The Indianapolis City-County Council on Monday passed a proposal 22-1 after no discussion that allows the city’s former Department of Business and Neighborhood Services to transfer $1.2 million to buy 50 replacement vehicles.
In his annual state of the city address Monday night, Mayor Joe Hogsett will announce plans to beef up the city’s street maintenance crew by dozens of workers and to use a program that leverages private investment to pay for 15 infrastructure projects.
Indianapolis officials have triggered a wide-scale review of the need for big municipal buildings downtown. Real estate executives are intrigued by the 28-story City-County Building’s potential for private redevelopment.
The settlement will allow developer Green Indy LLC to build a revised version of the so-called Alexander at the Crossing project that was initially denied by the Metropolitan Development Commission last year.
The Indianapolis City-County Council on Monday night approved an ordinance that restricts the city’s new jail and criminal justice center from being run by a private operator once it eventually opens.
Under the proposal, sign owners could convert existing billboards to electronic ones, as long as twice that amount of signage space is removed from the city’s urban core.
An Indianapolis City-County Council member has signed onto a pact with two other council members from the cities of New York and Austin, Texas, to oppose the “tax-break bidding war that Amazon has begun” in pursuit of its second headquarters.
The announcement follows a unanimous City-County Council vote to approve $14.5 million in emergency funding to address potholes.
Zach Adamson has proposed an ordinance that “requires the administration and operation of the county jail facilities be non-privatized.”
Council member Colleen Fanning said the action gives neighbors another chance to have their say in a redevelopment proposal that could affect what’s been deemed Haverstick Woods.
Council member Jared Evans, who authored the proposal, said there are 15 hotels in the city with problematic ratios that are resulting in a drain on police and fire resources.
The Hogsett administration and City-County Council are weighing whether to kill a little-known organization that has quietly worked for two decades on the key downtown redevelopments.
The proposal, which will be voted on by the full council March 12, calls for using emergency funds to fix many of the city’s pothole-littered roads.
A proposal, which will be voted on in committee Thursday with the intention of sending it to the full council on March 12, calls for spending $13 million remaining in the city’s rainy day.
Vop Osili replaced the Republicans who had been appointed by Stephen Clay during his brief tenure as president.
Hogsett called the condition of local roads “deplorable” and vowed to “return our streets to safe, passable condition.” Since Jan. 1., the city has received more than 12,000 repair requests for potholes.
The lawyer for the plaintiffs said the lawsuit was no longer necessary since new President Vop Osili has given the fired staff members at issue their jobs back.
Osili said his first task as president is to rebuild trust. He said the leadership controversy had “shaken the confidence of our constituents.”
If elected, Vop Osili said, his first order of business would be to “rebuild the public’s trust in the council” after a chaotic start to 2018. It started with the surprise ouster of the council’s longtime president Maggie Lewis in favor of fellow Democrat Stephen Clay.
On Jan. 29, the majority of council members took procedural steps to put the question of Clay’s removal as president on the next council meeting’s agenda. That meeting is scheduled for Monday.
