Good evening, everyone.

It is 5 30 p.m.

on Wednesday, May 13th, 2026.

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

Welcome to the Public Safety and Criminal Justice Committee, the City County Council.

We'll start the introductions of our meeting this evening at our far left.

Welcome back.

Michael Paul Hart, Counselor.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair, Michael Paul Hart, representing District 20.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman, Josh Bain, District 21.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Brian Mowery, District 25.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair, Dr.

Carlos Perkins, District 6.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair, Brian Delaney, District 2.

Thank you, Mr.

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

And top row, Councillor Graves.

Good evening, everyone.

Keith Graves, District 9 on the east side.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Frank Mascarry, Southeast Side, District 19.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Renite Island, District 15, Fari Side.

Thank you, Council.

We have a special guest this evening with us, President Lewis.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman, Maggie Lewis, District 5.

Thank you so much, Lee Robinson, District 1, Chair of the Committee.

First of our agenda is proposal 128-2026 appoints Jessica Harris to the Marion County Public Defender Board, Miss Harris President.

Miss Harris present.

We will move this to the end of the agenda.

If she comes in, please let us know.

Up next, proposal 129 2026 reappoints Fred Pervine to the emergency services agency board.

Mr.

Hervine, welcome.

You have been here before.

We have supported you before.

Yes.

And uh just talk to us while we'd like to reappoint you this year.

Say again.

Just talk to us briefly about why we want to be reappointed.

Um I've been a firefighter for over uh 40 years, retired from IFD 35, and currently chief of fire at the Indianapolis International Airport.

Uh public safety is very important to me.

Uh my two sons are in public safety.

My sisters, um, we're a public safety family, and I believe it's my obligation as a citizen to make sure that I can do everything I can do to help my community.

So I'm always glad to serve.

Thank you so much, Mr.

Perry.

Um, thank you for your service.

Comments or questions on 129.

Anyone in the audience care to speak to this proposal?

See no motion.

So moved.

Second.

Most be proper moved and seconded.

All those in favor, scan around by saying aye.

Those opposed.

Thank you, sir, for your service.

Thank you.

Appreciate you.

Thanks so much.

Proposal number 130, 2026 reappoints Lieutenant Larry Pete Atkins to the domestic violence for talent review team.

Lieutenant Atkins, welcome.

Good to see you.

Thank you for your service, and thank you for wanting to be reappointed.

I didn't share some words about us about this reappointment.

Yeah, I want to say that um I've been um over our Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department's intimate partner violence unit for two years now.

And um, some of the things that we um see in our community when it comes to domestic violence and how that the federal review team looks at potential ways to try to avoid um future um homicides in our in our in our community.

And um, one of the things that we really focus on in the federal review team is when we're talking to the um victims of the family members that are that talk about their loved ones.

Just really understanding the whole concept of trauma informed care and how that is also a preventive uh measure, but also an intervention method, because after the loved one is dead, um we're gonna rely on their information and what we can do and best practices to help um prevent the next uh homicide um in our community.

Related to domestic violence.

Thank you so much for your service.

Comments or questions on 130.

Anyone in the audience care to speak to this proposal for Lieutenant Adkins?

Chairman to any motion, so move.

Most being probably moved and seconded.

All those in favor standard by saying aye.

Aye, those opposed.

Motion carries.

Thank you so much, sir.

Thank you.

Thank you for your service.

Up next is proposal 131, 2026, appropriates an additional one million two hundred and forty-four thousand five hundred dollars, the two thousand twenty-six budget of the Marion County Sheriff's Drug Free Community, federal grants and county federal law enforcement funds for the purpose of funding the cadet program, the medication assistant treatment map program and security and feed expenses is Calvin Carr.

Welcome.

You want to talk to us briefly about this uh appropriation?

Yeah, it's thank you, Mr.

Chairman, counselors of the committee.

Um, I am here tonight as the chairman mentioned to request uh additional appropriation in three different funds county grant fund, federal grant fund, and then the county federal law enforcement fund.

Um these funds will be utilized in the county grant fund in character two, character three, and character four.

This will go to enhance our cadet program at the Marion County Sheriff's Office.

In the federal grant fund, we are requesting one million thirty-five thousand in character three to support an expansion and enhancement of our medication assisted treatment program, and that program currently serves about a hundred and fifty individuals each day in our MAT program, and then in the county federal law enforcement program, we are requesting an additional appropriation of 184,500 in characters two and four to put procure some additional security supplies and some specialty vehicles.

Thank you so much, Ms.

Carr.

Commercial questions for Miss Carr.

Counselor.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Um just real quick.

What what are the security features that you referenced?

Um the main thing we are looking to purchase, um, are ballistic grade podiums that will go here in the city county building and also at the community justice campus.

Thank you, Council Bain.

Council Books.

Thank you, uh Mr.

Chair.

Um, just quickly, Miss C CFO, the funds that have gone through that are passed through from grants.

Can you identify those out of all these numbers?

Which part are just passing through our hands, that come from a state or federal fund.

Yes, yes, the federal grant fund, um, this is a Bureau of Justice Assistance Community Project funding in character three.

The county grant fund is a drug-free community grant, um, and the amount of twenty-five thousand dollars.

We get that about every other year.

So the federal fund is the medicated medication assisted treatment correct, yes.

What is that in a nutshell?

Um, so in our facility, when individuals come in on medication medication assisted treatment um for opioid use disorder.

Um, so that is either they are on uh bupenorphin or another methadone.

Um so they receive those services in our facility.

If they are on them in the community, we continue them.

If they are eligible to receive them when they enter the facility, we will induct them while they are with us, and then we connect them to care when they leave our facility so that they can continue that treatment in the community.

And does the federal pass-through funds cover all of your costs and expenses in rendering those services?

Um so we grant fund that program right now is with these funds will be a two million dollar program for us.

Um we grant fund all but five hundred thousand of that.

So um the need is great.

I think we could probably triple the amount of individuals in that program, and we continue to seek funding to do that.

Um so we we initially started the program with a hundred individuals.

We've been able to raise it to 150.

So we continue to try to find funds to expand that.

Is the federal source not receptive to your needs?

I think you know they are.

It's just a um, it's very expensive.

So I think you know, we request quite a bit of money, and we we're pretty successful.

Um, but we continue to, I mean, go after everything we can to try and expand.

Great.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council.

Additional commercial questions.

Anyone in the audience care to speak to proposal 131?

Seeing that, journality motion.

Motion probably moved and seconded.

All those in favor signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Those opposed.

Motion closed.

Thank you, Ms.

Carr.

Thank you very much.

Up next, proposal 132 2026 approves an additional appropriation of 220,005 in the 2026 budget of the Marion County Coroner's Office.

County grants and state grant funds for the purposes of funding costs associated with the American Medical Association Project, the Health First Indiana Initiative Project, and the Trauma Informed Care Project.

Coroner Miss McGuinty is not you.

Welcome.

What's your name, please?

Sorry to disappoint.

My name is Mallory Malcheski.

I'm the chief financial officer for the Marion County Coroner's Office.

Thank you so much.

Um, thank you, Mr.

Chair and Council Committee members.

Uh first and foremost, the elected official, Ms.

McGinty would like to extend her regrets.

She is unfortunately under the weather.

Um tonight we are requesting the additional appropriations related to opioid settlement funds, state and local grant funding.

These appropriations are intended to support ongoing and newly awarded public health and prevention initiatives that directly impact Marion County residents.

We are asking for the reappropriation of 40,500 in underspent 2023 opioid settlement funds in character three.

These funds would allow us to continue the trauma informed care services and projects through the end of 2026 without any additional impact to county gen funds.

The trauma informed care programs are increasingly important component of our operations and help provide support services to family and individuals during some of their most difficult moments.

In addition, we are requesting a total of $120,000 in state grant appropriations with 20,000 in character two and a hundred thousand in character three.

These funds are tied to grants awarded through the Indiana Department of Health and will support several prevention-focused grant initiatives, including child drowning prevention, programs aimed at reducing firearm-related child deaths, and efforts focused in reducing drug intoxication deaths among children.

We are also requesting an additional 60,000 in local grant appropriations, consisting of 20,000 in character two and 40,000 in character three, related to an anticipated microgrant supporting maternal and infant mortality reduction efforts here in Marion County.

In 2025, firearm drug intoxication and drowning deaths represented 34% of child fatalities investigated by our office.

These grants allow us to move beyond only responding after tragedies occur and instead support proactive education, prevention, outreach, and community-based intervention efforts.

This request will allow the coroner's office to continue our critical trauma informed care services while expanding prevention and public health initiatives that align directly with community safety and health priorities throughout Marion County.

Thank you so much.

And if you have any questions, thank you so much.

Commissary questions, Council Wills.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Um yes, Councillor Wells, District 11, West Side.

Um, thank you so much for your presentation.

Do you mind if you walk through the state character funds again?

The numbers, one more time, just to make sure mine match what yours are.

Absolutely.

Um so the total is a hundred and twenty thousand, with twenty thousand total being in character two and a hundred thousand being in character three.

Madam Council, I have one hundred and forty thousand five hundred dollars in my packet.

Is that correct?

That's good.

I have two.

So part of it is a tr is transferring from one budget year to another.

So you'll see a reduction in 2023, and it's being moved to 2026.

So I'm not quite sure, something to do with their award, but that was my understanding.

Mr.

Chairman.

What year is the underspend from just to clarify?

It would be from 2023.

That would be the 40,500.

Okay.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Counselor.

Council Boots.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman, and thank you, Ms.

CFO for the presentation.

This issue of child drowning came up the other day in a parks committee meeting uh in connection with summer programming to teach kids how to swim.

What are the steps that your office?

You mentioned proactive versus reactive.

And when you say proactive, are you meaning the number one tool is teaching kids to swim?

There are other things to do about you know preventing access to bodies of water and things like that.

So give us a little better, more clear picture of what you're referring to as proactive steps.

Sure.

The drowning prevention grant, we will be partnering with Indy Parks, and we're looking at it from a data analytics standpoint in zip codes.

Where are we seeing drowning deaths?

Where are we seeing at risk using that from historical data?

And then we will be using a program to provide free swimming lessons within those impacted areas.

Great.

Just as I was hoping, thank you.

Thank you, Councilor.

Anyone on the audience could speak to proposal 132?

Seeing none of the chair and any motion.

Most of the moved and seconded.

All those in favor by saying aye.

Those opposed.

Motion carries, thank you so much.

Give the corner our regards, please.

Thank you so much.

Proposal 133 2026 approves an additional appropriation of 210,000.

The 2026 budget of the Marion County Public Defender Agency, the county grants fund for the purpose of funding the personnel for the interdisciplinary defense system project funded by Eli Lilly.

Mr.

Ray Casanova, welcome.

Thank you.

Good evening, everyone.

We are asking for additional appropriations totaling 210,000 in character one in the county grant funds to staff and support the interdisciplinary defense system project that is funded by the Lilly Endowment.

The IDS project is basically assisting clients that are coming out of the prison system and assisting them with finding housing, employment, and reconnecting them with services.

This grant will continue to fund our team that is working on the IDS system with the IDS project.

We currently have three social workers.

One of those positions is currently open as well as one attorney.

This additional funding will continue to assist them and assist our office in providing that support for those clients that are coming out of prison system.

This project has been very effective in helping reduce recidivism rates and in reintegrating those clients coming out of uh periods of incarceration in our system.

Thank you so much, Mr.

Costner, for your presentation.

Comments or questions on 133.

Counselor Graves.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Thank you for the explanation on that uh director.

Um how many uh individuals are you guys able to help do the IDS program?

Unfortunately, I don't have that information.

Uh I'm happy to provide it to you in a follow-up email.

Um, uh we have been very active in this uh work that we've been doing through our social workers and our attorneys, and I apologize I don't have that information, but I'm happy to provide that to you.

Thank you.

How do they find you?

Uh do you reach out to them uh upon um uh being released?

Uh basically uh we identify them through the nature of the offense uh and the length of the incarceration, so uh initial contact is made with them in while they're still in the prison system, uh, in uh I don't know the exact period of time in which they're going to be released.

So the work begins with connecting with them in the prison system and before they come out, and then identifying uh uh housing within the community, employment within the community, as well as uh reconnecting them with services.

I know that our team uh does meet uh regularly with those individuals that we're supporting through the IDS system.

Uh we are collecting data on a regular basis.

What we hope to do in the future.

This is a pilot program.

I think it's been in place for about a little over two years.

What we're hoping to do is continue to collect data to compare um the impact of the IDS support for those uh clients of that are coming out of incarceration and compare that to those that do not receive that additional support to demonstrate the the efficacy of this program.

Think of counselor, counselor Councillor Delaney.

Counselor Graves already asked my question, so thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Boots.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Thank you, Mr.

Public Defender.

How are you tonight?

I'm good.

I'm fine, thank you.

Um, reading the fiscal note on this, I understand that at one point um these three positions, if I'm reading this right, were covered by federal ARP money.

That's correct.

And then the Lilly endowment is picking that up from here forward.

That's correct.

Uh actually, the federal funding expired uh sooner than we were anticipating.

We were originally anticipating the federal funding would last through the second quarter.

Unfortunately, it did not.

Uh, and that but but Lily had always been there as the additional local funding that was going to basically carry the project through uh a longer duration than the funds would.

So tonight we're just approving the pass through of the Lilly money to pay for these three spots for your IDS program.

Correct.

Yes.

Thank you for the explanation.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Thank you, Council.

Additional comments.

Anyone in the audience care to speak to proposal 133?

Seeing none of your intending motion.

Motion has been properly moved and seconded.

All those in favor is going to vote by saying aye.

Those opposed.

Thank you.

Motion carries.

Thank you so much.

Appreciate it.

Up next, proposal 134, 2026, approves an additional appropriation of $34,000 in the 2026 budget of the Marion County Superior Court.

Drug free community fund for the purpose of funding the initiative of the drug treatment court and retro court project.

Miss Holly Fellows, welcome.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman, and members of the council.

I'm Holly Fellow, CFO of Marion Superior Court, and I'm here today to ask for an additional appropriation in the amount of $34,000 in character three in the drug-free Marion County fund for our drug treatment and re-entry courts as they were awarded an uh an award from the drug-free Marion County grant.

Thank you so much.

Uh comments or questions from counselors.

Anyone anyone audience care to speak to proposal 134?

To retane any motion.

Motion will probably move and seconded.

All those in favor by saying aye.

Those opposed motion carries.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Up next, proposal 135 2026 approves additional appropriation of 4,830,000 in the 2026 budget of the IMPD state grants, federal grants, and IPD general funds for the purpose of funding various grant awards not previously appropriated in crime gun test for its grant cleanup.

Ms.

Deb Hall, welcome.

Thank you.

Um IMPD is requesting approximately 400 4.8 million dollars.

Um, 3.5 million of that is specifically for grant cleanup.

1.3 is for new grant projects awards that were received after budget season last year.

Specifically for the in dot work zone projects and the internet crimes against children task force.

Um the in doubt work zone is just for that.

Officers will be patrolling that to help keep workers safe in in dot work zones, and the internet crimes against children will uh funding will support investigations for internet crimes.

Uh the other $3.5 million is basically between characters one through four cleanup from prior year grants between 2019 and 2025, where expenses were posted to the wrong funds, wrong grant projects, and of course, we need additional appropriations to clean up the account the accounting um general ledgers so that we can close out those grants in our system.

So I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you so much.

Comments or questions for IMPD.

Anyone in the audience could speak to proposal 135?

Seeing none, we'll entertain any motion.

Motion property moved and seconded.

All those in favor by saying aye, aye.

Those opposed.

Motion carries.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Up next proposal 136-2026 approves a transfer of $300,000 dollars in the 2026 budget of the Mary and County Forensic Services Agency, the County General Fund from Character 3 to Character 2, and the purpose of funding costs associated with laboratory supplies.

Mr.

Viperman and Amberger.

Thank you.

Good evening and thank you for your time.

As indicated by proposal 136, we are requesting to transfer $300,000 from our County General Character 3 to County General Character 2.

This will allow us to purchase supplies needed to maintain normal lab casework up until October.

We do want to make this body aware that we will probably need a return in the fall for an additional appropriations request for supplies.

Finally, I just want to highlight that our supply funding concerns can be largely attributed to the fact that we are working with less grant dollars in 2026 than in years past.

Thank you and welcome.

Commissary questions from 136.

Anyone?

Thanks, Mr.

Chair.

Uh, what kind of supplies are you mentioning?

Uh primarily it will be for our DNA unit, so that'll be our global filer kits, our quantify layer kits, and our Y filer kits.

These are very expensive supplies.

Um, one global file or kit alone can be over fifty, five hundred dollars.

You know, we need to purchase 40 kits at a time.

So that unit is the primary driver of our supply needs.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council.

Counselor Boots.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman, and thank you, Mr.

Vipperman.

Um, what has been the source or the cause for the reduced grants you've received this year?

So we haven't lost any grants yet, but we're still pending on several applications that we would have usually have received at a quicker pace.

So we're still pending on our um 25 SOCKI award and we're still pending on some PSN grants.

Is this a result of the current trend that we hear about of federal government withdrawing some of its funding for various state and local agencies?

I can't say for sure, but we have just seen increased scrutiny on like applications, and I think there's just been some turnover on the federal and state level in grant offices too.

That slows down the process of them actually reviewing applications and then awarding funds.

And has the slowness been on applications for state sources or federal money?

I would say both.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Counselor.

Anyone in the audience could speak proposal 136?

Seeing no, it's any motion.

Most be properly moved and seconded.

All those in favor scan by saying aye.

Aye.

Those opposed.

Thank you, sir.

Appreciate it.

Up next proposal 137-2026 directs the city county council to accept for the record the 2026 first quarter report submitted by the Marion County Sheriff's Office as required by HE 1208-2025, public law 54, and IC 36-8-10-21.

Mr.

Martin.

Welcome.

Good evening.

I'm just here to answer any questions you might have.

I think you guys have already had time to review the report, hopefully, and I'm just here at your disposal.

Thank you.

Miss Council Pierce, you want to kind of speak to this process and uh what we should be doing here today.

This is just a quarterly uh commissary report that you got electronically last month, month before.

And so you'll get it every quarter, and all we do is accept it.

So it just shows that there's spend from the commissary, the statute requires that you all accept it.

So we're yeah, we submit it to you guys and then we make ourselves available to you if you in case you guys have any questions.

And if I don't can't answer them today, I can go back and find the the question, the right answer for you.

So thank you.

Comments or questions from counselors?

Anyone in the audience?

There's no vote here, is that right, Miss Pierce?

That's correct.

No vote.

All right, no question.

Thank you, Mr.

Martin.

Thank you, appreciate it.

Have a good day.

Ladies and gentlemen, that is our concludes our proposals this evening.

We do have one we want to revisit, proposal 28.

128, which is Jessica Harris for the Marion County Public Defender Board.

Ms.

Harris, you want to come forward, please?

Ms.

Harris, this is your first time request to be appointed to this board.

Uh we do thank you for your willingness to volunteer.

Uh we do have your resume in front of us, so uh just speak to us briefly on why you want to be appointed to this board for the first time.

Uh yes, so um I am a practicing attorney.

I've been practicing for about it's going on nine years.

Um I am I've been in Indianapolis for a few um since 2012.

Okay.

Thank you so much.

Appreciate it.

So this appointment.

Councillor Boots.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

I'll be brief.

Can you explain the role of the public defender board and particularly with respect to how it monitors the personnel and employee count of the public defender agency to make sure it does not run afoul of its grant guidelines for its body count or FTE count, I should say.

So I am not as familiar, but I am willing to learn a little bit more to figure out how we can make sure that the body count does not run over those guidelines.

So I'm I'm really open to learn.

I'm not familiar, but I'm really open to learn.

And I should clarify my question.

Okay.

If it exceeds too much, then you endanger the funding.

Yes.

Of the agency.

Okay.

Because it's not staying in compliance so that your attorneys aren't overloaded and thereby underserve our indigent um respondents in our county.

So we'll look forward to uh next year maybe learning more.

Yes, sir.

Thank you.

Thanks so much, counselor.

Counselor, um counselor Graves.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

I just want to say thank you for your willingness to step up and take this role.

Um we certainly appreciate it.

Thank you.

Additional comments.

Anyone in your audience could speak to proposal one twenty-eight.

The chair to any motion.

Motion properly moved and seconded.

All those in favor, by saying aye.

Those opposed.

Motion could thank you for the list to volunteer.

We appreciate it.

Thank you so much.

All right.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have two presentations this evening.

Um being OAP presentation and one being on OPHS.

Uh first up is the one from the audit, Office of Audit and Performance, uh Director Merkley and Mr.

Westie Jones will come forward, please.

Each of the council members has a copy of the audit report, a hard copy.

One was also sent to your inbox, and we will have um Mr.

Jones and Mr.

Merkley go over this audit from the uh Office of OAP.

And we'll do questions at the conclusion, Counselor.

So if we want to hold on to the end, we will do the questions at the end and um sure by get a chances to speak.

Um, I apologize.

We were thinking this is a different order, so we had elevation first.

Maybe you're ready.

Good evening, Mr.

Chairman, members of the committee.

My name's Andrew Merkley, and I'm the director of the Office of Public Health and Safety.

I'm joined this evening by Office of Audit and Performance Director Wesley Jones, who will be providing information about how the audit that was recently conducted for OPHS was conducted and what it tells us about OPHS.

But I will be discussing this evening about how OPHS has responded to the findings of the audit and what we're doing to improve the agency.

Before I hand it over, I think it's important to note that we are here today to talk about financial and programmatic systems that were not in place prior to my becoming director of OPHS.

Efforts were made to begin addressing some of these findings prior to my leadership, and we have made significant progress over the last year.

What is important and cannot be understated is that the time frame during which this audit looked back was during a period of worldwide emergency.

OPHS was uniquely situated at the time to address the pandemic because we were already addressing many of the quality of life challenges exacerbated by the pandemic.

Because of the emergency and our focused efforts to implement critical programs through our grassroots partners and strategies, we often did not have the time to stop and think about what needed to be measured or ensure that we evaluated and trained our staff.

Now with the pandemic behind us, OPHS is in is at an inflection point.

Thank you, Director.

Thanks for having us here tonight.

I felt before Director Merkley got into more details about the findings and what they're doing to address them.

I thought it would be helpful to provide some additional context about our work in the Office of Audit Perform Audit and Performance and how this kind of engagement and results came about.

First of all, our office kind of works uh from the audit side based on risk assessment and by requests.

So that those are the two paths through which any audit engagement is created.

Our office currently focuses on performance audits, which are very different than financial audits.

So throughout this process, we focus on an examination of operations, management systems and procedures, and related items as opposed to a financial audit which would opine on the accuracy of financial statements.

So both are backed by evidence and by data, but the kind of end result of them are quite different.

And then finally, all of our work is governed by the generally accepted government auditing standards, which are issued by the government accountability office in Washington.

So looking specifically at the OPHS audit, this was uh ultimately a request by the mayor's office uh due to things that had come up uh across the the the um the time of the audit period.

Um it really kind of the finding five with the gypsy questions was really the genesis of where this uh engagement began.

Uh in many ways it's a kind of a conglomeration of two or three different small audits that expanded into a larger one that kind of examined the operations over the six-year period.

Within the field work we completed, we uh conducted interviews with key OPHF staff, uh reviewed a number of contractual agreements, and the related financial transactions uh that ensued from them.

In total, we looked at uh 29 total vendors and related contracts, and that represented about 20, I'm sorry, 92% of the expenditures that took place across that six-year uh five-plus year period.

Just to be clear, this only we only looked at allocations from the general fund, so there's no ARPA, there's no federal grant type uh expenditures that were reviewed as part of this audit.

Those many of those are covered in our external audit, which is for this year's or for last year's, is underway right now.

Um, so just for context, that's where the focus of the work and findings of this report lie.

And just a quick note also on the risk ratings, they're determined on on the likelihood and impact of the issues identified.

There's a more robust description of those within the report, but happy to answer any questions about how those are generated.

So, last thing before I turn it back over to Director Merkley are some takeaways.

Uh, in many ways, these are related.

Uh it's kind of a cascading effect, which is listed uh, I guess technically in reverse order here, but I'll just run through all of them.

Basically, the most overarching thing was kind of insufficient oversight across key operational functions, specifically in program management and financial kind of uh control and management.

This came about um largely from kind of a limited understanding of strong financial control practices.

A lot of the individuals that have responsibility in with these areas and financial matters had limited experience with doing so, and so it created some gaps.

And then finally, uh generally a lack of standard operating procedures and systems to help guide those operations for those that may not have had that experience previously, were also found to be present.

None of these are uncommon for younger agencies, and I think uh one of the results that you'll hear the directors speak of is that there's been kind of greater collaboration.

I'll give some credit to OPHS themselves of stepping up and asking for the help that that's been needed, be it from our office, from the Office of Finance and Management and other related parties, and as a result of some of the changes and findings through this process, there are already some measures in place, not just within OPHS, but also within within OFM that are will ultimately enhance the quality and control environment across the enterprise.

And finally, just the last thing is is it's not really noted uh terribly uh overtly in the report, but the trend of activities over the six-year period was going in a positive direction.

So these issues have kind of persisted for a little bit, but there has been uh some progress made across the uh issues that we we found.

So I wanted to give uh credit there.

So with that, I'll uh turn it back to Director Merkley.

Thank you, Director.

Um before I jump into the findings and our responses to them.

I I wanted to uh take a little bit of a look at our his the history of our budget.

There's been some discussion around the growth of OPHS's budget over the period of time that this audit looked into, and uh just just reminding you again that we were responding to an emergency uh, but OPHS was uniquely suited to fill that role.

Um, as you can see from the uh the information on the slide, our budget increased by roughly 75% during the period from 2020 to 2026.

That increase is primarily due to an increase in our character three budget, which allows us to contract with third parties uh who are implementing our programming.

OPHS is not a direct service provider, and uh that is somewhat unique to our peer agencies.

We ensure that the funding we have goes directly into the community to partners that understand the challenges in their community best.

And they are the experts who know the needs of their neighbors and how to help address those needs.

Many of you know the clinician led community response team, which provides free services, free access to behavioral health crises in our community, which just expanded countywide this month.

We have the assessment and intervention center operations that's at the community justice campus, where we provide substance use and behavioral health assistance free of charge to any Marion County resident, but also as a way to help keep folks out of our jail.

We've we've increased funding to our eviction diversion efforts, and the largest share of that of that increase comes from our gun violence reduction strategy or NDPs, as you all know it, which has helped to significantly reduce crime in Marion County.

So we'll start with finding one, which found that there was insufficient program documentation in OPHS.

50 percent 51% of contracts reviewed lack sufficient programmatic documentation or failed to meet the reporting requirements outlined in contracts.

OAP recommends that OPHS develop and implement standard operating procedures for monitoring and documenting programmatic activities.

These processes should include ongoing staff training to ensure understanding of program activities and compliance with contractual terms, customized plans for monitoring of program activities and expenditures, as well as a centralized system for tracking and storing documentation.

Throughout these findings, I will also provide what has already been implemented and what will be or is under development in OPHS to address these findings.

So for finding one, we have already, we are already including universal reporting requirements in all of our contracts.

We have universal reporting metrics across our programs, and we have standardized our the reporting cadence for our programs.

We've also assigned dedicated points of contact in OPHS for each of our projects or contracts.

What's in development?

We have we are working on universal annual reporting templates and presentations to ensure that our that our partners understand exactly what we are looking for from a reporting standpoint.

We are developing a central hub for all of our programmatic documentation data and reporting in SharePoint, and we are providing quarter, we will be providing quarterly training for all of our programmatic staff on contractual procurement and data management.

Finding two, identified insufficient invoice documentation.

84% of the contracts tested had missing incomplete or insufficient invoice documentation or failed to comply with contract terms.

OAP recommends that OPHS develop and implement standard operating procedures to improve consistency and ensure compliance with the invoicing requirements outlined in each contract.

These should include a centralized system for storing tracking and managing contracts and invoice related documentation and ongoing training for staff involved in the review of invoices and supporting documentation with special emphasis on potential indicators of fabricated activity and fraud.

Some of these findings are similar, and so you will hear similar types of responses to the various findings.

But for this particular finding, we have already, and this happened before I became director, created a finance team hub finance hub in Teams, or in SharePoint, that is, to house all of our invoicing and financial documentation.

Again, before I was in this role, our finance team created a multi-step financial review system, standard operating procedure, and we're we're we're going to continue to improve upon that.

And a financial tracking spreadsheet, which is accessible to any of our team members for each program in SharePoint.

We in development is a finance is financial documentation and payment processing standards.

Finding three found insufficient review of program effectiveness.

OAP found that OPHS lacked formal procedures to monitor and evaluate program effectiveness.

As a result, outcomes were not consistently measured or used to inform decision making.

OAP recommends that OPHS develop and implement standard operating procedures for evaluating program effectiveness, including steps to address noncompliance.

A centralized documentation system and ongoing staff training on program administration should be developed to support this process.

Similar to finding one, we've already again created those reporting requirements, reporting metrics, standard reporting cadence.

And we have also created publicly available dashboards for many of our OPHS programming.

We have additional dashboards that because of the types of data that we're collecting are not for the public, but we can provide those dashboards to you all if you need them.

And again, assigned dedicated points of contact for each project.

What's in development?

Universal quarterly and annual reporting templates, centralized hub for programmatic documentation and data, quarterly training for our programmatic staff, and a vendor non-performance SOP.

So how does our team engage with a vendor who we have identified is not performing to our standards?

Finding four contracts awarded to OPHS staff and their connections.

OAP's contract review and leadership interviews found several contracts were awarded to vendors with significant connections to current OPHS employees.

Additionally, one contract was awarded to a vendor who was employed by OPHS during the contract period.

These connections were not disclosed, and there is no documentation to verify that any exceptions were granted or that the OPHS employees with connections to the vendor were not involved in the vendor selection process.

This finding suggests a series of preventative control failures, exposes the city to reputational and financial risks, and a lack of awareness or understanding of the city of Indianapolis and Marion County's code of ethics.

OAP recommends that OPHS leadership and staff involved in the contracting process should develop a careful process for vetting vendors to prevent potential conflicts of interest.

OPHS staff at all levels should receive additional ethics training to gain a better understanding of relationships and situations that could create a perceived or actual conflict of interest.

Additionally, when a contract merits an exception to the city county prohibition on conflicts of interest, OPHS should consult with OCC to appropriately document the exception.

OPHS has already implemented program and project design SOP.

So our teams have been trained and they are already creating these program and project design templates that we have for them to make sure that we are identifying some of these challenges ahead of time and working through those.

In development is we will be working with OCC to establish ethics training in addition to the annual ethics training that the enterprise already offers.

Finding five found that there was use of the Greater Indianapolis Progress Committee or Gypsy as a federal federal grant recipient.

So Gypsy was utilized as the grant recipient for a USDA local food purchase assistant or LFPA grant totaling $800,000.

Per Gypsy's fiscal agent handbook, GYPSI should only be designated as the grant recipient when the grant criteria requires a 501c3 entity as an applicant.

The LFPA grant is intended for use by governmental entities, and such criteria did not apply.

OAP recommends that all federal grant application and funding receipts be coordinated with the Office of Finance and Management's grants team to ensure proper oversight and compliance with all requisite terms and conditions.

So we've already implemented our response to these.

Moving forward, any and all OPHS programs and projects intending to be grant funded will go through the agency's program and project design SOP.

This will ensure multiple layers of review and oversight in program project planning, and that OPHS leadership is aware of any plan grant seeking.

Additionally, any grants being sought will be done with advanced notice to and in coordination with the Office of Finance and Management's grants team to ensure proper oversight and compliance with all requisite terms and conditions.

Finding six lack of vendor compliance review.

Interviews with OPHS staff found that there is no standard process for reviewing andor remediating vendor compliance issues.

OAP recommends that OPHS develop and document procedures to detail the process of monitoring vendor compliance and evaluation for future engagement.

OPHS leadership and administrative staff should be trained on such procedures and maintain documentation of their efforts to monitor compliance, including remediation steps outlined in contractual agreements.

We have already implemented programmatic our programmatic staff is assigned as points of contact for any of our vendors, and they are required to check in regularly with those vendors.

We are developing standardized scoring and review system related to compliance.

So you know this won't just be a hodgepodge, how we identify whether or not someone is in compliance.

There will be a system for that.

Development of appropriate vendor corrective actions and procedures.

We already discussed that in a different finding.

Implementation of quarterly in-service training for all OPHS programmatic staff regarding vendor compliance and development of a vendor compliance SOP.

Finding seven, inconsistent vendor selection.

Staff interviews interviewed revealed that no consistent process for vendor selection existed.

Leadership also acknowledged the lack of SOPs, but noted that OPHS's operational needs often fall outside traditional purchasing procedures.

OAP recommends that OPHS staff receive formal training on the city county purchasing process.

OPHS should also develop internal procedures that define roles and responsibilities for vendor selection.

When OPHS operations require deviation from the standard purchasing processes, OPHS should collaborate with OFM purchasing and the controller's office to develop a standard for navigating such situations.

So we have again already implemented our program and project design SOP as well as our procurement SOP with training coming in the coming days.

But because we have this new procurement that is specific to OPHS, we will be providing that training and coordination with the purchasing division.

From January of 21 to January 23, $314,119 in city general funds were transferred to the Indy Food Council Gypsy account for food-related activities, including payments for consultants, community partners, and technological support.

This allowed these funds to circumvent both city purchasing and the county auditor's office review and approval for expenditures.

While the transfer of funds from the general fund to Gypsy was approved via via a December 1st, 2021 memo from the mayor's office to the county auditor, the transfer subjected the funds to significantly less oversight, creating a control weakness.

Expenditures from Gypsy accounts are only approved by the agency director, mayor's chief of staff, and Gypsy Executive Director, all of whom were are often far removed from the activity that created the expense.

OAP recommends that any future efforts to retain budgetary general funds be coordinated with the Office of Finance and Management and retained within city accounts to ensure proper oversight.

To resolve this issue, it I authorized when I became director, a total uh uh a return of the funds that remained in that account totaling eight thousand one hundred and sixty-two dollars and sixty-six cents, be returned to uh the the city's general fund with the through a uh April 30th, 2025 memo to Gypsy.

We are available for any questions that you have.

I didn't hear that last sentence, would you say?

Uh, we are available for any questions that you have.

Thank you, Mr.

Jones, Mr.

Merkley.

Commerce of questions from counselors.

Uh President Lewis.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman, and thank you for giving me the opportunity to ask a couple questions.

Thank you so much for your presentation.

Uh Director Jones, you shared that this was requested by the mayor's office because a few things kept coming up.

Do you mind speaking to what those things were?

Sure.

Um the first one was the transfer and use of gypsy.

So there were the two issues with gypsy, the transfer of the funds again, which was directed by the mayor's office at that time.

Um, and then a couple years later, there was the use of gypsy as the grant federal grant recipient.

So those kind of raised red flags, even though they the activities took place, and so we had looked into kind of each of those individually to see what had taken place with those, and that's what led to a larger review.

Mr.

Chairman, may I ask my second question?

Is this your first time actually auditing this department?

Yes, it is the first, it is the first time.

So you mentioned giving them credit for things where they're making progress.

Can you speak to that?

Uh the things that you've seen so far that show that they actually are uh making progress uh from your lens as the director of audit.

Sure.

Uh the the main thing is a greater attention to the need for processes.

So, as the director mentioned, uh, that teams hub that they have.

Now there's a whole uh submission and approval process for when they receive an invoice for given activity, it runs through an approval path within their department itself before it goes on to to processing with the rest of the enterprise.

Um, I think there's due to some of the issues they run into with uh you know payment delays and and other sorts of matters, um, the leadership has taken this uh with much more seriousness, and so there's been uh they've reached out again to other departments to ask for help and guidance on how to help improve those uh operations.

So those are just a couple anecdotes of how any of those risk factors do you believe we need to be aware of as the city county council in terms of the improvements or factor the the risk factors, anything that you saw in this audit that we as members of the city county council need to be aware of just moving forward to ensure that we are right fixing some of the issues that you saw.

Absolutely.

I mean, I think everything that's kind of listed in the report are significant risks that need to be addressed.

Um, our office is looking at ways to address those risks because they might exist in other agencies and departments, just given the nature of how our enterprise works.

And so I failed to mention this, but part of the kind of remediation process of this is that our office will go back.

We usually go back within six months or so and do a smaller type review to make sure the recommendations and the plans are implemented, but given the nature of this one uh that review will be a little more substantive, and so our plans with uh the agreement with OFM and OPHS is that we'll go back and Q3 or Q4 and retest another smaller sample of activities, run it up against their new standard operating procedures to see uh exactly how much progress has been made in this period.

Perfect.

Thank you for your efforts.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Thank you, Madam President.

Counselor Boots.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Thank you, Directors.

Um, this report, at least in my mind, generated a laundry list of questions that we don't have time for this evening, so many of those I'll send offline.

But correct me if I'm characterizing this in incorrectly, and that is this was prompted by the mayor's office being concerned about the use of funds given to Gypsy and it serving as a fiscal agent as a grant recipient, which it authorized by the December memo of 2021.

Well, just to clarify that there were two separate things.

So the the memo in 20 December of 21 was just authorizing the transfer of those funds.

It was directing the auditor's office to transfer that sum to the food gypsy account.

Subsequent to that, and totally unrelated, and with new leadership or new individuals in the mayor's office, OPHS food division went on its own and and sought out that LFPA grant.

Is that correct?

Yeah.

Yes, that's correct.

So that was not necessarily run through the mayor's office.

They're kind of two distinct issues.

But they were the mayor's office, obviously, was aware of the 2021 transfer, and so that's where the questions arose.

Okay.

Another question, sir.

Counselor, um piggybacking on President Lewis's question.

For everything you've seen, is there any threat or any concerns we should have that there's a potential for clawback by the federal government if it becomes aware of some of these deficiencies in the process and questionable uses of these funds?

Counselor, are you referring to the LFPA grant or other federal funds?

There was a lot of money coming through your office, and I know you weren't there at the time, but you know, 75% increase in budget in five years is astronomical.

It's probably unprecedented in the history of the city.

And so hundreds of millions of dollars came through OPHS, and we're just concerned where did it all go?

There are very little documentation, the reporting process was very loose for grants.

You know, my experience is until I see your report and it's detailed, you don't see another penny.

And that was not happening.

Millions of dollars are just flowing out the door, and that's concerning to us.

So the um, if we're talking about ARPA funds, which was a large portion of the funding that came through OPHS of the last several years.

Uh we so we have confirmation from OFM that our vendors who received those funds who were reporting directly to OFM because ARPA reporting went directly to OFM, we are in compliance with federal guidelines, and and we have already been we have been audited by a third party uh already.

So those funds we are in compliance with, um, and to my knowledge, the any federal grants that we've received outside of ARPA, we are also in compliance.

Okay, all right.

Thank you.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you, Councillor Counselor Allen.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Um, picking back off of Madam President's question and uh Mr.

Chairman's question when they talk about the government contract.

I think the word we uh we were looking for since you said that we're moving in another direction and offering training, and to keep this from preventing happening again.

Are we asking is there any conflict of interest?

And if there's a conflict of interest with funders and uh the city of Indianapolis, have we put that form before the employee, or have we even talked about the conflict of interest?

Are you referring to the finding of it?

Just in general, just going back to Mr.

Chairman's question, and I asked this question because I'm, you know, my background is in compliance and auditing, and I've even had to sign a conflict of interest, and when you're dealing with money, there should be a conflict of interest form signed by anyone that may be working for the city or have relationships with the funder.

So that's my question.

Has a conflict of interest form been signed, and that's in general, you know, federal dollars, city dollars, anything.

Because that's flowing through the office of OPHS.

I think I can answer that, counselor.

So, first and foremost, everyone in the enterprise receives an annual ethics training, which includes you receive a who?

Annual ethics training.

So they are made aware of what is appropriate or not when it relates to these kinds of conflicts of interest.

Second, um, my understanding is that there has been no illegal activity related to these grants.

Uh there things may not have been documented correctly.

I think that's what this audit demonstrates is that we didn't document things correctly, or we didn't save those documents in a one place to make sure that folks were adhering to the ethics code or to your point, demonstrating that there was no conflict of interest.

So moving forward, we will make sure that if there is any kind of conflict that that employee understands uh and and signs any kind of conflict of interest for Mr.

Chairman, counselor?

Okay, so going back to you said there was no legal consequences, but it may not be any, but a conflict of interest should have been there.

And I have to have another question.

Were there any of the OPAP who worked the OPHS audits?

Were any of them certified?

Because most certified in healthcare world, you have the professional coders, now you have the certified examiner examiner uh coders that works more on the legal side, and so I need to was there any of them certified during this process?

Because most people that are certified will understand that a non-disclosure form should have been in place.

I can probably speak to that.

Uh so kind of back to your first question.

From an enterprise standpoint, in terms of disclosing economic interests, that form, which we just the process was just completed in April, is kind of reserved for elected officials, appointed officials, and related employees to those employ uh appointed officials.

So it does not kind of reach down to the other levels of an agency or department.

So that is one reason why those were not, I think, in place for those that were involved at OPHS at that time.

As for the audits, those were uh the federal funds and grant programs that were included in the audits were included as part of our our external audit by our external auditor Forbes Mazars.

So there are no issues or findings uh identified in any of those single audits.

Um the current audit is going on right now, and so we have confirmation that those were done in accordance with their with their procedures.

So it's I think a little bit different than it's a traditional financial audit.

Um so we have the financial statement audit and then the single audits which cover kind of grant expenditures.

So uh there were no findings through those, but again, those were done by an independent third party.

Okay, I got one more question.

I'm sorry, I got one more question.

Um, Andrew, uh Deputy Director, you know that I have started building the ecosystem around the GBRS system, and I have already met with several funders giving this audit and the elevation grant, and I have stressed the importance of what this ecosystem is and what it will do because I feel as though it would help given oversight to everything that's happened happening now, and we should have been and already did that.

What is your hope that we would do differently now that this audit has came out, and I mean, even from a staffer standpoint and a funding standpoint, what does that and and with our community engagement with our funders that apply for the elevation grant?

What it what is your hope?

What does that look like for you moving forward?

Um, counselor, I want to make sure I understand your question.

We're it this is directly related to elevation.

The elevation grant, exactly, and is you know, as we have met previously, I had spoken with you all and told you that I was meeting with some funders about building an ecosystem of how important that is.

Since then, this audit has come out.

And so my question to you what does that look like with me building this ecosystem?

What does that look like for you?

Where do you see this elevation uh going?

Okay.

Elevation grant going, I'm sorry.

Absolutely.

So appreciate your interest in the ecosystem.

I think that it is critical for our community partners to be uh collaborating together more.

And elevation is a fantastic way to start that process and with what we'll talk about later this evening in the elevation presentation, is that with this new round of funding, current round of funding that is, we there is more collaboration, and OPHS is at the table involved in bringing all of those recipients, those grantees together on a monthly basis, and uh making sure that there's case conferencing of individuals being served, and you know, cross collaboration.

Who what can OPHS do to help how can the other grantees assist each other?

There's also a lot of capacity building coming from local capacity building partners.

Um the Indy Public Safety Foundation, as I think you know, has uh been in contact with uh one of the uh one of our universities to help build that ecosystem and who's and and they've developed that in other locations, and so they are um kind of spearheading that development of that body that would help to um create the ecosystem and build it.

And I think I think you're exactly right, having uh our partners, our community partners at the table to help drive the decision making related to gun violence reduction is is critical.

Thank you, counselor, counselor, counselor Hart.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Um I want to say I'm shocked not, and I say that because as a reminder, in 2022, I brought a proposal to most everybody here, not everybody who's here at the time, but I brought a proposal in that required every agency that requ received money from ARPA to come back to this body and tell us how it was spent and it passed unanimously throughout this council.

It took until last year when we were having elevation grant requests coming through the spring fiscal that I put in another amendment to this body, and I said, for us to release those funds, we need to start seeing the efficacy of those programs, and then you release this document, but we've never seen the efficacy of all the other 420 million dollars that came through.

I've been saying these things for a reason, because there's been concerns from me, and I've asked the same question over and over again.

What is the effectiveness of the dollars that we are spending?

And even when I look at at these reports that you have here, right?

These are large macro metrics.

They are not the finite uh performance standards of the individual programs that are being funded.

So if we looked at all this 40 million dollars in an elevate, and you know, what the audit is showing us is the insufficient uh programmatic oversight of these individuals that we asked them to do a thing.

Did they do the thing?

And if they did, did that result in a reduction in crime?

We don't know.

We had 400, well, you didn't have 420 million, but you had 40 million to try and your office did, because I I will recognize this wasn't just you, Director Michael.

This was a this was this has been going on for a long time.

But the office had this amount of money for a long time for a really good opportunity for the city of Indianapolis for us to try some new things to see what's gonna work, and that has been the point the entire time for all of us is to say, are these things working or are they not?

Because if they were, this body has the ability to double down, triple down on some of those things to help reduce crime.

We just lost out on that opportunity.

That's what I gained from this report, and that is terrible for the citizens of Indianapolis.

Now, as for questions, um, you know, I'm looking at number two, and I'll just ask a couple questions, Mr.

Chairman.

Uh number two, where we're looking at finding number two, 84% of the contracts tested had missing incomplete and sufficient invoices and documentation.

We've we've recognized those invoices had the insufficiencies.

Have we gone back to any of those contracts and looked for those conflicts to be reviewed, corrected, or any other type of corrective action to take place on those?

Counselor, we OPHS has not gone back and done any kind of performed any corrective action for any invoices.

And I'm not sure that corrective action is required.

I mean, I would suggest if we're if I mean it says in the audit that we don't even have a standard procedure for selecting individuals for our the programmatic opportunities.

If we don't have corrective action for those individuals that were paying out, how do we know that we're not going to keep paying them for not doing that what we don't we don't even know if they're doing what they're saying they're doing?

So again, counselor, I can only speak to my time as director of this agency and whatever I worked on previously in my former roles.

Um to your earlier point about whether or not we can tell that the elevation grants that we pre that we provided provided results or that we learned from them.

I think that I I will respectfully disagree with your comment.

Um when we present to you later on the elevation grants that are currently ongoing, we can we definitely learn from mistakes from the past or or how those grantees performed to in uh to tell us how who we should select moving forward and to inform how we should um make the program better moving forward, and so we have implemented a lot of those changes.

Additionally, what we learned from elevation has informed how OPHS uh is operating moving forward, you know, creating logic models to better understand um what it is that we are trying to solve for with a program at the outset before the program is ever implemented.

What are those outcomes that we want to measure and are they measurable?

And then being able to uh interpret that data and be able to correlate what we've done to violent crime reduction.

And so I do think that while the report that you may have in your hand right now is more of a macro level report, what we are doing moving forward is going to help us dive deeper into these programs because we will have better data that is measurable.

Yeah, I hear you, but we don't have it for the last 10 years that we've been spending hundreds of millions or tens of millions of dollars on.

Last question, Mr.

Chair, does is there a do and and this is maybe my ignorance for not knowing off the top of my head, but I know in you know public works, BNS, they have boards that oversee their contract executions for a lot of their purchases.

OPHS have a board that has any uh contract execution oversight.

Yes, uh, there is an office of public health and safety board.

I'm the director or the chairman of that board.

Uh and we receive contracts, we review contracts from IMPD, IFD, and other uh emergency services agencies, as well as the Office of Public Health and Safety.

Uh, a majority of the contracts that come before that board are professional services grants or services grants, which are not required to be reviewed by our board.

So when we look at the dollars that are that came through, say in the elevation grant, those didn't have to.

When you get down to the finite level per service provider, they don't need the approval of that board.

That's correct.

So an example of a of a contract that would come before our board is the purchase of firemen's helmets, right?

Or um the construction of the housing hub and the contract agreement, providing funds for that contract.

What doesn't come before our board is implementation of a gun violence reduction initiative.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Thank you, Counselor.

Counselor Perkins.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Thank you, Director Jones and Director Merkley for your presentation.

I have I think two questions, but I'll make a statement.

The complexity of the world and the situation that we find ourselves in pushes us to uh to accept that two things can be true.

Um the first thing is what is revealed through this audit, that their inconsistent practices, financial practices in the office of public health and safety.

It is also can be true uh that many of the programs that were supported that are supported through the office have been impactful and effective in community, and so I I challenge my colleagues to be able to wrestle with those two facts that what we have seen from the data over the last four years in terms of gun violence reduction, in terms of addressing some of the root causes in our community, uh that some of the programs, majority of the programs that we have been supportive have been very effective in doing so.

And so I don't want us to lose that uh in the midst of wrestling with some inconsistent policies, financial policies within the office.

Um, my statement, my first question.

Uh Director Jones, uh, you mentioned that uh none of these findings are uncommon for newer agencies.

Um and so the first question is what is the role of OAP in working with newer agencies or expanded agencies to develop financial policies and practices that are consistent with acceptable uh financial practices?

What's the role of your office in working with a newer agency?

Yes, no, appreciate that question, counselor.

Uh it due to our independence, uh, we we don't really have a role in establishing those things.

So OFM generally is the uh responsible party kind of for financial risk across the enterprise.

And so our role is to come in to evaluate how well things are operating.

So uh we would compromise our independence if we were involved with the creation of it and then coming in to audit it to say whether it is uh sufficient or not.

So when a new agency or department is created, uh that is more of a collaboration between them and OFM to get whatever uh setup they need going, and then we would come in to test that at a later date.

Thank you.

Um, so in fact, what we had was uh agency that over the last five or six years um grew into itself as a response to all that we were experiencing from the pandemic uh to the realities across uh Marin County, um, with kind of little direction in how do you develop effective uh financial practices?

Um my second question is uh the initial audit period was between 2020 and 2024, but it was noted that it was expanded to include specific activities through 2025, the end of 2025.

Uh what were those specific activities that were included in 2025?

Additional contractual agreements, some things that were initiated during the original audit period were extended, and then that carried them into 2025.

So we expanded the scope to get the full breadth of those activities.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Thank you, Counselor.

Councillor Muscary, Councillor Boots and I asked my questions.

Thank you, Council.

Counselor Bain.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Thank you, Directors, for being here.

I know it's uh probably not a presentation that you looked forward to to giving and going over on this, but Director Merkley, just to you personally and your role as director, and you know, your your hopes and aspirations to continue leading this department in the future.

Were you caught off guard by this?

Do you feel like um the results of this report are alarming to you?

Were you disturbed when you first read them?

What was your initial reaction to this?

Yeah, thank you for the question, counselor.

Um, as I stated during the presentation, there were there were activities occurring from the moment that I took this position to begin addressing some of these findings.

So these are not all new to me.

Um having been with the agency for now six years, I had witnessed practices that maybe weren't up to par with how we should be operating.

So but some of these things I was not privy to, obviously, as not being director.

So I look forward to continuing the challenging work of making these things right and making sure that our teams understand what their roles are, their expectations, and and but also giving them giving them the tools to be able to do that.

Thank you.

I know you said that there's nothing criminal in it.

I mean, I go through and I look to see you know how there's all these conflicts of interests, and there was wasn't really any protocols or anything here, and part of me is wrestling with how that can possibly not be criminal or how we can't um you know basically has the prosecutor's office reached out to you guys at all throughout this, or have you all referred anything to them?

I don't even know if it's technically your role to refer things, probably not, but as I have to imagine, you know, uh the office of auto and performance, you all maybe have some sort of relationship with them.

Has the prosecutor's office been involved in this at all?

Is law enforcement been involved in this at all?

Are there any investigations looking into specific abuses of taxpayer dollars?

Uh in short, yes, there are uh a couple entities that are continuing to look into those.

Um, one is at the state level, there is no law enforcement involvement at this point, but those investigations are still ongoing, so I have no additional information on where those stand.

Um, but that is uh what's going on from the operational standpoint.

What are the state-level entities that would be involved in this?

I knew you were gonna ask that, and I'm totally blanking on their name.

Um, would it be like it's kind of our overseeing body?

It is the uh state board of accounts.

Okay, yes.

That's good.

No, and maybe just one comment here to kind of wrap this up.

And being here for six years now, I can kind of say I was there when this originally came up, and I think probably five, six years ago during the pandemic, the city was drunk on a lot of money, and we had money burning a hole in our pocket, and we couldn't spend it loud enough.

Uh couldn't spend it fast enough, and I remember there were multiple counselors, myself included during that process that are like, well, what can we do to make sure that we are actually getting results from all the all the dollars that are going out?

And I think the responses that we would consistently get is that's a really good question.

You should keep asking it, and it never really went beyond that.

And I think things have changed at least on this council, so I certainly want to give credit to our new council leadership and everything, but I think we are here partially and result to a very weak legislative branch of government, the rubber stamped budgets without actually doing due diligence and looking into that.

And I will give credit to current council leadership because I think that has changed, but we are here as a direct result of I think of a lack of oversight from this from this fiscal body.

Thank you, Counselor Counselor Delaney.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Um so your 2025 budget is approximately 34 million.

Um, and looking to findings one through three, they basically outline a lack of documentation and data for the agency.

And I am similar to counselor Hart, and then I feel like that doesn't surprise me because during your budget hearing last year, and also during your confirmation, numerous counselors on this committee asked about data, and making sure that the data was there to support the spending and that $34 million budget.

And so I just want to reiterate something that I know I have brought up multiple times in this committee, which is making sure that we do have the data to show that what we're spending $34 million on is effective.

Um we are the fiscal body for the county, and we need to make sure that what we're spending our money on is you know right priority and that we're you know getting our money's worth when we have you know roads that are crumbling and lots of other top priorities that come to come to us as counselors, we need to make sure that that we're getting results and that the money is going where it needs to go.

So I I just felt that it was really important to bring that up.

I do want to give you some credit because you have hired a data administrator and you brought that up.

That was one of your priorities in your confirmation hearing.

So I know that that you from day one have seen this as an issue.

And so I I just want to bring that up again and reiterate the point that data is really important to us.

Thank you, Counselor.

Luna Mowry.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Uh thank you, Director Merkley and Jones for being here this evening.

Um first, I you know, I want to say, Director Merkley, I understand you haven't been there the whole time as the director, and a lot of this is kind of precedes you from your time as director.

However, I I don't want it to fall on us that you know it because it wasn't you, it's not a big deal.

And I think this is an opportunity for you also to the buck stops with you, you're the top of the food chain on this one.

Let's just take accountability for it and you know what how can we move forward.

Uh I'd like to see that more often.

I I got kind of frustrated hearing, well, it was before me.

I don't care if it was before you during you, you're here now.

And I want I want to hear you own these things.

So uh with regards to kind of counselor Hart was saying, looking kind of more at the individual levels and kind of looking back on some of these individual cases.

You said you didn't have that info right handy right away.

I'm guessing OAP can get that info to you.

Is that a plan that you are looking something you're looking to plan to look back and start looking at to see if there are instances and what those you know potential potential uh remedies could be to correct situations with what uh where counselor Hart was going.

My uh work thus far and my intention is looking forward and making sure that what we are doing moving forward is in compliance and that we are and I'm committed to ensuring that our programming, our financial documentation is uh robust and that it is in place for you know data for this body moving forward, and um and I will absolutely take ownership for uh you know this agency and where we have been, but again, I am focused on the on the future.

We absolutely have to move forward.

We also have to know that what we've done in the past has been money well spent because if we're not looking back at what we've done already, then we don't know if we should keep you keep doing these things.

And to me, it seems like all we've done is just you know do the same thing over and over again, shelling money out, taxpayer dollars out uh without any kind of knowledge of where how it's being spent or where it's being spent.

Um so I would hope that we can really look back at this too because two things can be done at once, and I think you can try to delegate that to some of your staff.

But my other question here is with budget season coming up.

I'm kind of with counselor boots here where he said that we don't, you know, not to shell out another penny until we know what's going on.

And I heard OAP said we're gonna have another look at this at quarter three, quarter four, uh, to see where we're at.

Kind of compare, you know, benchmark off this and um how explain to maybe the public here how we can have a meaningful conversation and uh good feeling of funding OPHS with this black eye of a report that we got here today.

When it when we get to the budget season, you will see significant significantly more detailed data in regards to the programs that we are currently offering.

Um our team has been working diligently to collect that data and to uh ensure that our vendors are are providing that to us.

Um we just met last week to ensure that we have all of our data and reporting from all of 2025 and quarter one, which just ended.

Uh, and that is that is in preparation for this upcoming budget season uh because we understand that there is that that rightly so you all have concerns about uh whether or not the money that is going into these programs is effective.

So aside from that, you know, I think I know that we can show and demonstrate that the work that we have done has been impactful in our community.

Uh if you go on to our website and look at our dashboards now, you can see the number of people who have received food.

You can see the number of households who have been impacted by our eviction diversion work, and we know how many people have been impacted by our gun violence reduction strategy.

Um, so yes, there's more we could do.

There's the deeper dive that we are doing, and we're working with our partners to do that, and our team is committed to making sure that we have uh the data for you all come budget season.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ludamur.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

I've gone once, so I'll be quick my second time here.

Um just to clarify, then the you said earlier this audit had nothing to do with the ARPA money that came through the city, correct?

Yes, that's correct.

Yeah, and that that money was overseen by the by OFM.

It was, yes, and then audited by our external auditor for this Mazars.

So there is a final report on how the use of ARPA money was overseen by OFM, particularly money that went to the Indianapolis uh foundation.

There's a report that tells us that.

So that final report is what we are discussing in our next presentation.

Okay, and that is coming at the full report will be this this evening, or I'm sorry, by the end of the month.

What you have tonight is the executive summary, and we'll be giving you uh a sneak peek at presentation of that of this cumulative report.

And finally, just as a maybe a suggestion, when we see all this data, uh I would like to see make sure we have causation shown and not merely correlation.

We've seen a lot of that in statistics.

You can make statistics say anything you want on how you spin it.

I want to see causation that the money we're spending here is the primary cause of this benefit, not a mere correlation.

The correlation is the sale of ice cream goes up as the level of crime goes up.

That's a correlation, it's not a cause.

Um we want to make sure what we're talking about and the money we're spending is a cause factor to the intended objective, and because this, in fact, back in the day I was even with counselor Hart, I co-sponsored that proposal saying it just makes sense that we know where this money's going.

And I'm also a little alarmed that this ethics and conflict of interest requires so much training.

I would hope a moral person would know better.

That's in a position that they're not having conflict of interest.

They're not hiring a relative and using taxpayer money to further their family's financial interests.

I hope that should not take much training.

If that's not inherent in that person, then that person should not be an employee of this enterprise.

So I just want to that's that's all I'll say, sir.

Thank you.

Thank you, Counselor.

Counselor Rome.

Thank you very much, Mr.

Chairman.

I want to acknowledge first, Mr.

Chairman, uh, the appreciation I have for you allowing this discussion.

Also, I acknowledge the participation of our uh council president.

Uh, that's just a really positive uh uh thing to see, and I think that it will only continue on the effort.

I think all counselors on this committee and in the council body are hoping to see not only on this issue but on a variety of other issues.

Um, directors, thank you for being here tonight.

Luckily for you, a lot of my colleagues asked a lot of the questions I had and made a lot of the same statements I was gonna make.

So you aren't gonna have to hear a lot from me, but you know me well enough to know you are gonna hear a little bit from me.

Director Jones, one thing you said in the beginning of your comments was this idea of limit experience and gaps.

The idea that this is not uncommon with younger agencies.

So I that's what I understood you to say, and and they're kind of um was a pivot to say that there are now measures in place, quality control practices that are kind of assuring us that this type of audit should it be conducted again, would not render the same results.

My question to you is with your department and office of audit and performance, if you know that a younger agency is prone to these type of issues.

Does your office regret not going after and taking a look earlier on in a more proactive way at a younger agency's practices?

In other words, if you knew or had a probability that there would be some of these gaps that existed, understanding that there's some limited experience in a younger agency, knowing that OPHS was a younger agency, wouldn't it have been beneficial before you got tipped off to maybe do a proactive uh type of audit?

And so I guess that's what I want to hear from you.

Is that a fair characterization?

And what I want to know is how will you move forward with maybe future agencies that are newer or doing something different than in the past being more proactive than reactive.

Thank you, Counselor.

No, I I think that's a fair question.

Again, I can only speak to the three or so years I've been in this chair, and as I alluded to earlier, we've been working on various elements of OPHS from almost jump from when I got into the chair is one of the first things that was placed on my desk.

So I would slightly disagree that we have just been waiting to get tipped off on this.

We've worked on a couple different engages that were not full public audits.

They have were rolled up and turned into this, so it's taken some time to do that.

Um of course I think it would have made sense to uh maybe have some sort of engagement with OPHS in its formative years, but again, I and a large part of our team was not here for that.

Um we haven't had that many new agencies and departments.

I think ACS and Mesa would be the two that would be the most uh fresh as part of our listing.

And so that is what you're getting at is one of the challenges of our setup.

So we've got a 1.6 billion dollar enterprise, we have four auditors, which is not nearly enough.

So but I think that's the point I'm making is if it's not enough, you know, what the council doesn't want is to walk out of this chamber with egg on its face.

You know, that's not gonna happen.

And this agency, you know, is gonna have to start making us bring towels with us to meetings to wipe the egg off of our face with these type of reports and the lack of answers we're giving.

So all I'm trying to say is it would to me be smart to say what agencies in the enterprise are new, and you should have in my mind some type of uh uh audit ready to go automatically.

Doesn't make any difference.

This agency's new, it's been two years, it's been three years, we're ready to go and do an audit.

That way you can catch it early.

And then if I'm Director Merkley now, if there's one thing that I know other than I'm probably gonna pull out of this building and hit a pothole, it's that my agency's on deck to get another audit very soon.

You know, those are the two things that I think as a counselor would be really reassuring to know that these new agencies have some audit uh tasks ahead of them, and that they will be re-audited uh quickly after, should there be challenges in issues.

Now, I am not uh in your position, and I am not trying to tell you exactly how to do your job.

Mayor Hogs that decides to call me sometime and offer me the position.

I'm sure I'll be waiting on that phone call long time.

You know, then I'll get into the to the nitty gritty, but I think you understand what I'm trying to say.

You know, I would rather have to spend more money on auditors than on these type of headlines and this type of response that I think we're getting out of the OPHS.

Okay, Director Merkley, it's been said and I acknowledge in the game of OPHS hot potato, you ended up with the hot potato last.

But there were a lot of people that touched the potato before it got to you.

So I don't really blame you a hundred percent, obviously for the audit report, but I appreciate what I think you understand is a very serious audit report that needs significant attention.

My question to you is I was shocked at how much I wasn't shocked by the report.

It didn't surprise me at all.

Because I've been in this council chambers for like six or seven years, and I asked questions, never get answers to it.

And I didn't just from you, that's from a lot of people prior to you, whether it's with violence interrupters, whether it's with ARPA dollars, whatever it is.

I never feel like I get any answers.

So if those simple answers can't be answered, right, what about the hard ones?

You know, so it wasn't surprising to me.

I'm sorry uh that the audit report came out as it did, but it wasn't surprising to me.

So my only words of wisdom to you before we get into budget season is that uh every agency, every department, every person who sits down where you're sitting now or goes up to the podium, this body should have its head spin at the dramatic difference in the presentations and the depth that you go into this year than the agency has gone in the last 10 years.

There shouldn't be a question where we ask you and you say I got to get back to you or I'll email you.

I really hope that OPHS this year is prepared to answer questions, provide the data.

It sounds like that's exactly what you have prepared for us, which I'm very excited about.

If you know you have money in the $34 million budget to buy a few tents or something to make additional time for folks to get that stuff ready before the budget season, that's very important.

I want to just acknowledge something Counselor Boots said.

Counselor Boots is one of the great advocates for the issue between causation and correlation.

You know, one thing that we know is that we are on par with national violence reduction trends.

We're not special, we're we're we're on par.

So, you know, let's talk about correlation and causation because we know that we're not necessarily breaking any records.

We're just on national violence reduction trends.

Those are the things I want to see.

If we can get those type of answers answered, it's easier to fund the agency, and it's easier to restore confidence in the agency, which has been significantly undermined by this audit.

Thank you.

Thank you, Counselor.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Um Director Jones, this is uh the first question I have is for you.

Uh, you talked about the um reason for audits, uh risk assessment and and requests.

Um I'm curious to know if there's anything in the protocol that talks about changes in leadership as we have witnessed with the responses from Director Um Merkley.

Um, would that create or trigger the need for an audit?

Uh thank you, counselor.

Uh so part of our risk assessment process is both qualitative and quantitative, and it would bore you more than you can imagine, but there are so many factors that we can use to select an audit or who we're gonna audit.

So traditionally the agency had selected two one to two agencies or departments each year and kind of done an A to Z audit of those.

We're working to move away from those because of the staffing kind of constraints that I mentioned.

So we're working more on an issue-based approach now where, you know, given it even look with this audit, the issue of third-party vendor uh maintenance and compliance.

That's an issue that transcends multiple agencies and departments.

So our new approach is to pick something of an agency or an issue like that and then find four or five, six different agencies that we can test that specific risk within.

So we are still in the infantile stages of getting that deployed, but when it comes to selecting which agencies those are, there are a number of factors we can use.

The last time we talked to them, budget size, you name it, go down the list.

So uh between your suggestion and counselor Anays, I think uh leadership changes and uh basically tenure or or maturity of agency are two factors that we could add into our our consideration to help uh maybe move up the list some of those agencies or departments that might be more inherently susceptible to risk.

Thank you.

Uh in my opinion, I think that that would help us identify things uh during those transitions in leadership, and I think um uh it would uh allow us to jump right on it versus wait for years before we identified the challenges.

Uh then my final question, Mr.

Chair, just just real quickly uh for Director Merkley.

I know that portions of what you guys do depend on anonymity, and now we're asking for more transparency.

Do you think that we might risk because in my opinion, the work you do is helping drive crime down.

So I I appreciate that in some way.

Um but will this will any of this request for trans more transparency more conversations, will that in any way uh challenge what we see uh in regards to crime in our city going in the right direction.

Thank you for the question.

Um, the data that we collect is typically non-identified, non-identifiable, uh, but it is it does you know collect demographic type information, uh, and then we aggregate that.

So, what we would share with you all would not necessarily it would be very difficult for it to for anyone to understand maybe who we've worked with, any individual person.

Um I do think that there could be situations where uh we may not be able to share.

We there may be data points that we aren't able to share uh because of anonymity, but for the most part, we aggregate it and we can provide that to you to the points that several of your colleagues have made.

You know, demonstrating correlation versus causation and whether or not we can do that.

Um what OPHS does is not like filling a pothole.

There's not 30 potholes, and we filled 30 potholes, and therefore we have solved that problem.

Reducing crime is multifaceted, uh it is caused by individuals with that are housing insecure, it is caused by lack of access to food.

I'm not telling you anything you don't know.

Um we could address one of those items for one person, and they still have 15 other challenges that they're trying to address.

And so, if we can't um address all of those at one time, that is where it becomes challenging to demonstrate causation.

But we uh what the work that we are doing is identifying the best ways, the best outcomes that are going to get us close as close as we can to causation ahead of those programs going into place so that we can uh measure that for you all.

Thank you, Councilor.

Uh President Lewis.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Not a question, just a request.

And so on the budget history page, you speak to the expansion of the clinician-led community response, and so congratulations on that.

Um, however, I was informed earlier this week that the numbers have decreased, and so I'd be interested to see what those numbers look like.

So we put more dollars in the program, we've expanded it to recently to my council district, but yet the numbers are decreasing.

So just interested on what's going on there.

So again, if you get you don't have to respond tonight.

If you can give me that information, that would be uh greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

Thank you, President Lewis, Councilor Anay.

Gonna make this very brief for the sake of time.

Um, without having consulted council leadership, uh, it just popped in my head.

But what I think would be interesting during the budget uh process, Director Jones, is if there was some way to come to the council uh committee uh for the office of audit performance and just give us an idea, right?

You just said you have four auditors, you talked about the size of the enterprise.

You know, what's two more auditors get us?

You know, it would be interesting to kind of better understand what the bang for our buck is uh so that maybe we would determine.

You know, I'm very rarely for increasing the size of any government agency, but you know, maybe a couple of additional people would tremendously help this body and the enterprise ensure we don't find ourselves in this position.

No, I appreciate that.

I'm happy to pull that together, provide that.

Um I see a couple faces that are on my admin and finance committee, so yes, we're happy to revisit that.

Thank you, counselor.

Additional comments uh on the audit portion of the presentation.

Uh thank you, Mr.

Jones.

Mr.

Merkley, you want to stay put?

Uh you are we'll move on to the other aspects of the presentation.

You guys have a hard copy of the elevation grant program.

Uh Mr.

Merkley, do you want to go ahead and get started on that presentation as well?

Yes, and Mr.

Chairman, I have two colleagues from the Indianapolis Foundation.

We have them come up and introduce them to us, please.

Yes, absolutely.

Thank you.

If it's okay with you, I'm going to transition to the podium and they're going to sit here.

Yep.

Mr.

Merkley, you have almost 50 slides in this presentation.

You don't have that many slides in your budget presentation.

So before you begin, talk to us how you're going to present 50 slides to a committee.

Yes, absolutely.

I can understand how that is shocking to see.

Many of them are just supplemental for you all to look at in your free time.

Trying to wear us down, huh?

I'm sorry.

So I will get started, but the majority of this presentation will not be by me, so you won't have to hear me drone on this evening.

Mr.

Chairman and members of the committee, I'm back tonight to introduce my colleagues as they are going to present to you some information about the previous six rounds of the elevation grant.

And that those are the rounds that were funded primarily by ARPA, but also the Thriving Neighborhoods results from Thriving Neighborhoods funds, which are local dollars.

I'm joined this evening by uh several partners, including uh Rebecca Nannery, who is a senior policy analyst with the Indiana University Public Policy Institute, along with members of the Indianapolis Foundation team, Ahmed Young, the CEO, Ellen Quigley, Chief of Staff, Rachel Vic MacIntosh, Vice President of Grant Making, and Dr.

Joy Usigby, Director of Impact and Evaluation.

Before I turn it over to Rebecca to talk to you about the previous rounds, I wanted to just touch on some high-level uh items.

So for the evaluation portion of this presentation, I wanted to note that a majority of the organizations funded are located in areas where crime hotspots are all have also been identified.

And that demonstrates the strategic the strategic strategy, excuse me, in these programming decisions.

We are going to demonstrate to you very good outcomes across the board in terms of participant experiences.

But we've seen success in spite of these challenges.

Grantees have indicated that they learned a lot during this process, especially as it relates to uh different funding from federal government, which is different from what they had received in other uh operations.

And in some cases, we saw significant program growth since receiving this federal funding.

And I'll just name a few of our partners who have who we've seen that expansion.

Voices Corporation, uh like no other, the Peace Learning Center and Use What You Got Ministries.

Uh, you'll also learn about how we have taken the experiences, and I talked about this in my previous presentation, but how we've taken these experiences from these six rounds of uh ARPA funding to make significant improvements to not only the elevation program but to other programs that OPHS offers with our direct funding.

Um, and that includes the intensive supports that we're providing to the current uh list of 30 programming uh excuse me, grantees.

Moving on to the current funding.

Again, we've been intentional in selecting our partners who are located in these high crime areas, and they're focused on uh work that is strategic to address the root causes.

We've planned uh we during this planning process, uh which we did before selecting grantees in partnership with the Indianapolis Foundation and Black Onyx.

Uh, we've we've created logic a logic model and measure and identified measurable outcomes that we have then provided to the grantees that we believe will help them be successful in reporting back to us the causality of the work that they are doing and how it impacts violence.

We've also implemented timely site visits and required quarterly reporting.

I can tell you tonight that all of the quarterly reporting has already been provided to the Indianapolis Foundation for this current round.

And this two-year grant cycle that we have implemented for this round is going to allow our grantees more time to implement their programming and will help will ideally provide data and measurements that will hopefully someday allow us to directly correlate this work to the crime reduction that we're seeing in the city.

And at this time, I will turn it over to Rebecca Nanary to provide details on the previous six rounds of the elevation grant.

Thank you, Director.

Nope.

Alright, thank you.

To prevent crime by addressing it early on through supports, prevention, and other activities that will ensure that individuals and neighborhoods are healthy and safe.

Over time, this will reduce engagement of people in these neighborhoods with the criminal justice system.

During the time period of this evaluation, six SAGRED funding rounds lasting one year each invested a total of 40.2 million dollars in elevation grantees.

235 grantees were awarded funds across six funding rounds.

Fifty-two of these were funded more than once.

Of these grantees, 189 were funded using ARPA funds, and 46 were funded using city dollars.

Our team conducted a statistical analysis to identify crime hotspots in Marion County using data from the IMPD on robberies, non-fatal shootings, and murders that occurred between January 2021 and February 2026.

The map illustrates these hot spots in relation to elevation grantee locations.

The green dots are ARPA funded and the yellow dots are city funded.

In general, crime hotspots in Indianapolis span the center of the county from the far east side to the midwest side and northwest toward Eagle Creek Reservoir.

The locations of elevation grantees are mostly located in crime hot spots, although there are some on the north side of the city outside of hot spots.

A sizable proportion of grantees serve many zip codes in the county, and some serve the entire county.

Grantees collected data on the characteristics of those that they served, which indicate a priority for the target population of elevation.

Young black or Hispanic or Latina males.

Grantees also collected data related to their program activities.

Each grantee selected an outcome measure that best represented the goal of its elevation funded activities.

Among the city grantees, not all selected or reported data for these measures because there were fewer of them.

Youth serving programs reported excellent outcomes related to youth employment, skills development, positive attitude changes, and school suspensions or expulsions.

Grantees also reported the outcome data of adult participants.

In this slide, two asterisks beside a percent indicate that the data that this is the data of 30 or fewer participants, so it's less of an impact on the overall percentage across both ARPA and city funded grantees.

Grantees reported that participants exhibited excellent results related to substance use stability, housing stability, and violent injury treatment and prevention.

Somewhat lower proportions related to employment and pay are likely indicative of local employment employment trends related to industries and types of jobs for which participants are qualified.

This may also represent challenges that individuals face keeping a job, such as unreliable transportation or child care.

Education or training program completion outcomes include degrees or certifications that take a longer period of time, and thus were started but not necessarily finished by the end of a year-long elevation funding cycle.

Finally, 88% of adults with prior convictions were not rearrested during the funding round.

On the other hand, about two-thirds of justice involved youth did not violate an existing court order or have a new case.

This indicates the need for ongoing support for this age group as their justice-involved youth who may benefit from longer term or more intensive support.

Finally, using data from IMPD, our team analyzed longitudinal data of several categories of crime.

Over the course of the elevation grant program until shortly after the conclusion of the sixth funding round, robberies in Marion County declined, although we see seasonal fluctuations in this and the following graphs.

Finally, the number of murders each month also generally declined, but the pattern of this is more difficult to see, especially as there are far fewer murders than non-fatal shootings or robberies in Marion County.

Our team also conducted an analysis of narrative reports submitted by grantees during and at the conclusion of their funding cycles.

Grantees expressed their appreciation for the elevation team's support.

They communicated that they saw challenges as opportunities for organizational learning and growth.

Some experienced challenges meeting financial reporting requirements that were different or more rigorous than their previous experiences.

Many reported that the event the elevation grant allowed them to increase service delivery capacity, leading to more people served, expanded service offerings, and improved service quality.

As Director Merkley stated, these results support the finding that the elevation grant program made a difference in the lives of many Indianapolis residents in ways that are expected to reduce violent crime in communities over the short and long term.

Next, I'm gonna present to you a snapshot of the capacity building efforts that was implemented throughout all of the rounds of the elevation program.

In the first rounds, throughout all rounds, you can see that the number of workshops and intention and intensive group trainings that was provided to grassroots organizations and the number of attendees at 1,049 across 56 workshops.

And additionally, towards the end of the round, more intensive coaching, one-on-one coaching was provided to 67 organizations, and 81% developed practical fundraising tools, 78% created fund development plans outlining strategies, annual goals, and timelines, and 22 engaged in board development, and 48% reported securing additional funding during their 12-month reporting period.

And moving on to the current elevation round, the next few slides is going to highlight some of the projected outcomes that we hope to see and some measures that have been put in place to strengthen and elevate the elevation program.

Just like Director Mumphy highlighted earlier, previous to the launch of this current round, we applied key learnings from prior rounds to strengthen the elevation program.

And in doing so, we worked very collaboratively together among the Indianapolis Foundation, OPHS, the city and council members to work together to focus the program design and outcomes on disrupting pathways to violence and build stability, connection, and opportunity in community.

The image you see to your right is a logic model, and the logic model is a clear step-by-step roadmap showing you how the elevation program is going to run and track outcomes at short-term and long-term periods.

And you will have this in your packet to review more in detail.

This slide shows our current sub-grantee at a glance, and on the chart, you will see the focus areas that were determined through the collaborative effort and the work sessions that we had to intentionally identify these areas that we believe focusing work on these areas will help contribute to grantees working around collaboration and system strengthening crime history, public safety, which will be focusing on interaction with the justice system and potentially avoiding reinteraction with the justice system and reducing recidivism.

And then we're also focusing on education and training for participants, safe, secure and affordable housing, mental health and wellness, workforce and employment, youth and young adult development, and protective factors and espongement.

And all of these factors, all of these focus areas were selected because we believe focusing efforts around these areas would help elevate and prevent individuals in reducing their risk of involving in crime and violence.

For the current round, we have a total of 19 grantees across, and then with a total of projected 15,364 individuals to receive the services across the two-year period of this grant for a total budget of $7 million.

And moving on, this image right here shows a quick glance of the target population and age groups that we're going to be serving.

As you see on the map, the current elevation grantees are focused in those highlighted areas on the map, and the age group of focus is around youth, 11 to 17 year old for 26.7%, and then young adults 18 to 24, 43.3% of those projected to be served, and adults 25 to 54 account for 30% of individuals to be served.

And we can assure you that the Indianapolis Foundation has, we are well positioned to ensure that the impact and evaluation of the elevation program is strengthened and we elevate the outcomes of this program.

We have our impact and evaluation team, which I lead, our internal innovative team and our own data analyst that's going to be working very closely with our sub-grantees to provide any technical assistance or support that is needed to ensure that we'll be able to come back and present um favorable outcomes to this committee.

And with that, that's the end of our presentation.

Do you have any questions for us?

Thank you so much, Mr.

Merkley and team.

Appreciate you as well.

Commissar questions from council on the elevation grant presentation.

Councillor Bang.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman, and thank you so much for the detailed presentation.

I really appreciate the trend uh graphs that you have here.

I was just curious, did you happen to compare those to maybe similar cities or national trends or anything like that?

Uh we did not compare them to similar cities.

Um we were we were focused mainly on Indianapolis.

Yeah, for sure.

I mean, I definitely get focusing on the city, and maybe that's homework for myself and the council, but I think that would be an interesting comparison.

Counselor, if I can add to that, um the Office of Public Health and Safety is uh contracting with our partner AIR, don't ask me what that stands for right now.

But AIR is going to be looking at our um gun violence reduction strategy, and they are going to be comparing our efforts to other cities.

On top of that, I um City of Indianapolis is has reduced our crime across the board in all categories, and I believe we are one of the only, if not the only city to do that.

Okay, thank you.

Counselor Hart.

Quick just to follow up on that.

How do we determine the impacts from the efforts here versus say the impacts and policing from IMPD and results of reduction in crime?

I will uh I will let Rebecca start that answer and see if I can add to it.

Yeah, so um how we would do something like that, quantitatively speaking, um, it would be a broader scope.

Um, but it it would involve taking into account the activities of you know that IMPD is doing, um, also community conditions, what what community partners are doing to understand um the extent to which they explain changes in crimes or specific individual crimes.

Um so it could be done, it would likely be complicated and expensive to do, but I think um that this could be done over time um to understand it to understand that a little bit better.

Yeah, just you know, my my observation, right?

I think I mean obviously you guys are doing work, right?

But IMPDs doing work, prosecutors' office is doing work, judges are making decisions, all of those things get ultimately determine a reduction in crime overall.

So it's hard to say that this is only you know potentially one fourth, if not less, of the entire equation that we're looking at of public safety.

So, you know, while I'm grateful that crime is down across the city, hands down and want to continue to see it go down.

I don't want to give all the the credit to one or the other because I do think it is a combination of all the efforts that are being given throughout the city.

That's a great point, counselor.

And um, you're exactly right.

I mean, the number of partners, the number of agencies that are touching individuals who may be impacted by the justice system, it would be very costly and very time consuming to pull all that data together, understand every single program and every single entity that that individual engaged with over the years, and then try to look back and see during that time period of their life how many times that they engage with each of those programs.

But I think we're getting closer to that by making sure that all of our grantees and uh the gun violence reduction strategy and I and PD are all working together collaboratively um moving forward with our elevation grants.

Thank you, Councilor Delaney.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Um my questions are surrounded around data here, and one of the things that we've talked a little bit about tonight is the national trend um of violent crime reducing across the nation.

And something that's come to my mind, and this is only a thought that I have, which is perhaps the ARPA funding that was distributed nationally made a difference, like not just here in Indianapolis, but nationwide.

And so I know you don't have an answer to this tonight but are there any national groups that are looking at the influx in the funding and outside of Indianapolis but nation nationally and and did that help reduce crime and the parallel here would be trying to figure out are our numbers or is our crime reduction due to the influx of funding is it just because there's this national trend of I don't know socioeconomic things that are going on nationally that's causing the crime to decrease and so it's just I think the common thread of what we're all asking in counselor heart is just trying to get at why are we seeing our crime go down this is great what can we do to keep it going down so I think I'm just throwing out another angle something that I'm interested in knowing more is as in additionally to what um my colleagues have brought up so thank you.

Thank you counselor Counselor.

Thank you Mr.

Chairman to address the concerns that counselor Delaney and Councilor Hart says one of the things I will say um with the ecosystem and about bringing all of these different partners to the table like you said the judges and I and PD and all of the organizations that is doing the work is supposed to help identify who's actually doing prevention work, who's doing intervention work and who's actually just doing those resources and what I have found that there is a gap and nobody is talking to one another which definitely needs to happen and so that was the reason why I wanted to take that task on is by building that ecosystem because one of the things that I did tell the funders that came to the room like we have to push back on the ad mentality because if I don't know what director Merkley is doing and then you over there doing one thing how can we all collaborate and so my hope is to have all of us do this collaboration together so that we can continue to see these numbers going down because I do believe that these strategies are working and everybody is doing um doing their partition is there's been some concerns around past um grantees on you know the missive um behavior and I didn't see that here in the report so have we done anything to rectify those relationships um to say why did they get the grants or anything like that how we how we took a look at that because I didn't see that in this report as far as the demiss dismissive um you know behavior and how and my second part to that question is uh would will the organization see something different from you from a leadership standpoint.

Yeah um I I think if I understand your question correctly counselor are you well let me let me ask it are you referring to the current round and grantees that previous grantees that had not been selected for this round both okay um and are you referring to grantees in the past who may have had difficulties or were not felt that they were not uh treated in a they were treated poorly or something like that.

Correct yes.

Okay.

I will answer the second piece then uh related to the current round so as you know there was only seven million dollars in this current round of funding and so it we there were going to there were just because of the amount of funding that we were not going to be able to fund all of the different programs that had previously been funded when we had 40 million dollars in ARPA funding.

And so we made some very uh strategic decisions, and we involved we included um the council staff as well as OPHS staff in vetting the applications to ensure that we were selecting programs that if they had been previous grantees had demonstrated uh efficacy in the work that they were doing and that also could hit the ground running and and begin work while also receiving you know additional capacity building as we were moving forward.

As far as previous grantees from previous rounds, um, you know, I I only know of one situation where there was a grantee that was um frustrated with the outcome of their time as an elevation grantee, and we rectified that um and but I don't know if anyone from the foundation has any other information.

She uh you had asked about my leadership, yes.

They will see uh different leadership, and I'll give you an example.

One of the grantees had not submitted their quarterly reports.

Uh they were a week late.

I picked up the phone, gave them a call.

We had the uh report this morning.

Thank you, Council.

Council Perkins.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

I think there is a separate conversation that could be held around how we see a way forward for OPHS to make sure that we are effectively providing leadership in the office and effectively provide services to the community.

Um I will echo what I heard from from two of my colleagues.

I would love to see in this committee uh in the near future, before the budget season, uh, a collaborative presentation from OPHS along with IMPD, along with the prosecutor's office, and some of the other major agencies that's working to reduce issues around not only gun violence but violence in our community.

Um, for us to really see a demonstration of the collaborative effort that it takes.

Um a part of my frustration in this council has been our willingness um to celebrate the work that's done through IMPD and not provide the same energy and celebration for what some may consider the softer work.

Um we know that it takes collaboration to address gun violence reduction and crime in our community.

We know that IMPD cannot do it by themselves.

It takes the work that's being done through OPHS and our partner agencies to be able to impact that.

We have asked for this um outcome evaluation.

Uh, we've been waiting for this.

Um, this demonstrates to us uh, in part of the effectiveness of some of those programs.

Um, and I think we ought to pause and give the community group, the grassroots organizations that's in the field that's doing the work that we don't necessarily see, and oftentimes don't get the encouragement because we have conversation about whether or not they need to exist uh that are positively impacting our community, the celebration and recognition that they they deserve.

Um, and so I want them to hear me because I understand how the research works, and that we're not going to see a direct causation between what a particular organization is doing and crime reduction, but there's gonna be some correlation.

We've had this correlation causation conversation for two years now, right?

Um, and I think that there's still somewhat of a failure to understand the complexity of this work and the need for the different agencies to continue to work together to do it.

Um, and so there's a separate conversation about leadership of the office that I hope we'll have in the future.

Uh, but as for tonight, thank you for the work that's been done not only through OPHS but through the partner agencies in making a difference in our community.

Thank you, Counselor Councilor Hart.

Yeah, just one uh real quick uh piece of information for some members of the body that might not know.

There is a uh body that meets that's called the criminal justice planning council that uh has effectively everybody that you're you're your name in Councilor Allen, which is you know the sheriff, the the prosecutor, you know, presiding judge or marriage county Judge.

Uh, I mean there's 13 members of this body, and and I think that is the intention is to break down the silos.

Uh I had the ability to to present to that body not too long ago on a report that Smart Indy did on essentially trying to find some solutions to uh reducing crime.

They're always open for us to join.

That was an invitation that I had from prosecutor mears at the time, uh he allowed me to come speak, share some information.

So I know that they're very open to hearing and collaborating with us, and then we also have I think two or three members of the council on that board as well.

So just a reminder to the board or to the committee.

Thank you, Councilor Hart.

Additional comments.

Um you want to read your statement and see if anyone in the audience has a question or comment regarding the presentation.

Okay.

Before we open the floor to public comments, we would like to remind committee members and the public of a few ground rules.

So everyone can have a fair chance to speak and be heard.

It is important that we each observe the following rules.

First, each speaker will be limited to two minutes.

Second, any public comments must reasonably relate to the agenda item under consideration.

Third, speakers who stray from the item under consideration or become unduly repetitious may be asked to move on to their next point or conclude their comments.

Finally, attendees who cause disruptions that prevent the committee from proceeding through tonight's agenda in a reasonably efficient manner will be removed.

Please remember that some types of threatening speech or incitement to violence are not protected by the First Amendment at all.

Now, Mr.

Chairman, if a committee member asks for consent to adopt these rules, we can proceed to public comments.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ms.

Clerk.

Did you have a list of anyone who wants to speak or okay?

Anyone in the audience could have speak to what you heard this evening on the OPHS presentations.

Oh you have a little bit of experience in uh working with this agency in the last few years.

Welcome.

State your name for the record, please.

Shauna Majors, um, executive director of the Brightwood Community Center.

Good evening, counselors.

Very good to see you all.

Two minutes.

All right.

Um first, as a grantee of elevation, I have been through um one through six, and um the the elevation program was was very helpful.

I am glad to hear that OPHS is going to participate moving forward.

I know that in my in my experience working in OPHS, we had monthly meetings with elevation.

Well, it was called something different than uh grantees, and that helped us keep the pulse on what was going on with each grantee, so I'm happy to hear that that's gonna be of happening.

Um also I was not surprised about this report either.

Um, there were no SOPs in place when I was there, and I beg leadership to put those into place because I knew that something like this could happen.

Um, and the violence reduction team when I was in charge did have SOPs, and we did have reports that we collected from the grantees for the 300,000 that we received from 2018 to 2020 while I was there.

Um, and so I'm hoping that moving forward that OPHS takes this seriously and really puts forth a good effort to um hold everyone accountable, look at be involved in the meetings, show up and not just every once in a while, but all the time, um, because we as the grantees look at Indianapolis Foundation.

I'm just using them because they're here um as the grantee or the grantor, excuse me, but OPHS is the leader that this city has appointed to work with this gun violence strategy, housing, food, and so on and so forth.

So if the leader is not at the table telling everybody, giving us the strategy on what we need to do to make this work, and put us in concert and make sure we're working together, this is gonna continue to happen.

So I just wanted to let you know from a grantee perspective that we do the work.

Um I am involved with AIR, and I'm hoping that we get to see more results soon.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Anyone else could speak to the presentation this evening?

Welcome.

Thank you.

Good evening, counselors.

My name is Josette Robinson.

I am a former employee of the Indianapolis Foundation that led the elevation grant program.

And I want to thank City County Council for your continued commitment to addressing violent crime in the city of Indianapolis.

And I want to encourage you to continue to support this initiative, particularly focusing on supporting grassroots organizations.

We believe that those closest to the problem are closest to the solutions.

And I'm concerned that there may be a shift in focus of the grant program to no longer support as many grassroots organizations.

When Andrew spoke, he mentioned about like organizations that were ready to go.

But he also did mention continued capacity building support, and I want to encourage you to continue to support grassroots organizations, but also provide culturally competent capacity building support so they can continue to make a difference in our city and Medusa Cry.

Thank you.

Thank you for coming down.

Thank you for your service to the organization.

Anyone else could speak to the uh OPHS presentation?

Mr.

Merkley, final words from you.

Where'd you gain?

What'd you learn this evening?

And how you gonna move forward.

Yes, thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Um this audit and uh and oh excuse me.

Elevation grants has and my work with the Indianapolis Foundation has significantly impacted how we will move forward as an agency to address these audit findings.

And I'm very uh I hope you all are pleased with what you've seen related to elevation because I do believe that more is more is to come related to everything that OPHS is doing.

Uh I'm committed to addressing all the findings in the report and supporting our very capable team uh in order to make that happen.

So I thank you for your questions tonight.

If you have any other questions, uh please reach out directly and I'm happy to answer them.

Mr.

Merkley, how's the culture and the work environment up in OPHS?

The culture uh is improving, and there I think many of these audit findings may have contributed over the over the years to some of the discontent.

We have a very passionate team, and this work is very difficult, and we don't always have the same way that we've we don't always agree on how best to address these very difficult challenges.

And so we are continuing to work with each other to address the internal challenges that we have.

Uh we've just distributed an internal survey after the enterprise survey came out to try and better understand and dive into what where are the challenges in our agency.

Uh, and we'll be we'll be working on those.

But I think when we started looking at the findings and um knowledge about how things worked in the agency, it was clear that there had not been expectations.

We had never done a pro, we had never done employee evaluations.

So if you had never done an employee evaluation and you had never had expectations set for you and your role, it can be very challenging when someone new comes in or someone asks you to do something and you didn't know how to do it, you didn't know that was part of your role.

And so moving forward, we would we we uh starting, we will have those expectations set forth in writing, and we will be performing biannual evaluations moving forward, uh, but also uh making sure that our teams understand what is required of them, so training them on how to create a program and how to evaluate a program and then holding them accountable to that.

I think all of that will help with the uh cultural challenges that have come up in recent years.

Thank you.

Any other questions for Mr.

Merkley?

Seeing no, we are adjourned.

Thank you.