Indianapolis Mayor Joe Hogsett announced Tuesday that he directed the Office of Finance and Management to identify the funds as a method of strengthening trust between the Indianapolis community and local law enforcement.
Despite the overwhelming council support, many Republicans expressed concerns about the possibility that the budget is underfunded.
Ratings agency Standard and Poor’s recently upgraded the rating on the city of Lawrence’s waterworks utility revenue and refunding debt—a move officials say could eventually save taxpayers money.
The council transferred half the money from its own budget instead of from the police department’s budget, as had been originally proposed.
Mayor Joe Hogsett’s budget team has been touting the proposed 2018 city budget as the “first balanced budget with sustainable funding sources since 2008.”
Lawrence officials say they are recovering from financial mismanagement and budget challenges of the past several years—and gearing up to invest in the future.
Mayor Joe Hogsett has proposed a city budget for 2018 that includes a tiny, projected surplus. It’s another step on a road to the fiscal stability Indianapolis needs to continue growing and thriving.
The proposal, which council members are calling a "living wage," would apply to about 365 full-time, non-union city and county employees.
The Indianapolis mayor says his plan adds police officers, boosts infrastructure spending and raises pay for some city workers while providing the first structurally balanced budget in a decade.
Mayor Joe Hogsett is weighing investing in basics like funding police officers and road construction against the cold reality that Indianapolis has for years been spending more cash than it’s taking in.
The money will come from the roughly $1.2 million in local tax incentives that Carrier and its parent company returned to the city after the announcement some local operations would move to Mexico.
The vote helps move the justice center forward to a design and planning stage.
An Indianapolis City-County Council committee on Tuesday night unanimously approved a resolution to issue $20 million in notes to pay for planning and design costs associated with building the new criminal justice center.
When the ride-connecting companies came to town, Indianapolis had 917 licensed taxi drivers. That number has fallen every year since then, dropping to 632 in 2016.
An Indianapolis City-County Council panel on Tuesday night postponed a vote on their Democratic leader’s proposal to increase the minimum wage of city and county employees to $13 per hour.
Indianapolis leaders want to encourage businesses to pay livable wages. The City-County Council’s president says that’s a tough sell when the city hasn’t done that for all of its own employees.
Indianapolis Mayor Joe Hogsett faces a tough battle in taking on ingrained, multigenerational issues involving homelessness, poverty, education and crime. But in his State of the City address, he vowed to try.
Indianapolis officials have started a two-year process for building a “modern, mobile-friendly” Indy.gov, intended make government services more efficient and accessible.
Although the proposal to raise annual pay for city-county councilors from $11,400 to $25,000 didn’t have enough support on Monday, members of the body are expected to revisit the issue next year.
City-county councilors are skittish about a measure to more than double their annual pay to $25,000 for a number of reasons, including working outside the normal budget process.
