The Sunday Post - Feb 15, 2026: The $20M YMCA Reality, Housing Baselines, IMPD Staffing, and Brookville Road
- Michael-Paul Hart
- 1 day ago
- 6 min read
A weekly report from Councilor Michael-Paul Hart — Building the Smartest City in America.
Volume 2, Issue 7
YMCA Meeting: A $20M Reality
This week, I had all the right people in the same room, on short notice, for a conversation Indy should have started years ago.
We hosted a working session at the Indy Chamber with leadership from:
The City of Indianapolis (Chief of Staff Chris Bailey, Deputy Mayor of Operations Shea Joyce, Council CFO Candace Harris, and Council Chief of Staff Doran Moreland
The YMCA of Greater Indianapolis (including their CEO and senior team)
Hancock Health (including their CEO and senior team)
SmartIndy (Kelsey Cook of https://www.kelseycookandco.com/)
Why this meeting mattered
Indianapolis talks about health like it is only a “doctor visit” problem.
But the healthiest communities treat health like infrastructure, the same way we treat roads, public safety, and utilities.
Hancock County is proof. They have built a Direct Primary Care (DPC) model that is producing serious results, and it is a big reason they rank among the healthiest counties in the nation.
The big idea: DPC plus the YMCA
Here was the concept I wanted City leadership to see clearly:
If Indy built a stronger DPC model and used YMCA locations as the hub for prevention, fitness, nutrition, and coaching, we could create a system that actually changes outcomes.
Not just bloodwork once a year.
A real lifestyle model that reduces chronic disease, lowers claims costs over time, and improves quality of life.
That is what the Smartest City in America does. It measures what matters and builds systems that scale.
What we learned in the room
The City already has a DPC vendor. Indianapolis currently contracts with Marathon Health. The challenge is that it functions like a traditional clinic model. It is not built around community-based prevention.
The contract timeline matters.The current agreement appears to run through 2027, which means any major change has to align with the City’s future RFP cycle.
That helps long-term planning, but it does not solve the short-term problem at Ransburg.
Hancock offered the next step. Hancock Health offered to help analyze Indy employee claims and rates to show what cost savings could look like with a stronger, more holistic model.
That is a serious offer. It moves this from “a good idea” to a real business case.
The hard truth about saving Ransburg
I pushed for clarity on whether a short-term bridge funding path could buy time.
Here is what I learned: the YMCA is not pursuing a gap-funding approach for Ransburg.
Instead, the only strategy they consider viable is a trust or endowment-style solution:
$25M trust earning 4%, or
$20M trust earning 5%
…to generate roughly $1M annually to sustain the facility.
And with the March 31 deadline, the impact will hit families fast.
Where I am going from here
This process opened my eyes. There is real value coming from Ransburg, and Indy has not taken prevention seriously enough.
I am going to keep pushing this conversation forward because the next YMCA should not be allowed to drift toward crisis with no plan.
My focus is bigger than one building:
Building a scalable prevention model that improves employee health, strengthens neighborhood access, and increases life expectancy across Indianapolis.
SmartIndy: Housing and Homelessness Committee Progress Update
This week the SmartIndy Housing and Homelessness Committee met, and we are doing something Indy desperately needs:
We are building the baseline.
Before a city can fix housing and homelessness, it has to answer one simple question:
Where are we right now, and how do we measure progress year over year?
What we are building
Our first project is a set of clear, repeatable benchmarks aligned to the IMD Smart City Index standards. This matters because Indy needs to stop debating housing with vibes and start tracking it like a serious city.
The committee is working toward a public-facing dashboard at SmartIndy.org that will show the “current state” of housing and homelessness in Indianapolis using reliable data sources.
The benchmarks we are using
Here are the core metrics we are baselining:
Housing cost burden: % of renters spending over 30% of income on housing
Perceived affordability: do residents believe affordable housing is actually attainable
Homelessness rate: people experiencing homelessness per 10,000 residents (PIT Count)
Unsheltered share: how many are outside versus in shelter
Time to stable housing: how fast the system moves people back into housing
Net affordable units added: annual change in units affordable at or below 60% AMI, including permanent supportive housing
What the data is already telling us so far
A few numbers should stop us in our tracks:
2025 PIT Count: at least 1,815 neighbors experiencing homelessness in Marion County
1,325 in emergency shelter (73%)
159 in transitional housing (9%)
331 unsheltered (18%)
Rental pressure is real: a major local report shows half of renters in Marion County are cost-burdened, and a quarter are severely cost-burdened (spending 50%+ of income on housing).
Supportive housing inventory: Marion County has 16 permanent supportive housing projects totaling 841 development units, with 832 of those LIHTC-restricted units.
This is exactly why we are building the dashboard. People deserve to see the full picture, clearly.
Want to join the committee?
We meet on the second Thursday of every month.
If you are a builder, a data person, a housing professional, a nonprofit leader, or just someone who wants Indy to operate like the Smartest City in America, reach out and I will connect you.
Also, I am going to post a short document library on SmartIndy.org so residents can review the sources we are using while we build the dashboard.
New IMPD Chief Confirmation Hearing: What I Put on the Record
On Wednesday, the Council’s Public Safety Committee advanced the appointment of Chief Tanya Terry. This now heads to a full Council vote for confirmation.
At confirmations like this, every councilor gets time to speak. I used my time to focus on the issue that matters most to the safety of our neighborhoods:
Recruiting and retaining IMPD officers.
At the end of last year, IMPD had about 1,380 officers.
The City budgets for 1,740.
That is a deficit of roughly 360 officers, and the trend has been moving the wrong direction for years.
That staffing gap means:
more strain on officers
higher burnout risk
slower response times
less proactive policing
higher safety risk for the whole city
What I asked for
I pushed for two things:
A clear strategy to improve staffing
A measurable goal with quarterly reporting back to the Council
If Indy wants to be the Smartest City in America, we cannot manage public safety with vague promises. We need targets, progress tracking, and public accountability.
Brookville Road: First Step Passed to Protect Quality of Life
Good news this week: the Brookville Road cleanup effort took a real step forward. The
committee passed the first step toward restricting parking on Brookville Road to reduce congestion and improve safety.
When I originally raised this, I focused on the stretch between Hunter Road and I-465.
After review, the City’s traffic team expanded the scope farther down Brookville, including areas that reach into District 14.
Public thanks where it is due
I want to thank Councilor Andy Nielsen for signing on as a co-sponsor and supporting this effort. This is what good council work looks like: collaboration that protects neighborhoods.
Why this matters right now
Brookville has seen a major increase in truck traffic and spillover congestion, especially with the USPS logistics hub near Arlington and Brookville.
My job is to protect the quality of life for the people who live in District 20 and the surrounding area. A councilor’s decisions shape a community for years. This is one of those decisions.
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