INDIANAPOLIS — The City-County Council held its first meeting of the year Monday night.
There are a lot of new faces ready to deal with some serious issues facing Indianapolis.
Seven new councilors were elected—one Republican and six Democrats.
This year, there are also newly drawn districts. You can find your councilor here.
As for council leadership, Vop Osili was reelected as council president. Ali Brown was elected as council vice president, filling the seat of former Councilor Zach Adamson. Maggie Lewis will serve as the Democrat majority leader, and Brian Mowery will serve as the Republican minority leader.
However, the issues facing the city are ones we’ve heard before, including public safety, roads, housing and the future of downtown.
These are the same priorities Osili hopes to tackle in this new year, especially when it comes to increasing affordability and access to housing.
Osili said he is excited about the passage of Senate Bill 46 last year and is looking at how to mitigate property tax spikes so people living in communities undergoing rapid reinvestment can stay.
“Raising the quality of life for as many residents as we possibly can, that really excites me,” Osili said.
He said another big focus will be addressing the uptick in youth violence in Indianapolis.
“What partners can we join with at the table to best address those things?” Osili asked. “It’s something that together we can have an amazing set of results for our kids and families.”
Democrats will continue to hold onto their supermajority on the council. As for Republicans, they won another seat, which now brings the total to six councilors.
Mowery said his party looks to work closely with the other side and listen to voters.
“We want to work with the other side of the aisle just as much as we can and make sure at the end of the day, we are passing proposals that accurately reflect what we believe is in the best interest of the city,” Mowery said.
He’s also keeping an eye on public safety, especially recruiting and retaining officers.
“We want to know that Indianapolis is making strides on becoming a safer city and a place that people still want to continue to come to,” Mowery said.
Other priorities include development downtown, fixing potholes and looking at making programs sustainable as federal COVID relief dollars run out.
Pedestrian safety another priority
Only a few proposals were introduced Monday night. One of them looks to make the city’s streets safer.
The proposal deals with the fatal crash review board. Currently, the board only reviews fatal crashes, but this new proposal would expand that to also include crashes where someone is seriously injured.
John Barth and Andy Nielsen are two of the councilors behind the idea.
“We want to open our aperture and look at a broader set of crashes to see if we can make strategic investments,” Barth said. “A great example is in my own district at Hampton and Illinois. We recently changed a two-way stop to a four-way stop, and that has notably helped with reducing crashes.”
The board is represented by the Department of Public Works, IMPD, Department of Metropolitan Development and two people from the community appointed by the City-County Council.
“It’s making sure that we are looking at how and why crashes are occurring before they become fatalities. Serious injuries are serious injuries, and they should be treated as such. So, this commission looking more broadly at serious injuries will hopefully help create strategic investments in the future,” Nielson said.
If the proposal is approved, Indy DPW would need to establish a process to determine and define which serious crashes are included by July. After that, the board would start reviewing those crashes in 2025.
“The process is going to involve experts at the Department of Public Works to really look at the data very carefully and make some recommendations of how big this universe should be that we look at. Also, we need to be realistic about what our capacity is to do these evaluations,” Barth said.
Another element of the proposal calls for the review team to post an annual report listing improvements that were made based on their recommendations.
If approved by the Public Works Committee, the council will hold a vote in February.
Redevelopment project receives opposition
Councilors also put a pause on a controversial project just north of Broad Ripple that would replace the Willows Event Center off Westfield Boulevard.
Developers originally withdrew their proposal back in 2022 because of pushback from neighbors.
Since then, the project has been revised and renamed “Elements.” It now consists of 192 apartments in four buildings and 16 townhomes in eight buildings.
In December, the Metropolitan Development Commission approved the developer’s zoning petition. However, Monday night, Councilor Brienne Delaney called down the proposal to review it further before approval.
A public hearing is now scheduled for the next council meeting on Feb. 5.