Good evening.

Good evening, everyone.

It is 5 30 p.m.

on Wednesday, September 24th, 2025.

We're in the public assembly room of the City County Building.

Welcome to the public safety and criminal committee of the City County Council.

We'll start our meeting.

Introduction of our counselors.

First roll, Councilor Hart.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Michael Paul Hart, District 20.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Josh Bain, District 21.

Just as a quick note, I do have to leave at 6 o'clock for a meeting in the district tonight.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Paul and A, District 22.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Brian Mower, District 25.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman, Dan Boots, District 3, Washington Lawrence Townships.

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

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Brienne Delaney, District 2.

And the top roll, please.

Councilor Graves.

Council Graves, District 9 on the Indian dependency side.

Frank Miscarry, District 19, Southeast Side.

And thank you, Councillor.

Counselor Perkins.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Good evening, all.

Dr.

Carlos Perkins, District 6.

Thank you, Councillors.

We do have a few items on our agenda this evening.

One presentation and a couple budget items, and then the adoption of the 2026 budget.

First up with the presentation is the early intervention planning council.

Ms.

Elizabeth Elizabeth Coyt.

You ready?

And the council do have a presentation, hard copy front of them.

Ms.

Coit, thank you.

And we will do a QA after your complete presentation.

Thank you.

Take your time.

I appreciate it.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

Thank you for the opportunity to share with you what we've been up to with the early intervention and planning council.

What I'd like to do is first I'll share a little bit about just a reminder about sort of what the council is and what our budget is for the coming season, our year.

And then I want to share a little bit about sort of what we have been doing in terms of understanding the scope of child services across the city and focusing our efforts in terms of creating a plan.

So first, just uh a quick reminder on the power of prevention and why why this ordinance was even created.

Um obviously, the earlier we can intervene, um, it results in positive outcomes for children, families, communities across the county, um, decreases the cost of public safety and law enforcement and leverages existing resources in increasing the effectiveness of our systems and deepening the impact.

Um quick reminder Marion County Commission on Youth McCoy.

Um, we serve as sort of the organizer and the coordinator of the early intervention planning council.

Um we've served Marion County as an intermediary supporting youth services for over 35 years, and we've been supporting the council since um the early 2000s.

Um every young person has an equitable opportunity to learn, grow, and thrive.

Um, and our mission, um, what we focus on every day is championing the positive development of youth through community and systems change.

As a quick reminder, the early intervention planning council was established in 2005 by City Council General Ordinance number 70.

Um McCoy was engaged as the coordinator in 2009.

The council's vision is a city where all children are safe, free from abuse and neglect.

All children receive the care, support, and resources to grow into healthy and contributing members of society, and all caregivers have the support and resources to provide a safe and healthy environment for children.

The mission of the council is to develop in collaboration with regional service councils a plan for the city uh to promote welfare, promote the coordination of available resources, uh, reduce and minimize the cost of providing service to children, uh, and reduce or eliminate uh the extent to the extent possible the need to remove children.

Obviously, I'm paraphrasing, but I wanted to stick do a quick reminder of why the council uh comes together.

Um this slide will just share with you sort of who is currently appointed in the positions that are defined in the ordinance.

Our co-chairs, Kate Peterson from DCS, and Maggie Lewis.

Ben Tapper from the Office of Equity Belonging and Inclusion for the City, Celia Wang from the City, Paul Anna, Roseanne Ang, Letty Martinez, who is the new head of the respite center, part of probation, Sean Anderson, Ashley Asante Doyle from Firefly, as one of our community members, Courtney Plukas, Wendy Tucker from Walk by Faith, Mary Beth Larkins from Sandra Eskenazi Mental Health, Nicole Goodson is also an at large participant, and she represents kids' voice.

So it's a nice diverse committee.

The budget remains the same going into the next fiscal year at 71,500.

Primarily that covers the cost of the personnel to organize, coordinate, and support the council.

I want to emphasize though that that very small investment is leveraged significantly through other grants and programs through McCoy that tie and wrap around the early intervention efforts represented by the council.

We currently have the Resilience Project, which is a mental wellness project that is in two of our school districts in Marion County, Juvenile Advisory Council, which I'm excited to say launched this week with great success.

Marion Council County Youth Violence Prevention Coalition.

We serve as the fiscal sponsor.

To Rise Above Poverty is a new program that's in place on the Glick residential family properties addressing two generational two generational poverty.

We are the supporting organization for the summer youth programs that are funded through the Summer Youth Program Fund, and we launched in 20% earlier in 2025 Fever Confidence All Star Ambassador program supporting young women in high schools across the city.

Total support from other sources and programs again, all wrapped around sort of building resilience in our young people is over a million dollars through McCoy.

The early intervention planning council itself has convenes bi-monthly representing the key agencies and organizations that prevent that address prevention and intervention.

We spend a lot of time talking about what do we know, what is happening, what do we need to know, and decided in this prior year that one of the big challenges that we had was the barrier to a common understanding of what was happening in the community, where were our children, and that this sort of lack of common understanding of the facts of where our children are was going to keep us from moving forward.

So we took it upon ourselves as a council to create a report which you should have copies of now called Where the Children Are.

It is a compilation of publicly available data, but it's in one place, so that we can all have a common understanding of not only how many children we have in the city, how many are affected, how many are involved in the system in one way or another, and how they're moving through that system.

That helps us understand what we're what it is we're trying trying to address here.

So that the report, which was officially published this spring, the goal was to arm decision makers and policymakers with a common understanding, information, insights to enable better and deeper focus on the most important trends and issues facing our children.

The council identified permanency as a critical component component to positive youth.

That has been true since it's since its inception.

But in that light, we needed to understand better where our children are if they're not in a permanent home situation.

So that data has all been collected here.

We do rank among the worst states in the nation for dual status children, which of course affects us both within the DCS system, but also within the juvenile justice system, indicating that we need to do a better job in prevention.

This report is just one step.

It's the first attempt to collect the data.

We learned a lot about the quality of the data, the availability of the data, the reach of the data, but we also learned a lot about the condition of our children and where they are.

I pulled out just a couple of pages here, literally just uh two, maybe three pages of data just as to ground us a little bit in this.

Um, Indiana's child population.

This data for the most part is 2023 because that's where the common denominator was in terms of access, is a little over a million and a half children across the state.

15% of those children are here in Marion County at 240,000 plus.

But the children who lack permanency in our county for 4500 of those are unhoused.

726 are within the juvenile detention system.

A little over 2,000 are designated as children in need of services.

There's overlap, of course, between those numbers we already talked about.

We have one of that one of the highest ratio percentages of dual status children in our county.

This is disproportionate to the state.

We all kind of know anecdotally that Marion County is unique and has unique challenges, and we're it's not different here.

We have a disproportionate number of our youth who are considered children in need of services.

And 2023, almost a thousand new cases came in, an average of 78 new cases a month.

On the next page, just quick snapshot of where those 2400 children in ease of services are.

They can be in a number of different places by definition.

Obviously, they can be in residential placement, which is or in home placement.

They can be have been placed with a relative, and 33% are in non-relative care.

How they're holding up under that, the number of stressors, the number, the amount of trauma that's created as they move through that system.

Since 2017, we have seen a decline in the number.

I hate to just sort of leave us there.

I'm going to sort of say dot dot dot.

There's a lot that goes underneath that.

Some of that is very real.

Some of that is policy change, some of it is definitional, some of it is the way we count the data.

But in general, the trend is going in the right direction.

So one of our sort of takeaways, and you'll see that at the back of this report, is we need to do a better job of understanding when definitions are affecting the way data is either collected, the definition of the data that's being collected, so that we can parse out what's what's real and what's really happening with our children.

I think again, another statistic that I think we we know, but our child dependency ratio in Marion County outrage most outrags most cities across the country and even in Indiana.

What's the child dependency ratio?

That is the ratio of children under the age of 15 divided by the number of people who are adults.

So how many children per adult are we taking care of in our city?

It's an indication of the relative cost of raising a child in our city versus other other cities.

We have more children, therefore, our need to spend to support those children in education and in health care and so forth is higher, right?

Our needs for child care is higher, pediatric services and so forth on a relative basis to other cities across the state and across the country.

So that's just a quick snapshot of a maybe 40-page report that you have, but I wanted to uh begin to sort of share some of that data.

Some key takeaways as we looked at this, really trying to understand root causes, uh root issues that need to be addressed, and we as a council need to think about as we move forward.

The relative economic situation of the children in Marion County, the system that is designed to support them.

We need to understand more about that.

We know that they're relatively worse off than other children across the state, but understanding the connection between that and their situation within DCS, their situation within juvenile justice, those connections need to be better understood and better addressed.

The role of trauma and perpetuated trauma in families, so not just understanding where children are, but where their parents are, where their caregivers are, has a significant impact on their ability to rise above their situation.

And the role of an insufficient health care system, especially related to mental health services and supports, is very significant in perpetuating the situation that these children face.

There's a lot of information in there about the length of time that they're in there.

There's a lot of science behind the longer a child is in, the more the more changes they experience within their placements, the more trauma, the harder it is for them to rise above their experience.

So lots of data.

We had to start there.

We we felt the strong need to create a solid and common understanding of what's happening.

So what's next for Early Intervention Planning Council?

We will continue to lead and participate in the conversation.

We have been out in the community with this data with various groups across the county, just sharing the information, having conversations, getting some feedback on what they're experiencing, how much they understood about that data, and so forth.

We will continue to do that.

We also would like to take a look at the original ordinance.

It's been a minute since it was written, just to make sure that we're still on point with what we need to be doing.

I think there's no question that the need for early intervention is as strong as it was.

But we want to make sure that the direction that is created through the ordinance is still as relevant as it was.

So our proposal is to come back with uh uh sort of proposed um update and revision to that ordinance um hopefully in the first quarter of 2026.

Um then, you know, sort of sort of last is we would love to be more um frequently in this conversation about early intervention across across the city within city county council, um, so that maybe we can all be a little bit more proactive as we think about this.

Um we certainly the council was created to bring the experts together.

Um we'd love to to be more actively in that conversation.

Uh so with that, I would uh thank you.

I do want to take one second to introduce um my colleague Sarah Comfort, um, who will be uh come the coordinator for McCoy for the Early Intervention Planning Council.

Sarah also serves as our director of advocacy and public policy uh at McCoy.

So I want to make sure that um we say hi, please.

Thank you, Ms.

Thank you, Ms.

Cool, for your presentation.

Uh we will do QA from our committee members.

Comments, questions from counselors.

Councillor Anna, thank you, Mr.

President.

Thank you, uh Liz for your presentation, all the great work that you do.

Um I have the honor of serving uh as a Republican Caucus' appointment uh to the Early Intervention Planning Council.

Um before uh I joined the Early Intervention Planning Council.

Uh our longtime esteemed colleague, former counselor Marilyn Feaster, uh, served on it, did a wonderful job, and we thank her for all the work that she put uh into it over the years.

I particularly want to thank our co-chair, um, our majority leader Maggie Lewis uh for the outstanding contributions that she makes and has contributed uh to what the early intervention planning council.

I think uh McCoy started back many years ago under uh former mayor Bill Hutnett, uh the Early Intervention Planning Council started under Mayor Peterson.

Um so this has a long uh history of uh of success, and uh I think that uh it's shown a very bipartisan um desire to continue uh with and I would just note that uh we did see a very um modest increase in the budget back in 2023, um, but I think that there's still more work to be done, and I think that uh the report that was presented and and more data that continues to be collected will just further uh encourage uh the city and and the council to take a really hard look at uh uh additional dollars that can be found within our budget in the future.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor.

Counselor Boots.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman, and thank you, Liz as well.

Just a question on um you said next for EIPC step two about presenting proposed revisions of the city county council.

Do you have any early idea of areas that you believe need revision or where your proposals might be directed to?

Um at the risk of getting in front of the council.

Um we've had some preliminary conversations, obviously, otherwise I wouldn't have put this comment in here.

Um there's some that are just practical, right?

We think that we need to make some changes in terms of um sort of broadening the scope of who's on the council to make sure we're really are including the leaders who are experts in this field.

So that to me is sort of in the category of um the sort of practical side.

I think the other question is the original ordinance calls for us as a council to create a plan.

Doesn't say for whom, but I assume it means for the city.

Um, and there's a disconnect there, right?

So I think we need to talk about um if we are playing if we are to create a plan uh for whom and in what time frame, um, how often will it be revised, how will it be funded, how will it be executed?

So I think some of this would be about asking for some clarification.

Um and perhaps that could become a formal role within the ordinance.

That's very preliminary.

Sure.

Is much interaction between your organization and CLPI.

Sure, yes.

I mean, much.

We are aware of what each other does.

We're involved in each other's work to the extent that that makes sense.

Would it ever make sense for them to have a spot on your board since they address one incredible specific area of youth justice?

I think I think a stronger presence by youth justice makes a lot of sense.

I agree.

And it they do good work.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilor.

Counselor Hart.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Uh phenomenal presentation.

Thank you.

And thank you for the book, by the way.

There's a lot of good data points in there, and it really helps to uh see things through that that lens.

And I had an interesting conversation at lunch today that really just coincides with a lot of things you were talking about.

Um specifically in regards to uh children and their outcomes in life if they make it to school, uh, graduate from school and and and show up on time and things of that nature.

And so I didn't get a look at, I'm trying to listen to you as I didn't look at all the data points in here, but I'm curious is that something that uh your either McCoy or their earlier intervention planning council is taken into consideration when you're looking at data points as well.

Yeah, I mean, absolutely.

I mean McCoy outside of the council has done quite a bit of work on things like absenteeism on um there's and then outside of McCoy.

Um we have certainly um curated a lot of good information and research around the impact of disruption of school, disruption of community, right?

So even our home placements to the extent that they're outside of their um, you know, their sort of home school is extraordinarily traumatic.

So we have curated quite a bit of that information um and also done quite a bit of work around absenteism um separate from the from the council, but it obviously all integrates into early intervention.

Okay, that's that's wonderful news.

It wasn't it literally last meeting.

I I suggested that we bring somebody in who is an expert on truancy and the correlation of juvenile crime.

So knowing that you have information is just uh another valuable asset that we have as a as a community.

So thank you for sharing that.

Yes, no, thank you for the question, and we do actually quite a bit of work for juvenile justice as well.

Um so thank you for the question.

Thank you, sir.

Additional comments, questions.

Anyone in the yonus could I speak to this presentation?

Thank you so much, Ms.

Coyote.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, up next is the budget review and analysis.

Uh we have proposal 256 and 257 with consent.

I'd like to take those two together.

Thank you.

Proposal number 256, 2025 approves the tax levy and rate for the police special service district for 2026, and proposal 20 proposal number 257, 2025 approves the tax levy and rate for the fire special service district of 2026.

Ms.

Controller, you want to come forward, please.

Welcome.

Good evening.

So I'm Controller Abby Hansen.

Both these proposals are administrative in nature.

They are actions that we have to take because you are serving as the special service district council, as opposed to the city county council.

Uh these districts are or these proposals are adopting the budget tax rate and tax levy for the police and fire special service districts.

The information in these proposals mirror the budget ordinance, specifically section 301, subsection G for fire, and subsection H for police.

Thank you so much.

Counselors.

Comments, questions?

Anyone of the audience could speak to these two?

Thank you so much.

We'll do a um let's do a vote, uh, do a motion first, Miss uh Council.

Most proper move is seconded.

All of the favor of these two, 256 and 57, please say aye.

Aye.

Those opposed, motions carries.

And last up is proposal number 259, 2025, adopts the annual budget for the city of Indianapolis and Marion County for 2026, the public safety and criminal justice committee portion only.

Ms.

CFO.

Hello.

There are no changes to the appropriations for the agencies that came before this committee.

Thank you so much.

Comments from counselors.

Great.

Counselor Bain.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

I've thought long and hard about this proposal tonight.

Um fully support men and women of IMPD, our fire department and public safety professionals here in Marion County.

That being said, the the chief of IMPD asked for one thing in his budget, which was that we would continue the vehicle program, and that's not included in this.

We still have a court system that refuses to share juvenile detention information with law enforcement.

Continues to keep the revolving door of criminal justice open.

For those reasons, I'm going to be voting no tonight.

Thank you, Councilor.

District Comments.

Counselor Anay.

Thank you, Chairman.

I I do share similar uh concerns as uh my colleague, Councillor Bain has noted some some provisions with the IMPD budget, specifically with fleet services, some issues with the public defender agency that I don't think have properly uh been worked out, some additional concerns with some of these grant dollars that uh we discussed uh the last meeting or two.

Um and while I think about that, I try to weigh.

Do I think that this public safety budget is better uh then it is worse?

Um and it does fully fund the police department, it does fully fund our fire department, it does a lot of great things, and so while I can't speak to the full budget and uh forecast my support for that, um I I will be supporting this part of the public safety budget 259 with continued concerns in hopes that these issues can be um uh solved or worked on, if not in this budget uh sometime in the fall fiscal and other opportunities where we can fill gaps.

Thank you, counselor.

Counselor Hart.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Um and I guess what I want to to raise the awareness of is we still do have an opportunity, but it won't be in proposal 259, but we do have an opportunity as a council body to uh address the uh the vehicle concern and the the underspend this year.

And um I'll be transparent with you.

I do have a proposal coming uh forward or an amendment coming forward for that to try and uh get the dollars there, and that's specifically uh for uh one main reason, and that's police morale.

You know, it's been made very aware to us that their vehicle is their office, they're in there every day, and um you know we have uh the option to to support that or not, and that's what I'm gonna be bringing to you on October 6th.

Um, but that I have to do that because it's not in this uh in this proposal.

Uh we've got an issue right now in the city where we're not attracting enough police officers, and I think it sends a really bad message if we can't get them the vehicles, the offices they need to be successful in this city.

Um and um I'm disappointed that it didn't land in in this part of the budget, uh, but I will bring uh that amendment forward, and with that I'm not supportive of 259 as well.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Thank you, Counselor.

Additional comments from counselors.

Anyone in the counselor league, good evening, Mr.

Chairman, uh members of the committee.

Forgive my tardiness.

I'm a little under the weather tonight, um, but for some of the same sentiments that my colleagues shared in the front row, um, in addition to the issues that we have happening um with regard to public safety in our sheriff's office, particularly with regard to our detention of uh individuals were not being compensated for with ID with IDOE, excuse me, I DOC.

Um, as well as um as well as the cooperation um with ICE.

So I will continue to advocate for these things offline as well, um, but we'll believe no vote tonight for proposal 259.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Thank you, Counselor.

Anyone in the Counselor Boots, thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Um I just would make a quick comment about what I found somewhat offensive when our attorney general sent us a threatening letter.

Um I don't think it's proper that one form of government attacks another form of government.

Um I thought there were some blatant mischaracterizations in that press release.

Um at least my purpose of our last public safety meeting was to delve into the basis for which the sheriff was working with the federal authorities for uh ICE detainees, and just to confirm that we are comfortable, that was all um proper and right, and to characterize that as our attack and not being for um in his words, we stand for law and order in suggesting that we don't is again I think a blatant false representation and also again based on just false mischaracterizations of the facts as our leading legal officer in the state asserting false facts is if I were a lawyer doing that and I am, and if I did that in a court of law, I could be sanctioned for it.

So for them to come forward and say with crime surging in our capital, that's a blatant lie, and it should not be coming from the Office of Attorney General.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you, Counselor.

Councilor McCormick.

Hi, thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Um, I if it's okay, I would like um Director Merkley to come up and confirm the immigrant legal defense fund um portion that is not in the budget that will be funded by some apparatus, correct?

Thank you, Counselor Director Merkley.

Yes, uh Director of the Office of Public Health and Safety, Andrew Merkley.

Um, yes, counselor, we are happy to say that we will be able to fund the immigrant legal defense fund at the same amount as 2025.

And uh we're thankful to our partners, our uh community partners for bringing this uh to our awareness and and uh happy to be able to do that.

Okay, perfect.

Thank you.

And I just want to say if we can double that number next year, that would even be better.

Thank you.

Thank you, Counselor Director.

Anyone in the audience care to speak to proposed number 259, 2025?

Anyone sign up or anything, Ms.

Clerk?

Okay.

The chair will intermotion.

So move.

Second.

Motion properly moved to second.

You want to do a roll call vote, uh, please, Mr.

Clerk.

Counselor Annay.

Aye.

Counselor Bain.

No.

Counselor Boots.

Boots, aye.

Counselor Carlino.

Carlino, no.

Counselor Delaney.

Aye.

Counselor Graves.

Graves, aye.

Counselor Hart.

Hart, no.

Counselor Mascarry.

Mascarry, aye.

Counselor McCormick.

McCormick, aye.

Counselor Maori.

Aye.

Counselor Perkins.

Uh Perkins, yes.

Chair Robinson.

Robinson, aye.

Motion motion carries.

Thank you, Counselors.

Also, thank to the agencies, uh, the city county, uh their leaders and their staff uh in the administration.

Uh the mayor's office will prepare and present their budgets.

Thank you all for that.

Your support for 2026's budget, and thank the committee members and counselors and our council staff.

With that, we are adjourned.