City-County Council Meets Tonight

The Indianapolis-Marion County City-County Council meets tonight. On its agenda for this evening is Proposal 62, 2009 that allows for the consolidation of the Perry Fire Department. The minutes to the April 15, 2009, Public Safety Committee, show they voted 5-2 to recommend do pass, with extensive procedural discussion on an amendment authored by Councillor Oliver. They agreed the amendment language should be worked on and introduced at the full Council debate on the proposal. It was unclear by the minutes exactly what the amendment was, but references imply it has to do with minority and women hiring and promoting practices of IFD. Also contained in those minutes was this little nugget just at the end of the Proposal 62, 2009, discussion:

Councillor Oliver asked if it is anticipated that any other IFD stations will close by 2010. Director Newman answered that there is nothing firmly in place, but they are having general discussions about possibly closing some of the stations that are on valuable commercial real estate and rebuilding them on less valuable commercial real estate in an effort to realize financial benefits for taxpayers.

Proposals to be introduced tonight include these more interesting (to my eye) Proposals:
Prop 176 -- approves the refunding of $540 million bonds for the Water Company. These would replace the variable rate bonds that will end up costing taxpayers another $80 million-ish to get out of.
Prop 177 -- creates a City Department of Code Enforcement.
Prop 178 -- pit bull and dangerous dog ordinance. It also includes a ban on tying a dog to an immovable object like a tree. This is a complex proposal. I would suggest that folks review the latest McANA meeting where there pros and cons of this approach were aired. It is after the much longer discussion of the CIB bailout - a twofer, if you will. To view the video archive, click here -- then scroll down to the "Other Meetings" section and select the April 18 Marion County Alliance of Neighborhood Associations video link. The dog ordinance didn't come up until 2 hours and 2 minutes into the meeting, so you may want to forward to that point.

All three Proposals are to be referred to the Rules Committee which next meets on Tuesday, April 12, beginning at 5:30 in room 260 of the City-County Building.