh, anywhere from uh inch to a half an inch.

Um fog seals, you know, help uh seal up the road.

Um, cape seals is is a uh combination of chip and seal and a fog seal operation, and then chip and seal operations also we kind of will utilize more in our our rural areas of the of the county.

Um that that payment app optimization technology uh software will help us determine how much money we want to spend in each one of these buckets or categories going forward to help uh enhance the health of our roadway network and increase the life of our roadway network as well.

Umcluded in that, you know, we we that's fine.

Uh we can go to the next slide.

Included is uh alternate delivery methods and how how do how do we procure our work?

Traditionally uh we would do the design bid build scenario, but we are looking at other options that you know um the state has allowed us to do now uh these public-private partnerships or or build operate transfer uh scenarios.

We can do design build now, not necessarily on the roadway networks, but if we're contemplating doing things for our facilities, um uh a build a design bill uh model would be great.

And then uh construction manager as contractor or CMCs, um that helps us uh deliver projects a little faster.

It uh it reduces the risk for us as an owner on that, it kind of spreads that risk between the owner and the contractor itself.

So um excited about the next uh four or five years for the city of Indianapolis and all the work that we're gonna be able to get done.

I also want to again thank everybody in the audience, all my staff for all the hard work that they have done uh over the last year.

Um I'm six months into this as last Sunday, and um I I'd like to truly say that um this is already the one of the best jobs I've ever had in my life, and I couldn't see myself anywhere else uh at this point.

So that being said, thank you very much uh for your time, and um we are here to answer, try to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Director Wilson.

Thank you, Sam, for your presentation and all your hard efforts.

Colleagues, questions?

Counselor Bain.

Thank you, madam chair, and thank you, Director, for the uh thorough presentation.

Really appreciate the time that you all put into presenting all of this data.

Um, for me, when I think DPW and budget, first thing that jumps to my mind is infrastructure.

How much are we spending on roads?

Um when I look at capital plan transportation, I see streets and I see 102, a little over 102 million dollars.

I also see federal aid streets, so combine both of those we're looking at a little over 110 million.

If someone were to ask you, how much is the city of Indianapolis spending on fixing our roads?

Is that the number you would give them?

If somebody were to ask me how much money are we fixing the planning to plant spin to fix our roads next year?

I think our capital plan is 279 million in 2026.

Is that a correct number?

Well, capital plan transportation, it's 216 million.

But I mean, there's trails on there.

Uh I know I someone asked me how much how much are you spending on fixing on roads, you know.

If I were to throw in how much we're spending on trails, I feel like I'd be misleading them just a little bit.

So, like when it comes to actual roads, lane miles, how much are we spending on that?

Sam, would you counselor?

Um, we obviously we can get you detailed breakouts of the capital plan, however, you think they would be more helpful.

We can get you capital output information that shows actual like uh miles repaved and things like that, and we're happy to follow up with you on those requests.

Uh these categories, of course, there are projects that span like there are road projects that have walkway components, there are there are trails projects that touch asphalt on streets, so it's not easy to look at this and just give a very simple answer to that question.

Um, you know, you you have the the breakout in front of you, and I mean um, you know, broadly this this would be a helpful tool in answering that question, but I would like to um you know probably follow up with you on a specific answer relating to output on roadways.

Okay, yeah, I would certainly appreciate that.

It'd be it'd be helpful.

It's the number one question I get uh when it comes to the budget.

And um the other thing I wanted to touch on was agency staffing.

Um when we see DPW operations, is it fair to say that's union employees?

Yes.

Okay, and it looks like when it comes to union employees, we've been doing a really good job.

We are staffing, and you know, so kudos to ASME and all the work that they're doing for that.

Is there any particular I guess subdepartment within DPW that you find it most challenging to hire?

It looks like just from this um chart here, it's engineering where it looks like it's over a 25% vacancy.

It is.

Um, and and engineering has always been uh a really hard to staff uh since I've been around with the city since 20 uh uh 2011.

Um it's just the the market and being able to keep up with the private sector and the city of Indianapolis.

If you had additional engineers, would it be fair to like what is that vacancy costing us?

The fact that we're 15 engineers down, does that mean we're not able to engineer as many projects and therefore we're not able to fix as many roads, fix as many intersections, fix as many culverts.

Is that the result of having 15 vacancies?

You know, I I I could say that you were probably right.

There's there's a little bit to that as well.

Um we do have uh consultant staff that we have embedded with the city as well.

So I don't not necessarily the output is a result of this staffing because we do have resources at hand.

Um so I I think it's a hard question to answer as well.

Um if our outfit is is directly uh a result of our staffing.

Now, our staffing just went down this year, right?

Uh at this significant level.

Last year it was a little higher.

Okay.

Counselor, I would just also add, you know, a lot of these positions in engineering are are highly specialized technical positions, and there's there's obviously paymatters to people, but also you need very people with very specific backgrounds, so the amount of time vacancies can last can just naturally be a little longer as you look for that exact correct person that's good at you know municipal engineering work as a specific skill set.

And also I just want to clarify with DPW operations, um, our supervisors, superintendents, those types of employees are actually not union, so it's a mix of union and management.

Okay, I appreciate the clarification on that.

And I think just maybe one or two final questions here on staffing, and you probably know where I'm going with this.

There's been a proposal introduced to eliminate the residency requirements in Indianapolis.

We heard last night from multiple department directors how much of a hindrance that is.

Would you say it would be beneficial to your department and the staffing challenges that you have if that residency requirement was eliminated?

And for these highly uh skilled, very specific um jobs that would be beneficial for you if you could hire from outside of Marion County?

Yes.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Any other comments, questions?

Chairman Boots, thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Director and Sam for the presentation.

Very thorough.

The more thorough it is, the more questions I have.

So I will uh save half of them for offline and just throw out four if I may, madam chair.

Um does everybody under DPW's umbrella make at least $18 an hour?

Who knows that uh counselor?

I would have to look so typically when we look at at pay rates like on our grade scale, where we're looking at things on an annual basis.

Um it's hard for me to say whether every single employee makes over $18 an hour, but I can probably get you an answer while we're maybe even sitting here.

Not a great rush, but I would would appreciate an answer.

Um you'd mentioned that there were it's bullet pointed in the presentation that the parks maintenance uh costs have been taken from beneath DPW and charge to parks.

Any idea of the ballpark costs that have been switched from DPW to parks for maintenance?

Counselor, could you I'm sorry, could you repeat the last part of that question?

Just you mentioned in the presentation that some costs for park maintenance have been moved out of DPW's budget and moved to parks.

Any idea of how much we're talking?

Uh if I if I said that, I don't remember precisely what I said.

So parks maintenance is housed in DPW.

It's funded from a mix of of parks fund dollars, but um that only makes up about 60 percent of the money that's going into DPW grounds, which is passed with maintaining parks.

The rest of it is coming from a mix of stormwater funds, transportation funds.

Um, and so um there's there's been no change in the budget with the this the breakdown of which fund is funding DPW grounds.

It's it's static essentially from status quo.

Okay, I'll I'll find that point and try to clarify that for you.

Um in the community crossing matching grants, my understanding was that there's two or three buckets of money in that program.

Can you clarify to which bucket is this new formulation based on lane miles, which has been you know our big battle cry for years about road funding?

My understanding was that that application of that algorithm was applied to just a small portion of the grant program.

Um I'm mistaken on that understanding.

So counselor, you can see a couple different lines.

I and I again I apologize for this slide.

I know it's hard to see, and hopefully you can see it in front of you.

But on the transportation capital funding slide, you can see two different lines.

Um about midway down from the page, you can see um state match to new revenue starting at 50 million dollars in 2027.

And the line below that you can see four million dollars on a line that says lane miles distribution, which is I I believe what you're referring to.

Okay, I'll I'll follow up that with with as well.

Um final question.

I know we're buying a new uh line striping truck.

Is that doubling our fleet, or are we just replacing the only one the single one we had?

Uh yeah, so counselor, right now uh our pavement markings team operates um one paint truck at a time.

We have a piece of equipment that is um 20 years old, and then we have a backup piece of equipment that that that can be brought online, but because of the age of the equipment, they're they're we're typically operating with one truck.

So um, so this would put us in a better situation where we had a new piece of equipment that's more reliable, and then potentially also the ability to supplement those efforts if we can if we could uh continue to utilize one of the older pieces.

Um the pavement marking equipment.

I'm glad you brought that up because that is that's a huge priority for our operations division, um, not only just because it's important in general to have updated pavement markings, but especially um in relation to conversations about safety um and our ability to respond to those in timely fashion in a cost-effective fashion, using our in-house cruise is is a lot more affordable on a cost basis than contracting all that out to an external company.

Okay, and then just on a uh personal selfish note, um I love the fact that the Kessler Boulevard near my home was totally redone, resurfaced um a couple months ago, uh, getting great compliments about it, but no one ever came back and put the striping on it.

So there's just that very sporadic marks and and people get confused, they don't know where the turn lane is and what have you.

So if you could maybe get that some of that equipment out there and finish the striping on that new road, that'd be wonderful.

Yeah, we'll get that done.

Thank you.

And counselor, just an update um from our deputy director, Lauren Stevenson on her birthday.

No, we didn't we do not we do not have any uh full-time employees that make less than eighteen dollars an hour.

Um there are uh interns budgeted in our our department that are just under great, thank you.

Happy birthday.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Evans.

Thank you, Chairwoman.

Um happy birthday, Lauren.

Thank you.

Director, I can't do the line we already celebrated next.

Um director and DPW staff.

First, I want to begin by saying thank you.

Uh recently, I've had quite a few illegal dumpings, and I think there are it looks like I said the solid waste crew, they've been responsive and picking those up, and I mean like 24, 48 hour, 72 hour at the latest.

Um so for anybody watching on TV, continue to report those to the Mac.

I have a few questions, so I'm gonna just break down a few here and then move on.

Um the MPO funding.

Well, I think now is this what we're characterizing as the calling it state exchange?

Is that the MPO, what previously used to be MPO funding?

Correct.

Counselor, it still flows, it's still um the MPO is still a part of the process, but the way the money comes to the city and the way projects are bid did change, and that that is the state exchange program.

I can go into it a little bit more if it would be helpful, but no, that's fine.

As long as I know that that's the funding source.

Um, can you speak to what I'm trying to understand on that?

We had a record breaking, would you say this year was a record-breaking year for the most MPO dollars that we've gotten?

Um is that increase directly related to the bipartisan infrastructure bill from a couple years ago?

Are they funding that is that where those revenue dollar that additional is coming from?

Yeah, so counselor, the these are different revenue streams.

So the bipartisan infrastructure law did create a constellation of programs that have competitive grant applications, usually through a notice of funding opportunity and NOFO.

And we do have multiple grants through those programs, but the funding that comes through the MPO is um federal formula funding that was um previously existing, it's authorized by these surface transportation bills through Congress.

Um it's not a um they're not new programs.

Okay.

So with that, what is the criteria?

So if we're we had a record year, we got more dollars than we have.

It sounds like the the funding from the MPO has stayed, I think, pretty steady overall for the whole program.

Um if if the bipartisan infrastructure bill is not included in that, what's led to us getting additional dollars out of that?

Because in the past, I've been somewhat not critical, but concerned about the MPO funding because it doesn't seem like we get our share of those dollars.

Is this for new projects?

Is the money being spent on uh previous projects that need to be refurbished, redone, things of that nature?

They're typically new projects, we'll get an answer.

Nathan Sheets CPW.

Um I'd like to say that I think we are more competitive uh now that we're um we're actually looking at our projects and kind of pre-scoring them before we submit them.

And so we actually compete with uh all the other LPAs that are within that MPO region, and and I don't have the the figures on me directly, but I can get them.

I think this last call for projects, we received more than 40 percent of the total allocated dollars, uh which which is which is great.

So we're just doing a better job of submitting applications for those funds.

Uh I believe so.

Okay, that's great to hear.

Um I'm trying to understand your guys' revenue sources here.

This is the most I've ever seen uh on the capital plan transportation.

You guys have uh a subset here for down or for TIFF.

Then you have one for economic development DMD.

Can you explain that?

Sure.

Because I would think DMD would be to Yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna give I'm gonna give an answer and then we might get additional information here from our other staff.

But um you're correct, there are a few different lines here that are similar.

Um the economic development projects are typically ones associated with with specific um DMD-led efforts um where DPW has a role in bidding infrastructure.

Uh other other TIFF funding here um is more of a planned uh ability by the city to find ways to utilize TIFF funds to supplement our capital program.

It isn't necessarily tied to specific infrastructure problem uh projects.

Uh most of the DMD stuff, or possibly all of it, already has, for example, a um MDC resolution that's passed, like allocating funding to a specific purpose.

Um, and so I think you're correct.

There are a lot of lines on here.

I think it's probably possible to roll some of these up in a way that makes this first of all easier to fit on the screen, but also more helpful.

What I'm trying to, like as I'm looking at this, and something I try to do with the public, is to educate them on what is the annual revenue sources versus one-time spending or things that we're bringing in from grants or TIFS, things of that nature, because I think the um the $50 million match, for example, I I assume now we want to include that as a part of our annual revenue sources, assuming we have that match.

Um and then that sort of was going to lead into uh with that $50 million match.

We we obviously see a huge increase in spending.

Where does this leave us at the deficit that we have in the city with regards to infrastructure?

So this this assuming we get this hundred million new dollars worth of revenue coming in in 2027.

Is that going to put us in a situation where hey, this is enough to maintain what we have today?

Or is it going to put us in a situation where we're still 50 million, 100 million dollars short, just to maintain the current infrastructure status that we have, not addressing the backlog that we know that we have.

That's a I think that's a great question.

And um, I don't know if I have a uh a solid answer for you, Counselor Evans.

Um is the 100 million dollars a year the end all be all no.

Uh I think uh we our infrastructure needs are much more than that, and I think we all know that.

Um is gonna it's gonna be a significant shot in the arm for our communities.

Um we're gonna see with that hundred million dollars, we are gonna see a lot of construction around the city.

Um, and uh that's gonna be one of the things that that uh we're gonna get complaints about more now than before.

Uh but uh I I I couldn't give a number on you know where that that hundred million dollars is gonna get us and um how it's going to impact the health of our roadway network.

Something uh I would just ask, it doesn't have to be done in budget season, but uh clarity on that would be good for us to have as a council specifically knowing what is the gap, what's the delta um for our roadway repair and resurfacing uh to counselor Bain's uh questions and comments earlier about spending on our roads, this is what we are getting beat up on consistently from our residents.

Um I'm a huge advocate for trails, so I'm not saying that we don't do that, but what I am trying to figure out is how short are we that we should be spending every year to maintain the infrastructure today.

And I'm saying that today's quality, right?

And then what's it take to get us up to the next level?

Yeah, because I don't think it's characterized as fair in a lot of the residential areas.

Um then I think someone mentioned it, and I believe Sam, you may have already said you were gonna do this, and that was to provide us how many lane miles and resurfacing and reconstruction are we doing in this 2026 budget for that, and then Madam Chair, I'm gonna be quiet and let someone else go.

Thank you.

Councilman Corn.

Hello.

Uh no feedback.

Good.

Hi, thank you, Chairwoman.

Uh thank you for the presentation.

Um, congratulations, you finished your first one.

You're almost there.

Um, a couple things, and then I have some questions.

So um I'm excited about the the new technology with advancements and road paving and stuff, I think to extend the life.

I think that's a good area to look for investment to new areas that we can do that.

So kudos on that.

Our new solid waste contract includes recycling, correct?

Yes, for all residents.

Yeah, counselor.

So the new res of the new solid waste contract uh for for collection with LRS goes into effect in 2026.

It will begin with a transition of trash pickup and subscription recycling pickup.

Um in beginning in 2028, that contract also includes the rollout of a universal curbside recycling program that would apply to residents that receive trash pickup um in the city, and so LRS would service all districts, not just the contracted ones, they would also pick up recycling in the DPW districts as well.

Um okay, thank you.

And I kind of have two more things.

Uh looking at our future investment um from what happened at the State House with 1461.

Um, I don't see, and I know not all excluded towns and cities, um, not all roads in there are DPW's responsibility, but there are some.

I know in um speedway, there are some roads that I think really do need attention, and I think there's that crossover, so I would love to have that conversation.

Um, and then my biggest point, and I will say this until I'm probably blue in the face, uh through down some numbers on math.

So when we're talking about our solid waste contracts, if we go like I wrote them all down on the page, slide 27.

Um so when we are looking at our numbers, uh our new contract is gonna be about eight dollars a month per house.

Uh we which for a year that's 96 dollars.

Our residents pay, we pay $32 a year for pickup.

So we are paying a third of the cost, and so that additional cost, we are transferring funds that we could be using in other ways at DPW, I think.

So as we're talking about conversations as residents, we need to think about the services that we're receiving, and um if we would pay a little bit more for our pickup now that we're also getting that trash or the recycling component with it, I think that that's an area where we can look to uh increase this revenue with the 50 million dollars new money that we need and the other burdens that we're gonna have across the enterprise.

Um, I think having those conversations is important.

Um, and so on slide 17, it said the projected fees income was 9.04 million.

So if we just pay to break even as residents, that would be an additional 18 million dollars that we would have annually.

Um and so I just think that as we're having these conversations, I'd encourage my colleagues and other folks to um explore this.

Thank you.

Thank you, Counselor Nielsen.

Uh thank you, Chairwoman.

I I won't be long, I know we're coming up at an hour and a half.

Um, so I have just a couple of quick questions, a few um requests for review and analysis as well.

So actually I'll just start there.

I wanted to add, I know the request for Chairman Evans uh asking about how many uh lane miles of residential we're doing in this budget.

I'd like to ask for the same metric for the strip patching budget, both in the base and the $10 million addition that should take us to 16 million.

Um that would be very helpful.

Um I do appreciate that you had in the budget kind of an estimate of the uh lead service uh lane replacement.

I was gonna ask that, but then I dug a little bit deeper.

Um one of the other uh comments I was gonna make is uh on the tox drop piece.

I I know we've talked about this a lot, and I know you'll provide this in the quarterly update, but uh just encourage you to keep keep us up to date, uh socialize that it is something obviously with that third location being closed.

Um that was in district 14.

I hear a lot about it.

So just I appreciate y'all finding a way of bringing another one online because that's a very necessary service.

Um so then the two questions I'll ask uh first one's for Sam.

Sam on this on the CIP uh CIP uh excuse me on the capital plan.

So the 26 transportation bond, is that the one is that the next draw on the previous uh bond that we authorized?

Uh what was it?

Keep keep me honest here.

Was that last year?

Last year, yeah.

Yeah, okay.

Counselor Nielsen.

So, first of all, um we owe more information for a review and analysis on projected um mileage for strip patching and resurfacing, and we will provide that.

Thank you.

I did just want to point out this this slide here um that we have up on the screen, slide eight, does speak to cumulative investments and a lot of those outputs as well as 2025 year to date.

Obviously, it's just a partial year, so it's hard to compare, but you can see um some of the outputs here on that slide, and if you have questions about them, we can bring those questions to review and analysis as well.

Um, regarding the transportation bond issuance, uh, that so you saw that 40 million dollars in the transportation capital plan slide.

So, yes, last year, council authorized up to 90 million dollars in new debt issuances for road bonds.

50 million of that was issued towards the end of last year and is being deployed into the capital plan.

The other 40 million of that has not yet been issued, um, but the authorization is still good.

We said at the time, you know, we were gonna issue the 50 based off of project need and timing and evaluate financial conditions in the future on the 40.

Um, you don't want to borrow money that you don't need immediately because you have to start paying interest on it.

So we're continuing to evaluate the timing of that issuance.

Uh thank you, Sam.

Yeah, I know we've we've discussed that at length here in this committee and an admin to, I believe, but just for the public's awareness with the other bonds that are up for authorization by council.

Just want to be sure the public is aware of that.

Um the final question, I appreciate you bringing this in, and and this may be for director Sam.

I know Leandre's here as well.

Um appreciate your participation director in the Vision Zero Task Force.

Um, you know, Chairman uh Barth and I and Councilor Cahill uh also as representatives on the as council representatives on the task force, and I know we we talked a little bit about um some of the we're in the midst of developing the action plan and the implementation of that.

Um I know you touched on some of the things that will be kind of vision zero focus um, maybe not necessarily on the capital side, but what are some other um vision zero uh action plan items that you know the department is looking to implement in 2026?

Yeah, I think that would be a better answer from LeAndre.

Um thank you, counselor.

Um, as you know, the action plan is still being in development right now.

Um from a DPW perspective, we're looking at policy changes right now.

My the division I serve is policy and planning.

So meeting with our engineering team to kind of outline some policies that we can look at to address that doesn't have any cost-effective impact, but rather than a more holistic approach.

And so those are the conversations we're having now.

I will also say that as we're developing this plan, we are revitalizing and revising some of our action items based on based on the public feedback.

So as we make these adjustments, hopefully we have some more outline in the future.

Uh thank you, Andre Leandre.

I appreciate that.

Yeah, I think you know, one of the objectives of the action plan is uh obviously these are not uh either policy decisions or infrastructure improvements that just lie on the responsibility of DPW, but you know, the action plan being a a guiding document for these conversations.

So we'll continue to be advocating that those items are in here.

I know it's something that it's gonna take a collective effort in this building.

Said that ad nauseum, so I don't want to uh beat the dead horse tonight, but um appreciate those comments and and working with you all to pull more into the budget as well.

So thank you.

Thank you, Chairwoman.

Thank you, Councilor Cahill.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Uh couple questions here.

Uh well, first uh comment.

Thank you on the tox drop uh improvement.

Uh I uh it as much as uh counselor Nielsen uh laments the uh the loss of his uh Tox drop site, I don't want the district 14 residents to have to come down to district twenty-three and wait in long lines on a Saturday.

So thank you.

Uh this one I sent this to Zach, but I uh for for the project for mine, but I I want to say this more for uh for others that have the safe safe streets and roads for all uh awards through uh that I know that Indigo received the awards, but obviously DPW does the work.

Um I really haven't heard I have I have one of those in my district, but I have not heard anything since the award announcement, and I guess it's certainly my hope that we will have some community engagement to talk about the planning and design uh because it was my understanding that there was some flexibility in exactly how that could be accomplished.

Uh, but we are several months since the award, and I don't think we've had an invitation to have a discussion on those yet, so I I would appreciate that if we could.

Um to follow up on uh counselor Bain's question on the residency.

Uh I think this is more for Sam, and it's it's speculative, but when looking at labor expenses, whether that attrition, uh, uh staffing challenges, the the the challenges we previously solved, uh and it was mentioned here that we previously the the successes we've had are largely a result or attributed to the increase in pay that we that we uh added.

Is it fair to say that if we had greater flexibility in residency uh restrictions that we might not have to always pull the lever of increasing pay?

Would that would that decrease the pressure on that?

Counselor, I'm I don't have numbers on uh obviously it's hard to have numbers on something that you don't know how often it happens, so you know how many people would apply for a city job, whether in DPW or otherwise, that that are held back by that.

I I it's really hard for me to speculate.

Got it.

Okay, thank you.

Uh the township road funding, there's two million dollars in the 2027 uh budget.

Uh it's my understanding, I I forget which of the the several state laws shifted where townships, if they have uh uncommitted funds, they they shift those to uh us basically.

Uh is that what that is?

Uh and I guess is that are we budgeting because I I would tell you that in uh Perry Township, they have no intention of giving us any money.

They will they will uh they they intend to encumber all of the funds so as to not transfer it to us.

Uh but I am curious what what was the basis for that?

Yeah, counselor, that line you're noting um is reflective of the policy change that you're talking about.

Obviously, the forecast of how much of that would actually end up being transferred is very speculative, and we've been pretty conservative with what we would forecast as that transfer, knowing that the timeline um might change the behavior of how townships govern um their finances.

So um I think I can get you if you if you'd like I can get you more information about how we're looking at that situation.

I um at this point would just say yes, it's reflected in the capital plan.

Yes, we have a conservative number in there knowing that what you just said is is likely the case.

Got it.

All right, thank you.

Uh the uh just this one's just more of a curiosity.

The XBE numbers, the the roll-up that I I added those up and they add up to 100%.

And I guess to me that seems a little surprising.

Do we not have vendors that check more than one box?

Like, for example, uh, is there it is the veteran is the VBE not potentially also a DOBE, and are there not simultaneously minority and women owned businesses.

It it seems odd that that normally that doesn't add up to 100% because you could be both.

You you can be three, you can be a minority disabled veteran.

So yeah, um, but it would go to uh satisfy the the highest percentage, which is okay, I got it.

All right, thank you.

Uh and then uh I I only have two more things, and one's just more of a layup for you guys.

But this is the this is the more complicated one.

The capital plan, this hundred million dollars.

So I see the uh state match to new revenue in 2027, the 50 million, and then I see the COET supplemental funding 25 million, and the base budget goes to 20, and so on and so forth.

What I'm trying to understand is how is it that we we're talking about a hundred million dollars in new funding, and yet when I get down to the funding sources total and expenditures, and and I I get that there's other that there's a lot of moving parts and pieces, but there's nothing it does not appear there's anything approaching a a new base level that's a hundred million higher.

Like the numbers go 255, 217, 218, 220, 227, 168.

Like it feels like if there's a hundred million more, we ought to see.

So, counselor, yeah, you're you're asking a good question, and I think a lot of that has to do with more the nature of this document and what we're able to forecast with any confidence.

You'll see in the earlier years that there's a like referenced earlier, there's a lot of funding in here tied to one-time sources, economic development projects, um the 40 million dollar bond issuance that counselor Nielsen referenced.

So those funds are showing up in the beginning of the capital plan because we have some level of confidence and being able to forecast that they're they're real revenues that are gonna support transportation infrastructure in the city.

As you get further out, that confidence isn't there, right?

And so we don't have those specific one-time sources and the out years.

So if you look back at previous capital plans, you would in almost all cases see the out years as smaller than the than the earlier years.

So you're you're making a good point.

I I will say, you know, if you if there's other roll-ups we could do of this where you're looking at kind of core ongoing revenue sources, and I think this speaks to to counselor Evans's point, maybe something that we need to work on communication on this document for.

Um, you you would see a substantial increase in those if you weren't factoring in the DMD stuff and the TIFF stuff.

All right.

And uh final thing, this is I think I hope this is gonna be a layup for you guys.

That you uh director, you spoke about the uh design build as a uh new option, and it it's my understanding that that was what you uh and I I don't know if that was the first time we did it, but on the Prop 283 projects, I believe you did implement that, correct?

That you you selected contractors under a design build rather than design bid build to expedite to help us get those done.

Is that familiar with that?

The Prop T 83 projects would be the million dollar projects from the previous year.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

So yeah, we are definitely using alternative delivery method for those projects that uh you all selected um by doing uh uh mini scopes, um, getting contractors uh we submitted a request for proposal, um, three contractors uh replied, and um now we're negotiating those those those fees, right?

Those costs right now with them with them.

Um so yeah, that those are that another examples of ways we can uh actually expedite our our our processes and get these projects on the road quicker.

Yeah, that's that was it.

So like speed to market, I guess I would call it that these are gonna it they they went from an idea to actually happening in pretty record time as far as DPW stuff goes.

Yeah, I don't know um that uh one of the counselors uh on Sunday was questioning you know the the time it's taken to get through this process, you know, uh typical design design development is a minimum of a year process.

Uh and and when we're talking about uh working on federal related projects, that process of four or five years, you know.

Um so uh the ability to be nimble and deploy different methods on our project deliveries is gonna be very helpful, especially with the influx new money coming in.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Gibson.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and uh I want to thank uh the director and the CFO for a very thorough presentation.

I I've said this often, uh DPW uh makes the city work, it makes the city open, and I think it's equally as important as as public safety, and happy to see that uh your revenue sources uh the dedicated revenue sources is uh keeping you afloat and would uh also include some some increase there, so you don't have to take that decrease like uh some of the other agencies are doing.

I I I uh I think you mentioned that uh there's projected uh three percent increase for raises, and is that it just DPTW staff are they also uh asked me as well?

Yeah, counselor, so the 3% is uh an increase for union employees spelled out in the CBA.

The first year that CBA was more of a catch-up based off of a market analysis that went into effect in 2025 and 3% going forward.

And then there's a 2.6% cola in the budget for all biweekly employees as well, as well as adjustments for things like health care costs and PERF and things like that.

Good to hear.

Thank you for the confirmation.

Um I uh wanna commend the mayor and your team here about the preparing for the additional uh possibility of the 100 million dollar revenues and uh forecasts and the 10 million dollars are set that stage in in place, if you will.

And I I uh value that you're gonna use data driven to help you drive in terms of what those projects are.

And I'm glad to see that the pavement condition is one of those uh drivers.

My question is is is that weighted somehow?

I guess uh I guess you got various uh sources that'll be taken in uh vet data sources that'll be taken into consideration to determine which roles would be resurfaced or paved.

Yeah, and we are we are doing uh awaited uh on those data points, um, a weighted scenario.

Um, you know, I think uh the the obviously the PCI is gonna be the highest.

Um uh the uh average daily travel be our our our next one, and then the MAC complaints and the crash data is gonna be down there towards the uh the lower half of of the weight.

Good, that's good to hear, uh, especially when I get uh some very, very old roads in my district, and I'm certain everybody does, but uh that's good to hear that uh there's some significant weight where where it should be.

Uh my final question uh uh gentlemen is um when I look at the XB spending uh and it's encouraging, but my question or thought process is uh how do we grow uh more MBE uh opportunities here?

Uh that's a great question.

And I I I wanna start by saying that um the Department of Public Works uh throughout not just the state of Indiana, but uh nationally, we have hit you know um XBE percentages higher than most.

And I'm very very proud of that and the efforts that our Office of Minority and Women Business Development put out and the and and our are actually our contracting community here as well, not only the contractors but the consultants as well.

Um I think uh it's uh an education um piece.

I uh recently uh was on a panel at the uh Indiana Black Expo uh conference to do just that to get that word out to uh potential vendors that would like to know how to do business with the city of Indianapolis.

That's good to hear.

And um, when I think about um you know how to recruit and uh the thought that uh we currently are hire uh our citizens that live in Marion County.

I just gotta believe that uh over a million people live in this county.

There's got to be qualified employees uh that live in this county, and it's good to hear that you you're you're looking at even on the minority and uh in terms of vendor trying to explore that even equally.

So uh thank you for very much for that.

Thank you, counselor Lee.

Thank you, madam chair, thank you, Director, um, this evening for your for your presentations.

Um, you know, every year this is a a lot to go through.

I appreciate some of the questions from my colleagues, especially with regard to some of the numbers and the budget.

And I know every year we go through when we budget dollars for projects that have yet to be designed, yet to be bid out and things of that nature, but um how can we as counselors as we go through the budget process be able to look back at where our projects currently, where do those dollars sit as they're in waiting for design process and things like that, especially with regard to those programs that are in the CPI INIP loop that are in partnership with the community because those are typically supposed to last a year, the process is supposed to be around a year, and um with dollars we appropriated in 2022, uh the town of Claremont in 2023 applied for some sidewalk projects, and we still sitting here in August of 2025, don't have dates on the calendar for those projects for sidewalks in town.

Um, and that's really disappointing.

I know that there are some issues with contractors and things like that, but it's difficult to get excited to appropriate another 1.5 million for community projects when we've been waiting years for community projects that the town has been waiting with their 50 percent in hand um since that application.

And so can you talk a little bit about how we can get uh better updates on that as counselors, maybe through um you know Zach Adamson or others, because I've had great communication with managers and and admins, so that that's not the complaint, but I think the communication with the community and and things like that would be helpful, and to know across the city on this committee, um, what are where are the statuses of some of these projects and where do those dollars currently sit?

Um thank you, counselor, for that question, and I I will agree with you.

Um, our department um and you know, we always need to be able to learn how to communicate uh more effectively uh with not only you uh but with the general public on project statuses and and you know and development.

So continue to ask those questions in our committee meetings, um, you know, uh continue to uh reach out to Zach.

Um Zach is a a great resource, not only for us but for you as well.

Um and you know, yeah, they there some some of these uh community um partnerships, uh the the projects are a little more difficult than meets the eye sometimes, and um and we have to we have to deal with that as well when we talk about for instance uh community wanting brand new sidewalks in their uh community and you know they they're they they do get excited uh about the opportunity to put their hard-earned money uh uh where where their miles are.

Um and we need to have a do better at communicating what our capabilities are going forward.

Thank you, and thank you, madam chair.

I appreciate that.

Um I think it was not new construction of sidewalks.

Um I believe it was like curb repair, something like that, having not seen the application um in several years, but yeah, I think that's just concerning and to think, Madam Chair, that um some of these projects they only really pop up and live for a year.

There are some um projects within that will live on for years, and so we are waiting though for those for years as well, and we'd love to see those as soon as possible.

The hope I know is this fall, but to wait until the spring of 2026 um is quite a leap for a program that should not last that long in any way, shape, or form.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And for the counselor who is spending his birthday with us, counselor Roberts.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

I was saying we have double birthdays today, so I'll keep this brief just for the sake of time.

Um thank you again for the really thorough presentation.

All these numbers were fascinating to look at.

I'd never seen it broken down like this before, so I thought it very interesting.

One thing that's piqued my interest that I was curious on is on page 26 for the solid waste page.

There's 550,000 allocated for downtown trash and litter pickup.

Is that the same program with the economic enhancement district, downtown Indy, or is this separate?

How does that partnership work out?

Thank you.

Counselor, so this this is again this is within our solid waste um division.

Uh it is not the same as the the what did you just say?

Could you repeat what you just said?

The economic enhancement districts like downtown Indy, like litter picker up programs separate.

No, this is this this is this is separate.

This is um specifically, I don't know how many crews we have.

Sorry, what yeah?

Okay, so this this involves both our own crews and also includes funding for thank you for uh uh Margaret for the the correction.

This also includes some funding for keys to work um who we use to supplement our existing activities um and their you know exclusive focus is is making sure um litter doesn't become an issue in the core downtown area it within the budget is there a separate line item that I miss it for because I know like on Binford Boulevard within D3, you know, there's like a lot of cleanups with keys to work.

Is that a separate line item or is this just for downtown?

So there is a lot there is a program called out under DPW operations, and uh you see that first one cleanup activities.

Uh they let me pick some of these names, and I uh maybe not the best uh clean it but programs, something to work on.

Uh that includes funding for a big part of that is keys to work, which again is a big part of our litter abatement efforts, whether uh near roadways or on other DPW are on grounds like parks, things like that.

So that's that's what that includes.

Gotcha, thank you.

Thank you, Counselor Bain.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Appreciate you coming back to me.

Uh did not want to hog the mic at the beginning of the meeting.

Um, but uh following up on what uh Chairman Evans was talking about when it comes to how much are we spending every year?

What does it cost to maintain our current infrastructure?

Uh I really want to say it'd be helpful if we um did another asset management study similar to what we did around 2020.

If we look back at those numbers and HN TV did that study, um if we were to just want to maintain our thoroughfares in Marinette County, it was 330 million dollars.

If we wanted to include residential streets in that number, it was 752 million dollars.

And if we wanted to include sidewalks and pedestrian bridges, it was 1.2 billion dollars annually that we would have to spend, and that's pre-COVID pre-inflation numbers.

So it's one of the reasons why I introduced the amendment last year to the budget to start tackling that um because it is a daunting number.

Um wanted to circle back on the um contractors.

This number came or this question came to me um just a minute ago.

When it comes to outsourcing our engineering to contractors, is that more expensive than having our in-house engineers work on engineering projects?

Um, so I want to clarify too.

Um, we do not do uh much in-house design work.

We're we're mainly a project management, and we manage uh our consultants, and so um some of the in-house uh project managers are helping us manage uh outside consultants as well.

Um, you know, uh so that that's that's the kind of the differentiation there.

Okay.

Um appreciate that clarification.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Boots.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Uh, and I promise these would be my last questions.

Um looking at your slide eight about the 2025 to date, when we talk about sidewalks, um, and even since 2016, my understanding has been there is no per se budget for sidewalks.

That when sidewalks that 3.4 miles is adjacent and new road construction that you do not just go into an area that currently has no sidewalks and put sidewalks in.

Is that accurate?

For the most part, yes.

Uh that that number of uh miles of sidewalks are dedicated or attached to a lot of our um roadway uh reconstruction, road grade resurfacing projects, um, just to get a uh holistic um I guess impact on on that that area and and fix the the broken infrastructure that we have a lot of places.

Has there ever been any policy considerations of doing a sidewalks and initiative, or is that something you leave for the INIT programs, or because uh we all have neighborhoods in our districts that come to us on a regular basis saying when are we getting sidewalks?

Yeah, I and I think that conversation is similar to the conversation with Ali's, you know.

Um our our our funding is you know dedicated to our roadway infrastructure.

We don't get funding for sidewalks, we don't get funding for the alleys, so um it's a it's a hard trade-off to put money towards something that we desperately need the money for our roadways.

All right.

Finally, um we talked about the delivery uh mechanisms on your last slide on slide 43.

Have you ever uh investigated the build-to-own models for the construction of things?

I know there's some municipalities and our doing countries that are counties that are doing some considerable projects on build-to-own basis, and I've had certain developers come to uh me and ask why isn't Marion County doing that?

I'm not familiar with the term build to own, but uh maybe maybe referring to uh build operate transfer BOT.

Um, and yes, we are actively working on uh two projects uh with that model.

Okay, which are those?

Uh we had our fountain square, um it's a sewer project that starts in uh late 2025, early 2026, and the uh White River Innovation District, Alancro project is uh BOT project as well.

Great.

I appreciate that.

I had my acronym written down wrong, BTO versus BOT.

So thank you.

Counselor Evans.

Thank you, Chairwoman.

Uh, real quick question.

In your slideshow, you have gas revenue being at 84.3, but in the uh book it's like 20 some of the million dollars.

What's the disparity in the sorry counselor in the budget book?

Yeah, and the the gas tax revenue that you see here is actually, and I'm trying to get to the slide last slides.

Um the gas tax revenue comes in the form of actually six separate lines in the budget.

There is a city distribution and a county distribution, there's an LRS distribution, which has one specific formula, and then there's an MBH distribution and further complicating things.

MBH is split between an MBH restricted fund and an MBH unrestricted fund based off of state statute and what percentage of that funding has to be spent on certain types of roadway investments.

And so I don't know, I don't have the budget book in front of me, but my guess is that's a portion of the gas tax revenue, unless I'm misinterpreting the question.

Um, I think that's I think what you probably explained is probably I'm looking at the 2026 revenue gas tax.

You're projecting uh 86.4, and then under the capital plan transportation.

Ah, so maybe it's because it's broken down by capital plan.

Okay, got it.

So on the transportation capital plan, there's a number that shows 23.8 million dollars for gas taxes.

That the okay.

So what we're showing here is is gas tax revenue that's specifically being transferred into our capital development fund.

Gas tax is used to support um uh expenses.

Pay we call we refer to what shows up here in the capital plan as PAYGO Capital, it's an annual contribution to the capital plan, but it's also supporting debt service on um road infrastructure projects.

You don't see that in the capital plan because of the the way it's displaying information, but we have close to 18 million dollars of debt service, supports um DPW operations biggest funding source is is transportation revenue, and so that the 23 million you see here is basically a a uh subset of that over that makes sense.

Yep.

Um so I want to go into residential streets because I need some clarity on this, and uh director and Zach, I appreciate the communication we've taken of the last week on this.

Um is that what is being dedicated to residential streets on an annual basis?

Including eight million that number being eight million uh that was adjusted for in the road formula by Senator Freeman, and then the eight million dollar match.

Yes.

Okay.

How um the D4 operations the money used to support them is coming out of a different fund, though, not the 16 million.

That's correct.

That's correct.

So again, pulling back up the this operations breakdown.

So the D4 money would be included in the uh category that's called potholes and patching.

I'm learning a lot about the naming conventions because really that's that's that's pavement maintenance that would include the D4 program, which would also include um any sort of work that they do.

Uh so it it is not funded out of the capital plan, they are different parts of the budget, and they're not competing for funding, at least not in any sort of direct way.

And then also in this capital plan funding is a line item for I assume, yeah, you have it in there, CEG led service line, four million dollars for the next four years.

So sixteen million dollars.

Is that how does that work with the sixteen million dollars?

Because when I when I hear you say that you are trying to get the biggest bang for your buck, is it coming out of that sixteen million dollars when they go into these neighborhoods?

Yes.

Okay.

The first off, I think we need to have a map of where these lead service projects are taking place.

Um, as someone who represents a district outside of the old city limits, I'm assuming, and I could be ignorant to this, that I probably don't have a lot of areas that are lead service related to the CEG projects.

Knowing that we are spending less than a million, so well, let me not jump on that bandwagon real quick.

How does the $50 million, the new 100 million dollars, how is that going to impact residential streets in 27?

So there are stipulations uh that we have to abide by for that 50 million dollars, that at least the the portion from the state, um, and uh it's dedicated to uh secondary roadways and a couple other things that are excluded.

Um, but the other 50 million dollars um we can choose how that money is spent on our roadways, and that can be part of the residential program as well.

What's considered a secondary roadway?

A secondary roadway would be those roadways that uh connect our our arterials that go through neighborhoods that connect neighborhoods that are typically a two-lane row that connect neighborhoods.

So, like from the west side, is this like Lyndhurst?

Is this Holt Road?

Is this Morris Street or I know it's not Washington Street or Rockville or any of those major thoroughfares?

I'm just trying to figure out what a what a secondary road is because a lot of my neighborhoods are either subdivisions that don't have secondary roads in them, or they're the old kind of you know grid pattern city neighborhoods.

When I think of your district, I Morris Street uh stands out to me as a secondary road to the world.

I think so.

You've answered the question on at least the 50 million part from the state.

Do you have you guys devised a plan or have a high level thought of how we're spending our 50 million?

The reason why I'm asking that question is because I have heartburn when I know that all we're dedicating toward residential streets is 16 million dollars annually, and then we are deciding that a large, I don't know what that figure is yet, how much of that's being used to do and match the CEG dollars into those residential neighborhoods.

So there are areas now that are gonna get millions of dollars worth of repaved streets while other areas continue to suffer as they have for 30, 40 plus years.

And what I'm looking for is like how what is the plan?

How are we going to begin to address residential?

You talked about the hundred million that this council has supported since 2021-22.

We know that's not enough.

So I'm trying to figure out if we are moving this needle and we're going to invest 100 million dollars towards second, or excuse me, 50 million towards secondary.

I think a portion of the city's 50 million dollar match should be put into the residential streets.

I don't know what that figure looks like, but we need some substantial investment in these residential streets.

You heard us screaming earlier in the year at your very first meeting about how we were activating and responding to potholes.

People are happy that thoroughfares are being addressed, but the residential potholes are not being addressed till May, June, July.

And that's a long time to wait for a resident.

And I'm telling you the I'm as calm as I could be on this when I take into account what I'm hearing from my constituents, and all I am is a representative for them.

And that energy eventually is going to be flowing into these meetings if we don't begin to develop some sort of plan because this budget, while we've we're mastering it, we're doing the best that we can is not enough to address residential streets, let alone any of the other things.

Um I could appreciate your comments, uh, counselor, and I I completely agree that our needs outweigh the resources that we have, and um coming up with a plan on addressing those residential streets are definitely top of mind for us.

Um leveraging the partnership there with CEG is a no-brainer, so um we we have to uh uh explore that and and continue to talk to them.

Um, but you know, we're we're gonna continue to use a data-driven approach on our selection of the roadways we we work on, whether that be thoroughfares, collectors, or residentials.

So yeah, so it's a work in progress, sir.

No, and I appreciate that.

I mean, it's it's frustrating.

Two things can be right at the same time.

You're absolutely right to go after the CEG and max them out, max out that amount of uh new resurfaced roads, but we're also right in that that's money now that's being directed into two or three or four areas that could then be spread throughout other districts.

Um the last thing I'm gonna ask, and I'll be quiet because I know it's been a long night.

Um the D4 operations, you guys have seen me say previously we would get a request for three residential streets to submit on behalf of D4.

That did not happen this year, and to my knowledge, that's the first time that's not happened.

So I'm trying to better understand is there a change in tactics, um, or was that just maybe a slip?

Like we just didn't we because there's been a lot of changeover, so I would understand.

Uh I appreciate that, counselor.

I don't think there's a change in policy or a slip.

I think um what we're doing is addressing previous ones that we had not gotten gotten around to yet.

Uh so that that we don't we don't fulfill that entire list every year, so it just keeps adding on to the next year.

Um I don't want to put words in your mouth, but when you say fulfill the list, we would submit three, and then they would respond back to us and they would say this is the one that we're gonna do because they would go out and check for various reasons.

I think Zach put in his email we couldn't do them for whatever reason.

Um removing that component D4 removes the ability.

I understand that we need to do our roads based on the formula that you all have set out.

We know our roads as well, too.

We know the the emails we're getting, things that nature.

It removed the ability for us to be able to, and then also you've enacted a thing that I agree with.

We're concentrating where we spend our money, right?

We're not just gonna go out and do three or four lanes or excuse me, residential streets in different areas.

We're concentrating into one neighborhood.

Removing the D4, at least giving us the opportunity to select that street, remove the opportunity for us to address different parts of our districts that may not be getting any love at all to show.

So that's just more of a comment.

And you guys could take it then.

Thank you, Chairwoman.

Any other comments, questions from colleagues.

Sure.

Uh just wanted to once again thank our DPW team, but take a moment to acknowledge our our birthday folks, uh, counselor Nick Roberts and Lauren Stevenson.

Thank you for holding it down in the front row, bringing the facts and back up.

Um I've been asked to sing a little Diddy, but I'll keep it quick.

Happy birthday to you.

Thank you very much.

Umgratulations on your first budget presentation, Director Wilson.

Um thank you very much for your team that serves alongside of you.

You have a phenomenal team, and we really appreciate them.

And um, thank you, Lauren and Nick, for your um spending your birthday with us as counselor lease said.

You didn't have a choice.

Well, we appreciate it.

Uh, we look forward to uh we appreciate you um taking the time to listen to our input and the questions.

We look forward to review and analysis, and I thank my colleagues for putting the time and the effort and doing your due diligence with your questions, and um I will ask for a motion to adjourn it.

Thank you.