Indy City County Cllr. Michael-Paul Hart Joins!

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It's about a 5% growth. And so they either didn't care or they didn't take the time to look to see that the money's there and you don't have to make drastic cuts to city budgets to make it work. And there's some ridiculous things, too. It's not like we're asking to cut, you know, food or shelter, glow in the dark trails and these violence interruptors that are all making six figures that nobody ever They're clearly not interrupting any violence. Nobody ever knows where these people are at. I mean, these are just some examples of some things you could do.

It is. And they don't even have to go into that level of detail because when we look at it, it's really in percentages. Move this percentage there in county income tax and we would have made a big difference. Commit this amount in county income tax would have made a big difference. We actually don't even have the authority over line items. So they can go back to their constituencies and say, look, I didn't do this. And it would be. a true statement. So in all defendable positions, they didn't have to do that. And still yet, they decided to raise the tax on people in Indianapolis. There were a couple of counselors that were on the fence that decided to flip-flop yesterday. One of them was Frank Mascari, Democrat from the

Beach Grove area. And then he puts out a statement, the Indy Star carries it, where he's blaming the state and somehow ties it into referendums. I mean, just a ridiculous, nonsensical answer. Yeah, That frustrated me last night and I said something to them. They kept on saying it's the state's fault, Republicans' fault, and they tell everybody, you know, go vote, go vote. And I told them, I said, the other way around, I said, what do you mean? I said, our elections are next year.

City council elections are next year. If we're gonna go vote, we're gonna go vote you out for raising our taxes. And I, of course, didn't like that answer, but my response is that the state, they gave us the ability to do it. And the state said, put your priorities in order, right? Make sure road priorities are number one. And that was the ask.

It didn't say go raise taxes. It said, make the priority. I talked to Nigel about this earlier. It feels like the state's idea behind this matching program is that they want to reward local governments for cutting, getting down to the bare bones. And if you do that, we'll chip in a little bit and maybe help you out with some infrastructure. I don't think the vision was to just raise the taxes on everybody and then also put your hand out. Absolutely. I mean, if we look at this year, so they raised the tax just now, right?

and that's not going to impact next year's budget, but we're still making the match. And so this alone shows that you don't have to do it. And they're just going out there because, you know, it's potentially a two-part play on just trying to go get more money, but trying to defend that is going to be really tough going into an election year for them. Talk about the reaction inside the room once the veto passed.

The veto of the veto. Obnoxious. They were celebrating. They were shaking hands. They were standing up. they were cheering. It was the strangest thing I'd ever seen. We retweeted you last night at Hammer and Nigel,

your video from inside the meeting where you're not joking. This isn't hyperbole. The minute they pass that thing, they're high-fiving, they're smacking each other on the backside. Like they just, you know, were Indiana and they'd won the college football championship.

Completely. And when they were talking about this thing, you know, trying to pitch it to everybody the whole time, it's this somber. Oh, we have to do it, the state, this, that, and the other. And then as soon as that's over, that somber moment is gone.

And it's nothing but fireworks and celebrations. It was disgusting. So how was Joe Hogsett last night? Because I did not attend, but folks I know did attend. And they said, even by his standards, which the bar is pretty low, even by his standards, he wasn't himself last night. How did he handle this defeat? Because I haven't quite figured out if he's bummed about this or not. You know, he was tired.

He that, I mean, that was the feeling that I got. Is that what he's calling it now? It must be right. But he just looked, he looked more, it didn't look like the same charismatic guy that got him in that role today. You know, regardless of his policies, that that is what won him, that role.

And, you know, it could go both ways for him, right? He can play the card. He didn't raise taxes, but at the same time, taxes got raised on his watch. And so, you know, he's going to have to be careful however that goes. To this current group of council, members, predominantly Democrat, right?

You're in the extreme minority. Do you get the feeling that Hawks said is now political poison to these guys? Do they need him anymore? Because now you're seeing Indy Star hit pieces. You're seeing counselors vote out against them. That would have never happened five years ago. You know, six years ago, he went missing during the riots and everybody thought that was fine. Now they're voting against them.

It's certainly fractionalized. I completely see that. But I will say there's areas where they're agreeing. I mean, the moratorium on the data center stuff, right? I mean, the Democrats came out in favor of that and then quickly, Joe Hogsett sided with them on it. So, you know, there's a couple things we can look at. I mean, maybe...

You were one of the lone votes with that, weren't you? I was the solo vote, yeah. And I mean, and I think that's because I had so much experience with it. I've had two, and, you know, I just thought we were better off with development standards because you can always go more restrictive than what the standards are. And I've seen that in two cases now where I think just burying our heads in the sand for two years and letting developers go plan these things without being a part of the conversation is just not prudent for the city of Indianapolis.

Counselor Michael Paul Hart joins us. We spent the first part of this discussion discussing the tax that was issued last night on the wheel taxes. I want to talk about a few other things here before we let you go. Got a couple of minutes left here. You went on a ride-along with the IMPD. I'm just curious. When was this? Like what hours were it?

And what did you see? Yeah, it was last Friday or the Friday before. And it was on a Friday night from 8 p.m. till 2 a.m. So this is prime hours and indie. It was when Jen Con was here. It was downtown Indianapolis. And essentially I went with two different officers, Sergeant Rosenberg and then Officer Barron.

And, you know, the most important thing is how professional of an organization, IMPD is. and we are really lucky to have them as our officers. I mean, just hands down. And here's why I say that. You know, we started and it was pretty quiet. I mean, I was just sitting there in the kind of the room and we're waiting for like a call to come over radio. And almost in like five minutes a call comes on

that there's an armed robbery down at the bus station. And so we head out there and you're looking for a guy in a white shirt, right? And so we're just driving around looking for this guy. And then out of nowhere I hear on the radio. possible officer shot. And everything just changed in a heartbeat. But what was incredible in this situation, terrible situation,

but what I witnessed was how fast everybody reacted. I mean, there were dozens, if not 30 or 40 officers, all in coordination at one point in time. I mean, we were doing 120 miles an hour through downtown Indianapolis to go make sure that this officer could get from, from his ambulance, off the highway, over to the hospital.

But the way they coordinated that, where we would go past two roads and then block a road. And then it was like a daisy chain of officers. And then they just got out. They knew what to do. That was the first thing that happened that night. That was just incredible. The officer was okay that ultimately was shot that evening.

So that was the first thing that stood out. The second thing that stood out. We always talk about community policing. And so we got back after things kind of cooled down a little bit. and I started walking around up and down the bar district with the sergeant. Everybody knew him and he knew everybody. What I mean by everybody is the bar owners, the bouncers, the bartenders. And they were just, they were, they would walk down.

They knew the officer that had been shot. No, no, they knew the sergeant who would go there every single night. Oh, okay. Yeah. And just talking to him. Like, hey, what's going on? You know, who do I need to keep an eye on? Where do we need to go?

Where is like what's going on to keep Indianapolis safe? I mean, these guys are doing doing the work that we're. all getting asked about. Wow. And it's, you know, it's really hard to see that day and day out. I didn't know, right? And didn't go and witness it to know that the things that we want to see, they're doing, right?

And they're going and they're spending the time where crime is happening. Did you get a feeling of, oh, it looks like crime is down in Indy, the way the prosecutor and mayor like to talk about it? I got the feeling that the presence is helpful. I mean, but here's the problem, right? There was only five officers on downtown district that were, I mean, because of our staffing level, but they had to go bring in overtime, bring in special units, and all of these things. So, you know, we talk about budgeting all this money, but, I mean, in terms of we have

1,300 officers, we budget for 1,800. I mean, we need more officers. So we're going and pulling in overtime units. I mean, there's, you know, probably 25, 30 officers in this small downtown district at that given time, but only five are the ones on staff at that time. Michael Paul Hart with us. We got about a minute left here. Tell me about the progress of Washington Square Mall.

What's going on with that? We are rocking and rolling. So the commission that we had to do a visionary study with a firm called Schmidt Associates wrapped up. We had about 160 people show up to a community meeting that I had the other day to really show them the plan, the vision of how we can best utilize this space. Since then, I've been a brokerage firm reached out to me on one of the units that's already willing to sell.

And so we're working on getting all the buyers together to figure out what this plan, what this strategy looks like, to figure out is there a partnership? Is there a sale going to happen? But we're working on bringing those parties together. We're bringing in the city. We're bringing in other organizations to try and actually transform the site. And we've got real momentum going right now. Find him on Twitter at counselor heart.

That's H-A-R-T at counselor heart. Michael Paul Hart, thank you for not raising our taxes and for actually looking for some cuts. We appreciate it. My pleasure. It's The Hammer and Nigel show.