Meet the candidates for City-County Council District 23

Two candidates are running for Indianapolis City-County Council District 23: Republican Derek Cahill and Democrat Ryan Hughey. 

Cahill, 45, ran unopposed in the May primary. He is a sales project manager and the Perry Township Republican Club President. 

Hughey, 31, filed to run for the District 23 seat in June. He is an HP repair technician and worked five years in information technology for Marion County. 

WFYI and the Indianapolis Recorder sent each of the candidates six questions to help voters learn more. Their answers are presented in alphabetical order.

Editors’ note: Responses were edited for style and grammar, and any numbers used were checked for accuracy. When a statement required more clarification or could not be independently verified, WFYI reached out to candidates before publication. Those instances, and those candidate responses, are noted throughout in editors’ notes, marked by an * and presented in italics.

Early voting started Oct. 11. Election Day is Nov. 7. 

DEREK CAHILL

What are the top concerns that your district’s constituents have shared with you, and what are the issues that you foresee affecting them most in the next two to three years? 

The top concern I have heard is the ongoing crime and particularly violent crime but also the increasing homelessness issues that are prevalent throughout the city. Infrastructure and quality of life are additional issues with underfunded roads and the near-complete lack of pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure on the Southside of Indianapolis. And the final concern I hear the most are growing commercial vacancies and the lack of services including mental health services indicating a serious need for economic redevelopment efforts to re-attract businesses.

Affordable housing is a major issue in Indianapolis. What measures should the council take to address this?

Council should look at the totality of the impact of zoning requests by engaging with concerned parties such as school districts and included towns and excluded cities.

What is your top concern regarding public safety in Indianapolis? What steps will you take as a council member to address it?

Retention of law enforcement officers is a serious concern as it impacts our ability to solve and prevent crime. I have a proposal to implement anonymous employee engagement surveys widely used in the private sector that will reduce turnover by predicting where we have high risk of loss and identifying concrete actions that we can take to prevent those losses proactively.

What specific steps will you take to address environmental concerns in your district that affect your constituents’ quality of life and life expectancy?

We need to do a better job of building multi-modal infrastructure on the south side. Biking and walking are often not practical options even for short trips because of a lack of investment in infrastructure. We need to leverage partnerships between neighborhood associations, grants and health care dollars that can make this happen despite the challenges Indianapolis has with road funding.

What specific steps will you take to connect minority-owned businesses in Indianapolis with contracts for city projects? How else will you support growth opportunities for minority-owned businesses?

Perry Township is one of the most diverse areas in Indiana. I have several close connections in the Chin/Burmese communities and they have great resources in helping to train and place people eager to work into jobs and I would help them to become aware of needs and to be in a position to bid on them. The local Chin Burmese North America group has a bold vision to create a large multi-use zone to include businesses. I support their efforts to make this project come to fruition.

What would you like to see happen for K-12 education in Indianapolis, and how would you work as a city-county councilor to achieve that? 

K-12 is very important to me. I have two children in K-12 myself and my wife works in K-12. Excluding the charter schools, K-12 is primarily handled by the elected school board members and I would leave that to their expertise. I think there are opportunities for us to engage the school board and ensure that they have the resources that they need from the City-County government to be successful.

RYAN HUGHEY

What are the top concerns that your district’s constituents have shared with you, and what are the issues that you foresee affecting them most in the next two to three years? 

After spending time canvassing and speaking to folks in my daily life, besides housing the next major issue has been childcare. With work life going back to the pre-2020 days, a lot of people are struggling to find child care while being able to maintain their current work schedule. It's either too expensive or there simply isn't the capacity for all of the families that need it. Secondary to that has been our transportation infrastructure. That has multiple facets: street maintenance, sidewalk and bike lane access, and traffic law enforcement. As an anecdotal example, I was knocking doors on Keystone Avenue where there is no sidewalk, which made me feel very unsafe walking the road. While speaking to someone about her concerns, there were multiple cars that sped by, and even passed on this two lane road, in ways that were astoundingly dangerous. For normal people just trying to get by, relatable issues such as these are the real concerns. To succinctly state the effect in the next few years, I believe the south side is at risk of being left behind in infrastructure and IndyGo improvements.

Affordable housing is a major issue in Indianapolis. What measures should the council take to address this?

Affordable housing is the number one issue for anyone I've been able to meet. Personally, I rented an apartment three years ago for $700 that is now going for $1,000. My pay hasn't increased almost 40% like rent has and it hasn't for anyone else.* There needs to be serious conversation about revising our zoning laws to ensure they aren't strangling the building of new homes and even looking at policies such as mandatory parking minimums to ensure we aren't sacrificing usable areas to an asphalt wasteland. While rent control sounds very appealing in this situation, I believe we need to incentivize more affordable house development and de-incentivize the purchase of housing for the use of rentals.

*Editor’s note: This report from the U.S. Census Bureau shows more than 40% of renters spend more than 30% of their income on rent.  

What is your top concern regarding public safety in Indianapolis? What steps will you take as a council member to address it?

My top concern for public safety lies with our drug crisis. It would benefit Indianapolis greatly to employ more social workers whose roles would be interacting with non-violent calls such as those involving overdoses or mental health crises. We've seen this benefit cities such as Eugene, OR, Alexandria, KY, and even Bloomington, IN. Their success is something we can easily point to and draw from to create a template that will succeed in our city. Rather than punishing people we can try to address the root of these issues. When needs are met, crime goes down. Simple as.

What specific steps will you take to address environmental concerns in your district that affect your constituents’ quality of life and life expectancy?

A good place to start is to look at what is currently in place and ensure that it's being enforced properly. Almost no ecological impact is created at the individual level, which means we need to hold larger entities and systems accountable for significant environmental changes.

Making our city easier to transport without cars, as I talked about earlier, is another great way to start reducing our impact on the environment. Better messaging and encouraging public engagement with Thrive Indianapolis would help the citizens be more mindful of their part they can play. Even something such as protecting more land or creating wildlife corridors is a way that not only benefits our local ecosystem but also makes the city more beautiful.

What specific steps will you take to connect minority-owned businesses in Indianapolis with contracts for city projects? How else will you support growth opportunities for minority-owned businesses?

My answer for both of these questions would start with engaging the Indy Black Chamber of Commerce as their mission is to help black and minority businesses. Instead of trying to come up with something on my own, reaching out to groups like them that specialize in this would be a major boon in targeting specific areas that would benefit minority businesses the most. The city has a goal for hiring from minority-owned businesses, but it doesn't mean much if not all of them are aware of the opportunity. Further support needs to come in the form of capacity building such as offering training programs, workshops, and seminars. Again, leveraging existing groups to provide this to the community would go a long way in effective change.

What would you like to see happen for K-12 education in Indianapolis, and how would you work as a city-county councilor to achieve that? 

An absolutely critical priority is to promote teacher recruitment and retention. Teachers nationwide are not compensated anywhere close to properly and it's discussed as if there is some elusive way to resolve this. It's simple: pay our teachers more. In that same thought, we also need to ensure their supplies don't come out of pocket. Education is not something we can put on the back burner. We need to ensure students are engaged, understand why they're learning the things they are, and be supported by a faculty that isn't threadbare and only passing. In my previous job, I worked with a teacher who helped me understand the realities of what our teachers endure. They are the front-line for many home issues these children face. They are the people who will help students find that interest in learning. We take teachers for granted and it's going to come back to bite us far sooner than later.