Ballard Offers Revised Rebuild Indy 2 Plan

Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard is scaling down a plan to pay for infrastructure projects in the city.

Since August, he has been promoting the proposal called Rebuild Indy 2, but Friday offered a revised version as a way to increase support for it.

“We have asked the Council majority to provide input on our plan for months without a response,” said Mayor Ballard. “This plan includes suggestions made by the general public and is a fiscally responsible way to invest $300 million in street, sidewalk, bridge and park improvements without a tax increase.”

The original Rebuild Indy 2 plan was for $350 million and included a 30-year, $150 million loan.

But, some councilors, mostly Democrats, questioned the proposal because of how much the city had to borrow.

The new version is for $300 million and includes a 20-year, $105 million loan.

Council Minority Leader Mike McQuillen thinks the revised plan is more likely to garner bipartisan support.

"The thing that I like about this plan is that it takes out a couple of the big concerns that a couple of the councilors had.  The biggest one being the length of the term of the loan," he said.  "The plan doesn't do quite as much as the original plan.  Instead of doing $350 million it does $300 million, but that is still about a third of our big needs list so I think it makes it a much more likely to pass plan."

But, Council Vice President John Barth says Democrats plan to introduce an alternative plan in the coming weeks and thinks the council ultimately will approve a compromise of the two.

"There will be a much more reasonable amount of borrowing, but we will be able to leverage other funds to spend more than $300 million," said Barth.  "We have to be as creative as we possibly can and that's why I think the plan that the council democrats will put forward soon will show that we do have some opportunities for spending revenue from non-traditional sources that we can invest all across the city."

The revised Rebuild Indy 2 proposal will be introduced at the council’s June 23 meeting.