Incorrect Indianapolis city limits

[Minh_Nguyen (Minh Nguyễn)]

The plot thickens.

The original Unigov Act had this to say about the status of the included towns:

SEC. 406. Included Towns, Conservancy Districts. The powers of all Included Towns and any Conservancy District located in whole or in part within the boundaries of the Consolidated City, including, but not limited to their respective powers with respect to streets, roads, sidewalks and sewers, shall be unchanged by this Act, except that no such Town or district shall have the right to issue general obligation bonds or enforce a regulation or ordinance within the county which is in conflict with or permits a lesser standard than any ordinance of the Consolidated City which is also applicable.

Indiana Code subsections 36-3-1-4(a–b) has this to say about the consolidated city’s territory:

Sec. 4. (a) When a first class city becomes a consolidated city,^[1] the first class city is abolished as a separate entity, and the territory of the consolidated city includes:

(1) all the territory that comprised the first class city before it became a consolidated city; and
(2) all other territory in the county except territory of an excluded city.

However, certain departments and special taxing districts of the consolidated city may have jurisdiction as provided by law over more or less territory than that inside the boundaries of the consolidated city.

(b) The consolidated city is known as “City of ______,” with the name of the first class city inserted in the blank.

---

1. Editor’s note: Indianapolis was the only city of the first class as of 1969. ↩︎

[kucai]

a side question: how do you guys get the boundary coordinates over there, helpful local governments willing to share? In my country, as best I can tell, all drawn boundaries are s.w.a.g mostly - nobody really knows for certain.

[Minh_Nguyen (Minh Nguyễn)]

This is the story across the U.S. in general:

@Minh_Nguyen

In OSM, county boundaries were imported from a USGS dataset, including Marion County (as admin_level=6), while municipal boundaries were imported from TIGER.

As works of the U.S. federal government, both datasets are in the public domain, but both are extremely crude. USGS is good data but it’s simplified for low zoom levels, while the TIGER was hallucinating before artificial intelligence made it cool. In some other states, subsequent imports have replaced these geometries with higher-quality datasets from state and county GIS departments. This tends to be in states that have similarly generous public records laws, where the government doesn’t treat GIS data as a profit center “because the taxpayers have already paid for it”.

Unfortunately, Indiana is not one of them: last I checked, the state’s public records laws basically give the public the right to inspect public records on a particular computer in Indianapolis, forget about copying, and I’m only barely exaggerating. IndyGIS has an open data portal, but I’m not sure we can import the boundary dataset, which comes with self-contradictory terms:

There are no restrictions on the use of Data provided via data download, map or service; any data derived from the Data must acknowledge the City of Indianapolis/Marion County, IN.

Another common source of boundaries is the Caltopo layer in editor-layer-index, which is a curated set of old USGS topographic maps (federal work, public domain). Older series contained comprehensive coverage of city limits, survey lines, and notable property lines. Unfortunately, the world has changed since they stopped publishing such detailed maps, so these maps are more appropriate for OpenHistoricalMap:

Georgia unincorporated areas

Just picking at random, Wesley was apparently drawn by hand based on an old USGS topographic map that likely didn’t reflect the town’s 1995 disincorporation. Since there isn’t even a CDP, the boundary could in principle be deleted, although it wouldn’t be terribly problematic to keep it as a boundary=place relation if people still use the old circle town’s extent in some manner, or if there are unincorporated community signs corresponding to the old town limit.

For individual boundaries, some mappers have gone through the trouble of looking up the legal boundary descriptions in old legal journals and mapped the boundaries based on those descriptions. This requires some skill and background research, and it’s the sort of thing OHM does as well. As with any edict of government, the text of these laws don’t enjoy copyright protection in the U.S.

[stevea]

Ladies and gentlemen, I gotta say it: let’s hear it for our OSM master himself, Minh, (Applause). My thanks are 100% genuine “aw, garshk, he rocks!” and truly heartfelt.

Yup, USGS topo maps (and curations) are old data when it comes to governmental boundaries. This is especially true for more recently-created “within our lifetimes” (newer, usually created quite deliberately for particular reasons) boundaries.

Minh, others and I have been following (and OSM benefits from) what happened in California (a somewhat landmark case) that put public government (like county GIS departments) data into a “help yourself” bowl. And OSM has been absorbing them ever since…mm, that’s turned into more like “carefully curate from them.” California also has fantastic public protected area boundaries in our state, (thanks to GreenInfo Network) Indiana might, too. It can be surprising what “feathering the edges” of an edge or boundary someplace can do “from the outside in.” I have seen polygons improve, razor sharp, it’s neat to see in OSM.

Y’know: for places and populated areas, start with a node at the center, work your way outward. I know we all want to stand on our toes and reach some Unigov-available-ODBL-friendly data nirvana, OK, though, maybe not quite by tomorrow afternoon, that’s OK with me, but it’s a great finish line to be seeing ahead.

Really, I think if we were to do as we do with AASHTO or CPAD data (I’m being California-in-OSM-ish as I say that) and wiki Contributors-acknowledge (it’s done all over Earth), Unigov GIS (sounds like a radio station!) that would likely suffice, though, best to ask them first. OSM does get “yes,” though not always. There is a way to phrase it to them that is a sort of gentle ask. Start with “it seems like saying yes to us is what you mean, right?” Maybe, it is. My opinion, any citizen of Indiana can have these for the asking.

And again, Minh is correct: we can always have these data, as they are ours. (We, the People).

This is awesome.

Clap, clap, clap, hurrah, Minh. You are a superstar.

[stevea]

@Minh_Nguyen

“City of ______,”

So, Indianapolis is a CCC as the “successor” city? (Which fills in the Indiana Code subsection?)

Seems like Marion at 6, Indianapolis at 8. Certainly not co-extensive. (Table said they were, table now says no, they’re not). The next and final column (Emerged) was Merged, now is Unclear. But maybe, just maybe what we’re trying to say, and right there in the Merged column, is “Merged into Unigov.”

Yes?

[Minh_Nguyen (Minh Nguyễn)]

@stevea

So, Indianapolis is a CCC as the “successor” city? (Which fills in the Indiana Code subsection?)

Seems like Marion at 6, Indianapolis at 8.

This just means the City of Indianapolis, a consolidated city, is the successor to the City of Indianapolis, a city of the first class that no longer exists. The county still has a weak government. Unigov is complicated and doesn’t really fit in any box we’d want to put it in.

[stevea]

OK, Marion County at 6, Indianapolis at 8, which is consolidated with Marion County in unique ways. Unigov is how the 6 and the 8 (and other jurisdictions) share various local governance jurisdictions and taxing authorities (dozens of them and dozens of them, respectively). OSM doesn’t really model / tag / denote such “internal gearworks” of CCCs, while our tagging acknowledge that Indianapolis and Marion County (and environs) “work together” in a unique sort of government we are happy to tag 6, 8 and that there is something merged together called Unigov…then we dust our hands with it. Such internal government workings aren’t for OSM to further denote.

Yes?

Next?

[Minh_Nguyen (Minh Nguyễn)]

Yes, all that remains is the little detail of Indianapolis’ territory legally overlapping that of the included towns after all.

[stevea]

I feel like we have gotten a lot done. Kudos to all for research and patience!

I am reminded that that indigenous people have “a parallel sovereign jurisdiction” that OSM (and admin_level) really can’t adequately model. That’s reality.

[ZeLonewolf (Brian M Sperlongano)]

Just remember that what we’re tagging is territory, not governments. The topology of the territory is pretty well described here, and the mechanics of the governments don’t matter too much. The city and county aren’t even the same shape, which makes this real easy.

Edit: I also don’t fully understand the overlapping issues.

[Minh_Nguyen (Minh Nguyễn)]

@ZeLonewolf

I also don’t fully understand the overlapping issues.

Based on the statutes, the Indianapolis city limits explicitly equals Marion County minus the excluded cities and towns. That is, an included town is not an enclave, and the city limit splits Cumberland down the middle. Also based on the statutes, an included town is subordinate to Indianapolis but otherwise remains a full-fledged town, in the same sense that it’s subordinate to a township but remains a full-fledged town.

IC 36-3-1-7 Excluded cities; included towns

Sec. 7. (a) A municipality, other than a first class city, having a population of more than five thousand (5,000) in the county is known as an excluded city and does not become part of the consolidated city under this chapter. In addition, a municipality that had qualified as an excluded city before January 1, 1973, under IC 18-4-1-2(d) (repealed September 1, 1981), is considered an excluded city. Any other municipality is known as an included town and does become part of the consolidated city under this chapter.

(b) This article applies to any part of an included town that is inside the county boundaries, even though part of it is outside those boundaries.

IC 36-3-1-11 Effect of change on political subdivisions in county; continuation of powers and rights

Sec. 11. Political subdivisions in the county are not affected when a first class city becomes a consolidated city, except to the extent that this title limits their functions or transfers them to the consolidated city. Such a political subdivision continues to have:

• (1) the power to levy and collect property taxes in furtherance of functions not transferred to the consolidated city; and

• (2) if applicable, the power to adopt and enforce ordinances prescribing a penalty for violation.

In addition, an excluded city or included town continues to have the right to receive distributions of revenues collected by the state, in the manner prescribed by statute, including distributions from the motor vehicle highway account, the cigarette tax fund, alcoholic beverage fees, and other tax revenues.

IC 36-3-2-5 Included town; home rule powers; restrictions; annexation of territory

Sec. 5. (a) An included town has home rule powers under IC 36-1-3, including all the powers that municipalities of its class have according to law. However, an included town may not:

• (1) enforce an ordinance or regulation that is in conflict with or permits a lesser standard than an applicable ordinance or regulation of the consolidated city; or

• (2) issue general obligation bonds.

(b) An included town that wants to annex territory inside the county may annex only territory that is outside the corporate boundaries of the excluded cities in the county. This subsection applies notwithstanding IC 36-4-3-2; however:

• (1) the included town must follow the procedures prescribed by IC 36-4-3 for other annexations; and

• (2) all territory annexed under this subsection remains part of the consolidated city.

(c) An included town that wants to annex territory outside the county may do so in any manner prescribed by IC 36-4-3.

Taken together, these laws would suggest an admin_level=* tag greater than 7 and less than 8 for Indianapolis. Between those two integers, there are an infinite number of numbers to choose from.

On the other hand, in practice, the Indianapolis government seems to consistently present all the included towns as enclaves. Is this a mistake? Have we ever come across another case in which a jurisdiction intentionally claims less territory than it’s legally entitled to?

Ironically, the Encyclopedia of Indianapolis notes that not every included town still has an active functioning government. In some rump towns, the city has stepped in to serve as the town government too – a consolidated town-city-county, if you will. Perhaps this is unsurprising, since most of the included towns are essentially residential subdivisions that would have nothing more than an HOA in most of the country.

[stevea]

@ZeLonewolf

I also don’t fully understand the overlapping issues.

My understanding is that part of what is going on is Indianapolis (at 8) overlaps geographically, but not necessarily for exactly the same governance and/or tax-authority issues. So, because one 8 does “this and these” and an overlapping 8 does “that and those,” they can overlap geographically but not necessarily governmentally.

I know, I know: all of this makes my head explode at least every few years. I am grateful to all of us in this project who are able to communicate what is right about these and those with each other so we can all stay sane; thank you.

[Minh_Nguyen (Minh Nguyễn)]

@Minh_Nguyen

I’ve also updated the relevant Wikidata items to point to the correct relations. All together, that should fix the infobox in Wikipedia’s “Indianapolis” article:

And after: