Good evening.

Like to call the Admin and Finance Committee meeting to order.

We have four budget hearings up first is the Marion County election board.

You have the floor.

Now you do get four and a half minutes, okay?

If you take a couple minutes later, are we okay?

Yeah, we need to adjust.

Okay, we're good.

Ready?

Hello, everyone.

Good evening.

My name is Kate Sweeney Bell.

I'm the Marion County Clerk and Secretary of the Marion County Election Board.

And well, you you I'm not going to read these because I hate that.

But our board is bipartisan, and we are responsible for governing and administering all primary general and special elections in the county.

Thankfully, we do not have many special elections take place.

And another thing that we're responsible for, the election service center, 3737, East Washington.

Poll worker recruitment and training for each election.

There uh just as a reminder, two in 2026.

Creation of the vote center plan, and uh the execution of items in that plan, including uh in-person early voting, coordinating voting for military voters and overseas voters, and campaign finance compliance and enforcement.

Oh, next one our budget.

Uh I know you see a lot of these.

These are there are a lot of zeros here, and it's a lot of money.

We have been the recipient of uh robust and bipartisan support uh for years that set up our agency for success election after election after election.

Uh so I'm grateful to you for that, all of you on this committee, but also the Office of Finance and Management, who uh you know they get a lot of pushback from all of the different entities that they deal with.

So uh we do look forward to working with you on this process, and uh you can see that next year reflects uh year over year increase in the general fund budget request.

Since there was no election this year in 2025, uh the numbers will be less in most cases.

Character one uh we have full-time employees, uh, and we also have seasonal workers and poll workers.

So we distinguish seasonal workers from poll workers.

The poll workers are the ones when you go to vote, uh, who are checking you in.

Our seasonal workers help us coordinate everything that we have to do to get ready for an election and to complete an election.

It's uh a lot goes into it.

But uh the increases in character one are reflective of the higher salaries that uh this body as a whole voted for last year.

So from it our poll workers went from 11 to 15 dollars an hour.

Um, and if you wanted, I'd be happy to pay them more because they're worth it.

Um so that was ordinance 16 last year, and uh our clerks, which used to be the judge and the sheriff, but we just call them clerks now.

We do not differentiate.

Uh they are instead of 100 are now paid 180 dollars for 20 hours of work, and inspectors now make 240 dollars for their day of service, and uh many of them do give it back.

Our character two money, everything costs a little bit more, and uh we will be judicious in our use of paper products and pens, and you know, maybe we'll tape them to the desk, but uh those those costs have increased, so that's what that is.

Um for character three, other services and charges.

That's uh that's the bulk of our budget, and it again is a large increase for next year, but it's because there are elections next year.

We will have a new election service center next year.

Uh that's safe to say.

Yes.

There we we've had it, we've had a minor setback uh this week.

Um, but after 15 years at the current warehouse, we will be moving somewhere more modern.

Uh hopefully still centrally located, and uh, but it will have security features, and one of the recommendations that we have received is in our mail handling area uh to have a separate ventilation system, which is not something that a lot of us want to think about.

It's not because uh you know uh mail gets dragged through the dump before it comes to us, it's for uh safety reasons, and uh those are just some of the things that we have to think about in addition.

Um the rent will probably go up, and during election season, we have 24-hour armed security at our facility to not only protect the workers but also um the ballots, because they're you know worth their weight in gold as far as I'm concerned.

Uh there are increasing costs for vendor logistics, election day support, and project management.

So all of that goes up.

The uh contracts control our pricing when it comes when it comes to much of this.

On to character four.

I'm happy to report zeros across the board this year and next.

Uh special funding, those cumulative funds, uh, the the separate pools of money.

I am not an expert on how they work, but that is those are uh funds outside of the general fund.

And we have a lot of as you can imagine, there are a lot of projects that take place on years where we don't have elections where we have to uh go out for bid for this, that, and the other.

That's that's what this these dollars are for 2025 and next year.

As you can imagine, next our time is a little uh more constrained, so we can't work on so many RFPs when uh it's our job to count the ballots.

And the as in years past, you can see the budgeting for equity.

We have uh these I I think these next few slides speak for themselves.

We um it's imperative to our board and to our full-time staff uh that those who come in to work with us uh reflect our community as a whole.

So be that political, um gender, race, ability, uh we want the folks who come in to do work, the people's work to represent the people.

So uh you if if you have any questions about these slides, I'm happy to take them, or anything else.

We have um there are always barriers when you're trying to um make decisions for one's agency.

There are um very few vendors that are available to us for our election equipment that are XBEs.

Um we're always on the on the search, so of the millions of people watching this, get those bids in to us.

Um there questions that any of you have.

Thank you, Katie, for your presentation.

There only took her nine minutes, so that is a somebody want to beat.

Um what do you feel about the uh mailing votes?

Is talk in Washington, do they want to just get rid of the voting by making how safe is it?

Well, it's been around for hundreds of years here.

It is uh there are some states that that is exclusively how they cast their ballots.

We have um there it there are new oh thank you.

Uh there are new um laws on the books about how we can accept absentee by mail ballots.

So the voter has to can't just ask for an absentee ballot, they have to apply for it and get approved, and they all of that information is in a central system within a state.

So our largest year uh for absentee voting by mail was 2020.

That's not a surprise at all.

Those just because someone is unable to leave their home or caring for a confined voter, or like my daughter, uh she goes to college out of state, she's still eligible to vote.

I don't think we take that away from our voters.

Uh and I know that an executive order uh from Washington DC only applies to federal agencies.

It is not a dictate to the states, and it certainly is not a dictate to any municipality, including this one.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Any questions to counselors?

Counselor Mallory.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Uh I originally only had one question, but I'm gonna kind of piggyback off your question.

Uh kind of questioning uh Ms.

Bell.

You said exclusive states, there's some states that exclusively only do mail in about it.

Yeah, uh Utah is one of them.

Um Oregon is another.

They don't have to be that's that's all they do.

They don't have places you can go cash your vote.

Right.

That they have everyone is odd, every registered voter is entitled to uh so there are places they can go cast their vote in person.

I believe if I could, I believe in most of those all state uh or statewide mail, they do have limited periods of like they have drop-off ballots, but I do believe there's um some states that don't have in-person, it's just dropping your ballot either at their office.

No it I mean state by state is different.

Some of the states that are all vote by mail, they don't have in-person and some do.

I'm just curious, I just want to make sure I'm I'm clear on my understanding.

So yeah, yeah, you're gonna be able to do that.

Utah and Oregon, you Utah and Oregon.

And they don't have any any in-person.

No.

It's all by mail.

It's all by mail.

They all they're voting all by mail.

Which I don't I I for me, I mean, it's the choice is not mine, it's legislated.

But I appreciate that voters have you know, you have to qualify.

You have to be 65 or older or caring for a confined person, or there's there are 12 um, you're talking about in this state in Indiana to in order to qualify to vote by mail.

Thank you.

But voters if if they don't qualify for that and they're gonna be out of town on election day, which is one of the reasons, but uh they can vote in person early at one of our satellite sites.

That's great, thank you.

I appreciate that.

And Mr.

Chair, if I may.

I just had one other one other question.

You said uh a lot of people will give it back when you talked about the pay they get, which is a very noble thing to do.

So you know that's very kind of them to donate their time for free and give the money back when they do give that money back.

I know sometimes it goes different places.

If they decide they don't want they want to forego their pay, where what happens that money?

They just don't get paid.

And so it's it just stays in our budget then.

Yeah, and we'll be reverted back.

Thank you.

Counselor uh Roberts.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair, and thank you to both of you.

Um I really appreciate obviously the work you guys do.

Um sure without saying, but this is not easy time to be an election administrator with everything going on.

So we are very much appreciative for all you do.

Um also very happy to hear about uh 3737 East Washington Street is getting renovated.

I was an employee there, which is how I met the two of you guys back in the day.

Um, and it's very much needed to have a new facility.

Um I was gonna I mentioned it earlier to the both of you that I am slightly concerned that Lawrence Township will lose a site, but it beyond that, I do think as we all know, we could obviously use more early vote sites.

Out of curiosity, what is the hurdle to getting more sites?

Is it a funding issue on our end?

Is it not finding enough sites that want to participate?

Like what is the barrier to not getting more sites?

I do think that would be very helpful in areas that the county that may not be serviced the best by the current nine sites.

Thank you.

We the how much time you get.

Uh it is not the cost.

The cost is not at issue.

The issue is having uh a site that is centrally located to a township that also has the ability and uh capacity for two weeks of early voting.

And um here at the city county building, we're open longer than everyone, but it's it's a whole different beast because we you know they unlock the Delaware street door, and uh that's how voters come to us.

Uh but there's parking to consider, and uh so we will probably need to find a new spot in Lawrence for early voting.

Um that's certainly not uh been communicated to us, but we understand what's going on with that facility, and I mean we don't have a choice.

It looks like we won't have a choice.

And if I could just speak to the the other question about expanded early voting, um that kind of goes back to what the clerk said about the the vote center plan.

The vote center plan is a comprehensive plan that includes election day voting, early voting, and sort of all of the administration that goes into that election, and that requires a unanimous vote of the board.

So it requires bipartisan uh you know, working in a bipartisan way to get agreement on those locations that you know we can adopt that plan through a unanimous vote of the board and then enact that plan.

So it does not just sort of the logistical challenges, but we do also have to have bipartisan cooperation and buy-in um from both parties.

And generally we do.

Uh thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Uh one quick comment and then a very quick question.

Um first obviously want to piggyback in Council Roberts uh sentiment that I know it's a difficult time to be in your all's position, so thank you for your service.

Um I think that now is an opportunity where we need to continue to show that our our public institutions are working for people.

Um and so one of the things I think you all do a really great job of is not just running elections, but making sure um voters, residents of Marion County can get educated on the process, and so something that I actually have sent to folks even out of state is the video you all do about how um absentee votes are taken in.

Uh it's very educational, it's very friendly, and it uh really demonstrates that this is a secure, safe uh process without interference.

And so I just want to say I appreciate the education component of what you do as well, because I think it's a big part of our responsibility in public administration.

So thank you for that.

Um the one question I had was uh as we brought up the increase in pay for uh uh temporary workers as pro you said proposal 16 case.

Yeah, 2024.

Yeah, thank you.

Um could you just maybe talk a little bit about how that it maybe was helpful really in retaining recruiting more uh temporary employees so that as many saddle as many polling locations could be open as possible.

Thank you.

Absolutely having it that what was the movie Field of Dreams.

If you build it, they will come.

If you pay them, they will work.

Um that is I I as I said earlier, I think the there aren't enough dollars in the coffers to pay um poll workers what they're worth they're worth their weight in gold.

And um but letting them know, and that's what this body did when you approved the increases, um it let them know that yeah, you can you can talk about it, but you're actually showing us what it means.

And uh four dollars more an hour, or maybe three dollars in some cases.

I it makes a difference to somebody being able to, you know, for some folks this is it's it's a supplement to a retirement income, meaning they can turn their heat up more degrees in the winter time and turn their air conditioning cooler in the summertime.

Um for others, it's taking their grandkids uh on vacation.

For others, it is putting food in their mouth, and uh you know, maybe in addition to the ramen, they they get a uh you know bag of salad or something too, but it it makes a difference.

Thank you.

Uh Leader Mallory.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

I just had another question for you.

Uh as far as you know, I know getting folks to work has been tough.

Uh I don't think that's been a secret for anybody.

So how's that going for you in getting folks to work?

Are we still having gaps that we're seeing in you know getting people to work?

And also within your individual, you know, one thing we didn't see in the in this is uh your current staffing if you have any openings or anything like that.

Uh we have one full-time opening, uh, and we anticipate another where one of our dearest is uh moving to be closer to her family, and she can't commute from Texas, so uh we will have another.

It's not that far.

Uh the well, you know, she's got to live here.

But she um there are uh yeah, it's always a challenge to recruit enough poll workers.

Uh there are some sites where uh it's sort of like a family, and the year after year after year the same folks come and they work at the same location.

Um I don't know how I I don't know if we paid five or ten dollars even more an hour if it would make a difference because there are we're they have to those poll workers need to live in the county as well, right?

Uh they do now there is an instance where uh the counters are we our board our three member bipartisan board uh there has to be a decision that is unanimous where um in order to come in and uh uh uh look at the ballots to determine whether or not to count them at the election.

Uh we have the board has voted to allow um Republicans to bring in workers from out of county just so we could get the work done.

Well, I appreciate that.

And uh Madam Leader, I apologize.

I know we talked about this last night, but since you brought it up, I'm gonna ask you said you know they have to live in the county, which is one of the you kind of made that kind of a point of maybe it's tough.

Would it open up your doors if we were able to recruit people from outside the county to be able to come in and do this work, and then we don't have to worry about you know residency requirement.

You know, we heard Director Bukasic last night said she went to work for Fisher, she didn't have to have a residency requirement.

She lived in Marion County work for Fishers.

Would that help you open up the door to have people that come into the county, maybe from these you know surrounding donut counties of Marion County that can then come help us get our job done when they maybe not have as much work in their county?

Uh it certainly might, but it's it's statutory.

So we we can't make that decision.

The legislature that they have they're the ones who have to decide that, so I don't even want to go down that wishing hole.

I think that just helps us when we go to the legislature and say, hey, maybe we should open up the doors, especially for counting and things like that, that we can open the doors up to let them people, the people at least from donut counties come in and help us out.

Well, it's it surprises me.

I mean, uh there are a million people who live here.

I maybe they're all surprised you though with the pay.

Oh huh.

Does it really surprise you with the pay?

Well, I mean, my family it's just what you do.

It's you you work the election in some way, shape, or form.

So uh, and you don't turn your money back to the county, you give it to the party.

So Hank Williams said it's a dying breed.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Any any other questions?

Anyone from the general public?

Nothing.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Are you presenting the next one?

Also, the voice I am not.

That is another agency.

Well, thank you.

We're the You did that in uh about 23 minutes.

Most of those counts.

Yeah, well, there's a lot of questions.

Thank you.

Welcome, Mr.

Boots.

Thank you, sir.

Mr.

Chairman, um ask our CFO a question while they're getting set up.

Absolutely.

Yes.

This as we continue to have these conversations about residencies.

Where do you pay your taxes?

Where you live.

And so we are the fiscal agent for the city of Marion County, Indianapolis, right?

So I think it's important that as we have this conversation, we understand people pay taxes where they're where they live.

And again, you are the fiscal agent, and our number one priority should be in Annapolis and Marion County.

Thank you.

All right, thank you.

Up next is the budget presentation for voter registration.

Do you have the floor?

Right.

Introduce yourself.

Good evening, uh, Chair Mascarry and uh members of the committee.

Uh my name is Alex Narenda.

I am the uh Democratic Board Member for the Marion County Board of Registration.

This is my colleague Cindy.

Cindy Maori, the Republican board member.

All right, so um slide please.

Um so voter registration.

Uh we are located on the first floor on the west wing of um the city county building, of course.

Um, and our main duty and function is to manage the voter rolls.

Um a lot of uh the community, a lot of the work that we do actually is right in the voter roll to make sure that um every vote, every new uh registration is processed correctly.

Um a lot of our staff spends countless hours reaching out to individuals that need follow-up.

Um, unfortunately, we're in a space to where people do sometimes make mistakes and communication doesn't really follow through when they make that initial voter registration.

So we find ourselves do it spend a lot of time doing that.

Other pieces of our office and our agency include uh counting and certifying ballots, uh excuse me, counting and certifying petitions whenever any candidates that need petitions, such as the governor, uh presidential.

We we dealt with quite a few of those last year.

Um coming up this year, we'll we'll see some others, such as school board, which are quite easier to manage.

Um as an agency, we are a um somewhat political agency, and uh both both major political parties must be represented in our office, so we are bipartisan office.

Um that is by uh statute that we must uh represent an equal number of Republicans and Democrats in each position, of which we have 12 total positions, uh, two co-directorslash board member positions, uh, two chief deputies, uh, four senior analysts and four um four analysts.

Um of the highlights of voter registration is the flexibility that we provide that we offer our employees.

Um we we we reach out to the community, so we we provide flexibility for them to go out to the community and actually perform the duty of voter registration in the community.

Um we've partnered with other community um partners in the past because there's 12 of us.

Um, as Kate mentioned earlier, this is a city with a million people.

We can't be everywhere all the time.

So another thing that we've done and focused on quite frankly, is just making sure that people in the community know how to properly fill out and or these agencies know how to fill out properly fill out voter registration forms.

Uh slide.

Um in 2024 VR voter registration touched um over 130,000 registrations.

Um as of August 13th of this year, we have 625,938 registered voters in Marion County, um, which is the largest number of voters in the state.

Um we have been very fiscally responsible and always finding ways to operate efficiently and lean.

Um in many many cases that has seen a reduction in supplies and temporary services using what we got and spreading it as far as we can.

Um in regards to the uh in regards to fiscal successes.

We also always do take advantage of any successes that are offered at low low to free um cost when it comes to training and equipment.

Slide.

As mentioned earlier, um, voter registration.

Uh we do provide several outreach opportunities throughout the community.

Um our chief deputies have made uh honestly each everyone in the leadership position in the office has made relationships within the community.

Um they know where to reach us if they want to have voter registration drive, and with each one of those drives, we do make sure we do make sure to send a bipartisan team.

So if you ever see vote uh voter registration out in the community, you will see a Democrat and a Republican working the table in the uh spirit of fairness and the spirit of fairness and bipartisanship.

Um in regard to um our voter information, it's not only English, we also do have access to uh Spanish voter registration forms that we do share when we are out in community events.

Slide.

Um 26 2026 goals, um, priorities and outcomes.

Uh we are planning to maintain our staff.

We're fully staffed at the moment, uh, maintain our staff, maintain our efficiency, um, to support registration opportunities, um, to support uh working through all those petitions that we anticipate to see next year, um, as well as support the election, um, the the actual election electoral process.

Our office does stay open as long as the ballots are open.

Um we take quite a few phone calls when there are miscues in some sort of registration, whether a person needs a uh uh 412 VRG 412 to denote a move or just some information that has happened within the 30 days after voter registration is closed.

Um we we operate as an auxiliary union to the or excuse me, auxiliary unit to the election board on the election during the election day, so um early vote all the way through election day.

We have a proposed budget 2026 of we have the proposed budget of 2026, which is really remains consistent.

At this point, we do have a pro uh conference that INVRA, which will be attending this week, to really anticipate any changes.

Don't really see any at the at the present moment.

SVRS, we've had that for quite some time.

The system has been very reliable to us.

So I don't believe the state, there are no signs that the state will be changing anything there.

And we will continue to reach out to people as I mentioned earlier.

If there are any further follow-ups necessary on a voter registration, our staff is very vigilant on that follow-up.

Slide, please.

Solely focused on processing registrations and maintaining the voter roles for Marin County.

General budget breakdown.

Voter registration operates out of the city county, other county general fund.

We are 100% funded by the general fund.

And 2020, the 2026 budget represents a 63,391 increase from 2025.

These increases are mainly represented in our character one and character two, character one being our personnel services and character three being professional services and charges.

Employee benefits.

Slide please.

We were able to cut some costs in our character two.

Excuse me, just over $9,000.

And that goes back to our office supplies and things that we feel that we can operate a little bit leaner on just to spread again to spread what we have a little bit to spread what we have and spread our resources further.

Slide, please.

Character three, we do see an increase.

Or excuse me, with just increases in general costs and serve increases in general of costs and services.

Again, our office maintains very, very pertinent paperwork when it comes to affidavits, VRG 412s, just general, a large amount of items, the petitions that the aforementioned petitions that we talked about, we hold on to those, we keep those, and each one of those has a different amount of time that we have to keep it in storage.

So when you're looking at the amount of paperwork that we have, the office space, we we would be swimming in uh pay, we will be swimming in papers if we kept in the office, so we do have to rely on a third-party vendor for that.

Um character four.

Uh property and equipment.

Um this is more online of just making sure that we are able to replace any equipment that we need in in-house, whether it be some ergonomics, some chairs, just things to maintain um supportive workspace within our office.

Slide.

And that is it.

Do we have any questions?

Thank you.

Um, you know, the paper, what other ways can the uh public register to vote?

Can you do it through the BMV still?

Yes, they can do it through the BMV.

The BMV is one of our that is that is one of the larger registration sources.

But they can go to Indiana Voters.gov.

That is also a very reliable space.in.gov, especially if there have been any name changes or any move it, any moves.

Um that site, that site is very um, it's very loaded with information.

Um, and we find that we have quite a few less errors when folks do register online because they're registering themselves.

Um, and sometimes spammenship can be an issue when you're reading a uh paper registration.

So thank you.

Any question to counselors?

Counselor Boots.

Mr.

Chair, thank you for the presentation.

Um just curious, uh do you have any type of affirmative outreach program to reach out to the high schools in Marion County to grab the 18-year-olds, make sure that our seniors are signed up.

As far as something affirmative, I say that's something we're still developing.

Um, just working on creating relationships, getting out there and talking to principals.

Um, it with the news articles we've seen in schools over the last 10 or so years with the levels of uh violence.

I should say it's become so much harder to get into a high school.

Um we do try to find, I I know personally I've tried to work with teachers and other individuals in there.

Maybe since they're already in there, they can be pretty much the hub and talk to their students because um voter registration is something that is just a civic duty.

Um it is not a partisan act, so it's it's a little bit easier when we're working with staff, um, but we are trying to find ways to really establish just a great cadence of even if it's just showing up to high school graduations or things of that matter, or you know, just places where we know we'll catch the seniors, majority of seniors and register them there.

Yeah, I would encourage you to do that to the extent you can, uh, and I do appreciate security has become a much tighter issue, but I know in the past, um, at least in my school district, people have worked through you know, the the student uh Republican Club or the student democrat club, and they'll have sign-up tables in the lunch room, things like that, um, just to as you say as a civic duty, get people accustomed to signing up, and also just you know, in a Friday night football game, handing out here's where you go, you know, a business card with the information.

There's just we need to touch these young people.

You need to be in front of them, you need to touch them.

Absolutely.

You can't just publish something, you can't put it on a website, you need to be out there, you need to look them in the eye, and you need to hand them something.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Boots.

Any other questions?

Councilor Allen.

Just to piggyback off of uh Councillor Boots.

Um, you had in here as of August 13th, 2025, there were 625,938 registered voters.

Do we know the data?

You know, the breakdown of the ages of those voters by any chance?

Um, I believe that's a report we could pull.

Um we can pull reports.

Um as far as age specific data, um, um I I would actually have to go in there and look to see if we can get the age-specific data.

Um, we can pull data based off of you know, um ad or locale, and but as far as age, I don't know.

Okay, so I'm being told no by my chief deputies.

Okay, and I do like you to commend you all on the work that you are doing.

Um, Brian, I actually work hand in hand um quite often throughout the year because I am very big on getting registered voters, um, but also providing that um voter education because I know that is real important, especially like counselor boots just said, you know, making sure we get those young voters in to see, you know, and provide that education.

And I know we did a voter registration.

What was it last year?

And one of the things um we ran into was trying to get an 18 year old to register to vote.

And I'm not gonna say what he said, but I was like, we can get your information if we really wanted to.

He was thinking the FBI was gonna come out or something.

Um, but I do know, like I said, Brian Chatfield is very um involved, and like I said, we're constantly uh working hand in hand to you know advance the book registration.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Any other counselors?

None anyone from the public can speak on this.

No, thank you very much.

All right, so make a review eventually.

Up next is the Marion County Building Authority.

Welcome, gentlemen.

Thank you.

Have a seat.

Introduction.

Introduce yourself, and you have the floor.

If you feel like it's getting warmer in here, it is.

Yes.

It's nodding your head.

Um it's one of the downsides to doing a downsides of doing a climate control project.

Uh so apologies for that.

We'll make this as quick as possible so we can be done.

Yeah, do you want to?

I can advance it.

It's okay.

But yeah, it's the other down.

Okay, yeah, it's the down, I think.

Thank you very much.

Um, chairman and committee members, thank you.

Uh President Verdix is our rec director of our it's he's with our board of directors, he's the president, and I'm Mark Peterson with the uh I'm the general manager for the building authority.

So sorry, a little disorganized here at the moment with the climate control.

We want to present our 2026-2027 fiscal year budget.

Um next slide.

Um we have a total of 23 property budgets in here with just a little bit over a 36 million dollar total budget from last year.

The biggest changes that occurred between last year and this this budget is OFM has back the expenses are related to the Dennison parking garage operations, five of which we carried last year, and we do have new facilities the Belmont Waste Garage, which is currently under construction, as well as the animal care facility.

Now we do manage the one at South Harding, but we will be managing the new one, which is twice as large.

So we did adjust our budget for that, and then the housing hub, which we can talk more about, but that's in our budget based on the original design, which is what we based our budget on.

And then last but not least, uh the family youth intervention center out at the former CJC site, not CJC, JJC site.

The Annex is as it was called, that is now going to be a facility that's run 24-7.

So we adjusted our budget up for that.

So that's that's a change for that particular facility.

Okay, thank you.

So just diving into the budget, the city county building, obviously the largest at 731,000 square feet.

Um the operating budget is just a little bit over 11 dollars a square foot, which is very good.

Um, and besides the OM we normally perform here, we also are doing the in our third year of our ND 3.0 renovation.

This room of which is one of the things that uh has been uh benefited by that, and lastly, IMPD East Wing Sixth Floor, they're going to be occupying that floor, formerly a courts floor, and that's under renovation due to open around March.

So next okay.

Um this slide, slide two of three of the budgets is just the uh CJ primarily CJC properties.

Um the adult detention center slash sheriff's office is just under 800,000 square foot, so that is our single biggest facility uh in these property budgets.

Uh we're in our fourth year of operating out there, and we are running the combined ADC courts building and central utility plant.

I combine those together because they all operate off of the central utility plant.

We're slightly under 12 dollars a foot, 1193 for that facility.

2.1% increase for that.

So in our budgeting this year, we're very careful.

We understand uh the financial situation and the budgeting situation, so we we've done our very best to keep these budgets as low as possible.

Okay.

Um this third page basically shows what I would call new and unique properties, um, Belmont waste, animal care, like I mentioned, housing hub, the youth and uh the what we call FYI.

Uh that is um obviously slightly changed, and then the uh Browning facility, the uh quitus professional building we call it out of the CJC.

Uh we're we're acting as a sub-landlord in that uh over the tenants out there, so that that's that's an expense only uh budget.

We don't actually operate that facility.

Uh Belmont is about 102,000 square foot, due to open in January.

Animal care will open Q1 of 2026, and that's about 61,000 square feet.

So we're happy that uh these properties are all uh coming under our umbrella, and then we will do a fantastic job maintaining them just like we do now with the others.

Okay, capital repairs.

Just a quick note we're going to be receiving uh 500,000 from OFM for the calendar year 2026 to do capital major repairs on these facilities.

Next slide just shows some of the highlights of things that we've done that are either complete or in progress.

We appreciate OFM's uh partnering with us year after year on this uh to be able to maintain our properties.

Okay, next uh strategic accomplishments.

I just wanted to mention that our board of directors uh encourages and approves a set of strategic goals every year six, seven, eight, whatever the number is for the particular year.

This is just three of those.

I wanted to mention uh the third bullet point shows that we just spent over half a million dollars with XBE vendors this year, and some of that has to do with ND 3.0, granted, and but a lot of it has to do with just making a dedicated effort, which our board and we are very serious about.

You can see that on MBE we spent 21%.

With WBE we spent 9.5%, and that's uh compared to last year.

The MBE was 16.2 and the WB was 8.1, both of which were also last year above the city's goal.

So we're really proud of what we're doing.

Uh the next slide just shows some statistics, uh, charts that proves out what I just mentioned, but I'd add that the lower left chart just shows that we added 12% more XPE vendors that we work with this year, and we're always looking to work with more.

Uh next is just basically strategic goals that we're currently working on.

So the board just approved a new set of strategic goals for the building authority.

And I might just really quickly mention, and it's ironic that the climate control project is one we're kind of working under now.

Um, but we we we are planning to take all of the uh controls in-house, so that will allow us to have not only a lot more control, but it will allow us to uh service it at a much cheaper cost and not use Johnson controls as our uh vendor who has an expensive contract.

We're trying to do away with those in control as much as we can.

So that is one of our goals for this year's get as many properties as possible onto an automation system that works for us.

Um this just shows our organization.

Uh the lower left box shows uh basically the city county building and all other what we call mobile operations properties in the lower box.

The right box to the bottom shows the CJC properties and everything else is supporting those two major operations.

Uh statistic organizational statistics basically have 124 employers, employees, uh seven positions currently open.

We're about 8020 on our hourly versus salary breakdown, and uh right now it looks like Gen X is leading the way in this donut uh picture of generational statistics.

The next uh slide shows kind of the gender and ethnicity data.

Um the left pie shows that females are double the number when you come to management.

So we have 20 22 percent female representation in our management side in property management, that would look more like 7%, just as a relative uh comparison there, and then to the right, ethnically, a quarter of our employees are minority status.

Industry average is right there, so we're we're right there with the industry average.

Next slide, our employees uh obviously our most valuable resource.

We do yearly, we don't do them every year, but for the last two years in a row, we have done compensation studies to ensure that our employees are being fairly compensated.

And when you're talking about trades and and you know mechanics and electricians, it's very difficult to not only find them but to retain them.

So the next couple of slides I just wanted to kind of really just quickly talk about the fact that we did this study.

When we find that someone's skills exceed their pay, we we make that adjustment.

Um play and performance.

About two years ago, we started a brand new performance system for our employees.

It's far more comprehensive, it's skills-based, we call it skills for pay, and again, that allows us to make sure we're paying our people equitably.

We do train our supervisors to be very fair when they administer that test to make sure that we're capturing all of their skills.

Employee promotion.

Um, I want to mention that we do have a very good internal promotion rate of about 30%, 29, 30 percent.

And we do have an internal apprenticeship program where we bring employee bring in someone from the outside and pair them up with people and they learn our trade.

And the goal is to keep them.

Employee retention practices.

Uh, some of our efforts include training for our supervisors this year.

We did a four-part rollout, just trained supervisors.

We do online learning, employee engagement committee.

You can see the picture.

And we have an uh annual turnover rate of 18.4%, which the average national is 47%.

Last year we were at 33.8, and then uh the year after that to 2024.

Apologies.

2023 was 33, 2024, it's 27.

Now we're at 18.

So we are quickly decreasing our turnover rate.

Um recruiting.

Um of the challenges we have, and you know, kind of the desire here is to learn what our challenges is too, is when it comes to background checks, there tends to be some fails with especially in the the people we're pursuing to hire.

That's primarily because we operate mostly public safety properties, and when you have public safety properties, the sheriff's rules guide us as to what is allowable and not allowable on a background check.

So there is a percentage of failures.

I don't know that exact statistic, but there are a number of people that don't make it through.

Um and real quick, employee wellness.

I just want to round it off by saying that we have a very good uh plan, wellness plan for employees, includes free resources and employee assistance uh program and and other health incentives.

That's as fast as I can run through that.

So I don't want to do that so you didn't suffer too much in the heat.

Thank you very much.

You guys do a great job in these buildings.

You know, this building was built in 1964, and it's polished, it really is.

Okay.

Um, you know, the general public, I don't you might explain how the money comes in.

Where's it does come back to Indy, correct?

As far as the maintenance and things like that.

How does the structure of the money work for the city?

Basically, uh OFM charges act back as rent to the agencies, and that's where the money comes from to pay for the ONM.

That is our budget.

Now we do an awful lot that is outside of that budget.

ND 3.0 is a classic example of that and other things.

Reimbursable projects like what we did out at the juvenile annex.

That was about a million dollar, if I recall, uh build out, and we did that uh you know that did a lot of it with our forces to save money, but that was reimbursed through the probation department.

So we do a lot of reimbursable stuff too.

Thank you.

Any question?

Councilor Barthes.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Can you talk a little bit about what you do to make your buildings run as efficiently as possible?

Oh my goodness, yeah.

So uh where do I start?

So um we we've been on a continuous improvement efficiency.

So some of the things we do, it's with climate, so uh utilities is a big 25% of our budget.

Uh we're religious about finding ways to save on uh utility dollars.

So whether that's negotiating rates for better uh improving our equipment, climate control is a classic example of the things we're doing here.

Um we we we we can whenever possible we negotiate for um we hired a consultant to help us save money because regulatory and um I don't know how best to describe it other than we say recently saved a hundred thousand dollars on sewerage just by hiring a consultant to help us negotiate a better sewer rate.

So those are all just some real bare bones classic things we do to better be more efficient, leader Mowery.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Kind of figure backing off counselor Barth here.

Um to not sound too facetious here, uh the climate control you speak of.

It seems like we're saving money by not running it after 3 p.m.

Um we get into these meetings all too often and it's a million degrees.

And this is one thing I've heard from a lot of counselors because I sit by a lot of people.

I know Dan and I sit next to each other a lot, and I I've heard Dan say he's hot.

I've heard I know Dan's heard me or seeing me sitting over there wiping my forehead because I'm sweating sitting in a meeting.

Are we able to get is that because Johnson control controls the temperature, or is that something you guys control?

Well, if it's recent, it's probably to be blamed on the climate control project because we have to have air handlers shut down after hours for that.

Our normal is to shut the air handlers down at five.

So if they're going down at three, by all means please reach out and let us in.

I'll say full disclosure, I say three p.m.

facetiously because I know it gets hot as all blazes in that par over there, wherever we're at, it seems like by the time we get there, it's hot.

So we're able to fix that because I mean, not you know, not to be self-serving here, but the folks in the audience as well have complained about how hot it is in the room.

Are we able to figure that out?

I mean, I see folks back here right now saying it is hot right there.

Yeah, it is.

It's hot around my college.

And that may be because you're in the hot seat, but you know, that's a size point.

But are we able to figure that out to where we can have the AC going in these rooms?

Because I feel like if we're the ones that are holding the purse strings and we're the ones that are approving the budget, we should at least be able to do it without having a uh uh hangrier uh hangry feeling of heat hangry.

Well I I need to have a conversation and get to the bottom of that.

Um it does normally shut down at five now.

When there's after hours things like this, we have a schedule.

The schedule is sent to our operator, our operator keeps the system on.

If it's recent, it may be to blame for the climate control project.

We will do what we can to work around that so that we don't have to have that happening.

That's that's my best answer.

Um I appreciate that.

Mr.

Chair, I have a lot of respect for you.

I think you're the only person I've ever heard complain about being too cold in one of those rooms.

Outside of that, I think you put it a polar bear status, and we're gonna be fine because the folks in the audience as well that are fanning themselves right now.

Yeah.

If we can figure out how to you know make it to where it's bearable for everybody, that'd be wonderful.

Um duly noted, sir.

Thank you.

Any other questions, counselors?

When you get older, you're your you and your wife fire with that thermostat.

Okay.

We're long sucks in bed.

Any other any nothing else?

Uh we have nothing else.

Next one is Mary County Cooperative Extension Service.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thanks for suffering with us.

Thank you for flag.

Thank you.

Welcome.

Are you toasty?

It is really high.

Say it a little louder, so you folks back in the car.

I thought it was me.

I was like, excuse me, because that would be unusual.

Welcome, ladies.

You're all right.

I am Laura Dodds, County Extension Director for Purdue Extension here in Marion County.

I'm Rita Blythe, our director of operations.

All right, well, zoom past this and give you some time to ask questions.

Um, I believe you all are aware of Purdue Extension, but if not, we are the extension of the university, Purdue University, into the community community, serving the unique needs of our urban environment by taking the knowledge and research from the college and bringing it here to Indianapolis, where our educators go out into the community and provide um primarily free educational resources to Marion County residents.

Um we do those programming under four core program areas agriculture and natural resources, which is the one most of you have heard of because you you've heard of master gardeners, that's us.

Um health and human sciences, community development, and four-H youth development.

Um, our staffing structure is a little different than other agencies.

We have four county supported positions that are full-time, and the additional nine educator positions are funded through contractual services.

Rita will share a little bit more about that, and also um supported through Purdue University and the USDA.

Our current workforce consists of 80% female and 20% non-white.

We don't love that.

Um staffing investments.

We um invest as much as we can because we don't have a lot of control over our recruitment and retention practices either at the university or at the city level.

Um, so but we do practice equitable recruitment.

Um we do have opportunities for internal advancement on both sides of the Purdue Educators and the City.

And um, this year we really invested a lot in free professional development for our staff.

Um just a little bit of program success.

We're serving um nearly 40,000 residents in each year that consists of about 386 separate unique learning experiences, over 700 hours of education, and as I kind of mentioned, 78% of our programs are offered free to the public.

Umgagement and outreach.

We have so many partners to do the work that we do.

Um, it's kind of required whether that's working with a youth serving organization to bring kids into our for each program or working with you know Marion County Soil and Water on uh led program for you know, it's most of our work requires partnerships.

So a lot of that we have a county extension board.

This is an advisory board, not a governing board, with seven community leaders, and each of those four program committee program areas that I mentioned.

We have advisory committees that make up those that are hopefully reporting back to our educators what the needs in the community are, and those advisory committees serve as a pipeline for our board.

Our external communication strategies are pretty similar to what everybody, you know, social media, e-newsletter, flyers, those kind of things.

We're happy with our open rate.

We have a pretty high open rate for e-newsletter.

Um our social media following just keeps going up and going up as we have dedicated communication coordinator really focused on that, and she's amazing.

Um, all of our facilities are absolutely accessible, and we pride ourselves on that, and we have opportunities due to a budget increase that you guys gave us, I think, two years ago, so that if individuals register for one of our programs and need language services, we can pay for translation services for that to make sure that it's accessible to them.

Um I won't read these because they're in your packet.

Um basically our goals are diversifying our workforce and volunteer base as much as we can to reflect the city of Indianapolis and this Marion County.

Um we're always working to enhance cultural competency, and we do this all while adhering to Purdue University's current policies and guidelines that have changed.

Um expanding program reached and grade engage broader and more diverse audiences is always a focus because we tend to serve um low-income families and neighborhoods in Indianapolis.

And now I will hand it over to Rita to budget breakdown.

Okay, so the budget our um breakdown for our budget, we are operating out of the county general fund for a total of 969,694 dollars proposed this year, broken down into just characters one, two, and three.

Um, for an overall breakdown with the change from last year, um, you can see that our character one has decreased, primarily due to changes in staff election of insurance benefits, and then we were able to save some money in character two.

We did remove a line item there that was unspent in prior years, and then we do have an increase in character three.

Um, I'm not sure if you all have heard about the recent um changes that ISA implemented in their chargebacks model, but that has been the primary driver of the increase for character three.

We do also have a three percent increase in the Purdue Extension Educators contract, so a three percent or three to five percent increase is requested by Purdue every year.

So we do have that again this year.

Oh, and I did want to mention that um if you do remove the changes in the ISA chargebacks model, that 48,000 number, that is actually more than the total variance compared to our budget from last year.

So in total, um, what we're requesting is actually less than what was our 2025 adopted budget if you don't count those ISA chargeback increases.

That doesn't happen every day.

Okay, as far as revenue goes, cooperative extension does not have any sources of revenue that directly affect our county budget.

Um, but this is gonna give us an opportunity to talk about the cost-sharing model with Purdue and USDA, which supports the remainder of the cost to deliver comprehensive education services through extension.

Um, and Purdue does contribute significant value as far as that goes.

And then just to reiterate, the majority of our programs are offered free to the public.

Uh, cooperative extension educators do pursue grant funding, and we do have some for next year, including our 4-H programs, nutrition education, mental health, and then free tax preparation services for low-income residents.

Our total estimated grant revenue for next year will be about 172,000.

Um, a little bit more of the breakdown into each character for character one.

Um, we did have the decrease.

Uh contributing factors were staff retirement, changes in benefits elections, and that doesn't impact our operations.

As far as character twos, we did have we did have the decrease because we removed the line item that was unspent in prior years, and this is just our operational supplies.

And then for character three, we have the increase in ISA chargebacks, as I mentioned.

Um, and then we do have the increase in the Purdue Extension Educator contract, but otherwise those line items in the middle there remain unchanged.

Any questions?

Thank you very much.

Counselor Nelson.

Thank you, Chairman Muscary.

Uh, thank you both for being here.

Um so could you maybe speak a little bit about uh so I'm I'm a Vita volunteer, and so I'm really excited.

Um that I know that the extension service has grown its its role in this in this space.

Could you maybe talk a little bit about that and what that's going to mean for 2026?

Yeah, so if you're not familiar with Vida, it's a grant that goes through the IRS to communities for volunteer income tax assistance.

So it involves Vita sites, which are located in Marion County and around Marion County and the Donut Counties, and volunteers come in and help low-income seniors, young people do their taxes for the first time.

Free of cost, um, and taxes aren't super easy to do if you don't have that experience.

So the United Way of Central Indiana has been doing the Marion County sites for many years, and that will transition to extension this year.

So we'll take over all the Marion County sites.

That's great.

And I'm I'm excited to um to have the program, I think, administered.

Thankful for United Way's work on this, and I think it's going to be a really I'm excited to see what the partnership with uh this program and Purdue given your connection to the university.

So one of the challenges we have in the Vita program is finding volunteers and finding volunteers who want to do tax prep.

And so I always I'm hopeful that we can as we took we always talk about in these meetings how we leverage our university systems, how we uh leverage young people who want to learn, and this is a great way of doing that.

I know that Butler University has a pretty strong connection um with this program, especially at the site that I'm at at Southeast Community Services, and it's always really great to see students when they come in and then by the end of the season, really what they've learned and really get a crash course and social services and just how important this program is.

And so to my colleagues, I'll bear with me because this will be my tenth year as a volunteer, and so I'm gonna be uh really as much as I can talking this program up because I think it's really really important, um, especially for the neighbors that are served by this.

Um, they would otherwise be spending three to six hundred dollars at a tax prep service.

Why or not filing their taxes?

Or not filing at all.

Those money that money comes back into our community that's right.

That's exactly right.

And so um, I'm really excited to see that you all will be um the coordinator, administrator, whatever the grant says.

Um, but uh thanks for talking a little bit more about that.

Yeah, thank you.

And we're working really well with United Way, like it's a smooth like they they chose to stop doing the program, so now the transition's really smooth.

So I'm glad you like it because we're really proud of it.

Thank you.

Well, I we really appreciate your presentation.

We appreciate what you do for the community too.

Any other business for this uh committee?

Seeing that, we are adjourned.

Uh