All right.

Good evening.

I've called to order the meeting of the community affairs committee of the Indianapolis City County County Count City County Council for Tuesday, September 9th, 2025.

At this time, I would like to introduce my account fellow counselors to uh I would like my fellow counselors to introduce themselves.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Derrick Cahill, District 23.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Michael Paul Hart, representing District 20.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Kristen Jones, representing District 18.

Thank you, uh Acting Chair, uh Ron Gibson, District 8.

Thanks, Mr.

Chair, and good evening, everyone.

Keith Grays, District 9 on the Indianapolis side.

And I'm Nick Roberts, district 4, and as was mentioned, the acting chair for tonight, uh, counselor vice president Ally Brown is not able to make it.

Um we were very fortunate tonight to have the director, Amanda uh Dehoney Hinkle as the uh presenter tonight.

We're gonna be going over the 2026 budget presentation for the uh animal services agency.

Um it's her first one, and as is the the CFO.

Um, and we're very happy to have you guys and um very grateful to everyone who's here and um looking forward to hearing about what else is going on for the animals in our city.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Roberts and all members of the committee for being here tonight.

Um we're very excited to introduce our 2026 budget, and it's as Nick said, um, it is my second month at IACS as director, and this is James's fourth month, so this could uh get very interesting.

This is our very first time presenting a budget to all of you.

Um we're excited to tell you what our goals are, our successes, and our projects that we have coming up.

So I'll go over those things, and then James will go over our proposed 2026 budget and our plan to allocate our resources.

I do want to say thank you again.

Um, you all have been big advocates for our efforts, and we look forward to continuing to work with you guys.

So, first up, we'll go over our agency overview.

Um, it's a highlight uh the work that our staff do.

We're happy to have a strong ASME partnership and operating under a newly negotiated contract.

Um, Indianapolis Animal Care Services is Indiana's largest open admission municipal shelter, providing 24-7 animal control services, um, sheltering, rescue, and support services for Indianapolis residents.

Each year we respond to thousands of calls involving strays, cruelty cases, public safety issues, and we have four divisions, admin and finance, placement, medical, and shelter operations.

Just to highlight some of our agency staffing, um, what we do, we are happy again have that strong partnership with ASME.

We have 67 and a half current staff members with 16 vacant positions, a strong track record of internal promotions out of 16 managers and supervisors.

13 of those were ACS promotions from internal, two external and one internal city transfer.

Employee retention.

Um has we vacancy rate has improved from 38 percent, and that's from August 2024 to 19 percent as of July 2025, increasing consistency and efficiency.

This is primarily from our ASMI contract.

Our staff has a 100% defensive driving training compliance as well as all employees intended conflict resolution training.

Our agency staffing.

This is our agency's demographics.

We have more women in our agency as you can see than and we will continue to work to have an agency that better reflects our community.

Number five, our pro programmatic and fiscal successes.

Um, our rescue transfers, so that's any animal that comes into our shelter.

We send out to other shelters or rescues um so that they're not having to stay in our in our shelter.

Um, we've had over 2,000 high-risk animals transferred, and this is for 2024 to other rescue partners.

Our adoptions increase 10 percent, moving more animals out quickly into homes.

Through our foster program, we have 27 and a half more animals placed in foster care, expanding our life saving capacity.

Staff safety, our workplace injuries continue to decrease in severity and frequency.

Our live release rate, we average 91%.

That's a seven percent increase from our previous year of 84%.

And our new shelter construction and preparation, which we are extremely excited about.

This one number.

We do a lot of those all around the city year-round on property and off property at different sites.

We're proud to have our increased number of adopted animals and look forward to even more opportunities next year in the new shelter.

We're proud to announce that our new volunteer coordinator started just yesterday.

That is a vital part of our team, um, and hope that he will be very, very great for our loyal dedicated volunteers.

And I do want to give them a shout out if they have any of them are here.

I don't see any, but I do want to thank them very much for their hard work that they do.

I would like to highlight their hours that they put into our shelter last year, did equal 15 full-time employees.

So they put in a lot of work at our shelter, and we greatly appreciate it.

Number seven, our 2026 goals, priorities, and outcomes.

Shelter monetization, preparing for the new modern facility to be open early 2026 to meet our infrastructure and capacity needs.

This will be a big time of transition and learning for us at IACS.

We want to increase our live release rate.

Continue to expand our foster adoption and rescue to reduce our euthanasia.

Community services, we want to continue to grow our IndyCareS program and increase access to pet support and undeserved or underserved areas and data and reporting, improve our tracking to guide decisions and planning.

Use data to inform better policy decisions.

This will be especially important with the transition to the operations of the new shelter as well.

And this is a fun little tidbit.

This was a drone footage from July of our new building.

Kind of shows you the front side, the playground that's going in, the back part of the back part of the area there is our pond, and there is a walking trail that goes completely around it.

The middle section you see where it looks like it's open.

That is our part of our indoor outdoor sheltering.

And I'm happy to answer any questions.

If you can see that building, I can try to point out what's what in there if you have any questions about it.

Some information on that.

It is due to complete March 31st, 2026.

We'll move in sometime likely by May, hopefully.

The total square footage for that building is 60,300 square feet.

That will give us 234 total dog kennels.

182 of those are indoor outdoor kennels.

10 indoor public visitation rooms.

Right now we don't have, we have one.

So that's a giant increase for us.

One indoor dog play area, so the animals don't have to go outside and volunteers won't have to go outside when they're exercising an animal or doing enrichment with an animal.

Five separate puppy kennels, 12 outdoor dog run kennels, those are big exercise runs, 3,200 square feet of dog play meet and greet park, 80 cat cages, two outdoor cat group playrooms, three indoor cat room cat room play areas.

100% of our dog and cats have access to natural daylight through windows and skylights.

It has 3,700 square feet of state of the art vet care space, which hopefully will draw in another new vet and give us a big break there.

Two acres of pasture space for livestock animals, 2400 feet or foot-long dog walking path around the site and pond, a two-acre public dog park, 74 parking spaces.

And I do want to remind everyone before I turn it over to James for our next slide.

This is our second budget and our first budget as an independent agency and our first time presenting.

So if you have any questions, we will gladly take them at the end.

All right, thank you, everybody.

And my name is James Finn Lason, the new CFO for the shelter.

So as you'll see here, that we followed OFM's direction and identified the target amount for reserves, but you'll see that our overall budget reduction is closer to one and a half percent due to mostly due to chargeback increases for our new building.

We have marginal increases to our personnel budget, and uh there'll continue to be changes as we move items around between departments and between accounts as we determine where things will be best be in our new shelter.

All right, overall, we don't have a very significant change to our revenue.

Um we have kennel fees, adoption fees, and collected overdue revenue from revenue recovery, as well as this year.

You'll see the surplus sales that's as we are moving out of the building.

We're committed to at least trying to get some cash back for items that would otherwise say go to the dumpster, and we'll continue to work with OFM and purchasing department on that.

So here's the budget breakdown for our character one.

Um as we go into this new shelter, we'll look to see what we need.

However, you do see that our overall character one budget grew by 49,810.

Um so we are funded entirely from consolidated county general, and this affords a 2.6% cola for the majority of our staff and then a 3% increase for our AFSME staff, as well as increases to health insurance and workers' compensation.

Next we have our character two.

Uh overall, these are moving between departments a lot, but you will see a reduction of 100,000.

This represents primarily uh general office supplies and some medical supplies.

We'll be looking to kind of make operational changes to view how these can best be absorbed uh by pursuing additional bid contracts next year for veterinary supplies.

And next for our character three, we did identify some areas to reduce.

Uh and you can see that overall we did see a hundred and thirty-one thousand dollar increase.

This is primarily our chargeback for our rent.

It makes up a big portion of that as we move into the new building.

And uh among the things we identified for reserves and to make changes were we are currently spending a good amount of money on emergency repairs, and when we're in a new building, we won't need that money as it should be under warranty, and I would be very upset if I'm making emergency repairs to a month-old building.

And then next is a kennel cleaning contract we have decided to end.

Um we'll have a lot more space and just be able to make logistical changes in addition to our vacancy decrease in the vacancies have allowed us to keep cleaning in-house.

And this was initially brought the kennel cleaning contract, was initially brought on when the cleaning situation was more difficult with crates in the hallways, and we're no longer in that situation.

All right, next is our care overall character four budget.

Um this decreases related to our reduction in vehicle purchases.

Most of our fleet from year to year is uh animal control officer trucks, which are very expensive, but these trucks uh have been mostly replaced recently, and long term we will just need to get into a different replacement cycle and look at other options.

Um character five, which is our internal chargebacks.

We see a very marginal change, and that's related to an increase in uh increase in OCC charges.

All right.

Any questions?

All right, thank you.

Uh great job.

Uh now I will take uh the floor for uh committee members to ask their questions.

I see uh councilor Hart has a question, so we will start with him.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Just uh a bit of dialogue here.

Um when's the move in date?

We don't have an exact move in date.

I wish it could be the day that we're heated the you know the building, but it'll we'll have to go through punch list and all of that good stuff.

They're slated to be complete March 31st at the latest.

I was there actually this morning and while I'm doing a walkthrough.

Um everything is still on track to be complete March 31st, if not a little bit sooner, they think.

Um so after that, it'll just you know it'll take a little bit of time to get everything moved in before I'll actually be open to the public.

Okay, you're right on the corner of my district.

So I when I go to the southwest side of my district, I'm I'm looking right at it.

Yeah, so you can come do Doggy Day outs all the time.

Watching it absolutely, absolutely.

Uh so I just want to touch on a couple things that just kind of perked my ear uh on the finance side of things.

You mentioned that you have rent.

And I'm just curious of how the structure is set up there.

Building authority rent.

Uh, so we pay an amount to building authority for the rent to pay for the building.

Okay.

So the but I'm gonna look, I guess, at you when I ask this question.

Maybe you know, maybe we don't.

Okay, okay, you seem very confident about this.

Um so we we the the bonds for this project are through the building authority, and they're managing that process.

And that is correct.

I believe is that and building sorry, bond bank, but it's a building authority project.

Okay, and then you mentioned the other thing financially in terms of chargebacks and the increase in character five uh going to OCC.

What what corporate council demands are rising to increase your costs?

Um I'm not entirely sure about the OCC chargeback.

I could get more information for you.

Okay, yeah, that one that one's interesting.

If it's I don't know, is which I mean is it the 280 year I don't know, whatever the number might be, but you mentioned it.

So I'm just curious of what why that why that could you know charge would go up this year.

Yeah, I could I can get with OCC and come back to that and give you an answer, a better answer because I don't have one for you right now.

Okay, no, it just seems to be a common theme in a lot of these committee meetings, um, whether it's ISA, but that's the first time, but usually it's ISA.

It's usually not OCC, so that one was a little bit different for me to hear.

But other than that, I just wanted to uh raise awareness that cleaning services did get brought up to me um in email form.

Um not too widely um you know uh expressed in disarray or anything along those lines, but I think the explanation that you mentioned is is really good, and I'll take that back to my folks.

So thanks for bringing it up.

Yeah, you're welcome.

Counselor Cahill.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Uh Director, just uh you and I have discussed this, and I just I want the others to hear some of this conversation.

Uh we are I I guess would you say that we are continuing to largely waive uh the adoption fees still?

Yes.

If if we were to collect it 100% at the current set by ordinance value uh of sixty dollars per adoption, what would that add up to?

I think it's roughly 200 times.

Well, uh I think a little under that, depending on if I mean how many animals we're adopting out, how many we're bringing in.

I think it would fluctuate yearly.

And that is something we are we are dedicated to looking into starting again um with the fees that are in our ordinance.

It's right now we're just trying to keep our shelters clear.

Yep.

And that it does help waiving that fee right now, keeping it.

Yeah, I and I appreciate that, but particularly as we move into the new year with the new shelter that we shouldn't have the we shouldn't be constantly full.

Uh hopefully we will not be in that position.

Uh in light of the fact that it is set by ordinance by this council at $60.

Uh BNS has done some benchmarking.

I can tell you I have I've looked uh one of the things that I hear from many of the advocates is that Hamilton County Humane Society is considered one of the of the uh donut community uh shelters is considered to be uh kind of a uh a good competitor to benchmark against, but they charge up to a hundred dollars.

But I would I'd be much like BNS has provided us with some information on what other communities are charging, if we were to evaluate whether or not in light of the fact that we really have not been charging that fee for several years, uh perhaps we shouldn't let it like some of the other fees get 30, 40 years out of date.

Uh maybe now would be a good time to evaluate that.

And then uh separately, as I understand it, today the the fee goes into the general fund.

Uh but I would we I guess we typically look to the agency through by partnering through OCC on things like this, that uh I would I would appreciate analysis of whether or not we could or should put that money straight into IECS to uh make available kind of direct funding because uh it's my understanding you still have kind of shortfalls on hiring uh yeah, staff, things like that.

Could we rather than give it to the general fund where it might go somewhere else and not straight into IECS, could we address that through ordinance?

So that's I guess a comment, but question if if you have any thoughts to add on it.

Yeah, I mean I'm happy to have that discussion.

We could definitely, you know, put it in talks and take it to OCC and see you know what what the pathway is to get that done, if if it's if it's possible and what that would what that would look like for the city.

Yeah, I I appreciate that because it we are obviously uh going to face more and more uh budgetary challenges.

We're looking at uh you know fees, not taxes, uh things like that that are maybe more palatable for people and to potentially know that there's a lever to the tune of two or three hundred thousand dollars out there that we could be pulling uh that could uh help fund IECS.

I I my my opinion is I think we should take a look at that as uh committee at a council.

Happy to have this that discussion.

Thanks, Mr.

Chair.

Thank you.

And would our uh our uh our counselor like to introduce himself too?

Thank you very much, Bob Osseli uh district 12.

Thank you.

Yep, thank you, Mr.

President.

Um so one question I had on this budget is there's a lot of fluidity with this that I noticed compared to other agencies.

How much of it would you attribute it to the shelter versus being a new agency kind of trying to figure out everything?

What what would you say are some of the big fa factors?

Because again, some of these things like six million to two million, you know, uh one million to three million, no million to one million, like there's a lot of changes here.

What would you say are the biggest factors in that?

Thank you.

Probably just assigning where things should actually be charged and where things are getting currently charged versus where they were just budgeted and sitting is a lot of it.

Um so it's not really what's not really changes changing as much here to year as the actual expenses is where they should be belonging.

I will say, are we having to because you mentioned contracts?

Are we having to change a lot of our contracts going to a new shelter?

Because I know that kind of changes the capacity of some of these different organizations, maybe or different contracts, or are we keeping loud in the same as far as our meta?

Well, I guess it would depend on what contract.

I would say we're gonna have to reevaluate kind of everything, um, just based on we don't know what it's gonna look like going into the new shelter, um, how efficient we're gonna be, are we gonna have a vet?

Um that is one thing, you know, it's a struggle nationwide right now is there's a vet shortage.

So that may be something we are having to reevaluate those contracts for medical care if we can't get you know a vet in that new building, too.

But hopefully the new building will be you know a cursor like hey, it'll draw it'll draw vets in more so than we are right now.

Awesome.

I'll say there are any other uh questions, Councilor Graves.

Thanks, Mr.

Chair.

Uh, thanks for your presentation and uh all the work you've uh you've been doing over there.

I did have an opportunity to get out to say hello to you, some of the volunteers and and uh employees over there uh where you are currently.

As I take a look at the new location, and thanks for sharing the over the overview uh of the of the new location.

And I noticed uh the revenue numbers are pretty low, and I was wondering if we have this wonderful new place.

Is there any opportunity for community-based events that could have a fee to come in and more celebrations and bring your animal uh type of events where we can maybe kick up that uh just thinking of things to to drive some additional revenue?

I know we'll we'll we'll we're not here to to drive revenue necessarily, but it would be good to see that number bump up a little bit more than where it is.

Yeah, I think that's this will be this can be fun.

So yeah, yeah.

No, I'm totally in agreement.

Um we've we've we've talked about that um within ourselves, you know, at the shelter, um, having more on-site events and inviting other rescues and organizations to attend those events as well and just make it like kind of like a mega adoption event on our site.

Um, and then we also have the the public dog park that'll be there too, um, so we can involve parks in that and things like that.

So, you know, that is something we are definitely talking about and looking forward to being able to do at the new shelter.

Thanks a lot.

Thanks, Mr.

Chair.

Yes, thank you.

Any final questions?

So, are there any members of the public who are looking to speak and comment tonight?

Okay, okay, Chris, okay.

Well, we'll read Kindle if it's okay.

Can we read the statement?

I'm sure Chris will be okay, but we'll read the statement anyways.

I would say, Kindle, if you don't have it, Chris can just speak for two minutes.

So we'll hold him accountable.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman and members of the committee.

My name is Chris Roberson.

I began volunteering at ICS in the spring of 2022.

I served on the advisory board, and as the agency became its own independent agency, I'm now a mayoral appointee to the board.

Um admittedly, the city is still working through some administrative challenges getting that board fully functioning, so in full transparency, our board didn't have a chance to review this budget ahead of time.

So I'm not so much speaking formally on behalf of the board, but really just want to continue the community's engagement with this with this committee and just share a few thoughts.

One is there's a lot of exciting progress that the whole community is excited about.

The shelter being long overdue, but something that everybody's excited for.

Secondly, I want to commend Councilor Roberts and other members of the search committee who are involved in finding the new director who I am extremely excited to work with.

Um she was very gracious with her time, met me for coffee a couple weeks ago.

I think she's a great hire, and she's gonna move all things animal welfare in the right direction.

That being said, I also want to just be a voice of of reason and and really just remind the council that although we have these very encouraging steps in the right direction, we have not solved the animal crisis in animal welfare crisis in Marion County.

We still have a drastic overpopulation of dogs and lots of challenges ahead of us.

So again, we're excited to work with the new director on these.

And I appreciate we didn't have the notes ready, but I appreciate you for staying on your two minutes as of everything.

So I'm greatly appreciative for you and all you do, greatly appreciative for the director or CFO.

As was already mentioned and mentioned a million times, you all have a very difficult job.

If there are no closing comments from the committee and no closing comments from the agency, I will take a motion for adjournment.

Yep.

Well, thank you.

Motion committee is adjourned.