Jackie Nytes leaving her mark on City-County Council and Mapleton-Fall Creek

When Jackie Nytes is introduced these days, she’s described as the new chief executive officer of the Indianapolis

Jackie Nytes served 12 years on the City-County Council.

Public Library.

But as most eyes are focused on the door that’s opening for the long-time Mapleton-Fall Creek resident, there are also two doors that are swinging in the opposite direction. As she prepares to return to the library system she once served as associate director and chief financial officer, Nytes is ending two tenures:

- As executive director of the Mapleton-Fall Creek Development Corp., a post she has held the past four years.

- As a member of the Indianapolis and Marion County City-County Council, where she served 12 years representing the very diverse District 9. That district includes all or parts of several Urban Times neighborhoods, including St. Joseph, Chatham Arch, Old Northside, Herron-Morton Place, Fall Creek Place, Meridian Park and Watson-McCord.

Nytes, whose background in financial management put her at the forefront of many key city issues, leaves city government proud of several key accomplishments, especially in some areas where she said “we made some tough choices.”

Chief among those was the sale of the water company to Citizens Energy Group and the creation of Fall Creek Place.

Nytes said earlier in her tenure she voted for the city to buy the water company, “and at the end of the day I voted to sell it.” She said her earlier vote came because the water company was on the block and she believed the City needed to buy it to keep it out of the wrong hands. “But we experienced difficulty running it.” She said the idea was to put the operation one step away from the political process – “but that wasn’t enough.” Now, she believes it is in the right hands with Citizens, a nonprofit charitable trust.

As for Fall Creek Place, Nytes said City leaders were correct in “being willing to do a large-scale urban re-investment.” Fortunately, she said, the first several phases of that project occurred while the housing market was still hot. She said many people don’t fully appreciate what that project did to the tax base. She said the convention industry uses a term, “heads in beds,” which also applies to the whole city.

Jackie Nytes speaks during a program marking one of her favorite Mapleton-Fall Creek success stories – the house at 2930 Park Ave. which was the first home sold in the neighborhood after renovation funded through the Neighborhood Stabilization Program.

But Nytes had the most direct impact on two very divergent issues – human rights and local taxing. “There are two pieces of specific legislation I feel awfully good about,” she said – the human rights ordinance and the County Option Income Tax.

As for the former, Nytes, a Democrat, and Scott Keller, a Republican, sponsored a change in the City’s Human Rights Ordinance, adding both “sexual orientation” and “gender identity”’ as protected classes from discrimination in employment and housing in Indianapolis.

It was not without controversy – but none like that generated by an increase in the County Option Income Tax. Nytes’s strong advocacy of that change brought her a lot of heat from her own party, but she remains convinced that the move was necessary because local government was far too dependent upon property taxes. “We needed to diversify funding for local government,” she said, noting that the County Option Income Tax hadn’t been changed in years, and that nearly all other Central Indiana taxing districts had taken advantage of higher rates allowed by the State. “It was an opportunity to look at an alternative way of funding local government,” she said. “We have a shrinking property tax base, and needed to diversity. I am proud of having helped fight that fight.”

Nytes said one determining factor in her decision to champion that cause was because the end result was for the “common good.” She holds that term dear. “I hang a lot of my votes on that.” Another example – the Duvall work release program, which many people felt was located too close to the Windsor Park neighborhood. Nytes said the community needs to successfully move people from prisons back into society – and that programs to accomplish that goal must be located close to services such as public transportation and jobs.

Taking a broader look at her dozen years on the City-County Council, Nytes said, “It has been fun to look at the neighborhoods and see how much many of them have accomplished together. She praised residents of neighborhoods such as Chatham Arch, the Old Northside and Herron-Morton. “People came together, and nobody wrote them a blank check. It makes you realize the power of people banding together to get something done.” A lot of home tours, she observed.

Nytes was able to experience that on a more first-hand basis when she took the job four years ago leading the Mapleton-Fall Creek Development Corp. It was, she said, an exciting chapter in her life. It was also a job in her own backyard. She and her husband, Michael O’Brien, lived at 3510 N. Pennsylvania St. in 1977, after which they bought an abandoned house at 3009 N. Pennsylvania St. No doors, no plumbing. In 1982 they moved to 3110 on the same street, before moving in 2006 to their current house on Washington Boulevard in Meridian Park, restoring a grand home which had been converted to business use for many years. For that restoration, the couple earned an award from the Historic Landmarks Foundation of Indiana.

“I had the chance to do full-time in a small neighborhood the kind of stuff I wanted to have every neighborhood do in my district,” she said. Mapleton-Fall Creek became a laboratory for those ideas. While progress hasn’t come at quite the pace she had hoped, she draws solace from remembering that the urban pioneers who turned around the historic Downtown neighborhoods didn’t accomplish that goal overnight. She draws comparisons between the current Mapleton-Fall Creek pocket park effort to the Old Northside Foundation’s successful efforts to create Great Oak Commons and Shawn Grove Park. If Nytes leaves with one unfilled goal, though, it’s that another $100,000 is needed to fund the park project, despite the 50-percent tax credit available.

She noted that the Mapleton-Fall Creek effort has evolved into a “most holistic discussion about what it takes for a neighborhood to succeed, such as schools. She said successful neighborhoods also have parks, shopping, walkability – “and jobs, so that people can make their lives here. Districts are the healthiest when they’ve got a more complex array of things going on.”

She is optimistic that the Mapleton-Fall Creek community will continue to improve, citing the work now being done on a Quality of Life Plan, a step which played a vital role in the recent progress being made on the Near Eastside.

She is optimistic that the Mapleton-Fall Creek Development Corp. will continue strong after she cleans out her desk. “They’ve got a good board that is really vested,” she said, as well as good partners with financial clout. “And the residents are stepping it up.”

Not that the work will be easy. Progress has been too slow to hold people in the neighborhood or attract enough new residents and businesses. The development corporation itself had caused some problems through poor management of properties it owns, a situation Nytes believes was solved through a partnership with the Whitsett Group that led to the revitalization of 50 units of rental housing.

She said federal funding through the Neighborhood Stabilization Program has jump-started some programs, but progress remains slow because the housing market has not rebounded. “But I’m not complaining,” she said. “We got a solid start.”

She remains buoyed by the spirit she sees in the neighborhoods. “At the very grassroots,” Nytes said, “you’ve got people struggling to make their rent payments, but also people working with other bright people interested in making sustainable neighborhoods.”

As Nytes winds down her time at the Mapleton-Fall Creek organization, she has thought about how her experience there and on the City-County Council has played into her return to a world with which she is very familiar. She began as a public librarian in 1975 and led the Carmel-Clay Public Library from 1981 to 1988.

“A sabbatical can be a good thing,” she said, noting that her time working with neighborhoods as city-county councilor and at the development corporation has given her a different perspective. “I’ve come to see the value neighborhoods and the community place on their individual libraries,” she said.

At this writing, a formal date for her ascension to the library throne had not been determined. She expected to make the move soon after the first of the year. And while she winds down her time at Mapleton-Fall Creek Development Corp., there is a sense of some wistfulness. Not so much with the City-County Council.

“When you’re a veteran on the council,” she said, “the days seem shorter because there are so many more people you need to talk to, so many more issues you track, so many more meetings.” By the 12th year, she said, she felt like she was only getting to a fourth of the meetings she should have – yet she was going to as many as ever.

She is also a bit tired of hearing people demand their streets and sidewalks be repaired. “They want everything from local government,” she said,, “and property tax caps at the same time.”

Despite that bit of cynicism, Nytes is bullish on the system and the city.

“We have a really good city,” she said. “I really think so. There are a lot of folks running things really well, making many of the changes that will make that better.”

- Bill Brooks