Hogsett and Shreve on Indianapolis’ top issues

The 2023 Indianapolis mayoral race is in its final weeks. Voters will choose between Republican candidate Jefferson Shreve, who led a crowded primary field in May, and incumbent Democratic Mayor Joe Hogsett, who seeks a third term in office.

In September, WFYI’s Jill Sheridan asked both candidates a list of questions about top issues facing Indianapolis. Below, you’ll find answers from Hogsett and Shreve, presented in alphabetical order. Click each audio file to hear the candidates in the WFYI studios.

Editors’ note: Responses have been edited for length and clarity.

WFYI asked the candidates why they are running for mayor.

Hogsett

Well, I love Indianapolis. I love it as a city, I love its people. I have spent my entire adult life in Indianapolis. And I have a passion for this city that is one that has fueled me over the last eight years. Frankly, Jill, had it not been for the pandemic, and some of the delays – fortunately, Indianapolis, nothing was denied. But a lot of things were delayed. And I guess the best way to describe why I seek a third term is I want to finish the job.

There are aspects of the pandemic that have just simply not allowed me to do that. Let me give you the best example. And I'll try to be brief. We're in the process of completely transforming Pan Am Plaza. We're building a second convention center hotel, the Hilton Signia. At one end of the plaza, we're expanding the convention center across Capitol, adding a 50,000 square foot ballroom that will allow the convention center – the Visit Indy – to hold two large conventions at the same time, which we're not capable of doing now.

But here's my point, the RFP [request for proposals] – or the announcement that we were going to propose to expand and grow our convention business – that went out in 2018. And I just broke ground on the new convention center expansion, just a month and a half ago or two months ago. It's 2023. My point is this. That was in no small measure, pandemic-related delay. And I would really like to leave office if I'm given a third term, having said that the hospitality and tourism aspects of the economy of downtown are in better hands and are bigger and more prosperous and stronger for all of the city when I leave office than were I to just simply leave office at the end of this term.

So whether the people want to give me that opportunity that's up to them, but I certainly would – I love the city. I love its people. I love the progress that I believe that we'll be able to make. You know, it was reported widely, just several weeks ago, that over the course of the next four or five years, Indianapolis is going to experience over $9 billion in investment and development. And that provides Indianapolis with quite an opportunity to be an even better city in many ways than we were when we went into the pandemic.

Shreve

It’s a big job. It's one I've considered for some time. It's a time in the life of my hometown when I'm convinced that we need change, and I aim to bring it.

Campaigning for a job like this is a long, tough interview. And it should be. There is so much to get your head around. And you have to assimilate so many conversations with people from this very diverse county of 400-odd square miles.

I was born here. I served on our council twice. I served on the countywide land use authority with the MDC [Metropolitan Development Commission]. I thought I knew Indianapolis. Every single day this year, as I'm moving around this town, I will look up and I am heading down a street I have not been down before. And I have met so many people and conversations across our city that you just wouldn't have in this compacted period of time if you weren't undertaking this process. It's been extraordinary. Tough, but rewarding. And I've learned a heck of a lot.

WFYI asked the candidates about their public safety priorities and what policies could have the greatest impact. 

Hogsett

I think there's a multiplicity of different things that the city is engaged in and that the community, frankly, is engaged in. But one of the most important decisions that I've made during the pandemic was when we received $420 million from the American Rescue Plan. We dedicated, well, certainly 35 to 40 percent of that overall figure to public safety. And I think we're the only city in the country who did that.

Now, I'm not saying that other cities did the wrong thing with their money. I mean, they have individual needs, but public safety is such a priority for our city. We put together a $150 million three-year strategy over 2022, 2023 and 2024. And we're starting to see some benefit – we're just a little bit over a year and a half into this three-year commitment. And we're starting to see some positive signs of improvement.

The truth is, gun violence is our most important challenge as a community. And we're not alone in that regard. I mean, every major urban area in the country is struggling with gun violence. But we are, I think, making some progress by reducing the level and the volume of gun violence that we experience. Now, I gotta be careful when I say that, because one homicide to me is immoral, and unacceptable. But the truth is also, that in the year 2022, we saw a 16 percent reduction in the number of murders in the city of Indianapolis. And here we are at the end of September of 2023. And we are well on our way to yet again, another double-digit reduction in the overall level of gun violence, murders and non-fatal shootings. In fact, violent crime is down 8 percent this year alone. So the investments that we have made, and the priorities that we have given to it are starting to, I think, pay enormous benefit for the people of our city.

I'd say as a final matter of the commitment that we made $45 million of the $150 million go directly into community-based, neighborhood-oriented, crime prevention and crime intervention programming. $15 million dollars in ‘22, $15 million dollars in ‘23, $15 million dollars in ‘24. And our neighborhood partners and our community leaders – you know, all too often people just immediately default to public safety being, you know, IMPD’s responsibility. Well, the truth is, IMPD does a yeoman's job in addressing public safety-related concerns, but by their very nature, IMPD is a reactive agency. A call comes in, an IMPD officer is dispatched, and hopefully something is able to be resolved. That's why it was important, at least in my estimation, and why I made the judgment – let's start investing in the communities. No one knows their neighborhood better than the neighbors themselves. And that's why I think that those investments are really starting to pay good dividends.

Shreve

Our citizens need to feel safe here. Citizens will vote with their feet. And they will move out of their neighborhoods, or their townships, or their county, if they do not feel safe, or if they feel like their children aren't safe. If they have the means to – and a lot of our citizens don't – that's no way for citizens to live, and it’s no way for a mayor to lead. And so number one priority, the number one fix that's ahead of a Shreve administration, is turning the trend line of urban violence – not just urban, but even in the more rural townships – around, and reversing these trend lines.

I can't come into the office and make it all go away. But I can come into office and stand up talent around a Shreve administration to begin quarter by quarter by quarter, reversing some of these trend lines that have challenged our city under the Hogsett administration for the last four years.

JILL SHERIDAN: We know that that’s difficult and there are many different ways that you can do that. Where do you think it’s important to start?

We need enough police on the streets because we're in this sort of just reactive staffing level where they can respond to the violence, but there's no ability to be community-facing, proactive,  in front of neighborhood associations, listening, getting ahead of some of the challenges that we have here. They don't have the bandwidth to deal with the policing of property crimes.

This broken window theory of good community policing is not a theory. You know, if we don't have the bandwidth to deal with some of the smaller property-level issues and crimes, they snowball into violent crime.

And I'd also offer that our challenge on this front today is not fiscal. I mean, I've been on the council, I've served on the IMPD staffing commission, I've been through lots of budget cycles. And we have funded and authorized 320 additional men and women – sworn officers on the force – than what we have. The challenge is leadership and the retention of that talent, because we lose more than we are bringing in the front door. And those that we are losing are simply higher value because they are higher in the experience level then the first-year recruits that we keep bringing in class by class.

WFYI asked the candidates about the city’s shortage of affordable housing.

Hogsett

I think Indianapolis strives to be a place where it doesn't matter who you are or what your income level is, you ought to be able to have a home that is affordable. And whether that's market rate, residential housing downtown, which is exploding, or whether that's workforce housing, or below market rate housing – however you want to define  the term affordable, it needs to be affordable for everyone in the city of Indianapolis, and that’s what we are committed to providing.

We've made historic investments over the course of the pandemic period in making more units of affordable housing available for more residents of our city. And I would be remiss if I didn't say we need to continue that pace. Because like other urban areas, as you mentioned, housing and housing affordability are top of mind.

Now I'm proud – just two examples – I'm proud of the property tax relief that the city-county council passed for residents, homeowners in the city of Indianapolis, which was provided to homeowners. Ninety percent of homeowners were positively impacted by the one-time credit that the council authorized, and that was in May of this year.

That type of assistance in affordability does, I think, go a long way. It doesn't answer the question completely, because property values have gone up and that's why the council decided –  well, we ought to do something about that, and give them some assistance. The other program I would point to is our Riverside anti-displacement program where the city is making a concerted effort. And Riverside is almost a pilot type of project that we would like to see, maybe scaled up and expanded into other neighborhoods. But in essence, it is our effort to try to slow down – if not eliminate altogether – the displacement that occurs, unfortunately, when property values are rising, and therefore your property tax bills are rising. And if you are a longtime multigenerational homeowner, who may be on a fixed income, retired or otherwise, in too many instances, people are, unfortunately, having to move. And we want to arrest that, stop it, so that homeowners have valuable property – particularly those who have been intergenerational residents – to be able to stay. Riverside was a fantastic neighborhood in which to begin this pilot program, the anti-displacement commitment we're making, because of the history there. You have people who have called Riverside home for more years than I've been on Earth. And those are the people that we are bending over backwards to try to keep them housed, and housed in affordable ways.

Shreve

Housing is in both the form of owner-occupied and renter-occupied, and we need to pursue the expansion of both pathways. We're in a tough macroeconomic challenge right now, where interest rates are around 8 percent. And so if I'm a first-time or a second-time homebuyer, it's really tough to do that at 8 percent rates, when just a few years ago, you could get rates down in the threes. It makes a huge difference in what you can afford.

But if you're a renter, you also saw this past year over the prior year, rent-rate growth of 8 percent. And so the cost of housing – whether you own it, or you're paying for it by the month – is growing more quickly than your income is. And that's just really putting the press on people. So what do we need? It's fairly simple economics at its basics. It’s supply and demand.

And so the city has to create a landscape where it is easier to add to our supply of both our single family housing stock and our multifamily housing. We need quality housing and at price points that people can afford. And the surest way to get there is by increasing the supply to meet the unmet demand, so we don't have that 8 percent level growth on the rental housing costs.

We, as a Shreve administration, can work with the Department of Metropolitan Development, and with the Department of Business and Neighborhood Services, to streamline, accelerate, rationalize some of the steps and processes that we put the development community through as they attempt to create more housing inventory for our community. Essentially, in my experience – and I do have some experience in working with these departments as both a city member from the commission and on the Metro and Economic Development Committee of the council, but also as a private business person, 30-odd years of doing real estate in and around Marion County – it's unpredictable as to the outcomes. The process is slow. It’s expensive. And all of these cost layers deter more investment in housing in our community. We need to get those out of the way so we can create more of that.

WFYI asked the candidates about equitable neighborhood investment and how the city can ensure residents have access to everything – from food to financial institutions to healthcare.

Hogsett

We work very closely with neighborhood organizations and community groups, number one, who are either concerned about gentrification, or have reason to believe that it may be in process. Look – I always want to be a leader of our city, who's trying to build up new neighborhoods and make more profound investments in neighborhoods, particularly some who have, over time, had a difficult pattern of no investment, and no progress. No new grocery stores or whatever the need may be.

But it is a very delicate balancing act between making sure that new investment is coming to these neighborhoods so that they are revitalized. But the investment is not so significant that the top-end homes are what's left, displacing longtime residents who have called home, that neighborhood home, for some time, but who just simply cannot afford to live there anymore because of the property values.

Shreve

There are certainly great disparities that I see as I move around the townships of Marion County. I will not be able to harmonize – equalize – every part, every township in Marion County. There are going to be wealthy areas, and there are going to be truly challenged parts of our city. But there are programs and pathways that I won't have invented, but will – through my administration – work to thoughtfully borrow from other cities that also wrestled with a lot of these same challenges to bring them into our community.

We have a lot of chatter about food deserts. Well, that's so real. And increasingly I hear talk about pharmacy deserts. And that arises, I think, because of the number of vacant former Walgreens and CVS stores that would have served communities. And they can't all become Dollar Trees. We've got way too many empty, empty Rite Aids to all become Dollar Tree stores.

One of the things that I saw that I think is working well, and there's an example of this on East 38th Street, German Church Road is a DG [Market], so Dollar General foods. And a part of our community where the only other option nearby is a plain Jane convenience store at a Speedway station. And so the residents, both homeowners and apartment dwellers along that corridor, walk on dirt pathways because we don't have sidewalks along 38th Street to the stores for most of their food.

But DG [Market] is something in between that and a Kroger because they have fresh foods, fresh meats and produce. And they've taken over just one of these many disused spaces that we have around our city. I would stand up a program to offer the investor community that wants to bring in a DG [Market] a predictable five-year tax abatement to bring them in and add to that community both the pharmacy element that's gone missing, and access to fresh foods, vegetables, produce, those sorts of things that they can't get – and in bite-size pieces of it that are scattered, located, all around in our city. And we also put dark retail space back into the vibrant property tax rolls. There are practical solutions to some of our problems. And this administration will be shameless in borrowing from solutions and pathways to other opportunities that others have figured out around this country. I will spend a lot of time working with people to find those best ideas, best practices and bring them into our city.

WFYI asked the candidates about the best ways to increase and sustain infrastructure investment.

Hogsett

The truth is, I'm glad that in this year's budget, if it does pass, it includes a $1.2 billion multi-year investment in infrastructure, roads, bridges, sidewalks. Here's what I'm really excited about. Now, first of all, I want to be completely clear to all of your listeners. Mayor Ballard once told me, and a study conducted by an engineering firm confirmed, that if all the roads in Marion County were given the love that they need each and every year, it would be a $1 billion price tag.

And of course, as you know, Jill, our budget this year, if passed, the entirety of the budget is $1.4 to $1.5 billion. So a $1.2 billion infrastructure investment over the course of the next several years will go a long way. But I think I'm proud of that investment. It does go disproportionately to our major thoroughfares, because those are the roads that are used the most, and the most densely traveled. But to their credit, the City-County Council over the last three or four budget cycles, has dedicated more than $100 million to neighborhood and residential streets. Yay! Because the neighbors and the residents really are profoundly impacted by their local roads. And they are pleased that we are making that kind of investment and to shock the conscience of people.

I've been asked several times since I introduced the budget. They said – is it real that there's $3 million in this year's budget for alley repair? That's never been done before in the city of Indianapolis. Now, in the interest of full disclosure, two or $3 million is not going to fix every alley in Indianapolis. But it's the message that that type of investment is sending that we do care about our roadways. We do care about stormwater, we do care about all of the types of interests. Sidewalks. I'm so pleased, and it's kind of one in the same, but the $25 million that has been set aside – matched by the Lilly Endowment, making it a $50 million investment – in new trails and greenspaces and greenways. While that's not infrastructure, as we often think of it, expanding the Monon, building new trails throughout the community, that is important infrastructure investment. Sidewalks in neighborhoods are infrastructure investments, and they're also quality of place and quality of life investments.

So I hope that we're touching several buttons as we are helping rebuild Indianapolis. As a final matter, I'd say that, you know, Indianapolis is challenged because of the type of winters that we experience here. We're in a temperate climate where we don't get the same type of snow events that, at least, we had when I was much younger. I mean, I used to pine for snow days at school. And yet, given the climate change that Indianapolis is experiencing, our winters are largely dominated now by the freeze, thaw, freeze, thaw, freeze, thaw cycle, with literally hundreds of thousands of cars going over the asphalt roadways that we put down. And it's just a very, very difficult challenge to try to keep up with. But the climate is what it is. And so we're dedicating as much money as we possibly can to making sure infrastructure is a top priority.

Shreve

They are in rough shape. This is a happy time of year where roads, especially right before the election, are getting resurfaced and paved. But this doesn't continue. And it doesn't continue at this pace in an off-year cycle, it seems. And rough roads are not only a hassle from a comfort and convenience standpoint. But if you blow a tire or bend a rim, and you're in an income level where you don't have an extra 400 bucks, you can hit the wall at that point. You can't get to work, you may lose your job, you may then lose your apartment.

There are big economic challenges presented by having lousy basic infrastructure. It's the biggest fiscal challenge that a Shreve administration will face. We won't face it alone. But funding the infrastructure – roads, bridges, sidewalks, sanitary lines – to bring it up to an acceptable level in our city is the biggest challenge that we've got to mount.

There's an independent estimate that puts that deficit at about a billion dollars to get us up to acceptable standards. And we, Marion County,  cannot do this, cannot get there on our own. This mayor will work with the mayoral leadership in our donut counties to advocate vigorously with the General Assembly for some rationalized formula for funding or infrastructure. And we're no longer standing on our own, Indianapolis relative to all the other counties – save for perhaps Allen and Vanderburgh – because our challenges are very much like those in Fishers, in Carmel, and Greenwood. And we can work together, unite in ways that the Hogsett administration has not worked actively with, say, the leadership up in Carmel or down in Greenwood or over in Avon to advocate at the other end of Market Street for a rational formula for funding the maintenance of our infrastructure – not just in Marion County but in our region.

Jill, that speaks a lot to the focus on regionalism that will be central to my administration. We will rise and fall as a region. Carmel, Hamilton County – some places are enjoying great growth and opportunity. But that won't be sustainable if we hollow out Indianapolis. So we've got to work differently.

WFYI asked the candidates about efforts to address pedestrian and bicyclist safety in Indianapolis after an increase in accidents.

Hogsett

The administration is dedicated to greater pedestrian safety. As I said, we're expanding our trail network by 20 miles. We have put in new bike lanes, we put in new sidewalks, we have put in, I think, a record number of crosswalks – I'd have to defer to Brandon Herget, the director of the Department of Public Works, to tell you exactly what that number is. But I think it's a significant improvement in crosswalks. And I'm proud to report that we're reimagining our roadways  pursuant to our complete streets policy. And what that means is that –  well, Secretary Buttigieg was here, just several weeks back, bringing a $25 million federal check with him, which I was happy to receive – and we're going to be using that kind of federal support and maybe other federal grants to two-way major thoroughfares downtown.

As they were originally envisioned and built, streets like Michigan and New York and Central – which has now been two-wayed – they were all one-way streets either coming into town or going out of town, which have a lot of pedestrian, cycle-related challenges to them, because people are driving at speeds that are unsafe. And so putting in two-way streets, you know, they exist on Michigan and New York on the west side of town, but we're going to be two-waying both of those streets on the east side of town. And then some of the major north south thoroughfares are also going to have two-way. Which protects bikers, protects pedestrians, protects anybody who's using any other form of multimodal transportation, other than a car.

That's also why I'm pleased that we're investing in our bus rapid transit, and particularly as that relates to your housing question earlier. But also now it becomes a transportation and infrastructure question. The transit-oriented development, which is going up along these bus rapid transit lines, which hopefully – and also going to your affordability question – will allow people to live close to a rapid transit bus line so they can get to and from work in safe ways. Or they can perhaps live downtown in affordable housing, where they can walk to and from work.

I'm very pleased and I've had a lot of good comments about the council's decision to prohibit right turns on red in downtown.  I've had many people come up to me and say we have experienced a fundamentally different approach that drivers use downtown. Instead of blowing into an intersection where a red light is on and you just turn right automatically, you have near misses going down – the number of near misses. So it's all that infrastructure-related investment that will protect cyclists, that will protect walkers, and other forms of multimodal transportation in ways that Indianapolis has never really thought of before.

Shreve

They seem to have spiked acutely. There's been some controversy over the overreach, some might say, from the General Assembly and right turn on red, and so forth. Now, as a former district councilor, it was our practice – council member to council member – to respect and support the proposal that would come forward from a district councilor who wanted to make an intersection control change. And I think it should be that those changes should happen at the councilmanic district. And so I would support and leave that in place, rather than have the General Assembly take an overarching view to what they're going to do in the mile square, the inner loop or whatnot.

There are intersections where sight lines, and they cross points with the Cultural Trail, where it makes sense to have a no right turn on red. And there are others where it doesn't. We have made moving through our city more complicated as we've added bus rapid transit, the floating parking spots in parts of the city, some of which were added when we built out the Blue Line, or rather the Blue Indy infrastructure.

It's complicated, and it will get more complicated, candidly, as some funding comes through to move arterials from one-ways to two-ways, because these are going to be kind of scattershot. It'll be one-way for a stretch, and then roads are gonna go two-way, and then they're gonna go one-way again. And even for those of us that live here, and run up and down our streets every day, the zigging and zagging and trying to keep clear what's what gets challenging, And if you're a visitor coming into our downtown, it can seem crazy convoluted.

WFYI asked the candidates about how they could work effectively with Indiana state lawmakers.

Hogsett

Well, we've got some good news on that front. I'm not saying comprehensive good news…but good news by signals that were sent by the legislature just this last session. A good example is the change in the road funding formula that is driven by the total population of the city of Indianapolis, and not according to the number of people who live in fire service districts, which was the antiquated way of delving out that money, which allowed the state of Indiana to provide the city of Indianapolis with $8 to $10 million more. Now, as I said earlier, it would take a billion dollars to fix everything. So eight to 10 million may not sound like a lot, but it's eight to 10 million that we currently don't have.

And I think that that's a signal that even the Indiana General Assembly, which has historically been, you know, overwhelmed by this trip wire of the rural versus urban divide. I think that there's been a warming of those relationships. And I think this eight to $10 million additional funding is indicative of that.

This goes to your question, maybe even as profoundly, if not more so. This morning, we announced the acquisition of land for a housing hub to be built. Now that is only possible, because in the waning days of the budget cycle, the state of Indiana put $20 million in for a housing hub – or in another way of saying it, a low-barrier shelter – to take care of our neighbors in and around the downtown area, but to involve all of Marion County, who find themselves either chronically or temporarily unsheltered.

And when you add to that the $12 million that the City-County Council has already appropriated, then you're well on your way to having a continuum of care from the early stages of being unsheltered on an emergency and immediate basis. And not just sheltering them for that evening. But actually beginning a process of continuum of care, for those who need to figure out how to get a driver's license, need to figure out how to pay for childcare, need to figure out where to find a job, how to get your records expunged – anything that is keeping people in unsheltered conditions. That $20 million from the Indiana General Assembly will go a long way toward a the first of its kind in Indiana and that is the city and the state cooperating on a low- barrier shelter, housing hub, that I think will move us into our housing first, permanent supportive housing strategy that we've been following for the last four or five years.

Shreve

I would go in with better relationships, in my view. I happen to be Republican, and they have a majority in both chambers down the street. I served with Republican members of the General Assembly that were on the council. And so I go in with those relationships as a starting point, and will be an honest broker.

You know, my agenda is to advance the interests of Indianapolis. And for those in our Marion County delegation, I think I'm going to be able to persuade some that this agenda just makes sense. And if you'll work with me, we're going to lift our region, hand in hand, county, council and state. And so it will be an administration that's heavily invested in relationship building, both with the members at the other end of Market Street, with the mayoral leadership in our peripheral counties, and I will be more invested in the relationships with our council members.

Part of that arises from my having served twice on the council. I don't think Indianapolis has ever had a former council member – current or former member – move into the mayor's office. And in my experience in the Ballard administration, when I was on council and the Hogsett administration, the engagement of the mayor to the council was really limited. It wasn't icy. But, you know, the mayors never stepped into our caucus meetings.

Because I have that respect for the work of the council, and their closeness to their neighborhood issues particularly, I will work vigorously — more actively — with the council members. In an IndyStar candidate panel, someone asked me how I would deal with a Democrat council majority, which we’re almost sure to have. And I said I wouldn't deal with, I'd work with them in the same way I did both times. So Maggie Lewis was our president on my first stint. And Vop Osili was president of the council the second time, and I have a very good working relationship with both and I think that they – I think that continues. I serve with Vop on an IUPUI board, and it’s been good.

WFYI asked the candidates about their greatest accomplishment in public service.

Hogsett

In the first term, I probably would have had to say the building of the Community Justice Campus as the result of comprehensive criminal justice reform. With the number one exhibit down there is the building of the assessment and intervention center, which is designed to keep people out of jail who are struggling with addiction and mental health challenges, or maybe a diagnosed or undiagnosed mental illness. Those people need treatment. They don't need incarceration. And I'm very proud that, I hope, the revolving door of justice in that regard is being slowed considerably. So in term one, it would probably be our criminal justice reform and the Community Justice Campus.

In term two, I think, my greatest personal satisfaction has been being given the opportunity to lead the city I love at a time in its history, when we have faced challenges that the city has never faced before. Now, I'm a historian, not by trade, but by interest. So I can't say that unequivocally, but I dare say, these last three or four years are among the most difficult. And I'm not talking about just Indianapolis. The world faced challenges that it had never faced before. And I'm proud of the fact that, you know, a lot of people would say, ‘Boy, you sure know how to pick them. You picked some of the worst years to be the mayor of this city’. And you heard about it, you know.

I don't look at it that way. I look at it as the opportunity to help my city at a time when it really needed perhaps more help than it's ever needed before. And I'm not saying I did this alone. I mean, Virginia Caine and the business community and everybody came together at a time when we were dealing not only with the pandemic, but with a racial reckoning brought about by the murder of George Floyd and so many other enormous challenges that our city has had to face. I'm very, very pleased that I was given the great honor of leading our city at that time.

Shreve

It would be something really close to home. My mom and dad met at the old Sacred Heart High School on South Meridian street. Now Sacred Heart Parish is still there, but the high school is gone. And that was such a sad, blighted stretch of our Near South Side, what was the old South Side neighborhood. We were able to get a Lift Indy grant for that corridor a couple of years ago. And it just looks a world different, including right in front of Sacred Heart where my mom and dad met. And that's how I came into the world.

And so those small, tangible accomplishments close to home, I would point to that. Bates-Hendricks neighborhood was in my district. We've had terrific improvements there. I was really saddened when the ladies behind Two Chicks and a Hammer decided to give up on Marion County. I will certainly reach back to them and say, look, you know, if I'm lifted into this office, you'll find working with Business and Neighborhood Services to be a very different experience.

And I hope you'll continue to reinvest in our core neighborhoods, such as Bates-Hendricks and the Old Southside, and Fountain Fletcher, because those parts of my district were what we want to see developing and improving in so much of our city and close into downtown.