Good evening.

I will call to order the Metropolitan and Economic Development Committee to order for Monday.

Uh what's today?

The 2018.

Yep, we're good there.

Um for August the 18th, 2025.

We'll begin with introductions of my colleagues on the first row.

Thank you, Madam Leader.

Derek Cahill, District 23.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

My name is Michael Paul Hart, representing District 20.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Brian Mowray, District 25.

Thank you, Majority Leader Ron Gibson, District 8.

Thank you, Madam Chair, Brien Delini, District 2.

Thank you, Madam Chair, Nick Roberts, District 4.

Thank you, Madam Leader.

Kristen Jones, District 18.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Counselor Jared Evans, representing District 17.

Thank you, Leader Lewis Lee Robinson, representing District 1.

Thank you.

Maggie Lewis, District 5.

The first item on our agenda is proposal number 237.

Appoint Brad, and I I apologize.

I don't want to mess up your last name.

Is it Clo Faiton?

Feeton?

Laura is really I apologize.

That's not my ministry.

To the Citizen Advisory Committee for the Lawrence Township Comprehensive Plan.

I apologize, sir.

Tell a little bit why you're interested in serving in this capacity.

Sure.

I'm president of the Greater Lawrence Chamber of Commerce.

Obviously, with uh the business interests, we have a very decided interest in land use and what is appropriate and inappropriate.

Uh I also live at Fort Benjamin Harrison.

I know an awful lot of people that live in Lawrence Township, and uh I'm happy to be placed forward to uh represent them on this committee.

Wonderful.

Questions, comments from counselors.

Yes, counselor.

I was just gonna say real quick, it was an honor to nominate Brad for this.

He's a great guy, and I'll also just make a quick comment that I appreciated.

We have now uh triple partisanship representation because we don't have to have Democrats, Republicans, we have a libertarian too.

So we appreciate Brad for being on this.

He's a great community leader, and I can't think of anybody better that's actually just involved in the community and be a great asset for this board.

Thank you, Counselor.

Wonderful.

Other comments, questions from counselors.

Is there anyone in the audience that wishes to speak to proposal two thirty-seven?

Seeing none, I'll entertain a motion.

So the motion been properly moved and second.

All those in favor signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Those opposed, same sign.

The motion carries.

Thank you so much for your willingness to serve.

Thank you.

Tell me your last name one more time.

Klaffenstein.

Kloffenstein.

Okay, thank you.

The next item on our agenda is proposal number two thirty-eight, appoints Lori Miser to the City Market Corporation Board of Directors.

Good evening, Miss Meiser.

You want to share why you're interested in serving in this capacity.

Good evening.

Thank you for having me.

Um, I've lived in Indianapolis and worked in the downtown for 35 years, and I've always loved the market.

I want to see it preserved and thriving again, and I would be honored to serve on the board to help to make that happen.

Questions, comments for Ms.

Meiser.

Counselor Evans.

Thank you, Leader.

I just wanted to say that it's nice to see Miss Miser again.

She was director of Department of Public Works when I joined the council, and I think that would be a great role for you to be in over there at the market, having the internal knowledge of the city.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Leader Maori.

Thank you, Madam Leader.

Uh thank you, Miss Meiser, for being willing to serve on this uh board.

It's it's definitely going to be a challenging one given the challenges that city market has faced thus far.

I do think that I'm hoping that you can bring in kind of a fresh set of ideas since it looks like you've served on the board prior.

You've been with the city, you know kind of the ins and outs.

So uh one thing I want to encourage is looking into other cities that have a similar market.

Uh I know I have family that lives in uh Milwaukee area and they have a market just like ours, almost the same footprint as ours, is or was and it flourishes.

Um I think the hours are a lot better at the Milwaukee one just because they're open more than just lunch hours.

So maybe that's something we look at in the future, but I would encourage you to get in there and really try to push to make this mimic more of other cities that have done it so well.

And I use Milwaukee because I've been there so many times and um I look forward to seeing what you do on the board.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Happy to do that.

Councilor Cale.

That's it.

That's it.

Any other questions, comments from counselors?

Is there anyone in the audience that wishes to speak to proposal number two thirty-eight?

Seeing none, I'll entertain a motion.

There's the motion been properly moved and second.

All those in favor signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Those opposed, same sign.

The motion carries.

Thank you so much again for your willingness to serve.

The next item on our agenda is proposal number two thirty-nine.

This proposal is actually going to be discussed during the budget hearing and doesn't require a vote this evening.

So I'll enter entertain a motion to table proposal number two thirty-nine.

Is there a second?

Motion been properly moved and second to table proposal number two thirty-nine.

All those in favor signify by saying aye.

Those opposed, same sign.

Motion carries.

Thank you so much.

The next item on our agenda is proposal number 184.

Counselors, just as a reminder, we did hear this proposal a few weeks ago.

Proposal number 184 approves a payment in lieu of taxes, a pilot as provided by IC 36-3-2-12 for Canal Village 3 LP for affordable housing project being financed in part with low-income housing tax credits in pursuit of section 42.

Yes.

When are we moving 239?

So it will entertain it later.

I don't have an exact date.

Thank you.

That's why it's asset tabling.

And we'll we'll vote and put it back on the agenda.

Okay, proposal number 184.

And so again, Council, we did hear this, and so I asked Mr.

Hobbes to come forward and just kind of give us a brief update on where we at with proposal number 184.

Thank you.

Uh Council Leader Loomis.

We met in June, and there were three main points for us to address at that meeting, although I gave a brief update in July.

I want to quickly review the three key points.

Number one, it was brought up here that there were some canal village phase one repairs and tree preservation work that we did not complete.

I want to address that piece.

Number two was the Canal Village One upgrades to the community that we had promised to have done by the end of this year, give you a brief update on that.

Then number three, uh, there was a promise uh from the city to facilitate a community meeting, which was also had uh last week.

So I'm happy to um address all three items uh were completed over the past two months.

And what I want to do here with the remaining uh few minutes here is just give you a quick update.

Uh many of you had also received an email there from me, kind of outlining the details on the C V one repairs and the tree preservation.

I just want to bring to your attention as we stated in the community meeting.

Number one, all of those repairs, the things that were mentioned, like gutters and other issues uh that were um somewhat exaggerated, all those things were completed last summer.

Uh the trees, there was one tree that was removed during Canal Village One, and it was a tree stump.

I can't speak to the trees that were removed prior to starting construction, but I will uh say this.

You know, me, myself personally and the team, we uh value trees and the preservation of trees and so forth.

Canal village three.

Uh we do want to commit to not removing any trees unless it's absolutely necessary or required uh for a home to be uh constructed there.

And if a tree is removed, uh we've already had conversations with Flanner House.

We will add KIB, keeping the beautiful in there as well to uh find a replacement tree if a tree does need to be removed.

So just our commitment to trees is um I just want to make sure you guys know that we are committed uh to that.

Um, let's jump into the CV upgrades.

From a timeline standpoint, I had some slides to present, but um uh felt it was necessary was not necessary for this particular meeting right now.

But at the end of the day, there were three uh main promises that we have for those upgrades that were committed to Flanner House and Northwest Quality of Life Group uh last summer.

Number one was a commitment to put a survey out to all of our residents on what type of improvements they would like.

It was chosen to be porch extensions or additional fences.

A decision was made last summer to pick the porch extensions.

It was later um uh voted on by the residents that they wanted fences, privacy fences for each of their homes.

So that is underway as we speak.

The second was the community sponsorships, five of them.

Um I'm glad to announce that we have completed all commitments for all five sponsorships and looking to do even more beyond that.

Uh the third one was just fences along Clifton Street, and that was done during June and July of this year.

Okay.

So the remaining item, you guys, is the completion of the remaining uh 35 fences for the current canal village one residents.

On our MOU, it was stated that they would be complete by the end of the year.

I'm happy to announce that we have uh expedited the improvements of making those fences get them complete here by the end of September.

And so we'll be ahead of the schedule on our commitment.

So it's important for me for you guys to know that look, we are a business of our word.

I'm a man of my word.

Um, yes, you know, challenges, you know, will always exist, but at the end of the day, uh, we do what we say we're gonna do.

And I just want to wrap up here, you guys here with the main reason why we're used to approve the pilot for CV3.

Um, and I ask for each of you guys' support so we can get the pilot approved so we can close and start construction uh next month.

Thank you very much.

Thank you so much for your presentation.

Counselors, before I open it up for questions and comments, I did have the opportunity to connect with Mr.

President.

This project is in his uh his district, and so with the commitments being in place, he is now uh in favor of us moving forward with this project in his district.

And also he noted that with the need for the city to have more affordable housing.

He believes that this project is crucial uh for our city.

So again, just wanted to share that with you that Mr.

President now supports this project moving forward.

So questions, comments from counselors.

Yes, sir.

Thank you, madam leader.

Uh, in the first hearing two months ago, uh, I had noted that we had heard some people in opposition in person, but prior to the uh hearing, I had not heard from anybody.

I have since last month heard from a number of people on this, and it has all been in favor of it.

So I do want to acknowledge those people, uh, some of which spoke last month but have privately emailed and it has been universally positive.

Thank you.

Thank you for sharing.

Yes, sir.

Additional questions, comments.

And so I do believe we have a list of individuals that are interested in speaking.

You will be given two minutes to uh to share.

If you have any specific questions, please direct your questions to me, and I'll attempt to get you an answer.

So uh Mr.

Stowers.

Uh before we open the floor to public comments, we would like to remind committee members and the public of a few ground rules so everyone can have a fair chance to speak and be heard.

It is important that we each observe the following rules.

First, each speaker will be limited to two minutes.

Second, any public comments must reasonably relate to the agenda item under consideration.

Third, speakers who stray from the item under consideration or become unduly repetitious may be asked to move on to their next point or conclude their comments.

Finally, attendees who cause disruptions that prevent the committee from proceeding through tonight's agenda in a reasonably efficient manner will be removed.

Please remember that some types of threatening speech or incitement to violence are not protected by the first amendment at all.

We will deal with those issues if they come up, but we but we do not think they will.

And now Madam Chair, if a committee member asks for consent to adopt these rules, we can proceed to public comment.

Thank you.

First up, we have Carolyn Watts.

We have Candia Scott Moore, and then Lori Perdue.

I'm Carolyn Watts, 1446 Congress Avenue, Indianapolis.

I live in the neighborhood.

Since I got two minutes, I'll cut out part of my uh written.

And this uh I'm in support of the proposal 184, and I would like to recommend the approval of those uh this proposal within our community.

As a resident co-chair of the near Northwest communities, I have spoken to residents currently living in the Canal Village One homes and residents that would love to live in one of the new proposed homes in Canal Village 3.

The issue that we have had to address has come about due to individual residents and stakeholders segmenting themselves from the community's umbrella of the near north near west quality of life guidelines.

There is no issue with the autonomy of individual neighborhoods.

However, the issue is when a small segment of the community comes to you, a government entity and represent themselves as the entire community.

When correspondence was sent, I was continually left out.

I eventually was informed of what was happening by various individuals.

Gary Hobbs of BWI has and is making efforts to upgrade the homes in Canal Visit Village One that was not part of what was agreed upon when built during the pandemic.

I am sure the committee is aware of supply chain issues while we battled COVID-19 challenges.

The city in Neapolis also had responsibilities during this time.

All of us have had to recover from uh setbacks, be it health-wise, financial or improvements and taking care of business from the past five or six years.

For our community to experience another setback in our efforts to improve the immediate needs of affordable housing would be tragic.

If you drive through our communities in the Northwest area, you will see new homes selling at market rates.

Currently, only BWI has foregone that the opportunity to reap profits to further enrich their company in the formation of the near North Quality Alive contractors and investors.

You can finish your sentence.

Finish my sentence.

Yep.

And out of state came to view the area.

We were told that we were not worth worth what we, the community wanted, which was affordable housing.

Thank you.

Um good evening.

I am Candia Scott Moore.

I have been one of the two co-chairs of the AMWA TIF for the last 15 years.

I've been in that community for 20 years, busting my tail to make sure that we have the best community that we can have.

Have an issue with the fact that when all of this was going on and all of the hours that we spent on our QLF, QOL, the remonstrators were nowhere to be found.

Gary's only problem is during COVID his lack of communication.

That's the only fault that I see in Gary.

So I want to leave this letter here from my other co-chair and speak for the CEO also of Flanner House, of which I work for and am the president of the neighborhood across the street from Flanner House, which is neighbors helping neighbors.

Please let us do what we've been doing for all of these years and making that community great.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Great.

Lori Perdue.

Next up is Ray Schnapp.

Good evening.

Yeah.

Good evening.

And thank you, Commission, for hearing us today.

My name is Lori Perdue, and I speak as a stakeholder in the Northwest Landing neighborhood.

I am a member of the Northwest Landing Neighborhood Association, and I am the co-director of the Community Canopy Alliance, which holds offices at 2813 Raider Street.

I've submitted two documents for your four-year review.

Both compare images submitted with this petition and compare it to the reality on the ground in Northwest Landing.

The first, document A begins with a map included of the proposal 184 by BWI and Mr.

Gary Hobbs, showing proposed development lots.

What it does not show is the true condition of this area after Canal Village One.

The clear cutting of mature trees and loss of a tree canopy that once defined and served this neighborhood.

In document A, we show tree loss between 2010 and 2025.

The 1000 block of Udell and Raider was shaded in 2010 by a continuous tree canopy, even after demolitions through 2020.

But in 2021, widespread lot scraping destroyed this canopy without mitigation.

By 2022, the BWI developed portion of the block was stripped bare, and in 2025, construction damage claimed a registered heritage tree on city parkland at Frank Young Park.

Document B concentrates on the area of Clifton and Roach.

The orange dots in photos one and three show lots now advised under petition 184.

While the wooded area to the north was previously cleared in Canal Village One.

Photos two, four, and six in document B show you the reality.

In short, flat roofed homes on shadeless lots stand where a thriving canopy once stood.

Mr.

Hobbes claims that he had nothing to do with the removal of trees, but obviously they have been removed.

Trees and canopy that served this neighborhood with eco benefits and health benefits.

It is the responsibility of this committee to make sure that any changes to neighborhoods secure the character of the neighborhood.

And I appreciate your time.

Thank you.

Please review these documents on your own.

Thank you.

Just to be clear, the first time the timer went off, it was inaccurate.

So I don't want anybody thinking that I gave it someone else extra time, so just a little error.

Ray Schnapp.

Good evening.

My name is Ray Schnapp.

I'm with the Community Canopy Alliance that Lori spoke about.

We are co-directors of the Community Canopy Alliance.

And this summer we had the opportunity to work with a group of teenagers through the Teen Works program to survey heritage trees in the neighborhood.

And I want to really just summarize the some of that data.

I think it was shared with all of you today, but I'll try to quickly summarize.

Heritage trees, as you know, are defined by ordinance as certain species that are larger than 18 inches in diameter at rest height.

And we identified 13 heritage trees on the parcels that are in this proposal.

That in ranges includes a 50-year-old elm to 175-year-old chestnut oak and 189-year-old walnut tree.

We calculated the ages of these trees and other parameters using a platform called ITree that is made available to the public through the U.S.

Forest Service.

And we use that same tool to estimate some of the benefits that these trees are providing.

So for instance, we find that those heritage trees are providing or capturing between 300 and 4,000 gallons of stormwater runoff every year.

They capture between 12 and 1,000 pounds of CO2 from the atmosphere.

And these trees also go a long way towards capturing particulates that are an extremely important indicator for public health because when the uh particulate matter is high, we have much higher incidence of emergency room visits and heart attacks and respiratory distress.

So those are very real health benefits that these trees are providing.

In total, the I tree analysis uh indicated that these trees are providing uh at least 120 dollars worth of benefits every year, and over the life of the tree, that can be up to about um $33,000 in total for uh all the trees on all the 13 heritage trees on these parcels, and that does not include energy costs to homeowners.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hadia emitting LaTroy Carter.

Good afternoon, Council.

Um, in the time frame that we spent um in between June and when we come back to you today, um our neighborhood leadership of Northwest Landing was approached by some of the residents of Canal Village One.

Um the president of the neighborhood council was unavailable to come today due to health concerns.

Um the biggest things that we wanted to mention uh with regard to Canal Village One moving into Canal Village 3 is uh some of the residents' voice concerns about repairs that had not been done to their homes from the time that they moved into 2023 until about two years uh which is now 2025.

Uh one resident spoke to us that their house their roof had been leaking uh for those two years and had just recently been repaired.

Um she was a single mom with several children and uh was concerned about the quality of life that she was experiencing in her home due to a lot of the repairs that she was requesting to be done for home not being completed.

Um she didn't indicate she, as many people have already indicated, they do love their homes, they're very grateful for what BWI and Gary Hobbs has done.

Um the concerns that they're having though is that the repairs are not being done in a timely manner, and some of the things that they're requesting to be done um are being unaddressed.

So it's the neighborhood's concern in moving forward with Canal Village 3 that Canal Village 1 repairs continue to be done, um, not to just the front-facing homes that everyone can see as you drive down the street, but some of the ones that we're realizing are tucked away and other unseen areas.

So there's a concern that some of those repairs to homes that are not seen on the public area are not being addressed as they need to.

Um documentation was also submitted with pictures showing some of the lack of landscaping, some of the overgrown shrubbery and things like that in the neighborhood, again, making the neighborhood look unsightly for some of the homes that are being maintained.

Um, as people are renting the properties, a lot of renters feel like it's the responsibility of the maintenance company and the ownership of the homes while they're preparing for homeownership.

The final concern that we have 30 seconds, thank you.

The final concern that we have as a neighborhood is that programs we put in place for these individuals that are currently renting their home, being told that they have 15 years to rent before they can purchase, is that programs are put in place to help them become very viable and affordable home buyers of the residents.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Um affordable housing.

When I came here last month, and now we're here today, um, on our way to the build to this building, 40-50 homeless people surround this building alone.

Affordable housing is needed in the state and in this city.

And I feel that the longer that we hold up this project because people don't like the way that the houses look, is the longer we're gonna have people sitting in our streets in our downtown areas in places that we feel like we don't want to see them.

Um it's very important to Indianapolis to have affordable housing because it's not a lot, and as a landlord myself, I know personally that there is not a lot of affordable housing, and that's something that we do need.

Thank you.

That's all I want to say.

Thank you.

Um last person is uh Alita Kemp.

Hi, uh Alita Kemp.

I am a resident in Northwest Landing.

Um, I just want to say that one of the questions that keeps coming back to my mind is why are we here again?

Um I've had many one-on-one conversations with Mr.

Hobbs and his team on one of the concerns being that he's only doing the repairs that need to be done because he's in the spotlight right now and he's looking for approval for whatever it is that he needs.

And unfortunately, the moment he thought that the residents weren't fighting back, this stuff stopped.

Um, only recently has he been able to acknowledge some of the other repairs that need to get done, and again, it's because he's being challenged.

Um, one of the things that I has discussed with him is the fact that these residents don't trust him.

They don't trust the fact that he's gonna complete the repairs and keep on top of this what once everything is approved.

And my question is even with the checks and balances the city is putting forward.

Are you prepared for that?

Um, some of the documentation that we showed you was just from gutters that are actually growing vegetation out of them.

Not that stuff fell into the gutters, but things are growing out of the gutters now.

Now that's not a gutter problem.

That is a gutter problem, that is a roof problem, that is most likely a mold issue, and it is the quality of life that our residents are living under now that causes concerns for what's gonna happen a month from now, five years from now, 15 years from now.

Are these residents going to have homes that are going to be purchasable, that are going to be livable?

And is the city prepared to spend that kind of manpower and that kind of money monitoring this on a monthly basis?

Again, the only reason why things are getting done right now is because he needs the city behind them.

He needs the residents behind them, and we are not right at this moment.

We are very concerned that these uh that what needs to get fixed goes beyond just superficial.

Uh we have senior living in uh Clifton Square that have water coming in through their doors that have buckled floors, again, health and hazard issues all over the uh properties he has here in Northwest Landing.

So, my question is are we really going to allow this to continue throwing bad money after bad money after he has proven not to be good stewardship with the properties that he already has?

Thank you.

Thank you.

Additional questions, comments from counselors.

Again, I did share the feedback from the district counselor, counselor Hart.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Um first I'd I just like to acknowledge a couple things.

Uh, one is that of the district counselor, um, and completely respect of his decision.

Uh, and I think there's some things to consider moving forward.

Uh, the first one is I do want to acknowledge the individuals who provided the photos about the the heritage trees, they didn't make it our way.

And I can't see what you're you're talking about from 2010 through 2025, where there was um what appears to be a removal of a lot of of trees.

So I mean I'm not sure when Mr.

Hobbs you just took over here, but I can't see from 2010 to 2025.

And I would urge you to not do that if it was you going forward um with the the next part of this project.

But for me, where this I think really draws parallel is you know, our body is approving this, but the city, and I can see the folks in the back who will be responsible for the contract here.

Um, and in the first time we brought this up, a month ago or two months ago, I'd asked the city what the plan is to uh make sure that compliance is met to obtain this pilot.

And my my question remains the same, and uh and Mrs.

uh madam chair, I'd be interested to hear from the city what they plan to do to make sure that Mr.

Hobbes is compliant with this commitments on this project.

Uh yes, so someone from DMD, but I think that for it, and we do have parameters in place for projects in general.

So if you want to speak to what those parameters are for projects like this, that would be greatly appreciated.

Yes, absolutely, and thank you for the question.

Uh so we can provide some clarification.

Um and we went over these commitments with the neighborhood also at our meeting last Tuesday, August 12th.

So I just want to reiterate that um that we went over this information as well with all of the neighbors.

So the project has a total of 33 lots.

We own DMD owns 26 of those lots.

This is different than phase one.

Um, those in phase one, those lots were owned by intend Indiana, and so we didn't have as much control over the project agreements during those land transfers.

So the commitments that we have in place when we transfer those lots to BWI will be the commitments of architecture review.

We've already reviewed the architectural plans for the properties, so our city architect has signed off on those, knowing that there were issues in phase one, we're gonna have additional oversight during this phase to make sure that the same issues do not arise.

But we do have more control through these project agreements, which is a good thing moving forward for with phase three.

Um let me find those.

I can read through all of those commitments here.

So we have the architectural approval.

Um for the next 15 years, BWI will only rent out the properties at a rate that is equal to or less than 60 percent of the area median income and will maintain all of those rental units.

They will maintain all of the properties according to IHCDAs, the Indiana Housing and Community Development Authority authorities livable standards.

They are agreeing to allow DMD to conduct inspections not only during construction but during the 15-year affordability period.

So we'll have the right to go in and inspect those properties at any time that we choose, even though it's private property once we transfer the land.

Uh the city will reserve the right to access uh easements or right-of-way for environmental investigations and public infrastructure.

That's standard with any of our project agreements.

Uh DMD, another condition is we can take back ownership of the properties that the city owned if the developer fails to complete an acceptable redevelopment job within a specified time frame.

So we will identify that construction time frame and make sure they're keeping to that so that way construction is completed on time.

And BWI is committing to providing regular regular monthly project updates to the community until the city decides this obligation has been fulfilled.

So we'll make sure those commitments are in the project agreements upon land transfer.

And then additionally, with our pilot agreement, they're committing to services, which they outlined in their presentation last month, and we'll continue to our standard enforcement, which is additional oversight during construction through inspections.

That's not only DMD but also BNS through their standard uh constructions.

And then we always have that right of reversion to take the properties back if it's the property owners in non-compliance.

And then related to the pilot, we also have the right to revoke the pilot or assess penalties if they are not compliant with these terms.

Thank you so much.

Madam Chair, uh I I'm just curious.

Uh curious to know how to heart, sir.

Yes, ma'am.

I wasn't giving you the green light, but go ahead.

Oh, I thought you were sorry, sorry.

Sorry, go ahead.

I was I was curious to know how the residents uh could follow up uh if any of these uh conditions were not being met with the city.

Is that a question for me?

Yeah, so I would say through the mayor's action center or really any of the contacts within DMD, so they can reach out to me directly and I can get them in touch with the appropriate person or the staff members that are project managing this project as well.

Counselor Hart, you good.

Yes, Leader Maori.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Uh I believe Councilor Hart kind of touched on what I was kind of asked as well, but the one thing that stuck out to me is when you said they had that DMD has the right to come inspected at any time of their choosing.

That gets a little hairy to me because I wouldn't want DMD showing up in my front door saying, Hey, I'm gonna come inspect your house uh unless they had good viable cause.

I'm assuming that it'd be more so if they reach out to you folks to say, hey, I'm having an issue, then you show up, you don't just come knocking on the door saying let me in.

Yeah, it would have to be for reasonable cause.

Thank you.

Additional comments from counselors.

Counselor Evans.

Thank you, leader.

Um, director commitment number seven, and thank you for going over these title to the real estate shall be vested conditionally.

When I'm read to the grantee, so when I'm reading this, if you find that there is a series of violations in these commitments, even uh the investment that the individual will have already put into the site, you can take back those properties.

Yeah, I'm sure there's specific you know conditions tied to like what is not being met.

I don't think you know it depends on the severity of the commitment that's not being met, where we would actually exercise taking that property back.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So properly moved and second.

All those in favor signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Those opposed, same sign.

The motion carries.

Thank you all so much for being here this evening.

We'll now move to the budget hearing portion of our agenda.

Uh with consent counselors, I would like to uh move Madam Surveyor to the top of the presentation.

That's my understanding.

I got my hands slapped at the last meeting.

So do I have consent?

Madam Surveyor.

Yes, ma'am.

Right.

I ask that you transition a little bit quieter, please, and thank you.

We still have a meeting.

Thank you all for being here.

Madam Surveyor, the floor is yours.

Good evening.

Thank you.

Thank you for allowing me to uh present my budget a little sooner than I expected.

I would my name is Deborah Jenkins.

I am your Marion County surveyor, and I have been since 2009.

Um before I begin, I would like to introduce some of my staff.

Um excuse me, my I don't know why I'm out of breath.

Um my uh administrative manager Crystal Drummer will be leaving to go to Lawrence North for her child's uh parents.

Back to school back to school night.

So um, so if she leaves, that's because she uh is going to be uh be with her son, and then to my right is um Brandon Leslie.

He is my um administrative um budget.

It's a kind of new position.

He's new at this uh type of job, but just for this office.

I have to um first kind of apologize for my vision.

I had eye surgery a couple weeks ago, and everything is a little blurry, and these lights are pretty bright, so I do appreciate you moving moving me forward.

Um I would like to present and read it to the best of my ability, and I will probably go through it pretty quickly.

And if you have any questions, I'd be honored to answer them to the best of my ability.

First of all, our agency overview.

There are three divisions to our office.

The administrative or HR and our budget are surveying, which are research, planning, and field work.

This may be difficult, and our history preservation, the data analysis and history reports.

Also, I included our county achievement award from Aaron County for the higher education longevity program, which I'll probably do that every single year.

The uh two employees that are students at Vincent's hybrid, or one just received his associate's degree in land surveying, and the other one is trying to get a state license as well, and they have signed a MOU with Ask Me and Myself for longevity of 10 years in the surveyor's office.

The agency staffing, um, there again, my vision is not as good, but we have 10 full-time employees, and we have one opening at this moment.

That is the division of male, female uh brace.

That is the division of male, female brace, uh the help program as well is showing extremely productive, and it is being copied statewide.

Um that also is investing in our staffing, and they attend conferences, they earn their credits, they have helped each other to do easements and ride-aways, as I just heard earlier from DMD.

So I got a funny feeling.

Which development is great, but it does put some kind of constraints on my office that I'm not aware of some things.

Our successes and our goals there again we've made our mandate every year in the last 16 years, 15 years.

There again, my employees that are attending Vincent's University on the hybrid learning program, and then our continuing goals, our continuing meeting mandates, and our serving activity.

Community engagement and outreach.

We have uh paired up with other countywides, and we have been out in the field educating people what the surveyor's office does.

Uh, a lot of people didn't know.

Uh and it's also nice to register voters and let them know what it is that we do, and that is important to vote for your elected officials to represent you.

Our budget breakdown a little over $1 million.

It is an increase of $65,000 in $508 compared to this year, but that increase was absorbed through my perpetuation fund.

It was no impact on the general fund.

The revenue comes from a $5 fee that's collected from the Marion County Recorders Office according to statute, which is deposited into that perpetuation fund.

ATCs, which are to get your liquor license, renew your liquor license, change a name on your liquor license.

There, there's uh documents that have to be presented to the alcohol beverage commission, and one of those is ATC.

Basically, where is that liquor being sold in Marion County, whether it's a liquor store or restaurant, doesn't I don't care, I just care where the shovel is where it is.

I don't care what you're selling, I just care where it is that you are selling.

And so we have a form that we fill out that's a state form that we help revise that, especially for Mary and Marion County, being consolidated.

Character one is our salaries and our compensate compensation benefits.

That's our biggest part of our bill, which is in just about every office bill, and that is mainly funded out of our perpetuation fund.

Supplies also there again uh is uh supported out of our perpetuation fund.

Contractual services is more out of the general fund.

Those are like our supplies and our equipment, uh so forth office supplies, computer software, um capital assets.

There's 11,000.

There is a piece of equipment that asked for for three years in a row, but I have been declined to purchase that.

It is $80,000, and it would have to come out of the perpetuation fund, but um the nine employees that I have, the five that are in the field every day, could use another GPS station to get some more product projects completed.

The other obstacles I have is I did have a vehicle catch on fire and blow up this year, but my employee had just stepped out of it, so he was safe.

Um there again.

The I have an obstacle of that GPS equipment, it's just gonna make things a little bit more prolonged.

Safety issues.

I had an employee of mine working with three other employees on Arlington Avenue between Edgewood and Thompson, and a driver did not want to slow down.

We had a slow stop.

I don't, I only have like two pickup trucks out there for traffic.

He didn't like it.

He hit the sign, which threw my ploy back a little bit, turned around, came back, punched my employee in the face, and then drew a gun on him.

There is a police report on that.

Um my performance matrix there again.

We have the actual numbers of constituents' inquiries, the estimated for the 24, and the goal for 25, and to do our corner perpetuation fund.

Um there again, I believe next year we would be higher than the 9%, but we have increased that every single year.

The last screen I would like to show you is membership and committees.

I sit on two national committees, one on a steering committee for transportation.

So our metro, bus line, airports, ports, highways.

I sit on a steering committee and take that to Washington DC to talk with our congressmen and others on the issues of Marion County's concerns that I see from my perspective.

Um I also was just elected to the large urban county caucus, and that represents any population of a city that has over a million.

There's only two per county, and I am fortunate to be on that committee with uh Madam Chair.

And then I sit on uh the Association of Indiana counties and the ISPLS, which is the uh Indiana Public Land Surveying Council.

Um the last thing is um in the red is um the Indiana is being considered Marion County, City of Indianapolis specifically, being considered for a conference for the annual NACO, which is the National Association of County officials, to have their conference here in July in 2028.

And they estimated 3200 in attendance, and the Indiana Economic Calculator values this group at 3.8 million dollars to our city and our county.

And I sit with on that committee.

Um if there's any other questions or concerns of me, I can see it vaguely, but I'll be honored to answer any.

Thank you so much for your presentation.

Questions, comments from counselors, counselor Evans.

Thank you, leader.

Just a quick question.

Um surveyor, what are some of the inquiries that you get from the public that the large number that you have that you guys fulfill each year?

You mean like phone calls or calls or just overall emails, questions?

Is that what you're asking me?

Which are my major concern constituents?

Um, it's their property lines.

That that's they think I'm a private surveyor, and I can come out and get their boundaries to them.

So we spend a lot of time explaining how those boundary lines are formed by the 2300 buried monuments.

Um and the right of way in easements.

It's always that fence is on my line, and that tree.

So I have those kind of concerns that I do reach out to the city of Indianapolis.

Orden sometimes the city of Indianapolis reaches out to me and tells me can you have someone in your staff go look and see if that fence or that tree is on.

You know, I can't do the actual survey, but I can say whether it's city owned, privately owned, or whatever.

But that's the main, it's the people's property.

Okay.

Welcome.

Additional questions, comments from the counselors.

Counselor Hart.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and Madam Surveyor.

I just want to say as always, you do a phenomenal job uh going above and beyond.

Um, and this time you have outdone yourself by bringing Mr.

Lasley aboard.

Uh I have to make sure I say something.

If I do we both have known him a long time, haven't we?

Very long time.

Very long.

Good to see that that he's here, and it is going to be a great asset to you, and I look forward to catching up soon.

Oh, me too.

Thank you, MJ.

Thank you.

Additional questions, comments.

Anyone in the audience wish to speak to the budget hearing for the surveyor's office.

Thank you so much, Madam Speyer.

And I appreciate it again.

Let me go.

Yes, ma'am.

We'll now move to the department of metropolitan development and city market.

Madam Director, the floor is yours.

Good evening.

Uh, thank you, Madam Leader, and the members of the committee.

Uh my name is Megan Vuksich.

I'm the director for the Indianapolis Department of Metropolitan Development.

And I'm joined this evening by DMD's chief financial officer and chief operating officer Lucas Anderson.

This is Lucas's first time presenting to this committee, um, but we are very lucky to have him uh in the department and serving the city of Indianapolis, and just want to give him uh a big thank you for uh this this year's budget and the presentation.

Um but I also want to thank the mayor and the city council and the members of this committee.

Uh you all have engaged with DMD over the last year in various ways, and we are proud of what we've been able to collectively put together and looking forward to going over this year's budget presentation with you all.

So let's get into it.

So the first couple of slides are focused on DMD structure, and so really it's about who's carrying out this work that we're going to present on.

So DMD has 10 divisions.

Five of those divisions are shown here, and these this is about half of our team is overseen by deputy director Jenny Foltz.

Each of the administrators are here tonight that represent each one of these divisions.

But those would be on this slide, community investments, which oversees our grants and housing pipeline, homelessness policy, which focuses on permanent supportive housing, real estate division, so those would be our request for proposals and the vacant to vibrant land bank.

Our public spaces division focused on legacy properties and public spaces such as Monument Circle, Union Station, and the Downtown Canal.

And then our economic incentives team, which is focused on our tax incentives, and we are growing a compliance team within this division.

The next five divisions are overseen by deputy director Carmen Lepig, and this is really the uh I would say urban planning side of the house.

So these divisions would be current planning, which is all of our zoning approvals, long range planning, which oversees the city's comprehensive plan, our urban design division, which is led by our city architect, focused on those quality design reviews, such as what we just discussed with Canal Village, Historic Preservation, which is the Indianapolis Historic Preservation Commission, and then we are creating a new engagement division.

This new engagement division will really interface with constituents and you all to better serve our community, and I'll talk a little bit more about that later in the presentation.

This next slide goes over our gender demographics.

I'd say the important thing to highlight on this slide is that the average salary among all genders is equal within the department.

This next slide goes over our race and ethnicity demographics.

It's important to DMD and the City of Indianapolis that our team is reflective of the community that we serve.

We've hired 11 people in 2025, and we currently have five openings that are posted on the City of Indianapolis website.

We are anticipating to hire more later this year.

I should have also added that total DMD has 92 full-time employees.

In total, we still have 21 vacancies.

So we have five posted positions, but we're going to have more hiring that we're going to see later this year.

We have been able to reorganize some of the divisions throughout this year, really just so our department can better serve the community and be more effective.

This has been done entirely within our existing budget, so no budget changes, but we do anticipate some more hiring from now until the end of the year, so a lot of opportunities to bring in additional people.

All new hires go through interrupting racism training.

We have quarterly all staff meetings.

Our team culture is really focused on highlighting the team members and the good work they do.

So we have kudos submissions and call-outs, and we have a department-wide incentive plans to encourage each division to go above and beyond their existing responsibilities.

And supervisors do hold annual and mid-year performance reviews with all employees.

Alright, I'm going to go quickly over these next few slides because I believe you were given a lot of these statistics ahead of time.

But just to go over some of our programmatic and fiscal successes, this slide is focused on our housing programs, and so we really try to address public safety through housing stability.

This year we hit a lot of milestones with the town and terrace development.

Our team acquired a total of 152 parcels and relocated 120 households so that we way we could partner with BNS and begin demolition work.

We also started the homeowner repair program, so we launched that this year and are continuing to grow it thanks to your all's allocation of additional local funds to this program.

We've received 555 applications, and 192 of those applications are in an active project status, so they are being pursued.

And that is really just with us launching that over this last year.

Housing investments that are under construction or have been committed as of 2025 would be 683 affordable rental units and 186 affordable homeownership units.

So those are units that DMD has incentivized in various ways that are in the pipeline to be constructed.

And I'm really proud of this statistic.

This comes from our homelessness policy team.

But 97% of individuals that enter DMD permanent housing programs stay permanently housed long term.

And so that is how we address homelessness within the city is to make sure that people who are getting housing are getting housing permanently.

Our Brownfields team also it has six active sites undergoing remediation, which totals about 32 acres.

And then as I mentioned, we have focused on department structure and organization to better serve the community.

This includes a new engagement division, a new economic incentives compliance team, adding additional staff capacity where needed, and future hiring.

When it comes to economic development, this year we've been able to partner with the new Indy economic development team, and I really want to highlight how wonderful they have been to work with.

Jim Schellinger and his team have done a lot of work this year and have partner very, very well with DMD.

In 2024 and 2025, we incentivized 18 development projects, and that resulted in 1,900 new jobs and 4,200 for TANE jobs.

I want to highlight out of those new jobs, 1,400 of those were committed this year.

So that really speaks to the effort of the new IEDI team.

And 95% of those job commitments have been outside of center township.

When it comes to land use applications, this is also reflective of private development that we're seeing in the community.

In 2024, we reviewed 1,810 land use applications.

And in 2025 year to date, we have reviewed 1,142.

So we are on pace to exceed last year's number of petitions reviewed and received.

And then when it comes to our public spaces, our public spaces team focuses on activating those spaces that everyone is welcome in.

And so in 2024, with Spark on the Circle, which is held annually on Monument Circle, we had 71, about 72,000 visitors and averaged 420 visitors daily.

We also were able to partner with our partners at downtown Indy and Big Car to hold over 270 free events.

For the downtown canal in 2024, we saw 400,000 visitors.

2025, we've had year to date 221 visitors, and we currently have a cultural districts application that is open now through August 31st.

Again, thanks to the work of you all for allocating funding to that program.

When it comes to community engagement and outreach, I would say this is a core pillar of DMD.

Community engagement touches every single division that I've talked about.

But just to highlight some of the things that we've been working on this last year and will continue into 2026.

So we are undergoing updates to the Marion County land use plan, which includes remaining area specific plans.

I want to thank you to everyone on this committee and everyone on council who has provided suggestions through the Citizen Advisory Committee to make sure that your townships are represented within this process.

Our IHPC team is actively pursuing new historic preservation district in the Murdy and Kessler neighborhood, and they are literally going door to door every home in that district before we pursue that designation.

Community stakeholder and advisory participation in DMD-led initiatives.

So we do community stakeholder engagement throughout the year when we're focused on site-specific redevelopment, such as the former Indiana Women's Prison.

We have TIFF advisory groups, and then we have programmatic and planning advisory groups throughout the year.

We also hold a minimum of 168 public meetings annually.

These public meetings are the meetings when you see that orange sign out in the community.

That's being a that's a meeting held by the Department of Metropolitan Development.

So this is representative of our Metropolitan Development Commission, our Platte Committee, our hearing examiner, and that totals 168 meetings annually.

We want to ensure this team works closely with you all, and that we are making it easy for people to engage with us.

We've also been able to launch a new DMD development portal online, and we're going to continue to build this portal out into 2026.

So this is focused on modernizing applications, streamlining approval processes, improved customer service, and then making it easy to collect data for outcome tracking.

So for example, the cultural district application that I mentioned is live on this portal, as well as our economic incentives applications and other forms.

We're going to continue to build this out to make it easy for people to submit for applications with us.

Alright, before Lucas goes into the numbers, we did want to share with you just the programmatic spend for DMD.

So this pie chart here shows DMD's total budget broken up into the different programs.

You'll see that a large part of our investment goes to housing.

This is representative of both grants and local dollars.

The next biggest category would be economic development, followed by the other categories listed there.

Here's the funding broken up into grant funds and local funds.

So grant funds again looks very similar to the pie chart on the previous slide.

Most of that funding is going to housing investments.

When it comes to local dollars and how those are allocated, most of the funding is going into one of the three buckets of either being DMD owned properties.

So we are responsible for maintaining all of the properties we own, such as cutting the grass, boarding up properties, or taking care of our legacy properties, staffing for our urban planning division, and then administration make up a bulk of our budget.

So when it comes to how we incentivize or support new development, we do this through various ways.

And this graphic is just to give you a visual representation of kind of what that process looks like and what tools we have at our disposal to support new development.

So we receive projects in a various number of ways.

That could be through our housing pipeline, through our city-owned real estate development when we issue requests for proposals, private development that's just occurring in the community, and then IEDI intake, so that's our Indianapolis Economic Development Incorporated, as they're trying to attract jobs and retain jobs.

And then our toolkit currently, our toolkit is focused on tax incentives like TIFF and tax abatement, HUD grants like CDBG and home, investments in our public spaces and infrastructure, and then when we own property and we are seeking redevelopment on that, we have the opportunity to reduce the sale of the land at a favorable rate.

And then we can also prep the spot sites for expedited redevelopment.

So Town and Terrace is a good example of that, where we acquired those parcels, relocated residents, and are now demolishing the buildings to get it ready for redevelopment.

I do want to highlight that this toolkit evolves and adapts.

So we are constantly looking at ways where we can be more resourceful to support development that we want to see happening in our community.

So I'm going to highlight some of the projects that are occurring in your all's districts, and I want to thank you all for your leadership because these projects would not have been possible without each one of you.

So when it comes to projects in the pipeline, Rose Dale Hill in District 23.

So it's a pilot that was executed in June of this year for affordable housing.

We also have promenade at the square, which is a pilot that is set to be introduced later this year, but we also supported this property through creed funding that you all approved a few months ago.

For tax abatements in Winterton District 2.

This is a project we've been working with Councillor Delaney on.

We're going to see that tax abatement come before MDC shortly and are working with the developer on that application that has been received.

Rocky Mountain Peregrine in District 1.

This is a tax abatement property that was focused on industrial development bringing in jobs.

Thunderbird in District 20.

That is also a life science tax abatement property that resulted in 200 jobs being created.

That final resolution will be heard at MDC this week.

And then we also have the county line commerce in District 25, which is a tax abatement that has created 63 jobs in that MOU was executed as of last year.

And in District 8, we are continuing our environmental remedi remediation efforts at Black Mountain to prepare that site for redevelopment.

In District 22, we have supported the Burmese American Community Institute through HUD funding.

And so we are finalizing contracts for that investment.

And in District 7, we are preparing for a request for proposals at 42nd and College Avenue, which is going to be a transit-oriented development on a former police station.

In District 17, we're continuing to invest in MSD Wayne Township Schools Vocational Program to make sure we're growing jobs in that area.

And in district four, we're continuing the long-range planning work of Castleton Revitalization Area, working closely with DEPW to establish either a TIFF or floodplain district to support future redevelopment.

So we'll continue to see that in this next year.

So each one of those orange dots represents where a project is occurring, either in housing, economic development, supporting the creative economy, DMD-owned real estate, investments in our capital or on our legacy properties, civic engagement, or efforts underway with our long-range planning team.

And then this next map shows applications that we've received countywide when it comes to land use applications.

So this would be rezones, variances, platding, regional center, administrative approval, IHPC, and urban design review.

You will see more dots in areas where you see denser areas of our community.

That's typical and expected.

When you have more built environment, we would expect to see more land use applications in those areas.

And then here's just an overlay of both the DMD initiatives and the applications that we've received countywide.

With that, I'm going to turn it over to Lucas to go over the numbers.

Good evening, counselors.

First, starting off with the first table in front of you is a total budget breakdown slide by major fund source comparing the 2026 introduced budget with the 2025 adopted.

What I want to highlight it first is an overall decrease of 6.3% or 6.025 million.

This is largely driven by a very intentional decrease in the requested appropriation in our federal grants funds.

And it's specifically tied to the phase out of one-time ARPA funding, which I'll speak to in later slides.

There is a 2.7% change in local funds or roughly 441,000.

Overall, we do not anticipate any significant impacts to service delivery with DMD core missions.

Moving next to character one, overall you're seeing a roughly 489,000 increase.

That is driven by 139,000 on local funding and 350,000 on grant funds.

As the directive noted, we are very proud that we've been able to go through a fairly significant reorganization within our department, which is budget neutral from the standpoint of local funds.

When you factor out COLA as well as the COLA of 2.6% and health insurance premium escalators of 5.6%.

The $350,000 driven in federal grant increases is tied to additional positions to which we will be able to receive federal grant reimbursements specifically relating to additional focus on our affordable housing pipeline, as well as DMD has received a lead hazard reduction pilot grant, which we fully anticipate to receive a full grant within the next three years.

Looking at character two, which I know is everybody's favorite and most exciting, we are requesting an additional three thousand dollars specifically for our vacant to vibrant land bank program.

That is with that program we in-housed within the last seven to eight months.

And at the end of the day, we are recognizing that there are miscellaneous supplies that are needed in order to fully run and facilitate this program.

Moving next to the real bread and butter of DMD outside of our personnel budget is character three.

Overall, you are seeing a $6.713 million decrease.

That is driven by largely a federal grant decrease of 5.896%.

But before I go into too much detail of the decreases, I do want to highlight the increases that you see in front of you.

There's an additional request of $325,000 of opioid funding, which will go towards the St.

George Bridge Housing Program as well as DMD's master leasing program.

We are excited to say that if we are able to secure this funding, we would anticipate our master leasing program increasing from roughly 30 to 50 units in the 2026 fiscal year.

There's also an additional 44,000 in the city cumulative capital development fund, and that is tied to additional costs with the Marion County Building Authority for operations and maintenance on the downtown canal.

In terms of decreases, again with the federal grants and the reduction that you were seeing there, that is tied to one-time funding that was provided to DMD and our federal entitled entitlement block grant funding under ARPA.

So while I'm sure this body is very familiar with the large Toronto funding provided to the city county under ARPA with the state and fiscal recovery funds, our again, our HUD entitlement grant funding also did receive additional distributions from the ARPA Act.

We uh utilize that funding to target specific pandemic-related issues issues.

So the phase out of that one-time funding we do not anticipate to impact any ongoing DMD initiatives and programs.

There is an intentional $320,000 shift from character three to four in our local funds, and that is for various capital needs, which I'll explain on the next slide.

There is a reduction of 165,000 in chargebacks, an intentional 195,000 reduction in our vacant vibrant land bank program, similar to our master leasing.

We in-house that program within the past year, and this reduction is aligning our actual needs with what is required to fully implement the program at a real cost.

It also recognizes revenue limitations since we based our 2025 budget off of an estimation rather than actuals, which we are now able to see.

Lastly, there is a 507,000 reduction, and this is tied to the removal of a historic subsidy provided for the annual operations of the city market house.

Knowing that that site is going through a significant and historic renovation and revitalization, the need for an annual operating subsidy is not required for 2026, and we hope long term to not require that at all once we are able to work with a operating an operator in the future.

Ultimately, this these funds are more beneficial to be housed in other city-county agencies given the larger fiscal restraints that we are facing during this time.

Character 4, again to highlight that 320,000 shift from character three.

Um, we are looking to have an additional 275,000 for both our permanently or temporarily owned historic properties, permanently or what we define as our legacy properties, include the downtown canal, city market house, um, union station as well as the Indiana Repertory Theater, and then temporarily owned would be examples of the Indiana Women's Prison site as well as the former Drake apartments on Meridian.

Ultimately, when it comes to DMD owning or helping to facilitate the redevelopment of historic properties, there are innately critical capital repairs that are needed to ensure the structural integrity, let alone the long-term longevity of these locations.

There's also a $75,000 shift in our vacant to vibrant land bank program, and that will allow for additional property acquisition as well to address property taxes.

Just to make note, since I know it is slightly confusing for those at home, why the government would be paying property taxes to itself.

A lot of that is due to timing for when we acquire the site versus the previous assessment date.

We do proactively work with our partners in the Marion County Treasurer's Office as well as the other county commissioners to look at reducing the cost, if not waiving those when it makes sense in that moment.

Lastly, is character five, uh, which is specifically internal city chargebacks.

Um for DMD that is inclusive of fleet in the Office of Corporation Council, and the decrease is driven by reductions in our 2026 proposed chargeback to OCC.

In terms of revenue, it's easiest to break DMD into two realms.

First is indirect indirect revenues, which is composed of our largest revenue source, which is federal grant reimbursements, and then we also receive a portion of fees assessed by the Marion County Recorders Office for every transaction that occurs, and that funding goes towards our housing trust fund program.

Direct revenues within our within the purview of the Metropolitan Development Commission is our land use applications for our urban planning team, um, economic development application and transaction fees, land sales, as well as miscellaneous operational revenue agreements.

For grants, um we I previously mentioned DMD is DMD in the city of Indianapolis is fortunate to be one of the communities in the country that does receive entire annual entitlement grants through the Department of Housing and Urban and Urban Development.

Um we currently have received initial award notifications for our 2025 program year, and we are working through the contract process to finalize that.

We in no way at this point in time are concerned regarding our 2026 allocations.

We work closely with our federal lobbying team to maintain a very broad perspective of actions occurring at the federal level.

In terms in a little bit more exciting, in terms of applied grants, we have received an award for 2025 EPA Brownfields community-wide assessment grant, totaling 450,000, which can go towards environmental assessment, hazardous building material assessments, and also on a smaller level uh development plans for specific corridors.

Um for 2026, we have identified a study of East 25th Street.

We also have received a public art for all grant for up to $30,000, which will go towards rehabilitating downtown canal murals that were commissioned under Super Bowl 46.

And I say that because I um was not able to read the Latin numerals earlier today, and I was made clear on that.

With that, I want to again just stress how thankful we are for the partnership with this committee and the council at large, and we are happy to answer any questions regarding DMD's 2026 proposed budget.

Thank you so much for your presentation.

Before I open it, open the floor up to my colleagues.

Two two questions.

And so it's my understanding that everyone was asked to hold four percent, and yet you said your changes uh decreases six point three percent, but most of that is from federal grants.

Is that correct?

That is walking through that option.

Uh yes, um, Majority Leader Lewis.

So we were requested, or as part of the budget process, um, DMD was uh required to include a four percent proposed reserve or reduction in our 2026 budget.

That amount totaled out to roughly 600,000.

And working with the Office of Finance and Management, which I do want to say special thank you to um new team members that the DM the OFM budget team um was so closely and willing to work with us during this budget process.

Uh specific shout out to Jenny Carter as well as Bradley Williams.

Um we were able to receive a little bit of that funding back to go towards um some contractual commitments as well as capital needs for the historic properties.

Their balance of that is 507,000.

We also did have a slight reduction that we tried to ensure that we submitted a balanced budget to offset character one increases, and that's tied to that um reduction with the vacant vibrant land bank program.

Okay.

So then my second question was are there any unfunded obligations?

But it sounds like there are.

There definitely is not, Matt or Majority Leader Lewis.

Okay.

We feel very confident that we will not have any program impacts from the proposed budget that you see before you.

In fact, we are hoping to find efficiencies and be able to potentially expand some service areas pending how the year closes out.

Perfect.

Thank you.

Questions from counselors.

Leader Maori.

Thank you, Madam Leader.

I had a question.

So the when you talk about the incentives, tax incentives you give to developers.

Um who was it that was running old city hall?

Is that TWG?

Yes, that is correct.

And they were doing the gold building and was originally doing uh city market as well.

No, that was a different developer.

That was a different developer.

Okay, who was doing gold building and city market?

So that would be Gershman Partners and City Mark.

Um when I thought about these kind of incentives and these tax deals that we're giving these developers.

One of the things that kind of stuck in mind for me is with the gold building and city market.

I emailed you about this earlier uh last week, I think it was just kind of gonna idea of what was going on there.

I kind of look at it as almost like a bulk pricing.

So, what's your unit costs that you're you're paying?

So if you're buying more, you're paying less.

If you're doing more, you're getting a better deal from the city.

So it's disappointing that they backed out of this project for the reasons.

Um I'm sure you can give better idea give us a better idea what those are.

I just think that when we when they when these things do happen, I think there needs to be a way for us to then go back and look at what we're giving them.

If we're if it's gonna stay the same, that doesn't make a lot of sense to me because they're not doing the same amount of work anymore.

So I would encourage us to in the future somehow figure out how we can go back and restructure these deals if they do back out uh kind of last minute.

Um and then madam we had one more if I may.

Thank you.

Uh one of the slides you talked about the developments within the townships, and one of one of the things in my township in district twenty-five has been uh the residential boom that's been going on for years now.

I had the opportunity to discuss some of the developments with one of the developers that's been doing some of the neighborhoods in the next in the district.

One thing that stuck out to me is he told me that uh the street width is not so now those neighborhoods have to be a certain width, is that correct?

I would it would depend on if it's a public road or a private road within the subdivision, but yes, it's a public road.

If it was a public road, it would need to be built to DPW standards.

I don't know what that width is off the top of my head.

Does that come through you folks that would be when they apply they would say we're gonna have a street that's this width, and you guys make sure it's that size, or is that DPW that does that?

Uh we would we would through the plating process, we would you know subdivide the subdivision and they would have to show the appropriate width for the right-of-way.

Okay.

Well, I appreciate that.

Um just kind of what I'm getting at here is that I would like to take a hope you can take a consideration in your your um your board that is gonna make all those decisions as well, the um economic development board and everything.

What they're doing to the district twenty-five right now, just because the street the city streets that run through the district are not this are are more narrow than what we see in the neighborhood.

So one of the things that developer told me is that when you look to code, um and this may be BNS as well here, but uh the city streets are not to code, but the neighborhoods are because they're wide enough.

The only street in the Franklin Township that's actually to code would be Emerson Avenue because it was widened.

So as you're approving these deals for these developments to come in, I encourage you to think about the ramifications on the city streets as well because DPW is having a hard time keeping up the way it is, and when we have 80,000, 90,000, 100,000 pound trucks on it with equipment on it coming through, it's tearing down the road faster.

So if we could try to slow down some of the development and have it more reasonable and more responsible development strategy where we're actually fixing some of these streets and getting these getting these things up before we approve them through your office, that would be hugely beneficial for the township, I think, and the district as a whole.

And I think that'd be beneficial for anywhere in the city.

So I I would encourage us to look into that as well when we're approving these projects.

So thank you.

Councilor Gibson.

Thank you, uh, Madam Majority Leader.

Um I have a couple questions.

Uh Madam Director and CFO, very thorough in uh presentation.

I appreciate you very much for that.

Um on the opiate funds, um, it that's going towards, I guess a portion going towards to master leasing program.

Is that part of the master leasing that we're using for as uh the um streets to homes initiative?

Uh so the master leasing program is I would say is separate from the streets to home initiative, but works very closely with that initiative.

So they're almost uh you know adjacent to each other.

I think through Streets to Home, the phase that they're working on is really on uh crisis response.

So they're focused on you know getting people into shelter or temporary housing.

Master leasing is more about that permanent housing, which I think will be coming at a later phase, but we're still coordinating what that looks like.

Well, good as good to hear because uh I think I'm really talking about that later phase where we're trying to get it 350 people actually permanently housed.

So good to hear that uh you invested in that a little bit further in terms of the master leasing program.

My second question is uh is housing, and I want to commend you for what you've done in terms of driving up more affordable housing here in Indianapolis with whether it be TIFFs or our our uh pilots.

You you're doing a really good job of trying to sow the seat if you will, in terms of trying to give more affordable housing to you.

My question to you is I don't I don't think we ever get to the point where we'll we'll be able to um maximize uh affordable housing.

I think we have a long way to go there, and is it's almost an impossible task, but you're you're you're you're you're definitely stepping up to the plate to try to get there.

My question to you is any estimates what how how how much housing we can affordable housing that we can maybe increase in the next one to three years by some of your efforts that you're doing.

So the the numbers that we have right now is what's in the pipeline.

Is your question focused more on like what will be coming or what should be?

Yeah.

So the MPO came out with a housing study in the last couple of years, and so they have some housing projections on like where we should be.

What is that housing demand?

I think right now with that development portal, that's gonna allow us to really aggregate our data better to see to be able to measure that progress.

Um it's been hard to do without a system like that in place, and so we're hoping to better aggregate data to be able to answer that question to be determined.

Thank you very much.

Appreciate you.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Leader.

Uh, two questions, if I may, they'll be quick.

Uh one maybe I missed it.

Is the DMD initiatives countywide?

Is that in our little book, or could we get the details of uh I mean, I see all these little yellow parcels and stuff, and I I mean I know what's what's there, but I don't recognize them as DMD projects.

So if we could get a listing, I it'd be helpful for me.

Absolutely, counselor.

Thank you.

And the uh the second one uh is I guess related to uh character one, which is which is uh the the bulk of our our uh spend in the uh city-county enterprise.

Uh we have a uh proposal from uh councilor Hart coming up uh soon.

And I wanted to get your thoughts on two things, and you're you're a unique individual uh yourself because you came from Fisher's.

So first part of the question is does the city of Fishers have a residency requirement that you had to live in Fishers or Hamilton County or anything like that when you were an employee.

Uh so no, they did not.

I lived in Marion County when I worked there.

Um, but I would say that that was part of my reason for moving or choosing to work for Indianapolis is because I found it important to live within the community that I was working in.

Okay, and then second part, uh, and we've we've asked this to multiple people, is based on that, would your recruiting efforts be easier uh to fill gaps that you have in in uh staffing if the residency requirements were lifted.

So in the positions that we've had open this year, we have seen a lot of demand for our positions, over a hundred applications for varying levels.

So I don't think that is a barrier right now for us hiring.

Uh, we're actually seeing an uptick in the demand for our positions.

Uh I would also add that DMD is focused on sustaining and growing jobs in Indianapolis.

Okay, that's fair enough.

Thank you.

Councillor Roberts.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Um Counselor Gibson took my question, but I will just give a couple of compliments.

Um really kudos to you all for all obviously the great presentation ball you're doing.

Um I love a lot of the stuff in here about activation.

You know, we've talked about George Street before, we've talked about the canal.

We've talked about the Spark, all those things that really just bring life to downtown, I think are so important.

Um and really just as a broader point, um, I just want to give again kudos to you all and really push you to be as bold as possible with building housing.

I know you guys don't have unilateral ability to build housing, working with BNS to make sure that our you know city uh bureaucracy and our city um you know management is not getting the way of development, but actually assisting with it, I think is very important too.

Um question that I just had on this is I noticed on here you mentioned the castle and revitalization plan and the um the floodplain.

I've not heard any updates on that from DMD for a while, so I was wondering if you could provide an update on that.

Thank you.

Yes, absolutely.

Um so Castleton revitalization plan was completed at the end of 20 uh 19.

So COVID did delay our implementation of that plan just because our efforts uh were focused on pandemic relief.

But we are working closely, and we have been working closely with DPW since the adoption of that plan.

Um and so that has really gone towards consultation of looking at that district uh and the floodplain.

So that would be daylighting Howl and Ditch.

What is the most feasible plan moving forward if we were to uh daylight Howland Ditch?

Um economic analysis of a TIFF creation or a flood control um incentive district.

So that is almost a flood version of a TIFF, and so right now we are in the midst of determining would a TIFF be better or would that flood district be better to support revitalization area efforts in that area.

I'll I'll say real quick, I appreciate that.

You know, I was not planning on even asking about that coming in, but I'm glad that you included this in here.

I know the TIFF is expiring next year and includes the Roche property, which we also just recently expanded.

So let me know if I can be partner to that.

Look forward to working on that.

And as we all know, I mean Castleton is the largest commercial center in the city.

So having that be a thriving area is really important for all of us.

And um so let me know if I can help out any of that.

Thank you.

Absolutely.

Councilor Maury.

No, I'm sorry, Hart.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Uh first I almost want to address uh gratitude for your entire staff.

Uh we work closely together all the time.

I bring them tons of questions and uh they follow up and do a phenomenal job.

And I I see a handful of uh folks here today, so I just want to make sure that uh I'm showing appreciation.

Um they don't always give me the answer I'm looking for, but I will say they uh they are very responsive and very thoughtful and very knowledgeable individuals.

Um I want to draw attention to is on the expenses by entity.

Um pretty technical financial question here.

On I'm just looking at a trend on professional services under the federal grant funds coming in from 23 to 24.

I mean, we were at like 24 million dollars, and then in 25, it skyrocketed to about 75 million potential for ARPA in there.

Uh I'll let you guys answer that.

But then I see now we're at we're at 69 million going into 2026.

So aside from what that jump comes from from previous years, the the big expense that we have out of those grants are professional services.

And when I partner that with the pie chart that you provided us uh on how grant dollars are spent, a lot of that goes towards housing investments.

So them there's uh certainly an overlap between those two.

And I'm just really curious of the what professional services are we paying for with those federal grants that make up the investment in housing.

Yes, Councilor Hart.

So uh the first point that I want to clarify on this report, when you are looking at the 23 and 2024 numbers, those are actual spend figures versus the 75, 70, 75.7 repeatedly for 2025 and the 69 figure or 69 million, those are budget numbers.

So that difference in spend does cause quite a discrepancy when you first look at those.

Um to be technical also with um the way that we expend our federal grant dollars.

We ultimately provide funding to community development partners via usually typically CDCs, and so those fall under our professional services expenditure category within our financial system in terms of accounts that are being used.

Ultimately, it's our community partner partners that are then actually going out and working to construct or real rehabilitate housing.

Thank you.

Is uh I think it'd be interesting to see a copy of essentially who we're providing those funds to and then what their results are.

I think that you know it ties back into Councillor Gibson's uh question in terms of affordable housing.

Um it'd be really insightful to understand how far those dollars are going.

Absolutely.

We'll be able to get that to you, sir.

Thank you.

Yes.

Thank you very much, madam chair.

Uh thank you, uh director and uh team for your continued work uh in the city, particularly uh during this budget process.

I just wanted to note that um as we took a look through the presentation uh and looked at some of the different in in the pipeline projects.

Um it would appear to me, just at glance that we see more happening outside of the center township area.

Uh and that's something that I think this council has been relatively vocal on, that we want to see additional and increased investment deployed through all of Indianapolis and Marion County.

I particularly wanted to thank you for the work that's happening in my district, District 22, uh, where we see the Burmese American Community Institute.

Um we're very proud of that, and um the folks at the BACI have worked very hard.

It was an honor to play a very small part uh in helping them go through that process.

Um I hope we can continue to see over the next several years those additional investments being deployed uh in an equitable, equitable way throughout the city and county to maximize uh the impact on all of our residents, and I think that we're moving in the right direction in that regard.

Uh Director, I was curious.

Uh we've seen in the news the last few weeks some discussions with respects to projects that maybe we anticipated uh seeing completed and have been pushed back for various reasons.

I was just hoping to confirm what projects are currently either uh being put on pause, um, getting put back out for bid uh or or otherwise being delayed uh in any way, shape, or form.

And and of course, I don't want uh a list of every project in the city or or or county, but mostly downtown, some of these big projects like the city market.

Um there's been some discussion about old city hall.

I'm just hoping to get more clarification on what really is and it's not a good question.

Yeah, I can speak to both of those uh projects.

So for City Market, on Friday we issued a request for qualifications for developers to help construct Whistler Plaza, which is the plaza that sits just west of the city market.

Uh it has been the plan for that to be the focus of the first phase of construction efforts, uh, really because what we've learned through the process is that we need to drive foot traffic in that area to support operations of the market house.

So we're trying to invest in the public space, make that more of a destination, and then we're doing that in partnership with the developers of the gold building who are looking to convert that office structure into housing again to drive that foot traffic.

So the developer is still focused on their private development.

That's always been private development, gold building, they're still working on that.

And we're supporting them through the incentives that you all have already approved.

Whistler Plaza was always going to be a hundred percent funded by the city.

And so we are going to continue those efforts.

What we're just what has changed recently is we are we are issuing a new request for qualifications to bring on a developer to help deliver those um improvements.

Previously, it was going to be the same developer that's focused on the gold building.

However, we want them to focus on the gold building, get that done.

It's a very ambitious project in and of itself.

We want to bring on a developer to help us construct and deliver the Whistler Plaza improvements.

So that's a status update there.

As far as City Hall is concerned, we're still working with TWG.

Um they went through legislative approvals for incentives earlier this year.

Nothing has changed on that front.

We have weekly calls with them to get construction updates, and really we're just working towards uh a groundbreaking, but we need to uh button up a few more things.

Really, some changes at the State House impacted the incentives that they were receiving there, and so that has uh delayed the anticipated closing date of that project.

I I appreciate that.

My my closing comment would be it seems to me, at least from from my own perspective, that I I learned of these developments through the media.

And I would hope that since the the city council is very uh involved in seeing these projects uh come to life, that there would be some advanced notice given uh to us as these new developments occur, or at least at the exact same time as as it's being released to the public, because I was getting questions um regarding some of these uh investments uh that frankly I was learning about um from outside the enterprise sources, uh, and I think it's important to make sure that we're we're aware um so we can defend or um discuss the work that we're doing in this chamber.

Absolutely thank you.

Councilor Moriarty.

Delaney, I'm sorry.

Thank you.

Thank you, Madam President.

What is her last thing?

I'm so sorry, yeah.

I knew what you meant.

Um this question is for Director Vukusic.

Um following up on Councillor Nay, could you just generally articulate what the vision is for Whistler Plaza in the market?

Are we looking at um food vendors again?

Something similar to what we've all remembered for the last 15 years, 40 years.

I mean, it's been a food vendor venue as long as I can remember.

Um could you just articulate on that a little bit?

Yeah, so the design plans we have right now that I can speak in detail about are Whistler Plaza.

So what we're looking at there is exposing the catacombs and making them really open air, daylighting them and making them accessible, uh, ADA access, but then just being available to the public as a public space.

Uh and then, you know, just some improvements with greenery on that plaza as a as a kind of a park-like setting.

When it comes to the market house, we really need to what phase two is going to focus on is identifying an operator.

And that operator will really help us nail down the details of what that new city market looks like.

We have a general floor plan, we're getting pricing on what that is gonna cost.

Um, so then as we're exploring operators, we can make sure that we're putting in a sustainable business model to support those operations, but really can't speak to the details of that until they're brought on board.

Um, but I would say generally we're looking at, yeah, vendors, multi-vendors of various uh both retail and food options.

We're not leaving really anything off the table right now.

We just want it to be a sustainable business model.

Thank you.

Additional questions from counselors.

Is there anyone in the audience that wishes to speak to the budget hearing?

Thank you so much.

I apologize, Councillor Delaney.

The last item on our agenda is a budget presentation for the Department of Business and Neighborhood Services.

Madam Director, the floor is yours, and that's what I'm saying.

All right, sorry about that.

Uh my name is Abby Brands.

I'm the department director for um the Department of Business Neighborhood Services.

Jacob Miller, uh Chief Financial Officer for Business and Neighborhood Services.

I think you all are used to uh Eva Flick sitting next to me.

She is still on maternity leave coming back next week, but she told me she's watching live.

So everybody say hi to Eva.

All right.

So uh do you want to take the okay?

Okay.

So department breakdown.

Um I present this slide.

It's frustrating.

All right, whatever.

Uh I present this slide every time uh to you guys just to provide a refresher of uh what BNS does and our different divisions.

Uh construction and business services is the area that focuses predominantly on permitting, um, but also business inspections, licenses, special events, property and land use use services, the area that um oversees all zoning enforcement, unsafe building enforcement, demolition, as well as other things.

Administration and finance is our kind of internal division, um, finance IT keeps all the other divisions running.

As you guys know, Animal Care Services became its own department in January.

Uh we're very happy about that.

But as we were party to the shelter construction project, we helped get that kicked off, and we still hold several of the contracts related to that.

We are still very much involved in that project.

Given the volatility of standing up a new department, and that department being animal care services, it just made sense that we remain involved in the project.

We'll figure this out.

Why?

Oh my god, gotta click it.

All right.

Uh next slide.

Uh I won't spend a ton of time on this, but I just wanted to provide a breakdown to show at a high level some of the differences between us and the health department because I know that can get confusing at times.

Um just a reminder so we oversee vacant structure disrepair.

That's our unsafe building program.

Um the health department is going to oversee all occupied structure disrepair.

So if a home is occupied but has issues, that's going to be a health department function.

Zoning enforcement, uh, that is BNS, we are enforcing DMD zoning ordinance.

Um, occupied junk trash and debris.

Um, that is often overseen by uh the health department just because when you get into occupied territory, uh you're not sure what the definition of trash may be to one person to another, and then uh oftentimes there might be other uh violations present that uh the health department would oversee, so that's their jurisdiction.

If it's a vacant structure zoning issue, like junk trash debris, that's us.

Uh we oversee all highweeds and grass, although uh the health department does have that capability, and then abandoned operable vehicles falls under us.

Department breakdown.

Uh I am pleased to say so.

We have 210 staff members.

Last year, when I came before this body, uh, we had 70 vacancies in January we had 30.

Now we have 18.

I think that's great.

Uh, and they are split evenly between a union and non-union positions.

Uh, we have several positions represented by ASME local 1437.

Uh, the other chart on the slide shows uh the increase to salaries that we secured with our 2024 negotiations.

I am incredibly proud of this.

Um, and I don't think AFSME gets a ton of credit for the work that they did.

Um, mainly the fact that they were open to right sizing.

It has often been one rate for all, but that is not the case with the different positions we have, right?

Some have more certifications or more qualifications than others, and they really came to the table and they were open to increasing salaries as it made sense for those specific positions.

So that's why you see kind of some differences in the rates there.

Um that right sizing uh occurred this year from 2024 into 2020 and to 2025 with an average increase of 13 percent, but some increased as high as 23 percent.

Um, over the life of the contract, the average increase is 24 percent.

Um, and joining us this evening is the president of ASME Local 1437, Amanda Thompson.

I think she wanted to say something, madam leader, if that's all right.

Yeah.

Hi, thank you.

Um, as Abby said, I'm Amanda Thompson.

I'm the current president of AFSME Local 1437.

Um, with me today is Vice President Jesse Markham.

We are not only leadership in the union, but we are also unsafe building inspectors, so um, we were definitely wanting to support Abby Brands, director of the department with this 2026 proposal, um, the changes to uphold the ordinances of Indiana and Indianapolis to keep our city safe and clean.

And we are firm believers in our mission statement, which is to protect and improve the quality of life of all persons in this city of Indianapolis, and this proposed budget that she has supports our mission as well as allows BNS to remain a self-sustaining city department.

Additionally, uh, moving forward, as you guys would see fit with the proposed continuous vacancy program to hold owners of long-term vacant structures accountable.

As an unsafe building inspector, I appreciate the department using every tool available to address blight and improve our communities.

And this proposed budget will also allow us to continue to fill the 18 vacant positions that we have in our department.

Thank you for your time.

Thanks, Amanda.

All right, construction of business services.

I'm not going to touch on 2024.

Um, these are items that I had in my appointment presentation, but just wanted to highlight some of the big things that we did in 2024.

In 2025, uh we were heavily impacted by this statehouse session, namely with uh House Bills 1037 and 1005.

1037 sought to uh reduce the local regulation around erosion and sediment control and essentially made it so that we can no longer issue drainage permits under an acre of disturbed land.

1005 is related to private plan review.

So for residential permitting beginning January 1st, 2026, you can have a third-party private provider review your structural and zoning plans, and then they can also conduct the inspections for that work.

We have a very small window of when we're able to take those materials in and review them and get them back out.

We have a very small window of when we're able to collect those inspection materials and approve them and get them back out.

I'm hopeful that we'll be able to continue conversations with the author of that bill who seemed very open to talking about it.

There are other states who have enacted these kinds of laws and they give a little bit more authority to the local unit, at least to be able to reprimand bad actors and things like that.

So we just want to make sure structures are built safely, so we're going to continue those conversations.

Bookings, and a more positive note, bookings was rolled out this year.

I think I've I've mentioned to this body I want to swing the pendulum back as it pertains to customer service.

Now every permit reviewer has a bookings link in their email signature.

So if you are a resident and you file a residential permit and you get review comments back, and you have absolutely no idea what they're asking for, you can click that link, schedule time, and talk to that actual permit reviewer about what the request is.

We've instructed our staff to not wait for those meetings.

If they see someone has scheduled something when they're next available, just pick up the phone and give them a call and see if they're available and talk through it.

And I think in almost all instances, we've been able to avoid a meeting because we've just picked up the phone called and hashed that out.

We are improving continuously improving our coordination between our fellow departments, DPW and DMD predominantly, working on things like variances and those processes, bond processes, the processes that seem to or not seem to that do span multiple departments and need that extra layer of coordination, which goes into IEDI as Director Vukusich mentioned.

We've been meeting with them regularly.

We've had ad hoc board meetings with some of their board members who are developers to have really candid but positive conversations about zoning and permitting processes and ways that we can all work together in a positive space to improve these processes overall.

And later this year we'll be bringing forward a special event ordinance change.

We don't want to do anything that jeopardizes Indianapolis being the best city in the world to host large events.

But this ordinance was passed in preparation for the Super Bowl, and I don't believe it's really been touched since.

I will say that number is skewed because that is literally every permit, so that includes things that have minimal review, but that's why we pull out the development permits, aka zoning permits, ILPs, structural and drainage permits, and those are averaging about 13 days.

That does play a role into what I'm about to share in the drainage permit numbers because of 1037 going into effect, and that change by state law of our ability to issue drainage permits.

We had to cancel a good amount of our permits.

We actually had to pause permitting in the drainage space for about a month while we figured out legally what we could and could not do, which leads into the next number.

So in residential drainage permits, um 99% of those that have been applied for to date are either issued, have been resolved or canceled, or are waiting on the applicant.

Less than 1% is with BNS now.

Non-residential drainage permits, 94% have been issued, resolved, or are waiting on the applicant.

6% or 13 permits are with BNS now.

Prioritizing citizen service.

So far, our neighborhood cleanups, we've picked up almost 24 tons of litter.

Our next neighborhood cleanup is on the near northwest side next Thursday if anybody wants to join us.

We have two left this year.

Last year, I believe we collected a total of 42 tons.

To put that in perspective, I think in 2023, we collected 23 tons total.

So we are improving with the amount of volunteers we're getting, and we're expanding the size to make these really impactful cleanups.

Illegal dumping assistance.

So if you are somebody who has been victim to illegal dumping, someone's dumped something on your property, we don't want to victimize you twice.

So we created the illegal dumping assistance program where you sign an affidavit, we send our vendor out to clean it, we eat the cost.

This year we also created a highweeds and grass assistance program for really the same purpose.

We know there are individuals who want to be in compliance, but for physical or financial hardship, just can't.

And so when we open a violation, we have a lot of information on the letter to reach out to us so we can start that process and conduct a free mail on their behalf.

We opened 975 repair cases in 2024.

To date, we've opened 762.

I will tell you, some of these have closed.

I don't want you to see that number and extrapolate that.

Oh, they're gonna open 1500 this year.

I do think we're on par to have another year similar to last year based on these numbers, but I don't I don't see this doubling, I guess I should say.

Demolition program.

So last year this body invested an additional three million dollars in our demolition program that we usually only budget around a million dollars for.

Uh yeah, he's excited.

Uh 54 structures were bid in 2024, and to put that in perspective, we will bid 100 structures by the end of this year, doubling our typical amount.

Um, since that investment, 79 demolitions have been completed, 49 were in 2024, 38 so far year to date, and we believe more will occur.

Um, there's approximately 110 structures in our backlog, which sounds like a lot, but 10 years ago there were 500.

Um, this investment has allowed us to catch up to those that were at risk of expiration because a demolition order, once it's been affirmed, we have to demo we have to demolish it within a certain amount of time.

And so we were having to prioritize those properties, not the ones that maybe need it the most.

And so by having this investment, we've been able to catch up in that backlog, and I think the most the oldest affirmed bid date we currently have in our backlog is April 2024, which is great.

And then, as Director Vukasich mentioned, uh Town and Terrace is underway that will be completely raised by this fall within a month or so, I'd imagine.

Uh, and Rosalon and Councillor Gibson's district uh was torn down earlier this year.

The continuous uh vacancy program.

So this is leveraging state statute and building on our current unsafe building program today.

Um essentially, it allows us to focus on the worst of the worst, so to speak, and significant blight.

Um, state statute allows us to open a specific case on properties that have been vacant for longer than 90 days.

We're going to add an extra caveat to that that a property has had to also have had three consecutive repair orders.

So, again, looking at the worst of the worst, these are properties that have been vacant for at least six years that are in disrepair, that have shown no signs of compliance.

Um, we foresee there being about 150 to 200 structures in year one.

Uh, this will be a largely administrative program because it is tied to repair orders.

Um, and then that map there kind of gives you so we went through the data to see what would be kind of an eligible property with what we have today with repair orders, and that's what this map is depicting.

Um I also had my team dig into the data a little bit uh to look at ownership as well, and I can tell you 60% of these properties are either owned by a company, um, an out-of-state individual or trust.

Um, getting into IT, I know Councilor Hart will appreciate.

Uh so we rolled out the road closure viewer earlier this year.

That's what you see here.

I put a nice uh QR code.

If you haven't visited it, please do.

Um this uh visualizes all of the road closures we have in the city, be it a special event or a DPW project, whatever that may be.

We also use this tool to build out our special event application to see if this tool could work well as a front end for us, and so far we've we've enjoyed the way it's it's worked.

Um we secured additional funding through uh the enhanced access review committee to roll out a second phase of this.

So we will be building out the right-of-way permit application, which is huge.

Uh, right now, our right-of-way permits are tied to a parcel.

This would actually tie them to a uh geometry-based map, so it would be tied to the lane where the work is occurring, making that data that much better.

And because it is being taken in through this tool, we can easily visualize it through this tool as well.

We're also going to be building out a public portal because we have developed so many hooks into our system, we already have the ability to display a lot of data through a cella, and so we want to make we want to create kind of an easier user-friendly search that folks can use with that mapping capability so they can look up whether it's uh a right-of-way permit or any kind of permit or any kind of enforcement case, uh, just being a little bit cleaner and a little bit more user-friendly than what the Acello portal offers today.

Digital license renewal.

So, right now, if you hold a license with BNS, you cannot um renew it digitally.

You have to reach out to a team member.

I think that's wild.

Uh, and so we are working on that right now with uh our development team.

Uh, we're working on uh contractor licenses currently because those happen next year, um, and we're looking at all of our licenses uh making that digital removal process available to everybody.

Website overhaul, this is something I've talked about for a while because of my ISA background.

I very much care about us uh overhauling our content, uh, and we're in that process right now.

It is not just um rewriting our content but also looking at how it's organized on the page.

I think the website is great, there's a ton of great information, but it was really designed from people who wanted to share a specific message and not necessarily considering how that message would be received by residents where we have this big knowledge gap.

So really paying attention to how we're communicating to the city.

And then legislative development, as I mentioned, with 1005 going live in January, that requires a whole new permit process for us.

So we have to build out an entirely new permit that people can apply for with this private function so we know when to engage and not to engage.

And so that's going to be a big part of our development team through the end of the year.

Allie's, I'm not going to spend a ton of time here.

Excuse me.

Because I was just here last April.

We are still on schedule.

I actually received the initial bid documents today to review.

So we should have that bid advertised and out within the next couple of weeks.

I think we already have a lot of interest from some contractors, which is great.

And we're targeting end of year to start that construction, certainly before some of the asphalt plants close.

Alright.

Moving on to the balancing budget proposal, the cost of service proposal.

So BNS's fees and penalties, some were established in 1988.

Those were our zoning violations, and you can see in your printout, I have the typewriter proposal to council in 1988 to establish those violations.

And then other fees we're discussing this evening were updated last in 2010.

Last year we worked with Baker Tilley on a rate and fee analysis that really looked at the output of our staff.

So how much time and effort does it take for an individual to review a permit?

What is the cost of that action?

And then what are we charging on the back end for that work?

We also assess peer jurisdictions, so looking at Carmel, Fishers, et cetera, to make sure we're competitive with our peers.

I think it's important to highlight that we are not changing every fee and penalty.

This is not kind of a 10% over the board situation.

For example, we could have easily tacked on an application fee to craft permits like electrical permits, plumbing, things like that.

It's not going to change the amount of review work we're doing.

So it's not necessary just to tack on a fee just because we can.

So I just want to highlight we we put a lot of effort into looking at the specific fees and penalties that we're changing and what we're changing them to.

I'm also pleased to say that as part of the ordinance packet in front of you, we are removing unnecessary permit processes.

For example, we have things such as notification permits, where we don't charge you anything, you file this permit, it goes into an office assistance queue, and they eventually upload it in the system, but we're not reviewing anything.

Why on earth are we having people fill out a piece of paper just to fill it out?

It's very bureaucratic.

So we are getting rid of that, and that's part of the ordinance package even there.

There's a whole section crossed out.

A quick uh overview of the approval process, so because it of course it is complicated.

Um, so broken up the fees into three groups.

The first group is zoning violations.

That is solely uh council's prerogative.

The zoning ordinance lives and ordinance.

Uh, my board has no authority over that, so uh the fees that we are presenting will be both weighed in on, voted on, and codified by council.

Group two, that's right of way, encroachment, drainage, flood, and some of our unsafe building uh admin fees.

That uh our the BNS board has jurisdiction over those fees, and they were never codified in ordinance.

So our board will be voting on any of those changes next week to go live in January.

And then group three is a hybrid of both of those.

So these are things that the board has jurisdiction over, but at some point in time we're also codified an ordinance.

So that's why what you have in front of you in your ordinance package includes some of those items.

Um the board will vote on those next week, and then council will need to vote to codify those to update those tables and ordinance.

The dates at the bottom there, just uh trying to highlight what we're what we're doing because I know there's some clunkiness in having to table uh proposals and things like that.

So tonight we're introducing the ordinance package, we're tabling it on next Thursday.

Our board will vote on those fees and penalties that they have jurisdiction over, and then we come back for review and analysis.

I know we'll have at least one amendment, um, and then uh we'll take the final vote at that time.

Not the final vote, but the the committee vote.

Or that's the intention actually.

Uh zoning violations.

So this is the group one I was just talking about.

Um, as you can see, um established in 1988, a flat $50 for every kind of zoning violation, which I don't think reflects uh the difference in these violations.

They're not all the same.

Um I think they have different levels of egregiousness depending on what is happening.

Uh and so you can see there in some cases we're not changing them.

That for a legal display, we're keeping it the same.

Uh but then you have ones like uh petition violation down at the bottom.

So this is a business has uh made a commitment to DMD to have landscaping around their business because they're near a dwelling district to screen for sound or what have you.

In some cases, we know maybe they don't put it in, in some cases maybe they put it in and they did they decide to take it out six months later.

That is clearly a thoughtful violation on their part because they know they've made this commitment to the city to have these things in place.

And so that's why we've increased that.

Excuse me, more significantly.

I know commercial vehicle parking is a huge issue in some council districts, so that one is increased as well.

Junk trash debris and operable vehicles development standards, those are all slightly bumped up.

But yeah, I think the Baker Tilly study averaged that about $326 for each of these violations, and so that's why we landed on that $325 number.

Skipping group two again, because those are the ones that go just to my board.

Um to group three for building inspections.

So when you uh get a structural permit and you pay the permit fee, there is an inspection process where our building inspection team comes to look at your framing, your foundation, they conduct final inspections, uh, they also do inspections for craft work like electrical plumbing, etc.

These were last updated in 2010.

Um, and so we are only uh requesting a few adjustments here.

So one is a reinspection fee.

Uh, all of our peer jurisdictions have one, we do not.

And what this simply means is that if someone schedules an inspection with us and then it turns out they're not ready or they don't show up or or what have you, um, right now we're going back out for free.

Our peers do not.

Uh so we would like to institute a reinspection fee.

Well, this would be nice to be able to offset some of the work that's being done by the inspection team when they have to go out.

I also see this fee acting as a deterrent because if you know that we're not going to come out for free anymore and you're actually going to have to pay a fee, then I think maybe you'll be available for your inspection when you schedule it or have everything available for us to see.

Moving on to the next four, these are accelerated uh inspection options.

So we do not want to change anything with class two that's residential.

I do not want to be the reason that someone has been waiting to get it back in their house and they need to get in their house soon and they can't.

We're so what you see in the current column there, those would stay the same for residential.

What we're proposing is that we create another four for class one commercial specifically, and that we increase those.

We have found that we get several uh of these types of requests.

In some cases, they've been in contact with their building inspector and they've just dropped the ball or something's changed and their schedules change and they need us to come out.

In some cases, they haven't been in contact with their building inspector, and then all of a sudden it's it's a big calamity.

Uh I've used this example a few times, but there was a hotel locally that was getting some work done and remodeling work done before a very big concert that was going to take place last year, uh, and they needed to reopen that day because the concert was happening, and we wanted to not be the reason why people couldn't sleep in Indianapolis after saying this concert.

And so we got a group of supervisors and all sorts of people together to go over there and handle it.

Um, but that was a very big mad dash situation to make sure that this all played out very well and that uh property owner knew they only had to pay $200 for it to happen.

So uh moving on, uh a slight adjustment to the administrative fee, um, and then a stop work order violation.

Right now, there is no violation for a stop work order.

So if you don't have a permit, and someone calls it in and we come out and we say, Hey, you don't have a permit, we put a piece of paper up that says you have a stop work order, you need to get a permit before you continue work.

It is not uncommon for people to look over their shoulder and say, Well, the city's not here, they're not gonna drive back by here, I'm gonna go back to work.

Right now I have no penalty uh for that, and I find that a particularly egregious violation.

You know that you're not supposed to be doing work until you have your permit in place, you chose to do it anyways, on um on top of working without a permit to begin with.

Um a lot of our peers have different ways of addressing this.

I've seen things like four times the permit cost to reinstate a stopwork order.

Uh we didn't want to do anything that was overly complicated for our system, so just keeping flat fees, class one again being commercial, class two being residential.

Um I'm not going through every single uh fee adjustment you because you have the the proposal in front of you, and I think it would take me another hour, even with as fast as I talk to go through all of them.

But I wanted to highlight just some examples here to talk about what it looks like the changes we're making.

So when we talk about structural fees, uh we assess a plan review fee at the beginning and a structural fee at the end when it's in ready-to-issue status.

That plan review plan review fee, excuse me, obviously offsets plan review costs and that and that work completed.

Structural fee is intended to help offset those inspection costs.

So right now, if you were building a 2500 square foot residential building, um, you would pay a little over 400 just in your structural fees.

That doesn't include zoning or anything like that.

We are proposing to adjust that formula so that cost would be a little over a thousand dollars.

And when you look at our peers, you can see that in Carmel, that same project, that 2500 square foot new build would be over $6,000.

In Fishers, it would be almost $5,000.

In Noblesville, it's over $5,000, and in Greenwood, which is even a smaller municipality, uh, it is almost $2,000.

Moving down to commercial, same situation, looking at $25,000 square foot.

Uh the plan review fee.

So in 2018, there was a decision by the board to remove the plan review fee.

Um, I think in all reality, it was just absorbed into the structural fee.

Um, I I don't think that's very transparent, and I I just personally don't like it.

I think if we're conducting plan review and you have multiple reviews, and we get into a situation where maybe a contractor is fired or a project runs out of funding or something changes and they don't get that permit, I'm never assessing a fee.

So I'm never recuperating the cost for that plan review.

So I think just being transparent, pulling it back out of the structural fee.

Um, our third party review costs are about a hundred dollars an hour, so that's guaranteeing we have a couple hours uh covered a review fee there.

Uh so right now that total cost would just be the structural fee about $1,700.

We'd be bumping it up to about $4800 per the formula.

Again, these aren't flat fees.

And again, when you look at our peers, you can see in Carmel that would be over $7,000.

In Fisher's $4200, and it's my understanding that their impact fees are well over a thousand dollars.

And same thing for Noblesville, almost six thousand dollars, and those impact fees are high as well.

So, in summary, um I just want to reiterate we put a lot of time and effort into getting good data and to understanding um the work that we do and the gaps that we have, and so these are very thoughtful changes to not only cover our expenses but to also align with our peers and remain competitive in the metro area.

We are not changing every fee and penalty.

Um, and I do believe these will ultimately net long-term improvements to service, whether that's us being able to invest more in our staff, uh, invest in greater technology solutions like overhauling our permitting and code enforcement system, um, or even the way we're able to leverage third party resources and and vendors.

And with that, I will turn it over to Jacob.

As Director Brand stated, BNS is taking steps to modernize our fee schedule with the goal of stabilizing the department's revenues.

That said, we approached the preparation of this budget with careful discipline and responsibility, and we're now proposing a budget that keeps expenses flat for 2026 until such time that those revenue increases from fee updates are realized.

The operating budget we're putting forward today reflects an overall slight decrease of roughly half a million dollars for 2026, which can be attributed to a reduction in our IT service charges from our internal partner ISA.

The end result is a balanced fiscally responsible budget that ensures the continuity of quality services delivered to the community.

Character one represents the department's personnel services.

There are some accounting shifts and strategic moves between divisions built into this character one budget, which will enable BNS to support the wage increases from the new collective bargaining agreement.

The net change to the 2026 character one budget is a $36,000 decrease, representative of a decrease in budgeted workers' comp expenses attributable to ACS splitting off from BNS.

Sorry.

The big picture here is that the overall reduction to BNS character three budget for 2026 will have no impact on the frequency or quality of services BNS provides to the city county.

There are no proposed changes to our character four budget for 2026 for vehicles and capital equipment.

And there's a slight increase to our internal services chargeback budget, um, which funds the services that BNS receives from the mayor's action center, office corporation council, and fleet services and with that, madam leader, our presentation's complete.

Thank you so much.

Thank you for your presentation.

Questions, comments from counselors.

Yes, sir.

Thank you, Madam Leader.

Uh two uh questions.

One is uh I you you mentioned the continuous vacancy, the new definition, uh you did data-driven, but I looking at the map, I believe I have a property that and I've I've discussed with Caitlin and this whole thing was well, it's it's owned, the taxes are being paid and everything else, but it sounds like under this new definition, the the person's not living there, and to your point, they own multiple properties.

Uh can I just send those to you or Caitlin?

Absolutely.

Okay, thank you.

And then uh second question, and this is more for the benefit on the uh other side of the aisle because this came up in our caucus discussion, but I think it's it's important for everybody to hear this, because I was shocked by this, that when we have the discussion about the fees being assessed and the why is it even egregious violations are it's just they we go in, OCC goes in or OCP goes in, and it's just uh request for continuance over and over and over, sometimes in many cases years at a time.

Uh and you mentioned that there is a limitation at the court uh that is driving that.

Can do you want to speak to that just for their benefit?

Certainly, yeah.

So um Katie Campbell, uh former uh legal counsel for BNS, she was an administrator over permitting, and then she went back to OCC and eventually became city prosecutor.

So the best person in BNS's perspective to be city prosecutor overseeing our cases.

Um post-COVID, we ended up with four docket spaces a week in front of a judge.

They alternate monthly, whether it's Monday or Wednesday, and that monthly alteration also alterates between or alternates, I'm sorry, uh, between uh magistrate Sandifer and Judge McMath.

Um and so that limited docket space makes it difficult for the city prosecutor to be able to prioritize which cases are going to be continued and which cases are going to be heard, right?

If someone appears to be working towards compliance, she's likely going to work with opposing counsel and continue those cases.

If someone is being more egregious and not coming towards compliance, she's gonna try to prioritize those, but she also has a very small window weekly of how she can prioritize those.

Um I would add, I think there's been a lot of frustration with uh, you know, how long sometimes these take, and certainly that maybe things don't really come to fruition.

I think um, or violations really come to fruition.

I think um the city prosecutor does a really good job of trying to uphold our fines and penalties.

What we have seen a lot uh with our assigned judges and magistrates is that they will often waive or heavily reduce uh penalties.

So that's something that we would love to discuss with this body further.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Additional yes, Councilor Nay Thank you, Madam Chair.

I just wanted to compliment uh the director, and I don't I know that it's easy to always pass around compliments.

I try not to pass them around so frequently that they aren't um uh viewed in in a significant way, but um when I think about all of the the folks that I email within city government on a variety of constituent concerns, very few can be director brand's responsiveness, but more importantly than the responsiveness that the the the detail uh that she provides.

Uh most recently uh we had a uh issue in my district um uh over near Ron Cali High School, and actually it's Councilor Kayel's district, it's my alma mater.

Uh but within five minutes, I had a full briefing of what the health department was doing in coordination with the Department of Business Neighborhood Services.

That's extremely important, and I just want to thank you and your team for doing that good work.

I also want to say something that I've seen the last uh six or so years is um a lot of time goes by before uh the council and departments make changes on fees and things, and it's frustrating for some of us who are sitting here because obviously that should have been done probably long ago.

And so I would just encourage you as we go through this, both at the council level and the board level, that there's some semi-annual review so that we don't end up 37 years later passing on to a new council uh things that should have been done much sooner.

Yes, counselor, counselor.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Uh also want to reiterate the sentiment of thanking your entire staff of beyond land use and BNS and probably Zach Adamson.

Uh your staff is the topic.

Uh specifically Caitlin that I email all the time, but everybody there is always helpful when I need them.

Uh and I'm I'm too very conflicted by everything that Counselor Cahill mentions.

Uh I brought this up in our public safety uh committee with with the judge and the concern about uh the amount of time, right?

But it's either three or four hours on a Wednesday morning that we're hearing any of these violation cases from the city prosecutor, which is a massive concern for me because it's it's the biggest portion of constituent uh management that I I interact with, whether it's high weeds and grass at the uh the mall or uh or housing illegal dumping, I mean you name it, right?

It's it's all the things.

Uh but it it almost uh uh semi truck parking I don't want to make sure I mention that when I'm talking to you, but it always seems that the bottleneck, you know.

I thought it was you guys for such a long time, which it's not.

You got I mean try if I'm speaking for if I'm speaking for my constituents, they would say we need to be faster.

I I will say that.

Um but there is uh uh three parts to this.

It's it's you guys, it's the prosecutor, and it's the city prosecutor specifically, and the judge.

And right now I've identified the biggest bottleneck is is the judge, and I just want you to know that when he was in that chair earlier last week, he did commit to looking into expanding those hours.

But I think it's gonna take all of us, you guys, the city prosecutor, I think it's gonna take everybody getting on those guys.

Um it wasn't just something of a funding mechanism either.

It was just a they have the ability to do it, they didn't have the concern about having money, they just need to appropriate more time to it, but they're not.

And so I would you know ask for your help in doing that.

I know I'll mention it Kay Hill's meant uh we're all trying to get to that point because that ultimately at the end of the day, that's you know, we're managing constituent needs and services, and you guys take the brunt of it on the front end.

I would love to do more.

I I've said year over year that I don't think we necessarily need to fund your department with your own fees.

Uh you know, if we could get more out of it by having more people, that would be great.

But I think at this point, if we did that, we're just gonna send the citations and they're gonna sit there.

Um so I just want to to ask your help specifically on that.

Um the other piece is you know, just to say the sentiment from anybody that I know I'm talking about in the building world.

Um I know we're continuously working on getting faster, but we just got to get faster, faster, faster, faster, faster, right?

Um, you know, correlating with um Director Vukusich and her initiatives towards housing, um, you know, I don't have Counselor Mallory's issue in my district with uh a residential boom.

Uh we could definitely use more on our side of town so we can start to incentivize our district 20 side of town uh more commercial development and the things up and down Washington Street.

Um and but we've got to get quick.

We've got to get really quick at it and um specifically in the permitting process.

I know there's initiatives going towards it, and I'm not saying that you're not, but we've got to get faster, more efficient every day.

And any, and I know there's technology that you're looking at, um, but specifically if you could lay out anything that you're doing in this particular in short uh budget to increase those speeds, I would love to hear it so I can take it back to the district.

Sure.

So I think highlighting some of the IT um investments we're making, things like pushing more things into dot maps so we can understand like we have more visual uh impact and we're collecting better data.

I also, if I'm being honest, I think a lot of this is perception-based.

I know any time I show turnaround numbers, I get you know groans of like, but that's not what I'm hearing.

Like, I know that's not what you're hearing, but that's literally what the data in our system is saying.

Uh and it's updated on a step-by-step basis.

So I think by and large, our team is moving very quickly when they get things to either assign those to a third party, hound a third party, or to do that review internally.

Um, but I hear the complaints, and I think that's a big reason I mentioned the um economic development um core that we've been working with with their ad hoc board members.

There are several developers on that board, and we've been having really great conversations about what is it, what are the hang-ups with zoning, what are the hang ups with permitting, and what should we be communicating better and what can we actually improve?

I think the other piece um there is I mentioned uh coordination with DPW and DMD um understanding when we're tossing things over the fence that we're being more transparent with one another, understanding that we're building out our processes appropriately, so when we do have you know a drainage variance, for example, we have some way of checking in to see where that is versus kind of tossing something over the fence and then just well, we'll get it back, you know.

And in the meantime, people are saying, Well, I haven't gotten my drainage permit yet.

It's taken six weeks to get my drainage, six months to get my drainage permit.

And it's not necessarily at the fault of our review or our vendors review in some cases we're sitting on a variance or multiple variances.

And so I think the more that we can get information in front of individuals to communicate what our processes are, to communicate what our turnaround times are looking at.

We've talked about linking Power BI into our system too, so we can have more regular uh dashboards because there's nothing that we're necessarily afraid of talking about publicly.

Like we know where a lot of our shortcomings are and we want to continue working on them.

All right, thank you, Director.

And yeah, I mean it's it's it's on both sides, right?

I've had people contact me and say, hey, my contractor, we're working with this guy, and then I contact your office and they say, Well, the c we're waiting on the contractor to do this, and then the person has to go to their contractor and have to send something to you.

So it is a two-way street, you know, by all means.

And then um, Madam Chair, just one more question.

Yes, sir.

Uh I I just want to take another stab at this question, but um specifically on the union side, because I haven't had the opportunity to do so.

Um, if it would be all right to ask the the union president on the staffing side of the house.

I've talked to some some city members uh in other committees, but I'm curious to know from the union's perspective if it would make their hiring easier if they could hire from outside Marion County.

So I will say the union doesn't hire individuals.

Exactly.

They represent me.

Um so when is the the this proposal being heard?

Because it can't be in remote.

The 26th, okay.

Yeah, but again, they they do not do the hiring.

Okay, well that hopes.

Councilor Roberts.

Thank you, Madam Ludie.

Yeah, we we've heard this question uh every meeting, every director, every person has heard this question numerous times about this upcoming proposal.

Councilor Hart.

So wouldn't it be fair to say though that if we broaden our search to outside of the city, the county, the state, we would have a more robust pool of people to work for us, though.

If we went outside of Marion County, then 90 plus counties, we could get more people to apply that are more qualified if we went to the whole state, though.

Is that fair to say that Councilor Hart?

May I answer Ms.

Mr.

Yeah, I I absolutely think if we broaden um our scope, we would get a larger uh pool of candidates.

Absolutely, that is very safe to say.

Madam Leader.

So that so that question uh that you've asked to several of the leaders of these agencies is gonna always be yes.

Anytime you broaden the scope of individuals that you can pull from, broaden the pool to Hamilton County, Hendrix County, uh, Morgan County.

Of course, the answer is going to be well, sure.

So you ask the questions if that's going to lead us into something in the future.

Well, although director said sure, the the pool be a better, uh it'd be a better people.

We can get more people, but I mean it's like you're putting people on trying to put people in a box with somebody asks this question every everyone that comes up here is how I perceive that.

Thank you, Madam Lee.

Yep, Councillor Hart.

Madam Luther, thank you.

Um so it it it it expands be way beyond that uh one piece of the question.

We get into the specialization of individuals and the ability to attract that talent.

Uh, we've had the conversation on the diversity of candidates.

We've had the conversation on the sunken cost in training and the vacancy of roles.

So it is far beyond just the scope of is it easier to find them based on the pool size?

Those are three other examples of of character uh that of conversations we've had uh just in that that single conversation.

So it is a broader conversation than just expanding the pool.

Well, thank you both.

And again, we'll hear this proposal win the 26th.

Thank you.

Additional comments, Councilor Delaney.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I just wanted to piggyback on what counselors Cahill and Hart stated about the violations and the city prosecutor.

Um I've been hearing a little bit about the same issue up on the north side of Indianapolis, and um I think the word that comes to mind is I'm curious about it, and um have talked to Director Briands, and I'm also uh working with my state senator on exploring um maybe creative ways of finding ways to get property owners to comply with the law.

So right now it's just a talk.

I'm I'm learning and I'm looking forward to working with Director Briands as the year progresses and and possibly the courts as well, into into getting creative about how we can um make our property owners comply with the law.

So thanks for bringing that up, um, councillor Hart and both committees.

I appreciate it.

Additional questions, comments.

Is there anyone in the audience that wishes to speak to the presentation?

Thank you so much, madam directors.

Seeing no other business called this committee, we are adjourned.