Actually it's the City-County Council's Economic Development Committee.

Chair Maggie Lewis called the meeting to order at 5:30 p.m. on the nose.[

They shifted the agenda to open with a proposal to amend to City Market Redevelopment Area. It will be a two-year process.

It is an office conversion project, changing the building from office/commercial to residential/office, along with extensive public facilities.

Converting office/commmercial to residential comes with some challenges.

Th "Gold" Building is a two-year project. The plaza and market house should take one year. The plan is for the Gold building later this year. The other two will start next year. The plan is to finish them all at the same time.

The plan calls for more than 300 housing units. Of those, 10 percent are set to be "affordable" or workforce housing."

At least part of the project will be done through Tax Increment Financing. That means the developer gets a tax break for providing affordable housing as part of the project.

The committee voted unanimously to send the project to the City-County Council for further study and possible approval.

The Department of Metropolitan Development made its initial budget proposal.

It includes several items, led by DMD land bank to building affordable housing and continue to address homelessness and affordable housing.

Right now, DMD has 370 Permanent Supportive Housing to help people who are homeless. Right now, they have 17 bridge units - housing homeless people. They expect that to double to 34 units next year.

Redevelopment and Environmental Justice is a DMD program that focuses on troubled and/or abandoned properties, redeveloping them.

Some of their work is focused on their transportation development overlay, in which they encourage development along transportation corridors that are currently available.

They'll bring the current land bank, an affordable housing tool, into the Department of Metropolitan Development. It's an effort to streamline the process.

Committee Member Derek Cahill pointed to an 885 acre project on Indy's west side north of the airport. He urged the DMD to exert the same type of energy on the east side.

At 6:23 p.m. they moved to their last agenda item, the Department of Business and Neighborhood services.

The BNS department has issued 20,990 permits. They issue permits in about 10 days. For comparison, Denver takes about 30 days just to take an initial look at a permit request.

That's 20,990 permits in the past 12 months.

Indianapolis Animal Care Services is aiming to become a separate organization, out from under the Metropolitan Economic Development umbrella.

Their people are passionate about their work.

They have adopted 1,700 animals out this year. Their adoption rate is 87 percent.

Their staff is practically superhuman, especially in the face of some of the withering criticism they get from social media, in person and other means.

Animal Care Services is already functioning as a division/department. Being their own department would mean their time would be spent on the ACS mission, and not on other things that overlap into other departments.

Committee Member Jerry Evans said gets the meanest emails from people angry about more universal issues, such as euthanizing animals.

Indianapolis Animal Care Services adopts out around 90 percent of the animals that come to them.

A new program is in place that eliminates arbitrary rejections by trying to match a pet with a family. A good match reduces euthanizing animals.

It turns out that only two staffers were making arbitrary rejections of people who applied to adopt pets. They've been put on probation.

Marion County Surveyor Debra Jenkins has held the office since 2008. The department's total budget is $1.01 million.

Their revenue is slightly more than that.

Their average staffer has been with the surveyor's office for seven years.

The staff is 11 people.

They're trying to increase their public profile. To do that they want to add social media management for their department.

Jenkins and her staff were named the Indiana public employee of the year last year, an award that had never been bestowed on a surveyor.

Among her other state and national work, Jenkins was named to the National Large Urban County Caucus, which has 450 members. Only she and one other person are from Marion County.

Jenkins lauded the department's training and education program. "I come from organized labor and what we're doing is essentially an apprentice program," Jenkins said.

The meeting adjourned at 7:38 p.m.