Okay.

Well, welcome everyone on a nice hot summer day.

This is the general membership meeting of the McCannna Marion County Alliance of Neighborhood Associations.

We meet every third Saturday at North United Methodist Church from 9 a.m.

to 11 a.m.

And glad to see everybody here.

I do have a few comments to make right at the beginning so that folks at home know what McCann is.

McCannna is a neighborhood organization that claims the entire county.

We're an association of other neighborhood associations.

And it was formed back in 1990.

It's a 501c3 nonpartisan group.

Share ways of dealing with the government and ways of promoting what's important to you in your neighborhoods.

And we encourage people to come not only to this meeting but to join up with other groups because there's there's a lot of information floating around in the heads of neighborhood leaders throughout the county.

And maybe they've seen something that's reminiscent of the issue that you have, and they can help give you ideas that you know that you can pick from for how to to uh further what's important to you.

Um we want to uh thank the church for being so generous with their meeting space every month and also channel 16 uh which is you know the the window on to our local government for those times when either you can't sleep at night and you want to see the reruns or you know you that something is important but you just can't make it downtown so um we'd like to again thank them they they've been a critical um uh for us to get our messages out so if you'd like to contact McCannna you can reach us through Facebook, we have a Facebook page, um, or you can you can reach me at this point.

Um my phone number is 317 679 7018.

Um I would ask that you text me just because uh oftentimes my phone, if you're not in my contacts list already, my phone will default you to voicemail.

Um and my email address is PC Andrews at Comcast.net.

So PC Andrews at Comcast.net.

With that, I'd like to welcome everybody.

Um we do have um the new chief of police, um Tanya Terry, uh but she has she's juggling in order to make this meeting, so she'll be here uh 10 or a little after.

Um but she will be here in the meantime.

We have this tiny little topic.

Well, we'll get to uh other things first, but we do have a tiny little topic called data centers that um I I can see faces in this room who've already seen the steep learning curve and um uh have issues.

So, but we do have a mayor's neighborhood advocate joining us this time.

So welcome Rosie.

You have anything for us?

I've got some flyers that I left out on the table.

Um the August schedule for the free perks concerts.

Uh flyer the solar neighbors, solar united neighbors asked us to give out about the solar co-op.

Solar co-op, cool, yes.

Um and information on Indigo's poetry in transit.

If anyone participated last year where they had concerts in transit, they are now doing poetry this year additionally.

How does that work?

Are people our poets on the on the bus?

I I am passing the information on.

There is a QR code.

Okay.

Um I'll leave these this up here so if you want to get a copy for the people on TV.

All of the information you need from them should be on that site.

Okay.

Are there any questions from me?

Yeah, are there poets on the bus?

Oh, cool.

Awesome.

Awesome.

If it's the same as the music and concerts in transit, there will be.

Awesome.

Okay.

Okay, and uh anything else, Howard at the city.

Are all the cleanups done?

Are you guys coordinating that or just the neighborhood?

Keeping it in is it just keeping up?

That's keeping Anapolis Beautiful, and we only would get notice from our neighborhoods, so each individual advocate would know future ones.

Most neighborhoods, they're allowed to have two, so I would say that they're done at least until September when maybe the weather starts to break again.

Franklin Township is having one today.

Today well, thanks, Rosie.

Thanks for coming too.

Um are there community announcements?

This uh the the broadcast won't go out for a few days, but anything happening in the neighborhoods this fine summer.

I just I want to take this time to announce as many invites as I sent out for this meeting this morning.

I'm happy to say that my city county councilman is here.

Well, and I'm happy to say my neighbor uh Mr.

Jows is here.

Excellent.

Well, welcome and welcome everybody.

First time coming, and I just don't want this to be their last.

Okay.

Well, we will treat them very kindly then.

Okay.

Okay, thank you.

And thank you for sending out all those invitations.

I appreciate it.

Yeah, um, and please leave your email address um if you haven't already jotted it down.

Um, and put a note if you do not want me to contact you uh with a the notification of the next meeting.

I I prefer to have people's permission, but uh, but please note if you don't want to.

It's fine if you don't want to.

Okay, okay.

Well data centers.

We might have a little reprieve.

So um Julie and Jackie and Jesse, Counselor Brown.

Um, and others in here who have already had to go through the the fire of the data center um zoning stuff.

Um just chime in.

But the brief background is that uh the first data center application was down in Franklin Township.

It was for uh Google one gigawatt.

Um data center, and just I'm juggling numbers in my head, but um that would be about um yeah, it'd be 160 percent of the single family homes in Marion County over that you could you could provide electricity to more than all of the single family homes in Marion County with that one data center.

That one was a rezoning, and the counselor did call it down at the council uh when it appeared that evening that the council was going to uh overturn the decision of the Metropolitan Development Commission, they withdrew the petition.

So um Franklin Township at the moment is um safe.

Then the next one filed was Martin Dale.

Well, there was a small one in um Pike Township that withdrew, waiting for um some kind of ordinance to be in place.

Uh then was Martindale Brightwood, um 13 acres, um something like um 75 megawatts, and uh that went through uh a rezoning and was approved by the Metropolitan Development Commission.

The counselor refused to call it down, and so it is in force and has been taken to court.

Um there's a little more to go ahead, please.

Um that they took the incentive package to them, and they they um the somebody doesn't want metro blocks to get the incentive package.

I mean they have a abatement the the tax the tax right off okay, yes, yes.

The abatement the the tax that tax right off yes um and that will go to vote August the fifth, um whether they will vote.

August the fifth?

Yeah, I think it was the mayor's assistant or somebody.

She it was um Megan.

Yeah, yeah, I think that was the name.

She's the uh director of DMD.

No, no, no.

Yeah, yeah, she is that the right name.

Yeah, but she she does not want them to receive the abatement of those so we'll see.

We'll see where that goes.

Right.

We will see.

Does her opinion matter at all?

It's very for my perspective, it's interesting because she was appointed by the mayor, so were the people and the IEDI, and they were saying yes while she was saying no.

So I was her going off the range?

That that's I don't know.

I think it's very curious.

There's mixed messages going on for sure.

Yeah, yeah, that is that will be interesting.

So August 5th, you say, okay.

Yeah, the Metropolitan Development Commission not only does rezoning say also approve um incentive packages that involve tax abatements, so property tax, real and personal property tax abatements, um, and that's what's on the floor right now.

Was it $56 million?

Significant chunk of change, yeah.

Um so the next step for that is MBC on August 5th, and then is it it's either up or down or the abatement?

Yeah, is there another step up?

Does it go to the council?

No, it don't abatements only go to the council if there's a TIFF district.

And there's not here, correct?

So the MDC is up or down, and then is it for it?

And uh, and I you correct me, but they tend to go with the wishes of the sitting the district counselor on an abatement within a TIFF.

So it's gonna be you're talking about Irvington.

No.

Oh no, no, no.

Okay, metro uh metro blocks in Martindale Brightwood is not in the TIFF district.

That's right.

So the MDC says up or down, the MDC says up or down, that's it.

And that's that's the end, but it's it's in court, so the abatement is meaningless if the judge overturns the the decision the zoning decision.

But the owner was saying he he it they would have to go back to see whether it would be worth it without those tax reviews.

Uh yeah, these these folks they come in, they blow it.

This is my personal opinion.

This is not mechanics of patients.

They blow into town talking about billions of dollars, and then if they don't get 56 million in taxes over 10 years written off, then that might make the numbers not work.

I mean, that's a rounding error.

So uh yeah, there's yeah, interesting.

Um but the zoning would remain if metro blocks says that their numbers don't work, um, the zoning would remain, and that's a threat.

I mean to the neighbors, so were there other incentives besides the taxes?

The um state has this huge tax incentive.

Indiana decided that it wanted to um uh lure data centers really hard.

So they um enacted um the ability of the IED C.

Wish those initials weren't so close.

IEDC, which is the statewide incentive um group, um, to forgive up to 50 years of sales tax, and it that's the seven percent tax we all pay.

Um and that's not trivial because you figure that the servers and all that stuff that goes inside the building is outdated within three years, and they have to buy new ones.

So for 50 years, they'll constantly be refreshing the equipment inside this, and like half of roughly half of the cost of the whole building is in servers.

So every three years it refreshes half of like um the decatur one was a four billion, so two billion inside the building every two years refreshing two billion, two billion without paying seven percent tax.

The IEDC technically can say, well, we're only gonna give you uh 35 years, but um the state has decided to kiss away all of that um revenue for the state.

That might be I'm not sure.

Okay, they did not read specifically to the neighborhood.

Oh no, no, no, no, not yet.

No, I think there was a deal with the metro uh blocks to have a neighborhood um benefit agreement.

I don't know if that's been inked down yet.

It's being worked on good so there is still a possibility.

Um right now there's only a possibility if it's done through commitment, right?

And there would there was a commitment crafted.

Do you know a number?

4.5 million year one, two million every year for the next 10 years.

And you were right about electricity.

That also gets the sales tax exemption electricity is for data centers.

Let's talk about AEHEA 1210 later.

Yeah.

Okay.

Well, just for trying to figure out how the mechanics work.

Yes, the city has the power to forgive real property taxes, which is what you pay on on your house, um, or personal property taxes.

So if you have something like in I live in down in Decatur Township, and FedEx is in our township, so they have all the conveyor belts and all that stuff in there in their facilities, so that's uh they pay a personal, it's it's personal equipment stuff that they're paying uh a tax on every year.

Um, and so but the city can forgive both kinds, and as I understood, I read it quickly.

So the personal the real estate property for give forgiveness on metro blocks was 56 million, but I don't know what the personal property tax forgiveness was.

Julie, I thought that was a combination of that was a combination?

Okay, but the the length of time was 10 years on the real and how much on the personal 15?

Yeah, for some reason it couldn't go longer, so long it would go longer, yeah.

Okay, yeah.

Well, they can do 100% too.

I mean, so um, yeah, there's uh so that's the tax incentives, so they pay less tax over time.

Um after the metro blocks, um, there was one in Decatur Township filed by uh Sabby out of uh Washington State.

Uh that was a 250 megawatts.

That's one my personal steep climb started.

Um Julie and and uh Paula Brooks in particular were were very helpful in helping me, you know, start that climb.

Um so that was a 250, 130 acres, um, and the MDC rubber stamped that one, and we taken that to court, that decision to court.

Ours was different at that point in that they did we the the ground was already zoned I2, which is light industrial, and um they did a variance of use, and I've been doing this since the mid-90s, and I have never seen a variance of use that wiped out the current um uses and substituted one use on 130 acres.

Usually a variance of use is added to like you want to um you want to be able to sell cookies out of your driveway.

So now you have a little um lean to on your your garage that's not allowed because it's commercial in a residential area, so then you would have a variance of use for that little thing, but basically the primary use would continue.

Uh and in this case, that hasn't been the case.

That hasn't been what was happening.

So that's that's now in court.

So that's the basis of your lawsuit.

That's one of them.

That's not a variance, it's a really a reasonable.

It's a it's a fake variance, they just applied that so that it wouldn't go to the council where it might get treated just like the Franklin Township one was.

Um so uh the the we do have paper that shows that there was uh an offer of an abatement deal, and but that has never been published by the IEDI, and I don't know if they're reconsidering that, but nothing's gone to the NDC, nothing's been published that would go to the MDC either.

So that's where all of the uh then now the latest was just last Thursday or sorry Wednesday, um the one in Irvington, and that started out as a 75, 78 megawatts, it's down to 50-ish megawatts.

Um that was approved by the MDC too.

That also that was that ground is zoned I3, and they went for the variance of use.

It's the same attorneys as was in indicator, and they they popped on to the variance of use, again, keeping it out of the council.

So I don't know what will happen there.

There are plenty of people in attendance against that effort.

So that's the that stuff.

Then starting in the midst of that, the city administration finally started having a public somewhat public process.

Let me just say a week, this is my personal opinion again, a week public process, um, to uh to enact an ordinance that would regulate data centers.

The primary issue from the get-go has been that there was no such thing as a data center in the uh ordinance, and these these new data centers are are much larger than the little things that we have in town right now.

What we have in town right now is about five megawatts, and I already been talking about 75 um a thousand, two fifty.

So the what we have in town is is like having a little lending library that they nailed to a telephone poll, you know.

So uh but so but there was nothing in our ordinances that that had regulations, and these data centers, these these large data centers have a really unique assortment of things that need to be regulated.

So um DMD came out with um an ordinance, gathered comments, made some changes, brought it to the MDC, the MDC revoked reversed some of the changes that have been made.

It was still fairly really weak.

And then it went to the council, and um last Monday, the uh metropolitan and economic development committee of the council uh reviewed what was submitted for the ordinance and voted 10 to 3 to take out everything that's that was submitted for an ordinance and replace it with a moratorium until December 30th, 2027.

So there's plenty of time in that theory, plenty of time to have an actual vigorous public process to craft an ordinance uh that protects everyone.

So that now they pass, they send it out of committee back to the full council, which will meet on August 10th, um, and that then the uh council can vote up or down on that change.

Since if it passes the full council, because there was a change in what the MDC sent, it has to go back to the MDC for their approval, or I mean ultimately they could, I'm not sure that they will, but they could just pull all of the moratorium language out and slap back in all the language that he sent in the beginning.

So this could be a political ping pong game.

Um but um I'm not sure the mayor during the testimony last Monday um posted on X that suddenly he's in favor of a moratorium.

So um it may not there may not be a ping-pong game.

So if the council is coming from committee, it goes to the full council.

If they tweak it, it doesn't have to go back to committee, they can tweak it and then it goes on to the MDC.

Okay.

And procedure-wise, I've been asked, and I really don't know.

Um, is that a um a public hearing on the 10th, or is that no?

Um the council leadership could hold a public hearing if they want to, but it's not required to have a public hearing for the final adoption.

Yeah, no, there are sometimes your public hearings are required.

Yeah, it's usually only when tax dollars are being spent.

Oh because zoning regulation changes do have to go to the MDC as you mentioned, either before or after, or both in this case.

The MDC does have to hold a public hearing on it.

So there will be public, yeah.

That's that's my understanding is that if they want to change it back or send it back to us, there has to be another public hearing.

Okay, but they do have to act on it.

It will that be a public hearing?

Just if I I believe it will, but also um, as a counselor, and again, personal opinion, uh, but it's been very frustrating because when I pushed for a data center moratorium in May, I was told the council cannot initiate that.

Anything related to zoning has to start with the MDC.

But then when I pushed last week at the MDC hearing for them to hurry up and just start a moratorium and not wait on the council, I still have to wait for the council that can't initiate.

So both sides are telling me that they can't initiate while data centers are going to be.

Right.

And basically by the mayor, and um then it goes to the council for approval or not.

Yeah, so that has been that's always been the the past, and uh um just I I would like to thank you and the council for continuing to try to put in a moratorium.

Um so that's been that's been needed for years now.

So it's it's much appreciated, but we have to get through and get one first.

I think you feel like John was saying to you that he couldn't.

I felt like he was saying he didn't want to.

That's I think that's accurate.

Um because he brought up the fact that a moratorium wouldn't impact MetroBlocks, DC blocks, and um, but it was a link.

Right.

Yeah, my point was today you could say we are initiating a land use policy, bring a resolution up, and then you know, maybe that would be challenged in court and said you didn't have a proper public hearing, but meanwhile, I mean it's only a few weeks until the council will act, so that I think would be a delaying action that would be very helpful.

Yeah, they could have continued it until the moratorium was in place.

Right.

So um, yeah, I I didn't find those answers compelling personally.

Yeah, a lot of tap dancing.

Um yeah, so um hopeful on the uh moratorium actually being enacted.

Anything, I mean, right now we're sitting ducks again uh still um us being the community because until uh the MDC should approve a moratorium, uh somebody can file to put in a data center.

They would be grandfathered into the wild wild west, no rules apply.

And um, so we'll all have to be vigilant about what's happening there in a in a good government again.

Pat Andrews' opinion in a good government situation, uh, since the moratorium is headed down the pike, um, continuances would be invoked so that it could be evaluated uh under the new rules and taken to court if they don't like it.

Well then just to give credit to who's gone.

Um what was that?

Was that January that you had to file for a continuance for that reason?

Because we were told that data center regulations were coming the next 30 to 60 days, and here it is mid-July, and we're just now finally getting a vote on them.

So the tap dancing has been going on for a while.

Well, on behalf of Decatur Township, I requested a continuance and I was denied.

So that continues for cause.

Yeah, it was continuance for cause for me too, and they didn't they said no.

Except yours and they did.

Why did they reject your probably because well I'm sitting in the big chair, I have to be careful.

Um put you on the spot.

Yeah, I I think you can probably guess.

Yeah, yeah.

That means before you move too far past this before I special guests eat here.

Would you give Mr.

Jowell some time on the floor?

Oh, sure, sure.

Sure.

Okay, now I don't should tell you.

Well, yeah, we can come back to the data center.

Yeah.

I didn't know there was uh something to be brought forward, so hello.

I'm Dwayne.

Hi, Dwayne.

I live um 1900 block of Lamoni Avenue.

Um I've lived there for over 50 years.

Um, my family home is on uh in 1940 Columbia Avenue.

Um and the reason why I'm here not only with uh imitation of Jackie, but to express not only concern, but I'm angry now.

Um back in 2019, um at my mother's house, we decided to rebuild her back porch.

Um the back porch was built in 2019.

As you can see, these the back porch.

Okay.

2020, uh I was I received a letter from the medical saying that they completely uh shut me down, saying that I needed to permit post it, remember post it uh in order to proceed.

And I was saying, now we lived here for over 50 years, and in my neighborhood, the demographic has changed so much that now because of new construction, certain things don't apply supposed to apply.

So I'm saying, okay, now I was sued by the city.

Um I had to produce drawings, and at this time I was I was a licensed contractor, but I had to produce the uh drawings where I produced my drawings, and they said as permit officers that they weren't good enough.

So I spend hundreds of dollars to get architectural drawings for this back porch.

And keep in mind now, it was about not having a permit posted.

Okay.

So did you have a permit?

No, I didn't have a permit.

Okay.

Didn't really think I needed one because we just uh tearing down something that was there and rebuilding it.

In my neighborhood, from as far as I can remember, if you needed something, a neighbor was there to help you.

Never had to go through anything like this, and this is a small structure anyway.

Okay, so what office is it that is the permit office that it used to be uh right off of Madison, but now they're downtown in the city county.

So I'm saying, okay, I'm trying to get some some feedback, and I'm trying to get some information on really what's really going on because what I what I observed was in the two years just observing some of the the inspectors, I'm convinced there's a hint of corruption there, where some being tagged, some being uh uh and then some aren't.

And I'm trying to figure out okay, Wayne.

Is it because you live in a certain area?

Well, I don't know, I'm not sure, but I can't get a definite answer.

So I had my my counselman come and to walk the neighborhood with me, and I'll show them certain things, and I'm saying, okay, I needed to speak to the the head person, and she didn't want to, she didn't really want to meet with me.

So this is what happened, and this is just in walking distance all these homes, all these homes right in the back of me, garages and everything were built without permit, and this is just in walking distance, I observed them.

So I'm trying to figure out why I was I targeted.

What could it be?

I'm not getting a definite answer, and I really don't want to start speculating.

So I'm just going a definite answer.

Why would you we've been here for over 50 years?

Why would you target me?

There's only five left uh my neighbors left in my neighborhood.

Only five.

When you walk the neighborhood with him, yeah.

Yeah, we we had a very sad game of you could play, where you just look at the house and guess with about 95% accuracy.

Does a 30-year-old white person live here or does a 70-year-old black person live here?

Yeah.

Yeah, and that was to me that was probably, and I didn't the thing that I really didn't want to start getting into the race factor, but the race factor plays a part into it now.

Because I'm looking at it and I'm saying if this person had tagged me, all he had to do was look right there in the back of my alley and saw all this new construction going on.

So they need to be held accountable.

And what makes me angry is because now I wonder, I I want to fight.

The marine in me wants to fight.

But I know that if I try to fight, I'll be down in Mary County.

So I need a direction here.

I need an avenue.

I need somebody to be able to start to give me a number or something to be able to start talking and saying, wait a minute.

I need an explanation here.

I spent thousands of dollars on uh plans.

Finally got the the uh uh permit posted, but the damage has already been done, and somebody's not doing their job here, or are they doing their job?

Did you recommend EDJC?

I I tried to work to set up a conversation with uh the director of business neighborhood services who'd oversee all of this.

Um I think her perspective, she claims uh that from the inside perspective, she could see that there were permits pulled.

Um I focus was on whether or not that's true.

How does this look to an outsider if you know Mr.

Giles gets an inspector knocking on his door against a lawsuit to the city, and what they notice was no permit posted, but there was also no permits posted for any of this ongoing work.

So whether it's legitimately, you know, like no, even if it's just optics, I think that's something that needs to be.

What should be three course?

Now I won't I this is what I want.

I'm sorry.

No, no, go ahead.

I want uh first of all, explanation.

In writing.

Then I wanted to see the person who's in charge of uh of having these inspectors go out.

Then I want to be able to talk to the inspector's face to face, then I want my money.

Then we're gonna sue, we're gonna do something to let you know that if you're gonna do it to me, you better do it to everybody else.

Uh let me just go to the you have it.

The addition's been the porch been put back up, right?

You it is there, are they pursuing you any further on action about the porch?

Well, not no, this is what happened.

It turned it twisted.

Now they they came in and they had two compliances.

They were supposed to take take a look at my two windows up front and then my back porch.

Well, on my back porch with flying colors.

Okay, everything's fine.

That's what you had the permit for then.

Yes, okay.

And the windows, but when he went inside my home, he walked all through my home and saw that I had been doing some electrical work.

So instead of going and getting me this second uh compliance card, he said, Oh no, we're not gonna until you get a certified electrician to uh uh certified your work here.

We're not forget the windows.

See, now I'm really angry because she you had no business going around in my house in the first place.

You should have been concentrating on what you were supposed to be doing.

Who let them in the house?

Your job.

Who let him in the house?

I let him in the house.

But I didn't know.

I mean, he wasn't supposed to inspect windows.

He took a turn and said no, so I'm really angry now.

Are they holding up anything on the porch?

Or is it the windows separate?

Is the windows in the porch and windows in the window?

No, no, they're separate.

Okay.

The back porch is not the compliance, but they wouldn't give me the compliance on the second part because he saw that I was doing electrical work, and he decided to take it upon himself to say, no, we're not gonna give you this compliance card and uh until you give me a uh a certified electrician of some of the work that you do.

I'm just doing receptacles and stuff like that.

You know, there's no law that says I can't do that.

And I'm I'm good at what I do.

Well, anyway, that's another story.

But I'm still saying, and now you're you're you keep on messing with me now.

You keep on pumping.

You keep on messing with me now.

I want out now.

I'm gonna come get you now.

And I took two years to, and I I observed, I observed uh inspectors and what how they went and proceeded and how they did things with other how homes.

And I'm saying, wait a minute.

They don't they're not posted, they're not posted.

What's the reasoning?

And then I begin to really understand, going deeper, that this is this is a trillion dollar business that's been going on for years.

If you ever notice some some houses that that that are up and coming in your neighborhood and don't have anything posted, just kind of wonder, hmm.

And then you see some that are apartments.

Wait a minute.

What's the difference between guilt and what's the difference between where I live?

I want an explanation on where face-to-face explanation in writing.

And then we'll proceed from there.

I'll see the fight is on there.

Yeah, I let you, I'll let you for two years I'll observe it.

And I've observed the demographics change, shift in my neighborhood to where at one time, this is something the back porch on your rear on your neighbor's house or windows or a roof, or just a little so I get neighbors did that from where I'm I live at.

And where I and and and where I when where I live at now at one time it was just Brightwood.

I mean, uh Martin Dale said it more brightwood, but since they combine both.

I'm still saying there's a difference there.

Somebody needs to be held accountable.

The inspectors need to be accountable, and I'm ready to fight.

So I just need an address, a name, or something, later on somebody to be able to give me a direction on which way to go.

Thanks for your time.

Appreciate it.

Okay, thank you.

Um oftentimes what'll have what'll happen is if one person is um cited for some lack of on a whether it's construction, you know, oftentimes it's like a privacy fence out where I am.

Um then they go around and they turn everybody else in who doesn't have who went ahead and did the same thing, and they just assume that that was okay.

Um so that's certainly an avenue.

As far as anything, any legal stuff, I I don't think we're equipped to uh do any recommending on that arena.

Um but it would seem that um just it would it I don't know why somebody in BNS wouldn't meet with you to discuss this so that if there was a resolution possible, it could be arrived at.

But there will be no resolution if they don't meet with you.

Well, you've already talked to business and media services.

Well, I I have, but only to us they I I've never I actually got a chance to talk to the head person, and that was one of the keys before I moved forward to find out I wanted to see who this person was, and I wanted them to meet me, and I wanted them to explain to me why I was targeted.

It's just a very simple note, yeah.

And she can always have the person who's uh had heads up permits in particular be there and their attorney, you know, to make sure things cool from their that perspective and their side, but this asking for what was it?

In the past, they they know I'm not familiar with who's running BNS now, but um in the past, former people have agreed to meet when there was an issue.

I would I would keep at that angle at least, if not turning all your neighbors in and see what happens there.

That's that is uh the MO of people who get cited for something uh when it's not unusual in their neighborhood.

So my question to you is how how would you turn in your neighbors?

Oh, um the request indie.

Do you do you have that app on your phone?

Um you can go online to um the request ending, google it up and get there, or you can call um the mayor's action center, uh, which is three, two.

Oh, thank you.

Three, two, seven, four MAC, Mayor's Action Center, and you can talk to a live person.

That person will only um take your um your complaint and relay it into the computer, and that sends out the inspectors from code and for code enforcement and permits are both under the business and neighborhood services department, uh, but they are run separately, so um they're different inspectors, um, and uh so but then if there is an issue, then the person who um is determined to be in violations is given a letter of violation in 30 days to correct whatever.

So um they're different processes, but um, yeah, so the mayor's action center.

I have I've downloaded on my phone.

Can I just yeah?

If you want to call the mayor's action center and talk to a person, depending on how many calls are on hold and waiting, they may only be able to take up to three, maybe four of your complaints at a time, and you would have to call back and get in line again.

So downloading the app has its advantages, you can do it when is convenient for you.

The other advantage to downloading the app would be since you have all of these pictures you would like someone to see, you can upload the pictures on the app where you can't upload the pictures to someone you're talking to on the phone.

So if you want, if you want to step out in the hall, I can show you how to download the app.

We can go through that.

Um I'll be here till the end of the meeting if you want to sit in on the meeting.

Thank you.

Yeah, and you can monitor um, well, first of all, for anybody at home, if if you want to file a complaint about something you think is in violation, um, but you don't want to give your name, you call the mayor's action center, and if you right up front say, I want to be anonymous, they will keep you anonymous.

Um just so you know, and then when you use the app, you can be anonymous as well.

But that's that's that's solely up to the person.

But sometimes you might it might be your neighbor, you don't want to get in trouble with, and um, but um, yeah, just so that there now the mayor's action center gives you a number, um, but um the when you're trying to follow up on what happened with code enforcement, um your best bet is to go to um it's called Excela and A C C E L A, and you can Google that to get to it, um, and you can put in the address uh under um code under the code enforcement tab, you can put in the address and it will um tell you what happened to that complaint.

If the inspector went out, there's some little drilling you have to do, but generally you can get a little more information going through there than um trying to monitor it with what the the number that the mayor's action center gives you.

But there is a learning curve on that that program, but you can keep poking until you find what you're looking for there.

Okay, could you repeat that with the Excela?

A C C E L A.

You can get there through permits like indie.gov slash permits gets you to a place where you can link into it.

I've got a bookmarked on my computer because I use it all the time.

There's a lot of information in there, whether it's permits that have been pulled or complaints that have been filed about possible violations or zoning cases that are coming forward.

Um there's one other history or the historic areas.

If you're in a historic area, there's there's other um things that that are pertinent to you, different um things that are pertinent to you, not necessarily anyone else.

So there um, but that's it is a font of information.

You do have to poke around in it to see how many layers of information are in there.

If you would like to invite whichever advocate is coming to future meetings, or invite someone specific, we can set it up.

We could do a class on a cell.

Yeah, if you and I have a shortcut if you uh if you want to find out just what's happening in your area, not anywhere else.

So yeah, but it it is possible to use it, um, and there is a font of information, but they're in layers, so yeah, but that's it's a good idea to bring a laptop in and go through it, and it will take it even if even if you see somebody do it once, you're gonna have to keep poking on it to to um until you become familiar enough with where all the information actually lies.

But if somebody is filing for a permit, they will actually have their drawings in the in that file online.

So, you know, depending on what you do in your neighborhood, um you can find a lot of information that you don't have to check downtown for me.

Not what I'm hearing, they did offer responses, they didn't answer Mr.

Charles' questions or offer or agree with me.

They didn't agree to meet, yeah.

So they would say they were responsive.

They did provide responses to all my emails.

Some of them took a little while.

They just have a very different perspective.

You know, Mr.

Giles is looking at the physical environment around him.

They're looking at request any tickets and detailed reports of their inspectors.

So I think there's a chance that there's truth in both, but without a meeting, I don't see how there's a way to bridge that.

And there's not a law that they have to meet.

I don't think just to clarify city employees are not allowed to talk directly with residents once it has been sent to city legal and is in a legal case.

And why it wasn't referred for someone from City Legal to speak to you.

But it's like because you said it's gone through court, I can't talk to you about specifics.

I can show you to how look things up yourself.

I can't talk to you about this because I'm not an attorney and it's in a legal setting.

Well, I've already been sued by the city.

Fines not has been already paying for so the legal realm is done.

Okay as far as me getting satisfaction on these two compliance cards that they talked about after that.

It was supposed to be okay.

You beat me out of this money.

You you did this again, but instead of doing your job and expecting these two last two windows, which you're supposed to be expecting, you decide to just I'll kind of walk through my house.

And I wouldn't even pay an attention, and then he saw electrical work in receptacles and he decided to take it upon himself and say, Well, I'm not going to do the windows.

You've already inspected this padding on back porch, which I did above and beyond specs anyway.

But these two windows where you decide to not do not give compliance card on his point, but uh say you needed to get it there, and then I start figuring it out where it really didn't make a difference whether I uh uh they because they looked at my my specs on my on my uh blueprints, anyways that was like secondary, it was all about phone lines.

And like I said, I I can't answer those questions because that's where a meeting can be held hold in, so concerned but I can help you learn how to look up as much on your own issue.

Thank you.

Yeah, appreciate okay.

Well, maybe we should have someone to to we'll go through the XLA.

Um I've been hearing more things.

Maybe some of the some of the um procedures in permits has been changing.

I know they've been under fire for years now because they're so slow.

Um, but I've been hearing from you know, neighbor type people, not developer types, um, that now they seem to be requiring some um very official um surveys and things like that that are quite expensive in addition to the permit itself.

So um maybe we can see if their procedures um have gotten more vigorous than they used to be in the past too, and maybe we can get someone in to talk about what is required anymore from uh from the neighborhood perspective, you know, developers they can take care of themselves.

So um at least see if things have changed uh over time now, but okay.

Anything else on that?

Okay.

It's just one quick, you know.

I'm assuming sidewalks still haven't been the work, anything like that.

No, so I honestly think that this is totally unrelated, but just to add to what I know the frustration of Mr.

Giles is feeling.

Uh if you remember back in 2024 when each counselor got one million dollars to spend on projects, the project I chose was sidewalks and drainage for a few historically black neighborhoods, including a couple blocks right in front of Mr.

Giles' house based on that walkthrough that he and I did, and there still has not been any work started on that.

And so um again, I I don't think that's at all because of Mr.

Giles or because of the totally separate department.

That was a couple years ago.

A couple years ago, and so you know, I don't blame him from his perspective.

It looks like everything the city has promised to his block has not been delivered on, whereas well, there was also in Decatur Township, um, on the north side, there was uh when uh Jared Evans was the counselor, um the uh he had arranged for some significant work on Kentucky Avenue, um which needs more you know a great deal of significant work, um, and that has never been done either.

So I would say downtown and and submitted 14 by 10 pitches of sidewalks and the flooding, it goes on.

Yeah, they say the case is still open, but I'm and I went down there and at least seven complaints.

I went down here, and I'm still getting the same shitty wiggly.

You might look it up on Excel, that on Excel, then if you have that number um big or the addresses, because um there it might be that that's in legal, and they can't touch it once they file but they prepare the file.

And we throw last year.

Uh uh Gibson he told me to my face he said you're not going get sidewalks.

As would he tell me, you're not going to get sidewalks.

How do you follow up on what your million dollars do?

As counselors, we have a liaison at uh Department of Public Works who helps with this.

Somehow or another, you know, I was part of like five, six different meetings, you know, got the email chain and back it up.

Somehow it got sent over to a contractor to do this work, and the contractor saw it as a roads project, and so started scoping out all the work to replace the roads, which you know, there's not a rotating album that probably couldn't use a little work, but the the streets actually not in that bad a shape.

Um, and that's not what the request was, it was sidewalks and drainage.

And then the most recent thing I heard was about a month and a half ago when I was pushing for that.

They're like, oh well, sidewalks and drainage are pretty cheap, so we'll just add those on.

I was like, okay, if you want to give me more than my million, that's fine.

But then they were like, oh my gosh, uh drainage, that's gonna cost a lot of money here.

That's like, would it maybe cost a million dollars?

Because that was why I chose this.

So uh did they spend that money?

They haven't yet said that we can't accommodate this, but it's just the timeline and your 23 project and your 25 project been done.

We only got this one year, so that was misreprim or misreported in the media.

We only ever had this one time, and so this is the only one million dollar project I've ever asked for, and nothing has been done yet.

So you didn't get one in 26, right?

Okay, um, let's see.

Going back to the moratorium before I forget, and we we move on.

Um see if uh the chief comes here shortly.

Um I do personally want to thank um not only um President Lewis for submitting the the um amendment for the um moratorium, but also um counselor Evans and Councillor Osley were pretty involved in all of that.

Um the we did set up a group.

Uh um Julie was part of it, Paula Brooks was part of it, our the Decatur Township trustee, uh Jason Holliday, and our fire chief for co-compliance, uh Lauren Hudson.

Um Kathy Burton was on the committee, and um a gal named Randy Um Berryman uh from the Protect Decatur group, and we worked uh long time to come up with a an ordinance that the purpose of which is to protect the neighborhoods from the um bad effects of of uh um the data centers.

Um people like to categorize folks who are against data centers as disgruntled or nimbies, or they just don't understand.

There's nothing different between uh this and a warehouse, and that couldn't be further from the truth.

Um, and we have to educate the folks who don't you know haven't had the trial by fire of having uh one of these tried to locate in our neighborhoods.

So um it's pretty thorough in you know, hopefully at least is is an eye-opener to what all really needs to get regulated, and it's not like we made these things up, these are in other ordinances that are either adopted or in draft form elsewhere in the state and in the the country.

had the trial by fire of having uh one of these tried to locate in our neighborhoods so um it's pretty thorough and you know hopefully at least is is an eye opener to what all really needs to get regulated and it's not like we made these things up these are in other ordinances that are either adopted or in draft form elsewhere in the state and in the c the country so um anyway those are available on the civic council website if anyone you know again if you're three o'clock in the morning and you want to fall back asleep you can start reading it and that would be helpful but anyway so the point was when they say all you ever do is criticize ours what would you like to see we have here you go we have that answer yeah and I think it is powerful people have said a lot of the things that that are the highest points because you only you know it's it again opinion from Pat Andrews you have something that's brand new not only in Indianapolis but brand new in the country these big data centers are brand new so there's not a lot of experience in this scale of data center so you try to bring information to the decision making bodies and you get 15 minutes I mean everybody who's who's had to deal with this how many hours did you put in trying to nail down is noise real or is it is it imaginary are there really health effects to noise or not I I just want to say that my department of water quality and hazardous materials management with no direction for me other than just complaining about it they are starting to do a lot of research on data centers what the environmental effects are what the long-term effects are because maybe it doesn't affect the water in the beginning but these data centers apparently create some type of sludge that's going to have to be removed and disposed of somewhere at some time.

So we're working on it I mean we're trying not to be late to the party.

Excellent but um yeah they're looking at things now yeah there's a there's a lot of stuff they put in the even if they have the closed loop an actual closed loop not a partially closed loop they put anticorrosis and antimicrobials in there and yeah so they they have to um especially the latest um chips are are um was it they are pretty much antifreeze going through because they're doing a new anyway the technology keeps changing but they have to doctor that water so completely that it probably does need to be carted off every five years and and changed for new water and then disposed of properly because if that stuff gets into the um sewage treatment plant I don't know how many things are going to survive and they require bacteria to to deal with the the um cleaning the water back up I feel like that technology is changing so fast you are going to have trouble coming like an answer that that DC blocks won't stand up and say oh yeah but we don't do it that way anymore so it's it's very difficult.

Yeah but there's there is a you're probably already finding a lot of information about the water they're excited about it because the ones that say they had sludge I'm telling you the developer the next developer is going to say yeah but we don't do it that anymore.

Right if you're coming with a sludge argument they're gonna be like that so you've got to be careful how old the stuff is that you're looking at well and could people can be using all of them all different methods.

Okay.

I'm doing with this data center why are they picking neighborhoods why would they not go out in the country so they are power infrastructure.

They what they want to do is they like I mentioned before they've blown the town saying billions of dollars we're gonna spend billions of dollars and then they want to cheap out on everything they can cheap out on the electricity stuff if they have to run new water they have to have really high um power so it's not that your house voltage in particular what they're doing is they're following where the power towers are right now and so they can build a um a substation right there too feeds their plant so right now they don't they could they could be a mile away in a an innocuous location but then they would have to pay for a mile of the wires going to their new location they don't want to pay that they don't want to pay their taxes they don't want to you know so um they would just want to make as much money as they can possibly make and uh cheap out when it comes to the health of the neighbors the noise from the stuff the um the water quality the ground what the contamination that might happen in in our case um with 250 megawatts they were gonna have depending on which time they mentioned it either a million to a million and a half gallons of diesel fuel on site right next right abutting a house right across the street from a bunch of houses and that was all okay and I don't know how what kind of diesel the Google one would have had there if that had been approved but that's just that there is a unique assortment of hazards

Right next, right abutting a house right across the street from a bunch of houses.

And that was all okay.

And I don't know how what kind of diesel the Google one would have had there if that had been approved.

But that's just that's there is a unique assortment of hazards that are there uh in a data center.

And what I know I learned was the hazards of the lithium batteries, because if they get a fluctuation in the the power coming to their plant, um they uh have lithium batteries that will immediately kick in to smooth it out, and then a few seconds later, these diesel generators start up, right?

But the lithium batteries, it turns out from the fire marshal that was on our committee, they're uh you can't put that fire out.

That fire just will go until it it burns itself out.

And you know, like if you go on a plane, they want you to carry your the lithium battery in your laptop on the inside where they can put the that out.

Um I assume they put it in something, but these lithium battery backups in the data center are a particular particularly odious hazard.

Um so yeah, the it's quite the learning curve in in all of this, and and we do have to we have a responsibility, those of us who know have a responsibility to try and get the word out to parts of the county that haven't been hit with a zoning case.

As soon as they're hit with a zoning case, they're gonna say, well, what's real and what's not real?

And they'll start researching it, and they'll find out darn, it really is real, you know.

But let's not go with this argument that'll put it somewhere else.

There is nowhere that it is appropriate to poison the water in the air for anyone.

These are just bad news, period, everywhere.

Yeah.

Didn't they have just recently hit the news where see they're so new that you don't have a history either?

They're so big.

Um so I somebody filled me in where they um actually had a bacterial outbreak from the water contamination.

That was somewhere in Utah.

So Utah.

Wyoming.

They've had ones where um the the contaminated the ground water um by the way they were circulating the the water, and there's just one thing after another.

They there's a um really I'm into the YouTube stuff.

So there was a YouTube that was really informative to me where they had a couple of experts on, and um they were talking about these these big data centers, and they're hooked up to the grid, the same grid that you're hooked up to, and they're yanking on the electricity.

So within a minute, it'll go from uh 100% electricity to zero, hundred, zero, hundred zero, a couple of times in a minute.

And what it's doing is yanking on that grid and it's causing rolling brownouts and stuff.

So these are serious issues for the quality of life.

And um so these things need to be they need to be taken seriously by our government and they the neighborhoods and the grid and all the stuff that we're relying on clean water, clean air, uh, and reliable electricity, um, should be a paramount concern to our government.

They must say we gotta have it.

Uh otherwise, you know, the internet won't work.

Well, that's both the internet works, fine until AI.

And there, if you read pretty technical journals, they say that there are ways that they could do this that wouldn't require hyperscale, but it's more expensive, so they won't do it.

Right.

Yeah, a lot of it comes down to how much profit can they put.

If they would work together, and in so that if this one's down, then they feed the other one, but they it's too expensive.

Yeah.

Well, I think we have guests.

Good morning.

Welcome.

Welcome, please.

Are you are you cheap Terry?

Yeah.

And are you officer Young?

I am.

Oh, good.

Welcome, welcome.

Would you like to come up and uh ready for me?

Um well, one second.

Did you have something, Jesse, you wanted to um say?

Oh, I was just gonna put one last piece of context on the data center conversation.

Uh by most estimates, it's now the largest infrastructure investment in human history.

Yeah, uh-huh.

So this isn't just like a couple developments here and there, it's like significantly higher in real dollars and in inflation adjustable than for example the federal highway system, like the understanding's all over 50 states.

So we see it so often in the news, that's why it like really is this large and this massive a piece of our economy right now.

So yes, absolutely.

Yes, thank you.

Okay, well, we're shifting away from data centers, so you will be a breath of fresh air for us.

Well, uh, yeah, hopefully um the topics of my conversation will be uh mainly positive for everyone, but um happy to be here.

Now I'm Tanya.

Pat Andrews.

Pat, okay.

So I've communicated with Kathy, yes.

So she's still ill.

Okay.

Well, I wish her a speedy recovery.

But she's the one that invited me here.

She was looking forward to it for sure.

Yeah, I'm sorry she's missing it.

I'll try to meet her again another time.

Oh, great, great.

So, well, good morning, everyone.

Good morning.

Happy Saturday to you.

A lot going on in the city this weekend.

Uh, hopefully, some of you uh get out to enjoy some of the festivities we have going on downtown with uh Indiana Black Expo summer celebration.

Uh I'll be heading there from here.

Was out there yesterday.

I know Sergeant Young was participating in a lot of the uh events, so uh really good thing for our city.

So please try to take advantage of that.

Um I was invited this morning to talk about some of my priorities, uh, some of our goals, some of our challenges, some of our crime data, and then uh part of that is also related to recruiting and retention.

So those are the topics that I plan to talk talk about and cover this morning.

Some of you have been in um other meetings that I've been at.

You've probably heard me talk about our IMPD strategic plan.

Uh that can be woven into just about everything that I talk about.

So uh I was sworn in in February of this year as the chief of police.

Uh prior to that, I worked as the deputy chief of operations for two years.

Uh, when I was deputy chief of operations, I had responsibility of all the patrol districts in the county, so all of the district commanders for our six service districts, plus um special operations, plus our uh operations support unit, which has our homeless outreach unit and our umcat mobile crisis uh assistance teams.

So I had a lot of responsibility for probably the majority of our agency, uh, but obviously now I have responsibility for the entire agency.

But that was really good learning experience for me as deputy chief of operations.

Um a lot of uh professional development, a lot of connections throughout all of the districts.

Prior to that, I was the commander of Southwest District.

So that was one of my um most favorite assignments I've ever had in my career.

Uh having um responsibility for one geographic patrol district.

I had the opportunity to come to a lot of community meetings like this, but I also got to see police officers each and every day.

Um at roll calls, I was able to show up on runs.

I had a little more flexibility in my calendar, so I was able to be uh more ingrained in the day-to-day operations of that patrol district.

I also learned a lot about the importance of community and police partnerships and how we can come together to solve issues in neighborhoods.

So we did quite a bit of work like that when I was the commander of Southwest District, and I know our commanders today continue that work in each of their respective districts.

So before that, I had some experience uh as a lieutenant in our aggravated assault and homicide unit.

Uh I've also been a part of our violent crimes unit as a detective.

I've also been a detective as a part of North District.

Actually, started my career here on North District, that's where we're meeting today.

I worked just to the south of here in the Crown Hill neighborhood.

I worked late shift for many years, and really took a lot of pride in making sure that uh during the course of my shift from 9 30 a.m.

to six p uh 9 30 p.m.

to 6 a.m.

as I was patrolling and neighbors were sleeping.

Uh that they woke up the next morning and everything was just as they left it, right?

That was my uh my primary goal.

So I had a lot of fun and really at night I didn't get to meet a lot of the neighbors.

So I think that's what one of the things that makes me push our late shift officers to do things during the day, try to participate in some of our community events, try to get out to some community meetings, even if it means they have to change their hours a little bit, because it's important for them to see that perspective uh outside of what's happening at night when most that most people are asleep, right?

Um so I learned that uh through my experience on late shift.

So I've done a lot of different things through the agency, and I think that's partly what's helped prepare me uh for where I am now, and I'm really appreciative to uh the mayor for the opportunity to serve in this capacity.

So while I was still the deputy chief of operations, we embarked upon under Chief Bailey's leadership a strategic plan.

And we solicited input from all of our employees.

We solicited input from members of our community.

And over the course of that one year process, we had more than 2800 community members provide input.

We had over 1,500 of our employees provide input.

And one of the goals for this strategic plan was for us to have a five-year roadmap of where IMPD needs to go, right?

Over the course of five years.

We also wanted to be a police department that's reflective of the needs of our community, the vision of our community, and the needs and vision of our employees.

So no one person, me as the chief.

I don't want to be the person that says this is our vision because it needs to be reflective of our entire community, right?

We uh some of you may have heard of the the Sir Robert Peel, the Pelium principles.

People are the police, and the police are the people.

This is in alignment with that kind of concept.

So as a part of that one-year process, there were focus groups, there were online surveys, uh, there were uh in-person community meetings, uh, a number of opportunities and different kinds of ways for people to provide that input.

And as a result of that, we had 34 key areas identified, and from that, we we whittled that down to three primary strategic priorities, and I'll get into those in just a minute.

But also what we did was we came up with a new IMPD mission and vision statement that is reflective of all of that collective IMPD and community uh input, and I think uh you'll be happy to hear what that is.

I'll share the mission.

IMP serves with courage and compassion, partnering with our community to address crime and create a safer Indianapolis for everyone who lives, works, and visits here.

So let me just touch on that.

It sounds very simple, but the words are very intentional, right?

We serve, number one, we serve with courage and compassion.

You have to have both.

We have to do carry out our responsibilities.

We have to be brave, we have to be courageous, but we also have to do that with compassion in our hearts, right?

Enforcement is not always the only option, is not always the best option.

Enforcement does not always lead to the best outcome, right?

So that's where compassion comes in.

And even if we do have to take that enforcement action, we can do that, and we can still treat people with dignity and respect and humanity, right?

So that's the goal there.

Um, obviously address crime and create a safer Indianapolis, not just for some people, for everyone.

Every resident, every visitor, every employee that comes into this county.

So that's the mission.

Our vision is a safe Indianapolis where community members, officers, and professional staff alike are supported.

Their voices are heard, and IMPD is a proud and trusted partner.

And you've heard partner used in both the mission and the vision, and I already touched on that when I talked about being a district commander.

We can't do this alone.

Partnerships are a key part of everything that we do.

I see a boys and girls club t-shirt over here.

When I was the uh commander of Southwest District, I piloted a juvenile pre-arrest diversion program.

When I and this is an example of how there are opportunities in leadership to influence your surroundings and your environment.

We have some success stories.

So I'm really looking forward to that.

Partnership.

That's a key partnership.

Um we developed that pre-arrest aversion program.

We worked really hard together, uh, continually trying to evolve that, really trying to address the needs of the of the juvenile, but then we recognize with that can't be the only focus.

There's an entire family dynamic that needs to be addressed as well, right?

I became the deputy chief of operations, expanded that program to every service district that we have.

So that's countywide now.

To take it a step further, when you talk about leadership and opportunities to influence your environment.

Alongside partners from Boys and Girls Club and juvenile probation.

So that's every roll call in the city morning, day, and night across all the patrol districts twice because we have to we had two letter days at the time.

So you know that it just shows you how important I think that is, right?

So I did get off on tangent because I saw your shirt, but appreciate the partnership of the boys and girls club, but that it doesn't stop there.

Youth violence has been a big topic in our community.

I'm grateful that I could I can say that we didn't lose any kids over July 4th weekend this year.

Part of that I think is because we had community partners that became involved over the last year and walked alongside us to try to influence and touch some of our young people in our community and their families.

So we have partners with trusted community community-based organizations, right?

That really focus on youth, and they have volunteered their time to come alongside us on some select weekend nights, Fridays and Saturdays at a what we've been calling a connection center.

You may have heard me talk about that, where we find unattended youth that might be engaged in risky behavior or just unattended out late at night, and we bring them to this connection center, which is a safe location, a secure location, and that's where our community-based organizations are with officers.

The majority of the officers that are working in there are not dressed like this, they're in khakis and polos.

And then you know, we we take a survey and they're engaged with the the partners to offer them services.

We also call the parents or the responsible adult, and they have the opportunity to come and pick up their child.

They also have the opportunity to come and engage with those community-based organizations.

What we've also been doing is proactively trying to identify at-risk youth in our community and making those proactive referrals, like, hey, we're seeing contact with this young person repeatedly in this kind of context.

Can you re out reach out to their family?

Sometimes we're going and knocking on doors after repeated contacts.

Maybe it didn't lead to an arrest or an actual crime, but we can tell this is not headed in the right direction.

We try to make contact at the home.

Okay.

That kind of work is meaningful, right?

And it speaks to the concept of trying to prevent what happens next.

Where does this lead?

Which goes in hand in hand with the pre-arrest aversion.

We know that our kids have a better chance of staying out of trouble in the future if they avoid being in our criminal justice system in the first place.

We can do more harm to a young person by putting them in jail than we can by connecting them with resources and diverting them.

Now that only applies to low-level, low-risk offenders, okay.

People that are out here playing with guns and toting guns, those are not the people that I'm talking about right now.

I'm talking about kids that are committing uh nonviolent low-level offenses.

In the in the eye with the concept of keeping them out of our criminal justice system and on a path to success, right?

Now, I really really got off on my tangent, but I do have three strategic priorities that came out of that strategic plan over the course of the last year and a half.

The first priority, and I'll explain the reasoning for the order, is fostering a workplace that supports the health and professional growth of both officers and staff.

And you've heard me say that a couple of times.

Officers and professional staff alike.

Our agency has sworn officers that are like me and like uh Sergeant Young, but we also have a robust support system of professional staff or civilian employees.

We like to call them professional staff.

Um, civilian employees sometimes might have a negative connotation, so I'll use the term professional staff.

We don't want there to be a divide between our sworn and our professional staff.

The same concept applies internally for IMPD.

Just because you're in charge of one area doesn't mean you don't have a responsibility to work with people in other areas to push our our overall mission forward, right?

So we're supporting the health professional growth of all of our employees.

Without an office an officer that's been supported, and having all of their the trauma that they're exposed to, the shift work that they're exposed to, the physical injuries that they're exposed to addressed, then we may not be our best self when we show up to handle somebody in an emergency, right?

So we have to be healthy from the inside out.

That's that's our priority number one.

Now there's there's some sub priorities underneath there.

Um the components that feed into that strategic priority are recruitment and retention, and I'll talk about that.

Employee wellness and leadership development.

One of the things that I think is widely understood within our profession is that the single most influential supervisory rank that we have within our agency is the sergeant, the first line leadership, the field sergeant.

But what do we do to support them?

Because they're the ones that are supporting our street cops, right?

And our detectives.

So professional development, not just for supervisors, that's one key part of it, but for everybody.

Uh, so they have all of the the equipment and training to be implementing national best practices and being the best police department that we can be, right?

So healthy from the inside out.

That's the way I like to phrase that and view that first strategic priority.

The second one is that enhance community safety through mutual support, trust, and understanding.

So the sub priorities are visibility and connection.

We want to increase officer leadership officer and leadership presence in our neighborhoods to strengthen community relationships, one interaction at a time.

We want you to see us, not just the chief, not just the deputy chiefs, the the commanders.

We want you to see all of us in the community in whatever capacity that looks like.

We also want to do that through authentic communication.

That's transparency, right?

On some level.

We want to expand the opportunities for consistent two-way communication, two-way.

We want to hear from you too.

And build a shared understanding between IMPD and the community to increase cultural awareness and ensure everyone feels respected, engaged, and heard.

We have some challenges in that area right now, right?

With multiple different members of our population or multiple multiple cultural areas, right?

We got a national trend of fear of federal enforcement on immigrations and customs, right?

We've seen a lot of stuff televised nationally about what's happening across our country.

And people are worried, people are scared, and that's understandable.

We've also had instances in our past and in our our history as a police department or a police profession where we haven't always done things in the best way, right?

And that impacts and harms our relationship with certain members of our community, right?

So we want to proactively try to overcome those challenges.

We want everybody to feel heard, feel supported, and we want to earn the trust of our community, and that's that's not an easy thing to just do.

You don't get that through just words alone, right?

We get that through transparency, we get that through accountability, we get that through having officers that are healthy and well show up for you.

I keep getting off on tangents.

The other thing to enhance community safety is through community partnerships, because I've already talked about quite a bit.

The um the work that we're doing with youth is just one aspect.

We also walk along alongside other city agencies.

We have partnerships with IEMS, where we do uh and and IFD, where we're doing mental health runs, mental health response.

We have co-response models now, okay.

One of the things that's part of this strategic plan is for us to always seek self-improvement, okay?

Okay?

And so we debrief, we after action.

We try to identify what's working in other communities, or even better, let's show other communities what can work for them.

And there's a lot of other communities that come here to learn from what we're doing.

But mental health unified response.

Instead of this is the old way.

The old way was send the police in first.

Okay.

Sometimes that's not the best option.

So we're not the resident experts and medical issues, and sometimes not mental health issues either, right?

That's why we have our mobile crisis assistance teams where our officers are paired with clinicians.

They get out in the community, they handle as many of those runs as they can.

We have our clinician-led response team that goes out where police aren't even dispatched to mental health runs.

Okay?

And that clinicians try to handle those without even any police involvement.

And then on that unified response, we have the EMS, we have the fire, we have the police.

We all go up together, we all evaluate, we communicate.

Who's the best person to step forward here?

The police, our our perspective is where are the safety chokeholes here?

What do we need to do to make this scene safe so that our partners can address the primary issue of this?

So partnerships is expansive.

It goes on all fronts.

It also goes to the granular level of these types of community meetings.

We don't know what's happening in every one of your blocks.

We don't know what's happening with your neighbors unless you tell us what's happening, right?

So we have to be we have to create these opportunities where we can have this two-away dialogue.

And I'm not going to take up the whole time talking to you.

I'm going to give you opportunities for questions too.

The third strategic priority is investing in our department infrastructure to improve efficiency, preparedness, and morale.

Our technology and data.

Upgrade and integrate information technology systems, analytics, and communication tools to support transparency and data-driven decision making.

We have implemented new tactics or strategies sometimes because we just thought that maybe that was a good idea.

We've got to get away from that kind of thinking and really lean into data-driven, data-supported strategy and decision making.

We also need to leverage data.

One of the ways we can leverage data or technology is to open up lines of communication with you all.

I would love for us to do more work in community sentiment surveys.

By the way, we do have online complaint format, but we also have online compliment format.

And I don't know, sometimes people don't always realize that you can just as easily as you can complain on an officer, you can also compliment an officer.

And those are my favorite things to get.

So that's all on the IndieGov website under the IMPD portion of that.

But analysing data and helping us interpret what does that mean and what does that tell us that we should be doing, right?

One of the ways that one of the things that we're trying to work on right now is identifying throughout the county what partnerships do we have within our community, what relationships do we have, and then more importantly, where are the gaps?

How can we dig into the areas where we have voids between IMPD and our community?

And how leveraging with the community, how do we get here?

How do we come together?

Facilities and equipment.

We need to invest in modern facilities, safe work workspaces, reliable equipment to meet our current needs and prepare for future demands of policing.

We have some facilities where we've lost use of them because it was unsafe due to mold.

We have some facilities where detectives have had the ceiling tiles fall in on them because of water.

We have some facilities where our steps are crumbling.

We have, I mean, I have facilities in my agency where I will not be proud to take people, and that shouldn't happen.

As professional police officers, we should all be able to come to work and take pride in our environment and not be embarrassed to have a meeting or have a community member or an elected official come and meet with us.

That shouldn't be the case.

So we are working now to provide our council a plan for our facilities so that long term we can stay ahead of that and plan for the future and the next generation of police officers.

Organizational structure.

This is something I'm going to reevaluate again in the coming months.

What makes sense being transparent about what our organizational structure is, not just to the public, but also to our officers, right?

And then our policies and communication.

We have a lot of policies.

Some policies I'm I'm ashamed to say are still on the books from when we merged in 2007.

And I don't feel like as a if we want to call ourselves a modern police department, we should be looking at our policies more often than what is that 19 years ago?

So whatever those policies are that still say 2007, under that chief, we need to revisit, they need to have my stamp on them, and then we need to update that.

We also have policies sometimes that conflict with each other.

So we're really taking a hard look at how do we simplify that for our officers, what makes most sense and be intentional about that.

So those are the three main strategic priorities that came out of the strategic plan.

Our work is cut out for us over the next five years.

We're taking small chunks.

This is not something that we can just attack all at the same time.

So we have to, even though I have priorities here, I have to prioritize the priorities, right?

And so one of the things that I have prioritized is recruitment and retention.

Made a few changes internally on that.

Many of you know Sergeant Randy Diaz.

He has been known as our recruiting sergeant, but also as our immigrant outreach officer.

So given the climate that we have seen across the country with our immigrant population, I felt that it was important for him not to have to divide his attention with two very important responsibilities.

So I put him in our community engagement bureau so that he can be more focused on immigrant outreach.

And then I put a different supervisor that is solely responsible for recruiting and recruiting.

So we have three full-time recruit officers, recruiting officers plus a full-time supervisor in that unit.

What I have tasked them with and asked them to do is look at national best practices.

What is working in other communities to get officers, qualified applicants interested in this great profession?

We have to connect with and identify people that have a heart to serve in this capacity in our community because we need them.

All backgrounds, all socioeconomic backgrounds, races, color, creed, religions.

We need everyone to raise the right hand and swear to serve this community and uphold our constitution.

So we're all we're constantly recruiting, we're we're looking for ways that we can connect with those those people, those individuals.

Some of the things that we've done this year, besides those personnel changes, for one thing, uh we have, thank you.

For one thing, we have issued uh, we started to issue some of our newer cars in the fleet to the recruiters, right?

New people, that's that's something that's important to them.

They need to know that we have all of the the opportunities, all the best equipment, um, all the modern technology, and our recruiters being forward-facing, uh, they should be equipped that way, right?

That's one of the things, but the other stuff that we realized is that we have got to follow our potential applicants and and really walk alongside them for the entirety of the process.

And how do we do that?

We got some software, some technology that allows us to have a constant text communication and mass communication with everybody in our applicant process.

And that's not just with the recruiters, it's also with our background investigators.

Uh, we've also been looking at our entire hiring process.

How can we be more efficient?

Where can we shorten the process so that people don't have to wait a long time?

We've talked about like so with um, we talked about the timing of our classes.

We have three classes a year.

We used to have two classes a year.

I was talking to a recruiter yesterday at the expo, and we have an applicant that's in college, a senior in college that doesn't graduate till May, but our class starts in April.

Well, how do we how do we get those two in alignment so we don't lose a good applicant, right?

So we're constantly looking at ways that we can be more efficient, improve our hiring process, and also make sure that the candidates that we are engaged with know that we want them.

Know that we care about them as people, that they're not just the 15th candidate for the 36th recruit class.

Hey Mike, how are you?

How's your family?

Let me go to your house.

We've we walked them through the chief's office.

They've come for a staff meeting.

Uh we've walked them out to our canine facility.

We are our recruiters are really showing them what IMPD is all about so that they make an informed decision.

We took, as a matter of fact, a week ago Wednesday, we have at our training academy a village built.

It's called Hersheyville, and we do scenario-based training there.

We took applicants through scenario-based training before they even started working here, so that they have an idea of the kind of work that we have an opportunity to do.

They go on right alongs.

I mean, these are the things that we're doing to try to get and keep qualified applicants.

So I'm really happy to say August, we have another class that starts.

It's the 36th recruit class, and right now we have 36 people slated to start.

I can tell you 36 is the highest number I've seen in a number of years.

We've had recruit classes as low as seven.

Most of them have been around 15 or 20.

So we have 36 starting in August, and then I'm told that projecting December's class should be even higher than that.

So that is encouraging to me that we are trending in the right direction.

Um that front, on that note of trending in the right direction.

The one thing that I was asked to talk about that I haven't talked about yet is crime data.

Uh, you guys have probably heard me talk about this before.

Uh just checked this morning as of yesterday, because we um we cut that off the stats off at five in the morning.

Umfortunately, we are working a shooting investigation, so this might change by tomorrow, but roughly a 24% decrease in homicides over this time last year.

If you look at our decrease over the last five years as we've been involved and engaged in a gun violence reduction strategy, a citywide uh strategy, uh, that reduction is well over 40 or 50 percent, uh, which is incredible.

And that that's not just a number, those are members of our community, neighbors that are still alive today, that are not another homicide in our community, okay?

Uh, lives are saved.

Overall, our violent crime is down uh almost 29% this over uh last year, and our property crime is down almost 13% this time over last year.

And when I talk about property crime, and this is something that I think is really important to a lot of our neighbors, burglaries are down almost 22%.

And while property crime isn't what we normally talk about, right, publicly or in front of the news cameras, property crime really speaks to your quality of life in the neighborhood, right?

And so I'm I'm really happy that while we we're not where we want to be, right?

The the goal is zero, right?

Is that realistic?

I don't know, but that's always what we're gonna strive for.

Um but to have us be down over 350 officers from our full strength, and to see these kinds of reductions to me shows me that we are doing some things right.

We have to be doing something right to achieve that together through partnership.

So our overall crime uh throughout the city, when you combine everything, we're down still about 16 percent.

So the goal is to continue to dig into what's working for us.

A lot of what we do with as far as violent crime reduction is focused deterrence, where we try to identify those most at risk in our community of committing violence and targeting it, targeting them proactively.

Uh and that's either that's either enforcement or services, and we uh do have partnership with the Office of Public Health and Safety and NDPs, where we if if we identify somebody who we think is on this track of violence, they can either be a victim of a shooting or a suspect of a shooting.

Maybe we haven't charged them yet, maybe we have.

But that talk happens.

Look, you're on our radar, we know what you're involved in.

If you don't choose a path of uh being a productive member of our community and seeking services and changing your decisions, then you will be facing enforcement action from IMPD.

We will hold you accountable.

And uh we have I think the best investigators, police officers in the country that have a really really outstanding track record of holding people accountable in our in our community when they choose choose to inflict violence in our community.

So I'd stand them up against anybody.

I used to be one uh when I did real police work, and uh I'm really proud of the work that they do.

So I would like to save the rest of the time uh to answer any questions that you all might have.

Any questions?

Yes, ma'am.

National nine out.

What does that look like from the top down?

Oh, we were just talking about it this past week, so I've I've already gotten some invitations to some of the community parties, and um, I know I have my calendar blocked all day for national night out, so I'll be getting with Sergeant Young, we'll be going all around the county uh and stopping by to thank uh community members for getting out with us on national night out, stand up against crime.

I would like to thank you.

Uh my neighborhood is a strong partner with INPD Southeast.

We were great with Commander Hicks and all of his staff.

Um I've been fortunate to go to Hersheyville.

Um I've done ride-alongs.

I had a uh a new officer when I did, he was so awesome.

I mean, he just it was funny because I'm obviously a little older, and they kind of laughed when they put him with me at roll call, you know.

Okay, uh officer so and so you're gonna go with Mrs.

Patterson and and everybody like but he was so good.

I mean, he was younger, he he walked me through everything, he showed me what he does extra, not just every day, but checked up on some kids, uh, took me over there.

We had a situation that I probably won't do another ride along.

And I shouldn't say that, but but I was scared because I was in a position that I wasn't comfortable with.

But he said, You do this, if this happens, you do that.

He made sure I was taken care of before he got out of the car to go to the situation.

So very proud of that.

We've had roll call in our neighborhood, the neighbors loved it.

The next day was what was all the you know, officers there for.

We did second and third shift.

It was awesome.

The people that from my neighborhood that came, wow, this happens every day.

They were just amazed.

People don't understand what you folks do.

We in our neighborhood do safety walks every Monday night.

Very fortunate when I have an incident.

Um again, I'm on the South Side, I'm at Thompson and 31, if you know that area.

If I have a situation, I contact Commander Hicks and uh Officer Sheeler and say, Hey, I need some officers to walk with me tonight.

Uh we have this situation.

I don't ask often, but when I do ask, Commander understands that we do have a situation.

We're a lone neighborhood, but we have some homeless issues, and we have some other uh issues around our neighborhood.

We have helped our neighborhood has connected.

I don't know if you know the South Side shooting spree that we had in Glenn.

Yep.

I connected that neighborhood with Commander Hicks, and we got that that safety walk going that night.

Yeah, uh we have National Night Out, Commander Hicks will be there.

We we offer uh our uh county officials, our state representatives, other neighborhoods.

My big thing is bringing in neighborhoods together.

I work with four or five of my adjoining neighborhoods.

I go to their meetings, um, I take what's going on in my neighborhood to them and what's going on in theirs to mine.

So and what you find often is you guys are dealing with a lot of the same issues, right?

Right.

So uh partnerships is you've got it down.

I mean, if I'm an example, I being my neighborhood is an example, you are doing an awesome job.

Thank you very much, and appreciate your engagement.

It's important for people like you to have that level of engagement and ownership in their community because sometimes community members can achieve things and accomplish things and have conversations that somebody that's dressed like me cannot have with somebody, so that's important, and and it's working in other parts of the of the county as well, where we have asked community members, please.

We need you to step up, and community members have taken ownership of those communities and have resulted in less involvement from the police, which you know reduces the potential for conflict, right?

So thank you for what you've done.

Anyone else?

Yes, ma'am.

You mentioned that recruitment is what is uh people outside of Marion County allowed to apply for police officers.

You can you can be anywhere in the state according to state law that was changed a few years ago.

So did when you when you recruited, you have to move within the state some perimeters.

You can live anywhere according to state law, but you have to have reliable transportation and the ability to get to work every day.

And but the take home car program is not statewide.

You have to live within uh Marion County or an adjoining county uh to be able to take your car home.

Well, uh I'll ask since you were Southwest.

Um I'm with I'm in Decatur Township, and I would assume there's similar things wherever it starts getting to the edges of the the county.

We don't see police officers.

I mean, I do see the police cars parked in government centers and fire departments for the take-home issue, but um you know the the manpower just isn't extended to the lower population areas.

No, we have we have staff.

We don't see at C so when you get so the population density changes, right, throughout the county.

So as you get closer to the center, uh the population density is higher, and as you get closer to the county lines, that population density decreases.

Neighborhoods are more spread out, would you agree?

There's a little more rural space.

And so I think the opportunity to see officers actively patrolling in those less dense less dense populated areas, it's just the chances are lower that you're gonna see them.

But we do have coverage in every of the every beat.

Not I get that not all the time, but in every part of the county, we do have officer coverage.

I yeah, I get that.

I'm just thinking of the engagement with the youngsters because you know it um taking the better path doesn't it hardly matters where you live, you know.

So uh how or do you have any way to engage the youth that are in the more less populated?

And you and I would encourage you to take a similar approach as Ms.

Patterson has, where you reach out to Southwest District, uh, either the the commander, the captain, the community relations unit.

We don't know about those youth that need our attention unless somebody tells us, or else we get a police run on them, or we come into contact with them.

And usually contact is because of a police run, right?

So you might know about things that are happening in your community, but the police maybe not be aware of it.

Are you interacting with the schools or yes?

Uh, we have we are in partnership with we have a really good partnership with the Decatur Township Drug-Free Coalition that's very active in the schools down there.

Um, and as a matter of fact, when I was the commander, I did uh community safety walks uh in partnership with them, and we have people on their board, so I do know that we have that that level of engagement down in Decatur and in Perry.

Thanks.

There are other questions just uh quickly.

I know IMPD provides like barna the best training in Indiana for law enforcement officers.

So what I've heard is that's a really difficult retention problem when other people can work less hard and get as much money and just go to some kind of part of the sticks out in the elsewhere in the state.

Right.

Um since they have fewer officers, they could throw up a giant salary out of them and it doesn't break the bank.

Uh I guess what could the council do, or um you know what what could neighbors do to help combat that issue because we don't want you to have less training, right?

Right, and that's been um so in the past years past the salary gap was much wider, right?

Right, so it made that competition a little bit less competitive.

Uh we had the upper hand in that area, and over the last several years with the um just the decline and an interest in our profession, it's become a lot more competitive across agencies.

And because we do have our own Tier 1 Academy, uh we don't send our officers to the Indiana Law Enforcement Academy.

We think our our training is um we can do above and beyond what the Indiana Law Enforcement Academy provides.

So I I agree with you, we do have the best trained officers, and they are attractive to some of the agencies in our donut counties that are smaller.

And if you watch the news, you you will see that those populations, especially in Hamilton County, continue to grow.

And as those populations continue to grow, they continue to increase the size of their police force.

And so they continually have hiring processes, and of course uh everybody is in the lateral officer program, us included.

I am happy to say we have gotten some lateral officers from other agencies, other smaller agencies.

I just swore a lateral in from uh Beach Grove uh just a couple of weeks ago.

Um so how do we combat that?

One of the things that I've heard a lot from our officers, uh rank and file is just uh public support of officers.

Um the council uh included, right?

Uh if they feel supported at the government and at the community level, they are more inclined.

That's that's one area of competition uh between here and and donut counties.

Um the sentiment is that the donut county agencies, the smaller agencies have more uh community and government support than they do here.

So that is one area that I would say that I would point out that I've heard quite regularly.

Um the other ways that that I think some of it is really on us, and I I know that wasn't your question, but my goal would be uh so if you take one district, the size of one of our districts is some of our districts are much larger than most of those other agencies, right?

But a size of a district is more comparable to one of those agencies.

So if we take the approach at the district level, like it's its own, it's little police department, and we make our officers feel supported at that level.

To me, that is competition for a donor agency.

We also provide uh more variety and more opportunities for different roles on this department.

I went through uh some of the things that I've done on this police department.

I read a retirement letter about a month ago where an officer went through his journey on this police department over 30 years, and the things that he has been able to do ride motorcycles, ride bikes, um work in intelligence, be an investigator, be in a proactive unit, work in work with the community.

We are we have drones, we have uh pilots, we have canine operators, we have SWAT team, uh you name it.

We have an opportunity for somebody to find their niche in this agency, and a lot of the small agencies, you can't do that to the extent and to the level that we can offer that um those different variety of career paths.

So I think highlighting those types of things, um, big city policing is different than small town policing.

We have a higher frequency of uh critical incidents, and we have we face a lot more scrutiny.

IMPD officers work under a microscope when you compare them to other other police departments.

How many of you want to go to work every day knowing that you're under a magnifying glass like this?

And every mistake that you make is highlighted and scrutinized and criticized.

But we're all human and we're all gonna make mistakes.

Even when they make mistakes, I have to hold them accountable, but we also have to be humane, right?

We also need people that want to do this job that step up and work like that and work in that environment.

So we need to keep that in mind.

The um the police level 23rd Rawls does that under your leadership.

That is our uh motorcycle and SWAT area.

Yeah, yeah, did you know that?

Well, no, that's what I was asking.

What your affiliation is with them, Mississippi administration.

Yes, ma'am.

Okay, yeah.

I go through there every once in a while.

I get to see all the the toys they have in there.

Yes, they do.

We call that equipment, ma'am.

Now that you think of it.

Any other questions?

Well, thank you so much.

Thank you for the invitation.

It's a pleasure to be with you this morning.

Well, thank you very much for getting your time.

I know it's valuable time.

Yeah, excellent.

I'm gonna head downtown and yeah, see what's going on with the summer celebration.

Great.

Thank you again.

Thank you all.

Okay, is there anything else that we ought to be talking about?

We had okay, um, then let's adjourn until next month, and uh we'll uh we'll decide on a speaker during the month.

Um, then let's adjourn until next month, and uh we'll uh we'll decide on a speaker during the month.

If you have ideas, uh send them towards me and the