Editorial: Special downtown taxing district deserves support despite change

The Indianapolis City-County Council plans to reintroduce a proposal on Monday to create a downtown taxing district after making changes meant to bring the ordinance in line with a new state law.

Those changes mean that some key downtown property owners—primarily the owners of apartment buildings and single-family homes—won’t be required to pay the tax that’s meant to fund cleaning and beautification efforts, public safety initiatives, homeless outreach and costs associated with a planned low-barrier shelter on the southeast side of downtown. Those property owners can opt into the tax if they choose—more about that later.

Although it’s too late to matter, we remain frustrated that lawmakers would step in this spring to undercut the city’s plans for the taxing district one year after the Legislature approved the very rules the city had been following to create it.

As IBJ reported and we have previously written in this space, the Republican-controlled Legislature slipped authorizing language for the taxing district into the two-year budget bill in 2023 at the last minute and with no public debate.

Then later, when the Democrat-controlled city started implementing that language, special interest groups persuaded lawmakers to change the law and exempt some property owners, which makes the entire proposal far less viable.

That leads us to today, with the City-County Council crafting a new economic enhancement district ordinance that can generate enough revenue to make improvements downtown but doesn’t overburden the remaining property owners who will be paying the tax.

We understand the city’s goals. Downtown is not as clean as it once was. It’s not as vibrant as it once was. We can blame the pandemic and work-from-home policies for emptying out office buildings. We can blame what has sometimes felt like an influx of people who are homeless (officials have said the homeless numbers are not higher now than before the pandemic). We can blame the Hogsett administration for not prioritizing downtown enough. And we can certainly blame some state policies for making it harder for the city to generate enough revenue to take care of all of its infrastructure.

Regardless, downtown needs a lift, and the economic enhancement district could be the vehicle that leads to improvements. We think the council should approve the district’s creation. And we hope some of those property owners who are exempted will decide to opt in—or find other ways to contribute.

The enhancement district proposal will be introduced at the July 8 council meeting, at the City County Building Public Access Room at 7 p.m. The council is expected to refer the proposal to the Metropolitan and Economic Development Committee, which will hold a public hearing on July 15 at 5:30 p.m. in the Public Assembly Room.

We support the larger effort to clean up downtown and provide better services to homeless individuals. We see the enhancement district as one way to do that. There might be others. If so, we want to hear about them.•

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