Human Resources Committee Meeting Summary – May 20, 2025
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Human Resources Committee Meeting – May 20, 2025
The Indianapolis Human Resources Committee met on May 20, 2025, at 2:00 PM. The committee approved the prior meeting's minutes, received a presentation from Airport Fire Department Local 416 about the 1977 Police/Fire Pension Fund, and approved workforce funding recommendations for the 2026 budget.
Consent Calendar
- Minutes of the March 21, 2025, meeting were approved by unanimous voice vote.
Guest Presentation: Airport Fire Department Local 416
- Hank Harris, Vice President of the Professional Firefighters Union of Indiana, and Brian Booth, District 5 President and airport firefighter, presented in support of the airport fire department joining the 1977 Police/Fire Pension Fund.
- Harris described the fund's scope: over 24,460 participants, more than $9.5 billion in assets, 89.8% funded as of June 30, 2024, and 134 fire departments. Benefits include three tiers of disability coverage, line-of-duty death benefits ($225,000) and non-line-of-duty death benefits ($12,000), surviving spouse benefits (100% of a member's benefit for line-of-duty death, 70% for non-line-of-duty, plus benefits for children under 23), and a pension after 20 years of service with a pension base tied to a first-class firefighter plus up to 25 years of longevity, with anti-spiking provisions. The plan is funded by a 6% employee contribution and a 20.3% employer contribution.
- Booth emphasized retention and equity concerns: the department has lost 13 firefighters to other departments in the past two years, 90% due to pension disparities. He stated that the airport fire department is one of the only career fire departments in Marion County not in the 1977 fund, and cited a recent hangar fire where an airport firefighter and a Wayne Township firefighter had different disability/death coverage for the same incident. The speakers asked that airport firefighters and their families receive the same protections as neighboring departments.
Discussion Items
- Headcount Recommendations: Human Resources staff presented a conservative staffing plan for the 2026 budget, proposing approximately 4.5 net additional FTE/PTE roles. The largest realignment is in public affairs, with additional positions for student/pipeline programs and to address unsustainable overtime caused by FMLA usage in operations. The committee voted to forward the recommendation to the Finance and Audit Committee.
- Mayor's Percentage Recommendation: The committee reviewed a recommendation to hold steady at a 3% cost-of-living adjustment and a 2% average merit increase for 2026, consistent with recent years and based on CPI factors. Discussion clarified that this is a budget placeholder; the committee will make final approval in the fourth quarter after year-end review. The recommendation was forwarded to the Finance and Audit Committee.
Key Outcomes
- Minutes approved unanimously.
- Headcount recommendation approved and forwarded to the Finance and Audit Committee.
- COLA and merit recommendation approved and forwarded to the Finance and Audit Committee.
- The meeting adjourned; the next HR Committee meeting is scheduled for August 15, 2025.
Note: The transcript contains a speaker's reference to "Friday," which conflicts with the stated meeting date of Tuesday, May 20, 2025.
Meeting Transcript
Yeah, human resources committee. Meeting. We've got a quorum. No one on the line, so we will not have an official royal call. Instead, we'll start with the minutes of March 21 meeting. Do I have a motion to approve those? So move. Okay. Any discussion on the minutes. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed. Unanimous approval for that. Rachel, you want to help us with the uh committee's responsibility chart? Sure do the major responsibilities of the committee for the charter. And as you can see, our next um action that began is a proposed succession plan that uh is about five years out of date. But it's time to uh resurrect that plan and make some adjustments. And then you'll see that at our next meeting in August. Um, after that, there is uh no required committee um action. But the written plan is out of date, but the actual succession internal plan is in good shape. Very, very good. That's correct. All right. Well now uh question mark. Yeah, we are pleased to welcome uh guest speakers, the airport uh fire department local 416. So uh like to make a presentation to us. Here that'd be fine. Uh morning, everybody. Uh thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. My name's Hank Harris. I'm the uh vice president of the professional firefighters union of Indiana. Um here representing the airport fire department, and do a presentation on what the uh 1977 policen fire pension fund is. Um members after me, uh District 5 President Brian Booth, who's also an Airport firefighter, and I come up and kind of give a reason of why the firefighters are interested in entering the fund. So this is a presentation that we do as the state union with state legislators, so it's kind of based off of that, and I kind of for this presentation. So a lot of information, but I kind of want to give you guys the information on the uh pension, what it does and what it doesn't do, and why it's important to us. So um so a little brief history is started back in applied through this a little bit, but it started back in 1905 in the Bowen Merrow fire downtown Indianapolis, field searching firefighters decision came together and they wanted to take care of the families of the pollen, and that's kind of how the pension system started back then. Since then, it's changed multiple times. Um it was started as a pay edge you go plan in the 70s. Um got together and said this isn't gonna be a sustainable plan. So uh ourselves, the FOP, state legislators, cities and towns, and uh emperors all together developed the what's now the 77 plan with funded and it's uh funded as you go. So full refistry. So some stats of the plan, there's over 24,460 unit in the plan with over 9.5 billion dollars in assets, and it is as of June 30th of last year, 89.8% uh actually funded. Um there's departments from firefighters, uh like Batesville to 1200 with Indianapolis in that plan and uh for their members. And uh 134 fire departments are part of that plan. It's also the police plan, but I didn't get into the police information. Um the primary functions what to do is our short-term disability, it's a long-term disability, it's a line of duty death benefit. It's also the non-line of duty death benefit. Obviously, it's our pension, and another big component that's different than most um other retirement plans is it's our surviving spouse. So when we had our spouses and our loved ones to take care of after that.
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