Good evening.

Welcome to the Adman and Finance Committee meeting.

I'd like to start with introductions to my left.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Mike Dilk, District 24.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman Paul and A, District 22.

If you were right.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair Renee Allen, District 15.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair Nick Roberts, district four.

Thank you, Chairman Andy Nielsen, District 14.

Good evening, Chairman Mascary, Krista Carlino, District 11, West Side.

Good evening, Maggie Lewis.

Frank Mascarry, District 19.

And I thought it was Mrs.

Mrs.

Wells now.

Officially, yes.

Name changes take time.

Well, welcome to our newly wed.

We have three things on our agenda.

Are you presenting all three?

Just the first proposal 328.

Okay, you're you're you're on the hot seat.

You're up.

Proposal 328.

Good evening.

My name is Jake McVay, Deputy Controller in the Office of Finance and Management.

I'm presenting proposal 328.

This is the year end omnibus fiscal.

Similar to previous years, this fiscal transfers budget between characters, and the only additional appropriation is for grant awards.

These transfers are required to allow agencies and departments to fulfill their commitments and maintain their services until the next fiscal year.

Coming to the end of the year, agencies and departments may need to realign their budget from how we originally built it 18 months ago.

So this fiscal does not add any new local dollars to the budget.

Excuse me.

So the budget is aligned with the agency's operational needs before we enter into the 2026 fiscal year.

These transfers may be needed for a variety of reasons.

The most common action here is to transfer funds from character one to three for additional contractual expenditures and services.

And with that, that's the end of my slides.

Anyone uh on the council have any questions?

Seeing none.

Anyone from the audience have any questions?

Mr.

Chairman, I move uh proposal number three twenty-eight to the full council with a due pass recommendation.

It's been moved and seconded.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Opposed?

Thank you.

Who's up next?

All right, proposal three three twenty-nine.

Thank you.

Thanks for the support.

Everybody's leaving.

Andy, what'd you say?

You should everybody left.

Is Jake McVay here?

Did you have a PowerPoint?

Oh, sorry, thank you.

Thank you.

Um good evening, Counselors.

Oh, thank you.

To give you all just more of a comprehensive view about what we use are under spend from character one to character three, which will be exclusively for litigation related costs.

Thank you.

Oh, sure.

Spin the time.

Thanks for trying to appreciate it.

Jake we have maybe we're good.

Okay, sure.

Yeah, thank you, Counselor.

Head of ID?

Head of IT.

Oh my gosh.

Have your numbers?

No.

Let me get that on us.

Maybe.

Oh, not yet, not yet.

I think it's been up.

Do you have to go on every video?

All right, press the button.

Go for it, Jake.

There you go.

That's ISA in the house.

That's going on.

Yep, that's it.

I can't technology.

Well, this is like my how I start every year.

Yep, yep.

Yep.

Thank you, Bob.

Thank you.

All right.

Where was I?

Not very far.

All right.

Well, good one.

Good evening.

Thank you, Counselors.

This is a request to transfer our character one underspend to our character three to cover costs related to our litigation contracts.

I'll give you a preview and kind of a sample of what cases look like here in the Office of Corporation Council.

So in the past couple years, especially litigation costs have increased due to the cases that we've seen over the past couple years, and I'll may give some information about those.

I particularly want to highlight two cases in particular that do cost at least in this fiscal year in 2025 a lot of money.

Both cases involve a very specific subject matter.

So we had to find a local count, a local firm here that we thought would meet and has been against this firm before, to litigate them.

Not only is it a specific type of subject matter involving some law enforcement issues, it also subjects the city to a significant amount of liability in the tens of millions of dollars.

So it was important for us to get people who are experts and attorneys who are experts in this area to defend the city on these cases.

That we will hopefully either completely eliminate the liability of the city or at least significantly reduce that liability that we are facing with those two cases.

In particular, since 2020, uh nationwide, there's been an uptick in law enforcement specific cases against the city.

Oftentimes a lot of these are resolved in the beginning cases because the claims aren't there, but we're gonna see a lot more litigation, but that still takes time and resources away from our OCC litigators who spend time filing those procedural motions and spending time doing initial discovery in those cases to again vet them and to get them uh resolved.

Um we also do while we've increased our litigation staff this year and are still in the process of doing that.

Uh there are still vacant positions, which is why this character one uh transfer is available, but also kind of we try to match so we would cover what we have to spend on outside counsel.

Um I also want to talk about what we often have to do, which is hire conflict counsel, and conflict counsel is actually part of our uh local ordinance.

Um this essentially is that if you are employed employee of the city county and you are sued for actions you take in your official capacity, you are entitled to representation by the Office of Corporation Counsel.

Um, and sometimes cases present either ethical conflicts under the NBA rules of professional conduct or by local ordinance where we could be conflicted from representing us a client.

So in that case, we have to get outside counsel for them in order to give them what they're entitled to, which is a robust um defense of any claims they have against them.

Um an example to kind of put that in context, I'd say a more common one, unfortunately, is one where we get a case against the IMPD, and individual officers are also named as defendants in the civil case, then subsequently those officers are then charged with the criminal offense because of that potential conflict, and to give those officers fair representation, which is our duty, we will have to get them conflict counsel so that they can be represented appropriately and not um brought in at least during the time that they have criminal charges proceeding against them into the case that the city attorneys were OCC attorneys are representing the IMPD.

Um that's just one example where we do routinely get conflict counsel for for those um officers.

Um to briefly kind of tick through and not bore you all with all the litigation, but discovery cost and trial cost and uh deposition costs have certainly increased uh within the past year, um past two years actually.

We do have um some of these funds are gonna be going to pay.

We have hired and found a good deal with our our internal, well, contracted uh court reporter who does our depositions, but obviously we are defendants in the case, so oftentimes plaintiff's counsel will hire their own transcription services, so we have to pay for those transcripts and things to do for litigation.

In addition, one big exponential fee that we talk about in litigation world a lot is expert witness fees have significantly increased just since 2023.

Um so that's something we have to pay for.

We I mean I just I just think for most cases it's malpractice not to try a case without an expert witness.

You're just gonna put yourself in a disadvantage.

So, in addition to hiring an expert that we always try to keep local uh to do the review and to provide the expert report, we have to pay for their time to go sit through depositions, which can be multi-day, as well as pay for their time to sit in trial and to give testify and testify at trial.

Um, and finally, this request will help cover some of our ongoing contracts that we just have every year that have been higher in the past two years, at least since I've uh sent it to this role.

Uh, first, our litigation team does not have capacity to be plaintiff's attorneys.

Uh, they are defense law firm exclusively.

So we do have cases where the city uh is entitled to money through collections actions, workers' comp, things like that.

So we do have uh attorneys that we put on retainer to help do um to initiate cases on behalf of the city to get what we believe we're legally entitled to from businesses or whoever.

Um, and additionally, as you all probably know this, the past two years have been cycles of collective bargaining.

So we have had a labor attorney who've engaged since way before my time, who has experience with our those contracts in particular that builds that trust level from the set from the offset from whatever union we're negotiating with, and so she's just been phenomenal in helping us just go through our collective bargaining agreements, and those I don't think they're well, there's one set for next year, but that should go down.

But we've had two years of getting all of our union contracts renegotiated for 20 at the end of 24 and the rest at the end of this year.

Um, and that's kind of in a nutshell what all that is.

Uh thank you.

Thank you.

Uh any questions, counselors.

And counselor Nelson.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

I think that this is probably just a maybe a drafting error, but I think in section two of the proposal, I don't know which one.

Is it in fact an 838,000 dollar additional appropriation?

You're gonna make it new math now.

Yeah, so the one the the first one they have, Jake.

You like that the character one, and then the idea of the idea was the oh I'm sorry, I I it in the in the actual text it says 740,000.

And then in the digits, uh the actual is 838.

So I just was making sure.

Okay, cool.

I just I mean I know we can settle that later.

I just wanted to make sure which one was right, and it was more just a no, sorry, counselor B.

Yeah, yep, yeah.

Just what thank you.

Uh Council Pierce.

Thank you, Chairman.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

Uh I have one.

Uh, how many outside attorneys do you hire?

Like your the labor attorney is that in staff or is that somebody you hire outside?

Uh the labor attorneys outside, uh, that's a separate outside attorney.

Um, as far as the workers' comp, the one we've had for years is retiring this year, so we are actually just today negotiating a new contract to have a workers' comp and collections attorney.

Um, and then the other ones are law firms.

I mean, as far as you know, the most law enforcement cases we go through the firm frost round Todd, which I say is the bulk of where this character three is because we have so many law enforcement cases, they've um helped us out for so many years on doing those and had the expertise.

So, as far as a number goes, I probably have to count the contracts, but as far as attorneys who are helping us routinely through those law firms, maybe 10 to 12.

Thank you.

So the one Ross Brown is the one that uh the sheriff uses so they are an expertise within that.

Okay, thank you.

Any other counselors' questions?

Seeing none?

Anyone from the audience can speak on this?

Seeing this understand a motion.

Some moved second.

Move and second.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Opposed.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

One more to go.

Proposal 330.

Information technology.

Welcome.

Are you you're in charge of these microphones, right?

You know, we had a conversation about that today.

See these spongy things?

They're missing all over and there.

In fact, uh they're missing in the big room.

Oh, it's uh technically the microphones are building authorities.

Oh, we need to get that fixed.

Oh, yeah.

All right, you're on the table.

All right.

Give me one second to get this up.

Uh and I passed out uh uh, yeah, you most of you have seen it, the the presentation.

Well, good evening, thank you all.

Appreciate the opportunity to come before you and present our year in fiscal.

Um at the at the summary of what this is is ISA is requesting uh over 4.8 million dollars in additional appropriation, $515,000 are from the enhanced access fund, and just over 4.3 from the county general fund.

Uh there is a slight movement within our characters as you can see below, uh 50,000 and 18,000 moving into character three uh from underspend within character one and character two.

Uh I will not probably talk about these again unless you all ask us for it, and then I'll get into it.

Um but as far as the the bigger cost and the what's coming from the county general fund and why we're asking for that, I'll probably spend a predominant amount of time here talking about what that is.

So about 13, 14 years ago, uh we did an RFP uh sorry, we we awarded a contract to uh our previous property tax, our current property tax vendor.

Uh that has run its course, and after a certain number of renewals and contracts, you have to go through the RFP process in order to get uh a new vendor in.

And so that's what we undertook this year.

Uh we included people from ISA, the auditor, so the auditor's office, the assessor's office, uh, the treasurer's office, uh, DMD and BNS in order to select a vendor for for the system.

Uh and it was open uh to anybody who who would apply for it after a long and lengthy process.

Uh we ended up selecting a new vendor by the name of EXOFT.

Uh they are currently in uh I believe 84 counties within in Indiana.

They are uh recognized and certified by the DLGF uh and the vast majority of our um fiscal is paying for the licenses and software and installation of that new system.

Uh this is a known expense that we knew about and cooperation with OFM uh back in 24.

We had talked about adding what uh a potential to our budget on what the cost would be.

And instead of doing that to 25, we decided that with the best course of action is once we knew what that number was was to come for a fiscal at the end of the year this year in order to get that put into this year's budget so we could pay for that initial sum of money.

Um the second piece on there, uh, and I'm happy to talk more about that is the address and parcel modernization initiative.

This is something new.

Uh, this is so within the city county, we use Esri systems a lot for our GIS systems, and they are used by a vast majority of departments and agencies.

Maps.indies.gov is powered by it.

Uh this is a significant improvement to our addressing and our our parcel, it's called the parcel fabric and the ESRI address data management.

Uh, and so it will help with the accuracy for uh address-based routing within our system.

So when you think of uh the systems that use that, that not necessarily the assessor because that's more on the parcel side, so that will be that parcel fiber piece, but the addressing piece will be used by a vast majority of the other city and county uh uh units of business if you think of uh even even with uh Cadden RMS with PSC, we send information over from our GIS systems to them so that they can do routing and emergencies uh more appropriately.

Uh this goes to uh street routing and street mapping and updating center lines, which is really nerdy stuff if you wanted to get into it.

So I I'm gonna try and avoid it, but uh that is $500,000 of our request.

Uh but the the goal here is that we will update this address and parcel uh information so that the new property tax management that sits on top of it will be more valuable to the residents and and to the city county, is the idea behind that piece.

Uh, we have just recently gone through uh a year and a half upgrade of our GIS systems uh that's taken some time, and this is the last piece that we want to incorporate in order to make sure that our our systems are working appropriately.

And finally, uh the third piece there is the Indigo Blue Line.

Uh, you're wondering why that's on my budget request.

So we have fiber that runs uh between most of the central area of of Indianapolis so that we can connect all our distinct build buildings and kind of running our own fiber network.

A lot of that runs along where the blue line is going in, so we have to pay contractors in order to move that around so we don't disrupt the network that the city county runs on.

And so that is $380,000.

And then finally, the enhanced act enhanced access fund.

I have come to this committee before on enhanced access requests.

Uh the goal enhanced access is a uh I believe a state statute that uh allows for a certain fund uh to be created and for things that will improve uh more access to services of the of the city county or of any local government for that matter.

Uh there's a committee that goes before that committee is a sub to the IT board.

Uh it goes to the the committee for approval.

Once those are approved, it goes to the IT board for approval, and then finally it comes to council for approval of the appropriation of funds.

Um but the whole point of these things are things that will help uh residents and staff have better access to electronic records, is really what it comes down to.

Uh, there are four things on there.

The first one is dot maps.

Dot maps is already in use by uh VNS currently uh to help with uh uh road closures and uh permit handling to the so the public can see where permits are being being used.

Uh this is actually uh for 150,000, it's an improvement to that.

They are going to take right-away permit uh applications through the system in order so to have a better integration with this.

There will also be a new interface on the dot maps uh application where residents and the public can see uh what area or what permits have been given to uh certain areas within the map that's on there.

Uh you can draw you can draw uh uh a square and any permits that are in that area will light up and you'll be able to look and see what permits have been issued in that area uh in regard to right-of-way permits.

So that's a that's an exciting development.

Uh next one is DocuSign.

Uh, some of you may be aware that uh of what DocuSign is, it's not just signing documents.

Um however, there is a workflow piece to it as well.

Uh, and so it is a kind of a where the idea here is with the workflow and and the ability to sign documents electronically.

This will replace a lot of what we use for forms on the website and and potentially enhance other government services.

Our website is as you may have seen, has it's been in existence now for about seven to eight years.

Uh that website is uh almost 99% compliant on accessibility uh requirements, particularly that's a deadline that we have at the end of April of next year to work on on the accessibility both internally and external applications and our websites.

Uh, this piece will help not only with that, but it will also we use an application called Screen Door, which is one of the forms with you ever used a form on indie.gov, that's that's what we use.

Uh that form will be will be replaced by DocuSign.

Uh and DocuSign allows the departments and agencies to create their own forms and put them onto the website or to use them for other services as well.

So I believe this one was for 125,000, and that is for the first year.

Uh we have several use cases that we're trying to get off the ground uh this first year to prove its worth.

But the screen door application that we pay our website vendor is $150,000, so there's already a savings if we're able to switch those out moving forward.

Uh the next one on there is OpenGov.

So OpenGov is currently in use by two departments, uh purchasing and uh DMD.

DMD is using the permitting and licensing piece to do some internal work within with within their organization.

I think there is a public facing piece to it, but I you can't I can't get into all that detail, I just don't know it as well.

But the purchasing piece is for procurements.

So vendors are able to go to a website now uh and look at the available RFPs, uh RF calls, uh quotes, whatever, and and submit their applications or their responses directly on that website and it routes through.

This next piece that we're we're asking for funds here that's $125,000 is for the contracting piece.

So we will go directly from procurement to contracts and doing digital contracts with everyone in the city county.

We currently do have a digital contract portal, however, it is outdated and a little a little difficult to work with.

Uh, but this is will not only will it give us that contract piece to sign, but once the contracts are are done, it will post them on its own website on open.gov that is not only searchable like our current website does, but you could actually browse it and be able to see quickly the value of certain contracts.

So we're we're really excited about what that will look like.

Uh but that is uh 125,000.

And then finally, the last one on there is Preservica.

Preservica is a so currently within the city county, we store uh document retention within uh an application called File Net.

It is very it's old, it's been around for a while.

Uh and it is not quite as uh it's it needs to be improved on, and we haven't had that improvement that we've been looking to find.

There's a lot of people who don't like the interface, it's difficult to use, there's challenges with it.

Uh Preservica is looks very much like a SharePoint, SharePoint Online type of style.

Uh this allows for document storage and archiving uh on in not only on premise where File Net is, but in the cloud.

It also makes the ability to have public uh archives available.

Uh you can set up uh these are documents that we want the the public to be able to view and be able to get easily, uh and it allows for that as well as internal secured documentation that we're storing uh in perpetuity.

For example, uh payroll, uh payroll of anything related to someone's payroll, they have you we have to maintain and keep that for 75 years past their death.

So, like there has to be a place in perpetuity to store these documents, and this will be the new piece.

Uh at a high level, these are the improvements that we're asking for here, and I can go in deeply a little bit more on all these, and that's what the remainder of that PowerPoint slide is.

But for the sake of your benefit and to talk about it, I I wanted to pause here and see what it is that you wanted to speak about.

Thank you.

And again, questions from counselors.

And you sure you can't get these enough thanks fit.

I'll see what I can do.

You got poll.

I got poll.

Anyone from the audience who likes to speak on this?

Man.

Entertain a motion.

Some move second.

Second it.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Opposed?

All right.

Thank you very much.

Very, very informational.

I kept it short, right?

All right, no other business.

We are adjourned.