Good evening, everyone.

It is Wednesday, August 27, 2025.

It is 5 30 p.m.

We're in the public assembly room of the city county, city county building.

Welcome to the public safety committee of the city county council.

We'll start our meeting off with introductions on the first row, Councillor Hart.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

My name is Michael Paul Hart, representing District 20.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman, Josh Bain, District 21.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Brian Mowray, District 25.

And thank you, Council.

On the second row, Councilor Perkins.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair, Dr.

Carlos Perkins, District 6.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman Brian Delaney, District 2.

Thank you, Chairman Jessica McCormick, District 16, West Side.

Thank you, Chairman Robinson, Dan Boots, Washington Lawrence Townships, District 3.

Thank you, Council.

Thank you so much, Chairman Robinson.

Christa Carlino, District 11, Far West Side, Speedway, and Claremont.

Good evening, everyone.

Keith Graves.

Thanks, Mr.

Chairman.

District 9 on the east side of Indianapolis.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair, Frank Mascaries, Southeast Side District 19.

Thank you, Councils on Leo Robinson, District 1, Chair of the Committee.

We do have two proposals this evening prior to our three budget hearing proposals.

I'm sorry, presentations of first proposal number 244, 2025, amends chapter 279, Division 9 of the revised code converting the general orders board into the general orders advisory board calendar of proposals, August 12th, 2025.

This is a proposal introduced by Council Hart.

Council Hart.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Members of the Council, you've got a couple, you got a little packet that I put together for you guys.

One is the Smart Indy, uh Smart Indy round table on public safety, uh, a letter, and then the other Gmail emails for the next proposal.

So no no need for that one today right now.

Uh the reason I gave you these things is uh I'll allude to them as I I talk through uh my statement this evening.

Uh but I just want to open up and say that you know these aren't like just like last night and in our other committee and the two this evening.

Um I don't just sit around and start thinking about you know I'm gonna change uh these things, right?

Everybody always comes to me with these ideas in this case.

Uh these ideas generated from the community, they generated from business leaders, they generated from uh our public safety leadership and and as a part of this report.

So tonight, uh members of this committee, uh I just want to discuss uh why uh I'm I'm bringing this proposal in front of you, uh, which is I've heard directly from IMPD officers, uh, from members of the community about how the current structure of the General Orders Board impacts morale and ultimately public safety.

Uh officers have told me they feel that their hands are tied, unable to act decisively uh when circumstances demand it, and that the lack of agility has had real consequences on our neighborhoods.

And I'll give you a couple examples of things that that happened recently, where uh we had some spinning ordinances recently, we had um curfew violations, and we're even talking about those things tonight.

Those eventually have to make their way through the the general orders board, and the the information that is given to been given to me is that uh there are layers uh beyond us when we even make changes that impact officers, and and that's where the agility uh comes into play that I'm talking about.

So, in some cases, uh it has been brought to my attention that this board, uh the general orders board, has failed to make quorum uh because citizen members did not attend, which has left our chief in a place unable to adapt to policy in real time uh to events that are occurring in Indianapolis.

And what what we need as a city is uh the ability for the chief to have that agility to adapt uh when things do arise.

So the goal here, I want to be very clear that the goal here is not to silence the public voice by any means.

This there is no intention.

Uh this does not eliminate the general orders board.

It is it is quite the opposite.

Uh my under this proposal idea that again came from uh leadership and as well as rank and file members, uh, under this proposal, the chief of police, who is appointed by the mayor, that the city of Indianapolis elected, and then confirmed by the council, who all of we then uh confirm, the chief would become responsible uh and held accountable for submitting, amending, creating uh or rescinding any general order, giving that flexibility and agility to him as well as that responsibility.

Now for the advisory board, it would still review all of those things, all of those general orders were they rescinded uh or amended or created.

They would still provide their feedback ensuring that the community's perspective would remain a part of this process.

The the difference that is is with this proposal is that the accountability and the decision-making authority rest with the chief.

That is the difference.

So this proposal, again, I've been you know reiterating this point again, but it did not be clear on this, it did not originate from the FOP.

It is something that uh I did not target in isolation.

It grew out of conversations with officers and other leaders uh of the unit.

And most recently, it came from this public safety round table uh that I hosted on July 10th.

Uh that copy you have uh all a copy of it here.

So I've spoken with other community trusted partners.

So there's another letter that you guys will have.

Um looks like this.

There's a couple signatures on the back.

Umrix Property Group, uh, who is you know the developers of Bottle Works, also they are doing the uh Circle Center mall project downtown are sub uh supportive of this suggestion and another proposals that we have uh in front of us this evening.

Keystone construction.

I think most of us know uh the level of um attention and and commitment they have for the city of Indianapolis.

They are seeing the need for this level of agility in our city.

Um and each of them have expressed their concern with the current process and agreed that we need to change.

They see that this is to them the the way the best way to move forward is that the chief should be empowered to lead while the board continues to provide valuable input.

So, colleagues, uh the Senate Minister has been clear to me from officers both in leadership and on the streets, community leaders and business leaders alike, that our city needs to take a uh a more effective and accountable system, as that this proposal is a practical step in that direction, ensuring that both the public input and the strong leadership that we have elected uh or appointed from elected officials uh leads Indianapolis and our public safety.

Uh and that is what I have to share, Mr.

Chairman.

Thank you, Leader Hart.

I'm sorry, thank you, Council Hart.

Um before I put up to comments and questions from our colleagues, I do want to make uh one quick uh point.

So uh you you mentioned the public safety leaders, police officers, community members, rank and file, community trusted partners have all come to you uh regarding this proposal, and uh I do find it odd that none came to me as the chair, not one of these trusted uh folks that you mentioned.

I talked to IMPD quite a bit.

Not one of these individuals, community members, rank and file, none of them came to me as the chair about this proposal.

Secondly, uh I also find it odd that I met with Jennifer Pavlik about two weeks ago in person, uh, and also I met with the Hendrix property group folks in person about a week ago, and neither of them mentioned this to me.

So I do see that you have their name here, though, but I do find it odd as the chair of the committee that not one person, not one email, uh not one phone call, not one text uh has come to me about this proposal and the need to change it.

So I'm not questioning anything you're saying here.

I just find it odd that these individuals, uh two I met with in person, Jennifer personally, I'll go on the record for saying that.

And then also I met with the people to Hendrix property group, who you have in your letter here, um, did mention it.

And then the uh officers, I talked to officers quite a bit, and none of them came to me.

So do want to acknowledge that uh I have this first time I heard of this ground swell of people wanting this change.

So with that being said, Commerce question counselors.

Counselor uh Perkins.

Uh thank you, uh Mr.

Chairman.

I'll I'll echo those sentiment that you just shared.

Um I've also not been contacted by any of these individuals as a support for this.

Uh, but I do want to raise uh a couple of points.

Uh one of which is interesting to me uh at what point we want to empower the chief uh to be able to do uh his job.

I remember having a conversation in this chamber less than a year ago uh when we were talking about police misconduct and what the chief is empowered to do and not to do.

So it's interesting that we're bringing this up now as a way uh to eliminate uh this particular board.

Um unfortunately, I think many of us have seen the news today in Minneapolis is back in the news for the for the tragedy that happened this morning at the school shooting.

Um I want us to uh to drag our minds back uh to 2020, uh that this board came about um as a result of some of the things that many of us sat at home uh while the pandemic was happening uh and watch um on the street.

This was a response uh to some of the uh the national outcry around police brutality.

Um and so I want us to play that back in our minds uh and understand that as a city and a county, we made a decision that fall stands um deeper and more impactful than many cities across the United States that painted uh their streets um uh in protest and and also raised the police budget that Indianapolis and Marion County made a decision to establish a board that has had deep impact.

If the concern is about quorum, it is my understanding that under this new leadership this year, when the board have met that they have had quorum.

And so I think taking away the opportunity from our citizens to have a voice in this is walking back and weakening a clear and intentional way in which our city has decided that we want to make sure that our our public is a part of uh of our policing.

Um and so I am asking my colleagues to vote against this proposal tonight.

Thank you, uh Council Perkins.

Counselor Carlino, which is our sponsor of the original proposal, uh Counselor Carlino.

Thank you, Chairman.

Um a sponsor, uh co-author, and an advocate, really.

I believe that this proposal is is regressive in nature.

Before we reform the general orders board, it was three individuals, it's now seven.

It had to meet, it was allowed to meet behind closed doors, it now has to meet and follow open door law, which is important for transparent and public community policing.

But what's more important, I think, is that as it stands, it preserves the agility of our chief.

Our chief has the ability to create SOPs in real time as as things come up, and he has done so, and as have previous chiefs as well.

I think it's important if you've ever been to one of the meetings or watch them recorded online that they're now publicly available, you will see that that preservation of the police, the police chief's power and autonomy is there.

Um, but it bolsters support, in my opinion, of the chief, um, and it includes community in a way that um reduces ambiguity for our officers to say that officers are currently experiencing ambiguity.

I I don't disagree with that statement, but that was a pre-existing condition, and as times change and as protocols are constantly changing, our general orders and our SOPs are living breathing documents.

Um I'm sure there are revisions that our chief is is constantly considering as our members of the board.

It's important to uh allow our our public safety officials to be public safety officials, but when it comes time to have legal considerations for public safety to make sure that our officers are not only protecting themselves but protecting our citizens in the city, reducing the amount of uh you know legal cases that are brought against the city, which as the fiscal body is critically important to us.

Um but more importantly, I think that ongoing changes uh require support and input and collaboration.

And I know our current chief is one of the most collaborative people in the city of Indianapolis.

Um, and I know he welcomes collaboration in his decision making oftentimes, and that's a question that I have, Mr.

Chairman.

Um, where is the chief in that laundry list of of support that that's here and on the letter?

I'd love to hear input from our chief.

I value his input and professional experience.

Um, but officers are often punished for following the wrong protocol because there is ambiguity in language and in procedure, whether or not there's a weapon involved, whether or not um you have to pursue, whether or not um to make certain calls in the heat of a moment in a dangerous time, it's a lot.

Our officers are making a lot of decisions, and these policies are important, and the public eye should be on them.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Thank you, Counselor.

So the chief is present, but we're gonna wait.

Uh let's get through a few more questions, give uh the chief a chance to prepare his response.

So um took a few more questions from the committee.

Leader Mowry.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

I just want to point out the fact that I think the narrative right now has been that we're uh dis disembot getting rid of this board altogether and uh disassembling it, and that's not the case.

This is just simply taking it from where it is now to an advisory role.

And in an advisory capacity, they still have the same ability to meet, they still have the same ability to uh suggest changes and the same ability to do what they've been doing thus far.

However, it would then fall to the chief and the as it should uh fall to the chief to run his department as he sees fit.

Thank you.

Thank you, leader.

Comments and questions from counselors, counselor Boots Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Um just a couple quick points.

Uh, one being a practical issue, and that is my understanding is the biggest gripe is that we often lack quorum so that the body cannot operate and cannot pass, cannot deny, cannot adopt new policy because of lack of quorum.

That's a practical issue, not one that I think justifies killing.

Killing is the wrong word, modifying it to an advisory role.

I think we can handle that from a practical standpoint.

We just assign the right people and we hold them accountable.

Secondly, I'm not sure even if this was transformed into an advisory role.

How would this move the needle in improving safety?

And how does it improve the service of our police force protecting our citizens by making an advisory role?

So I question that.

So I'll be voting no for this proposal and encourage my fellow colleagues to do likewise.

Thank you.

Thank you, Counselor.

Counselor Bain.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

You know, when we first discussed the General Orders Board back in 2020, um, I was very new around here.

I think it was probably a month or two after I'd been caucused in.

And you know, it was a pretty steep learning curve throughout that process, but I still remember when there were probably hundreds of police officers in their family in this chamber asking us to vote against that.

Um situations have changed a lot since 2020.

We're a different city than we were back then.

I think the culture around law enforcement is different than it was back then.

And to echo what um counselor Boots just said about assigning the right person and the right role and being able to hold them accountable.

We've done that.

We we have the right chief and Chief Bailey.

He's someone that I think everybody in this community respects and admires.

And we have the ability to hold him accountable.

The mayor has the ability to hold him accountable.

The elected leaders of this city have said he's the right person to lead this department.

So I think giving him the ability to actually lead his department and control the general orders within his department is something that would clearly be a benefit to our city.

Another thing that I think we need to make abundantly clear because you know I hope it's been said, I hope this has not been set out of malice or to purposefully deceive anyone and what this proposal actually does.

Because I've heard multiple people say that this eliminates the General Orders Board.

It does not.

It doesn't change the makeup of the General Orders Board, it doesn't change what you can meet, it doesn't change the open door laws around it.

All it does is says they can make advisory opinions to the chief.

Thank you.

Thank you, Counselor.

Counselor Delaney.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Um my comments are along the lines of my colleague uh counselor Boots.

You know, I A, I have not heard from the same groups that you have.

I took um a moment to reach out to IMPD personally to ask about this, but haven't had any ground swell um from my constituents or others across the county that have said we have systemic issues with our general orders board.

That being said, I do know there are issues with speed and quorum and procedural issues, and so I would be open to other ideas to help fix some of the inner workings of the board, but I don't think at this point in time that it needs a wholesale change.

Um I I look to what um uh my other colleague said that you know what we need to think back to when when this was passed in 2020 and what was going on and some of the undercurrents, and so with that I will be opposing it in its current form.

Thank you.

Thank you, Counselor Leader Hart.

I'm sorry, Councilor Hart, sorry, Leader Maui.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair, and yeah, I just wanted to uh allude to a couple things.

One, it was you know, I wrote down that I remember the hundreds of blue shirts being here that night as well.

Um and I just want to remind everybody that we are still having uh difficulties attracting and retaining officers, and this is you know what I'm being told as a reason, not the only reason, but a a reason for that.

When officers have a choice to go here somewhere else, that is a consideration that they make.

Um, and I do want to reiterate because I did hear counselor Perkins make the comment that we were eliminating the board.

We are not eliminating the board.

Um, and how this improves safety is that it gives the agility uh to the chief and and and makes us a quicker, more uh agile city to the to the individual that we've all appointed to do so.

Um the last thing I'd say is that um I it sounded like Mr.

Chairman that we were gonna hear from the chief on this.

Um it's a just a little disappointing to hear from you guys that you would vote against it before even hearing from the chief, uh, who has probably some good things to say or some things to say uh that should be taken into consideration.

Thank you, counselor.

Any additional comments, Counselor Perkins.

I'll I'll add uh two things.

Uh, one um I think we all like the chief.

I think we think we have the right chief for the right season, right?

Um, this is not about the chief.

Um and the system is worth accountability from the community.

Um, and so I want to to kind of nail that down.

This is not an individual that we're making a decision against.

This is a system that we need to make sure that it's held accountable.

Uh, we also need to make sure that um issues around recruiting is across the country.

This is not just an issue in Indianapolis and Marion County.

Uh recruiting officers is an issue for most major cities across the country.

And so tying this particular issue to a reason why folks don't want to come and work in Indianapolis and Marion County.

I don't think that's fair because we're seeing the same issue across the entire country.

Thank you, Mr.

Councillor Perkins.

Uh Counselor Boots.

Um I did speak to the police chief personally or communicated with him to get his thoughts.

So I did talk to him before I made my decision.

Um, and I think that following Councillor Perkins' comments, I view this as a much bigger picture than just a board.

To me, this is about building trust back in IMPD from our community, which we lost in 2020.

And I think that lack of trust has been cancerous to the growth of our department and has led to our low enrollment or inefficiency or inability to attract, and anything that points the needle toward building trust, in my opinion, is the way to go, and I think this does that.

Um I don't disagree with your practical points, Counselor Hart.

I think they're well placed and like well thought through.

I just think in the big picture at this point in time, we need to rebuild trust, and I think keeping the board as is uh is the best way to go.

Think of Councillor Uh Council Delaney.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

I'd also like to add that I was able to speak to um the chief of police prior to the hearing this evening and was able to discuss my my thoughts and his thoughts about this.

Um I agree with Counselor Boots that this is something that I think we could discuss further.

Um I this is the first, however, that I had heard of your public forum.

Um, and so I think maybe maybe this is the time that we do try to do more public forums to invite more feedback about what's happening if we need to reopen the discussion again.

Um it sounds like that that's where you think we're at is we need to we need to talk about this again um five years later after 2020.

So maybe that's where where we're at, but I do think um the current form is not the right form for for this time.

So thank you.

Thank you, Counselor Leader Maury.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Uh, one thing I want to bring up tonight that I think we've heard in the past, especially from uh FOP president Rick Snyder, is that there has been a lack of trust in rank and file officers within IMPD and the leadership here in the city.

Uh we've talked a lot about 2020 and what that's done.

We saw 2020 happen, we saw riots in the city, the city burned down almost, and police officers were told to stand down, they couldn't do their job.

We need to give the police officers in the city the ability to do their job and the ability to have a leader in their department that can tell them how and when to do the job rather than a citizen advisory or citizens general orders board.

Uh I did a quick Google search.

I couldn't find any other examples of a citizen general orders board outside of being an advisory capacity.

Uh maybe the chief knows of any others that are in more than an advisory capacity, but I think this proposal tonight is something that brings us back to a position where when we're facing a public safety crisis in the city with with homicide with youth violence, um, and we've looked at the we've looked at the curfew laws.

Um, you know, we need to give officers the support that they know we have their back.

And we heard from the person that leads those officers in their union saying that they don't have that full uh ability to trust us at this moment.

We need to change that.

We need to make this city a safe city and make this back, take this back to where it can be something that the chief has the ability to do his job without waiting on a quorum, without waiting on someone, some citizen advisory board to tell him how to do his job.

I think he was selected for this job for a reason.

I think he knows what he's doing.

I have the utmost confidence in Chief Bailey and what he does for the department.

He's done amazing things so far, and I think we all can agree that he has been uh a very shining light in the department and what he's done.

So I I tonight I think this is an opportunity for us to give control back to the folks that are actually doing the job.

Thank you.

Thank you, Leader Maury.

Councilwoman Cormay.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Um hearing hearing from colleagues, um, I think what we like in the conversation is maybe that there is a change going, but we can work to address the issues that we have with quorum and making the group work.

I do appreciate what Councillor Delaney said about, you know, it's been five years and reevaluating and assessing any policy that we have in place is important, right?

So we shouldn't just put it in place and never look at it again.

Um so I appreciate the conversation.

I think maybe before turning it to an advisory board, we should look at what can we do to improve the efficiency or the efficacy of the current group that we have and the way that they they operate and then continue this conversation.

So I don't think it's an end of the conversation.

I think it's one that we need to continue to have and see where we can make make fixes or address issues, and then ultimately, if it doesn't work, then this could be the route that we go.

Thank you, Counselor.

Counselor Carlino.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Um, I want to just comment as we continue to refer to some of the more recent um policy regarding curfew, which is next on the agenda, and I want to make sure we're not conflating to issues.

Um, you know, the chief doesn't have the ability to make laws.

He he runs our law enforcement arm, and so it's really important when we consider amending the curfew.

We're doing that tonight, not the chief.

So there is no SOP or general order that could have existed.

Um it had to be political will.

And again, I appreciate my my colleague, Councillor Perkins' comment about this not being about the chief because it's not this is about systems.

Um, and so I think it's important that even in the current model, um, so to go regress it and make it an advisory role, we still have to have political will to exist in order to institute change or give the chief of police an amended law with which he can enforce and that our law enforcement can enforce.

We are a team, so whether the chief and and this board approaches us, the the fiscal and legislative body, or approaches the administration with changes that they see they need to make, then then it's our job to get the policy on the books or to amend the policies on the books as well.

So I want to underscore the fact that the curfew piece was political will.

I believe it was my colleague, Chairman LeRoy Robinson that authored that legislation.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor.

Counselor Graves.

Thanks, Mr.

Chairman.

Uh Mr.

Chairman, I just wanted to um say I've always appreciated the original intent of this board, uh, the hard work of my colleague uh counselor Lee and some of the others that worked hard on this uh because it gave our citizens an opportunity to be to play a meaningful role in in creating those general orders.

And so I do recall that time and I do believe that this particular amendment could begin a crack in what I believe was a win for the citizens of Indianapolis to have a say in in the general orders.

So I want to ask my colleagues to to not support this vote no, because we do not want to remove the voice of our citizens on this particular uh uh general orders board.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Counselor Hart.

Thank you, Mr.

Leader.

Uh you know, I guess I would follow up with the you know what I think is a bit different than what you guys think.

It's it's uh to me it's a it's an opportunity to you know change the perception of Indianapolis, and that goes back to the conversations I've had with various individuals.

I mean, we get we get stats, but stats are different than the way people feel, and not everybody necessarily feels that they're safe in Indianapolis, and that's the perception that we need to change.

And if we can start making some changes here that can make people feel more safe in Indianapolis, I think that's the direction that we need to start going.

Thank you, Counselor.

Uh we will um the chief, so before we have public testimony, uh Ms.

Clerk, you want to read the statement, please.

Then we'll have the chief come up and share his thoughts.

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 would 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, maybe asked to move on to their next point or conclude their comments.

Finally, attendees who cause disruptions that prevent the committee from proceeding to 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 don't think they will.

And now, Mr.

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

Consent.

Thank you, Ms.

Clerk.

Thank you, Council.

So Chief, you've heard the uh comments from our uh colleagues here and also from the sponsor of this proposal.

You want to kind of share your thoughts.

Have you seen this uh transition of the last few years?

Yeah.

Thank you, Chairman, members of the committee.

Uh IMPD has always valued working closely with our community to gather feedback on how officers serve and interact with our neighbors, and we remain committed to exploring new ways officers can make those connections and deliver the highest level of service to the people that we are sworn to serve.

I would say this, one of the things that I was brought up is that it is equally important, and I've learned as we've started to explore the strategic plan where we spoke to our community members and we spoke to our officers, that those uh with law enforcement expertise have to have a voice in shaping public policy, department policy, and that our officers feel supported and heard, and that their perspective uh is listened to to help ensure policies are practical, effective, and fair because we ask them to do it.

As chief of police, I'm accountable to an elected mayor.

I am confirmed by an elected counsel.

At any point, I can stand before you and answer to you directly for the questions you have about how I run my agency, your agency.

With accountability comes the responsibility to lead the department and ensure our policies are consistent, enforceable, the best practices, and meet risk to avoid liability for our agency in the city of Indianapolis.

I recognize there are different opinions on whether this law should change or stay the way it is, and my commitment is not to any particular structure, but to the principle of transparency, accountability, and collaboration, both for our community and our officers.

Whatever the decision is, whatever uh whatever direction, I'm sorry, I did not bring my glasses, so it's hard to read on this screen.

Uh whatever the directions taken, the people of Indianapolis can count on INPD to remain steady, to follow the law, and continue working with all of you who are our partners to build trust, fairness, and professionalism and to make things better.

What I will say is uh thank you, Councilor Hart, for bringing the matter forward, because as you said, Councilor Delaney, we can't let these things just sit in a pan without looking at them.

I've been in the mix from the very beginning of this, helping develop it with this council and other people on this council and people from the administration, but also I've been working in it, working through the issues.

There are always challenges with these uh civilian boards that were consistently consistent throughout the time they've existed.

Do they do people show up?

Do they conduct their training?

Do they go on royal right-alongs?

Those are all issues.

When they leave, how fast do the appointing authorities reappoint people so that we don't have a gap like we did in this general orders board from November to almost May?

IMPD is an agency that has to move with speed and be nimble, especially in an ever-changing environment.

As chief, I've one of my priorities, which I've explained to all you is modernization of the police department.

That requires us to look at every single one of our policies, top to bottom.

There are still policies with Mike Spears' name on the bottom of them.

I want them all to have my name at the bottom of them by the time I leave here.

They need to be eliminated, they need to be combined, they need to be updated.

That's going to take a tremendous amount of work.

And I've communicated that with the president of the uh General Order's board.

We can't have months where we don't have meetings.

We can't have any of those things.

So I think there are ways we can improve this if if if it's not uh changed to an advisory board.

But the bottom line is that we have to be better if this is going to work long term.

And you all have to listen to the officers every now and then.

Indianapolis is not Minneapolis.

We all got lumped into a giant puddle of garbage that isn't all of ours to bear, and certainly not the cops to bear.

And it is a contributing factor, whether you want to believe it or not, to why we don't retain and recruit officers, not the general orders board, but all the things we did or didn't do in the last five years.

And it's important to recognize that.

We don't have to uh agree with it.

There's things I don't agree with.

When the things come out from our strategic plan, it's not a lovely pretty picture of how they feel about me, uh the leadership or political leadership in this city.

That impacts us, and you have to recognize that as much as we have to recognize the impact that that what we do or don't do as a police department impacts our community.

They are our reason for our job, they are our why, and we uh derive our authority only through their consent.

I 100% agree with that.

But sending men and women out to put themselves in a position where they may not come home at night, you all have to listen to them occasionally and hear what they have to say.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chief.

Counselor Graves.

Thanks, Mr.

Chair.

Um Chief, I just want to confirm that you did say that uh the General Orders Board has nothing to do with hiring new men and women in uniform.

Right?

Because we're here to talk about the General Orders Board and they don't, but make sure that's the one.

Yeah, they they didn't or not hire, but they they do impact people's morale, how they work and the and their day-to-day activities.

So you're you're connecting the general orders board to hiring?

I'm saying that there is a list of things that have contributed to why people don't want to be police officers in major cities, and this is a contributing factor in Indianapolis.

Because that's what the officers are telling me.

That's what I'm saying.

Yes.

Okay.

Thanks.

Thank you, Counselor.

Uh District Commons, anyone else on the we'll do one more with the chief.

We're not going to integrate the chief tonight, but he made a statement, so we're not going to go back and forth with the chief.

Counselor Bain.

Thank you.

Um, Mr.

Chairman, just had maybe one quick follow-up question for the chief.

Um we'll do one.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

Um do you believe if we pass this proposal tonight that it would be a net benefit for your department in the city of Indianapolis?

You know, I I don't think it I'm like I'm not I think in my remarks I said that whatever you all do is all is the law will follow.

I'm not I'm not here to convince you to go either way.

I'm just trying to provide facts.

I can't I can't predict if you know that if the tide will turn and this is the decide, I don't think that is.

I think it's that that's just this thing.

It's a combination of things.

And it's not just here.

Just like we're not responsible for what happened in Minneapolis.

The cops see what's happens in Portland and other other places, and they absorb that as what everybody feels about them.

That's why I've encouraged everybody that in the business community in the community that don't come here and pound on this podium and tell you how terrible things are, to have conversations with the officers.

Tell them how you feel, tell them you want them in their neighborhood, tell them you want fair, consistent, and constitutional policing, and that you appreciate what you do.

Because from this podium, as I said in here in 2020, 2021, what was rattled off was very nasty things, and they internalize that and they feel that.

They're human beings, they're not machines.

And so we have to remember that that you have that that you need to talk to them.

All I'm asking is that you talk to them too, and let you you hear it from them.

You don't have to take my word for it.

I'm regurgitating what they're doing.

I'm not asking you to change the board tonight.

I'm just saying be mindful of the decisions you make, do have an impact on how our officers feel about the job, how they feel about serving uh this city, uh, and ultimately you know, ultimately me.

What they say consistently is that the this the leadership in this department never stands up for them.

And I'm not here uh to like sway you one way or the other.

I'm just trying to give you my perspective on the issues that I've seen with this board and how we can maybe make it better.

I'm committed to working with them.

You can ask anybody in the in that board, past or present.

I'm all in with them.

That's the law.

I'm going to follow the law, we're gonna do everything we can to make sure it's it's right.

I'll give you one example.

Our general orders are numbered, they're not numbered uh in any in my view, any logical way.

Uh really.

Uh and what's in one nine number and in three, and what what I have purview over and all can we change the numbers?

Can we renumber them?

No, you can't do that.

Well, okay, then they're just combulated all over the place.

So we we have to be able to work together in order to accomplish uh the goals we we all we all set out, we want the same thing.

We're all want the same thing.

A fair, consistent constitutional police department that treats people with dignity and respect in every circumstance in every corner of this community.

We all want that.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chief.

Appreciate you.

Um Ms.

Clerk, we have a uh list of those who want to speak to this proposal.

Did anyone sign up for this particular proposal 244?

You want to have so if you want to speak to proposal one uh 244 and you sign the list, you want to come forward, please and state your name.

Sorry, you can state your name for the record, please.

Uh Larry Vaughn, please.

You know, this board has needed to go away a long time ago because what it does is second guesses.

Our chief, which is uh uh experienced officer, has been in law enforcement for many years.

You're hiring people off the street who don't have that level of experience, and some of them are uh plain uh people who are unqualified to make those decisions.

And and sometimes this board, as I've seen in the past, have been used as a scapegoat.

That means it's been uh held to make decisions that really uh have some kind of a doubt within them.

But in any case, when we see our chief sitting here tonight, he's gave a good statement.

He couldn't get too too uh into it because you know the mayor controls his budget, and uh you're trying to control his authority over his officers tonight and give him a vote of uh no confidence here tonight.

If you have an executive officer that's out on the streets putting his life on the line every time he gets into a circumstance, he could have to make a split-second decision.

The same way if some emergency comes up in our city, he cannot go to ask the citizen complaint board what to do.

He knows what to do because of his experience, because of his time on the job and so forth, but your uh discount all that tonight and throw it out the window.

It's as if you want more crime.

You want to promote more crime to keep yourself going here in this city.

That's what we're gonna get if we don't have autonomous law enforcement that can make their own decisions, they can uh appropriate their own budget after you give it over to the general fund.

We know what happens in that case, but uh just here tonight.

I can't believe that you're gonna uh this man that is coming here and put his life on the line for this city that you're gonna give him a vote of no confidence tonight and tell him that you that he doesn't know how to run his business after he's been here protecting this city.

It's a shame.

Thank you for your comments.

Anyone else want to speak to proposal 244?

Come forward, please.

The honorable Keith Potts, welcome.

Good evening, Mr.

Chairman, counselors.

Um glad to be here and standing on this side of the podium.

Uh, hope you all are doing well.

I just want to offer a few thoughts uh looking back five years ago when this proposal was initially introduced and passed uh with a supermajority of votes by this body.

Uh, to begin, uh, the chief at the time and assistant chief Bailey uh at the time was a part of these conversations, and it's why we included the specific carve outs to allow the chief to act in real time and to make general orders in real time.

So that authority does exist within the proposal as it was passed.

Additionally, there have been a lot of I shouldn't say a lot, but some comments about the fact that we are not like other cities, and that is correct, because we, in the wake of a reckoning on racial justice, did not immediately respond by tugging at the purse strings of our police department, but rather we looked thoughtfully at what legislative and policy issues we could do to bring the community to the center and hear the calls to prioritize the public in Indy's public safety, and that to echo what Councillor Perkins was saying.

This body, the General Orders Board, built a bridge to a community that had long felt disconnected from our police department, that had long felt disconnected from our public safety leadership.

And so this General Orders Board did a great deal in rebuilding some trust and in building that bridge.

And I'd encourage you all to vote no on this proposal this evening so that that bridge can continue to stand strong and deliver for our city.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Thank you for coming down this evening.

Appreciate your comments.

Anyone else want to come forward to speak to proposal 244?

Councillor Hart, your proposal.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair and uh members of this committee.

Um I want to make a bold statement to you all.

Um, something we don't normally do.

Um I'm not the only person that's been having conversations with leadership and officers in the city and in this state.

Um I've had conversations with state senators, state representatives.

We might be the minority here, but we're not elsewhere.

And I will let you know the conversation doesn't end here.

I will let you know that I urge you to work with me on something before the next council meeting, because the the state is looking at this, and it's not as amenable as what I've put in front of you.

I want you to consider those things and how we can make this, how we can improve this before the state comes in and does what they have to do.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Thank you, Counselor.

Final comments from counselors.

Counselor uh counselor boots, then counselor Perkins.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Question to Councillor Hart, are you suggesting to possibly suspend the vote tonight to the next meeting?

I I mean I'm open to that if that if that helps continue to work through this.

Um it's your proposal.

I I would rather that we pass the proposal this evening.

Okay.

Final comment would be regardless of the vote tonight.

I think Chief Bailey knows and should know he has an open channel communication to everybody on this council, and that anybody would pick up his call and listen to him and follow through and help him to the best of our ability.

So, regardless of this vote, you have my personal number.

You can call and talk to me anytime you wish.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you, Council.

And I do want to emphasize the fact of um this proposal appears to be uh going along partisan lines, which is very clear from those in the audience and those on the TV.

Uh we don't want to put the chief in a situation to where he has to make a decision for or against a proposal.

Uh that's kind of unfair to him to put him in a position where he has to vote or make a public statement for uh the general order board or against it.

That puts him in, I mean clearly it's where it's going.

It puts him in a box.

That's not fair to him.

So to the next proposal in curfew.

Asking the chief put in a position where he has to make a decision.

Oh, yeah, I want to support that proposal.

Or I'm gonna that's not that's not how it works.

He represents all of us, both sides of the aisle.

So put him in a position on a proposal that's obviously partisan, is not fair to the chief or the men and women that he represents.

Counselor Perkins.

Uh thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Uh, thank you for for those comments because I was I was thinking the same thing.

Um and and I'm a little uh unsettled uh by the comment that my colleague just made because it felt like a threat um to threat to to thread this to this um to this chamber.

And and so I do want to name that for our colleague.

Um that that comment felt like you were putting us um uh on some clear warning and and and threatening um us if we don't if we don't pass this proposal.

Um I also want to make it clear again that this is not about the chief.

I think we believe in the work that he's doing.

Um I think if you take a vote from this chamber, he will have at least close to unanimous support um on his leadership of our police department.

This is not about the chief.

Uh this is about a system that must be held accountable.

Um and I think we want to be clear about that.

Um, after Chief Bailey retires and sits somewhere and drinks some Heineken, um, there's still gonna be a police department in Indianapolis, Marion County.

Um, the second thing that I want to lift is um oftentimes when we have these conversations about public safety and more specifically about our police department, um it it it appears to me uh that it's us against them, as if the Democratic caucus does not support the police department.

And I want to be clear that we are in support of the men and women that go out every day and protect our communities, right?

And protect us.

The question is not whether or not we listen to our officers.

We can walk and chew gum at the same time.

We can listen to our offices, we can hear their concerns, but we also can build systems that are held accountable by our community, and that's what I'm recommending.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor.

Uh Councillor Bain.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Um, if we look back five years ago, Chief Taylor stood here in this same podium right there, and he said, You are moving too far in a particular direction if you pass this.

This council did not listen to him then.

This council did not listen to the men and women of INPD then.

And if you vote no tonight, you are telling them again, regardless of what you say here.

You can sit here and say you that you listen to them here when you vote this way, you are sending a crystal clear message that you do not listen to them.

Thank you, Counselor.

Leader leader Mowry.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

You know, I understand where you're coming from, where this may seem like a partisan issue, however, I don't look at crime as a partisan issue, it affects everybody the same.

Um if a member of your family is murdered in the streets, it affects you just the way the same way it would mean Mr.

Chair.

Uh the chief, I don't think is being asked to make any decisions on this tonight since he does not obviously have a vote.

The decision lies solely with this body, and I think from where counselor Hart was standing and what in his comments, I don't want that to be perceived as a threat.

I think this is an opportunity for us to maintain control of what we have right now.

If the state were to get involved, which is what I think a lot of us would like to not see happen because you know, local control is where it should be.

The smaller the government, the better.

Uh we could see this disbanded altogether.

Our this proposal tonight is going to keep it together.

It just simply changes it to an advisory role rather than being able to dictate the what happens in the within the department and giving the chief the ability to do his job and uh his vote of confidence and what he does.

I do just if Mr.

Chairman, if I may, uh I'm curious.

Since we did talk about the state, does the chief or does anybody in uh in the audience know are we the only county or law enforcement body that has this citizens advisory board that is citizen-led rather than in an advisory capacity?

Would it only would this is this only an Indianapolis issue?

Leader, we're gonna give the chief a break.

So um I think that's a chair respectfully.

I think that's a very important thing to consider here when we're talking about the state and uh people are calling it threats and everything else.

I think it's important for us to understand if the state were to do something, is this something that's gonna affect statewide or is this something that's gonna just going to affect Marion County?

We don't want the state to get involved, however, we're not understanding whether the state would be making something that would affect other departments or just this one department.

Thank you, leader.

Final comments from those um on the committee.

Ms.

Clerk, you want to do a roll call vote of proposal 244, please.

I'm sorry, we need a motion.

There it is.

Motion property moved and seconded, Ms.

Clerk.

Counselor Bain.

Aye.

Counselor Boots.

Boots, no.

Councilor Carlino.

Carlino, nay.

Counselor Janey.

Delaney, no.

Counselor Graves.

Graves, no.

Counselor Hart.

Hart, I.

Councilor Ms.

Scary.

Ms.

Gary, no.

Counselor McCormick.

McCormick, no.

Counselor Mowring.

Yes.

Counselor Perkins.

Perkins, no.

Counselor Robinson.

Robinson, no.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ms.

Clerk.

The uh motion fails to move proposal number 244 forward.

The next element or agenda's proposal 245 2025, I mean chapter 381 of the revised code, further defining parental responsibility under the juvenile curfew law.

Counselor Hart.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

And before I begin, I I did receive an email from Counselor Boots asking to be a co-sponsor.

I don't see his name on the page.

I just want to confirm if that's still the case on this proposal.

All right, thank you.

Uh hold on, hold on, Councilor Hart.

Did you clerk you get that?

Uh counselor Boots is a co-sponsor.

Okay, got thank you.

Counselor Hart.

All right, thank you both.

Uh so I mean, this is again like everything else I'm presenting to you this evening and and in prior uh committees, these are things that have been suggested to me as as a counselor, right?

Basically, what has happened after our our last meeting, we we put in uh place to reduce the times on curfew, and I think we all probably heard it.

There was you know, either language around there's no teeth, there's nothing that really holds that accountable, you know, and and how do we get to that that position?

So uh effectively what this does is I worked with uh again, I as I always do uh our council, the city's council, um specifically uh counselor Bieler in this case, uh, to identify uh ways and options that we could um have a level of parental accountability.

And so um, as you can see, if you're looking at the proposal in section 381 105, there was actually language for um curvy responsibilities of the parent or guardian or custodian.

So I'm not creating anything new there, suggesting anything new there.

Uh that but what I am suggesting new is that uh subsection B is that there is an enforcement procedure or ramification listed in the revised code, and as as you see A B and C A being uh the first offense that uh the parent or the responsible guardian or custodian would receive a notice of the first offense for the juvenile, uh, in which I would encourage the mayor's office to put in any sort of uh language notification of the the services that have come forth to the city uh since our last proposal on this.

Um if the offenses continue to happen, that's where we see subsections B and C on uh increasing fi or uh imposing a fine of 500 dollars on the second offense and imposing a fine on the third offense of $1,500.

So Mr.

Mr.

Chairman, that is uh the proposal I have in front of us this evening, and uh give it back to you.

Thank you.

Thank you, uh Council Right.

So again, similar to the uh 244, I'll make a brief statement, then I'll uh let our colleagues uh chime in.

Um to the pre prior proposal, uh I haven't received uh one text message, one email, one phone call, one meeting uh on this topic to impose fines of $500 to $1,500.

Not one.

What I have done, Mr.

Council Hart is it in your district.

There's a data set in your district.

I received lots of emails, lots of phone calls, lots of text messages in opposition to that.

But I I do find it ironic that on this proposal and the proper polls, I haven't received anything.

I'm the chair of the committee, been the chair for a few years, and nothing.

But um, you bring proposals to us uh that you say there's like a groundswell of people wanting to make these wholesale changes to the proposals that we just passed and amended about a month ago.

Um, but I received nothing out of text, but those other topics like the data center in your district, I received lots of response from your colleagues and from your constituents, but this one absolutely nothing.

So I said that to say this.

Um I would encourage you to those people that you say that support these proposals, support this curfew change, support these fines, should come forward.

Uh the same way they've come forward uh in the other proposal in your district on the data center, and just reach out to the chair and let me know when I'm hear from them that they want this to happen for our for our city.

So appreciate that.

Uh comments from counselors.

Uh counselor Carlino.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Um, I I share those sentiments, especially with the last proposal.

I know when crafting that language, I I was it was before I was elected in a ride along with an officer.

Um I'm like, how do you like XX district?

He said, Well, I like it, but my home district was over here, but I got in trouble for X, Y, and Z.

So I just want to underscore it's important that those folks are noted to not be here tonight as well.

The same with this.

I think the fines, Mr.

Chairman, are discriminatory and predatory, and I'll be voting no tonight.

Thank you, Councillor.

Uh Council McCormick.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Um the basis and the thought of this proposal, I like.

I think there are we need to hold our parents accountable for what our kids do.

I have two young children, and um I would want to know so I could be involved.

I also agree with my colleague that I think there are certain demographics and there are certain populations in certain areas of our city where these five uh juveniles will have the curfew, parents will be fine, and then there's other areas where it won't happen.

So I do see that.

Uh I like to make data different driven decisions, and it looks like chief stepped out.

I don't know if there's anybody else in the room that could answer.

I would like to know.

I know we just put the new curfew order in place last month.

Um, or was it this month?

But uh either way, how many repeat offenders have we had?

How many like first-time offenders?

Like, where are we with those stats and those numbers to justify?

Council, I would direct that to the sponsor of the sponsor, yeah, not the chief, the spirit of the city.

So sorry, if the sponsorship would ask the question about the data.

What like data and numbers do we have that this is the route that we need to go already?

Like again, the conversation is good, and I think maybe down the road we need to, but let's get data and numbers and see what things look like so we can draft it where it's data-driven decisions that support our community and our residents the right way.

So I guess I'm asking Counselor Hart.

Uh, what kind of information do you have on that?

Yeah, I think thank you, Counselor.

I think she's asking for uh the need for the proposal.

What is the evidence of uh data that supports the um repeat offenders?

Um current data of those who have violated a curve you one or two, three times.

What what do you have on that, Counselor?

Yeah, yeah, for me it's it's been community outreach, right?

It's verbal outreach, uh, like I've been mentioning before.

Um I did bring you at least an email on this one from uh a pastor James Jackson.

Her question was about data.

What I know about data.

This is data.

This is data.

This is a theory.

So how many data?

How many how many young people were violating curfew the last month?

What do you what do you have on that?

Council McCormick?

Uh so the quantitative data, not the qualitative, maybe is what I'm looking for more of.

There is no data on that.

Well, there's data on it.

No, we were told there was no data on it.

Well, there's data on it.

The number zero.

We were told that they don't know.

Does it not exist is what we were told up.

They we were told that they are not taken to the juvenile center because there's no room for it.

So they weren't even you know citing the violation for curfew.

So there's there's no data because we're not citing anybody for it.

That's the problem.

That's why we enacted what we enacted last month.

So you said there's no data to cite that we have uh first time, second time, or third offenders, there's no data, but you jump right to finding those for those offenses, even though we have no offenses that have been documented.

Certainly that yeah, that's how you create a level of accountability.

Okay.

Thank you.

Council McCormick.

Were you you good?

Thank you.

Leader Maori.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Uh, to your point, you know, you're saying there's no data and we're just finding these people.

I would argue that this is gradual in nature.

It's it's not that we're, you know, your first time out, you're getting a fine.

It's it's the fact that you know, we're giving you a written notice, we're giving you the opportunity to get your household in order.

Uh and you're not just letting your children run around the city at all hours of the night.

Um I've heard this called discriminatory and predatory, you know.

I look at this as an issue that you know we've got to have some some group here accountable.

Uh, and if these these young young adults and these young uh juveniles are out running the streets at all hours of the night committing crimes and uh being out past curfew as a crime in and of itself that we're not looking to find them for, we're looking to hold the parents accountable.

These parents are not being held accountable, and that's part of the problem.

You know, we we have officers out here doing their job when they could be patrolling neighborhoods that are of much more issue and have have higher needs, yet we're having to worry about these kids that are out here after curfew.

I think it's time we hold parents accountable and and let them know that you can't just let your kid go run around the city at you know, whatever hours of the night, and that there will be repercussion if you do.

For far too long, we've let these parents skate skate on all these issues, and you know, it's time we start looking at the home and looking at the family life and what's causing this.

I understand not every family is gonna be built the same, and you know, maybe they have one parent that's out working all hours of the night.

Yet there's still a lot of other parents that are in the same same boat that are still able to maintain their home and keep their kids inside and accounted for.

What we see is that these kids are going out and committing crimes, and you know, they're being let go to do whatever they want.

Again, I I said this previously, and I think our city's in a public safety crisis still, and uh we've got to take all the measures we can to ensure that we're doing what we can to ensure the safety of these kids.

We're we're letting children get killed rather than trying to police the ability to make them stay home and stay safe.

You know, there's no numbers, and I asked the question last time last time about this.

How do we know if there's repeated offenders?

That's because they they uh you interrupted me and you told and I was told that these numbers aren't collected.

They don't they don't keep these numbers on file because there's state statute and there's our current ordinance.

And maybe this brings us to a point where we can start creating that data.

And if we're gonna make decisions, we have to have data to support those.

And I think this is a good way for us to start collecting data to make those decisions.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ludamur.

There's no doubt that everyone in the room uh watching understands that the parents are responsible for the children.

Uh we just don't believe many of us just don't believe that if a parent is dysfunctional and not doing a good job in parenting, then finding them $1,500 is all of a sudden make them a functional parent.

So that's let's be clear about that.

That's for a third offense.

They would have had a first, they would have had a first written notice with with no penalty, no no monetary issue.

A second one with a $500 issue.

Again, this is also going to be decided by the courts that are gonna be able to issue these fines.

They can choose to try to work with these parents.

You're saying that we're running right to a $1,500 uh uh uh fine is just it's deceptive.

So let's make sure we make that clear.

Thank you, Leader Maori.

Um what I'm saying is that because an individual parent is not functioning as a parent who is responsible, we just don't believe that finding them is gonna make them all of a sudden more functional as a parent.

Counselor Bain.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Um I will say I feel like there's been a lot of double talk tonight, you know.

Um we get upset that people aren't coming forward, or you know, leaders aren't necessarily coming forward to certain um elected officials within the community, or you know, we we tell Chief Bailey, hey, don't don't take a position on this, don't tell us whether or not you support this proposal or not, that's our not your place.

Then we say, well, hey, no one's telling us if we should support this or not.

And I will say, as far as it goes to getting community feedback on this.

Um yeah, if a counselor is being proactive and going out and talking with the community, I would not be surprised if they have more feedback than counselors that don't.

So I would not, so I wouldn't say it's the fault of counselors that are being proactive, coming up with creative and innovative and smart policy solutions for our city, that they're the ones that get the feedback from the council.

You know, we went two months without a public safety meeting this summer.

Let's not forget about that.

So we didn't even have an open forum for people to come down and talk to us.

Thankfully, some counselors got together, had a public safety round table of that.

Three of these policy ideas came from.

So let's not get upset that the counselors that are being proactive and engaged in the community and having those conversations are the ones that are getting the feedback and are the ones saying, hey, that's a good idea, you should do it.

Thank you, Counselor Bain.

Uh counselor Carlino.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Um I want to respond to Leader Maori's comments about our kids, and there are just presumptions that I think we when you're a person of privilege, we and I'm I'm guilty of this at times, even as a mother, um, to say go to your room, lay in your bed.

Not all of our kids have that.

Hell, not all of our parents have that.

And so we're not gonna find our way to public safety and to harmonious family life.

Um, and nobody's mentioned the elephant in the room, and that is just the lethal access to guns in our state and our city and the proliferation of those weapons.

And so, to me, um, as a mom, sometimes I'm here late with in these meetings.

I have a 15-year-old, and when that curfew kicks in, if I'm not back on the west side and my daughter does some dumb stuff, I might not be able to pay fine number two, and sure as hell can't pay fine number three as a public school teacher in the city of Indianapolis with two jobs.

So again, this is discriminatory and predatory, and I think it preys on um parents and totally misses the fact that we have a lot more things that we need to do to serve our families and in particular our teens and young adults here in the city of Indianapolis.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Thank you, counselor.

Counselor Boots Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

We are not the first ones seeking uh parental responsibility.

I think we've all seen recently the Marion County prosecutor has brought felony charges against parents who who allow kids access to uh unlocked weapons and loaded weapons that has resulted in some disastrous consequences.

So we're not the heavies here by asking parents to be responsible for their children.

Um I've signed on as a co-sponsor to this because I too believe public safety is not a political issue.

We should all be on the same page to do as much as we can, push every little button, pull every little lever.

This is not a godsend silver bullet.

We know that, but it's just one small brick in the wall that we're trying to build to build the support for better public safety.

Um I've had a concern with this city from day one that we lack enforcement across many fronts, not just public safety, but BMS inspection, things like that is just you get away with a lot of stuff in this city.

Um, and this is just maybe one other step, and this is a small step toward trying to um refute that.

So uh as I've been quoted as saying this we really whip people with wet noodles in this city.

No one feels any pain for violating the rules or violating the law.

That's a lawless society.

We need some guidance here to hopefully move the needle in the right direction.

Um, and I'm well aware of the hardship this can cause.

Um, and it may have a discriminatory application, but I will also say the the judge here is the um buffer, if you will, that has a discretion in any case in the hardship case to waive any fine he or she wishes.

So I think there is a protection there that this will not be discriminatingly enforced or assessed against people who can't afford it.

Uh so but I do think anything that can help enforce better behavior that will prevent disastrous consequences, or police having to be the heavy to go down and even round up kids violating curfews.

That's one reason we have no statistics because the police aren't excited about doing that.

You want to build distrust, you go around and pick up kids late at night in a at the mall who come out of the movie when they should be home.

We need to have families more involved with the control of their own children, is my point.

So that is why I have signed on as a co-sponsor, and I encourage our members of this committee to vote yes.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you, Councilor Boots.

Counselor Perkins.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

I'm going to take up my colleagues' invitation Lita Mallory to have a deeper conversation around the impact of our community and how to make our community safer.

I'm also gonna uh encourage um my colleague uh uh Chairman Boots to think about uh the fact that public safety is a political issue, it is a political issue that has caused us uh to determine policies and practices and resources that we put to address the issue of the cycle of trauma that so many of our families live in in Marion County, uh the city of Indianapolis.

It's a political issue of how we address poverty, it's a political issue how we address the issue of availability of guns, redlining and housing, drugs in our communities.

If we're gonna address the issues that affect our families and our young people, let's address them.

Let's not punish our parents on top of what they're really trying to do.

Thank you, Counselor.

Counselor Delaney.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Um, first of all, I want to state that I do believe that parents should be held accountable for the decisions that their children make.

Looking at it in the context of the proposal that we have in front of us, um, I'm also aware that any time that a child is out in public and they're doing something that raises reasonable suspicion or they're outright committing a crime, there's a whole other block of criminal statutes that address that as counselor boots talked about our prosecutor that would then not only be prosecuting a juvenile but also their parent for allowing them access to a gun.

Again, there's a whole a whole nother set of statutes that are firmly established that will address anything violent or anything possibly criminal that's happening.

So we're talking about a very small subset of children that are presumably not doing anything illegal out past curfew.

And that gets me to my second point, which are questions for our co-sponsors, our sponsor and co-sponsor.

How is this procedural?

I want to know about how it actually gets enforced if you have a child that's out on the street and they're just sitting there talking to their friends.

I I don't I'm just trying to throw in some non-criminal activity that a juvenile would be doing out there.

Um, and the police officers approach them, and then I guess they're getting I'll call it picked up by the police, they get taken to a facility, then what happens?

Like how how are we monitoring this?

We're kind of back to those questions, and how do the fines get issued?

Um the it says $500 for each one, and so is like is and then you somebody mentioned about the court.

So I I want somebody to further talk about that.

But then also within that, I'm really asking about I don't know, Pastor Jackson, but the email that you provided, Counselor Hart is from Pastor Jeans Jackson, the lead pastor at the Fervent Prayer Church, and um I take something that he said is something that I thought about, and I think my colleagues are thinking about and I don't want to take it out of context, so please just take this as my own words and not his, but I it is something that he said, which is um he wants finds, or I would also want any find to be part of a broader compassionate approach, and we want to be careful that they're not a blunt instrument that further punishes struggling families already burdened by systemic inequalities or inequities.

Um, and and that is a concern of mine as we look to this.

So that's where why I want to know specifically about the procedural pieces, and if we're concerned about this particular statute as a body being applied in equitable, can we have that discussion separate from maybe the law itself is right because we want to hold counts parents accountable, but having a separate discussion about how it's applied and maybe making modifications to the proposal as it is that would require some sort of reporting back to us to make sure that it's being applied equally to all children that are being um taken in.

I don't know, I'm just trying to separate what I'm saying is I'm trying to separate the two issues of one.

I think it's important that parents are accountable, but two, if we're concerned about application of the law, let's look at that issue separately.

Thank you.

I did.

Can you explain the procedural pieces of it?

Counselor Hart.

Thank you.

Certainly, yeah.

And this goes back to the conversations that we had last time about curfew, where uh the discretion starts with the police officer, right?

And they have this choice of to make.

Uh, is this a civil violation or is this a criminal violation?

And that's where it starts.

Um if they decide to make it a civil violation, and we we go down that route, that's where this comes into play.

Now, the the chief uh and and whoever explained it last month, I believe it was the chief, uh, explained to us that their initial goal isn't to take them straight to the juvenile detention center, but they have set up community um centers with community partners that they will take that that individual to.

Um so, and they're still not not cited at that time, they're just at that location, and whether they're their guardian, parent, whoever it is, comes and picks them up from that location, that's that's it.

That's the end of that that storyline.

However, if they make it over to the juvenile center and they are cited, and then the citation then acts like any other citation, like a parking ticket, right?

Which is the most common.

It is then um subject to the uh the civil court process.

That you mean you can pay it or you can challenge it in court and you have your time to go in front of a judge.

It is then up to the judge's discretion based on which stage they're at, right?

I mean, the first stage they're just gonna get the letter.

So I mean that's that's that.

But if it gets to B or C, uh, I think that what's really important to call out here is that it's subject to, not shall, and so that allows the judge, and then obviously always decides the judge's discretion.

Uh and if there's other legal folks here, whether it be counselor Pierce or Counselor Boots.

I mean, you guys are certainly more legally trained, but that gives them you know the ability to be you know have the discretion on what they are subjecting that fine to.

Um, and that's how that would play out.

So, how who so IMPD is the one making the decision about whether they get just the the public service resources that we talked about, and their parents pick them up or even a trusted family member we talked about that versus getting cited.

So you're telling me the IMPD is the one that's making that decision.

Correct.

Okay, thank you.

Because that goes back to you, like if you had a you know, we we changed it on the timing because if you had a teenager driving home from work and you know they've got that discretion to say up you're just trying we're not, you know, it's it's that's the the where that discretion lies is with the IMPD officer.

Thank you, counselor.

Luna Mowry Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

I appreciate it.

Um I think it's ironic that we're talking about gun control here yet again in this in this chamber.

Um, you know, I I'm I don't I don't disagree that there are guns in the hands of bad people.

And sometimes uh unfortunately for our youth, they get a hold of those guns as well.

Sometimes even it's the parents' gun that they get a hold of.

Rolls right back to why don't we hold the parent accountable?

Why didn't they have that gun locked up in a safe?

Why didn't they have a gun's uh gun lock on that firearm rather than letting that child be able to access that firearm?

Any family with a child, any family, any person with a firearm knows should know basic firearm training and knowing how to secure that firearm.

If you don't secure that firearm properly, let's go back to you and look and you know, make sure you do know how and uh make sure it's a lasting effect that you know how we've heard that public safety is a political issue.

I would disagree.

I would I think public safety is something that affects Democrats, Republicans, independents, black, white, brown, purple, I don't care.

Public safety affects us all.

If my family member is shot and killed, it affects me the same way as if anybody in here's family member was shot and killed.

Your heart's broken.

You want to know what happened.

If it was the juvenile that did this, we pray that it isn't.

Were there measures in place that we could have potentially prevented that?

Were there measures in place where we could have put the parents accountable for these juveniles that are out at one to three a.m.

with no business out at that hour?

I think counselor boots put it very well, and counselor Hart as well, and saying that this fine is not an end-all be all that you're gonna automatically get a fine.

It's at the discretion of the judicial officer at that time.

And I think we need to remember that that it's not going to be something that we're you're automatically getting that fine.

You can plead your case and you can say this is the reason this is what happened.

I apologize, and we'll make sure it doesn't happen again.

And at that point, I think it puts it back on the parent to be a parent and not just a friend that just lets them go all out at all hours of the night.

I would hope, and it may not be the case in all cases, you're right.

But in the cases that it is, we need to hold those parents accountable.

And that's why, if it isn't the case, that judicial officer has the opportunity to work with that parent.

Thank you.

Thank you, Luda Mowray.

Uh, Council McCormick, comments or questions on 245.

Anything.

Thank thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Um I don't know if the authors would be willing to postpone, but I think it sounds like there's maybe area for more conversation moving forward and maybe to get some data and some numbers, whether than that they really exist on paper, or it's more anecdotal and qu uh like the qualitative versus quantitative.

Um, but I think there's further conversation and maybe to bring in subject matter experts and also those who can help identify where there might be some discrepancies or disparities in different populations.

So that would just be a comment suggestion.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council.

Council Muscary.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

You know, I was uh beginning to think I might support this at one point, but with the fines the way they are, there's no way I'm going to.

You know, I feel like we're getting set up, you know, this all stem from July 4th or July 5th of two children being killed.

Uh those kids were arrested, and they it's been it's happened.

Um, but the state house is hovering over us right now, wanting to take over Indianapolis.

It's happening in other cities where National Guards coming.

Be safe.

It could happen here.

And I I don't doubt it one bit.

Our structure of the State House is waiting to take us over.

Thank you.

Thank you, Counselor.

Counselor Ba uh, Counselor Bain.

Thank you.

Um, Mr.

Chairman, just um I know we're not necessarily supposed to direct questions to uh specific members of the council, but um I did have a follow-up question with uh counselor McCormick.

Um what exact data would you be looking for in order to say that you know hey, this is an appropriate fee structure because uh I think the best case scenario is we never have to issue a violation.

Um it would be amazing if we pass this and we don't have to do anything with it because parents are holding children accountable.

Unfortunately, that's not the case.

So what we're debating tonight is whether or not we think that this is an appropriate fee structure to hold parents accountable.

Thank you, Councillor Bain.

I um slightly disagree.

I think the discussion is the hold them accountable with a fee at all.

Not not the discussion of a fee structure.

I think at this point, um, the discussion is the the fine in general is what we're discussing.

So McCormick, you want to respond to Counselor Bain if you choose?

Sure, thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Um, so counselor Bain, I think I think it's sort of twofold.

So there is fee structure, no free structure, and if there is a free structure, what do the dollars look like?

What do the numbers look like?

Um then for the data on my side, I I think what I would be looking for is what is the popular like so.

What's the population?

We the population, the numbers and the data, right?

So how like we don't they're not getting to those multiple offenses.

And last month we heard the reason you know that it's changed in the courts and the judge and who's willing to hear curfew fences, right?

So that's why um IMPD and other uh other groups are doing more education versus uh citing uh curfew violations, right?

So because for a long time they there was nothing that they could do, right?

It was just it wouldn't get taken in the courts, and so there was no point in doing it, sort of like that's my words.

Uh so we're we're now back at the point where we can enforce curfew and we have support in our different brand and our different areas of government and um and in the courts to be able to pursue this, and what is what are those numbers gonna look like, right?

So I know we don't have historical data, but like what do the numbers look like?

And then again, I think for me it goes back to that disparity.

And is this is is it first is a warning, second to find the really big fine?

Is there more that we can do in the middle?

So maybe it's third strike is a fine, right?

The second one is there is mandatory XYZ.

I don't know, I'm not subject matter expert in this, so I do not want to suggest what any of that should look like.

Again, I I'm open to further conversation.

But I think there's information that I don't have that number, the stats, the data that I use to make my decisions that I have to be able to support it tonight.

Thank you, Council.

I think one thing on that follow-up, Council McCormick is that uh you go from first notice uh to a warning to second of 500, uh then to 1500.

Uh I I think something along the lines of a maybe requiring a parenting class uh will be a good step, we'll give it a good process versus jumping right to the fines.

So that was just a thought I had um requiring parenting classes is important to us as opposed to uh the curative stick.

So Mike, you guys just jump right to this stick right away, let's get them.

So um that's just a thought.

But again, um I wouldn't be in favor of postponing it.

Uh I think we need to start over uh if we want to impose things like parenting classes as opposed to trying to um change this one uh and look to start over fresh with uh accountability is important.

We we all believe in that, and the parents are responsible.

But I think that um a notice to the maybe parenting classes will be a would be a part of the discussion as well.

Thank you so much.

Counselor Delaney.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Um I uh am agreeing with Councilor McCormick that I would be open to postponing a vote on this to allow for um amendment or amendment this evening.

I think the way criminal law is written is often a fine imposed of there's a range.

Um and these the way that it's written is very specific of a subject to a fine of 500.

It doesn't say up to or no greater than and um being coming from prosecutorial world, um, judges are there for a reason to be able to listen to a story, listen to all facts and circumstances of what's occurred, and I think giving more leeway in what's written here to the judge, I think would be really important in not punishing parents that don't deserve to be punished and allowing the judge I I like Chairman Robinson's idea of parenting classes or whatever it is, we could write this in a way that would allow the judge to have a lot more leeway.

Bringing, I think that's important, an important intervention, bringing a family before the court to really try to understand what's going on at its core and giving each circumstance, especially when you're dealing with children, the children are the priority.

Public safety is secondary, but what we really want is for our children to be safe and healthy.

Um, and allowing the judge to intervene in a manner that would take the whole family into accountability and all the circumstances of what's been going on with that child.

I think that that is really is a really important piece to this, especially since we're dealing with children.

Thank you.

Thank you, Counselor.

Counselor Graves.

Thanks, Mr.

Chair.

Um, Mr.

I just have a comment.

Um I think um this this makes me uh this brings to mind that we are, and you mentioned the the the carrot uh and the stick.

We're being uh focusing on our reactive uh um reaction to what's happened out there without really giving a lot of consideration to being preventive in nature and looking at the root causes of why people are youth or downtown anyway.

And I'm willing to bet that it's because of lack of opportunity.

I would love to see us shore up what is available for our youth to do on a preventive measure uh versus spending uh this much time on the reactive measure going straight to the punishment uh for those families.

So I would I would love to see us be more intentional about providing opportunities uh for those same youth to go to places to enjoy themselves because if we all can recall when we were young, we needed something to do and someplace to go.

And if there is nothing to do and no place to go, downtown Indianapolis is where it's gonna happen.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Thank you, Councillor Counselor Hart.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

And I'm so glad you guys brought up uh parenting classes uh because this is the this is the second version of what I wrote.

I wrote parenting classes the first time.

Um and I had a meeting with Councillor Pierce, Counselor Bieler again from the city and uh Council or Sealer, uh Beeler, as well as uh Julie Slaughter with the city, um, who's also a former city prosecutor who would see these sorts of things.

We to my understanding, and correct me if I'm wrong, but uh counselor here'cause you were there, we don't have the authority through uh our our means to when we have uh citations and fines.

The fine ability we have is through monetary and written.

We we don't have the ability, the authority to require a parent to go to a parenting class.

I I started at that uh with giving the option of uh parenting class uh and and bringing both the parent and the child together.

That was the original intent, but I was told by three different attorneys that with this city that we cannot do that, and I wanted to do that, but I'm uh we were we're just unable to do it.

So this was the option.

That's why I mentioned when I opened this up that when the the written notice is sent out that anything that we have available to the city that has come to the city is mentioned in that that letter because that's when we have the option to inform people that these things exist that they've come to the city, but this is what we can do.

We can we can adjust these fees up and down, uh, but we can't we can't require anybody to go to a parenting class.

Thank you, Councillor.

Counselor Perkins.

Uh thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Um I I want to just echo a couple of things that my colleagues have said.

Um Council Graves just mentioned that we are we are being reactionary and we still respond in uh from what happened earlier this summer.

Um I think the evidence that we are asking for and it underscores the importance of doing research before we bring this out to the public is is there correlation between leveraging a fine and a reduction of curfew violation?

Period.

Is there data that suggests that from a national perspective?

Um I remember uh 24 years in in in education K-12.

Uh there was a time period where uh truenza was a major issue, especially in the major urban city.

I was working as a principal, and we made a decision to leverage fines and refer parents to the court for truancy cases.

All it did was to overburden my staff because we had to prepare the document for the prosecutor, and it just clogged up the court system.

There was no correlation between referring a case, a truency case, to the court and the reduction of Truincy.

We had to address the root causes.

If we're going to be a class A city, we must address the root causes and stop being reactionary.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Leader Maury.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

We've had a lot of discussion here tonight, and I want to be brief here.

So we talk about leveraging fines and and that nature.

You know, I I when we talk about leveraging fines, I think of things like speed limits.

If I'm doing 60 and a 40, I'm not worried about the speed limit or the cop that sees me doing 60 and a 40.

I'm worried about the ticket he's gonna write me because it has a monetary value to that ticket, which is a fine.

I think the same policy goes and the same the same notion of I uh the same idea goes applies here that you may not be worried about the police officer if there's no fine attached, if there's no there's no accountability held.

However, if I'm if I am speeding, there's accountability to be held.

I'm I'm held accountable for what I've done, rightfully so.

And I think this is a way for us to hold parents accountable for letting their kids go out at all hours of the night.

And you know, so leveraging fines is a is a did absolutely a deterrent for letting kids go out at all hours of the night and making sure that parents have have their homes in order.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ludamory.

Uh Counselor Bain.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Um appreciate you coming back to me and the flexibility that we've had tonight.

Um, you know, thankfully this is public safety committee and a budget hearing.

Uh so we're we're blessed with um some city leaders and staff out in the audience, and uh, I just thought it might be appropriate if uh director Merkley uh could come up speak about maybe if he has any info uh that he could share about the curfew system um and maybe think about how OPHS was involved in setting up staging centers and everything.

Um counselor Bain, we were gonna hold up and be appropriate.

Yeah, we're gonna hold off on that for now.

Uh you do not want to hear from city officials on you know things that could be beneficial for this proposal.

Uh we we can have them come up and inform us if we want.

Uh Mr.

Chairman, I think we have extablished protocol in this chamber that you're recognized first by the chairman before you speak, and so I asked my colleague to do follow the case.

I was recognized.

Thank you.

Thank you for thank you, Councillor Perkins.

You weren't even recognized.

Counselor Bain, hold on, hold on.

Um hold that thought, Councilor Bain.

Counselor Mascarry.

I'd like to call the question.

Miss uh Pierce, uh, we have a call to question uh on the floor that's been seconded.

Um do we go to that do we have to address Bain's question first I I think that's up to the chair.

You're up to the chair.

Yeah, we'll take a roll call vote on the call to question, please.

Councilor Bang.

No, hold on a second, hold on one second one second.

We're voting, Councilor Delaney on the call to question, meaning that the questions from the committee at this point will be sub suspended and ended, and uh we'll go to public comment.

Is everyone clear on that?

And the question was called by Councilmascary and seconded by Carlino.

And we'll do a roll call vote on call the question to end this discussion and go to public comment and then to a vote.

Councilor Bain.

Absolutely not.

Councilor Boots.

No.

Councilor Carlino?

Yes.

Counselor Delaney.

No.

Councilor Graves.

Yes.

Councilor Hart.

Hart, no.

Councilor Miscary.

Mascary, yes.

Councilor McCormick.

Yes.

Councilor Mowray.

No.

Counselor Perkins.

Yes.

Counselor Robison.

Robinson, yes.

Okay.

What was that vote?

I'm sorry, I wasn't following.

Six yeses and two.

Five no's.

Thank you.

Uh anyone in the audience care to speak to proposal 245.

We'll go to public comment on proposal 245 regarding the curfew fines.

You want to come forward?

Do we have a list, Ms.

Clerk?

Of names of those who are signed in.

Thank you.

Just the first three names.

Um listen for your name, please.

Anyone come forward?

What's the clerk calls your name?

Larry Vaughn.

Mr.

Vaughn.

You have two more.

Hold on, Mr.

Vaughn.

You have two more.

Okay.

Um.

Diesel, is there a DZL in the audience?

Okay.

And then one more.

Um, those were the last two.

Okay, good.

Great.

Mr.

Vaughn, comments or questions on 245 regarding the curfew uh amendment.

Uh yes, Larry Vaughn, please.

You know, whenever you monetize a problem like this, it always gets ugly, right?

This is about money.

I mean, in every democratic uh city that's ran by Democrats across the country, you're seeing this problem pop up.

What they've done with this careful deal, they know that these parents are not gonna come pick these kids up.

The first thing they're gonna do to monetize is they're gonna pick them up, they're gonna have them changed over, they're gonna collect the uh information on these kids, drain them dry according to whatever dope treatment they can get.

So many of our black pastors have set up dope houses in their debunked churches now that they're doing nothing but selling dope.

So this is how they monetize and also I had a friend, friend of mine, uh Dr.

Kenneth Eccles was the former coroner here in Marion County.

He told me that every time uh young murder victim comes across the scales, and this was in 79, that they profited the medical industry profited over uh $750,000 off of the guts that they stripped out of him.

Remember IOPO and how they had to cut that down because they were taking scru unscrupulous uh uh advantage of dead bodies that ended up in the morgue or triaging them if they were injured and then selling the body parts.

This is a shame, and you have people out on the streets being promoted by the city at being paid by the city to corral these young people to get them into a place where they have to give their information up, where they're take not taken before a judge, but they have a gun stuck it stuck to their head and say you either take this dope or we're gonna blow your brains out.

That's what's going on here tonight, folks.

They've monetized even our most vulnerable kids in this city, and it's a shame, but uh they're doing it anyway, they don't care.

Thank you.

Your name for the record, please.

Good evening.

It's nice to meet all of you.

My name is Diesel Hasen.

I'm a youth advocate with uh voices.

I attend Pike High School.

I am uh a senior currently um on the road to graduating.

Um before I begin, I wanted to thank you all for taking the time to listen to the voices of our community.

I believe our community as a whole truly struggles with accountability, and we need to do better at following through with the laws and our system, the systems that we put in place, because despite the popular opinion of the rest of my peers, I believe it truly does keep us safe.

With that being said, I do think improvements and reinforcements should be added to the curfew law, but I think jumping straight to finding isn't the right way to right type of reinforcement to persuade our youth to follow them.

I think we should try to strive to find solutions that focus more on reformant rather than punishment.

For example, getting our youth into things like community service or putting them in recreational activities.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you for your comments, sir, for coming down.

Anyone else care to speak to the proposal 245 on the curfew amendment?

Seeing none, the uh debate is ended for the committee members.

Um the chairman telling a motion on 245.

So moved mostly probably moved and seconded.

Uh Ms.

Clerk, you want to roll call vote, please.

Council Bain.

Aye.

Councilor Boots.

Boots aye.

Council Carlino.

Carlino, nay.

Councillor Janine.

Delaney, nay.

Council Graves.

Graves, no.

Councilor Hart.

Hart.

Aye.

Counselor Miss Gary.

Mass Gary, no.

Councillor McCormick.

McCormick, no.

Councilor Mowrie.

Yes.

Councillor Perkins.

Perkins, no.

Counselor Robinson.

Robinson, no.

Thank you.

The motion uh has failed to pass 245 2025.

Let us then we have three uh budget hearings this evening presentations.

First up is our Marion County Clerk's office.

Clerk Case when anybody want to come forward, please.

And I did pass out your uh your stickers to all the committee members, Miss Clerk.

We all have one.

Each of the committee members should have a hard copy of the presentation in their possession.

And uh we will have a one for the public to view on the screen here in just a moment.

Ms.

Clerk, you ready?

Whoops.

And we will take your we will take the questions from the committee members at the conclusion of your presentation.

Uh thank you very much.

Good evening, Mr.

Chairman, and members of the committee.

Everyone here, not everyone here has uh seen me before.

For those of you at home, my name is Kate Sweeney Bell.

I'm the Marion County Clerk.

Joining me tonight are Jenny Trautman, the CFO for the clerk's office, who's giving somebody the eye right now.

Chris Becker, our my chief of staff, and Jesse Pizarro, who is our uh uh director of finance.

Before I begin uh with the budget, Mr.

Chairman, if it's okay with you.

Uh I need to correct the record on a matter.

Please uh please, Ms.

Clerk, go right ahead.

Thank you.

Um, as you may know, in addition to presenting this budget here tonight, I also represent the Marion County Election Board and presented my budget last week to another committee.

And during last week's budget meeting, Councillor Maori asked a question regarding the election process and other states, and I answered that question only partially correctly.

Uh and if he were still here, I would uh remind him that he asked about these other states, and I told him that Utah only had mail-in ballots, and that was incorrect.

Instead, Utah is one of eight states uh that automatically mails ballots to every registered voter.

However, each of those states also allows for in-person voting.

And uh hopefully he will uh hear this later tonight when he watches the replay, but I just wanted to publicly set the record straight and to apologize to Council or Leader Maori uh for the error.

Yeah, we'll we'll be sure he watches it tonight when he gets home.

Thank you.

How often does somebody get apologized to, right?

Uh I was wrong and I regret it.

Thank you for your acknowledgement, Ms.

Clerk.

Uh I appreciate you letting me explain that.

And now on to the budget for the clerk's office.

I only have about 45 minutes worth of material, so we'll uh no, I'm kidding.

It's like it's five minutes, five minutes.

I'm gonna go really fast uh because there are very important things that you're doing here tonight.

Um and but I do want to preemptively answer two questions for all of you here tonight.

No, I can't get you out of a ticket, and no, I can't get you out of jury duty.

That is uh something that well I might be able to help, but please don't make a habit of asking about about the jury duty because you really should serve if you're called.

Uh so far this year through June 30th, we've processed more than a quarter million requests in our office and received over 75,000 payments.

Uh anything from bonds, copies, court costs, everything in between.

Uh not included in the you see the total funds on that sheet of uh 36 million dollars.

Um there's 24 million in garnishments, about seven and a half million in sheriff sales and miscellaneous fees, plus over three million in bond payments.

That is uh through June 30th.

So it's it's it's there are a lot of dollars.

Uh the budget breakdown on this slide, we've decreased character one spending by over five and a half percent.

Our character three increased, but uh that has to do with a lease that is coming due next year for our records facility, and while we've digitized the records we can uh nobody's offering to do that for free.

So uh until we can find more revenue streams for that, we we need to house these court records.

Next slide is the revenue, which I believe is a misnomer.

Uh what is called revenue is statutorily dictated to our office.

So if there's a hundred dollar fee assessed by a court, it doesn't go into the general fund.

Instead, a dollar might be collected for the alcohol and drug countermeasures fee, another dollar to the domestic violence prevention and treatment fee, and on and on until you get to that $100, and then a percentage might go to either count uh the county, the state, or cities and towns.

Again, that those are all dictated by Indiana Code.

Uh character one, as I said, there is a decrease.

It was not five and a half percent, it's really five point six three percent.

Uh next one, character two.

There's no change here.

Um you can imagine the cost for supplies is not going to go down in the near future.

Uh and just like our fellow agencies, we endeavor to be good stewards of the public dollars.

That will not change, but that figure still might change just a little bit.

Character three, uh, that's the where we expect to see the increase in rent for um our records facility.

I mean, who knows?

Maybe it will be less, but uh again, you know, I I don't see I don't see prices uh going down any time soon.

Uh character four, as you know, that's uh in case we need a new piece of office equipment that will come out of our perpetuation fund.

Thank you.

Any questions?

Thank you.

Ms.

Clerk, comments and question counselors on the clerk's presentation.

No vote tonight.

Wow.

Okay.

Oh, Council McCormick.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

We've got to have at least one.

Um, I said we have to have one question.

So I was just I wanted to ask, um, thank you for your presentation about your character one.

So the cut in that and um so the decrease in that and then the number of staff, and is that gonna decrease?

Um are we are there city county employees that are going to be needing other positions, and how is that gonna impact the office and the work that you can get done?

Uh thank you for the question.

It is uh we have positions that have been funded that are not currently filled, and that's where the decrease came in.

We're not cutting anybody's salary, and uh if if you haven't encountered any clerk's office staff, go meet them.

They're great people, and they do they do wonderful, wonderful work.

Thank you, counselor counselor uh laney.

That was my question.

So thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Thank you.

Anyone of the auditors care to speak to the presentation of the clerk's office?

See no.

Thank you, Ms.

Clerk.

Thank you for the stickers.

Yes, thank you.

Don't forget to vote next year.

Have a good day.

May 5th, that's the next election.

The second presentation this evening is the regional health and mental health centers.

Uh Mr.

George Hurd and Dr.

Ashley Overly.

And we have a nice um thick packet.

Very informative.

Leader Mallory, uh, the clerk had a uh something to share with you about the last committee meeting about voting milling ballots.

So she stated um she met an error in the last meeting.

So we want to go watch the video tonight.

We get home about the uh conversation she had.

About Utah.

I'll cherish that.

Thank you.

Absolutely.

Watch it.

Let me click there.

That's just my pilots.

Oh, um, please.

Mr.

Hurd, if you want to go ahead and start, we have the hard copy, so it's just a presentation.

So uh if you want to go ahead and start with your hard copy, you have we we can just get going and then when that no, I uh electronic copy comes up, we'll have it.

Well, I want to thank everyone for allowing us to be here.

Um I will start with my hard copy.

I came prepared um as well, uh, just in case.

Um I do want to stop for a moment on the first slide on the title slide, and um let me introduce myself and then go from there.

I think we're getting there.

So uh Mr.

Chairman and members of the board.

I'm George Heard, the vice president of behavioral health at community health network.

Um I wanted to stop on this slide for a minute and talk a little bit about um what this is.

Um when we were putting this presentation together, um, one of the things we thought about is hearts and minds.

And it's really important um when we think about that, because as we're thinking about what we do as community mental health centers, behavioral health and mental health and addiction service providers, um, we think about this in that way about mental health and what we're doing.

We're treating hearts and minds, and we know that we can't do that without the support of community members, um, also elected officials, uh organizations at the government level, different departments and everybody else, as well as the large array of service providers around uh Marion County and Indianapolis.

Let me see if I can get my um let me go back.

And so um from that standpoint, I want to thank everybody uh here.

Um next, I want to go ahead and let you know I'm representing on behalf of all four community mental health centers here in Marion County.

Um with me tonight is Dr.

Negadenck here from a Dalton Child, uh Anthony Sheehan from Aspire uh Health, and then um Dr.

Ashley Overly from Sandra Eskenazi.

So I want to thank all of them being here with me tonight and their staff.

Umce this is a budget meeting, this comes up uh every year, and one of the things I think I want to point out is our county funding that we receive, um, it does come from uh an Indiana code that states that county governments shall uh fund community mental health centers based on a formula established under uh code uh that county funding is not a taxing levy, but rather a statutorily required funding levy that is adjusted annually statewide based on the assessed value growth quotient.

So that's that's long winded to say that uh this funding that we receive, while it does uh count as uh county tax dollars, um, it's all determined uh before uh the budgets are set.

Um I I was able to speak with some people, and I understand that's about 8.7 million dollars this uh budget cycle.

And uh while that seems significant, broken across four of us, um it's not that much when we think about what we're being tasked to do.

I also would like to always remind everybody that our funding, I always call it braided.

It's all braided together.

Not any one funding source we get is enough to cover the services we have to deliver.

We have to pull a lot of different funding together to make that work.

A lot of that is oftentimes partnerships between local government, state government, and federal government, and a lot of times it's very complicated funding streams where we have to match certain dollars to pull down other dollars that can make us start to be somewhat whole in the services we deliver.

And so in this case, a lot of the county tax dollars are used as match to pull down other dollars to help us fund everything we do.

Conversely, on the right side of this slide, um, I I would like to point out that uh not doing the services we do.

Uh the Indiana Behavioral Health Commission did study this, um, and what they determined is uh not treating uh behavioral health and addictions adequately is costing Hoosers about 4.2 billion dollars a year.

Um, of that, it's most important to point out that the highest number of costs related to this is premature mortality.

So that's one of the biggest uh costs to the state is the fact that people suffering from mental health and addictions uh tend to die younger than others without.

The next thing is uh lost uh productivity.

So you can think that from a workforce standpoint, people suffering with addictions and mental health can't be as productive as it in terms of as other people.

And then finally, just straight up health care cost.

Um it just costs more when people have uh comorbid conditions uh related to mental health and addiction.

So I would just want to point that out.

Uh the next slide really just kind of goes into what we do as community health centers, and there's about 10 required services that we uh have to do as a community health center.

And I want to point out we uh really uh focus on and are tasked with serving the people with the highest needs, and we'll get into that more as we go through here.

But you'll see uh we have to have 24-hour day crisis interventions, case management, and I can go on and on.

What I want to uh go ahead and compare that with is what I'm gonna say is my presentation is going to take a little twist here.

We're going to go into the future.

It's actually kind of the now, but now in the future.

One of the things I want to point out is the state of Indiana in 2023 did as part of Senate Enrolled Act 1 appropriate money through the Department of Mental Health and Addictions, 100 million dollars, 50 million dollars each year of the biennium to improve behavioral health services across the state of Indiana.

Um they did recommit uh to funding this and advancing uh support for mental health and addiction services in this last uh budget cycle and uh appropriated another hundred million, fifty dollars each year of the biennium uh to support our expansion of what we call CCBHC, certified community behavioral health clinics.

It's really important because this should increase the amount of funding we have to serve individuals, and the state has been helping to move this process along.

As part of that, the state at the beginning of this year did award eight demonstration sites, community mental health centers across the state to be the first CCBHC organizations across the state.

Marion County was fortunate.

It had two already in this county that qualified to be early C C BHC participants, that being Sandra Eskenazi and Adult and Child Health.

The state has then reaffirmed a commitment here recently, opening up an application period for others to communal health centers to apply.

Both community Fairbanks Behavioral Health and Aspire Indiana Health both applied.

And so it's our hope all four of us will be able to benefit from this new service delivery and funding of C C BHC.

Down below this, you're going to see that there's nine required services that C C BHCs have to do.

I won't go into all of them.

They're very similar to what communal health centers had to do.

The big thing is we should get funded better to do this.

There is one thing absent in this list, and that's residential services.

I bring this up because I know this has always been a concern of this of this group about how are we handling people with housing insecurity and things like this.

I want to tell you the state has committed that they're going to find a way to do that.

And communal health centers will still be around making sure that those activities still continue.

I will also point out later in the slide deck what we have been doing and how we've been growing.

I can say this is what I would say should be what you should expect from a CCBHC.

You should expand, you should expect expanded timely access to care.

You should expect expanded access to substance use care.

You should expect investments in workforce, workforce is our biggest need.

And I'll explain why you should expect that, and then you'll see the rest of the things that you should expect.

What this slide deck is really about what are some of the outcomes because Indiana isn't the first state that has transitioned to C C BHC.

Others have done this for years.

And so what has been the results when people have been able to uh transition to C C BHC?

And what you're going to see is quite simply there has been an expansion of access to care.

Access gains were particularly pronounced amongst the Medicaid populations, expanding their number of people served by an average of 33%.

Also, there was an expansion amongst children and youth and uninsured people without a you know who couldn't normally get outpatient services, which are really critical in trying to prevent things.

There was also overall an expansion of substance use care related to this new CCBHC model of care, and you can see the outcomes that were reported around that.

Staying on the themes of outcomes, also CCBHCs have really been tasked and uh focus on working around dealing with health disparities and social determinants of health.

These are big drivers of costs.

And not treating these things early only makes things worse long term.

And so, as part of this, um CCBHCs have engaged in a wide array of strategies to address these, including including screening for unmet social uh needs.

You'll see that, increasing outreach to individuals who have historically been underserved or underrepresented, and also hiring staff who more represent the communities and the people that we're serving.

These have all been items that uh CCBHCs have been able to do remarkably well.

Um there's also been uh a real focus, and this is this comes right from the federal government's requirements for CCBHCs, a focus on increasing access and support to veterans, people experiencing homelessness, and uh people who are at risk for involvement with the criminal justice system.

Um, and then I want to say that the vast majority of C C BHCs have been able to proactively assist clients in finding and maintaining stable housing.

So I think what's key here for this group and has been in the past is what has historically held us back from being able to achieve great results here regarding behavioral health and addictions.

Oftentimes it's been a lack of workforce.

I could spend a long time explaining why it's hard to hire behavioral health workforce.

It really oftentimes comes down to economics.

If we aren't reimbursed well enough to cover our cost and increase wages, it's really hard to retain workforce.

It's really hard to attract new workforce.

And so we have all, all four communal health centers have really engaged in trying to look at how can we build our workforce, retain our workforce, and what can we do to increase that.

One of the things I want to point out is the number of people we have across the four agencies working in Marion County, providing behavioral health and substance use treatment.

It's over 2300 individuals.

That's up from last year.

So that's important to point out.

The next slide I want to point out is when we're looking at slide 10, a little showcase of some of the things we've done.

As a group, all four of us have come together to work in what we call the behavioral health academy.

The behavioral health academy really focuses on training early therapists on how to deliver care more effectively and more efficiently by training them to treat both mental health and addictions.

Because historically, people have only been trained to do one or the other.

It was estimated that in Indiana, we were thousands of therapists short of what we need to provide the services that people needed.

This, and that was primarily because you had to have two people if you had both a mental health and addictions issue.

Here, we trained one person that can do both.

And you'll see in Marion County, we've graduated 218 people who can now do this.

And so if you think about that, we've reduced that by over 400 people that we needed to serve people by doing this by training them dually this way.

Also, I want to point out that we've also started a care coordinator pathway.

You've got to think about this early people getting into workforce.

Therapists need a master's degree.

We also have individuals who are getting their bachelor's degree, and these are important people in our workforce.

And so, but we also want to get them prepared if they want to advance the career ladder and get and become a therapist and stuff like this.

And this care coordinator pathway, again, a very collaborative process amongst us, is also working to train individuals to work with people with dual diagnosis.

So many of our people have both mental health and addictions issues.

And you'll see the great thing is a lot of our uh higher uh schools of higher education, uh, Butler, Indiana University, Indianapolis, you know, I UND, Martin University, and Marion Universities are parts of these programs.

So I want to point that out.

And again, um, also us as service providers, we're working together collaboratively.

Here, another very important item uh the council has always been interested in is how many individuals have we served.

Um, across all of our types of care and services, um, this past uh state fiscal year, we served over 65,000 individuals.

That was up from a little over 61,000 individuals last year.

So important, we are serving more people.

Uh the pie chart off to the right, I want to point out to you is as communal health centers, we're to focus on individuals with the highest acuity and the most important needs, so the highest needs.

And if you look at this pie chart, you're gonna see two things kind of popped out medication only and outpatient only kind of therapies.

We consider those low level kind of cares.

Not that medication isn't important, it has to be prescribed by a doctor, but generally those are things that sometimes primary care can do, or a private practitioner therapist can do outpatient only.

What we really focus on are things like community-based services.

This is where we have staff going into individuals' homes because maybe they can't get to us.

We go to them, and we're delivering that therapy inside their homes or wherever they may be, because sometimes they're not even housed, but we're we're meeting them where they are delivering that care.

Sometimes we do intensive community-based services, and that's where a team of individuals has to support and keep that person in the community, and then residential services.

And we'll talk a lot about the types of residential services we do, and then systems of care where we have to coordinate across multiple entities, especially around use services to support individuals in the community.

When we look at who we're serving, the this is a very vulnerable population.

Of these individuals we're serving, 36% of them have residential instability.

Think of them as I'm housed today, but maybe not next week.

Also, 27% of them have legal system involvement.

And 24% of them are suffering from food insecurity.

So these people have high needs.

When we look at the demographics of who we're serving, you can see the overall demographic makeup.

And I will tell you, as we look at our workforce, our workforce at this point in time isn't necessarily fully representative of our populations, but we are making great progress on that.

And then if you look off to the side, when we think about the people with the highest needs, you'll see the majority of them are adults and a smaller number being youth.

I can go through these next slides quickly.

Some people have always wanted to know so what kind of people are we working with, depressive disorders is the number one chief complaint by our people, but then also followed by people with uh schizophrenia spectrum and other psychotic disorders, and then you can see substance use.

This is pretty much the same list that we had last year.

Some of the percentages are a little different, but um it stayed relatively the same.

Diagnostic categories for kids again, relatively main remains the same as last year with depressive disorders leading the way.

Um, and then you'll see anxiety disorders being third on our list.

Um can't not go and talk about at the bottom of our list as trauma and stress related disorders as well, as we uh live in a society where sadly some of our children suffer from abuse, neglect, and other such traumas.

And then our substances again um same same items that we had last year, a little different mix up here in terms of its ranking, but overall alcohol use is our number one uh followed by opioids, uh cannabis stimulants, and then nicotine as the chief complaints people are coming to us when we do our diagnostic reviews.

Next, um, I really want to get into this is probably where I want to brag a little bit about our continuum of care and what we do.

So we are always interested in gathering feedback from the community.

That's one of the things as a certified community behavioral health center that's C C BHC, we're required to do.

And we um all four of us have have sometimes grouped together, sometimes individually, but we are constantly surveilling the community for their needs.

And as a result of that, we have a very robust continuum of care.

And you'll see this you know, we we we provide services in 162 schools here in Marion County.

We have 27 outpatient clinics spread around the county to try to make access easy for individuals.

Um we have 151 acute psychiatric beds, uh, think about that, behavioral health hospital beds, 52 acute detox beds, um, 203 residential beds, and you can think of those as both kids and adults, but that's a higher level of needs, not quite acute, but not a group home, which we have 129 group home beds.

Uh we have 28 use shelter beds.

So when kids are removed from their home, uh whether that's in the middle of the night or for some other reason due to abuse, neglect, or any other issues, um, we uh some of us provide those services where they're taking to immediately until they can be safe until a family member or somebody else uh can uh get them.

Uh we have 156 cluster apartment beds, those are people living in apartments that a lot of times we master lease or own, um, but then we have people working in that apartment complex sometimes uh seven days a week supporting them so they can remain in the community, and then 61 foster homes.

Uh that's a wonderful item that we do.

Um so we definitely work in that child welfare area greatly.

Uh we have 25 crisis stabilization chairs or beds.

You can think about this like somewhere, and we'll talk about this in a minute, somewhere else somebody can go other than having to be in acute care hospital.

Maybe they just need some time and space, and they can not have to go into an acute care hospital, but it also gives uh the community another level of resource in that continuum, and then across us, we all have a mobile crisis team.

Some of us has multiple teams because you got to think about this.

We run this 24-7, 365 days a year, and so we all have mobile crisis teams now going out, uh, connected to 988 going out and serving uh people in the community.

So this is that crisis continuum.

If there's a hoosure in need, they have somewhere to call.

That's 988.

It's the equivalent of 911, but for behavioral health urgent needs.

Someone to respond, those are those mobile crisis teams I just talked about, and somewhere to go.

That's that crisis stabilization beds that we're talking about.

And I want to point out that uh we provided over 22,000 crisis services last year.

That's up for 19,000 some uh the year before.

Bragg a little bit.

We talked about our mobile crisis teams.

This isn't every individual who makes up our mobile crisis teams, but you'll see Adult and Child has a mobile crisis team, Santa Eskenazzi has a mobile crisis team, community fair banks, and Aspire Indiana Health.

And here's our people, love their smiles, they're eager and they want to help people, and uh they're well trained uh to provide services.

And then again, uh in the past, uh there's always been a strong focus on um what are we doing around people with housing insecurity, um, homeless issues, and I want to tell you across this continuum, some of us do more and different things in this area, but as a collective, we do a lot of things like homeless outreach, transitional housing, uh rapid rehousing.

I can go through the list, but you'll see there's 702 housing, think of them like units, uh, beds, apartments, things like this that we have available to us, and we served 978 individuals.

Some of these people are now stable in their housing because of these interventions we've been able to do.

And then um, I mentioned it earlier 65,000 individuals uh that we served last year.

Uh you can see the growth in that since 2018.

It's it's an upward trend.

Um, and last year, across the four of us, we provided over 28 million dollars in charity care uh supporting individuals.

With that, I'm gonna say thank you.

It's a lot of information, and it's a thank you from all four of us uh for the support, not only from this body, which every year you guys have been amazingly supportive, uh, but also for everybody else who supports us and what we're trying to do to help the community, and I'll take any questions uh that there might be.

Thank you, Mr.

Hurd, for your presentation and for your team behind you uh on the regional health and middle health centers.

Commissary questions, Council Muscary.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

You know, first off, I'd like to say thank you for everything you guys do.

You know, adult and child inspire everyone.

It's something that's really needed in Indianapolis.

But really bothers me that we have no central state anymore.

Um numbers that you've given to me, uh it looks like you're housing about 719 people.

Is this correct?

Around give or take up to 800, correct?

978, I think was the number.

Um, but you got to think about this.

The sometimes these individuals, and that's numbers up from where it was the previous year.

We went from 500 some housing units to 700.

Um that number uh these individuals are are think about them very fragile.

They need a lot of support to remain housed.

So sometimes when you you put an individual in one of those housing units, they can be there a long time.

Um we certainly all partner with um different entities.

Umglewood is one of them.

A lot of us have partnered with on different housing initiatives.

We work with the city on housing initiatives, and so certainly always eager to do that.

Um, it's it's a huge issue.

And I want to say we have uh homeless outreach teams that are going out trying to help individuals to come in to get into care and get into our services.

But I I can appreciate the concern.

Right.

The menal or the uh homeless, 99% of them are a mental, is that correct?

We're 80%, 85 to 90 percent.

You know, I I wouldn't want to put a percentage on it.

I I I can say certainly uh individuals uh with housing insecurity, there are a number of them that were also suffering, whether it's from mental health or addictions issues or both.

Um but that doesn't mean that they're always uh impaired to such a level that they can't make uh choices.

We also uh we can't always compel them to not be homeless.

While sometimes we do have individuals on commitments and we can do that, there's a whole process that has to happen that involves the legal system to do that, but certainly there is a population within uh people with housing insecurity that are suffering from mental health and addiction.

Are there people still uh committed to the board of the state?

Of course.

Okay, um, we uh each of us are considered what's called a gatekeeper uh to the state hospitals.

Um there are still uh state hospitals and all of us manage individuals inside the state hospital last year.

Um I can't speak for everybody else.

Last year uh we uh committed 31 individuals to the state hospitals as community fair banks behavioral health.

Um those individuals spent a little over cumulatively over a thousand days in the state hospital.

We work with them to bring them back as quickly as possible, but sometimes their needs rise to that level, of course.

Okay, one more quote comment and I'll be done.

Um you do understand that the Marion County Jail is the largest mental institution in Marion County, correct?

I do understand that the jail certainly provides lots of services to individuals with mental health and addictions needs.

Um that's that's always an interesting conundrum.

Uh I I want to point out that one of the things I've long said, and you've got to understand I started in the justice system, you know, uh 30 some years ago.

Um, very much understand this.

I have often felt that as society, when we said we're going to not have people in uh asylums and mental health institutions, we started this process of de-institutionalization.

Thank you.

I will also say we didn't always fund the community services well enough to pick them all up.

Has there been a shift sometimes to other places?

Of course.

Um I'm very interested in making sure that no individual with a mental health or substance use disorder who shouldn't be in jail is not in jail.

And we want to make sure those individuals get care.

Come come tonight to the sheriff presents, it's about 48%.

But again, thank you very, very much for what you guys do.

Yep, thank you.

Thank you, Counselor.

Uh Counselor Bain.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Thank you, um, Mr.

Hurd.

I I just want to say I think uh everything you guys do is heroic uh for our city.

Um, how do people find you?

How do um youth in particular?

Like you give us a delineation of how youth end up in your care and um using your services versus adults and then people who have mental health issues and substance abuse issues, is it referrals through psychologists as uh through law enforcement?

What does that look like?

So how individuals get to us, I tell you, there's not one singular way.

It is so multifaceted.

We we could spend hours talking about how individuals get to us.

Um youth get to us whether again we're in 161 schools, so we're working with them right inside the school building.

So, you know, if there's a child that school has raised a concern with, they speak to the parents, they direct the parents on how to get a hold of us, right?

We we don't just go start working with a kid without parents making a referral.

They we're a resource, and so they make referrals to us, so schools refer.

Uh the Department of Child Services makes referrals.

Police officers will sometimes bring them to whether it's our crisis stabilization center or our acute care center, and then we connect to individuals that way.

We all have websites, we get self-referrals, we work with primary care.

So uh your family doctor might suggest you contact one of us.

The the ways that people connect to us is just I mean, it's it's just so varied.

It's it's large.

Counselor Perkins.

Uh thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Thank you for your presentation.

Um I echo my colleague in saying the work that you guys are doing.

It's tremendous, tremendous lift uh for the city.

Uh, interested in learning a little bit more about your uh mobile crisis response teams who are the clients that you that team serve uh serve.

Um or the clients that you that team serve uh serve.

Yeah, so um please understand the mobile crisis response teams are a requirement as a certified community behavioral health center, and so uh we each have to have those.

The people we serve are really uh we're a service to 988.

So individuals who contact 988 needing support and help, uh, we would then get dispatched to go help those individuals.

They can also be a self-referral, they could contact one of our access departments.

We all have crisis contact numbers out there.

Um sometimes uh I know we have a lot of pamphlets we leave, whether it's community organizations, churches and stuff like this, they hand that out, call this number.

We will assess that individual, and if they need a mobile crisis response, we might self send somebody out.

So uh I can't necessarily I don't know that I right now in my hands have like demographic information about, but it's people who are in imminent need of support, um, otherwise uh you know could be needing a higher level of care and support.

Let me ask the question another way.

Thank you for that.

Is it uh that most of the uh clients that you service through your crisis mobile teams are already a part of your network?

Um I I would certainly say some of them are the actual percentages I can't say, but some of them are definitely not within our care continuums at this point in time.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you, counselor.

Counselor Boots.

Thank you, Dr.

Hurd, and please give her a best of Dr.

Overly.

And we haven't seen her there this year.

She's right there.

Hello.

You handed the baton off, right?

Someone else enjoy it.

She's here if I mess up.

So that's that's the one.

All right.

Um I have a handful of questions, so I'll just ask a couple and yield my time and maybe come back to them.

Um this is just a confusion over all the acronyms that fly around in this field.

What's the difference between the C C BHC and the CMHC?

Yeah, uh, I think the big difference is going to be funding.

Um, but also let me say it's far more nuanced than that.

In 1963, uh President Kenney signed the Mental Health Act, and that was to bring people out of institutions and really laid the groundwork for communal health centers.

What never happened was the funding.

Um it got funding got added, you know, here a little bit there, a little bit there, a different funding mechanism this way.

What CCBHC started was at the federal level, they said, you know, our communal health center process, uh, we can't get anything passed to really fund it.

But we can start a new service and fund it right from the beginning, right?

That's why I said you'll see a lot of those services that communal health centers have to provide, C C B H C's have to provide.

Yeah.

Now, the big thing is this funding is going to fund us differently.

Instead of fee for service, in other words, I have to meet with an individual for a certain amount of time and then bill based on time.

I'm going to get paid what is really my cost that goes into a cost report, and then I'm going to get paid a per diem based on my visit that should cover my cost for seeing these individuals.

It should, and other states has dramatically increased the amount of funding we get, which help us to hire and retain more workforce.

You got to understand.

I have to thank my staff all the time.

It's very hard work.

We're working with other people's problems day in and day out.

Some of those individuals not even able to fully express their needs, right?

And so we're working with those individuals, and this is you when you think about STEM.

Behavioral health doesn't fall in that stream, right?

Um, where's the helping professions?

Where's the promotion of that?

The problem is our individuals that work for us, while they might be highly educated, they aren't always highly paid.

And I for every one of them that does this, I apologize for that.

What we need is to be able to fund them well enough to, you know, we need funded well enough so we can support them.

And C C BHC, it's it should be the goal.

One day it replaces CMHC.

Are both of them statutory animals from the state?

CCBHCs are a federal.

Um, just like C C B H C's was established by federal law requiring the state to essentially set up mechanisms to do that.

Here, Indiana applied for it said we want to be a C C BHC, and the federal government approved it.

And so that's a good thing.

Um, but yeah, it's federal laws that then Indiana has to adopt to carry out.

Then what if that's the Fed, what CMHC?

What is that a child of?

Um, so again, uh CMHC was born out of that uh community health act of 1963.

Um again, it just put a broad framework out there that states then had to try to work towards, and it set up that if there's a community health center in every state has communal health centers.

Ideally, we're several we're covering every square inch of the United States as part of that.

CCBCs, not every state has them yet.

There was an original eight in the federal government recently, and they got to operate for about six, eight years as demonstrating can this really improve things, and it has.

And is there an actual effort to replace CMHCs with the CCBHCs?

Yeah, you know, the state will have to ultimately decide how it gets to that place.

Um, and I don't want to speak fully on behalf of the state, but I believe they they've expressed an intent that this will be the predominant way services are delivered in the future, how and if communal health centers dissolve is to be worked out, but ultimately the vast majority of these services that to these individuals we're talking about would be delivered through this new CCBHC model of care.

It's more expansive.

We also have to coordinate with primary care a lot more.

You've got to understand individuals with serious mental illness and chronic addictions, on average, they die 20 years earlier than their non-uh affected uh uh community members.

Yeah, and so working with primary care even tighter than than we are today, and it's a requirement.

That's an important distinction, should improve those individuals' lives.

Okay, one more question, sir.

Counselor.

The uh explain the difference again, if you could, please, between the mobile crisis response teams that each organization has and then how's that interplay, if at all, with the clinician-led response program, yeah, and then yet again the MCAT program.

Yeah, I think um what we can say is our four teams are all required to essentially do the same thing, and 988 will be dispatching us, and so um working with 988 about how they do that.

Is it you know, um, is it just a round robin as a geographic, but they dispatch us.

Um that is very similar to the uh civilian clinician-led uh response team.

I I believe they do that.

I do believe distinctively they might uh work a little differently in that regard.

Again, we also dispatch from our own access lines, and you know, um last year uh we had over 15,000 uh requests, right?

So that's a big number.

Um and so you got to think about it that way.

As far as MCAT, differently, MCAT is primarily uh, and again, I'll let others, if I'm wrong, primarily dispatch from 911.

And that's a different response.

That's a that's a uh co-response, uh mental health and law enforcement.

Okay.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you, counselor.

Counselor Hart.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Uh thank you, Mr.

Hurd.

Uh I'm looking at this slide right here that's got the 28 million dollar number on it.

And I I know at the beginning you mentioned that you receive, I think you said 8.2 million dollars roughly uh before dollars even get to the the city for us to distribute.

Roughly, uh before dollars even get to the the city for us to distribute.

So and then I'm I heard you mention that you then work with the federal and do a lot of matching.

Is is the 28 million the amount that is after using that eight million to then match up to 28.

Is that how this number cut is?

No, that that number you gotta think about it um in a lot of different ways.

Uh charity care, you know, um some individuals have no insurance, right?

So in that regard, there's really it's hard for us to match anything, right?

There's there's no uh cost that we can get reimbursed for in that case.

We're providing true charity care.

There is uh no funder paying us.

Uh we are required regardless of severity of condition, regardless of ability to pay, we're required to serve individuals.

And so you can think about it.

Sometimes we're providing a lot of just out and out free care.

Um also a lot of times I've mentioned that our braiding is our funding is braided.

We're getting parts from this funding stream and parts from that funding stream, and we're matching that other one and pulling down dollars.

A lot of times that still doesn't add up to cover the cost of the actual care delivered, and so that delta also falls into that bucket of charity care.

That that's helpful.

So I was I was mixing up two things, then it looked, it sounds like I guess the point I was trying to get to is um if you had more than eight point whatever million, uh is there still room to match more?

Um that gets really complicated because this all has to go with the state Medicaid plan amendment, and it's it's all rules between the state and the federal government, and of course, this the state I will say is sometimes worried about how much uh that's being allocated uh that has to then be used from state or local tax dollars to then pull down federal dollars.

Um is there an uh unlimited supply of federal dollars we can pull down?

They have to make appropriations every year.

We we get as as eager as anybody when budget resolution bills at the federal level come up, right?

Are they are they gonna do that?

Um and so from that standpoint, uh I don't believe it's endless, but yeah, I mean technically if we have more money, we can match more funds.

Okay, and Mr.

Chairman, the reason I bring that point up, and just to you know make the correlation to everybody on the committee is that right after you we have a presentation from the Office of Public Health and Safety, and I'm looking at what they oversee, which there are some duplicative um specifically community nutrition food policy, homelessness uh and I'd say homelessness prevention um and then behavioral health, and you guys are are showing us a lot of great stats on doing a lot of those things, and you know, as you know, as we look at at funding and how we spend our dollars, um I think it's something to consider of do we need to do this in both places or is it better served uh through the hospitals?

So just something to consider, just an observation.

I mean I'm I'm learning a lot today, and we've had previous conversations, but it's something I'm noticing.

I I will echo back to my very first slide with the hands, where I'm going to again say those hands represent a lot of people.

They represent all of you, they represent everybody in the community, they represent all those other service providers.

Um while we certainly uh want to help as many people as we can, I think we're all eager to hire more people.

Um I I don't I I can't speak for all the other three over there, but I will tell you I would hire as many people as I could, um, and I believe they would do the same.

Uh but I don't think that's at the exclusion of others.

There's still a shortage, whether it's you know we can't make one Uber entity that's doing it all, there still wouldn't be enough.

But at the same time, I do believe uh funding raises all votes.

So whether it's us or the next presenters, um, I do believe it's critical that we receive the support we do.

We love to coordinate.

I will tell you, um, I'll speak on behalf of all four of us here.

If some entity needs uh wants to collaborate and and work, uh we I'm always interested in taking phone calls.

Thank you, Councilor.

Council McCormick.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Um I had to follow up on counselor boots.

So we have your MCRTs.

We have the CLCRs and then we have MCAT.

So when we look at the the responses that we're doing, so we have two groups that respond to 988.

Correct.

And then we have one group that responds to the 911.

Yeah.

Okay.

So part of my question is, and I get this kind of transfers over to our next person.

No, sorry.

Mr.

Chairman, can I ask our director to clarify that answer?

Absolutely.

Perfect.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Counselor, the CLCR team responds to 911.

So MCAT and CLCR are responding to 911 calls.

Okay.

So our MCRT, thank you.

So our MCRTs are the ones that do 988 only.

Yeah, I believe again, and all the others, but I think MCAT does primarily get dispatched from 911.

And the civilian led, I believe they also do take responses from 988.

Not at all.

Okay, then they're dispatched by 911 as well.

Okay.

So this is kind of going around like this overarching, and we can talk offline later.

So all of us in this room from the time that we learned what a phone was, and when there was an emergency, we were told to call 911.

I so appreciate our 988.

What I what I'm trying to understand, and I know this is a broader if we call 911, but it really should be a 988.

Is there a transfer between the two phone numbers, right?

So if I know that this should be a 988 and we don't need to send out our police or five, like right.

So is there is there a conversation going on with that?

I guess is my first well.

Okay.

And uh I that's because those are discussions that happen a lot higher than we as service providers.

Um and so certainly I think you know that that's something that I wouldn't feel comfortable giving the ultimate answer on.

I do believe that there's hope one day that that kind of thing can occur.

Okay, and then if I could continue to sort of like a follow-up.

Um part of where I'm thinking is right, we have this budget that we're in and constraints um and decisions to make, and so I'm wondering if there's a way to sort of spread that.

So my question is with the four teams that you have, your mobile response teams, what is that capacity, like the number of runs that you're doing in a day or in a week versus the team that they have, and is there capacity to take more if the state or whoever would make that decision says that 911 calls can get switched to 988 or something, if that makes sense.

So I'm just wondering is is there capacity on one end to help with the other?

So we're best serving our community and the folks.

Yeah, I know and I want to be careful.

It's not it's not my intent to set up uh this or that kind of uh discussion because we have to remember the genesis of each of these is different.

And uh our mobile crisis is really started when we had uh our C C B A C designation start, which was just January, and so from that standpoint, um our capacity is growing.

Um and uh I'll I'll let you if you want to add to this, but our capacity is growing.

Um this was not something we collected it collectively as a group is what's our collective number.

Um what we do have is collectively, uh we all have teams.

Um we're all supposed to be able to dispatch 24 hours a day.

Um it's uh it's a lot of coverage uh for the county for certain.

And the folks who are doing the response, they're doing other jobs as well.

They just need to be on that's their one job is that mobile response.

Okay.

I think the counselor did you want her to come forward, counselor?

Yeah, if yeah, does she have something to offer?

Yeah, this this is so hi, I'm Dr.

Christine Negendank, um president of Dalton Child.

Um, and just to add to what um George has said, um, so there is plenty of capacity with our four agencies to take more 988, more uh calls of any kind.

So um at the state level, we've been trying to um 988-911 interoperability.

Okay, it's very complicated.

So we have DMAJ and Indiana Council all trying to work on it.

Um there are some states, such as Missouri, which has done this well, so we're hoping to model that.

Um, but we definitely have a lot of capacity, and the four of us have been working together all for a year or two, maybe now trying to figure out the best way to do mobile crisis within Marion County.

Okay, perfect.

Yeah, and don't recreate the wheel if there's somebody else doing it.

Yeah, let's um, but yeah, I think I think that collaboration, and again, like my thought is best serving the residents in the way they need served, yeah, and breaking a habit of the 911 versus 988.

Exactly, and I don't want to touch and I I want to point out this is a required service as part of our designation.

So if we're if we're gonna be CC VHCs, we have to do this.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Counselor Perkins.

Uh thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Um it's kind of two points.

The first of which is um just a general shout out to to community organizing.

Uh, I'm glad to hear that that one million dollar uh that was really a genesis from some community organizing here in Indianapolis uh that the state designated about two years ago is now impacted Marion County.

Um so I you know I want to to leverage the community organizing teams out there.

I was there in the State House with the teams advocating for this two years ago, and to now know that some of that money is now spent in Marion County, uh, that gives me a little bit of joy.

Um I will also say uh that we just some some clarity around the mobile crisis team, CLCR, and then MCAT.

Um I think uh the director just shared um one of the reasons why I asked the question initially, uh, because it is my understanding that your mobile crisis response team typically responds to individuals that are already part of your network.

Uh for MCAT, there's a response across the city, but they're limited by time from CLCR, they respond across Marion County 24-7 in the areas in which they're designated.

So I think that we need to just be clear clear about that because there have been some conversations uh that are kind of staring around about whether or not we are uh pouring resources uh into um uh services that that seems to be uh duplicated across the city.

Um and so thank you for for clarifying that that you're required to have a mobile crisis team as a part of your your the state requirement, uh, but you're also serving um serving the clients, right?

The other part of that will say is I I'm thinking back to two weeks ago when we heard from the coroner on and the increase in the number of suicide deaths uh in Marion County, uh, that they are individuals that are suffering with mental health uh issues that we still need to reach.

Um, and so I want us to kind of think about it.

That there's still folks that are falling through the crack uh that we still need to reach to be able to service.

Yeah, just to clarify, um, our mobile crisis teams are typically responding not to our clients who are already connected to us, but to those who are not connected.

So we will accept calls from anyone whether they're connected to any of us or not.

So that is a difference from what you had just but you cloud your your calls are coming through 988 and not necessarily 911.

Uh no, they're not coming through 911, that is true, they're coming through 988, and then as um George has said, we have all of our crisis lines listed 24-7, so they'll contact us that way or be referred to us by the um police or you know, EMS.

There's also a new initiative with IEMS, triaging low acuity, trying to get them to either a clinic or to move a crisis.

So that's a new initiative that we're working with as well.

I will say the 15,000 some crisis services we provided last year at community, the majority of them were not already clients of ours.

Councilor Burkins, you good?

Thank you.

Uh Counselor Boots.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Um just to answer one question that was raised.

The I do know I'm on the clinician-led uh review uh advisory committee.

And the the 911 operators are being trained and have mental health professionals in the emergency call center to take the calls and to do a triage at that moment.

Is this a call that needs to go 911, maybe the MCAT and send a law enforcement officer, or is it more purely an addiction or mental crisis situation?

And then those in the 988 though.

Um that's being worked on, whether they can do the not yes, yes.

988 is not so I understand not quite yet statewide.

No, it's statewide.

It is now though, but there's being served statewide as well.

Because last year it was not, there were still gaps.

No, uh actually, Indiana is one of the better states in terms of being able to handle 988 calls and keep those within the state.

Um, and so no, uh, it is statewide at this point.

Indiana is still rolling out mobile crisis coverage for the entire state.

Um there's still some gaps in coverage around the state.

Marion County, it it's well covered.

Yeah.

And do do your um centers get any of the opioid settlement money?

Um it I can't speak for everybody.

I and at various points, I believe some of those have received some, um, but you know that's not an ongoing thing always.

Um, but I can't speak for everybody and how much they've received or have they received it or not.

Okay, and then finally, um do you find that um you mentioned earlier that it's hard to find someone that's dual trained between mental health and addiction?

Don't you find though that those issues are often intertwined, that the addiction is caused by mental health or vice versa.

Yeah, I I won't say always, but is there a high correlation?

Yeah, I mean, and you gotta understand that you know, uh traditionally how we trained individuals was I work with people with mental health disorders, or I work with people with addictions, but people came to us with both.

And oftentimes we told them which one do you want to work on first, or I can work on this part and you need to go see somebody else to work on that part.

Well we really have been trying to do is train people to do both so that you're managing both issues at the same time.

One person for one person instead of two people for one person.

Or one person works on one thing and then we tried the other with somebody else.

That also meant we had to work really closely with our schools, um, all those universities to change how they train people.

We had to change how we viewed it.

I really appreciate the support from all the other uh members here uh from the community centers.

Because we've all really focused on this.

It's it's been a great thing.

Wonderful.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you, Councilman, additional commerce with questions.

Anyone in the audience could speak to the uh regional health and mental health centers presentation.

Thank you, Mr.

Hurt.

Thank all of you.

Thanks so much.

And our last presentation this evening is the help of the safety.

Oh, no.

Presentation.

Director Merkley.

I thought it won't point you to do a both.

No, we were we're discussing this question before.

But it wouldn't mean we'd have to go out.

No, no, first.

So we're waiting for button.

Ritch with the whole food, I think nobody else wants that.

I haven't had food.

Oh, yes.

Alrighty, ladies and gentlemen, Director Merkley.

Councillor Moots.

Thank you.

Thank you for your patience and your team and their patience.

We will now hear from the Office of Public Health and Safety.

And Director Merkley will be presenting his budget.

And uh along with Carlette Duffy.

Thank you both.

Welcome.

And we do have a hard copy of your of your folder here.

And um before we get you get started here.

Well, good evening, Mr.

Chairman and members of the committee.

My name is Andrew Merkley.

I'm the director of the Office of Public Health and Safety.

And I'm joined this evening by Carlotte Duffy, our CFO, as well as many of our team from OPHS.

It's a privilege to work alongside a dedicated team that's focused on innovative community-informed approaches to public health and safety.

This proposed budget is a direct reflection of lessons learned, data analyzed, and the priorities we share with this council and our constituents.

This evening you will hear about the changes we have implemented to hold our programming accountable, finding efficiencies, and demonstrating efficacy.

OPHS is composed of several divisions that address the root causes of violence, support re-entry, expand food access, respond to behavioral health crises, and promote general health equity.

Together, our divisions ensure that public safety and public health are integrated and responsive to neighborhood needs.

On this slide, it is our current organizational chart, and uh it's not much different than previous versions of this organizational chart, but I did want to highlight a couple of things.

First off, we've shifted the division of re-entry to report to the deputy director of public safety.

Uh we did that to uh make uh balance the workloads between our two deputy directors on the screen, as well as to uh try and create collaboration and and more communication between our division of uh re-entry and our division of violence reduction.

Additionally, we are working to regrade several positions to ensure equity across positions that do similar work, and uh changing some titles so that they reflect the work that individuals are doing in our agency.

OPHS's staff composition is diverse and continues to reflect the Indianapolis communities that we serve.

Our staff composition is 63% non-white, and 17% of our uh staff identify as LGBTQ.

OPHS in its current form has been building and growing for the last nine years.

Looking back on our years of service to the community, we've had some significant successes, including the introduction of the gun violence reduction strategy in 2021.

Uh but it really started back in 2018 with our community violence reduction team.

And the gun violence reduction strategy is more than just the NDP's team.

It's our fellowship.

It is the violent crime prevention grants and the enforcement arm through IMPD.

Since G VRS began, we've seen a 50% reduction in murders and non-fatal homicides in the city.

65 fellows have successfully graduated, and we have an additional 120 currently enrolled in the program.

The assessment and intervention center, located at the community justice campus, opened in 2020, offering 24-7 behavioral health and substance use supports.

If you'll recall, this is uh the AIC is kind of the the growth from the Ruben Engagement Center, which provided that same work uh previously.

Established in 2021 to address the increasing number of eviction filings due in large part to the COVID-19 pandemic, and to help connect folks, tenants with emergency rental assistance.

The tenant advocacy project grew from two pilot courts to providing services in all nine of Marion County's Township Small Claims Courts and the Marion County Superior Court.

Piloted in uh 2019 is the Pathway to Employment Program, which it was our uh what came from an expansion of the uh uh parking meter hours and was an attempt to provide employment opportunities to individuals experiencing homelessness.

This program was added into our operational funds, and we've been able to expand and grow that since its inception.

I'd like to highlight a couple of things for that program.

Number one, we've connected 450 individuals to full-time employment, many of them to DPW to jobs here at DPW.

We've also connected 128 to housing, and I think that's critical because this population who served is oftentimes not prioritized by our prioritization process.

And so the fact that we've been able to house them is is incredible.

As of today, excuse me, the community justice campus's release lobby opened in January of 2022 with just overnight hours.

And today we are operating that that 24 7, providing individuals released with necessities and bus passes, as well as lift rides.

Launched on the east side in July of 2019, ARPA funding allowed the Lyft Grocery Storac Access Program to expand countywide.

OPHS has continued to fund this program, providing countywide rides to those living in food deserts and over 169,000 households with access to healthy and affordable foods.

As you can see, OPHS has grown significantly, both as an agency and the programming we provide to address the root causes of crime.

As we continue to grow, it is imperative that our programming and operations reflect a maturing agency.

As part of that maturing, we are using more and more data to inform the decisions that we make, the programming that we implement.

The slide in front of you is OPHS's outreach efforts in our community, broken down by division.

As we will be as you will be shown in greater detail, our outreach efforts are targeted to areas demonstrating the greatest need based on data.

Often individual and community needs regarding public safety and social determinants of health overlap, resulting in OPHS's five divisions taking a holistic cross-divisional approach to addressing communities in need.

We have instituted several policies and procedures to ensure alignment with the mayor's policy priorities and compliance with relevant laws and regulations.

This slide highlights a number of those successes, and I'll highlight one being our data manager position.

We brought on a data manager this year, and that has really helped us to hone in on the data that we need to collect, the outcomes for the programs to ensure that they are ethic efficacious and uh and really helping each division understand and collaborate with one another.

Additionally, we've implemented cross-agency trainings to ensure that we're working with other agencies in the city and our county partners.

Our operational goals for 2026 are to build off the successes of 2025 and leverage enhanced data management and governance practices to inform programming design and strategic investments.

That includes staff training, uniform data collection across programs, and increased collaboration with public health and safety partners.

Additionally, to foster responsive community partnerships and support grassroots organizations, we plan to establish community-oriented procurement, which attempts to ensure alignment between the community-based organizations we partner with and the communities that we serve.

Next, I'd like to discuss the public health successes that we've seen in 2025.

The TAP program has assisted on more than 2,000 cases and was able to successfully integrate into the Superior Court without having to increase personnel.

We are on track to surpass the number of tenants we served last year.

And we will continue to work to right size this program with our county partners.

OPHS also provided over 2,800 households with over 92,000 pounds of food, a majority of which was produce.

And this is really good food.

This is produce that you and I would buy at the store for our families.

In 2025, OPHS implemented a new data management system for both the AIC and CLCR.

The electronic health record system will ensure that both programs can accurately track the needs and outcomes of those served.

OPHS continues to perform outreach activities throughout our communities.

Five days a week, tenants around the county can access legal aid and navigation services in township courts during the eviction dockets.

Tenants can also reach the TAP team directly by contacting the mayor's action center.

Earlier this year, CLCR and OPHS hosted three outreach events, each in one of the three IMPD districts that they currently serve.

The CLCR staff continues to host outreach, smaller outreach events in those same districts as they build trust and understanding with the community about how they can best serve them.

Partnership for Healthier America chose to pilot a grant program in Indianapolis in partnership with OPHS.

Over a thousand people were in attendance at the launch event.

And PHA issued eight $10,000 mini grants to community organizations increasing food access in our communities.

I wanted to highlight a quote from one of the Pike Township residents who's received food from our team.

I'll be honest with you, this is such a treat.

As much as I love fresh food, I have to prioritize medicine and gas over fruits and vegetables.

Thank you so much for taking time to do this.

The slide before you is the food division's new food in transit dashboard.

And this dashboard reflects the new questions that programs are asking those served with about the additional challenges they face and what resources they need.

It also demonstrates the communities in Indianapolis who are accessing the food resources that OPHS offers.

And as we continue through these dashboards, you're gonna you're going to see a trend.

The east side of the city and the near west side are uh utilizing our services more often than other parts of the city.

This dashboard is our dashboard, and as you can see, the number of tenants served continues to increase year over year.

The majority of those served are African American women, oftentimes with children.

And the map demonstrates the areas of the city where a majority of those folks are being evicted.

Moving into 2026, OPHS's goals include ending chronic homelessness through our partnership with Streets to Home and beginning construction of the housing hub, which will serve as a hub for all homeless service responses.

Not all, but a lot of them.

OPHS also plans to expand CLCR's footprint later this year.

Throughout the upcoming slides, you will see specific successes from the community violence reduction division through our partnership with IPSF on Indy Peace, Indie Champions, and the Indy Center for Conflict Resolution.

Additionally, you'll see successes from the re-entry division and the release lobby, as well as the MI nominated Real Talk episode on gun violence.

As discussed earlier, Indianapolis has made measurable progress in reducing gun violence, achieving a 50% reduction in combined murders and non-fatal shootings since the launch of the program.

This success is the result of targeted investments in evidence-based strategies, robust partnerships, focused enforcement, and innovative programming that directly addresses these those driving and affected by gun violence in our city.

Indie Champions has served 837 survivors of domestic violence this year and trained over 1,000 individuals in prevention.

This is our new Indie Peace Fellowship Dashboard.

Through intensive life coaching and relationship building, Indy Peace is actively working with 120 individuals that are at very high risk of being a victim andor perpetrator of gun violence.

I'll repeat that we've seen 65 individuals graduate from that 12 to 18 month program.

These are lives that are being given a chance to make a choice that's an alternative option to normal incarceration.

Our goal is to support their choice to interrupt cycles of violence and help change their lives.

For each life affected by a non-fatal gunshot, that can cost the city almost $698,000.

For each fatal gunshot, that can cost the city up to 1.2 million dollars.

So Indy Peace is just one part of a larger system, including IMPD and the violent crime prevention grantees working to save lives in our communities.

The Indy Center for Conflict Resolution is working to train community members in conflict resolution and provides free conflict mediations for the community.

The hospital-based hospital-based violence intervention or HVIP program is a partnership with IU Health and has finished its first full year of implementation, providing staff with the opportunity to meet those affected by gun violence and provide crisis intervention at the bedside.

Our justice reinvestment initiative has helped more than 100 people with nearly half of those participating in optional programming.

Our re-entry division continues their efforts to assist our justice-involved community members through barriers and needs upon release from Marion County Jail in the release lobby.

Our data indicates that individuals who choose to engage with our team before they leave the release lobby struggle with employment, housing instability, and access to food.

OPHS's re-entry team is providing direct assistance, connecting individuals with housing and employment opportunities.

Our re-entry housing specialist works with landlords to accept individuals with a justice-involved background, forming new relationships with independent landlords who are willing to house some of our most difficult to house neighbors.

Sure, thank you.

And the readers that don't have to let it out.

They have now.

This budget is comprised of three fund categories, consolidated county or general funds, and that fund is 22,54,231.

Opioid settlement dollars are 1 million, and federal grants account for 4,470,559.

The Office of Public Health and Safety's 2026 introduced budget reflects a total reduction of 516,246 compared to the 2025 adopted budget, which is an approximately which is an approximate 2% decrease from the 2025 introduced budget.

If we include the approved, or I'm sorry, if we exclude the approved TAP request for $500,000 for fiscal year 2026, OPHS's overall reduction from fiscal year 2025 to 2026 is closer to 4%.

Due to budget compression, OPHS will not be launching any new programs associated with the budget being presented to council today.

Grants awarded include two burn grants from 2022 and 2024.

Each of the Bern federal grant earmarks were awarded with the much appreciated assistance of Congressman Andre Carson's office.

These grants are currently providing additional support services to the community violence reduction divisions in the Peace Program for $963,000 covering staff support and the division of behavioral health for $1 million to cover a new mental health database that will allow the coordination of services between the AIC, RAC, CLCR team, and MCAT.

The Byrne Behavioral Health Grant also provides funding for mental health toolkit program, youth mental health services, and funding for a marketing campaign to reduce the stigma of seeking mental health services.

Grants being pursued include a USDA grant for $250,000 over two years to be managed by the Division of Community Nutrition and Food Policy or our food team.

This grant, if awarded, will allow the food team to assist with the planning and creation of a community-driven and focused organization to implement food initiatives for Marin County.

OPHS will be seeking an office for victims of crime grant for the victim and witness assistance program to cover the cost of emergency housing and case management services.

This grant will be managed by OPHS's division of community violence and reduction and finance teams.

Grants to be issued include the elevation grant to be implemented and managed by the Indianapolis Foundation.

Elevation will operate in a single grant period over the next two years.

The $7 million not to exceed includes funding from the 2025 and 2026 budgets.

OPHS is character breakdown by character.

This increase will fund COLA and health insurance increases for existing OPHS employees.

This budget reflects a reduction of $111,503 in grant funding from fiscal year 2025 for the behavioral health project manager, which will be covered by consolidated counting funds for fiscal year 2026.

OPHS's FTE count for 2026 remains unchanged at 35 FTEs.

With no change to the overall FTE count, OPHS leadership is making determinations regarding the current organizational chart to be to better support both housing and violence reduction related priorities.

For character two, there are no changes from the fiscal year 2025 and the fiscal year 2026 budgets for character two, which is the budget for OPHS supplies for consolidated county and federal grants.

Each reflect budget availability for the purpose of potential federal grants funded supply obligations.

The fiscal year 2026 OPHS Character 3 budget of 24,533,929 for contracts and services reflects an overall reduction of 584,946 from the fiscal year 2025 character three budget.

While all grant budgets are flat from fiscal year 2025 to fiscal year 2026, there are significant changes to the consolidated county funds.

The OPHS administrative division consolidated county budget of 4,292,216 is reduced by 1,084,946 from the previous year.

The AIC, which is the Ruben Engagement Center consolidated budget is reduced by 1 million.

The consolidated county reduction is offset by increased opioid settlement funds of 1 million.

The divisions, the divisions of re-entry at 150,000, the food team, 648,000, community violence reduction, 5 million, and behavior health 3 million will see no change between the fiscal year of 2025 and fiscal year 2026.

Consolidated county budgets while the division of their consolidated county budgets.

While the division of homeless eviction prevention will receive an increase of 500,000 for the total for a total budget of 1,161,480.

Examples of significant projects and/or contractual obligations include an overall reduction in chargeback obligations resulting in a fiscal year 2026 obligation that is decreased by 27,822.

The immigrant legal services contract is reduced from 300,000 to 200,000.

The elevation grant funding for fiscal year 2026 is reduced by 946,990.

The dedicated budget funding requests for the tenant advocacy project is approved for 500,000.

This program was funded using federal ARPA funds in the past.

OPHS is a pilot agency for program-based budgeting.

Therefore, we request grace as we navigate this endeavor.

The slide shown identifies program codes with funding recommendations.

For those of us who work with these programs daily, the program's name, the program names reflect how much we love our acronyms.

So for clarity, I will state the full name program name of the acronyms listed.

TAP is also known as is the tenant advocacy advocacy program or project.

EIPC is the early intervention planning council for Marion County Commission on Youth.

ICCR is the Indy Center for Conflict Resolution.

AICREC is the Ruben Engagement Center at the Assessment and Intervention Center.

DB is the domestic violence program, GBRS gun violence reduction strategy, CLCR, condition-led community response, DC and FPS Division of Community Nutrition and Food Policy.

While program budgeting is not a new concept for OPHS, the expansion of this practice will offer greater transparency of budget spend for city administration, the council, and the public overall.

General administrative represents character one chargebacks, general office expenses, and grants.

The OPHS administrative budget consists of 1,000 of available consolidated county funds for equipment costs and 5,000 available for potential non-governmental grant funded equipment.

The divisions of reentry at 25,000 DC and FP or the food team at 74,000, and behavioral health 1500 each reflect budget availability for the purpose of potential grant funded equipment obligations.

The fiscal year 2026 OPHS Character 5 budget of 25,377 reflects an overall reduction of 30,273 from the fiscal year 2025 character 5 budget.

The Office of Corpse Office of Corporation Council charged back is reduced by 30,273 to 17,878 while fleet services remains flat at 7500.

I will now turn it back over to our director.

Thank you, Carlette.

Thank you, Director Merkley and Ms.

Duffy CFO comments or questions on the presentation by the uh officer health and safety.

Counselor Carlino.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman, and thank you, Director Merkley and Madam CFO Duffy for your presentation.

I think I just have to begin with gratitude and thanks.

That's um, first of all, the ending of a very long night, save the best for last situation.

Um, but it's a complex gamut of work that your agency does.

It's a complex um makeup of budgeting structures, a variety of funding mechanisms.

Um I commend you for um your hard work and your dedication and innovation and commitment to data-driven results and ensuring the dollars go to support the people who need them the most.

Um I know with the budget compressions, it's it's disheartening to have to make those cuts, and I think specifically with regard to your agency, um, I have a little more heartburn, and the reason is because you're the Office of Public Health and Safety, and there's so many times that even this evening we heard people refer to our city and county as having a public safety crisis, a public health crisis with regard to even gun violence, and yet to see a reduction in this budget doesn't make sense when we know these are issues.

We put some additional dollars toward toward housing and towards some other things.

Um it gives me pause to see some of these cuts and that you had to go through that process to determine some of those things because I know those weren't even easy for you to do as well.

Um so, Mr.

Chairman, my comment is really um in regard to a specific line item.

Um but I think I would have liked to have seen as I went through each character what maybe the reduction was year over year in in a little more detail, madam CFO, because I know you did have to to trim some things that this committee would have liked to have seen in a little more detail.

So if that's something that you can give to our CFO, Candice Harris, I'd be interested in seeing that as well.

Um, but my specific concern is a 33% reduction in the budget for the um legal defense fund.

And um for those on this committee uh know for maybe those of you in the audience don't know, or those at home watching that fund is to support um our neighbors who uh maybe um immigrants or refugees and need legal support through some of our partner organizations.

Um public defender's office has not had an immigration support division since um under the previous chief Bob Hill.

Um, last night, our our current public defender spoke out about um pay parity issues and and case support, and and that office struggling.

So we're struggling to support um the most vulnerable people in our community right now, both um from a public health perspective, but even from a legal perspective.

Um, you know, and and that just makes me feel a little bit like we say no mean city, but we don't always mean it.

Um I don't think that this is a good cut for public safety.

I don't think any of the cuts that this department had to make are good for public safety.

I don't think it's um humane in some ways.

I don't think it's democratic.

Um, and with regard to this specific fund, I'm not sure that how we're operating as a city-county with regard to support for um human beings, um, immigrants, refugees, our neighbors.

I think that's really important.

It seems to be something that could even be illegal.

Um, but I know under the federal administration and some of our neighbors being rounded up, deported, not giving due given due process.

I think now is the time not for 33% budget cuts, but for increased funding and bolstered support.

Um, and so those are some of the things, Mr.

Chairman.

That as I look at this this budget presentation tonight.

Um, I think we have a little bit of work to do with regard to our OPHS budget, but again, um cannot thank you and your team and everyone here who has showed up tonight um doing the work day in and day out, and we just hit nine o'clock.

Um, and I stand alongside you with a roaring belly to to let you know.

I thank you and I appreciate you, and I really wish I would have ordered pizza like two hours ago, but that's on me.

Um, and with that, Mr.

Chairman, I yield my time.

Thank you, Councilor Counselor Perkins.

Uh thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Um, I I echo everything that Councillor Lee just shared, both from stomach roll into nine o'clock hour.

I am concerned just in terms of budget reduction.

I think what you demonstrated to us that ultimately it's anywhere from two to four percent, uh two percent not included the 500,000 if you include that is about four percent.

Um echoes my statement earlier uh that public safety is political uh because we will see two weeks from now when IMPD come and propose their budget in front of us that they don't they're not seeing a reduction, but they're actually seeing an increase.

And so here it is that we have a department that is specifically designed to address root causes of some of the issues that we're facing in our community, and we're reducing their budget, but we'll come back and see IMPD's budget in two weeks, and we'll go up by almost six or eight percent.

Um, and so that's a concern.

Uh, thank you for the work that you guys are doing.

Um I know last year this was a conversation, and so I'll put it back out there again uh about the difference between causation and correlation, that there's no one strategy that is causing violence reduction in our community.

But thank you for the work of this department in the violence reduction strategy that we're seeing a correlation between the investment that we're making as a city and reduction in violent crimes.

So I I want to make that clear.

My last point, um uh Mr.

Director, this is your first time back in front of this committee before uh uh since you've been appointed.

Uh, would like to hear a little bit about culture and climate uh in the office.

Uh that was a concern for us upon your your appointment, um, and what's your assessment since you've been there.

Thank you.

Thank you, counselor.

Thank you, counselor.

Um you know, we've as I stated at the top with the organizational chart, um, ensuring that we are uh reevaluating positions to make sure that there's parity and equity across positions, um, shifting some things to make the the workload uh more equitable for both of the deputy directors of public health and public safety.

Um I think that those have been significant changes holding each other accountable, providing trainings, making sure that everyone on the staff has the same understanding of how a contract processes through the system.

Um believe it or not, these are things that not everybody understood on the team.

And so by providing everyone with the same level of of information, um, we can all do perform our roles better.

And so I think that that's those are some of the ways that we've been addressing that.

Um we're also you know, any time anyone needs wants needs or or uh we need to send someone to a training, we're we're off offering that up those opportunities.

Um so I I would just say, you know, we're holding each other accountable, and we are all being provided with this with equal and adequate information to do our jobs.

Thank you, Director.

Counselor Bain.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Appreciate the time tonight, and uh thank you, Director, for um your presentation for reaching out this morning as well.

Um, beforehand that that communication is very key.

Um I just want to maybe give fellow colleagues a brief reminder that we are the legislative body.

We do not have to rubber stamp any budget that is introduced before this council.

I don't want that to be perceived as saying that I do support taking money from IMPD.

I don't I think we should continue to fund them and they should see increases year over year.

But when you sit here and say that we need to change the budget, it takes political courage to introduce amendments and do that.

So I guess we'll see if anyone has that.

Um as far as uh your presentation tonight and homelessness in our city, uh it's clear that there's been a lot of discussions around homeless encampments and everything.

And the one over in Fountain Square, there was a notice sent out that it was supposed to close, but then was delayed.

Could you give a brief update on that?

Yes, sir.

Um the encampment is closed for any new camps that move any new campers that would try to move into the area.

And IMPD has been enforcing that closure.

Um we were notified that for by CHIP that the Streets to Home Initiative was going to be able to house everyone from that encampment.

Uh we pause the closure so that like the permanent closure, uh, which would have forced everyone out in order to house those individuals because we understood that moving individuals into another part of Fountain Square, which is what happened, um, is not the solution.

The solution is housing.

And if we were able to provide that solution and we had already addressed the public safety challenges that were uh the reason for the closure, we felt confident that that that was the right decision.

Um and so far, my understanding is that everyone who was at that camp has accepted housing, and we're we're working over the next few weeks to make sure that they all get housed.

Appreciate that.

And um, one quick follow-up.

I know um before you were officially confirmed by this body, we had a meeting in your office, and I had asked about homelessness in general, and when would the city uh get to a point where we probably wouldn't see homeless encampments anymore?

And you would eventually said to give you to the end of the year.

Do you still think that's an appropriate timeline?

You will see a significant decrease in unsheltered homelessness.

Um we, in partnership with CHIP and our partners in DMD, we are moving quickly to address the unsheltered camps in our city.

Um, and our goal is to make a significant impact before the end of the year.

I will note that this we've always said that this is a uh 12-month uh process for phase one of the program.

And so we will not end chronic homelessness by the end of the year, but you will see an impact.

I appreciate that.

Thank you.

Thank you, counselor.

Counselor Zlaney.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Um, first off, I just want to thank the NDP team and crew in the orange that's out there that's been sitting here all night.

Um, we see you.

Thank you for coming.

Um think you've been to many of our committee hearings, not just our budget ones, and so I just want to thank you first for coming, but second and more importantly, for the work that you do for our city.

Um it's clearly making a difference, and um just wanted to extend that thanks from the council to you.

Um, second, my main point is I really appreciate Director Merkley the agency's uh thoughtfulness and energy expended towards data collection.

Um, right off the bat, you had even just putting it in your presentation right here, numbers, um, bed capacity cases served, things like that, the dashboards that you're showing us.

I think that's really important for an agency like yours where it's a it's a choice, a policy choice that we're making as a city to invest.

Um I don't that total value was large.

I can't remember exactly the total um value in your budget, but it's it's an extremely large sum that we're investing.

Um, and so I think it's important that we at least take a small percentage of that and show our work.

Um I know counselor Perkins says that we can't confuse causation and correlation, and we'll probably never have the the magic, the magic you know, thing that's gonna say exactly what we're doing is is reducing all the crime, but I think we're doing the best that we can to show that the money that we are investing in your agency is making a difference in crime.

Um so I just wanted to thank you.

I recognize that it's something that I've said and harped on.

So I I really appreciate that.

Um, and I do have one question related to that.

Um, somewhere in here it said that there was a three-year independent evaluation of NDP.

So, what is the independent evaluation and what is that gonna show?

So the American Institute for Research is performing that evaluation separate from us.

We're we're obviously providing them with the data that they need in order to evaluate um interviews, anything they might need, but they are they are performing that, and I and I believe it is part of a larger evaluation of other strategies around the country.

Um but yes, it's going to tell us specifically how NDP is doing, and so that is the piece that that OPHS oversees and that we fund that um and and as I said earlier, there's multiple parts of the gun violence reduction strategy.

Great.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Councilor.

Counselor Hart.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Uh I got a couple things, but I'm gonna be just succinct because we got some other some more conversations with you coming up in a in a future meetings that I think we can address, uh, certainly elevation grant and all that when we see those presentations.

Um so I won't go into that stuff, but I do want to make a quick comment.

I've heard multiple times this evening that um local government is political, and I and I just gotta make the comment.

It's local government's operational.

I tell this all the time.

I I scream it from a mountaintop.

People just want us to make sure the city's safe, they want to make sure that the waters draining, the streets are paved, and that the trash is being taken out.

And that's what we've got to continue to do.

It's only political if we make it political.

It is an operational structure, and we need to focus on results.

And ultimately, any of these budget presentations, that's the point of what we're trying to get to.

Um and for me, it's how can we best be the most efficient?

I mean that's I say it all the time, right?

Especially as it pertains to some of these grant programs.

How do we know that what we are paying for, we're getting the result in?

And I think we're gonna see that next meeting, the presentation for that next meeting.

But as it pertains to what we've seen this evening, I'm interested having now learned more about what the hospitals are providing.

What's the relationship look like with OPHS and those hospital services that we just had prior to you?

Sure.

Um the clinician-led community response teams are just serving in those three districts, those three IMPD districts, north, downtown, and east, and we'll be expanding this year.

Um they respond to 911 calls through Mesa and individuals that on the other end of those phone calls at Mesa, they are able to through questions and and what they hear over the phone, they're able to dispatch the appropriate team.

So CLCR is only dispatched if there is no weapon involved or if there's no intent to harm by the person, right?

And and if but if there is, we would dispatch IMPD or the MCAT team if the MCAT team is operating, and they only operate um five days a week, you know, nine to five.

So otherwise it's it's uh the CLCR team and they're operating 24-7.

The difference between CLCR and what the the behavioral health programming that what you heard about earlier is that they're responding to 988 calls, and that means their funding is state is coming from the state, so they have to respond externally from Marion County, whereas CLCR is only funded by our funds here in the city, and so they are they can only respond within the county.

So if we were to go to 988 and change our model, that would require us to go outside of the county for calls.

And I'm also referring to homelessness, right?

I mean, they they have um solutions for that too.

Um the exact same solutions, right?

Master lease programs.

You're asking for eight million um to go towards uh streets to home, they do the exact same thing.

Are you guys working together?

So I think that that's there's some uh maybe it's a little bit conflated.

They are providing the services, oftentimes the housing, this this wraparound supports.

The city is providing the funding to do the that work.

So we don't OPHS, DMD, we don't have teams or uh the personnel that are going to provide that wraparound service.

We aren't going to go, we don't have outreach teams.

We're partnering with all of these other entities, adult and child has outreach teams, Eskenazi, they're providing housing, and so streets to home will contract with those entities to perform the work and ensure that those individuals get housed and stay housed.

Okay.

That's what's I mean, really important to me is make sure that we're working together at the end of the day.

Because I look at what you're like one of your largest line items here, and that's the AIC.

I mean, you're you're five million out of, I mean, it's of all the programming you do outside of it's admin, it's it's the biggest cost, and I just want to make sure that I mean, those are the services that I hear one of the biggest topics I hear about the most is homelessness and uh the correlation of mental health along with it, and so making sure that we're getting the most out of every dollar that we're allocating there, and I think the best way to do that is is partner with those folks.

So I'm it sounds like you are, uh, but I highly encourage that we uh make the most out of those relationships and um and do the best we can for the city if any.

Thank you, counsel, thank you, counselor.

Counselor Graves.

Thanks, Mr.

Chair, and uh thanks, Mr.

Director, for the presentation.

And I too want to give a shout out to uh all those uh here with NDPs.

Uh I really appreciate the work you guys do.

I see you so visible in my district, and thank you.

Thank you all.

Um I have so much I would like to talk about, but in the interest of time, I'll just reach out to you because I know we missed our phone call the other day.

Um, but you know, I'm really interested in you know, I'll go through this list, but you know, I lost a friend that worked with NDPs this year, and there's there's you know, uh understanding that they too need some of the service that they guide individuals to.

So I want to make sure that we keep that in mind.

So uh that's one of the things I wanted to uh discuss.

Uh the other thing, uh of course, I I don't think we talked enough about um just really the overall work environment that was addressed by addressed by my colleague, uh Councillor Perkins.

I don't know if you actually hit some of the things that I was listening for in response to his question.

So I'll get to you on our phone call on that.

Um the other things uh that are extremely important, uh immigrant funding and and uh how we've lost uh um some of that funding year over year, and uh in a time where it's real critical.

Um so I'm I'm hopeful that we um are not going to uh put those individuals that need that most this year at a disadvantage.

Uh but what I do want to spend time talking about, Director is a couple of things, uh, tenant advocacy and then uh winter contingency.

Uh you know, I want you to really break that down for me if you don't mind, because if you recall, that was a really big concern last winter.

So I want to know where we are.

No, we talked about starting late last year.

We talked about the challenges that that presented.

Uh we talked about the the location that we selected and how inappropriate it was for what we used it for.

I'm hopeful that you're not gonna tell me that we're going back to that same location, school 68.

But I do want you to talk to me a little bit about that winter contingency and where we're going, what it's gonna look like, and then uh I want to pivot over to tenant advocacy, and I got some things I want to talk about on that.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair, if that's okay.

Thank you.

All right.

Thank you, counselor.

I will continue to push back that the facility that we used last year was the appropriate facility.

And as we move into this year, we were planning to use that facility with capital improvements to address some of the challenges.

I don't want to interrupt you, sir.

But are you telling me that these individuals are gonna have to get out of their warm location, go into an outside source to take a shower, and that's okay.

So no, the capital improvements would have addressed it.

In the winter time.

This is winter contingency, and I don't want to be uh too aggressive here, but I just I'm still triggered from last year's last time we spoke on this.

You're letting finish though.

So we were intending to use the school.

We were working with the center township trustee to provide capital funding for that, those improvements, which would have put in installed showers, new water fountains.

It would have addressed all of the concern, many of the concerns that were brought up and raised during my uh nominate confirmation hearing.

Um we were very far along in that process, and the IPS board determined that it they were not comfortable moving forward with that facility.

And so um last week, the yes, last week I believe we were notified that that was not going to be, we weren't going to be able to move forward.

Now we have uh we're able to pivot.

We have other options.

We've already been talking with uh Noble Industries on the nearwest side, and uh I'll be talking with Counselor Carlino about that.

I believe Councillor Osley's already been there.

Uh and we are we also have a couple other facilities that we are um looking at that that may be um good options moving forward.

Obviously, um, you know, we've we've been planning for this year since before last the last winter ended.

Uh we immediately began a facility needs assessment on the school in April when it closed, and that took a couple of months to get to understand what the needs were, how much it was going to cost.

We began working with the township trustee, um, and we engaged the school, uh not the school board, but the school um IPS uh administrative team.

So we this has been a long time coming, and it's very disappointing that this misinformation has caused this, but we can pivot and we will council Grace.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Uh now um Council President and I, we also visited a hotel, and I thought that was ideal for this winter contingency.

This was maybe a year ago, and they had participated as partners with you in the winter contingency, and it gives families the opportunity to have their own individual location.

And are we considering that kind of setup when as we took a take a look at the Noble uh project?

The continuum of care who we've been working with and planning around winter contingency, like I said, since last winter has determined that hotels are not the appropriate option, and that's because it is a lot harder to both care for, manage, and and rehouse those individuals.

Last year we were able to rehouse more than half of the families that we housed at the school.

Um they are more costly and and if you've seen numbers, I will tell you that they are inaccurate.

Um I've been operating hotels since I started since I started the exact opposite.

Sorry.

Um we can I'm happy to talk more about it, but they're they're inaccurate.

All right.

Uh thank you for that.

And I just, Mr.

Chair, I'll just finalize finally just talk a little bit about tenant advocacy.

I know that that continues to be a challenge, and uh the meetings that I've had in anticipation of tonight um lead me to believe that there's some room for us to to grow as a as a city and a county uh to improve on our eviction rate.

Um I know you're new in this role, um, but it's a concern that's been around for quite a long time.

And um, although we have the navigators and the tenant advocac advocates, um the attorneys there, I'm understanding that that's where their service stops.

There's not, and and I think I saw in the presentation a little bit more assistance to individuals, but my understanding is that there's there's no wraparound services, there's no help.

Um, maybe you can explain that, and then I also understand that there are examples of where it's being done successfully in uh parts of my district on the east side in Lawrence Township and uh and uh believe Warren as well.

Um so maybe you can talk about what you know about the Lawrence and Warren Township, uh which is the um eviction uh diversion initiative, um, and then you can talk about where you guys stop and and if there's any opportunity for collaboration so we can see that full cycle to get those individuals that are uh probably at the most shocking moment of their lives being evicted.

Um and then what what are we doing?

Because my understanding is that's that's where the the assistance stops from from tenants advocacy that that we fund.

Yeah, I I really appreciate this question because it's something I've been working on for a long time in partnership with the Indiana Bar Foundation, Judge Bacon, and all the judges around the county actually, as well as um some of our partners who are in the room tonight.

Look, there are two programs.

Um we have we spent more than a year trying to get to a point where we could have one program because, like you said, it's inefficient.

Um we have redundancies, and I personally don't like inefficiency.

So uh like I said, we we got very close.

Um unfortunately there were some um challenges with um, I think uh belief or not belief, but like um whose program was better, and so we we haven't gotten there quite yet, but I already have a meeting with Judge Judge Bacon on the books to work with her.

I'm willing to do whatever we need to do to make an efficient program.

And finally, I'll just say that um I didn't speak much with Judge Bacon, so my source of information come from many individuals that are in the administration of the court work, and one of the things, and I'm glad you made that last point uh that they mentioned was that coming from your perch, I don't think they believe that you've seen you know right up front how that system works and where you can see improvement.

I think their understanding is that if you do, if you did, if you were books on the ground in that community in those hearings, that you would have a different opinion about a ways to approach uh how we can solve uh some of the challenges that we face and bring Marion County Indianapolis off of the top ranks across this country as leading in evictions.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Thank you, Counselor.

Counselor Boots Thank you, Mr.

Chairman, and thank you, Director Um Berkeley and CFO Duffy, good to see you both.

Um just to piggyback and maybe just to emphasize the importance of the homelessness and eviction issue for our county.

Um it's embarrassing to be on the national news about our eviction rates.

I'm not blaming you, but I am charging you with the the job of reducing that.

And I've already had some discussions with Judge Bacon and Judge McMath in Superior Court.

I would really like to get turbocharge that process, and if there's duplication of the two programs, we're the legislative body, and we'll kill one of them if we have to.

I mean, that's what we do, and if there's pride or egos involved, we'll shut that down in a heartbeat because this is too important to goof around with egos and things of that sort.

Uh, we really need to get to the bottom of this program in turbocharge it.

Um you mentioned in your slides too on slide 16, particularly moving the TAP program toward case management.

Can you just briefly I've got a couple other questions, but I would like you to expand on that, please.

Yeah, I think um to yours and counselor grave's um concerns.

We've we've known for a long time since the emergency rental assistance funds dried up that we needed to to change our how we approached uh helping tenants in court.

And uh we've already started some of that work moving toward a more case management style, getting to folks ahead of their case uh ahead of their hearing by including the mayor's action center as a as a call center to receive those those calls and and begin creating uh uh a case for that individual so that we can serve them better when they are in the courtroom.

Um we are also we've like I said, as part of that restructuring of that program, we were looking at how can we uh better identify a better case management system that works with the legal aid teams and integrates with them so that we can share information better uh and then follow them after their hearing.

So that's kind of the next step.

That's what I'm talking about, is following them after the hearing.

But we also want to get to them before the evictions ever filed.

And so um we we were working on a HUD grant uh last year and that would have allowed us to do some preventative work, and we were not selected for that.

I I would assume because of the administration changes.

Um but getting to folks ahead of time is is the goal, and we're still working on how we can make that happen.

Wonderful, and I look forward to working with you and your group on that.

Um interesting fact in your presentation jumped out at me, and that was on slide 17 about that each prevented shooting saves up to 1.2 million dollars.

What's the basis or how do you quantify that?

If you don't mind, I'm gonna call Deputy Director Lopez to the podium to answer that question.

Sure.

We haven't seen Tony in a while.

Good evening, Chairman and Counselors.

Um that is actually coming from a study that was done by the National Institute Institute for Criminal Justice Reform on the cost of violence, and when they did their problem analysis of the city when it came to gun violence in our city, they also did a cost of violence.

And when they looked at the cost of violence, that's breaking down how much it costs at a scene, um, all the way down to hospital bills, corner bills, and things like that, and we can provide you all with the website of where that cost of violence is at.

Um so for a homicide scene that's 1.2 million per per person in that shooting scene.

Um for non-fatal shootings, that's 698,000 per non federal shooting scene that it costs the city based off of these different uh numbers that they pulled, and again, we'd be able to provide you guys with the um link to that uh cost of violence as well.

And this is the initiative out of Oakland upon which we base a lot of our gun violence reduction strategy on.

Yes, sir.

And when you have the link, you'll also be able to see multiple other cities across the nation and their cost of violence analysis as well.

Great, thank you.

Finally, Director, um back to the opioid money, because it's again it's always an enigma to me.

It's in a lot of people's budgets, but no one knows where it comes from and when it's gonna come and how to account for it.

Can you tell me when who is the first one to touch opioid money that's granted the city?

To whom does that money go?

I apologize, counselor.

I cannot answer that question for you, but I I'm happy to work with OFM to better under help understanding.

Sorry.

Uh I don't know that answer, but I'm happy to work with you and OFM to better understand where where that money starts.

That would be helpful.

Thank you.

Thank you, Counselor.

Thank you, Counselor.

Counselor Perkins.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Uh, just a clarifying question and then a statement.

Um Did you mention that school six to eight is not available or not an option for for this year?

That is correct.

The school board said indicated that they were not comfortable moving forward this season.

And so at this point, we're still discerning what the options will be for this winter?

We have one option that's pretty definitive.

Um we have not signed any agreements or anything.

Um we also have another option that we are fairly confident will be a good location.

Can we charge you to to come back and inform us about what's what's happening with the winter contingency?

Absolutely, I'm not sure.

Given the concern that that Chairman Graves just raised around ensuring that we don't have the same things in place or what we experienced last.

That's absolutely I I would welcome that.

My second quick statement is you know, we've we've been talking about the issues around eviction, um, and you know, Indianapolis being on the news for our eviction rate, right?

So and uh you know, I'm always driving the conversation around root causes, right?

So uh the number there's six main causes of of evictions, right?

Um, and and and and the number one is availability of affordable housing.

So if we're gonna charge you and doing the work, then we have to make a commitment to invest in affordable housing for residents in Marion County.

Thank you, Council.

Final comments from counselors on the uh this presentation.

Anyone in the audience could have speak to the uh OPHS uh presentation this evening.

We have a do we have a list?

We have a list, okay.

Good.

So um just read the first three names, please, and uh then they'll come forward.

Okay, we have Mark, Steve, and Trey.

Thank you.

If you all just say your first and last name, that would help.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman, Council.

Uh my name is Mark Lynch.

Um I'm the director of advocacy for the Indy Hunger Network, and I'm here on behalf of our organization.

Our executive director, Kate House sends her regrets for not being here, but she's moving in her oldest son to university today.

The work we do at Indie Hungary Network is is at the systems level, and it supports the grassroots organizations who are doing the on-the-ground work to improve the food systems in Indianapolis.

We have already experienced significant cuts in federal funding and loss of capacity.

We rely on the funding from the city to do this work that is so vital.

We receive no staff support from the city, so the city is only covering program expenses.

We raise outside funds to lead all of these programs.

A large portion of the money we receive from the city is given away to food pantries to support their work through our grants program and our healthy nudges program.

We are doing the work for the good of the food system with no direct benefit to our organization.

And in essence, the money that OPHS gives us each year is already being shared by small community organizations.

We prioritize we prioritize grants to local-led pantries and to pantries in areas that have been historically underfunded.

The city contributes to these programs, but does not fully fund any of them, including Community Compass, which it owns.

We are doing the lion's share of the work to raise funds and do work, and we need the city's contributions to accomplish this work that benefits the whole city.

I'll end by saying, as the director of advocacy, we are experiencing significant cuts at both the state and local levels, including the zero zeroing out of SNAP ed.

I hope you will consider not only keeping our funding at 2020 2025 levels, but increasing the amount that we receive due to the essential systems work that our organization does.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments and for coming down this evening.

It's past my bedtime.

I say that I'm a unicorn because I've been a licensed Indiana attorney for 46 years, and an avid eviction court watcher in Marion County for the past three years.

But most importantly, I volunteer every week as a pro bono attorney for TAP at the Lawrence Township Tenant Eviction Clinic.

I work at the intersection of rental and affordability and tenant displacement.

I always said Lawrence again this morning.

Like every week I saw single moms juggling multiple low-wage jobs and sick kids.

I saw people living with significant disabilities and on fixed extremely low incomes.

These folks simply can't afford their housing cost and are just one lost job, one medical bill, or one flat tire away from losing their homes.

Tonight I'm here to passionately advocate for the proposed 2026 budget for OPHS with a particular focus on the funding allocated to the tenant legal assistance project, any eviction avoidance project under the TAP umbrella.

Why the introduction of $750,000 in direct city funding for these two essential programs is a step in the right direction.

It's crucial to recognize that this amount falls short of meeting the full demand for homelessness prevention services.

As someone who works tirelessly to keep tenants off the streets of Marion County, I can attest that the housing navigators are indispensable.

We collaborate closely to ensure that indie residents remain housed.

The navigators possess unique skills and can ask questions that the lawyers cannot, making both legal and housing expertise equally vital to our success.

The TAP staff attorneys and navigators are the unsung heroes of the homeless prevention system.

Their dedication goes above and beyond.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for your time for coming down this evening.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

I'm Tracy Pappas.

I'm the managing attorney of the Indianapolis Office of Indiana Legal Services, and we've been one of the legal partners for the TAP program since the beginning of that program.

You all know Marion County evictions, Indiana evictions.

It's fast, easy and cheap to get an eviction in Indiana.

And the TAP program, I'm I'm here just tonight to to talk about the value of the TAP program to our clients.

And you also, I'm sure are all aware, evictions are much more than leading to homelessness, they're leading to job loss, school changes, health problems, all kinds of things.

It's a cascading situation.

Almost every landlord has an attorney, and almost no tenant has an attorney, except for this TAP program, which provides tenants attorneys in the court for both advice and representation.

The TAP program has been able to start to level the playing field a little bit because tenants now know their rights and have a voice in court.

It's also provided an opportunity for the tenant attorneys who are in the courts regularly to get to know the landlord attorneys and some good relationships ships have developed, and they've been able to work and partner together to try to make some soft landings for tenants, move outs, um, you know, pay-in stays, agreed move outs and things like that, without the Scarlet Eve and eviction, which follows tenants for a very long time.

Having housing attorneys in court for tenants regularly also allows them to see stem systemic problems and take steps to correct those systemic problems, which has happened on several occasions.

Um it doesn't only help for that tenant, but it fixes it for everyone that's coming into that court.

Of the tenants that Indiana Legal Services has assisted through the TAP program in the last several years, approximately 71% are women, and most of them have children.

And if you count the tenants and the children, the we have assisted basically with tenants and household members, 20,000 Marion County residents facing eviction, um, many women and children and men also.

Um the TAP program is really very important to give tenants a voice and to um try to stop evictions when we can.

Indiana law is not very good for tenants, as we all know.

Um, but we we are able to at least slow down the process and give tenants more time.

Thank you very much.

Thank you for your comments.

Um read a few more names, please.

We have Blair, David, John, and Hannah.

Good evening.

I'm Blair Hedges.

I'm an attorney with Indiana Legal Services.

I'm one of the attorneys that provides um eviction and defense assistance in the clinics we've been discussing.

Uh just I know we're all aware of a lot of the numbers here, but just to bring it down to today's level, there were 113 evictions today in court.

There will be a 400 by the end of the week, and that's a light week due to the holiday weekend.

Um a normal week, I would expect more in the area of 600.

Uh we have uh throughout our time uh in Indiana Legal Services throughout our involvement with the TAP program have assisted with 7500 cases, and in approximately 2200 of those who've been able to be we've been able to prevent an order of eviction being entered against our clients.

Um these clients have included uh a disabled veteran who lost his job and was facing eviction because he was unable to enter or exit his home freely because his landlord refused to provide a ramp or his wheelchair.

We were able to get the landlord to forced to provide uh an accommodation under the Fair Housing Act and to get that eviction dismissed.

And the tenant and the gentleman has now moved on to better housing.

But uh apart from the legal outcomes that we've been able to achieve, uh large part of our goal in the program is to just sort of slow down the often very automated mechanical, machine-like process of eviction and enable some human moments that can occur between myself and opposing counsel, opposing counsel, and the tenant.

I've seen I've seen property managers of other properties who witnessed evictions in court offered housing to our clients.

I've seen an opposing counsel who we're able to explain the case that uh the eviction case and the nature of the problem enough to him that he actually ended up helping the client move physically packing boxes for them as they moved out of the property.

Uh the work we do is vital to ensure that the process can be a humane one and not just a legal one.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

I feel like I'm like I'm uh piling on here, but uh thank you, Mr.

Chairman and committee members.

I'm John Florensic.

I'm the general counsel and CEO of the Indianapolis Legal Aid Society.

Uh we are the oldest civil legal aid provider in the state.

Um but thank you for the opportunity to speak this evening about TAP, um, of which you know we are a key partner with OPHS, as my colleagues have said.

Um, as my colleagues have said, um I could explain my time explain explaining the intricacies of the eviction process, but I really what matters most, and I think is uh and what I want to focus on this evening is how TAP connects directly to many of the broader challenges that we've talked about this evening.

Um we all see the concerns downtown and across across all of Indianapolis with groups of unsupervised youth running around, sometimes leading to conflict, as we've heard tonight.

Uh but what often goes unspoken is how closely this ties back to housing instability.

Um families are evicted, they're forced into overcrowded apartments, uh into couch surfing situations.

Um this the research is clear, overcrowding and uh stable housing leads to more behavioral issues, lower school performance with the kids, um, and long-term health struggles.

So evictions just push families deeper into instability and feeling a very public uh public safety concerns the city and uh you on the council are working to address.

Um, a lot of times these young kids have nowhere to go.

They're packed into two bedroom apartments with two or three families living in it.

Uh, there's nowhere to go, nowhere to socialize, so you can imagine what's happening.

You can see that.

So why tap matters is it's not a what if program, it's a proven actionable solution to what's going on in the in the eviction world.

It delivers direct services and legal representation of families and eviction court.

Every dollar you invest in in this program goes straight to the attorneys and social workers.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments and for coming down this evening.

Thank you all.

So I'm David Sneed.

I'm the C OO of Indianapolis Legal Legal Aid Society.

So I had some prepared works, but I think everyone covered them for the most part.

Um I did just want to add, so some of the things that kind of got unmentioned.

Um, so we are not on the east side of Indianapolis, we generally cover the west side of Indianapolis.

And what I can tell you is not only do we have the attorneys going into court and actively representing and actively challenging contestant evictions, we keep roughly 25% of our clients housed.

So we're winning 25% of the time, often because we get negotiated settlements, we pay with we call pay and stays.

But what we're also doing that isn't really showing up in some of the stories, and what I've kind of heard of some comments.

So we have an in-house social worker.

So not only does that social worker, when they come into the eviction process, she starts working with them on basic needs, on support.

I've seen her fill out rental applications.

I've seen her call apartment complexes and say, are you going to accept somebody who has an eviction on your record?

What can we do to show that this person really does have the finances, does have the capabilities to get them housed?

So what I want to kind of close with, so I did some quick and dirty um review of our attorney files.

So the month of June, we negotiated on roughly $500,000 of debt for our clients.

And that's three courts, a couple hundred clients that are the thousands we serve annually.

So that's one month we were negotiating over $500,000.

So just to give you an idea of the impact of the dollars you're talking about here, that's the impact that's actually happening in the courts, the transactions we're actually talking about.

So thank you all.

Thank you for coming down for your comments.

Anyone else could have speak to this presentation?

Final comments, Director Merkley.

Hello, my name is Hannah Cartwright.

I'm an immigration attorney at a small nonprofit legal service provider here in Indianapolis called Mariposa Legal, which has been one of the organizational recipients of the Indianapolis Legal Service and Indianapolis Immigrant Legal Service Fund funds over the last three years.

Um that the council not approve the budget cut of 100,000 of the immigrant legal services fund for three reasons.

First, according to the National Bureau Institute of Justice in Indiana, 68% of all Indiana immigrants who have immigration court cases do not have attorneys.

Uh, by leaders in the immigrant community and the city to begin to address the huge gap, um, huge lack of immigration attorneys in Indianapolis.

To take away these funds now would be a sharp turn in the wrong direction at a super critical time.

We should instead be having an entirely different conversation about how we can do more.

Secondly, as an attorney who grew up in Indianapolis and has a deep commitment to the community, but who also has worked in other cities, including Chicago and Philadelphia as an attorney.

I've been dismayed over the last five years to learn how bare bones our immigration legal system, legal ecosystem here in Indianapolis is by comparison to other cities.

I wish I could convey in the allotted two minutes the capacity constraints described by my fellow legal service providers, including Exodus Refugee Immigration, the Indianapolis Office of the National Immigrant Justice Center, Indiana Legal Services, Catholic Charities, and more.

We do have biannual meetings, and over the last five years, these weaknesses have been incredibly apparent.

But what I can confidently say is that cutting the $100,000 will have an immediate impact.

Lastly, as you may have seen by our announced by our state and federal leaders, ICE is about to gain access to 2,000 additional beds in the state of Indiana at Camp Atterbury in the Miami County Correctional Facility.

The largest number of immigrants held by ICE at any given time in the state are from Marion County.

So I'll just ask that you not approve the cut of these funds, and I'm happy to provide more information offline.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you so much.

Anyone else could speak to the presentation?

Director Merkley.

I just want to say thank you to you all for the time this evening.

The work that the team behind me does is real.

It's raw and emotional, and they do a fantastic job of it.

They put themselves in harm's way to make real impacts in this city.

And I understand that there's some challenges, some concerns with some of the programming, but we are doing everything we can to demonstrate to you all the efficacy of our work.

And we're going to continue to do that.

So thank you.

Thank you so much.

We want to also shout out Tony and Shadi and their team of men and women for their work in the communities.

I do echo those sentiments and uh thank you for being patient and thank you all for your hard work in the community.

Um it doesn't go unnoticed, so thank you all for that, Tony, Shade, and your team.

Uh no ad arms around Jinder, we are adjourned.

Thank you.