Indianapolis-Marion County City-County Council Parks and Recreation Committee Budget Hearing

On Thursday, August 27, 2026, the Parks and Recreation Committee of the Indianapolis-Marion County City-County Council held a budget hearing in the Public Assembly Room of the City-County Building. Chair Dan Boots (District 3) presided, joined by Councilors Krista Lee Wells (District 11), Jesse Brown (District 13), Brian Delaney (District 2), and Jessica McCormick (District 16). The committee heard 2027 budget presentations from the Department of Parks and Recreation (Director Brittany Crone) and the Arts Council of Indianapolis (Judith Thomas). Members opened with acknowledgments of recent regional flooding and the role of city parks in emergency response. No votes were taken.

Flood Response and Park Operations Context

• Director Crone announced that Broad Ripple Park Family Center will host FEMA on Friday and Saturday, August 28-29, 2026, from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. for residents to register for individual assistance; no advance registration or forms are needed.
• Riverwood Park continues to serve as a community hub for the flood-impacted Ravenswood neighborhood, and Broad Ripple Park connected 15 households with pet-friendly accommodations on the first day and night after the flooding.
• Flooding at Riverside Park damaged on-site food storage; the department is working to restock as soon as possible.

Budget Hearing: Department of Parks and Recreation

• Indy Parks presented its first program/outcome-based budget, organized into 15 program nodes instead of the traditional character-based format. The parks general fund request for 2027 is 7% above 2026; the overall budget rose 0.7% because federal grants are being spent down.
• System scale: 218 parks covering nearly 12,000 acres serve more than 10 million visitors annually; Eagle Creek Park alone sees about 1.5 million visits a year; the trail network is over half the length of the Grand Canyon; total park acreage is nearly the size of the city of Lawrence; more than $150 million in capital improvements are largely wrapping up this year; the annual budget is more than three times its 2015 level of $17 million.
• Lilly Endowment Grant: 40 projects, roughly half already open and nearly all complete by year-end, delivered across all nine townships, including 30 new playgrounds, three new splash pads, pickleball courts at six parks, sports fields at three parks, and new trails at three parks. Over 40% of the city's 136 playgrounds are being upgraded; new splash pads opened at Chapel Hill and Dewberry Parks, with Graham Edward Martin Park next.
• Other capital highlights: the renovated and expanded MLK Park and Landmark for Peace Memorial opened this spring; Lilly, with the Caitlin Clark Foundation, donated downtown land for a new park with a multi-use basketball/soccer court; and Parks Alliance partnerships include a new playground at Tarkington Park and relocation of the historic Traders Point covered bridge to Lily Lake at Eagle Creek.
• Newly secured: a $10 million Bezos Earth Fund grant for the first phase of the Hallville Riverfront Vision Plan at Reverend Moselle Sanders Park, one of eight cities selected nationally. The project will plant more than 400 trees, restore native wetlands, build two miles of trails, and add a community farm and orchard, with Belmont Beach plans made shovel-ready. Groundbreaking is targeted for 2027 with substantial completion in 2029.
• Councilor-selected projects from the 2025 cycle: Wish Park (Pike Township) broke ground in spring; Thompson Park was completed in May; Canterbury Park is under construction; Roby Park improvements were awarded this week; and Haverstick Woods preservation is being coordinated with Councilor Delaney and the Indiana Wildlife Federation.
• Aquatic strategy: the department is evaluating a move toward more indoor pools, more splash pads, and a reduced outdoor pool footprint; pool attendance exceeded 106,000 this summer despite a $1 increase in admission prices driven by chemical and maintenance costs. A system-wide pool assessment will guide $1.1 million in JOC line-item allocations; roughly $1 million is anticipated for aging aquatics infrastructure in 2027.
• Capital and maintenance: the annual capital budget is $5.8 million; facility maintenance funding increased by $300,000 to $1.86 million; a new capital asset lifecycle development fund was created; the capital budget is now a non-reverting fund. Introduced 2027 fiscal appropriations include $2.1 million for a new playground at Rhodius Park (home of the only adaptive/inclusive camp for children with disabilities), $700,000 for court improvements at 18 parks, and cameras at 23 additional locations (explicitly not Flock cameras).
• Selected 2027 budget nodes: food programs at just under $2 million; cultural arts with a $1.3 million pass-through to the Indy Arts Council plus $2.1 million for arts programming and concerts; environmental education at over $1.1 million; special events at $231,000; summer camps at $568,000; community engagement at $213,000; training at $48,000; athletics and sports at $27,000.
• Programs: summer camps served 10% more youth, over 4,700 campers; 159+ special events and 100+ performances hosted; 56,000+ meals served; Drive & Dish distributed nearly 10,000 grocery orders totaling 312,000 pounds, with a new Christian Park location planned; volunteer partnerships removed 1,000+ bags of litter and weeds and improved 340+ landscape areas. The department also celebrated the 100th anniversary of the Frederick Douglass golf course, the first course in the country named after a Black man.
• Staffing: active FTE is 299, down from 307, reflecting positions defunded in prior-year budget cuts rather than new cuts; no budgeted positions were eliminated for 2027; about half of FTEs are seasonal. A staffing assessment is ongoing; COLA, step and grade pay, and continued lifeguard sign-on bonuses are expected to support retention. Park rangers are funded under IMPD's budget; the parks safety ambassador program is under development, potentially with police powers.

Parks Discussion and Councilor Questions

• Councilor Wells questioned the 2027 allocation of only $192,550 for parking lots, drives, and pedestrian bridges (rising to $400,000 in 2028-29 and over $1 million in 2030) and advocated directing wheel-tax dollars from the veto-override road fund to safe access to parks. Staff responded that road and bridge improvements require coordination with DPW because many park roads continue into neighborhoods.
• Councilor Brown sought reassurances on staffing and attrition; CFO John George stated all budgeted positions were retained. Brown expressed concern about fewer staff in parks and the shift toward cameras and splash pads, asked what data justify camera purchases (staff cited incident reports, facility gaps, and visit/event levels), suggested QR-code donation prompts at free programs, and urged acquisition of wetlands and mature forests for stormwater resilience.
• Councilor McCormick asked about FTE and vacancy figures; about 150 full-time staff listed on a slide may be a typo, and roughly half of the 299 FTEs are seasonal. She asked how camera priority sites were selected and praised Chapel Hill Park's Lilly-funded amenities.
• Councilor Wells registered disappointment that 2027 goals for arts and nature programs for minority and low-income residents are below levels of two years ago, with arts program participation at about 60% of prior levels, and that Indy Arts Council funding is flat. Staff noted prior-year figures were inflated by ARPA dollars and that new metrics are being phased in. Wells strongly supported expanded evening hours and staffing, endorsed security cameras, and said she would not support increased funding for more police officers in parks. She added, "You can't say you're frankly pissed off about gun violence and then support a budget where we close our parks at 7 p.m."
• Chairman Boots asked about trail maintenance (a DPW-led combination), the safety ambassador program, and staff incentives; encouraged expanding friends-of-parks groups; and said his push to override the mayor's veto of tax proposal 192 was intended to protect parks and quality of life, not only roads.

Budget Hearing: Arts Council of Indianapolis

(Note: the agenda identifies the presenter as the Arts Council of Indianapolis; the transcript's opening refers to the "Arts Council of Minneapolis" in an apparent transcription error.)

• Judith Thomas presented the Indy Arts Council's 2027 request: $1.3 million from the city for the annual grants program, plus continued Capital Improvement Board and Bond Bank funding at the same level as last year. The council approaches its 40th anniversary and has administered the city's annual arts grants for 39 years.
• In 2025, the annual grants program supported a record 103 organizations reaching at least 8 million residents and visitors each year, more than double the 49 organizations funded in 2016, and a record 20 BIPOC-led organizations, up from 4 in 2019. Applications for the next multi-year cycle open in January 2027.
• State arts funding in Indiana declined 33%, increasing pressure on local support.
• Project grants for free arts programming in parks, libraries, and community centers drew 144 proposals; 22 were approved, with $1.5 million requested and $200,000 awarded. Nearly 80% of peer local arts councils nationally offer similar programs. Examples included an immigrant-family workshop at the Eagle Branch library (16 families, 51 participants) and Creative Roots youth programming at Cranert Park.
• Marketing and awareness reached 9.3 million in earned media, over 5 million combined video/social media views, and 1.1 million website visits.
• Funding context: the Arts Council budget is about $5 million, or $5.68 per capita, well below peer cities such as Columbus (about $25 per capita) and Cincinnati (about $56 per capita); other cities use bed taxes, food-and-beverage taxes, county sales taxes, and ticket fees. In 2025, the council invested $2.2 million across about 135 nonprofits and paid $441,000 to 665 professional artists.
• Thomas asked the city to develop a sustainable long-term funding model for arts and culture over the next four to five years and thanked the council for its public art ordinance work.

Arts Council Discussion and Councilor Questions

• Chairman Boots noted arts funding has not returned to 2005 levels and pledged to pursue a sustainable economic model for arts funding.
• Councilor Brown said flat funding feels like a decrease given cost-of-living pressures, and argued that public art and Indy Arts Council funding should not be competitors, preferring money that flows through artists.
• Councilor McCormick said there is "not enough funding" the city could give the arts, cited Denver at over $100 per person, and argued arts investment benefits quality of life, education, and business recruitment.

Key Outcomes

• No votes or formal recommendations were taken; the hearing was informational for the committee's 2027 budget deliberations.
• Indy Parks will complete its pool condition assessment in the coming weeks to guide $1.1 million in JOC allocations and will continue its internal staffing assessment.
• Indy Parks will begin work on the 2028 comprehensive plan, including public input and council conversations on the future of aquatics.
• The Arts Council of Indianapolis's $1.3 million 2027 request, along with its call for a sustainable long-term funding model, was placed on the record.
• Next steps: FEMA registration at Broad Ripple Park on August 28-29, 2026; continued committee review of the 2027 city budget.