INDIANAPOLIS — Indianapolis Mayor Joe Hogsett's office tells 13News he is focusing on supporting his staff.
The message, sent in an emailed statement, comes a day after the mayor sent an email to City-County employees, acknowledging a staff member was fired for violating the city's sexual harassment policy. That email also said the city is investigating six other allegations of harassment.
All of this comes after two women came forward last month alleging they were "sexually harassed" several years ago by the mayor's second in command, former Indianapolis Deputy Mayor Thomas Cook.
Despite two emails this week that indicated Hogsett would be part of a new food pantry's grand opening on the city's near south side, that wasn't the case.
"He just bowed out on Wednesday. We're not sure why. We should have got the word out, sorry. He cares a lot. He's come to a lot of our other activities, for sure," said Paul Ainslie with The Society of St. Vincent de Paul. "He's a big supporter of St. Vincent de Paul. I know that. I presume his to-do list is a little long this week for sure and I understand that."
Instead, in his place, the city's deputy mayor of the Office of Public Health and Safety, Lena Hill, was there.
13News asked Hill about the mayor's absence.
"Actually, I'm not sure. They actually asked me to come and because it is public health, that is my department," said Hill.
"Thought on what's going on in the city?" 13News asked.
"No thoughts at this moment. Yeah, no comment," Hill responded.
When asked about what it's like to work for the city right now amidst ongoing and past investigations into allegations of sexual harassment by staff.
"I trust the people who are in place with their policies and their procedures and the investigation that will go through," said Hill.
Last month, Hogsett signed an executive order requiring all city and county employees to take yearly sexual harassment training, not just supervisors.
Hogsett also announced an internal anonymous system for employees to report harassment of any kind while the city searches for a third party vendor to handle those complaints.
The city is also hiring a national law firm with no local ties to review and make recommendations to the city's employee handbook.
13News asked to speak to the mayor Friday about all that's going on. His spokesperson sent a statement, which read:
"The Mayor has redirected his schedule internally to focus on supporting the employees of the City-County enterprise and continuing the work to implement recently announced internal policy changes as expeditiously as possible. He will not be available today."
RELATED: Here's how councilors want to investigate sexual harassment in Indianapolis city government
The Indianapolis City-County Council is set to decide next week if they need to create a separate committee to look into how the city handled past and current allegations of sexual harassment from employees.
First, the full council needs to vote on whether to create that committee. That will happen Monday night.
There's already been a lot of bipartisan calls for that to happen.
If the council votes to create that committee, within 72 hours, three people will decide who sits on it. The City-County Council president and the Democratic and Republican leaders on council will make that decision.
The committee would also be tasked with hiring an outside law firm to help with that work.
Seven city-county councilors, five Democrats and two Republicans will sit on the committee. Committee members will look into the city's current HR policies to see what, if anything needs to be changed. They'll also be in charge of hiring an outside law firm to look into how the city handled past and current investigations.
That law firm will make recommendations on what if anything needs to change.
The seven committee members will also look at recent measures implemented by the mayor and decide if those measures need to be taken before the full city-county council and voted on as resolutions.
If those passed, the measures would have a more permanent status, even when a new administration takes over.
One of those measures came last month when the mayor issued an executive order to require annual sexual harassment training for all employees, not just supervisors.
13News spoke with Democratic City-County Councilor Ali Brown.
Brown's one of the councilors who drafted the proposal calling for a separate investigative committee of councilors. She said she does not believe this will be a quick investigation, but councilors want it to be a thorough one, where other city employees can feel safe coming forward if they have also experienced any kind of harassment.