City-County Council to Meet Monday Night

The Indianapolis-Marion County City-County Council will meet this Monday evening.

One proposal up for a vote that is of note is Prop 490, 2009, which appoints Councillor Michael McQuillen to the CIB. That passed out of the Administration and Finance Committee on December 15 with a do pass recommendation - by a vote of 6-1. The public notice for that meeting included a blank in place of the name - and that is how the proposal was offered initially in committee.

Tradition has it that the President of the Council sits on the CIB as the Council's appointee. Ryan Vaughn is due to be elected the new Council President on Monday night. Listening to the Channel 16 archive (click on 'video' next to Dec. 15, 2009) of the meeting did shed light on what was going on. As explained by Councillor Vaughn, the Republican caucus met the night before to determine who they would be supporting for President, etc., of the Council for the coming year. Once that was determined, the incoming leadership put their heads together to decide who would be nominated for the CIB position. Councillor McQuillen's name was offered and it was filled into the blank by an amendment to Prop 490 at the committee meeting. He will be stepping down as Chair of the Municipal Corporations committee of the Council as well as Chair of the Council task force looking into new funding methods to bail out the CIB finances. Councillor Sanders voted 'no' on the Proposal in committee because of the way this was handled. Those voting in favor were Councillors Malone, Vaughn, Day, Pfisterer, Nytes and Lewis.

I must say that it is a positive move not to appoint Councillor Vaughn to the CIB due to his employment at Barnes & Thornburg whose clients include the Simons, who own the Pacers organization, which is in negotiations with the CIB for an additional $15 million a year of taxpayer support.

Of interest to those of us who work with zoning and variance matters is that Prop 476, 2009, reappointing Tim Ping to the MDC, comes to a vote by the full Council Monday night. Being introduced are Props 9 and 11, appointing Roberto A. Ramirez and Tasha M. Phelps, respectively, newly to the MDC. That means the two other Council appointees are not being renewed. I looked for the official list of MDC commissioners and who their appointing body is, and it has been removed from the Mayor's portion of the City's website. I do know that the Council gets 3 appointments, the Mayor 4 and the County Commissioners 2. I'll keep checking for its return and post that information at a later date.

Fortuitously, I had pulled the list of currently seated Board of Zoning Appeals members prior to that list's removal from the Mayor's site. The Council gets 2 appointments to each Board, the Mayor 2, and the MDC gets 1. To be voted on Monday are Props 477, 478, and 479, reappointing Earl Pool and Matthew Symons to BZA I and Mindy Westrick to BZA III. Also up for final vote is Prop 493, newly appointing Richard Redell to BZA II. Being introduced that night are Props 10 and 29, reappointing Alan Retherford to BZA III, and newly appointing Darryl "Troy" Bell supposedly to BZA I. Likely that is a typo since BZA I is full after Monday night's vote on Pool and Symons. I am guessing that BZA II is the intention, since that board would still have an opening. That means that currently seated Brad Klopfenstein and Larry Walker will not be reappointed by the Council to BZA II.

Of particular interest to the gun community is the introduction Monday night of Prop 13 - lucky 13 - approving the Mayor's appointment of Frank G. Straub as Director of Public Safety. This is being assigned to the Public Safety and Criminal Justice Committee which next meets on January 13 - again, lucky 13.

Of particular interest to me is what is NOT on the agenda for Monday night. The introduction of the new fee structure for the Office of Code Enforcement is being postponed yet again.