Good evening, everybody.

Welcome to tonight's municipal corporations committee meeting on this day, September 17th.

We are going to begin.

I'm Chairman Jared Evans, by the way.

We're going to begin with introductions, starting with Councillor Hart.

All right.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

My name is Michael Paul Hart, representing District 20.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Mike Dill, District 24.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman, Josh Bain, District 21.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Brian Mowra, District 25.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Jesse Brown, District 13.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Renee Allen, District 15, the Far Isat.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Kristen Jones, District 18.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Allie Brown, District 10, City of Lawrence.

Thank you, everybody.

Again, I'm Chairman Jared Evans representing District 17 on the far west side.

We will begin tonight's meeting with proposal number 279, which reappoints Mr.

Richard Wilson Jr.

to the Indianapolis Public Transportation Corporation Board of Directors.

Whole mouthful.

Please come on up, sir.

If you'd like to begin by uh saying a few words about yourself and why you'd like to serve on this, thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

I appreciate your uh confidence very much.

It's been an interesting four years.

Um I know that you specifically had wanted to hear about fair policy, so I'll defer on that to answer any questions that you might have.

But I do want to share a couple of things that are really exciting, I think, for us.

So I've been championing over the last 18 months a fiscal sustainability study where we're taking a look at every single part of our operation.

We're looking where we can leverage revenue, where we can look at our expenses and see you know the things that we must do because there's a statute or a regulation that says you must do it.

Are we doing it in the most efficient way?

We're going to look at the things that we need to do that support the things we must do, right?

Um things that support our coach operators, our mechanics, our our back end staff.

Um, and then there's things that maybe we should be doing, and we don't know it.

So we want to take a look at that.

And are there things that we're doing that we don't know why we're doing it, and maybe we don't need to do it anymore, and we can just stop doing it, right?

So we've engaged in this study, it's been going on for a few months now.

The preliminary results have come back.

I won't bore you with all those details, but it's really exciting.

Um and then the other thing I want to bring up to you is we've working with Bart Brown, our controller, CFO, uh, and his budget team, who I want to uh Justin and his team, Justin Burkope and his team, we started doing what we what I call zero-based budgeting.

So at the beginning of the budget process, we start up flat line zero, and everybody justifies everything they do using that same criteria.

This is stuff we must do, this is stuff we need to do, this is stuff we should do.

And I'm happy to report that this year we have slowed the rate of growth in our budget by 20 percent.

And Bart will give you all the details of that later.

But I'm really proud as chairman of the finance committee.

I'm really proud of that accomplishment.

We've been working on it for a couple of years.

Jenny and her team have done a fabulous job in sort of changing the culture and the way we think about the budget process.

And and I and it's starting to bear some real fruit now.

And I think I think that one of the things that um I'm most proud of is the way that the whole team, all of the parts of the operation have really pulled pulled together to take this seriously and look at ways that we can start being better stewards of the taxpayer dollar.

And again, by leveraging the revenue, looking for new revenue sources.

There may be some things that will need to come to you all to to get your support that you know to change ordinance or something like that, but particularly with regard to advertising, maybe, where we can where we can start to generate some significant revenue outside the fare box.

And then, of course, as those of you have heard me the last two times, the reason I wanted to serve on this board in the first place was to get new butts and seats.

I'm uh you know, I grew up on in the northwest suburbs of Chicago.

I rode public transportation all the time.

Um I don't think you can be a world-class city without a robust transit system.

And while I have no empirical data, and those of those of you who know me know I'm a data guy.

I have no empirical data, but my gut tells me when the blue line goes into revenue service, it's gonna be a game changer, especially from the airport to the central business district.

I mean, I really think with all of the wonderful things that Indianapolis does, sports sporting events, you know, the the Indianapolis 500, the the convention business that we have.

I mean, I just think you know, being able to get from the airport to the central business district in 45, 50 minutes for a couple of bucks is gonna be a game changer for us.

So, with that, I'll shut up and I'll entertain any questions that you might have with regard to the fair policy or the study or any anything else you'd like to ask.

Thank you, Mr.

Wilson.

I appreciate that.

That uh was one of the more thorough explanations for why you wanted to serve.

So I greatly appreciate that.

Counselor Bain.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman and uh Mr.

Wilson, uh, just reading through your biography.

It's very impressive, so appreciate your willingness to continue to serve and your commitment to zero-based budgeting is something that I think many other municipal corporations and even our city should take note of and uh begin to look at.

Well, we'll be happy to share our success with them, counselor.

Councilor Brown.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

And yes, thank you, Mr.

Wilson.

Echo what my colleague uh Counselor Bain said.

I I thank you for being an engaged board member.

I think that's very clear, and just your quick you know, presentation just now.

I had a couple questions.

Number one, uh do you regularly ride Indigo today?

Are you like a frequently user of the services?

Uh in fact, I rode the purple line down here this evening.

I ride at home when we're done.

Red the 21 here myself, so glad to hear it.

Um really glad to hear it.

And then my second question is you know, we don't have another board vacancy for quite some time, but if there's a weakness in the board in terms of council appointees, um or or a place to shore up strengths, what should we be looking for?

Our next candidate.

After you I'm happy to report that since since you first appointed me, I believe it was in 2018.

Uh the the quality I don't want to offend anyone, but the board members that are serving on this board now is I think this is the strongest board since I've been on the board.

I mean, we've got uh a really uh I know I don't mean diverse in like the the you know race or sex or excuse me.

I'm so sorry.

Forgot to turn that off.

Um but backgrounds.

So uh even with the mayor's appointments, you know, we've got some really high quality people on the board now.

Uh Mary Ann Fagan is is you know, she's on the finance community with me.

Adrian Slash, Joe Slash's daughter, is on the finance committee with me.

They are engaged.

Um they're they're um they're showing up at meetings, having read the material, and they know what we're what we're trying to accomplish, they're on board with it.

Um I would I would tell you that the caliber of folks that you've appointed uh and the mayor's office has appointed is is pretty good.

And I don't know that I'd change a thing, to be perfectly honest with you.

All right, you provide enough details that I'll allow that answer, so thank you.

Thank you, Councilor Brown.

Counselor Dill.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Uh Mr.

Wilson, I just wanted to acknowledge we appreciate your service in the Army.

Um I also think it was a great presentation, and I will be voting yes for you.

Thank you, sir.

I thank you, Councilman.

I appreciate that very much.

Any other questions from my colleagues?

Counselors Graves and Gibson, if you'd like to introduce yourselves.

Thanks, Mr.

Chair, and uh good evening, everyone.

Keith Gray's Indianapolis Council District 9 on the east side.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Uh Ron Gibson, District 8.

Thank you.

Is there anyone in the public who would like to speak to proposal 279?

Seeing none, I'll take a motion.

Councilor Brown.

See the full council pass recommendation.

Second.

It's been moved and seconded.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Same sign, no.

All right, sir.

We're gonna recommend you to the full council.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Thank you, counselors.

It's been a privilege to serve, and I look forward to another four years.

Thank you.

Have a great rest of the day, evening.

Colleagues, we're gonna begin with the budget hearing presentations with Indigo, then the Marion County Health and Hospital Corporation, and uh the public library board.

I want to said say this now up front.

I want you guys to be concise and precise with your questions.

I'm not dragging this meeting on.

The last one went way too long.

Indigo, the floor is yours, and I say the same to you in your presentation.

Get it moving.

By going too long, feel free to interrupt me or yeah, tell me to be quiet.

Uh thank you so much for having us here tonight.

My name is Jennifer Pierce, president and CEO at Indigo.

I have with me our Chief Financial Officer Bart Brown.

We really appreciate the opportunity to share our proposed budget.

Uh Indigo exists to connect people to opportunity through transportation, safety, reliability, and accessibility are instrumental to our vision and to achieving our goals.

Over the next several years, we are focusing on three main strategic objectives.

All of our teammates from the executive level through the admin, our garage, our frontline workers, we're all focused on achieving these objectives.

You heard Director Wilson talk about fiscal sustainability.

That's one of the three.

We are also focusing on protecting our frontline workers, which we know then translates to protecting our customers, our riders, uh, and then increasing ridership, of course, which is our reason for being.

Our board of directors is seven members led by Chairman Greg Hahn.

Adarius Gardner is our vice chair, and Richard Wilson's our treasurer.

Marianne Fagan's our secretary.

We have three new members uh that have joined us over the past year.

They are Stephanie Quick, Adrian Slash, and joining us just this month, Stanley Smith.

This is our executive team.

Many of our executive teammates are here tonight and will be available if there are any questions in their specific areas of expertise.

We have a new exec team member, Annette Darrow was just appointed to the position of chief operating officer this week.

Um we're really excited.

Not while she's new to the executive team, she's not new to Indigo.

We're thrilled to have her ex expertise and nearly 30 years of experience at Indigo.

Our team includes about 840 employees.

About half of those are professional coach operators.

Our workforce also includes mechanics, road supervisors, dispatchers, trainers, and a host of folks in administrative roles and finance, engineering, HR, et cetera.

We have about 75% of our employees represented by the amalgamated transit union local 1070.

With that, I'm going to hand it over to our CFO Bart Brown to walk through our proposed budget.

Thank you, General.

Um happy to present work.

There we go.

Need the light on.

Happy to present the 2026 proposed budget that was passed by our board.

And as for your consideration tonight.

Now I know you're going to hear from other Minnesota corporations that they've done the best job of budget, but I assure you this is the best budget you will see this year and many years to come.

So uh the total for this year is 432.3 million.

And in comparison, I'm just going to read the uh, and you can read this for yourself.

I'm going to read the 2025 numbers that you approved last year.

So last year the total budget was 342, which is a big jump, and the majority of that will be in our capital project projects.

Operating last year was 146.8, capital is 179.5, and then our debt service was 15.9.

And you heard uh both both our CEO and our appointed, hopefully newly re newly appointed, reappointed uh director, talk about what our priorities are and zero-based budgeting.

So this year, when my budget staff sat down with all the departments, they said you need to address these three things.

How is this budget address any one of these three things?

And we need to start at zero.

So you need to build your budget up.

Um, I'll tell you the history of the staff was pretty much, you know, we just used the historical staff and we decided if we had a decrease or increase.

But when it came to character three uh contracts, they had to describe every contract that they wanted to enter into for next year, and then defend it.

And we'll talk a little bit about that uh here in a minute.

So this is our operating, and we consider our operating.

When you look at our ordinance, if you have in front of you, you'll see characters one through four.

Uh we call our operating characters one through three, and then we call our capital budget character four.

So I'm only talking about characters one through three.

Um and over to the uh right side, budget comparison.

Um for uh 2026, we're asking for 83,979,954.

Last year that was 83,564.

We are only asking for 415,000 increase in character one.

And yes, we are going to give raises next year.

We have a CBA uh, yeah, we have a contract with the union, and it calls for at least a three percent for those folks.

Uh we also hope to give raises to our uh non-union folks.

What we've been able to do is really cut back on our benefits.

We have done a great job of um working with the union to get our health benefits in line of what the standards are in the industry, and we will see a zero increase in help benefits for the first time in a long time.

So, with that, and also the other thing is what's our uh workforce is getting younger.

So a lot of the folks have been with us a long time, and we value those folks, they're retiring at a higher salary, and we're replacing those folks at a lower salary.

So that and a couple of things we've been able to keep that budget relatively flat.

The next is materials and supplies at the bottom.

That's only going up 140,000 again because of zero-based budgeting.

Our staff, all our staff, not just my budget staff, was able to keep that budget relatively flat again because we truly looked at like can we really do without this?

Is this something you have to have?

And we all came to agreement this is what we need.

So we'll only come into you for what we need uh for 2026.

That's less than one percent growth.

Now the biggest is other services charges and the contracts.

And the reason why on the left is because of the following things.

We have a lot more facilities and repairs.

The purple line.

We and the red line, the red line, the pavement has to be repaired.

It's getting getting old.

It's been around since 2019.

So we had to put money in budget for that.

We also saw an increase of our paratransit operations, meaning we're putting more service on the road for those folks that depend on our paratransit.

Security.

Security is very big in transit across the country.

And we are spending more money to make sure our drivers are safe and our passengers are safe.

And then finally, we've got a lot of capital planning going on with the blue line.

And we just got uh we were just told we got the grant for our new garage on the east side.

So we'll be spending a lot more money on planning, and um also um we're increasing ridership and to the sustainability.

So we're doing more studies on long-term sustainability to make sure that 20 years from now, 30 years from now, that we don't have to come to you and ask for increases.

So this year we'll see a 4.85% increase in our budget.

Last year it was nearly seven percent.

And again, this gets back to we are really taking a hard look at our budget and trying to make sure we're only asking for what we need.

I hope next year to come back and tell you that our increase is lower than 4.85%.

So this is uh what we see as our revenue 153 million, uh nearly 144 million, um, and most of that comes from our income tax and our also our property taxes.

Some of our income tax or majority of our income tax goes to the operating.

But the first thing we do with income tax is we take we'll take 20 million off the top and pay our debt service.

Then we'll fund our operating, and then what's left we can throw into our capital.

Uh, our passenger service revenue, you'll see that 5.9.

If you looked at our budget for this year, you'll see 5.9.

And you might be asking why are you budgeting the same amount if you're asking for an increase in fares?

Well, that's because last time we did this, and that was over 15 years ago, we saw a drop in ridership the few first few months.

People had to get used to it.

So instead of us trying to really overestimate what we might collect, we did take into account we probably will see a dip in ridership the first few months, and then it will even out for the first year.

Next year when we come back, you'll see a bigger number.

You'll see a higher number on that because we'll get that ridership back.

And again, we we also get federal assistance and state.

Without those two, uh, we have a really tough time delivering the service.

Um last our operating income.

We're doing a really good job of getting more and more revenue from our advertising.

Our public affairs staff is really getting it.

I don't want to, I'll use the term aggressive, but I don't mean it in a bad way.

I mean they are they are going and taking every inch that we can put advertising on and getting that money because if you remember, we have a requirement, we have to raise 10 percent for operating budget, non-tax, non-fair, and just with what they're bringing in and advertising, it almost covers that 10 percent.

That in addition to the interest earnings that we get uh from the money that we've been able to save meets that 10% requirement without any any other help.

So I hope that trend continues, but we'll make sure we point that out because I know that's a concern for some counselors, and then on the expenditure side, these are the biggest projects.

It's no secret our BRT.

We we are on Washington Street, and we yeah, we're making a mess, but I'll tell you it is going to be worth it.

Um if you um our director Wilson told us that he was on the purple line, he got down here quicker than a lot of folks in the cars because they were able to go right down in that in that bus lane only, and that's the same thing for the the blue line.

And it it it in additional, we we we're doing some other work, some of that's gonna be facilities.

I just told you about the garage.

We continue to upgrade the fleet.

Um we're buying more hybrids, and and the thing we like to point out about the hybrids is those hybrids are using Allison Gen Flex right here from Speedway.

We are buying so we are buying local and they're putting them in those buses, and they're some of the best buses out there, uh, not only in Indianapolis but across the country.

And again, talked about safety and security.

Um we continue to spend money on making sure, like for instance, bus drivers.

We're putting the if you go on the bus now, the drivers is right there, but we're putting security doors on there.

So those folks have the opportunity to shut that door and feel safe.

Now we don't want to obviously make them feel like they're separate, you know, separated from the passengers, but we have found out that the doors that we put on during COVID they have saved some of our drivers from injury.

So we're putting them on all the buses.

And then this is just the capital program funding where where the majority of the money comes from.

140 point 142.4 million capital grants, meaning those are federal dollars coming to Indianapolis that are spending on our roads or buses.

20.5 million is cash that we put in, and that's mostly our income tax.

And then 94.6 million is coming from the 125 million dollar bond issue we just took out that you approved, gosh, almost year and a half, two years ago.

So we are leveraging every dollar and more, those federal dollars that to bring to Indianapolis to put into those streets, sidewalks, to to the drainage systems, and of course our good transit system.

And finally, um, this is just the debt service.

We have four bonds that we're still paying debt on.

And the description, the biggest one, of course, was the 125 million that we just took out for the blue line.

That's 10 million dollars a year for 20 years.

The 2018 will be rolling off a couple years, so that debt service will go away.

So we can put more of that money back into either service or back into our capital projects.

And now I'm gonna turn it back to our CEO.

Thank you, Bart.

Uh, I wanted to talk a few minutes about the service that we provide.

Our route network uh is designed to bring the most service to the higher number of people.

And I know we've showed this uh map before, but I wanted to just highlight once again this is our route map overlaid on top of areas that um have the highest levels of social vulnerability.

So the brighter colors on this map, the yellows, oranges, and the pinks indicate areas with higher vulnerability when assessed against the list of criteria that are shown to the right.

Um I like to point it out just to show that we are reaching the areas with not only the highest employment density and population density, but the areas of most need.

We revisit the system network about every five years through what's called a comprehensive operational analysis.

Uh the last COA was done in 2022, and we last made significant changes to the network last October in line with that COA, and that was to coincide with the purple line.

Besides that operational analysis, we also conduct an onboard survey every five years.

Our on buy onboards on board survey, easy for me to say, uh, works to examine our travel behavior characteristics and the demographic characteristics of indigo riders so that we can tailor our service to to the folks that are riding.

The last one of the that survey was conducted in late 2022.

It showed us that our typical rider is an African American woman, ages 35 to 49.

Uh, she's employed but likely has a household income of less than 25,000 a year.

She rides the bus five days a week to and from work.

This information was instrumental in helping us understand our rider as we moved forward with those fair conversations uh this past year.

Uh next, I know we often get asked about ridership, of course.

Uh wanted to just show a couple graph graphs.

This shows our overall ridership for our entire network.

Um, as we have talked about every area, COVID was a big hit to us, uh, but with the after a low in 2021, we have been on a steady increase, and we're currently at about 70 percent of our 2019 ridership and moving towards full recovery.

Our BRT ridership is also strong with the opening of the purple line in October 2024.

Ridership on the two BRT lines has steadily increased, um, approaching nearly 200,000 riders a month.

We've started combining the two.

You'll see the purple dots there on those months October past.

Um, because the purple and the red line operate on the exact same path from downtown up to 38th and park, people join one or the other bus indiscriminately.

So it doesn't make a whole lot of sense anymore in that section to report red or purple because people don't specifically choose one or the other.

Um so we're starting to look at them combined and and comparing them to the to the before condition.

So with ridership as one of our strategic plan focus areas, we then of course continue to build out our network to attract new riders and continue to provide excellent service.

Um I wanted to highlight some of the federal support.

I know Bart talked about it briefly.

We've been tremendously fortunate to have the financial support of our program from the federal level.

The slide shows some of the more significant funding awards we've received over the past year or so.

Umwards that will carry us through 2025 and into 26.

We have more than half of our capital program budget supported by grant funding, both formula and competitive.

Those competitive dollars, especially could have easily gone to other transit agencies around the country, but our grants team has been able to bring them to Indianapolis.

So through the course of implementing this capital program, which you know has been significant, we've successfully leveraged those local dollars to attract over half a billion federal dollars back to Indianapolis.

In addition to that, we assign local budget every year to make improvements to our city's infrastructure.

Every year we set aside at least a million dollars of our local dollars and leverage that to attract millions of additional dollars in grants from programs like areas of persistent poverty or the Indianapolis neighborhood infrastructure partnership.

This money is used to improve local bus stops across the city.

Many of the stops we've improved are on Indianapolis's high injury network, and all of them are locations where accessibility improvements are needed.

In addition to that, those annual improvements to our local stops.

We have recently partnered with DPW on a couple roadway projects that benefit our transit users.

One of those just opened a few months ago that was to convert Michigan and New York streets from one-way to two-way operation on the Near East Side.

We provide a technical support and four and a half million dollars in a financial contribution to make that happen.

We also participate on the city's Vision Zero task force.

Of course, the projects most people are familiar with are our BRT projects.

I'm sure you know we opened the Purple Line in October 2024 on schedule and on budget.

The total project cost was 188 million, with more than 100 million of that going towards public non-transit specific infrastructure that will benefit all users.

And then the blue line reached 100% design completion this past year.

We executed our 150 million dollar grant with the Federal Transit Administration in January and started construction this spring.

When it's done in 2028, the blue line will transform Washington Street in the same way that the purple line has transformed 38th Street.

For those of you who may not be familiar with that transformation and what's happened on East 38th Street, these photos show the impact of that.

So a few years ago, you may have walked through or driven through one of those little lakes to get to where you were going.

If you were a bus rider, you might have had to stand in a giant puddle waiting for your bus.

Now you can walk on bike and sidewalks and paths that had only been kind of cow pass or rudded dirt.

The roadway's been reconstructed, not just repaved, but in a lot of places, completely reconstructed from the bottom up with installed with proper drainage.

And your bus ride will not only be more reliably on time because of the dedicated lanes, but your total trip time will be reduced by about 25%.

As a reminder, the blue line is our third and final BRT.

It runs east-west through downtown, mostly on Washington Street.

It will also, like the purple line, bring infrastructure improvements all along there, including upgraded sidewalks, curb ramps, new and improved crosswalks, resurfaced roadways, etc.

You've seen out there also the entire road reconstruction again from the bottom up, making sure that that payment can last for many, many years.

There's also a tremendous amount of drainage in that project.

The construction's underway pretty much across the corridor.

We are very sorry.

As we said, it's going to be worth it.

We're anticipating a fall 2028 opening.

So bear with us.

We encourage everyone to sign up for our weekly construction updates at our project website.

We have a newsletter and our website also that provides segment by segment information about the construction progress and upcoming traffic impacts for anyone, car, bus, navigating the corridor in any way.

And we also have a couple construction liaisons, folks who have been working with us over the past couple years to get to know the stakeholders.

They are part of the construction management team, so if there are ever any problems, questions, concerns about construction, they know the area, they know how to get to the people that can fix whatever the problem is.

So I hope everyone will take advantage of that resource.

Quick look ahead.

Besides our BRT projects, we continue to make improvements to our local bus stops and invest in our fleet and facilities.

Bart mentioned our new buses have Allison transmission.

They also have Cummins engines.

So a little extra bonus.

Some of the things that you can expect from us in 2026, we will be implementing fare increases on both our bus and our Indigo Access Service.

Our board passed that this past July.

We're also going to be making fare equipment upgrades mid next year.

One of the things we heard throughout the process of the fare increase was that the fare validators do not reliably work, and that there is confusion on the BRT lines because we're asking people to validate on the platforms.

So we will be upgrading all of our fare collection equipment.

We will be moving fare validators off the platform and onto the BRT vehicles so that it is much more intuitive for people.

And we're going to be adding new ways to pay.

Carrie Black's team is out there already, and that will be ongoing through January when the increase goes into effect.

And we'll be working too on education campaigns to curtail the number of people who are knowingly evading fares.

A few more words about our workforce.

Earlier this year, we received a safety award from the Transportation Security Administration.

I wanted to highlight representatives from the TSA honored us with prestigious gold standard award for safety in its bus system.

That was this past February.

The Gold Standard Award is the highest level of recognition TSA can give to a transit agency for achieving top scores in security and emergency preparedness.

We're only one of five, we're one of only five transit agencies nationwide to receive this recognition.

And then internally, and I swear this is my last slide.

Internally, we have a number of ish initiatives to grow our workforce and support our teammates.

We've recently updated our fair chance program.

It was previously called our second chance program.

It's a hiring initiative designed to provide employment opportunities to qualified individuals with a criminal record by offering individualized assessment of their background rather than automatically denying them on past convictions.

We adopted it in 2021.

We've had some bumps and lessons learned, and we're excited to be modifying the policy.

I think we're gonna have a lot of success that's gonna support not only our team in managing the program, but in the folks that come to work for us and helping support them.

We also are continuing our operator mentorship program and our mechanic apprenticeship program.

We recently graduated our first cohort of mechanics apprentices.

And it was three apprentices that embarked on a two-year endeavor to get their bus maintenance technician certificate.

They spent thousands of hours in the classroom lectures, on the job training.

They received a U.S.

Department of Labor certificate and an Ivy Tech certificate with 24 hours of college course credits.

So we were super excited to be able to offer that to our folks who uh we have a lot of people who join Indigo with the hopes of growing in the company and and really turning it into a career and a way to improve their lives.

So I love that we're able to give them that opportunity.

And with that, I think that is all I have.

Thank you so much.

I'm really grateful for the opportunity to share our good news.

I'm really excited about um what we have to look forward to, and I am happy to answer any questions.

Thank you so much, CEO.

Counselors are gonna open up our questions.

Two questions, and we're gonna move on to the next counselor.

Anyone have any questions?

Councilor Brown?

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Try to be brief.

Um first question, CFO Brown, thanks for mentioning, you know, uh, I'm glad you're doing the hard things and coming up with a budget that makes sense, especially in light of what's going on with the federal and state government and tax revenues, et cetera.

Uh you mentioned benefits expenditures going down, and that's helping with the budget.

That concerns me a little bit since benefits are really important for workers, right?

Um can you share a little bit more detail about that?

So I know how concerned I should be about that.

Yes, thanks for asking that question.

We we are not cutting any benefits.

What what what we have done is um people are choosing uh we we're offering more plans.

And so newer folks are going on a higher deductible, but they're getting a savings plan with that.

So our younger folks, like I said, our the folks like me, you know what we're retiring, we're getting younger folks who are healthier and want to save money, so they're choosing the cheaper plan.

It's a good plan still.

Plus, we also have an on-site clinic.

So um so no benefits are being taken away.

It's just that we are just managing better, and we've we're using and we our new uh HR team is really hitting our our uh providers harder and making them um give us deliver what they promised on the contract, and that's proving out to be our our costs are going down.

Thank you.

I was hoping that was the case, but just want to make sure I got that.

Um I guess there's a quick comment to end, which is you know, I I appreciate that.

And you know, I appreciate that we're budgeting appropriately, knowing we're gonna see a dip in ridership, and I just want everybody to think about that average customer that we had on the slides, and you know, so this is somebody who's going to and from work who maybe now will not afford to go to and from work.

And you know, this is somebody who is making less than $25,000 a year but working, so they're working poor, and we're asking them for more money in the city while we continue to give you know land beneficial contracts to billionaires.

This is a choice that we're making as a city.

I don't blame Indigo for doing what you have to do given the tools available, but um I am asking the the council to consider what we can do to help stop decisions like that from having to be made.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

Counselor Hart.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

I do have two.

Um you said something that caught my my ear.

Um CFO Brown, which is uh on the red line.

You said that roads are needing a repair and that they're old and that they were you know built in 2019.

I guess the the concern that I have for that and my question around that is if six years is old and we're starting to build, we've already built out the purple line.

Uh, how is that going to scale towards um maintenance at in these future budgets?

Well, that's I'm getting a flashing light here.

Okay, there we go.

Thank you for that question.

Um if I said old, I I misspoke, but it is it it's been in service for going on six years now, and with buses going up and down, and um and our CEO happens also to be an engineer.

So I'm gonna let her talk a little bit about you know the life of a road.

We recognize that we cannot wait ten years to address you know small problems.

It's an old, you know, penny save, what is that uh pennies spent?

It's a dollar saved or something.

I can't remember how it goes.

But anyway, we we want to spend money now as we see issues and not wait for a 10 years.

But I'll again I'll turn it over CEO who can explain reasons why it's good to invest during the lifetime of uh of a road instead of waiting ten or twelve years.

Yeah, and I'll uh I'll make it quick because I'm guessing you all understand.

But the um it's simply it's a maintenance, right?

It's that it we're not talking about having to reconstruct the payment that's there.

We're talking about sealing cracks, um, fixing if there's potholes developing, getting in there early.

So it's all it's a maintenance budget that we've assigned to make sure that everything lasts.

The bus I can't remember exactly how much the bus is weigh, but I remember they're the equivalent of two African elephants.

It's like hundreds of thousands of pounds.

So they do wear very heavily on the asphalt.

Okay.

I respect that.

Uh just concerned the question was how does it scale towards the future?

So uh if you don't have an answer, that's fine, but we'll have to look at those things moving forward that we will have more maintenance because of BRT, and that will impact the maintenance budget going forward.

Uh the second question uh is on is related to SB1.

I mean it's something that we're all talking about all the time.

And maybe you can clarify this for me.

And I may have it wrong, so I'm not not considering that I'm right.

I'm looking at you as the expertise because you are the ones impacted by this just as much as we are.

Uh and it has been made to my um knowledge that in SB1 the co it or sorry, the property tax portion that goes to you, the dedicated portion is removed in 2028, and that is something that you don't automatically get.

Is that a true statement?

And if so, uh that's a big number in here.

It was 47 million.

How does that how do you plan for that?

That I'm not we didn't we didn't read it that way.

Our property taxes will be handled just like every other um local unit of government.

Um yeah, so we uh we actually are looking exactly what the impact is.

We're doing a well, we're doing a five, ten and a twenty-year projection.

Um and we're still we're still in the um process uh of looking at that.

We do expect probably to see a hit in 2028.

Um we don't know what that hit will be.

We don't think it's going to be in the millions of dollars, it could be less than a million dollars, and but we are again uh addressing that through looking at how how to budget through that.

But I I not read and know and our folks that looked watched this at the state level uh during the session didn't bring it attention that our property taxes was in danger of going away.

Okay, yeah, and like I said, I could be wrong, right?

I will tell you the income tax though.

That's that's the piece that we need to address uh because we are right now our income tax is a separate special tax.

Um under the new legislation, we are now lumped in the county in the income tax cap.

Uh most counties, the special taxes outside that cap for some reason they included uh for Marion County to include our special tax within the county's one percent maximum cap.

So that's the one that uh if anything's going away, it might be the special income tax that's gonna be treated as the county income tax after 2028.

Okay, again, the question of that is how are you guys planning planning for that?

And it's just chant changing state law or is it working through the we are it's a combination of we are going to ask to be treated like every other county that our special tax be outside the cap.

We think it was an oversight.

We don't think it was intentional.

Um that's the first thing we'll ask.

However, if that is um if they do not change it, we will have to come to the council every year and ask you to make sure you you approve that point two five in the county, not the city, but the county one percent.

Okay, thank you.

That's helpful.

Yep.

Thank you.

Counselors, any other questions.

I have a few myself.

Who is taking the the lead on the um projects that are uh safe streets for all?

Is it you guys got the grant, but is DPW taking the lead on that?

I believe there are actually two different grants.

One we're leading, and one the Department of Public Works is leading.

Is that correct?

There's one that is like traffic cameras and safety.

Um I believe we're leading that one, and then DPW is leading the other one that's more construction planning for construction and conversions of streets.

You know which is which like dollar wise.

No, like the name of the grant.

Is it the Safe Streets for All?

Is that the infrastructure one?

Let's see.

I think they're both safe streets for all.

Uh oh, I do have it here.

So there's 238,464 dollars in Safe Streets for All funding from Federal Highway to collect and analyze the near missed data in the high injury rate areas.

So that's when we're leading, and then there's 19 million dollars in safe streets for all funding that the city of Minneapolis is managing, and that's complete street upgrades.

We're providing a 50% local match.

Okay, thank you.

Yep.

Um appreciate everything that you guys have presented to us.

I've seen a lot of communication on social media on behalf of Indigo.

I would only suggest that you guys continue to probably increase the amount of social media posts with the before and after.

We need to continue to educate the public on the infrastructure that you guys have done in helping this city that is under underfunded woefully on infrastructure.

Uh any questions from the public.

Seeing none, thank you for your time.

We'll see you back here in a few weeks.

Health and Hospital Corporation, get on the move.

Counselors, just to be clear, I wasn't limiting you to two questions.

I just wanted to spread the love in case you had more.

You'd come back to it, all right.

Okay, I haven't had too much.

CEO Babcock, the floor is yours when you're ready.

Uh well, I'll do introductions while uh James is loading up.

So with me today, um, one is I'm Paul Babcock, President CEO of Health and Hospital.

To my left, I have James Simpson, uh CFO and proud Ben Davis graduate.

Um behind me is uh Dr.

Lisa Harris, uh CEO of Eskenazi, um, Dr.

Dan O'Donnell, chief of the IEMS service, and then Dr.

Virginia Kane is on her way.

Um, as well as we have in attendance one of our board members, the council appointee Mike O'Brien.

So just wanted to point those out for the folks here before we get started.

All right.

Well, thank you.

Mr.

Chair, members of the committee look forward to being in front of you again today uh talk about our budget.

And you'll see through this presentation that all of the great work that we do at Health and Hospital as the safety net system for Marion County, as well as across the state.

Um just a general overview if you go to that slide.

Um, our mission is to promote and protect the health of everyone in the community and provide health care with a focus on the underserved.

You know, we have two statutorily created divisions as our entity is created um by state a law in 1949.

And those two statutory divisions are the Marion County Public Health Department and Eskenazi Health.

We have two service divisions, which is I the ambulance service and as well as the long-term care division.

Um, and just want to highlight what this budget funds before I turn it over to James.

Well, it continues to fund obviously patient care here in Marion County as well as across the state.

Um, construction of the new public health lab, which it's very nice to go after Indigo since that 38th Street corridor is a part of our headquarters and we're helping to improve it.

We like to call 38th Street uh our public health corridor that we're working to continue to improve.

You know, if we've got the Grande Clinic on the East uh 38th Street, 38th in Arlington, and then the West Side Clinic at 38th and Muller.

Um, and then a lot of things in between.

And then additionally, this uh budget does fund the construction of the new IEMS headquarters.

Current headquarters is in the west side.

Um, however, it is not purposely built for the ambulance service, and we thought it would be important to build uh a facility that supports the great work that IEMS does.

And so, with that, I'll turn it over to James to go over the budget.

Sorry.

Uh good evening, counselors, and thank you for the opportunity to present our uh HHC's 2026 budget, and thank you, Paul.

First, I'm going to cover HHC's governmental enterprise budgets at a very high level before diving into the general fund budget.

The general fund budget is HHC's primary governmental fund budget, and then eventually turn it back to Paul and our divisional leaders to discuss some of the essential services each division is able to provide with this proposed budget.

Uh, first, I do want to point out that both our general fund and our Eskenazzi Health Fund do both project approximately 25 million dollar deficit.

So we do want to point that out.

Um, it's not ideal.

The challenges that HHC faced in 2026 and after, I will discuss in just a few slides.

Um, as we've reported in the past, HHC continues to work through a multi-year financial sustainability project.

We've identified our long-term goal is to maintain a day's cash on hand of 240 days.

Uh and we believe that with this uh 240 days cash on hand, it ensures HHC's ability to manage through the ups and downs and the changes and challenges with both local, state, and federal level pressures on revenues.

And the 240 days also helps us maintain a strong general obligation debt rating, uh current rating through Moody's is AA2.

And to achieve this day's cash on hand of 240 days, HHC has identified the need to identify approximately 450 million dollars in run rate improvement over the next five years.

And that in order to achieve that, we're we're tasking all divisions with coming up with run rate improvements.

We have annual targets, and I will I'm proud to report that we did hit our targets in this 2026 budget.

This number, the run rate improvement number, 450 million dollars will likely increase as the one big beautiful bill act um rolls out, and so we do expect the 450 million dollar number to potentially increase.

On here, you do see um the general fund budget of 406 million, the special revenue health first Indiana fund budget of 6.1 million, bond retirement, uh, the smaller one that we do levy a tax on of 2.3 million, bond retirement Eskenazi Health that's the hospital campus debt, 54 million, 54.2 million, which we do not levy a tax on that, cumulative building fund of 38 million, Eskenazi Health of 1.3 billion, long-term care of just under 1 billion for their operating budget.

So all other funds, excluding the small bond retirement debt fund, is in balance except for the general fund and Eskenazi Health Fund.

HHC expects to cut our deficits on the general fund and Eskenazi Health Fund in half in 2027, and then our expectation is to be able to come back to this committee with balanced budgets on all funds in 2028.

The next slide, we compare the 2025 approved budget versus the 2026 proposed budget.

And so what I'd like to point out here without going into detail on every on every fund is if you look at the governmental funds, every fund except for the bond retirement Eskenazi fund, which that is you know scheduled payments.

The the 2026 proposed budget is lower than the 2025 approved budget.

I'd also like to point out uh similar to Indigo, our personal services, we do propose an increase to personal services.

We have merit increases budgeted in 2026.

And that's how we've been able to find some of our our run rate improvements on the expense side, and we're also looking at all all revenue streams as well to try to maximize those.

The Marion County Public Health Department.

One other big thing I'd like to point out here is the Health First Indiana funding, which that was a challenge we faced.

Their funding went from a little over 23 million to we're estimating it to be a little over 6 million in 2026.

Um that was part of the state's annual uh budget appropriation process.

And I I'm happy to report uh with that decrease, the health department did not contribute to that 25 million dollar deficit on the general fund.

So they were able to transfer employees back to the general fund that had moved over to the Health First Indiana Fund.

But then the one the one downside is they did um award 10 million dollars in community grants as part of the Health First Indiana Fund, and now with with the decrease in funding, those grant dollars will go like will go away in 2026.

So next, the challenges and uh challenges and opportunities.

So for health and hospital corporation, the challenge is we had a multiple loss or reduction of revenues in 2026.

Um at the state level, we did lose 38 million in health care for the indigent, what we would call HCI in the past.

Um, and I'll I'll talk a little bit more about that in just a few slides.

There was a reduction in hospital dish due to the consolidated appropriation act of 2021.

Um, that is if a patient has Medicaid and then any other potential payer uh insurance, they cannot be calculated in the in the in the dish upper payment limit.

So uh Dr.

Harris could likely speak more on that, but that is one uh revenue challenge that we faced in 2026.

There's also a reduction in of hospital dish in general of 70 million, and that's due to the timing of of Eskenazi hospital dish.

Every other year we get a couple of partial payments and one final payment.

2025 is one of the years where we got two partials and a final.

2026, we only expect to get one final payment.

So we're going from 120 million in dish down to approximately 50 million in dish for 2026.

And then, as I spoke to briefly on the previous slide, there was a reduction in health first Indiana funding, uh, and that that reduction was 16.7 million.

Um so one of the health department's run rate improvements was to identify how to continue to budget without incurring a deficit with that loss in H HFI funding, and they were able to achieve that.

Then we've uh we've we've faced similar to everyone else impacts from uh tariffs or tar tariffs, and then also just supply prices in general.

Uh, in 2025, we have had vendors say, you know, we've we've held off price increase as long as we can.

Um one in particular, they they uh ended up increasing our price and supplies five percent.

So we've factored all that into our 2026 budget, that increase in supplies.

A federal and state legislative changes uh including Medicaid enrollment.

And there I would I would talk to some of the key pieces of the the Big Beautiful Bill Act OBBA.

We expect a lot of those to impact our budget in 2027 and after.

And the the key ones in there that you know that I see are the work and community engagement requirements, those uh go into effect December 31st to 26, increased eligibility redeterminations, that's January 1st to 27, immigrant eligibility restrictions, that's October 1st to 26, and then provider tax limitations also on October 1st, 2026.

So those are uh challenges that we're keeping on our radar.

Now the opportunities.

Um HHC, we're continuing to maximize our our tax levies to the extent possible after loss of HCI.

We're continuing to advocate for HHC on federal and state uh special revenue programs.

Um we're uh keeping a close eye on the state directed payment plan and how that will impact Eskenazi.

And then another opportunity that that we did in 2026 is from the hospital perspective, what we what we've tasked the Eskenazi team with is um work towards a break-even budget from an operating standpoint.

In order to do that, we've tried to eliminate some of the hurdles, and so on the general fund, we've committed to fund their capital because we we also agree like with Indigo, don't delay maintenance.

And so we're the general fund has committed 50 million dollars in capital improvements for the hospital that that we will fund uh through operating transfers.

We are going to transfer the Eskenazi Health Campus debt from the general fund to the debt service fund.

That's approximately 44 million.

And then also we've committed 25 million.

We're calling like HCI replacement transfers of 25 million.

So they've we've lost 38, we've committed 25 in addition in transfers to the hospital to kind of ease that loss in 2026.

And then when I talked about run rate improvements earlier, our our target as a whole was 60 million in 2026.

And I'm proud to report that we we found and were able to recognize eight over 86 million in run rate improvements and the 2026 budget.

So just a few more slides for me, and I'll turn it back over to Paul.

One slide, you I think we introduced this slide the first time last year.

The general fund's very complex.

We have a lot of things in and out.

So what we've tried to do with this slide is to just show the funds flow.

On the left side, you see the sources of funds coming into the general fund, and on the right side, we have the uses of funds.

And then in the middle, you do see that the deficit that we showed the 24.9 million.

Is it's you know predicted that the rates will likely drop some.

We we have benefited from higher interest rates last few years, and then uses of funds.

We have our headquarters operating expenses and grants that are processed out of our general fund, the health department operating capital and grants, debt service, uh Eskenazi Health Foundation support, lease payments, operating and capital expenses for Eskenazi, the cumulative building fund support transfers from the general fund, and then also on the long-term care to get those long-term care operating transfers.

The general fund does have to put up intergovernmental transfers or IGTs, and that amount uh projected in 2026 is just over 65 million.

Now I'll talk through the impact of the HCI, the cut in HCI at the state level.

So HHC is not levying any new taxes.

But one thing that we have done, and we've continued to do this for many years, we've always advertised our maximum levy on our general fund.

And so you'll see here from 2025 to 2026, our average max levy went from just under 160 million to just over 165 million.

That change is 3.7%.

When you take out low it, which this um counselor Hart, I think this was part of your question.

We because we do expect to lose low it in 2028 as well.

That's that's one thing that we have on our radar.

When you take that out in 2025, 2026, same amount, the 10 10.6 million.

Then in 2025, there was a state statute where we had to give a $35 million property tax credit to get to our working levy.

So in 2025, our working levy before circuit breaker was $114 million, and now in 2026, we no longer have that $35 million HCI property tax credit.

So with that excluded, our working levy does increase, and we also expect circuit breaker to increase as well.

So now our net working general fund levy is that bottom line where we expect it to go from $100 million to $131 million.

That $35 million circuit breaker or uh property tax credit, we don't expect to receive the full $35 million.

The projection show we'll we'll likely collect about $29 million of that.

So going from the $38 to the $29, it does impact the health department or HHC around $9 million.

And from we've worked with policy analytics to look at how does this impact the system as a whole, and for the $29 million, um, I have this number here, just wanted to make sure I'm factually accurate.

Uh $12.7 million would be generated from properties that are not at their circuit breaker.

So they they would not um they would contribute there, and then the balance would come from the the bigger pie, all the units, the distribution.

That impact is 16.3 million.

And so when I look at us, we're losing approximately 9 million, a little little less than 1% from what we're seeing, the other units, it's about a 1% impact on other units taxes too.

So we did want to be transparent here with that impact on uh HHC losing that HCI funding.

Um this was not our preference to to lose the funding.

Obviously, we we worked with the state to try to keep it in the budget, but we were not able to do that.

My last slide is the upper payment limit, and this is really related to our long-term care fund.

This is one that we I believe we started this three or four years ago.

We wanted to be very transparent around the upper payment limit that comes into the long-term care fund, and then you know the dollars that end up getting transferred back to our general fund, but we project, and just that ultimate net impact to HHC.

And so on the far right is our 2026 projections.

We're estimating UPL on our long-term care fund of 186 million.

Long-term care is expecting to need uh just a little under 40 million of that.

So we project to transfer 147 million back to our general fund.

Now that's not all benefit to H to the general fund.

We have to put up IGT to get those dollars, and so we do have approximately 65 million of IGTs to get the the upper payment limit funds there.

So the net benefit before we factor in any other long-term care service like uh programs that we have on our general fund, it's it's just under 82 million.

And so when you see that difference when we when we talk about run rate improvement, one one thing that we can point to here is the 25 budget to 26 budget.

We've tasked long-term care to how can they contribute to to helping us find this 450 450 million of run rate improvement.

So when I see their their transfer going from just under 65 to just under 82 million, that's that that shows that they are in their operations are improving as well.

We're able to transfer a little bit back, a little bit more back to the general fund there to help us maintain that long-term financial sustainability, which you know is our goal of the 240 days cash on hand.

So now I will turn it back over to Paul.

Thank you, James.

Um, I'm here to briefly talk about our office of cultural excellence.

Um, from a background standpoint, we had to change um the name of that department as well as committee earlier this year due to a flurry of changes from the federal and state level that impact us.

Um, as you know, as James has gone through thoroughly, a significant portion of our funding comes from Medicaid, Medicare, federal sources that are run through the state.

Um, and so we just wanted to make sure that we continue to do the work, um, but we're trying to do it in a different, more collective, whole holistic way.

And so that's where we created the Office of Cultural Excellence.

It's run by Dr.

Kimberly MacI McElroy Jones.

She's our chief culture officer.

She's here if you need any questions you'd like to ask her.

But what we've done over the last three or four years under Kimberley's leadership is we put into place um better ways for the corporation to identify diverse suppliers, but also economic impact and some um supplier diversity to really be able to spread the significant size of our budget out to more smaller businesses across Marion County.

Um, and so this is the result of our initial, I think our best effort at the moment, and this is our supplier diversity spend for 2024.

And you can see the total applicable spend because obviously can't count rent, uh leases, Medicaid, Medicare.

We have a significant amount of stuff that you just doesn't count.

We're um almost 100 million dollars that's applicable, and we've got about 21 million of it dedicated.

So that's about 23% spend of the applicable spend for what we do.

And obviously, we want to continue to increase that because we think it's a part of actually our mission in the sense that if people are economically better well off, then their health is better.

Um, and so that's really something that's very important to us, and we're working towards doing that.

And so if you have questions about that, be more than happy to either answer them offline or have Dr.

Jones come up here uh and talk some more.

Um, so the next slide, we'll talk about our long-term care division.

Um, HHC's long-term care division, I think is a critical part of our identity is also I think how we do our mission across the state.

You can see that in 2020, we had 34 facilities, and our average was 1.6.

So the left side of the column is the one star.

So we had 21 facilities, and now you can see today in 2025, we have 72 facilities, and we have one one star, and we have 25 stars.

Um, and so you our average is better than the state and the nation, and that's the quality of care we provide.

Um we have statistics about Marion County if there are specific questions about that.

I will say one of the challenges for Marion County is staffing, and so that does impact our rating.

And the reason that there is a staffing challenge is there's so much competition for health care entities within Marion County.

You've got the big five hospitals, um, you've got different long-term care facilities, different care facilities that compete for a finite amount of employees.

Uh next slide, please, James.

So, just as a brief, this is more of the quality metrics.

Um, so three 13 facilities are awarded the silver and seven the bronze, AHCA national quality award.

So this is these are pretty prestigious awards.

They're very difficult to get.

They take a year of planning and filling out forms and showing that you're implementing programs that have quality metrics to them that actually really have a difficult impact on someone's health, and it's then they're scored by a national panel.

And so we're really proud of this.

And you know, we want to thank ASC for really managing to this level.

I think that's exemplary and shows what we at HHC believe our mission is, and that's to provide high quality care.

We going back over the two 2025 state averages, HHC's average year to date is 3.7.

Um you can see in 2024 it was 4.5.

State average is six year to date, and 2024 is 6.05.

And these are deficiencies.

And so what happens is the state and the feds come in and do surveys of the nursing homes, and we actually have less than the state average and less than the national averages of deficiencies when people come into our facilities to inspect them.

So that's something to be proud of.

It shows that we're doing the really the good work.

And then finally, we have a nurse training program because we obviously we have a staffing challenge.

And so we work with ASC to train people to go from LPNs to RNs, which then hopefully they stay in our facilities, but we pay for their education.

We think that's a good way for us to give back, but to also improve the workforce both in Marion County and across the state of Indiana.

And so with that, I'm more than happy to answer questions, but I'd like to turn it over to Dr.

Lisa Harris to talk about the good work that Eskenazi does.

Thank you, Mr.

Babcock.

Knowing that funding cuts are top of mind, I'm going to focus this evening on where we stand in terms of addressing Eskenazi health financial challenges.

And as I do that, I think it's important to keep in mind our strengths as we rise to the challenges that we're facing.

Among the most important of these strengths is our high-value model of care, focused on achieving good health outcomes while at the same time keeping the cost of care low.

And we manage this by focusing upstream on prevention, primary care, mental health care to reduce the burden to patients and the cost to the system of end-stage chronic disease.

This slide uh demonstrates that focus.

And you can see the blue lines represent the number of visits across the various departments of our health system in 2016, and then the green lines below show the volumes in 2024.

And it shows, first of all, the large volumes and the significant growth that we've managed in primary care and mental health care over the past eight years, to the point that at this time we're almost delivering as many mental health care visits as we are primary care visits.

Recently, we've also added screening for the social drivers of health in all of these sites of care.

And in partnership with the American County Public Health Department and a host of other community partners, we're working to address these needs because we know that it's these factors.

Access to nutritional food, stable housing, transportation, for example, that contribute the most to health and longevity and decrease the cost of health care.

Our work in mental health also, it's the next slide, please.

Thank you, James.

Our work in mental health also extends beyond the walls of our hospital and clinics with a 24-7 mobile crisis team that's funded as part of our newly designated certified community behavioral health clinic, as well as our work within the assessment and intervention center.

And funded by the Indianapolis ARPA grant through our Ackerman Center, we're working to grow the mental health workforce.

Next slide, thanks.

So not only do we have the right model of care, but we're working we're on stronger ground than we've ever been.

We have more commercially insured individuals using our services.

Over the past two decades, we've gone from 6% to 52 percent of randomly selected individuals across our community rating us as the best or one of the top providers in our local market.

In a study conducted by America's Essential Hospitals in 2020, we emerged as a leader in terms of the trust our patients place in us.

And enabled by the move to the new hospital campus and adoption of an enterprise-wide electronic health record, we've improved operational performance significantly over the past eight years, resulting in us reducing our need for additional support beyond what we derive from patient care revenue and the supplemental government programs that recognize our role in caring for large numbers of uninsured patients.

So look, it's it's a good thing uh that we've done this work because as James noted, uh as we look to the future, we're facing as strong headwinds uh as we've ever seen.

Uh James already covered the loss of uh 38 million in uh health HDI funding from the state, the impact of the uh Federal Consolidation Appropriations Act, and then anticipated changes to Medicaid enrollment and reimbursement for services that are included as part of the Federal Budget Bill.

This is important to know that this is not unfamiliar territory for us.

We've never been in a position where we were adequately uh reimbursed uh for the services that we provide.

So the uh mountain may be a little steeper, but it's been an uphill climb uh all along.

Um so, in terms of strategy, at the federal level, we continue to work as an alliance of safety net health systems to get into legislation a definition, protecting safety net uh hospitals from additional funding cuts.

At the state level, we were instrumental in advocating for the state-directed payments for Medicaid, allowing more local control over how funds are allocated.

And in initial discussions with FSSA, it looks as though we may uh be able to anticipate an enhanced rate compared to what we has been the case historically.

So, as James said, we're looking uh closely at that.

We're also working to make sure that individuals who are eligible for Medicaid get enrolled and stay enrolled.

And we're poised to meet the requirement set forth by HHC that we improve operational performance by another 35 million for 2026 compared to uh 2025, all in the interest of continuing to put us on an increasingly sustainable course into the future.

We're going to be achieving this both by increasing revenue and decreasing expense.

We've test each department within our our health system uh with identifying a 3.5 percent improvement in their departmental operations and having vetted the more than 300 initiatives that were submitted and having assigned a level of confidence uh to each of these initiatives, we're projecting over 39 million in financial operating improvement for 2026 at this point.

A significant part of this will mean a focus on increasing access to specialty care services.

And this will allow us to attract more commercially insured individuals, also to entertain uh commercial contracts to offset the increased uncompensated care that we anticipate providing.

All of this is in the interest of delivering more care while continuing to keep the cost of care low.

This is how we deliver on our mission, and it's our commitment to that mission and drawing on what we've already achieved that gives us the will and the confidence that we that we need in our ability to navigate both current and future challenges.

So it's that and the reminder of the responsibility that comes with the critical role we play within our community.

So thank you.

And I will turn it over to Dr.

O'Donnell.

Thank you, Dr.

Harris.

Good evening, counselors.

Um I have one slide, so just be prepared for that.

Um I do want to take that one slide to highlight of all of all the wonderful things we're doing at Indianapolis EMS and with Health and Hospital and other partners.

I really want to highlight three things uh tonight to speak specifically about IMS.

First is our run volume.

And again, uh for the last few years you've seen me mention this, but I just want to remind others is that uh much like others in public safety, we've seen almost a logarithmic increase in calls for service for EMS specifically since the pandemic.

And again, we've continued to meet those uh that increase in run volume uh through our people.

Again, our people continue to work extremely hard, uh working uh over 400 runs, 400 incidents a day uh in 2025.

Uh, and they're doing this in a way that's extremely uh compassionate with excellence in clinical care, and again, doing what's right for the patient.

So I'm very proud of our our providers for doing that each and every day, 24 hours a day.

Next, I want to speak to the EMS workforce development.

IEMS is the largest training site for paramedics and EMTs in the state of Indiana.

If you it doesn't take much of a Google search to see that there's a national shortage of pre-hospital providers, and Indiana is no stranger to that.

IMS has taken that challenge head on, and we're doing that in a way that is unique in that it is develop truly developing our workforce.

Historically, the way EMS worked and is similar to other public safety agencies, is people got into it a lot of times because of family friends that were in involved in public safety.

And EMS was no different.

What we found is that we wanted to increase access to training and bring people who may not have been interested in in EMS and in medical work, and we've done that through our civilian to EMT program.

And this program has been launched since 2022, and where we train, we hire on uh individuals with no EMS background whatsoever, and we hire them full-time with benefits to become certified EMTs and then subsequently hire them.

And that has been a successful program that has helped meet the need not only of our city, our state, but also more importantly, our community here in Marion County on increase the number of providers.

Once they sign on as EMTs, then there's many career pathways uh to for those EMTs, specifically becoming paramedics.

Again, we bring them out off the streets and and provide them with a full-time accelerated paramedic program.

They work as district medics, community paramedics, and other areas.

So again, we are meeting this head this workforce challenge head on, and we continue to do so.

And then finally, we want to speak about how IMS is integrating the future of healthcare in Marion County.

No longer are we just a 911, you call us and we'll take you to the emergency department.

We want to look beyond what are ways that we can help partner with, augment, or create ways, unique ways of providing health care when people are calling 911.

We spent the last 30 years teaching people when they need help to call 911.

I think it would be an overreach to tell them to suddenly stop doing that.

You know, only call for this, don't call for that.

And the way we're doing that is a few ways.

First, in our mobile integrated health care program, these are advan uh paramedics and EMTs who received advanced training to look on the more proactive side of medicine.

So they are tasked with meeting the needs of individuals who may be calling 911 40, 50, 60 times a year, and and trying to meet uh their needs and look at ways that they can plug them into other resources so that they don't have to reach out to 911 so they don't have to come to our emergency departments for care so that they can find better avenues for care.

Uh next, we partner with our Eskenazi primary care partners to help support their homeless outreach program.

Uh again, we think this is incredibly important, and it's an honor to work along Dr.

Don Howe behind me uh to continue to provide the service.

And then finally, some of you may have heard of the crosswalk to care program.

This is a nurse navigation line that is embedded to our 911 center.

And although we are not the um primary agency affiliated with them, that is done through Mesa, uh, we helped champion this program, help give them the clinical clinical parameters.

And again, while we're about three months into this, there are some successes.

We are seeing uh a large number of runs going over, but there's always gonna be room to grow there.

So, again, our goal is to to really help take pre-hospital care beyond just from the streets to the emergency departments, and again, we've been successful and will continue to be successful.

And with that, I will hand it over to Dr.

Virginia Kane.

Thank you.

I'm on one slide or two, just like Dan.

So um, thank you.

Okay.

So, first of all, um, you know, why is public health so important?

And as you'll see up there on that slide, it all adds to better health.

It improves our quality of life, it helps our children thrive, it reduces human suffering, but more important than that, it saves money.

But every day our public health field is working often behind the scenes to prevent hazards and to keep people healthy.

And one of the major tools that we use is a community health assessment that we do every four to five years, where we involved um almost over by 202 organizations throughout Marion County, plus we do nearly a 5,000 survey of different individuals randomly throughout the community uh to identify what those priority areas are.

No surprise, mental health was the number one issue that we identified.

Some of the other issues were uh access to care.

Uh, number three, maternal and child infant uh health and safe housing made it for the first time recently in our survey.

Uh also so critical is that um we focus on our immunizations.

Uh this is back to SCOV clinic time, and so trying to get everyone immunized in terms of being ready for SCOV.

Lastly, uh enforcement of housing and food codes are really critical in this city.

Uh we registered 11,578 housing complaints last year.

Our average number of days to service a complaint is two days, and we did a total of over 50,000 housing inspections last year.

And so, as you can see, um we need the voice of our community, we need your technical assistance, uh, but we're gonna need both action in order to be successful and improve our health life.

Thank you so much.

Mr.

Chairman, we are open for questions.

Thank you for the opportunity.

Thank you, and thank you to everybody who spoke.

Appreciate you coming today.

Dr.

Virginia Kane, it's always good seeing you as well.

Uh colleagues, are there any questions for Health and Hospital Corporation?

Councilor Hart Thank you, Mr.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

First thing I just like to say that we got to see you guys more than one time a year.

I know we just seen you for the bonds and all that, but um, given the complexity of the budget and everything that you get and the responsibility that you have as a mission, you guys are an incredibly important entity to Marion County.

And I would say, I mean, it's it's apparent your budget is it's more than the city county budget, right?

It's over two billion dollar, two point what was it, two something, you know, it's over the city county's budget.

Uh it might not be as complex with as many 2.7 billion, right?

And we're just at or not even at two yet.

Um we got to see you guys more often.

And I'll ask that of you, Mr.

Chair, is as we start diving into some of these things more throughout the year.

I don't know if you do quarterly reports or have those requirements uh elsewhere, but um if I got to do them independently with you, I'll do it.

But I think it would be good for for the public to hear um just to go through some of these topics, and I'll be brief just because uh of the timing that the chairman asked.

Um, but my thing is it always comes back to is it's the long care funding, and and it seems to be uh really important for you guys.

You know, you mentioned it, or it's the first thing I noticed, you know, on page three, you know, when going through the table is you know, the transfer of 147 million over to the general fund.

And it came up again on slide six under the upper limit, and then again on slide eleven when we go through the long-term care.

Uh and I guess from for my and it's always been my my topic to bring up, but curious just like I was talking with Indigo from when we look at scale, you know, how long can we sustain relying on long-term health care facilities to prop up the the in the general fund budget that you have here.

Um, at what point do we hit the cliff uh where we can't take in any more?

I don't know that we are taking in any more uh long-term health care facilities across the state.

Uh but what what is the plan and where is it?

Where does it break?

So that's a great question.

Um, you know, we have we're not taking in any more facilities at the moment.

Um we have 73.

We've actually um removed a couple off of our roster.

Um we're uh and we're working with the ASC as a part of our long-term or five-year strategic plan to um maximize the quality facilities and then partner with the state to figure out how to remove beds from the lesser starred facilities to be able to then improve their quality, which obviously then improves the number of people who are there and the number of bed days is what generates the revenue.

So our goal is to continue to improve the quality of the facilities while also looking strategically at how you know in the next five, ten years what that system looks like.

I mean that and that addresses I mean the facilities, but the dependency on their revenues to support the general fund.

Well, that's a part of the that's why we're doing this five-year strategic plan, knowing that no matter what, there was gonna be changes in the way anything was reimbursed, right?

So there could be changes in long-term care reimbursement, just like there's changes in direct hospital reimbursement through the OBB or FSSA's directed payment plans.

So we set out five years ago in anticipation of this challenge and this possibility, and so now we're at it and we're better prepared to address it.

Um, and so that's why you know Dr.

Harris is talking about run rate improvements.

James was talking about finding run rate improvements in the general fund.

Um so I can't say how long we rely on it.

I I guess at at this juncture in my career in this organization, I don't necessarily see it as a reliance on long-term care.

I think the raw long-term care is a critical part of what we do as an organization.

Because if you think about it, I like to say this.

Um HC can touch you from birth to death in the way.

We're a truly fully integrated system, and we provide high quality care in each of those aspects.

You know, you could be born in Eskenazi, and then the regulatory and framework like Dr.

Kane was talking about for food, housing impacts you.

You may have to call 911, even though Dan doesn't want you to, um, and get taken to a hospital, and then you may have to get put in a step-down facility or a skilled nursing facility to either you know uh to you know deal with some of the care you received in an acute facility.

And I think you know, all of us in this organization are proud to be able to highlight that for Marion County.

And so, you know, I first started, I didn't necessarily think as much about long-term care in terms of being a part of the system, but now I think it is because I I do believe that it truly makes HHC, and I think everyone in this room should be proud of everybody in this council, the statewide safety net for Indiana.

And that's a that's a big deal.

Um, but it's also I think a really proud deal for lack of a probably better, clear articulate way to describe it.

All right.

And I would just add to Paul's point too.

So to your to your question, it's a good question.

That five year strategic plan right now, we're not we're not seeing any significant change in the long-term care world in that next five years.

Because to your point, if if we did see if if we're working with consultants, if there was a cliff that was it at year two or year three, we would be baking that into this long-term financial sustainability project.

So that 450 to your point, like that transfer, if it's gonna be cut in half, then we would have to find additional run rate improvement because the ultimate goal is 240 days cash on hand balanced budgets.

So if that goes away, then it it becomes a larger run rate improvement that that the corporations tasked with finding.

And and that's one of my head to that, right?

Because if you lost fifty, if you're you're in a deficit of 50 million this year, and I don't have last year and the years before it, so I don't know what your you know dwindling cash on hand is, but um you know it if you're not making that up, then it ultimately you're not gonna hit your 240 day goal.

So that to bring it home, that's where I was seeing you know your ultimate cliff.

And to the day's cash on hand, at the end, at the end of 2025, our projection is 236 days cash on hand.

In 2020, or sorry, that was 2025.

At the end of 2026, it does drop to about 220 days.

So we're projecting that 50 million dollar hit to cash.

Um, and then without the run rate improvements, it would drop down to below 200 by the end of 2029.

Okay.

Awesome.

Thank you, gentlemen.

Thank you.

Thank you, counselor.

Any other questions?

Councilor Brown.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Uh, thank you, Mr.

Pabcock, for the presentation and everyone for the presentation.

Um I have a couple questions.

Number one, we're talking a lot about run rate improvements.

Uh got kind of corporate America flashbacks uh to doing more with less.

I know that's difficult.

And you know, here at the city, when I came in as a counselor, I was expected to find efficiencies to gain.

I found there were surprisingly few.

It's hard to imagine that HHC is in a similar or is in a different situation than that.

So can you give a couple examples of like what are these run rate improvements and how does that impact constituents or your workers?

A great question.

So for us, you know, and I I can't speak to each other we we've tasked each division with finding those run rates on the general fund, though, the the team that I worked with, what we did, we really did.

We went through those supplies and contractual services to look here, are these essential?

That's you know, that that low-hanging fruit that that first year in year one.

And so we were able to initially find we were tasked because we're one of the the smaller budgets of the the 2.7 billion dollar overall budget.

Originally we found five to six million, and we had originally reported a 33 million dollar deficit on the general fund.

Well, then after hearing the mayor and the controller introduced city budget, you know, I was talking to Paul said, Hey, I think I think we can find a little bit more.

So we went back and we really dove in a little bit deeper on this is at the statutory level, so it's real high level right now, and we were able to find another eight million to get us down to 25 million.

Now we're gonna go into the operational budget process where we're gonna meet with departments, and and and we'll be at or below or even better than the statutory budget.

So we expect to find some more of the that low-hanging fruit to get us back to that balanced budget.

But one of the things you know, with the the consultants we're working with, you know, they have you know, how do we become if it's 10% more efficient?

So as an employee, if if we have a retiree, can we potentially do that do what that work was for that person with uh a little bit smaller workforce without having any cuts in workforce?

So just that we're trying to plan that long term, and so that's that where we don't want to bounce.

I mean, we we'd like to have a balanced budget this year, obviously, but by not having that balanced budget with the strong cash position we're at today, we feel like we have a little bit of runway to to to see what we can find on the on the technical efficiency side, and if we can figure out those improvements, then we can hit that balanced budget in that way, and also looking at revenues too.

Is there any like the state directed payment plan?

Is it something where it's not finding efficiencies on the expense side?

Is there ways where we can improve the revenues we're pulling in?

So we're we're we're looking at holistically, and I and we were we were happy that we were already engaged in this multi-year strategic planning process.

So when OBBBA came out, we felt like we were in a good spot.

It wasn't it didn't just you know just hit us in the face.

We were like, okay, we've been we've been talking about these things, so now we were able to start putting them into action.

I appreciate that.

Yeah, I think constituents are still gonna wonder, you know, you mentioned finding contracts for supplies that weren't necessary.

Does that mean longer wait for supplies, et cetera?

You're you're at a very high level, you know, as Council Hart mentioned, uh 2.7 billion dollar budget.

We have one meeting and a half with the review and analysis compared to dozens for a 1.7 billion dollar budget for the city.

So I get we're gonna talk high level tonight.

Um I did want to bring up as well, and the Andy Star reported this earlier this year, uh, that uh according to their reporting, HFC spent $500,000 on an advertisement that I actually saw myself and was pretty shocked to see it that just said thank you, Mike Braun, um, for not making the cuts that he actually turned around and made uh to the tune of millions of dollars to your budget.

And so I want to ask, you know, like everything's political.

I get that.

You want to make sure to lobby to try to get a budget, and I think that's appropriate to do.

But you know, you mentioned the OBBBA having severe impacts on people.

I I think it's important to state, you know, this is Republicans of the State House and Republicans of the federal government making massive cuts to public health.

And yet, if you look at what HHC has said publicly about it, all we see I don't think that I don't think we ran a $500,000 ad saying Mike Braun is to blame for these cuts.

And so uh can you talk a little bit about your thought process there and whether you think that was a good ROI?

Yeah, so we we did that um because we had been told in February that there was a possibility that the HGI was going to be removed from the budget.

And if you look at the original process of those advertisements, uh they coincided with what was going on.

So the Governor Braun releases his budget, HCI is in there.

We find out that it may come out, so we're gonna try and make it a little, you know, put some pressure.

Then if you look at the second iteration of the ads that came out, it um it thanked the house because HCI was in the House budget.

Um and then the third ads came out, which was you know, call your senator, encourage them to keep HCI in the Senate's budget.

Unfortunately, it was taken out of the Senate, and you know, we were able to we learned um that there was a possibility that even the notion that we could draw um our you know our levy was gonna be taken away.

And so we were able to at least put some pressure to be able to keep some of our funds that you know we we receive.

So that's the logic behind it.

It was what can we do to try and keep 38 million dollars uh to be able to provide care for uh people in Marion County?

Um so that's really it.

I we don't want to cut services, we want to provide care.

And that's why we got this plan, and that's why we're trying to generate new revenue, and just in anticipation to be able to continue our mission to provide high quality patient care.

Appreciate that.

And Councilor Brown, just uh Dr.

Harrisank wanted to speak just or okay.

Okay.

I just had an example to your uh question about it.

Come on up, Dr.

Harris.

Do you do any this speaks to uh what we talk about in terms of what we've already achieved?

So as we work to increase specialty care visits, if you remember the slide I showed that over eight years we've increased primary care visits by 153%.

That's a large that's a large increase.

At the same time, we've reduced the cost per visit by 41 percent.

So that's an ex that's the exact example of what we've already done and what we're gonna be working to do more of to actually provide more care while reducing the cost.

And so we we it was by making sure that we used every exam room uh most efficiently, that we deployed a staff most effectively and efficiently.

So we reduced the cost per uh room, the cost per uh full-time equivalent of staff, the cost per visit, uh, at the same time that we uh dramatically increase services.

So that's the the high level way that we're approaching this that does allow us to imagine doing more uh with uh less and and then of course there's always other challenges that it just puts us in the best stead uh to to meet the next challenge.

Thank you.

Appreciate that.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilor Brown, for your questions and uh spot on rhetoric there.

Councilor Gibson.

Oh, thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Uh thank God for health and hospital cooperation.

I mean without you, I don't know what we would do.

Um, President Babcock and CFO, your uh 2.7 billion dollar budget appears to be uh financially responsible.

I appreciate you being very proactive in turn to try to deal with the millions of cuts that you have faced with.

And so my hats off to you.

I uh thank very highly of the health and hospital cooperation and and what you do.

Uh shout out to um uh Chief O'Donnell and what he's doing, and uh I love that new EMS in my district.

Uh uh, but more importantly, how you trying to think out of a box and trying to steer people from the hospital and with uh uh crosswalk uh to care.

That's that's uh innovative and uh should be acknowledged here.

Uh Dr.

Lisa Harris, uh, you know, I you know my love for Escanazi hospital, my little one being born there, and uh he goes to your uh Grand Day Cock Clinic at 38 Arlington for primary care, and his PCP is exceptional.

So uh thank you for all you do there.

And then uh Dr.

Kane, you know I love you, and uh I would I wouldn't even be in politics, put out your your love and advice and counsel of the years.

Uh your new lab is looking wonderful and in transforming the East 38th Street Quarter, and it says a lot about uh President Babcock and entire uh your organization in trying to make make uh that 38th Street look like uh is bringing back life, and I thank you for that.

But more importantly, Dr.

King, your your code enforcers, your health people go out in district.

Man, I love them.

I can call them out by names.

I know the ones I deal with on a regular basis in my district.

When I got a health co-bination, they go out and they do it in less than two days and give me a response back and site and find whatever they need to do to get get get things right.

So I I think we we need that more, and uh your leadership is evidence.

So I just want to say hats out to you, President Babcock, and thank you very much for what you do for our people, especially for those, the least of those.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Gibbs.

Any other questions?

Are there any questions from anyone in the audience?

Um thank you so much, Paul.

Uh CEO Bapcock, I apologize, and everyone here tonight.

We greatly appreciate it.

I think one thing I would like to do in the future.

Uh Clerk Nance, I'll kind of put you in charge of this.

I agree with the comment made by Councilor Hart.

I'd like to break this up and let's start having some meetings on the um the two divisions and the two service divisions as well.

And let's take them to you.

So let's perhaps do one at Eskenazi Hospital, maybe one at the new lab.

Uh let's get this committee out of here and out at these facilities.

So we'll start working on that in the spring and summer of next year.

Um, I think that was a really good comment.

Um, the only other thing that I have for you is are we going to see a conclusion to the case that made national news all the way to the Supreme Court?

We're getting phone calls and emails on that, and uh quite frankly, I'm I'm at my point where uh I don't want to have to put any pressure on you, but I don't want to get allowed as the committee chair, but I'd like to see this case resolved.

So I I mean, one, you know, we can't comment on pending litigation, um, but two, but we obviously would like a resolution as well.

Um, so you know, we're working diligently with our legal teams to to address it.

Okay.

When we're talking about budgets and losing money, what I think of when I hear that part about our legal team is money going out the door.

So I think you either need to start looking at some different avenues, adjustments, but they need to get it resolved before more questions come and more outrage starts happening.

Thank you for your presentation, gentlemen.

Appreciate it.

Thank you all so much.

The Indianapolis Public Library System, come on up.

Clerk Nance, let's remember in 2026, the library will get to go first for their presentation.

Because I feel like this is at least two years in a row where they've been on the back end.

CEO Hill, feel free to start when you're ready, sir.

All right, thank you.

Uh good evening, uh Chairman Evans, uh members.

All right.

All right, good evening, Chairman Evans, members of the committee.

Uh, thank you for having us here tonight.

Uh, my name is Gregory Hill, CEO of the Indianapolis Public Library.

And to my left is Ms.

Lolita Campbell.

She is the chief financial officer of the Indianapolis Public Library.

Um, really quickly, a brief overview of our agenda.

Uh, we'll talk about some accomplishments and achievements and the impact that those had.

Uh we'll talk about some challenges, uh, priorities, our proposed budget, and then the the budget allocation.

Uh year in the next public library.

And we have a slightly revised mission and vision statement.

Our mission is the Indianapolis Public Library enriches and supports communities by inspiring lifelong learning through stewardship and engaging services.

Our vision is to be a premier urban public library that delivers world class service and champions equitable access to knowledge and resources for all.

Some of the equitable accesses examples would be digital inclusion, educational resources, and skill building opportunities.

Some of our achievements that I would like to cover here real briefly is the Glenda branch opening.

Glenda, as you know, relocated and opened in March of 2024.

The Glenda branch is the most visited branch of all of our locations, excluding the Central Library.

It is the highest circulating branch as well, excluding the Central Library.

If we measure the time frame from April 2024 to April 2025, the first year we were open.

Compare that to March 2023 to February 24, the year before closing, we saw visits increased by over 67,000 people, which is approximately 54% increase.

So the year before we had about 125,000 visitors.

The first year we were opened, we had about 193 visitors.

So I think some of that had to do with the accessibility issues.

We don't no longer have the stairs or the elevator that people had to use to get up to the old location.

As far as our renovations, Pike opened in March of this year, and then Nora opened this year as well, and both of them are doing well.

This year we became a good wages initiative employer, and I believe we were the last of the municipal corporations to become a good wages initiative employer.

We were also featured in the cover story article in Biz Voice titled Leading with Humanity Employers Prioritize and Elevate Wellbeing.

So I would like to recognize that we were designated as an achieved well organization awarded by the wellness council of Indiana.

And it establishes NDPL as an organization that values mental health and well-being of our employees.

Also, we were recognized in 2025 as a Bell SILF for workplace mental health recipient by the Mental Health Association, Mental Health America MHA.

And also, this is a testament of NDL's NDPL's commitment to the well-being of our employees.

We were a certified autism center for the Fort Bend branch, and I'd like to thank Councilor Brown for getting us on the path to that.

The certification has been well received, so much so that we are adding five more branches with this designation in 2026.

That will include the Franklin Road branch, Beach Grove, Decatur, Hallville, and Pike.

So staff are trained to understand better what autism is or isn't, to empathize, emphasize, empathize, understand how autistic and sensory-centive individuals experience the world in the library, and to be able to communicate more effectively and be aware of the common sensitivities that those patrons may have.

We offer sensory kits, which contain uh ear dampening headphones, uh sorted fidget, soothers, and they are available on every visit and for the duration of the visit.

Um programs I'd like to highlight real quickly from our three priorities from our learning priority, uh, our 2024 small business resource workshops, which got underway September the 8th and runs through September the 30th.

They are a huge success.

This is our fourth year with the series.

Some of the organizations that partnered with us to help present these programs include the Indianapolis Recorder, Latinos Indy, the Indy Chamber, and the Indianapolis Bar Association.

And again, this series runs from September 8th through September the 30th.

In the belonging category, we have Fallfest, which is a program that's been running for quite a while.

It's a contest for all poets and spoken word uh artists in grades six through 12 throughout Marion County.

Uh in 2024, Yolanda King was our featured speaker, and she was the granddaughter of the late Dr.

Martin Luther King and Coretta Scott King, and that was an excellent program.

Had a lot of participation.

From our well-being category, we had a program called Science in Action, and that program is a Steam Theme Obstacle Course where kids learn the science of sports through agility, flexibility, and teamwork.

And then once they complete the course, they will start on a Steam based project.

Our social work, our social work connectors are essential in providing resources to all of our patrons.

We've had a search social work manager for approximately about a year or so now, and we just recently added an additional social worker, and that really comes in handy.

They really do a lot for our patrons that come in and require referral service.

We don't do any casework or anything like that.

It's just referral services.

The shared system.

We have 86 schools in our shared system, including public, private, and museums, including the Idol George and Riley Hospital, the Black Family Libraries one.

All managed 41 IPS schools are in the shared system.

We completed the last one in April with IPS School 39, William McKinley.

They were the last school that was added that gives them 30 elementary schools, seven middle schools, and then the four high schools.

So we're very proud of the partnership that we have with IPS and being able to get books in the hands of students.

One of the benefits of the share system is it works as just like satellite locations for all the other locations.

You can request a book, and that book will be delivered to that location for you.

So it just gives access and our collection.

Everybody's able to access our collection.

And we think that it is a fabulous program that we're doing right now.

The impact of some of these programs that I just mentioned, our program attendance, and 2024 is the numbers that you will see on your graph here.

That's about a 7% increase from 2023.

And then through August of this year, we're at about 140,000 in attendance, which uh which is that's about 6,000 programs that we've had so far through August, and roughly that is a 3.7% increase from this same period last year.

And we are projecting to have about a hundred and over 190,000 patrons who attend our program.

So we're very proud of being able to offer programs that people uh actually come to and uh enjoy.

Total card holders, 30% of our population that we serve are card holders.

Materials borrowed, this is physical and digital.

Uh in 2024, the number you see on your screen is a little bit over 8.7 million.

37% of those circulation is digital.

Uh in 2025, from January through July, uh, we circulated 5.1 million items, and about 38% of that is digital items.

Our branch visits, we have about 2.3, a little bit over 2.3 million visits.

Uh again, from January through July of this year, we've had over 1.4 million visits, which is about a 2% increase for the same period in 2024.

Uh, the shared system in 2023, we had 65, and as I just mentioned now, we have 86.

That is a 32% participation in shared systems, and we have about 50,800 uh card holders in the share system.

Uh social work.

Again, we are very proud of the social work connectors that we have, people that help connect our patrons to resources throughout the community.

So, year to date, we've had uh just a little bit over a thousand patron interactions with our social work referral tracker.

That's what we use to track the interactions that we have with our patrons.

The Central Library has tabling hours every Monday and Thursday of the week, and we generally average about five community partners at each one of those events for those both of those days.

So we appreciate our partners who come out and help support us and our patrons as well.

Uh they also do branch office hours, uh, one visit per quarter.

Uh, year to date, they've had 48 branch office hour visits, so they go out to the other 25 locations and um provide services to our patrons at those locations as well.

And then in 2024, thanks to the Indigo Foundation with the partnership with them.

We distributed 895 bus passes, and then as of uh so far this year, as of July, we distributed 468 passes to our patrons that come into the library.

Couple more things, slides here before we move on.

Some key challenges just based off of some of the achievements and accomplishments that we just talked about.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Apologize, skipped ahead.

So this is a another graphic with just a few items from uh our community impact.

Uh starting from the left with circulation, you see our total electronic circulation.

You see there's 44 circulations per active cardholder, and that includes electronic and physical.

Um 30% of the population is card holders, which I've already mentioned, and 55.9% of our card holders are active.

Active card holders are card holders who have used their card in the previous uh 12 months.

Community leverage, uh, we really appreciate the Indianapolis Public Library Foundation with their support.

They provided over $2 million worth of support to our programs, and we have approximately 625 volunteers, and we uh definitely appreciate all the work that they do for us as well.

Next slide.

Uh some of our key challenges or challenges I would say is in security.

I think we have uh eight or nine of our locations have library security assistance.

Uh I believe most of those are part-time.

Uh we're looking at uh increasing some hours for them and making those some full-time positions, some of them if we can.

Uh the Central Library, they have 55 hours of security, which is all of their open hours, and then they have an LSA force as well.

I believe it's like 13 that serve there along with uh one police officer.

Um we do get assistance uh sometimes from some of the LSAs, they may move around to some of the other locations to help provide assistance.

I would say security overall has gotten uh better, not worse, uh, but the cost of it has increased significantly over the past two years.

So that's uh a really big challenge for us with the security budget.

Uh facility upkeep, and I'm speaking more of housekeeping and grounds.

Again, just trying to keep all 26 locations clean, uh making sure the grounds uh you know look great for our guests and our patrons.

Um housekeeping has increased significantly as well.

And then lastly is capacity.

I just like to use the share system real quickly as an example.

Uh we have 86 schools in the share system.

We have a whole lot more schools that are wanting to join the share systems, but right now we just can't do that.

We don't have the infrastructure, uh, our sorting capacity.

Uh we we we're not able to do that because our small our sorter is not large enough.

Uh we don't have enough drivers, and we just don't have a big enough building to facilitate that.

So until we are able to get uh the renovation of the library services center, um unfortunately we won't be able to add to the the share system.

But what we do do is we are able to have what's called the library card campaign.

Uh we do have that where we can go out to schools and make sure that all the students have library cards, and that does at least give them access to our e-resources and a limited amount of our physical material.

And then with that, I'll pass it over to Lolita Campbell.

Hi, um, on this slide, we have the 2025-2027 strategic priorities.

Excuse me, there are four of them.

Um, learning, belonging, well-being, and workplace of choice.

My budget supports these priorities.

My budget focus is um to invest in health and wellness through innovative programs, resources, and collaboration, strengthen organizational framework, um, retain and recruit a talented, diverse, and exceptional skilled workforce.

I provide a welcome inclusion, accessible and safe environment to all our branches and community uh community support and partnerships.

Our proposed 2026 budget for 2026 is um 89,394,474 dollars.

This is um overall about 4.64 percent increase from um this current fiscal year.

Our operating budget is 8.25% increase from this fiscal year, and our debt service is a decrease because we paid off a debt, and then our raining day in LERF is the same.

Here is our tax rate history, and we have continued to always uh on our debt service um continue to have the 0.0318, and the overall tax total tax rate is 0.1263, which is a um a little bit smaller than it is for this current fiscal year.

So some of our challenges for 2026 for our revenue.

The main one I want to point out is the property tax reform, which shows in 2026 we'll have a deficit from our property taxes of a little over 2 million dollars.

And then for expenditures, our main challenge I want to point out is our personnel costs that continues to rise because again we implemented a good wages initiative as well as brought up some of our staff up to market and address some compression.

And then of course we have some benefit expenses that have increased as well.

And then the increasing cost of security, cleaning services, technology, and the trend of using sophomore software.

This is based on character codes.

Let's look at the expense of the personal services.

We propose a 40 almost 44 million.

And as and again, that is about 8% more than 2025.

And our supplies budget has increased 19%.

However, that was only about 300,000.

And then characters three, which is other services and charges, has increased by 7%, and that is $1.2 million.

And our capital outlays has increased by 3.41%, and that's just $18,000.

Our property, yeah, our revenue, as you can tell, is $55 million, and our expenses $67 million.

So we have to support that with our fund balance, and we have positioned ourselves to do that.

On this next slide, you'll see a graph where you'll see that property taxes 81% of our of our revenue.

With that said, with the property tax reform is with a $2 million deficit, that wouldn't have really helped with our deficit.

So that really helps.

Again, that is $67 million, and then it did increase in our personnel services 65% of our expenses, which is a great percentage of our expenses.

So again, I want to emphasize with our healthy cash fund balance, we're able to pivot to for circumstances like this to cover the deficit.

So we do realize it's $11.5 million, but however, in the past, if you have looked at our financials, we have been good stewards of our taxpayer dollars by negotiating our contracts at lower expense and reviewing all our expenses that come through the library.

Is that the last time we had a moody rating, we had a double A1, which is the second highest rating, credit rating.

And with that said, with the debt service that provides us a chance to get a lower interest rate, and that is less cost to our taxpayers.

The services and programs are supported by our foundation, so we greatly appreciate them.

So on this slide right here, you'll see that our debt service has lowered to 16.8 million with a projection of that we are getting another bond in 2025.

Again, that is much lower than it was because we did put pay off one and we were scheduled to pay off another one within the net next year.

Oops.

Sorry.

And here is our rainy day in LERF.

Again, it stayed the same as it was this current year.

We did not increase it or decrease it.

This is here to support any building capital projects that are consultant services that we may have with our capital prior to us getting our bond.

And our long long-term plan, if you look at column four for 2026, again it's projected that we have a deficit in 11.6.

Of that, where our deficit is 8.2 million.

And with that, and that we will cover that with our cash fund balance.

Okay, thank you, Ms.

Campbell.

Uh, real quick, quickly, I just want to talk about our uh community connection and how we collaborate.

Uh just a few uh pointers here.

Uh so with community engagement for our 2025-2027 strategic plan, we were able to engage about 1,200 community members and focus groups.

Uh they did some surveys and outreach, and they help us uh to guide us uh for our 2025-2027 strategic plan.

Uh community support and feedback.

Um we did some surveys, approximately 97% enjoy the programs that they attended.

95% of our patrons found the program to be educational, and 95% said they could make use of the knowledge that they gained from the program.

So those are all encouraging uh numbers.

Patron engagement.

Um when you come into the branch, you have a chance to take a survey.

96% of the visitors surveyed reported that they had a positive experience during their visit to any uh one particular branch, and then partnerships 87% of our programs engaged a community partner to help us inform or plan or to assist us in presenting uh programs, and we had staff uh attend over a hundred and fifty uh community events as well.

So I just want to say um I really appreciate the work that our staff uh does.

I appreciate uh the patrons that come through our doors every day that we're able to serve them in a meaningful way, and that we are a definitely a community asset, and uh again, our capacity is we're asked to do a lot of things at the library, and it's our job to just try to make sure that we can provide for the community as best we can.

Thank you, CEO Hill.

Yes.

Um quick question on the budget.

You mentioned that you were gonna be going into fund balance.

So I was seeing that it looks like there's a difference of a little over well, near 12 million, 11 million something.

But when I see on the presentation the ending fund balance, I don't see a reduction in that number.

So repeat that again, you said the ending fund balance.

Yeah, on the long-term plan on that page.

I was looking, you've got uh proposed budget for 26, 37 million four hundred thousand.

So I was looking to see a significant reduction from 2025 to 26, but I didn't see it.

Um well, 2526, we were only projected to have a 1.5 deficit.

And um the way we go on right now, we probably will not have a deficit, so we probably have a surplus, and that would roll over to 2026 to help support the deficit that's projected for 2026.

Well, we so the bottom line to ending fund balance.

I'm sorry.

No, I apologize.

Go ahead.

Yeah, on the long-term plan slide, the bottom line for the ending fund balance.

Yeah, and even from 26 to 27, though, there's actually an increase in 27.

But when I look on the uh slide operating fund, and maybe I'm just misunderstanding this, but I see total revenue at 55.6 million, total expenditures at 67.2 million.

So where's the 11 million gap?

And I do see where you're pointing that at the ending fund balance.

Um I guess the from we didn't I apologize for but if you would take it from the ending fund balance, the 11 point, well, it'll be the 8.3 million.

So the the just so I'm clear on the long-term plan when I see that funding balance number proposed for 2026.

Is that an accurate number?

37.4, or should there be it's an accurate beginning number.

However, the formally at the bottom didn't uh subtract the deficit.

Okay.

Yeah.

So if you subtract the deficit, then it will reduce.

Okay.

So that that we're talking about uh you're you're projecting about eight and a half million dollar reduction on that.

So we're looking at maybe starting 2027 with more roughly 30 million dollars in fund balance.

Approximately, yes.

Um we may again for 2025, we're aiming to have a surplus right now based on our financials.

So that would add to that, then you subtract the deficit if we have a deficit of the 8.3 million.

What is the um at what point do we get in jeopardy of having to close libraries or let people go if we're running you know eight, ten, eleven million dollar deficits year over year?

Um go ahead, go ahead.

Go ahead, start with.

Well, um it really depends on year 2028.

Um because right now, based on the property tax reform, it's predicted that we're we receive more revenue than the deficit that we receive for 26 and 27.

So if we can get through these next couple years, I think we'll be fine, but honestly, I don't know based on the fiscal impact they provided, so that 2028 could change.

I don't know.

Um if it does change where it's a deficit, I don't think that we will close libraries or um let people go.

We just go on a hiring freeze and um operate at the bare minimum.

But I'll let the No, I was just gonna say I agree with uh the CFO here uh for the next couple years there's no plan to um lay off anybody uh close any branches because right now we can sustain with our fund balance.

Um and again going into 2028, uh the projection said we were supposed to get a what a little bit over two million increase in our funding, um but we don't know again how accurate that was so we'll just see but the next few years we should be we should be in a good position.

Well, and I'm gonna let some of my other colleagues go here after this.

I'm CO Hill, I'm concerned because what I'm seeing here for at least potentially the next two years is a $38 million fund balance going down to possibly 18 million.

And so at some point, this isn't this the maths, not math, and it's not gonna work.

Something's gonna have to give.

And so I'm asking, you don't have to answer this today, but we definitely need to understand what is a five-year scenario look like at what point, because even in your your slide here with the uh operating fund.

Your um well no, where's the one that shows out the a couple of years?

The long-term plan and revenue, I'm only seeing going up to $59 million in 2028, yet I see expenditures at $70 million.

Perhaps I mean, is the capital the the debt incorporated into this?

Um no, this is operating right now.

So I'm one of our plan, sorry, and then and based on our past financials um in our audits, we have been very good stores where we never have a deficit because we really looked at our expenses and negotiated our contracts.

This is just a prediction, and again, for 2025 this current year, although it shows a deficit, the but our current financials show that we're on a um positive um a positive for 2025, right?

So we're we'll continue that uh efforts that we have done in the past with their um years in the future.

It does show this right now.

This is just on paper based on expenses, but based on our our works that we do on at the library, we ensure that we're um monitoring our expenses and reducing as um on the monthly basis.

So we have always um came out in a positive make sure I understand you correctly.

Okay, I apologize for this, but uh I thought you said earlier in 2025 you're looking at potentially a 1.5 million dollar surplus.

Um here it shows that, but on our current financials that we have, um this is when we was doing the prediction, you know, projections and everything, but the current financials as of this current month, we show it as we're gonna be have a surplus by the end of the year.

Okay, so just so I understand so the 2025 adopted budget, it's it's showing a 4.6 deficit, but you're saying you're actually gonna have a surplus.

Right.

So this is the adopted budget.

Um but I'm um talking about our actual expenses.

We're gonna have a surplus.

Okay, I see.

Um, these are some big numbers and they look pretty scary when I when I see the the fund balance and that.

So I guess we'll just have to keep a close eye.

Uh colleagues, any questions?

Councilor Brown?

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Thanks for voicing that because I had the exact same questions.

Uh yeah, it is very concerning to see the ending fund balance not seem to match up with the math that you're providing.

Um clerical error, I get that, but it's concerning at a budget presentation.

Um I I did want to make a comment about uh salaries and especially how you handle your staff.

I was very pleased last year um when the library chose to institute flat dollar amount raises for people.

Uh since you know, we we could talk about, for example, hiring minority businesses for um you know vendors, etc.

and how that can help address equity.

Uh but one of the best ways to address equity is to make sure as you're increasing wages, you're increasing more from the bottom first to help level out the playing field.

I thought that was a great move last year, and I wanted to ask you if that was the plan again this year, because I'm hearing some concerning things from my union friends that that's not the case.

Yeah, I'll I'll answer that.

So right now we are in negotiations and we're as you see our budget, what you just we just talked about.

Um we don't know if we're gonna be able to do that this year or not.

Now, is this something that we could do again in the future?

That's possible, but looking at our projections and our budget, it may not be something that we may be able to do at this time.

But we haven't made an absolute decision on if that is what we'll be able to do or not.

I appreciate that.

And I know you know negotiations are ongoing, and I get that.

Um I don't think I'll be voting for this budget based on the quality of the presentation and that fact, if that's the if that's the case at the end of the negotiations.

So just want to make sure that's clear.

Uh, one thing I want to point out is that if we do the same flat amount, it is like um additional five hundred thousand dollars on top of the personnel expense.

So we wouldn't be able to do that.

Um however, we will look at it in the near future.

We do know that when it comes down to addressing compression and uh market rate, that that's the best way to do it at that time, and that's why we implemented that as well as the good wage initiative, and we also provided the long range, I mean long-term um bonus where people were there for a long time.

We gave a bonus for that, and that has never been done at the library.

So we have implemented a lot of benefits when it comes down to salaries and increase um other um well, we established another um benefit as well to help them to make it a total compensation robust package.

I appreciate that and I get that, but at the end of the day, if you only have a certain amount of money for salary increases, you could choose to make that a flat fee as opposed to a percentage fee, and it wouldn't necessarily cost more.

That's all uh Gibson and Councilor Jones, Chairman Jones.

Well, well, thank you, uh Mr.

Chairman, and uh thank you, CEO and CFO, and I do think that your presentation was very thorough, and uh I appreciate you uh uh talking about the challenges ahead of you and trying to be more proactive there, and so uh I I think your budget is uh financially responsible and I intend on voting for it.

And thank you, uh CEO for your email regarding East 38th Street Library, and I appreciate the attention there and uh look forward to supporting your budget.

Yes, sir.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chairman.

Um kind of following up with uh counselor Jesse Brown's question for your negotiations with your union employees.

Will the negotiations be done before we are voting on the final budget so that we will have an be able to make an educated decision?

Thank you.

Um when is the final budget next week?

Isn't it the October 6th, the first Monday in October?

Um I know we're in negotiations now.

Yes, we we will we we will be completed by October 6th.

Okay, thank you.

So you can someone can report back to us with that answer is for your union employees.

Yes, ma'am.

Thank you very much.

They'll come they'll be coming back before us on October 1st for their review and analysis or uh vote.

Counselors, any other questions?

Anybody in the audience would like to speak to this budget?

All right.

Um I have some reservations about this fund balance number versus expenditures and revenues.

I'd like to understand this a little bit more, so we're gonna need to meet and discuss offline.

Is it possible that I can send your revised um slide?

I think the wrong the wrong you know was was put into the slide, and I didn't realize it.

So I can send that to you tomorrow in the morning.

Yep, and which will show a difference there.

Thank you.

Um counselors seeing no more business, we are adjourned for the evening.

Thank you so much.