and so. The is a a year. Good evening. Welcome to the and Finance Committee meeting. I'd like starving and actions to my left. Thank you, MR. Chair Gary Cahill District. 23, thank you, MR. CHAIRMAN Mike district 24, thank you, MR. CHAIRMAN Renee Allen District saying thank you, MR. Chair Nick Roberts worked for thank you. CHAIRMAN Andy Nielsen District 14. Thank you. CHAIRMAN Miscarried in Boots, District 3. Good evening. CHAIRMAN Miscarry Krista Carlino District 11, far West Side. Good evening. Maggie Lewis District 5. Good evening, MISTER CHAIRMAN John Barth representing District 7 Frank miscarriage, district 19 sort out was we don't have one
proposal reappoint 70 chapel to the Alcoholic Beverage Board. America is every year? We have the floor? Many years you've been on board? Just one term has been someone turned that concern or a scene of Tell us what you'd like to be on the board. Yeah. I would like to be the board. I've learned a lot about how to closely with people that, you know, nightlife spots in Businesses making sure that they're safe for the community. That's probably been the biggest, you know, perk that have gotten out of being on the board. So and happy to serve another term and then continue doing that work. Any questions the counselors, anyone, anyone from the audience Jane a
motion. I think this question. Do you have a question raise your hand quicker that's what I the of where the thank you for offering just curious you term. How long the terms for your board? I believe it is a full calendar year. Okay. Thank you. Thank Thank you, MR. CHAIRMAN move opposed to 3, 3, to the full council. What they do pass recommendation this moved and second, all those in favor say Aye. Aye oppose 9th. Welcome Thank you. Next, are some budget hearings. First up is office minority and women business development. We have the floor. Welcome. Good evening, everyone. Chair folk council members. Thank you. Once again for allowing us to come back and present for you. Our
budget proposal for 2026 before I begin. I would be remiss if I introduce acknowledge my staff members, my senior staff members joining me here this evening, senior manager to my right behind big. Also have. But Taylor's our program manager Michelle in Napa. It is a certification officer. Also our data analysts. And of course, everybody knows Jolie, clients officer. Agency overview once again, I won't go through all this, but the mission of our office. Strives to enhance business growth and economic stability through promotion and caught of contracting and procurement opportunities for vendors. Our objective czar to provide free business consultations and outreach events for all Indiana business owners. Educate all vendors on projects and bidding
opportunities around the city. For most successful procurement opportunities for also contractors with city county and municipal agencies. Monitor public. Private partnerships. And development projects. This is just an overview of our staff, as you can see, I report to Chief of Staff Dan Parker. Underneath me is as mentioned before for high. They have my senior manager. Grace Julian, as our communications coordinator, Eva Taylor has mentioned before is our manager programming and development. The certification team makes up. It's made up of Michelle an avid it. Debbie recalled as Isabella Slagle Ariana Our Yanni Solano. Daniel, to our day, Angela room and Jolie. And then as this is just a
agency, demographic breakdown. As you can see that on wbt team. In his workforce, we strive to represent and make up the city of Indianapolis and Marion County. So you can see we have a breakdown of foreman on staff. 7 women. 5 racial minorities and 5 not minorities that make up our office for staff of 11 right now. So before we into the programmatic work of our agency, I thought it would be best if we also set a baseline undefined what supplier diversity is what what we do. Supplier diversity as a business strategy that seeks to provide inclusive purchasing practices by engaging, small, diverse and might I local businesses? Supplier? Diversity is vital
for driving. Innovation. Expanding into new markets in fostering a more equitable business climate. It's also a meaningful to for economic growth and job creation. Our suppliers are only the first step. Along the supply chain. All these businesses, all those businesses by goods and services from their own from other small businesses and diverse businesses, which stimulates and amplifies growth in the economy and last but not least just want to make you are where also the fact that all of our contracts are awarded. To the lowest, responsive and most responsible better. Next. You can see some of our. Programmatic and fiscal successes. On wb has seen record-breaking increases, certified vendors over the past 5 years. Following the implementation of the last business utilization plan
update in 2020. And then also we see this as a result of an increased demand. The one thing you will notice that gray bar, our consultations dropped off in 2020 for 2025. Primarily due to being understaffed. We chose to concentrate the staff did. We did have on certifications. Trying to fill those positions and then also training the new staff that we hired along the way. Being fully has allowed us. To process more applications in a timely manner and keep up with demand. Also, I feel that the increased outreach events that we've done have also helped to create more program awareness. Some of our other fiscal successes and some of these quotes you MAY have seen recently, but Indianapolis has
been recognized as one of the 2025. Top 25 cities on the rise in the United States filing. Dan. Citing specifically. All of the construction projects that we have going on that are driving the city. According to Yelp Economic report, Black Business, black owned businesses grew by 59% in Indianapolis. More doubling the national average. According to Axios. Right top top 3 in the nation for black owned business growth. And then last but not least on wbb. Like I said, we reached nearly 1000 community members. And we continue to generate positive media coverage with fox 59 which tv? Indianapolis other several other local news agency partners. This is a snapshot of our certification
numbers. Through AUGUST of 2025. And as you can see. Right at the end of AUGUST, we were it. 1112. Certified vendors. We had 61 that were pending. Done 166 business nba consultations. Reviewed 73 bid opportunities. Average to either certify or recertify a business. We got that back down to 76. Normally our is stated in our. That process can take up to 90 days. And so we've got that back down to 76 days. And then we've seen total of new and recertification applications this year, 242. We've got 17 site visits. And then we've done to commercial useful function, visits. So as I mentioned before, those visits the some of those are down from previous years because
like I said, we had to sort of prioritize what's more important for the office at the time with the number of projects and the high demand. We felt like certification applications getting process was was a little bit of a higher priority. But we continue to still work in those 2 areas. And, you know, did see a drop-off in any of that. This is just a pie chart. Give you an idea of our numbers for the different categories. That we have. So you can see that I won't go through all of that. But minorities, women and women that are minorities continue to lead the way. For businesses that we are working with and that we certify. 2024 local business utilization report. Looking at this number 2024. Total spanned of. 147 billion dollars that number is
a little bit less for total spin as it as a enterprise. Then what we had in 2020 3, however, the amount of money that we were spending with, diverse companies actually increased. And this information that you won't see on here, but we can get that information to you after this meeting. But we did see almost a 3% increase for 2023 2024. In the dollars that we spent. With diverse businesses and then to go into just a quick for the breakdown of some of those number. The biggest increase was within be ease. That was almost a 3% increase. We had a very slight increase for wbez 0, 2%. We saw slight decrease for bb ease. 8.3, 7%.
And then a slight increase for deo be east participation of 0, 4%. Said we will make sure you guys get the percentages for the 2023 span that you can compare to this after tonight's meeting. Community engagement and outreach. So 2025. Some of the things that we are. Have done and we will continue to work on. So we had the local business aspera rollout. As you know, we are in the process of wrapping up. The disparity study. We anticipate. Coming out some time actually in the next couple of weeks. And when that comes out. Council members will receive copy that along with the mayor's office and
then we will make public. But as a part a process, we will also begin stakeholder meetings that will begin happening in the next couple of weeks, which we will be gathering information from individuals, organizations to garner their feedback. Us. We have an internal working group that will begin to look at the recommendations. And so we want to give stakeholders the opportunity to give us their feedback. That will take to that committee. They will also, like I said, have an opportunity to meet with council members to garner some feedback from you as well. And then that group probably the next. Probably 6 or 7 weeks to review those recommendations and then we will return back
with recommendation. Final recommendations to the council and to the mayor. Before we look at if there's any legislative changes that have occur at the end of the year. Workshops, our office does a phenomenal job of doing workshops that we do. 3 annual certification workshops. We do want annual good faith effort workshop. And then we do our 10 workshops on bid submissions. Those are critical, especially the last good faith effort workshop and a bit submission workshops, the good faith effort workshop is critical because that is where we get to work with developers. General contractors, other individuals to make sure that they really understand our process of how we want them to try and
garner. Businesses to work on various projects. How we want that information to be documented. And how long they have to keep that information. So we go through a workshop to answer all those questions to hopefully give everybody sort of a level said on that. And then let them know that we're here is a resource for them anytime their project is going on. So that workshop is critical and then debate submission workshops are critical because this is where we actually get to work one-on-one with the vendors who often have a lot of questions about. How do we submit a bid? We hear about all these opportunities, but we don't know what to do. So we do 10 of those annually to work with folks to make sure that they understand that
process. And we do that in conjunction with the purchasing department. So when they come and meet with us, they get answers from everybody that's involved in the process. Then we also have our b# # # # # the month campaign, which many of you have participated in. That is a campaign that we started a couple of years ago we highlight one of diverse vendors every month. Present them with certificate from the mayor's office. We have if available one of the counselors to come and to present that to them. But as a part of that process, the n b, the xp that we certain that they get months course of marketing and promotion from our office to help boost and an increase. The visibility throughout the community for the whole month. We've got a wonderful partnership with
wish tv as a part of this project is so they always do a story on the business and the business owner to talk about what they're doing, how, you know, history of their business and everything. So. This program has grown tremendously. And so we're just excited to see where it goes in the future. And we're glad that you members of the council are available to participate in that because the business owners really enjoy the fact that you guys are able to come out, recognize him for being in your district. So. All right. So they will continue, as you can can meeting and outreach. Ula's Asian of bg So if you remember last year as part of our budget for this year, we move to purchase a new software package. So that we've got that package pursed purchase. We're still in the
process of getting it fully implemented into our system, along with help from, say in purchasing and some other departments. But we are hopeful to be able to watch that this fall. This process will take us to being able folks will be able to apply online. And so we will start to make that slow move away from paper applications. But then also it gives us an opportunity streamline some of our outreach that we do to vendors and everything else. So we're really excited about being able to watch that. Those of you who don't know. We have a podcast on the air with on wb, This is something that we started earlier this I thought, you know, any way that we can communicate with folks and we know the podcast, a very popular. So we do. We try to do it monthly.
Sometimes it runs every other month. But with these park, as we basically are just sharing more information about our office, how do you learn about opportunities? How do you engage our office? We talk about upcoming events, whether it's been so we're hosting events in our community. Partners are hosting so we started this process. We getting some good feedback on it. We know folks are listening to us. So we're going to hopefully continue to turn grow that over the next coming years and hopefully will continue to help us out. Pretty big meetings as mentioned before we've attended, participate home in previous meetings to make sure that folks who are coming to those meetings know that we engage with their to answer questions to a system with connecting and networking so that they get involved and get access to these opportunities. And then of course, we have
our flagship events that we host ourselves that would include so now we sort of have in our rotation. We do a huge networking event out of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and of course, we have our participation with the Indianapolis Black Expo and the mayors breakfast and a business conference that we participate in every year. We just hailed last week reversed trade show conjunction with the Indianapolis Airport Authority, which was a huge remarked University where we had well over 200 folks come out and engage with various businesses in departments here within city government. And then we wrap up the year with the mayor's year in 4, which is always usually the first week in DECEMBER. That event is one where we bring business
owners back together, give them an opportunity to ask questions and learn. Talk about some of the things that have occurred over the past 12 months. For more importantly, we try to give them an opportunity to get a snapshot of what's coming down the pike for the next 12 months. So that event wraps up the year for us. But those are our flagship events and Eva Taylor program manager for those to make sure that those are tight and then we have good success So those doing well for us. Goals and priorities for 2026, as mentioned before transition into bg that that is going to be. Huge for us. Because like I said, I think that will help to eliminate for the disparities that diverse businesses are saying. We will hopefully make the process a
little bit smoother and easier for those businesses to certified to recertify with our office for us to be able to get information out to them. So that is a top priority. And then the release and implementation of the 2025 disparity study is also critical for us at this time. We want to go through that. Look at those recommended changes. See what makes sense for our agency and for the city. Bring those back to you. So that. You have the opportunity to. Have conversations with the mayor's office and we can make a determination of what what works best. What makes sense
for us to move forward. So I said those are to 2 of our larger priorities. Last not least. We want to continue our staff training. As I mentioned earlier, we are fully staffed right now. But we do have some new staff members. So we want to continue our training process, make sure that we're staying abreast of all of the changes that are happening locally state level federal level. And so that, you know, we're able to provide the best services we can for the citizens of Indianapolis. We also want increase our participation with our partners out in the community. I think we've done a great job so far. But I think we can go even further. There are still certain sectors, certain areas of the city that I think we still could do a better job
connecting with. So we're going to be making outreach efforts into the Burmese community and Senate. Okay. Kimmi Council Cahill's help me out with that other communities that are emerging here in Indianapolis. We want make sure that they are where the services we provide and what we can chart a system with. So increasing our visibility. It's going to be key for us in doing that. Some of this we know we can't do all of ourselves. We are, as I mentioned, a small staff. So we're going to be leaning on creating even deeper relationship with some of our community partners to help out with some of the some of the priorities that we have. All right. So budget breakdown, as you can see. There's a variance of $193,451 this variance. However, we were
going to pivot. Some of the things that we do. So the folks do not see a drop-off in any of our services. As I mentioned earlier, we're going to lean more in our community partners to help deliver some of the services that we know small in diverse businesses need. We will also work to delegate some of the consulting services that we currently provide to some of our community partners as well so that we make sure that folks are still getting the assistance that they need. Character. One likes it, not a huge drop in line item. Take the 2. Same. Care to So the different states you are seen. Is a as a result say, charge backs. But then also the larger port of comes from the
fact is I mentioned earlier, we're dropping the current software package that we do currently use in lieu of the bg software package is it is more effective, but its also more economical for office as well. So that's why you see the difference there in line out 3. Character for no significant change. Character 5. That's just a decrease. The corporation counsel allocations. And then last but not least. If you have any questions, I'm more than happy to turn answering those now. It's not. Here's our contact. Information will be more than happy to follow up with any questions that anybody for Thank you, MR. And thank Nice. very detailed presentation director right thank you for the work you mentioned with
the Burmese community. I I appreciate that. Only real question. I'm just curious how this work that you you said you are fully staffed. I don't know if I don't think that was the case. All of 2025 know that's listening. So how with the co of 2.6 and health insurance going out. Did you pull off tonight? Doesn't matter? It's a small or how did pull off negative number of home care? I just hear it. On character. One. Unfortunately, house. And that is a a question film would need to help us out with all I know is we were. Pull to make sure that we had some slight reductions in budget is, as you know, everyone else was. But that was one area where I say we knew we needed to be
fully staffed in order to to do the work that we needed to do. I'll be more than happy to Get that explanation for you and we'll get that. 42, think I'm just like I said, thank But just really curious how you get a character. One reduction with. Everyone getting raises everyone getting health insurance goes up in your full least. I that's we don't we don't usually get to have have our cake and eat it, too. So that was nice to see that you clearly this. Thank you, MR. CHAIRMAN, thank you for presentation. And congratulations on all of your success. A couple questions. If that's MR. CHAIRMAN, absolutely think so. You talked about the increase is a with their vendors, but there
is a decrease in the bet. Talk to us little bit more about that why you think that's taken place. COUNCILWOMAN, I think part of that one we don't have. Very many. The bees that are certified with us in and the ones that we do have. Are certified. And in. Probably 2 or 3 sectors. In in 2023 going into 2024, just I think we were starting to see the uptick in construction projects things like that around the city. A lot of those firms that construction based bb ease had not been contracted yet on some of these projects. I think when we see the numbers for next year, you're gonna see a substantial increase in the amount of spam that we have
would be be easy because they've been contracted on projects that started end of 2024. Going into 2025. Perfect. Thank you for that. And then my last question I know we've had lots of conversations about this bill. What are the consequences if a contractor doesn't meet those diversity goals? It really sort of it will let me back up it up and it starts with with there. The good faith effort assess if if they have put together. A good faith effort plan that has been followed. Working in concert with our office to try to gauge diverse businesses every opportunity that they could do the life of the project when they don't meet their goals and we have that plan. Then we normally would have to accept the fact that they made a good faith
effort. They documented all the things that they tried to do in terms of engaging folks doing outreach meetings and things of that nature on the other foot when there is not a good faith effort in place in or we we sign off for one and they still don't meet it and a good faith effort steps are not followed as well. We do have the options of withholding payments and in some instances, I don't think that's happened since I've been here. But possibly do. Barring. Company for mean, certified or being able to work on city projects for certain period of time. But our goal is to try and work with folks prevent getting to that point. So we are we are
really emphasizing right now to business owners, developers, contractors who ever as soon as they it in their mind that they they want to do a project and it's going need city assistance when they have that conversation with Dmd mayor's office, whoever else. So as they have those conversations, we want them come have a conversation with us because we know that they're going to have to be engaged with our office. We know that our diversity goals are going to probably be attached to the project. Let us work with you. Let us educate you in the process and keep you from getting in trouble in the longer. Thank you. Thank you for your leadership. Thank you. Any other councilors council moves? Thank you, MR. CHAIRMAN, thank you. Director Frederic for your presentation. Just a couple questions. Can you? The dew 2025 disparity study. Yes. When you give us just the
briefest attention of the scope and intent of the study. So the study looks at spending from 2020, 2019, 2020. No appointment, 2019 through tried even more. So we're looking at. City dollars spent. It will also look at usage of diverse businesses in all of our sort of major spanned whether it's construction, professional services. Are some of the other areas also look at a public private partnership public private partnerships, CHAIRMAN Practices. What barriers, small businesses face in the one local marketplace and the legal framework from program. So it this is like I said is basically a 5 year snapshot of how the city has performed when it comes to doing business with diverse businesses. What our spin looks like. But the more
important like it's a the consultant we have heart will give us. A behemoth amount of recommendations. None of which were obligated to to abide by or accept. So that's where we have our internal working group that will go through those recommendations. We will look and see, you know, which ones make sense for us, which ones don't. And then hopefully have them hash out. Through meetings and discussions. You know what, what makes viable sense for us and in turn around, like I said, and bring those back to the council into the mayor's office to determine which direction we want to go forward. Great final question. In spite of the title of your department, the services you offer are open to. All businesses early, not yes or any so he but it
needs some consulting or bid practice information. Any of you don't have to be a woman owned minority owned disabled. What have you anybody can come to your department for us or anybody walks in door. Their business is in Indianapolis, Central Indiana. We will system with with any of services we provide. Great. Thank you. Thank you, MR. Thank you. Any other comments questions any with audience? See none. We'll everyone now thank you. Thank you, Sir. Thank You. Up next is the Office of Corporation Counsel. Good evening. Thank you, MISTER CHAIRMAN. Thank Committee members. My name is Brandon Beeler. I serve as the corporation counsel and here to present the 2026 proposed
budget for the Office of Corporation Counsel. It's a brief overview, the Office of Corporation Counsel is the and that his law firm within the city county we've charged with representing city county agencies and employees provided legal counsel and advice. Administration manages the office's daily functions which contain senior leadership and administrative staff. Our office is comprised of 3 principal divisions for litigation Division. The Counseling division, the office of the city prosecutor, Paul, getting to those a little bit further in the presentation. In addition, occ also ministers, the office of Equal Opportunity. This is a snapshot current occ staff, an organizational chart. The first 3 lines are members of
occ senior staff. And while they're here today, I should honor them and thank them for all their work of throughout the year because it really is a team effort. So that would be Julie Slaughter, who served as the deputy corporation counsel, Katie Campbell, who serves as prosecutor. And Gavitt you serves as chief counsel, Kylie Keesler, who serves as a chief litigation counsel Jamie Stout, who serves as our office project manager. Again, a really certainly takes a team to keep the office running and to continue to provide high-quality legal services to our city county clients and very much appreciate all they do. And it's also know they are early. Senior leadership team is comprised of 80%. Women. Going through the 3 principal divisions. The way shun team manages a large docket of lawsuits which the city county, Kay County agencies are. Its employees
are named as parties last year. A total of 93 cases were filed against the city county or employees. We were able to resolve 131 of those cases this year to date you'll see an uptick in that. There been 110 cases filed against the city county and we've resolve 81 of those case. None of those cases, but of cases total. The Counseling division provides full-service legal support to city county agencies as well as the 26 boards and commissions. The county attorney sort of service, the in-house attorneys for each agency, age agencies assigned an attorney. So that attorney is generally the principal legal contact for agencies when they have legal questions want insult her office about something. The office, a prosecutor is responsible for prosecuting ordinance violations. Last year, the city prosecutor's office filed 811 cases resolve 1012 cases are closing. Should
say 1012 cases this year to date they filed the city prosecutors filed 671 cases closed out 579. We get a little bit to agency staffing. Cc is a law firm comprised of 45 total positions. We currently have. 36 feel which is that take from last year, which really happy about we still do have 9 vacancies. One of the biggest focus of our senior staff is to make sure we support our staff and focus on retention. Here are some things we do and we can plan to continue to do in 2026, we do pay attorneys annual licensing fees. In addition to that for most of litigation section, if there are already admitted to practice in the
district, the Federal District court, 7 circuit or even the icy Supreme Court. Should that be necessary? We would pay for those missions as well. Salem turns out to worry about paying out of pocket. We also retained. We also reimburse our support staff to maintain credentials. He's example of this would be several of our paralegals are notary publics that serves all city county employee people. And obviously we have to know right several things that we will pay for paralegal to maintain his or her. I know Republic credential. Something we started last year. That's been really a positively received by our attorneys is we give each tourney ate a tray of $500 bank that they can use when they find professional professional development are
continuing legal education opportunities. I'll talk about was later. We don't have a lot in house that we so it help not only attorneys maintain their licenses with their continuing legal education. We kind of let them pick and choose what programs are beneficial to them. They just have to clear. And these have $500 a year they can use on those programs. We also provides a tourney with a membership to the International Municipal Lawyers Association that helps connect them to a network of municipal lawyers doing similar work. Also that also offers programming specific to the work that they do here for the city county. And finally, we have done, especially the litigation section engage in some internal education programs that we want to help too more of next year, particularly working with impd
of since there's been such an uptick federal cases involving civil rights with a police involved in trying to focus on that to snow where the law stands in the 7th circuit and also to help our attorneys, local attorneys who experts in this area and getting some guy or continue to thrive those services for impd in any other law enforcement agencies. Programmatic and fiscal successes. We'll talk about staffing increases. And even just a few attorneys really does make a difference to our office on Van and not the the capacity we have to take on cases. So that would be figures. The litigation section more attorneys means there's more capacity and the county section we hired this year, a deputy chief counsel that's going to focus on public records requests that will help streamline those. And now that's a person that
each agency knows the contact when they get a public records request and how process that and how to and what's disposable, what's not all that and all that finally for the office prosecutor, we hired deputy city prosecutor and now have that team for a full staff leadership. Again, always on retention, which for this. I want to thank hr if and we're able to utilize our internal advancement system, which is really help keep people who've been with the city county who do good work with us and the attorney and as attorneys to feel advancement in the office able to give internal promotions, which I think is really help with more out and also helped was developing leaders and leadership in our office and just to the benefit of this that we've that I've heard from several agency leaders there since we have less turnover, we've been table to
maintain our staff. The agency's feel like they know their attorneys now that we're comfortable reaching out, it helps us keep in lucan jump in front of any potential liability issues because they're just a better working relationship and knowledge of who people are. So this slide, security impact changed a bit because we just to be clear and we're facing or going into 2 agency. We are not outward-facing and agency we provide support to the city county and its employees. So here's some of the things we've done. Those who impacted positively impact the community. We are navigating as plaintiffs in the opiate litigation, which are several cases going on right now. The settlement funds we've received over 16 million dollars and check in if and I think the projected revenue
from the opioid funds will be 71 million dollars by the end of it. There's been some slow going into the news of all email seen this in the news. But something that started out as this tackler bankruptcy was rejected by the courts. We've had to kind of go back and wait for that to get all worked out. We just recently as of last week signed off on that. So hopefully we'll see some movement with that soon. In addition, you only remember from the news a few years ago that Kia Hyundai break-ins due to a manufacturing defect. We didn't trust plaintiffs in that class action. A special shout out to Julie Slaughtered at the Corporation counsel and impd who are tasked with providing a time of information in a very quick amount of time. So we could keep that case going with and redacted redacted. Police
reports. Well, a lot of work has gone into that. This is very early in the litigation. We are only in phase 2 of discovery. So I anticipate that going on for at least the next year or so. Mitigating liability that some theme occ is not a policy making agency. What we do is we provide guidance and legal support to Asia, to agencies that do make policy. So again, working with them more closely and making sure like legal compliance, but compliance with our ordinance in compliance with our rules. And finally, a unique challenge that's part of this year's keeping monitoring all the changes to the federal and state policies that have gone on since JANUARY of this year. So officers in charge monitoring these changes that are occurring and we want try to find the ones that we think
could possibly impact the city or county. And our goal is to work with them to make sure the city county arrange compliance so we can risk in Middle 90's liability. And keep saying it 2026 in such a positive thing to have a retention of staff. So that's something that we focus on again, keeping our staff supported and that they feel fulfilled and the jobs they're doing important work they're doing for the city county, even though again, we are internal agency. The special Assistant United States attorneys program is something you all MAY recall comes council for aid funds for this a few years ago. It's a program that is funded to their character. One employees in our budget, but their house at the U.S. Attorney's office, 3 positions were are on their. We've hired one who's had some phenomenal success and has
been very, very good over there. The other 2, I for lawyers MAY know this, but the Attorney's office certainly requires a high caliber attorney. So we've had some trouble to find some of those. And then this year we got notice from the U.S. Attorney's office with the change of leadership and with the federal administration coming in that there was a hiring freeze and that included these positions to. So we kind of put on hold. But the good news of that is you only know that knew attorney has been appointed. We've been in contact and we plan the next few weeks to me to start the process again of trying to hire those other 2 positions because, again, this is a crime reduction. This is prosecuting violent crime in Marion County at the federal level. We also will next year when to use character 3 to provide and how special development re opportunities
reached out to a few speakers on that. And finally just have some stronger engagement with our small locally owned law firms for Professional Services. This is snapshot of our budget will go through each character. Kind of briefly explain what we what we utilize those funds for. But this is just the summary slide. With character. One. You will see we do have a variance while it does include the cost of living adjustment of 2.6% and the health insurance increase of 5.6% This is where we focused on our reserves for 2026, we working closely fm on this. We're able identify a few positions that we were comfortable holding off on hiring until 2027. And so that is part of the reason for that variants as well. Character to supplies that didn't say change from 2025. And then our
care 3 addition to it with agencies said about a surcharge backs, another charge backs. This also isn't counted for it it's from an increase in our uncontrolled character. 3. That occ. Yes, I think about you see is handles character. 3. These are what moneys we use to operate a law firm. So in addition to the professional services contracts, this is what we use to hire experts for summary judgment. Experts for trial deposition testimony transcript cost records for court of appeals mediation cost. So this is really just everything that a law firm does comes out of here for 3 for us. Character for this. We do have an increased here because lawyers MAY know are. Those numbers MAY know is that technology for law for legal
community is just grown. So we're hoping to use some of these funds to help modernize and got priced out adequate technology for modern offer. Finally, this is a character. 5 charges. Charge backs. Looks like our charge have increased from last year with a variance of $269,304. Questions. Thank you for a station picture cancer Thank you, MISTER Chair and thank you, MR. Beeler one thing that was top of mind for me. Just Quincy. Only for the day. I get it. You know, from a constituent lit up all in Fall Creek Road ironic. That's probably what most public-facing, you know, responsibilities and I believe your agency. What's the process for that? You know, they sent all the information, everything and they were declined for it was a process
for filing claim for that. Thank you. Yes, great, great, great, great question. I think so. There's process you go online get the form we accept hand. We accept forms they would go into the office. People can fill it out there. So under the state law for state or local governments. So as a filed tort claim, every we have a dedicated tort claim investigator who actually it was a train paralegal who investigates every tort claim that comes into our office. Our process is typically if we need additional documentation because the coal it's to make the person hole and if we find ourselves liable as the first question is, are we liable to be fined liability? So we will have to typically reach out to that person or if they're represented by counsel that investigate a reach out to their attorney and say, hey, we need medical bills are your
tire bill, whatever it is because we have to verify what the cost is and then do internal investigation has to various factors as for possible specifically how long do we know the pothole was in time frame where we don't have liability or do we have liability? And it's all just a matter of law that everything is investigated and to a degree when we find that we MAY in fact be liable. We always offer settlement. We always offer to settle and they the person hole. And that's really the process for we have 90 days from when we get part of the tort claim to 2, 2, by state laws team tonight after 90 days. So that's the time frame she works in to communicate with the claimant or whoever else is involved to fully investigated, make determination. Council Nelson. Thank you, MR. CHAIRMAN, have quick questions Counsel
Mueller Peeler. Thank you. I feel like it MAY have asked this last year. So I do up. I apologize. But when you were discussing the special assistant U.S. Attorney program, it. It's gentle to the memory. I think it was in the previous term that there was money that was appropriated to evaluate. What possible actions we have against Lawrence. There is to put on the spot on that. I think it was so that council to the council appropriate this in the previous term want to put that out there because I've if if so that there was some monies appropriated to do some further analysis. And I know this is something you understand very well in your in your in your previous a legal career. So I just wanted I'd love to get a hold of that information to see what you
able to find because as we've seen other municipalities explore creative ways to address this issue. I think it's something we still need to be mindful of. The second piece was on the Quick on planned, a Kia by Senate works, right? Has anyone. So it'll kind of like on a broad base. Where is that? I know it. It's happening around the country. Can you kind of characterize where the city is that in relation to other municipalities, cetera? Sure. Thank thing counselor, we are in the same boat. There's one class action lawsuit that although the midst Pellys are in, we just got in that believe earlier this year, possibly late last year. What I reference impd end, Debbie House deputy Counsel Council
slaughter. We were selected as one of the cities that they wanted to get some initiate digital data from to the case was going to. That's what they got. A very short order to provide like over 1000. Some odd in a couple 100,000 police reports and no, I would work through those for privacy concerns and things like that. It was a big task to help keep kind of a case like actually one jurisdiction, at least maybe 2 bowed out because too hard too hard reach for them to do. We were motivated to not be in that situation they got that done. And now we're in for. So everyone's just in phase 2 of discovery of this case. You to thank Questions. Ftz you haven't had filled. As that Delta com shorter over time, we had that you over the time even nearly 2 years, right?
But in the time look back and see how much change have You've narrowed down considerably and how much? Yes, I came a city 22, whenever that So, yes, I came litigation section, had kind of had a lot of turnover. And I was like, 3 litigators. And that was very challenging. We now we are fully staffed litigation, but that's the position to be kept open because that's the ones that we had to do. A lot of them outside work because we just did not have attorneys to litigate cases. So that's been a huge positive increase. Overall we are up from last year. I've been in this role since some time last year and consistent increases, including beatings, all leaderships. Each division is now fully staffed on leadership, which is also helps kind of streamlined just
the administration of the work that comes in sections. So, yes, we've seen increases with that. And then work on the the support we're providing for the federal prosecutors. What my recollection so to to facts my recollection is part of the reason we did that was to help with using federal charges in federal resources to get guns off the street right. And I've noticed that one of the few times I'll say something positive about the Trump administration is that they've been wildly successful in their takeover of the dc public safety universe and that they have focused on getting guns off the street. They've been relentless in getting guns on the street. And then in the last week or so, they've gotten over 200 and talk to street. So are we seeing anything like that? Are we seeing any kind of results like since the PRESIDENT
Setting the stage that it's appropriate to take guns off the street. And we continue to go with that. That approach. I have never practiced criminal laws. I can't speak much to it. I can say is that what has since I've been practicing and I started in the federal courts this year. This office here in Indianapolis, the Southern district has been really vigorous about prosecuting a felon in possession cases that is unique to our district. So that work has continued. And mean, as I understand, that is the focus here in these sorts of positions because the Southern district goes all the way down to Evansville. These are positions that are dedicated to have the time and resources in Marion County. Cancer. Thank you, MR. We've we've talked with this
particular issue be announced but I wanted to get your sort of unique perspective that. A number of counselors and I think Bns agrees with this. When ocp goes to court regarding zoning violations, things like that. It is. Very common in my experience that it's more common than not where they're going. They don't have enough time in the court there's continuous after continue its after continuous regardless of how sort of egregious or not moving towards a solution. And I enjoyed a counselor boots comment that we with people with the a wet noodle here. And I would I would say that that's what I hear quite a bit about. So to that end biggest one, would you agree with? I do if you can answer that work
into what? Is there anything you can offer that this council could do to help. Move the needle on that problem. How we can get more court time to get a hearing so that we don't just have a continuance and one more month of flavor on compliance. Thank you. Yet his sort identified an issue. And I know Katie, here is prosecutor has a plan that even this year and I think recently our core time for orders, cases has gone down a whole day. So that certainly is a problem. I think the basic bases where we start this from is remembering that the goal of Ordnance Corps compliance, not punishments. So I think that then there's only so much we can do controlling the courts. All with the judges do. That's what we have to do. I'm not a policy person. I can't I can't. Happy to have the discussion. Okay. He would be.
He heard a discussion as well. Thank you. Yeah, I guess my view is I just think both parties deserve their night and I agree with with your sentiment. The compliance is the issue. I really don't have a problem when people come into compliance and avoid court. For that. I want compliance. The the issue is when somebody comes they've done absolutely nothing. Sometimes sometimes and frequently made it worse and then come in. Still got a continuance and stuff. Can I have cases in my district goes on 3 years now and it's continuance continuous continuing. So those those are the types of things. And once that reputation is out there, then I more people just not comply because nothing happened. So thank Thank Thank you. Council moves thank you.
Counselor Mueller and just a follow-up Catherine Cahill's. I too serious concerns about the speed at which ocp prosecutes cases. Nothing irks our residents, constituents more when they bring a blatant zoning issue to us, we. They're found in violation and then a year and a half later, they haven't done a thing. And then the neighbors see that I can put fence right up against the street. He didn't do anything about it. And that seems to be happening more frequently now. So I would just encourage you to you do what you guys can to speed up that process because that really feeds into the public's view that the government's whipping people with wet noodles. So no really encourage you spend some time focusing on that issue. Thank He's going the for the fines who controls how much the
fines are U.S. Or state. It's tricky so we certain agencies have their fines prescribed to an end in the ordinance. We do. We do control it to a degree of the court ultimately controls them. So we learn through enforced and what the court, how far the court will allow. So that really it is incumbent on the court. Ok? Thank you. Because we the full likely will never it. Started yesterday. And while we're while we're and certainly have not delved into the unit Gov. Unique things in the first class city. Cities in Indiana. Have a look. The mayor's quarter municipal court is that for for these types of things, instead of having to go to the county court, is that a possibility to your knowledge or do do know you could could we haven't? City
of Indianapolis Court too. That could we just create a record possible. That. That is you can research more. I know that the executive committee at the very high Superior Court has the authority to create what's called problem solving I don't know the details of what that would be with But that's something that's one area to look at. And so I think that's something to see what the courts jurisdictions are creating separate course like that. I Even talk about what township small claims court should be operated different ways. Well, again, that's dictated to state law that I think that's that's my understanding of that. Is he with course can do. But I can look in to see if that's a possibility. And that would ready to or but yeah, I just I would be I guess I would be curious because I do see that.
I think Fishers has a municipal court and they're not the Holden to Hamilton County Superior Court we've never done it. I don't know if we're prohibited because uniquely first class city, but if not, maybe it's time to investigate. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else from council anyone who audience scene and was seeing or even now says. Thank you. Thank you. Up next is I s a. When was 4 as you think anything. You're you guys did a great job with this. It's all problems have been ironed out. So one year later, it's good to go. You good. Thank You know, floor well. Thank you, MR. Chair and counselors of the committee. Appreciate the time to present our budget
for 2026. With this presentation. It kind of took delivery go a different way. And the past I sa has it been a very forthcoming of of how it is that we do work. So as we explained who we are, where also explain how we do work and how we measure that and what that looks like for the city county and what I hope will to show the value that you will see from from our budget as we move through that process and then end with more with our community, our region and our successes and what it looks like for 2026. So with with my executive leadership team, we have Kevin Moore. He's our chief operating officer Nicole Healy. Homes are chief information security officer and Keiko chief digital officer today. This is not here today, but we do have can Montgomery Channel 16 and
is now a pardon. Strategic comms manager. As we look at how I sa structured the admin and finance rules up to our cfo kind in U.S. Business services, which is our relationship. How we interact with the departments and agencies of the city county currently rolls up through me. Infrastructure services. Think of that as network. Data center support des killed services of who you call when if you if there's an issue that all goes up through. Kevin Moore, our chief operations officer and then application services and channel 16 rothrock a coat and and security services rules of through Nicole. Comes. And I apologize to all of them for putting their pictures on there. But I thought it was a little nicer than an As far as our staffing. I sa has 52 full-time positions. One part-time. 46 of those are
filled 6 or vacant currently. And that is by design. So for for for budget means and for trying to design and figure out what's what's best for the city county overall, I say is buoyed by 2 minute service providers, Daniels and Associates is our application service provider and they'll logic, says data center networking support desk such service provider. They add about 100 ft east to our team for a grand total of around 150 like I mentioned earlier, we had very little unintentional vacancy over this past year. We we promoted one person into executive position. That was a new position. The chief digital officer that's cake And then we backfield her role externally. As far as education for our team. We
rely on couple different things for the last several years. We've been using a product to called storm winds that would make available to die as a team and the technology training domains, whether it's security, whether it's networking, whether it helped us, they're all different demands within within it training and we are available within that product. Additionally, earlier this year we partnered with innovate U.S., which is a has provided ai training for the entire enterprise as far as public service professionals with that kind of they also offer a legal public sept public sector professional training as well. It's been very beneficial in a great partnership that through that partnership. We've also we're able to offer a a batch of 150 Google certificates, 150 people to get Google
certificates and business analysis, a cybersecurity and project management as we open that up to the enterprise for that training that was filled within an hour. Just to show you the demand that that was there for that level of training certainly foster upskilling through additional means where people find that they have a need were willing to support professional development with as far as certain certifications or outside training. One of the things that I think is important from an it industry perspective is customer satisfaction. The acronym there is he said that's what's up there. Generally speaking. When you look at an organization and their customer satisfaction, particularly in it support desk or service type of rule you're looking at around 75%. Is your industry average for customer satisfaction currently for the last several years, really, for about the
last 6, it has been in the high 90's lately. It's been a 98%, which is an amazing testament to not a work that my team does our bikes tension the minute service providers as well. You can see what that training looks like. Each of those ratings. You'll see that there are surveys and response rating per cent Cent and responded to after every ticket that we send out. There's an opportunity to pick on smiley face in rate rate. What your level of satisfaction was with the resolution. As you can see, I'm not hiding anything. You can see that very unsatisfied up there and the unsatisfied. Looking at our service desk tickets just so you understand what we look at day in and day out. You can see by quarter and by year at least going back into 2024, the number of tickets that have been
submitted for those time frames. I will have to describe kind of dive deep into finding what an incident is. What task change requests and problem management. I won't make it very little. I don't need to talk down, but I just want to make sure that we understand what it is from an instant standpoint. That is something that occurs outside a band. Your computer stops working at blue screens, your phones, not working those types of things. Those are when people would engage with us to get that fixed because it was unexpected for a catalog past. That is something that we know and have fulfilled before. So someone needs a laptop. Someone needs a phone. Someone needs an application. That would be a cut. Asked that we're we're we're going to do. We understand how to how to fulfill those passwords. Senate MAY be something that we have to figure out to solve change. Request. The city county has a complex
technical. Tax cut. We have a technology framework of networks and systems and applications. And the goal of that is to keep it up for as long as possible with and without any interruption. To do that. What we have is a is a change advisory board where if someone wants to make a change, they want to update an application. They want to change. And the way it network is route and they want to add not has a bad word, but that's just a terrible example. That will continue to use. You have to put in a request in order to get that done and we need to make sure that it's not going to interfere with the day-to-day operations of the city county. 24 7, 3, 65. So that is that would go through that process, everyone to make sure that it technically works, that it doesn't impact the business doesn't impact to
public. And then add a way that isn't expected unacceptable. And then accept that. And then that change occurs over time. And so you can see the number of requests over time that that has happened. And then finally, problem management, probably management's pretty simple and explaining so a counselor, Cahill Counselor Roberts Council mills and have like a similar problem with e-mail isn't working. We start to notice a larger problem. We call this, take us together and we saw together. And then what we saw, one of those assaults, all those problems on your right hand side. You can see the different ways that we can bring in incidents. There's automated. Those are we have monitoring tools in place if a fire station goes down for
networking or for power, we're going to get notified. And so those are the type a dunce of type of tickets that you'll see there. There's chat that someone speaking with a live chat to a present. There's phone calls and then there's self-service, which is kind of an automated walk through on phone to fix an issue, reset a password, that type of thing. And then finally on on floor 9, we have a tech cafe that is open during business hours. And anyone who was within the city county can walk in there and get there issue hopefully resolve quickly. Finally, I think is the last type of ticket that we have is major incident response. Something that started I think in 2019 was a the ability to we rate certain things as critical. So the network being up is a
critical. The network itself is a critical thing. It for a reason that it went down. That would be a critical instead, some locations, fire stations, some parks, different networks, services are rated as critical and if they're down, that could impact public safety of service to residents. Things like that where we would want to bring everybody together as quickly as possible under bridge to resolve the issue as quickly as possible. So these are the amount of major incidents that we've had over what frankly is the last the better part of last 2 years. You'll notice that there is a big spike in quarter to a 2025 with a network issue that was related to storms. We had a lot of fire stations and parks disconnect from the network and where we had to wait a little while to get those restored. We'll talk more about storms later, but that
that's something that respond to and try and get up and running as quickly as possible so that the service critical services are restored to whatever department or agency where the public as needed. Outside of that. That's just our tickets and responding to 2 requests. We mentioned earlier our interactions with our customers and what that brings on there are projects that we bring in from departments and agencies where they have a new application that they want. They have to want to change the technology that they're using or maybe we internally know that we have to upgrade an application to do something else. So this is a screenshot of a project tracker from last week. This project tracker has over 844 projects counted in this. We've only had this going for about 2 years in the last when I took the picture, there 2 weeks of data and within the
last 2 weeks, there was 108 active projects. And if you can recall, we have 150 people. So just just understand what that looks like on top of the tickets all those projects are rated by priority. And our worked on as as as quickly as possible. Doubling a little deeper into projects. These are some business as usual. That's that you that you see up there projects from moving buildings to in Windows 10 deployment Windows, 11 deployment impd laptops for official cars and the configuration there and Wi-Fi deployments and upgrades at hvac for moves that building authorities doing to upgrade the hvac like we are helping in all of those projects that are going on. When you go to the applications projects and look at what that's like, a bully neighborhood services move their their cell last year.
Whenever we change benefit partners, we have to change people soft. And so that's a project that we will be working on. Affects what we're doing when it I mean that basically every application within the enterprise, if someone wants to touch it, we have to do work on it. Now how we measure our partners and are buy, sell a certain level service level agreements or service level objectives. These are some key Bell has delays that are up here. You can see that on these examples. They're mostly green. There was a yellow from quarter one of 2024, if you remember MARCH of 2020 for the storms are terrible and it knocked out all sorts of things. And so this one was that p one resolution, which is major incidents that they had to have resulted in 4 hours. And some of those outages, those power outages with while beyond our control lasted longer than 4 hours.
That's why that yellow. 100 ea i side you can see some of the sla is that they're responsible for the last little while here. And most of these were actually all of these were met by the vendor. So I say all that to on top of all these all delays that we monitor for our vendors are there are 102 sla is that we're making sure that we're providing service to the enterprise and to the public essentially on how we operate day in and day out. That being said our budget for this year is is as following our proposed expense budget is 45.1 million dollars in our revenue budgets? 45.8 million dollars. The difference being that external do are not included in that expense budget. So if if they if they
pass and we hope that they do, that ends up going to our fund balance for that for the next one that's needed. You can see across our towers how that's broken off. One thing I didn't mention in that first part was of the 6 structure overview of I say, was the office of the That's essentially my executive team and the people that rule up to that and what that salary looks like in any applications that we have related to that. Well, when you look at last year why I thought it was important to have a little bit of inside baseball and how I sa works we we are not taking a hit like unlike some other agencies and departments MAY have taken in a challenging budgeting year. You will see if you look at the numbers were roughly going down about 17,000 from last year there you'll notice that the 2025 revises actually more its 567,000 higher. That's just without actually calculated it. That's because
we went to a fiscal for fiscal this year to the council for Migration that we're working on. So that's why the revised budget is so different. Breaking into character. Eye as noted in the previous presentation tonight, there is a cola and there is a a insurance increases that we have make do within our character Currently, we are taking over $6,000 hit and our character one. You can see how that played out across our areas character to that's going down by 30,000. I think when you think of technology organization when it comes to office supplies, we can probably cut a little bit there and be okay. We'll figure it out. Character 3. This is primarily where the vast majority of our budget comes from. You can see the
application services totals in the infrastructure services and there's a slight decrease there. I will say that we've already begun having cut conversations with our vendor partners essentially saying, hey, you know, in good times, a lot to go around. But when things get challenging, we all have to like work together to find a way forward. So they're prepared to me. That's where we need to be next year in order to continue services with with most of our vendors and scaled appropriately. From a character for standpoint, there are some channel 16 upgrades that we're going to do. And some networking equipment that we need, that we have a slight increase in character for. Finally charged back. And I know that having sat through a couple of these meetings with you all in the background are in the in the audience. I know that there
have been questions about the IOUs. A charge back in the new ios, a charge back model. So I'm hoping to address those and this conversation. One of the things that we found in if I could step back to 2022, I came in on in 2023 in 2022, we had an issue where we were not able to Add up for actuals of what people use. We're going by what we budgeted for and the promise. And 23 was that we're gonna build back and be able to build for the actual usage by department and agency. And we have. By and large, not without issue and not without problems, but we we were able to do that now as we did that, people are looking at their usage. They would and application to what I their pain. I sa for to what they could go and just put something Amazon for not understanding. That's not including that someone else is
for you, not that it's encrypted. Not that it's be using other services to help across the city county that it's not backed up, you know, like there they were just it wasn't apples to apples and it was a very large problem that we had where people wanted to jump to in secure insecure things or 2 things that they thought would be cheaper or more of available and then turns out it might not be right. So what we did was we stripped out all the overhead from all of the items that we charge for. And it we're just charging for actual is moving forward for this new model. So that means that. Councilor beaches office 3.65 account is going to be whatever it costs us. That's what it's going to be caught charge. The City council's office It makes it easier and unable to be
understood by those who are reviewing it. However, there is an I it's a core services bucket where we've taken all that overhead and put that in there. And that is given out had great 2 fte by the budget book. Now that is not a perfect solution by any means. As I just told you that I sa has like 50, 50 by by ft in the budget book. But we also have 100 other people that are working for us in using I sa licenses. So it's not a perfect model. So as we move forward, we're going to find ways to make that work better. But for this first year trying to be more transparent to so people can make better usage of other technology. We thought it would be easier be direct cost more for the agencies and apartments. So jumping into our programmatic
and fiscal says the successes. We have a several initiatives and projects that we've been working on. First up here is a I ii. We spent a lot of time a lion share this time spearheaded by Kate Coating on trying to get our arms around generative ai within the city county. There is a public facing website explaining what it is that we do certainly have had several workshops to get people to understand what it is. We had several trainings, including that in a Vegas partnership, which I'll mention again later or maybe not but the whole point here is that we're trying to change the culture on how we use technology in the city county to think about how we use data to think about how we use ai and where we can do it in a
pragmatic and proper approach with understanding. How we how we think about where it could be the most beneficial with where we keep the human in the loop and to make sure that we're doing in a way that is it's practical Windows 11. We are nearly complete with our Windows. 11 rollout when 11 goes into life in OCTOBER. Open GOD is a new platform that will help on the procurement side. With the with the rfp is an rfq from purchasing side. Also internally, we're working on an open solution for for contracts and for a contract portal. We spent a lion share last year again, working on at nasa GIs upgrade, which will really help all the agencies departments who make use of it
on a day in day out basis. There's the training that I mentioned and then Webex calling is our new calling platform that replaces the Cisco Ucm product. So that is completed as of I think last week service delivery. We created a new share point site that allows us to better share internally with our agencies and departments. What it is that we do how to interact with us. What we offer and really just help us communicate, how we can help people moving forward. It's something that I think internally communication is so hard. I think communication is hard all around. But having a site where that department or someone in a partner agency can go to and figure out what it is that I sa doesn't help buy a stake in health is
really important. We've seen a lot of positive results for that. We're actually going to move that share point site, not move it, but expand a similar sites, too. I believe with In-person h r and all that. Most of the other internal services agencies just to make it easier to understand how to operate within the city county. I mentioned the new charge back model policy changes. So I sa will bring about policies to it board. It board will approve those and also become enterprise policies. We have a new jet ai policy that just came up. We made some incident response policies lately. We've updated a lot of or policies that hadn't been updated for a while to bring them into more of a modern state it also have a functional groups. Social groups are made up of agencies
and departments come together and talk about technology. We have reinvigorated those those improve. We have a new cyber training b# # # # # , including phishing campaigns. We instituted a live chat. You can see the buildings that we've worked on continue to work on with some of those. We have changed and secured our eye wireless network here within the city county. We continue to roll out free public. Wi-fi any parks and we're up to 30 now access upgrades continuing on east for the city county building. We have a redundant fiber network that were monitoring network and system of time is the best. It's been a long time kind of wood. You continue to do all sorts of cybersecurity improvements throughout the city county. From a fiscal standpoint we have signed Microsoft and
Cisco Enterprise agreements. When we benchmark those against other agreements from other local governments, we had significant cost savings. So we're pretty proud of that. And then there's some other things that we're continuing to work through on that slide. As far as community engagement and outreach summer do cc where primarily internal. But we do have a website that we have that we enter and interact with the public on day in and day out basis. We partner with on wb that most of their events make sure that we're out there meeting next. Be better community. We also work with different local groups to help outreach for as far as local. It is concerned whether it's women in technology or other things. We want to embrace the technology professionals within the city county and we try and do our
best to support other state and local governments. There's a lot that can be said for having conversations with other directors or CEOs at different cities and counties throughout the state one of good a team that's coming up on SEPTEMBER 15th. The plan is for any dot Gov website too Begin. Translation that is in partnership with the officer. Office of Equity belonging, Inclusion and their language access plan. So that should start to again on SEPTEMBER. 15th, once Grassy creek, him live on the Wi-Fi, free public Wi-Fi that made 30 city parks. As I mentioned earlier. But I think if you look at that middle line there and that diagram, there's 12 terabytes of usage from JULY. 1st to AUGUST, 22nd of 2025. On the public Wi-Fi. And that is
that's a lot of data. So I think that's when it comes to our goals, priorities now comes what next year is going to be a little challenging. Showing you ways and what we work on day in and day out. I think that there's ways to be creative. There's ways to be pragmatic. There's ways to move the ball forward and work to get every one of in this building in the enterprise as a whole to embrace technology to understand how we can improve and understand owner data. I think continuing forward Arjen ai journey and understand data and bringing that all together is important. Everybody wants to do make data-driven decisions right? There's a lot of work we have to do as a city county to get to that point where we
can really do that from a cyber security and resilience. We have tools that we can look to improve on get make it so that it's a little bit more effective or potentially use different parts of those tools. We can have a did you potentially a new digital front door for the city county that we need to look at what that looks like. That's something that coming in the next year. Not coming to arrive becoming too, to look at what those options are. We have infrastructure that will need to modernize the next couple of years and understand what that plan looks like is something that we're looking to do. And finally, like I continue to perform and be accountable to our agency department partners on how we deliver it. Services is important to us. And then violate. These are some of the
words that we've won over the last year and has really since last time we talked and I'm happy to answer questions. Thank. Thank you very much. He's just an Key Internet goes down for 2 weeks completely. Recent of to be analog for the police and fire. Yes, okay. Good. That's Bart. MR. CHAIRMAN, I've been keeping an eye on other cities when they have had. Service attacks or ransomware attacks. And I notice that same poll out a pretty significant attack this summer where they The entire city shut down for a period of time and they had procedures for recovering which they did. But the challenge is number one. Has that ever happened? The first place and number so can you talk a little about our security procedures? And number 2, if something happens
like a ransomware attack, how do we maintain city services? Maybe a little vague and that response in sits on public television. That being said, we have procedures in place in the event something like that would happen. And certainly we have defense and death in place to hopefully prevent something to that effect. I think as we continue to mature, there is more layers that we put on of. To prevent something like that permits a strong word, too. 2, hold that off. And really when it comes to an attack like that, it's not a it's not it's going to happen. It's a win. It's going to happen. The best networks have been hacked. If there's someone who's willing to get it going to figure out a way it's going to happen. All we can do is make sure that we're doing our best to prevent
that. We other options, too, restore or have resilience in the event of an event like that. And then with that, you know, we have conversations with departments and agencies on what it is that how long that they can expect to be down to be able to, continue to operate how long what their appetite is for that. And for each agency and department, that's a little bit different there. Certainly ones that are. I mention criticality earlier, right? Certain ones that are MAY have more critical services than others, but that isn't a shared conversation that had right. I don't know the sheriff's office has had a conversation with don't know that Bns about more important, but I think when it comes to safety of individuals, you know, maybe that's the sheriff's office
and that should be a priority service. And that's how we how we trying to arrange look at it. There are there are procedures. There are policies in place. There are even other other and along options that we can pursue and have looked at. Have in place. Do they need continual update? It has to be an evergreen thing. People change response changes. And so we continue to try and make that easy as possible for those who are going to operate in event of an issue like that so that they can bring people back but also make it as best we can to prevent something like that. I that place yet. Ended? Just expanding on that. And I'm realizing there's something I've never asked before and that or if I did, I forgot. One thing I am not sure who would be accountable for this, but you have a role in it. What what is our overall disaster recovery plan and do
we have a disaster recovery plan management and updated in the tested in pressure, tested annual basis or or or more frequently than the. Get answer the kind of a way, but try and get to the heart of your question with any plan like that, there's there's always constant work and it needs to be evergreen. There are certainly tabletop exercises that we We test certain things along the way to make sure that there is resilience in the event of an incident. But when you when you try and think of the overall posture and potential areas where we could have have impact. What does that look like and how is that going to hamper us in the moment? You know, it's hard to say that. Every Ingles been covered night. Imagine it isn't of.
But we continue to as we mature, grow it and make sure that we're doing the best we can to guard that. Council moves. Thank you, MR. CHAIRMAN, thank you, director. He'll just couple questions. One being hear a lot about the different silos of information systems across the enterprise and the difficulty of communication. We sales floor as we've got million. It. Is there a concerted effort to try to make it is much of a universal consistent data system versus all these competing things that you guys spend a lot of effort just making sure they don't crash each other. How impd talk to what have you? It's to that. If you could, please, respect to the data side and being able to pull data from from the different repositories
across the city county. It is. It has stopped and started over time without continual support funding. I guess this is how I would say that we've had some efforts over the last year in that regard that frankly, the result of that effort was lackluster. And I was really disappointed with we partnered with that regard. I had high hopes for what that looks like. I still think there's opportunity for for that, particularly as technology has changed. You don't necessarily need to go out and pull the data in from Salesforce. You don't need to go out and pull the data in from measure or Google private cloud or wherever right you need. You can go access that data. There its it's not as demanding as it used to be. We don't need to have that single repository. We can go out and touch those places and report
off of that. So I think that gives us hope for the future. I just this past year we had the conversation on on data classification. I think the next next next conversation we have is what our data rules so like I say doesn't on the data, right? Word still into the data. And what does that mean for the city and the county and those agencies and apartments? Are they ready to actually own their data? Do they have people in the agency's apartment to understand their data historically speaking? That has not been the case. And so in order to be that forward a piece a good job, I think with any performs trying to have those conversations to get people to understand that data could mean something. But to get real data ownership in those agencies and departments
sort of the next school. I think we have. And then from there we can start to bring that together and actually have a true data lake and data warehouse rl even to this point. But let's just use those terms so I think that's still on the horizon. But getting I to be honest, I took a shot in the last year. Didn't work out so what's what's the next stop time? How can ai help us do that? Potentially were maybe not all that to say, we're still working on Okay. Other 2 are just fiscal questions. You mentioned earlier, the separate fiscal phraya say can you remind us what that fiscal was? Sure. I talk about out defense in depth and we're working to migrate people soft, which is erp system from on Prem to cloud. And that's
what that schools and a recall. We get a lot complaints about Max. It system, particularly its status. We understand what happens. But we did a special appropriation for them to try to cure that. But I understand. Have not shared it. Can you shed some light on what the issue is they're at and what we do about it. Still hearing from constituents that I filed a complaint Tuesday and Friday mates. They said my case is closed when we know that's not what's happening. So I know that there's been work between the Mac and Arvind or partner in order to make make that work. Start moving forward. I don't know where that specifically is. I know that negates with the makin in that particular vendor partner on on trying to
use those funds this year in order to meet some of the needs. I don't think that to be clear what they do with that amount of money is not a key role. It's not it's not going to result, but it should result some of the issues that you are experiencing from your constituents. But but not all of them, I I will say that we're we're waiting for that partnership to understand what it is that we're looking to accomplish. A will work with them to get doesn't. Can I just ask you to? Pushed that ball along as best you can and you got Thank you, sir. Thank you. Council Keough. Thank you, MR. Chair just Thank you for making us talking about. But while this year's budget is flat, you're talking to vendor partners saying what can we do to achieve because you are one of the
organizations that he's not bring like-4 percent to the table here and it's really not in character one, which is which is different than a lot of the department's. It's it's in your vendor agreements. My my question is that and I guess I would preface this is a building off what council boots said that the the basis of this is that in any long term organization processes, software or hardware it out or get set up by somebody who MAY themselves be long gone and then. Because that's the way it was always done. We just keep on doing it. Is there is there any effort to go back to departments and say, do you need piece of software on piece of hardware or whatever? Could this not just moved to Microsoft teams or Microsoft? 3.65 war. Whatever can you go
into that? In, I guess so that I feel back here. I would. I would encourage if if the timing with the other departments, I would encourage even having those conversations with 25 counselors as well, because I think all of us have a lot of interactions and my perception is that sometimes. We might be able to see is sort of an outside person like, hey, this that I always get this or this is always on this way type of thing. And I feel like to your comment of you don't own the data. You're the custodian, but a lot of times you are asked, hey, figure this out when the proper solution probably in front, probably for many years, has been you need to modernize. You need to move. You said people talk moving the clock, right, that that's a logical thing to me.
But something had to. 4 set to happen. And I feel I guess I would I would add I feel like the real savings that we need to get with how cutting the actual services. That's the type of thing that needs to happen. We need to go figure out. Still want to be able to do x, y or z. But instead of using some old, you know, like you said, data warehouse, the lake, whatever. But if we decided that's power be I or whatever is our tool of choice. If you're not on it, how do we get you there? Sorry for the long when question. But I back. Thank Just just a direct one of the fiscal things on here, system, rationalization into me. The modernization rationalization are usually cousins for what looks like we have application portfolio of that has been maturing over the years. And what it does is it can do it. A couple different things where can look at what those legacy applications are, where
they where they are from a a cost issue like a recommendation like this is something that needs to be upgraded. But one of the conversations that we have we have and we have regularly is like, hey, this is this is no longer going to work on these systems. Can we need to upgrade this? And then it goes into hey, let's talk to the vendor. Let's get connect. And sometimes those vendors are direct with agencies or departments. And so we're we're sort of that middleman and I don't know if you are familiar with it, but it and technology organizations get into this like fingerpointing thing. And I really have no time for that. There's there's a there are customers here. There are services that need to handled. Let's find a way to get those upgraded move forward. And so that's a conversation we have all the time. We have legacy applications that need to be upgraded services that need to
be upgraded. Certainly we do. It's prioritizing those and finding them and then having William Partnership at the agency and department level to get those upgraded because a lot of times what you'll have is to your point like this is this is what we've always I've always push this button. I just want to push this book. And so can we push this button and like, like of confetti will shoot from the sky. If you go to this application, whatever the incentive is like, how can we incentivize people moving forward and sometimes it needs to be more than just, hey, we're gonna switch. Or which switch or switch your applications, which are switcher thing. We need something where they'll see the benefits going to save them time. We'll take them 10 seconds left to push that
button and then they can push the button 20 more times in a day. And that's something they really would like to do like or how does that benefit the residents? You know, how does that finding the ways too, sell that upgrade process too. Our internal customer bases an important thing that we continue to work on and strive for. Thank Thank you. Any other counselors? I anyone the audience see for you analysis. Thank When asked in does the officer on us and on it and performance? I think we might actually be released because we might have the smallest total number kind maybe European Union. 14 pages is good under 4. Yes, we are very much, for That's right. That's right. The I he was still here second filed tort
claim from sit in those audience. Cheers for to But it's good to be with Members of the committee, especially funny. It really hurts that like it a not But it's going to be with you tonight. I'm Leslie Jones directed the Office of on Performance and joined by deputy director of Avian Agnew and our manager performance and Innovation. Caitlin Edwards is also here with us tonight. Looking forward to sharing our details for a proposed 2026 budget. And I will actually picks up this year. Let Vivian could take you some of the just general specifics about our office and then I will jump back in with the specifics of the budget. I really do a brief agency. Guys. We have 2 teams. We are a performance. Innovation shopping. Also an auto shop and they have very similar. As of the end of the
day, which are kind high-performing government, transparency and accountability across all departments and agencies within our enterprise to tackle that work, though, our performance team kind of takes a sort our care approach. They offer different kinds of trainings, particularly in continuous improvement. Methodologies data, literacy and data analysis. Audit team conducts performance audits and compliance with generally accepted government auditing standards and oversees the enterprises, external audit contract. In terms of staffing, we have 9 at t's total. We're currently hiring for a senior auditor positions or staff folks right now. You'll notice the Mardi Gras. We have general parity across genders who 50, 50 there. And you can see that our annual salary by gender is pretty much equal surging. Well there
as well. Well, our offices in super diverse demographically, we only have 2 different kind of ethnicities represented there. We have a lot of diversity in the experience that our staff bring to the table. We have folks who've been at the enterprise for a long time fix background says teachers have come from the private sector and on that level of experience has been invaluable in helping us to do our jobs better essentially. I want to make a note that we preserved our budget at about $10,000 for staff to per to continuing education opportunities. We're a small shop. And so we have to do. I'm kind of a lot with a little and the more that we can learn, the better we can serve the enterprise next. I want to mention also that
focus generally in our offices on teamwork and collaboration. We don't do any projects or we try to always have more than one person sort of working on something. And that translates over to the way that we work with departments and agencies. We find that our projects and goals kind of come to fruition a little bit easier when we are collaborating as opposed to coming in and telling people what to do. Next. I'll talk to our programmatic and fiscal success our big one that you've heard from s quite a few years now is are in deep reforms program. So this year was the first year we hosted a sort of symposium. So we invited participants who had been part of the program in previous years come and show the things they built using tools like Power b, I we had our staff talk about the training in general. So folks knew what the offerings were and so far this year, we've
trained 42 employees across 23, different departments in those data, literacy pieces in Power b, I. Also in JANUARY were able launch our first virtual lean training. We previously offered that in person. So we were limited by space. We're limited by our Steph time, but because be able to launch this virtual version. We freed up a ton of staff time and are able to reach a larger audience across the enterprise. They can work on it, you know, during their free time where they have extra hours. So it's a lot more accessible to folks. Through things like using tools like virtual training and intentional scheduling just from our team. We've been able to offer 745 hours with a performance management training to the wire enterprise that is at no cost our staff for putting this on.
So things like lean power be I did. A litter CDs are tools that are useful across all agencies and departments and things that employees can take into their careers as they grow and continue to work with the city. And we also were able to utilize vacancy, savings and other savings to fund a portion of the city County employee survey for the first serve and 8 years. So exciting stuff. This is from inaugural symposium is a very fun event. We had a lot of popcorn next read that should come wary of a date set. So we'll send it out. And a less takeover. With community engagement outreach. Again, we're an internal facing agency so we don't have a significant amount of that. But both are audit performance. Teams have done a great job of networking and finding ways to engage the
performance team specifically for external type of events. They participated in some lean coffee events which have been put on by Green dot consulting here in town. And that allows them to kind of compare notes on process improvement. Methodology isn't teaching strategies with other folks around the city that are doing similar work and they also participate in the State Department of Education's information. Technology teams, networking events and they have a good line of contact with them. So all about building professional networks and resources that we can tap into when when necessary on the audit side some more that working with local audit firms. We have the only have for auditors. And so there are likely some skill gaps there. And so when we do have the opportunity to contract from a 3rd party bases, it's nice to know who is available in who
has skills that we could utilize that at a certain point. And then also continue with the theme of internally. We're looking to launch in queue for he three-year he for hear this. Team specific Internet page, I say, has been super helpful in helping us learn how to get that's stood up and it will basically contain information that we have available. But about what our office does, the audit approach. Also the performance side, how to engage with us based on your needs. And it will just be another resource for folks internally to access and learn more about what we do and how we can engage in help with them. If that goes well, I think we could potentially spend that into an external site which would be a better way to communicate with the public. I know I've spoken with in the audit committee and some other things about ways the council can be brought abreast about certain
audit related issues. And I think we're real world trending towards a way to maybe formalize that more and make it more consistent from year in and year out. Well, 2026, our priorities and goals from the AUGUST and port number one is going to be at least a 25% expansion and audit coverage across the enterprise. And when measuring that by units. So with current within the current year, we had engagement across audits, cash counts and other kind of the general engagement sub 7 units, agencies and apartments. And hoping for at 9 or more in 2026. Again, those are across different types of engagement. So they're not all traditional audits. But they give such a limited staff. It's hard to cover everyone, but we're trying to find ways and revise our approach to maximize our
our effective this. Second goal is to make partisan maintain participation and the performance and innovation teams, educational initiatives. And that's going to be measured by total hours. The humans who are at 750 some year-to-date. We get close to 1200 last year. So be great if we can hit that mark again, part of the success that also kind of reference by Director Hill that we've had with the any performance program is that it's been going for so long. It's kind of in year close to 5 now of kind of different iterations. But of this current general format. And so with that, we touched a lot of folks that is still here and they develop a lot of skills. But with that, they don't need to come through again. And so it's hard to kind of find the new crop of
folks and advance the ones that have have used those skills over the period. Being able to maintain that that participation from our standpoint is, is this is relevant goal. Believe at this point. And then 3rd more broadly, this is kind of m# # # # on my shoulders and billions a little bit is we've got more involved helping to try to reform some enterprising company culture efforts, including the survey that she mentioned earlier. The that couple working groups that have been established that are going on and the work for that really continue. So in order to really make. Institutional change, I think we have to keep our on the gas with those issues people continue to pay a role. The forefront of that. Looking at our budget now in
total, it's just over 1.0, 9, 5 million in total. That $55,727 production from 2025. Is budget. It's largely a reallocation of character. One character, 3 funds to to meet our needs. We do not have any revenue sources, if these training efforts continue to be successful, we could maybe find a way say occ year. I say charge back, but I don't think that's going to happen any time soon. Looking at our character one, we had a decrease of $563 from 2025, of course, as everyone said, the call increase. That causes an increase in wages as well as health care costs. We were able to offset that by reductions in our workers, comp disability and incentive pay incentive pay specifically is not a complete reduction.
We just had more budget. Then we could actually pay out given the terms of consent of pay restrictions. And so we have enough to take still take care of our staff. That is goal. 1, 1, a one b is continue to focus on our people, especially when we had to kind of tighten the belt a little this year. I want to maintain everything we could for for our talented staff. As mentioned, we only have one vacancy and we're in the process of entering interviewing for that and should be filled by the end of the year. Moving on to care to 2, there's no change in our very moderate supply budget. And then on the character. Is most significant This is also about a 54,000. Dollar decrease from 2025 and way we're able to do that was to allocate unused funds from contractual agreement that we have used historically Trump
some other budgets on some discretionary things and items that we're kind of we're able to contract with unilaterally. And those are all done to kind of offset the increase is the largest percentage of this goes to the external audit contracts that contracts that's with us or great auditors that for a their fees. We'll take it a little increase action. So we had to absorb that. They're moving some things around. Character for no change and no anticipated use of that next year. And then character 5. We had a slight decrease due to some reduction in our sec charge backs based utilization so that was the major elements of our budget. Happy to entertain any questions you MAY have that the office about performance accounts and you'll Thank you, CHAIRMAN.
Just a few quick questions. Thank you. Director so I mean, you made a joke about the charge back model and that's actually was a kind line of questioning. I was gonna ask you about, which was. Which projects you are specifically like how you how ap is utilized in the enterprise like how have up a sign. The project. We'll start there. Yeah, yeah, that's a good question. So is outright speed as possible to kind of different paths GOD performance on it essentially has the ability to engage with any body agency department that the council has budgetary approval for, which is a large number of and a couple, the municipal corporations, From the point standpoint it. So there's not really any kind of regulations on it. So it's
it's a lot of either soliciting participation for folks will come out directly to lessen asked for assistance on certain things. And so those are the 2 kind of primary pass through which we engage with to to the question was, again, as is there ever. Given that you if use languages division of the mayor's office, just what the direction If there's if there's a policy goal, right for policy objective, how? We can ensure that we're utilizing. I mean. Your shop right to do come in and provide some strategic and vice direction. So just was curious how you all are signed projects for like a better way of saying absent. Yeah, yeah. So historically that we've had kind of free rein to pursue whatever we need to pursue.
Think there some intentional, shameless kind of marketing weaving kind of touted our services and and what we can can ride again, we're a small shop, but I think in the last year we've seen some increases in that where there has been an interest in folks have come to us about specific things that are maybe not in the traditional audit round to either evaluate their effectiveness for the performance. And so that's a space where we want to be. We want to be supportive and collaborative with our colleagues and help them do their work better. Thank you, director and MR. CHAIRMAN is 2 quick questions. I promise. I'll be quick. On the audit. So for the audit for the entire enterprise, is it done by one from cases on MAY one from. So are the auditors on staff? Are they preparing for the I mean, is it audit is not
just hiring one from and so so what kind of maybe speak to what some of your staff are doing during Dodgers are doing during that during our lights are out so in the shoulders of of the audit. Absolutely. Yeah. So we oversee the contract. We engage with the auditor and their leadership and Stephen, but that kind of all took place last year's. That's all kind of set terms of the engagement itself. We do provide some support hours into its an issue that was that we're just a couple of us. And we do some very kind of low-level testing that helps reduce the load on their audit team. And so it also helps reduce the bill just the slightly a slight bit. But large amount of their engagement at them and and are fine team over there. And so
we almost just small little part of their team of buses are throughout audit. And in the final question I was going to ask was in you, you briefly touched on it. But just 4. Kind of Publix, I think we say audit right There's huge financial component to that. Obviously out of committee members right But then can you maybe talk about how what the importance why this audit process is done outside of a fam? Like why a separate division of the mayor's office. First officer financing. And in terms of like why? Yeah, just kind of like what kind of the rationale is for that to sit outside of a family kind of hierarchy. Oh, absolutely. The office over time has had a lot of different kind of aims
goals that once the performance element was brought and the team was kind of split in half, it feels like there's more of a deviation away from the financial type audits. And that's currently how we operate know. Do any any at all. Really financial audits of their performance based on its based on the government? Well, think standards. And so we are usually taking a set of criteria that's defined by the agency department themselves and measuring them against. But they say they do. And so there's element of kind of independence of one. We have the time. And that's our focus and our jobs to do that. But also we can look at it from outside perspective, especially on the performance side where we tend to make more recommendations for strong recommendations about how to improve import
performance and how they can implement certain elements to improve their work. The audits tend to be more. Did indication of things that going right and going wrong and then suggestions on how to fix them based on kind of best practices. Thank you, Director General. Thank you, director. Thank you. CHAIRMAN. You have any other comments. Questions seeing none. Anyone, the audience gate go forward in Macon, Georgia, very and I will thank deputy director Agnew mentioned the survey. That the ai survey? No, that was not I certainly did. So this is a survey that's a part of that company culture, sort of effort that we're doing. So that's a survey of city county employees. So we've I think wrapped that up to this past week. Yeah, just close yesterday. Okay, when can we
expect the final work products? That's a great question. Just gonna call the day. There's another element of it. There partner will be doing some focus groups with employees, but we're engage with them through the end of the year. So it'll be by the end of the year. That will happen Thank you. Last call, any of the questions seen see it review. Review now says we