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Carmel mayor launches IdeasforChange pilot, seeks resident input to shape small‑business priorities
Summary
Mayor announced ideasforchange.org/carmel, a pilot platform where residents and business owners can submit and vote on ideas to help local businesses; the city will narrow high‑support ideas after a July 6 review and convene a 100‑person representative panel to vet top proposals.
Mayor (representing the City of Carmel) asked attendees to participate in a new pilot that will collect community ideas aimed at helping small businesses. "We're gonna come to a screen, and you're gonna be able to do two things: add ideas you have to make our business community better, and upvote or downvote the ideas that are there," the mayor said, noting the local link ideasforchange.org/carmel.
The mayor reported that "currently there are 77 ideas on the platform and 5,584 upvotes or downvotes," and said the city will review submissions through a July 6 cutoff to identify items with broad support. Those ideas, he said, would be winnowed into a shorter list the city can pursue: "They're gonna take all of these ideas and call us around the ones that have broad support… and they're gonna give me a list of… 10 or 12."
He described the next step as recruiting roughly 100 paid, demographically representative residents to evaluate and refine the top ideas in an anonymous online process. "We need about 100 residents pulled together who broadly represent our demographics… and they're gonna come into an anonymous online platform, get paid to do that, and then talk through those few that we call that have broad support," he said.
The mayor urged business owners to both submit ideas and volunteer to help implement promising proposals. He also asked businesses to use city recognitions — for example the city’s recent ‘‘best place to live’’ badge — in their own marketing and to share stories the city can amplify.
In the same session the mayor addressed longer‑term redevelopment and infrastructure topics relevant to local business capacity. He said a developer is in due diligence on the former Conseco ("C & O") site—about 68 acres—and described potential uses including a conference hotel, mixed‑use offices and residential. "If they get through that process, then we start with entitlements, zoning… so stay tuned on that," he said.
On transportation, the mayor said the city has funded the first phase of a multi‑phase trail project tied to a new Veterans Park and that more difficult east–west segments will follow as land is acquired. He raised public safety as a top concern for the community, warning about both physical security and financial fraud: "Public safety. Hands down. That is my biggest concern," he said, and urged residents to talk with seniors about scam awareness.
The mayor closed by inviting input via the platform and by email (mayor@Carmel.in.gov), and asked attendees to consider partnering with the city or the chamber to promote local businesses. The meeting included a short raffle and networking time after the mayor’s remarks.
