I'll call this meeting of the Bloomington Commission on Sustainability to order at 6, 07 p.m. And we'll
go through the roll call. Okay, Tara Dunnerdale. Here. Here, Justin Vassel, I'm here, Matt Austin. Present.
Present, zero rows. Not in the room and not online. Okay, Dave Rallo.
Here. Here on Zoom. Quentin Gilley. Here. Here. Alex York. Here. Here. Jamie Scholl. Here. Here.
Evan Nix. I'm here. Here online. OK. Annalise Jenke. Here. Here. Diana Ogrodosky. Here. Here. And Cheng
Weishu. Here. Here online. OK, great. So.
So we've got 12 occupied spots on the commission right now. So that puts our quorum at seven. And then
we've got to have 50% of our members here in person. So that threshold is six. So we're good on both
of those counts. I do want to make a note, as we learned at the last meeting, that the Indiana State
Code stipulates that you can only attend two consecutive meetings virtually and not three or more consecutive meetings.
So that would apply, I think, to two people today. If zero joins up with us, that would apply to him,
and then also as well for Evan. And so the way that we've been doing that is that that does not count
for quorum or in any votes that we take. But even with that, we're good to go on the quorum side of
things. OK, great. So we'll move on to the approval of the agenda.
debating whether I want to suggest that we move some of the important time-sensitive voting things up.
I'm going to move that. So I'm going to move that we at least move up the agenda item 7B, which is the
BCAS-sponsored O'Neill School capstone project, to maybe we'll say after the public comment, before
the report from commissioners. So I'll make that motion.
Okay, we have a second, great. And then when we have people attending virtually, we have to do everything
as a roll call vote. So we will go through with that vote. Okay, so this is on the motion to move agenda
item seven B after agenda item five and before agenda item six. Tara. Yes. Yes. Justin, yes. Matt. Yes.
Yes, and zero still absent, I believe.
Council Member Rallo? Yes. Yes. Quintin? Yes. Yes. Alex? Yes. Yes. Jamie? Yes. Yes. Evan? Yes. Yes.
Oh, yeah. Thanks. I just said that. Annaliese? Yes. Yes. Diana? Yes. Yes. And Shengwei? Yes.
Okay, yes. One, two, three, four, five, six, okay. So we've got 10 yeses. Okay, great. So the amendment
is adopted. Are there any other suggested changes to the agenda as amended? Okay, hearing none, then
we'll vote on the adoption of the agenda as amended. Tara? Yes. Yes. Justin, yes. Matt? Yes.
Councilmember Barallo? Yes. Yes. Quintin? Yes. Yes. Alex? Yes. Yes. Jamie? Yes. Yes. Annalise? Yes.
Yes. Diana? Yes. Yes. Shengwei? Yes. Yes. OK. Perfect. The agenda is adopted. So we're at agenda item
number four, the approval of the minutes. There are two sets of minutes that were circulated,
one for April 8, 2025.
which is a bit of a while ago, so hopefully people had a chance to take a look at that. And September
9th, 2025. So I'm gonna move that we approve both of these all in one fell swoop to reduce the amount
of roll call votes that we have to take. Are there any objections to doing that as a bundle? Okay, hearing
none, is there a motion to adopt both of those minutes or approve both of those minutes, I should say?
Okay, there's a motion and a second?
Perfect, okay. We'll call vote then. Tara? Tara, I'm sorry. Yes. Justin? Yes. Matt? Yes. Yes. Councilmember
Varela? Yes. Yes. Quintin? Yes. Yes. Alex? Abstain. I wasn't on the commission in April, so I have no
input on that aspect. Okay. I think it'll pass fine without me. Fair enough. Abstain. Jamie? Yes. Yes.
Annaliese? Yes. Yes. Diana? Yes. Yes. And Shengwei? Yes. Yes. OK. So that's 9-4, zero against, one abstain.
So those minutes are approved. All right. So that brings us to the public comment portion. So we set
aside about 10 minutes for public comment, up to three minutes per person. Is there anyone from the
public here in the room or either online that would like to address the commission?
Seeing any activity. All right. So then that brings us to agenda item 7B as we amended the agenda. So
let's see. Would it help if I share the packet? Would that be easier? So while I'm getting this pulled
up, maybe Alex, if you want to give an introduction for what this is and what we're asking. Yeah.
So I listened to a podcast in which they were interviewing somebody from Ann Arbor, who in Ann Arbor
had started a sustainable energy utility, which functions as a municipal electric utility that operates
in parallel with the utility on the grid. Ann Arbor evaluated whether that would be a good idea, decided
it would, enabled it through a referendum vote, and they have
since then been implementing it. I've talked about this with some people. It was suggested to me that
an O'Neill capstone course would be a good way to kind of explore the feasibility of the Bloomington
community undertaking a similar action. So I reached out to professors I knew from O'Neill, because
I have two masters from there, and a capstone course has been formed.
There's a memo kind of describing all of this. There's a description of the classwork attached as well.
And yeah, we are looking for the commission's blessing to under go this work where a capstone course
is just looking at, you know, from a wide variety of angles, how practical it is for blooming to do
this. We're also very open to feedback on
Home angles of research home we have a bunch of research questions that we came up with home but if
there'd be things that people think would be useful for the city to know that we're not included home
that would be great to know before we start the research. Okay excellent so so yeah this is something
that doesn't require any
you know, upfront costs on behalf of BCOS or any sort of like material support, right? So we're... Yeah,
there's no cost. It is free consulting. So that's a nice advantage of having this type of program in
our community. It will require somebody to kind of be a point of contact, which I have volunteered to
do given we're heading
creation of this. And I have a connection about those relationships and things. So yeah, there will
be questions at times that I'm sure will have to be kind of the students and their research, I'm sure
will have questions that I may not have all the answers to. And I will have to find the correct people
to get those answers. But I'm signing up to take on that burden. Yeah.
Perfect. So yeah, I want to open it up to the commission to ask questions that they might have. I guess
I'll also note we have Professor John Rupp here, who is the professor who will be leading the capstone.
So if there are questions about how a capstone works, he is going to be a better person to answer that
than I am. Excellent. What's the level of city participation that you're expecting?
In the capstone project, minimal, there will be some questions. I imagine there will be at least one
question I will need to ask you at some point in time. But honestly, it's going to be more looking at
kind of utility. I have some. So the capstones are mandatory for all of our master students.
and they're all applied, practical kind of thing. So a real client, in this case the city, comes in,
and the obligation on the client's part is to agree with the framed question, avail themselves to an
initial presentation. I don't know if that's gonna be you, Alex, or some other saying, here's how we
function, this is the context within which this research question would operate, and then avail themselves
at some point down the, it's a semester long project. So maybe a couple months in, could they meet with
some students and ask some questions of them. Hey, we've come to this place, is this a priority? Do
you think these are avenues we should pursue? We've got these kinds of things. A little bit of a sort
of a guardrails kind of a thing. And then avail themselves to a final presentation and receiver report.
So it's pretty minimal actually on the part of the client.
They just need to be clear about what they want. It's supposed to be a practical. It is a practical.
It emulates reality. And of course, sometimes bad things happen in reality of a consulting firm starts
down one trail and a client says, oh, we're changing course. So one of the things I'd like to not happen
is like three months into it, the city to go, actually, we don't want you to do this. We want you to
do that. That kind of really throws a bugger on them. So that would be sort of a constraint
not do that to the students because they're just learning. There is no budget. There's no extension
of work orders or anything like that. So it's an emulation of a real project with minimal kinds of sort
of consequences. So Alex would be attending those presentations and things because
I let Alex know that we don't have the capacity to be involved with this capstone project. Yeah, it's
pretty minimal, really. I think it's just sort of letting the students know that the avenues that they're
going down, and they'll go down some blind alleys. And I'm a guardrail. I sort of manage them, but they
self-organize. That's part of the drill. And I'll keep them from really sort of running off the edge,
but it's not on the client's watch to do that kind of thing.
And I think the intention is that we as a commission would be sort of the, you know, the client there
playing that role. So like, you know, through our points of contact here through Alex or Annalise or
myself as backups if Alex isn't available. Yeah. In preparation for this meeting, I have to lift up
Alex and my colleague, Nikos Tsiragiannis, and I worked quite diligently on this. I assume this is part
of the five-page full description that's in there.
We would request, this is probably the most work you gotta do. Somebody's gotta look through that and
go, yeah, we like this, or why don't you rank these questions like this, or have you thought about this
and take this out? Just some kind of a tweaking, and then get those comments to Alex, and then we'll
fold those in. And the students are actually getting ready to register for classes. This was a last
minute thing.
They kind of knocked on my door last week and said, can you do this? I said, well, you're six months
late, but we'll do it. So if folks can give feedback to you, then we'll fold that into that description.
And that's kind of the scope of work, kind of. But they'll get refined later. I have two questions.
One is the length of the presentation, the time length, typically done. The other is, when is the deadline
for when you need
further get feedback for review if there's any changes. We need to vote on it tonight because registration.
This class was mostly approved this past Friday, and these types of materials were due two weeks ago.
I think you'll be moderately pleased with it. I don't think it's going to be a trainwreck. As to the
presentation duration,
I like to push the students at 25, 25 at most. If you're longer than 25 minutes, you're long. And then
25 minutes for interaction with the client. So less than an hour. I can speak from my capstone experience.
I'm sure we could have students come to commission meetings as well. I know we did presentations to
people in India at midnight.
That would be really nice if you could structure it so it would be at a commission meeting. It could
obviously be virtual, and or others within the city governance structure that could be of interest to
them. And then, of course, there's obviously, at that time, literally a presentation of a hard topic.
Could be a media presentation or something. Those are details that can be worked out later. Could you
scroll down to research questions, because that's kind of the
first bullets you find. These ones here? Yeah. That's kind of the meat of, are these the correct questions
to be asking? So my question would be, and I think it doesn't seem like it's a lot of data heavy that
you're going to need, right? Or am I wrong about that? Because sometimes that can be the hardest part
on the client side as a consultant.
says, well, can we hire a consultant? Well, even if it's free, it can be a lot of work. But it sounds
like it doesn't look like these are real data-intensive types of questions, maybe. Or maybe I'm wrong.
I would say some of them are. Some of them aren't. One thing to explore would be something like, what
would be a good place for a simple energy utility to start? So that's thinking. The answer is probably like,
supporting, like, utility-owned, installing utility-owned solar and storage at people's houses and connecting
them kind of microgrid style. But to do that, you're going to have to do real financial analysis of
that world. And that's not going to be light on the data. No, that makes sense. And the other question,
and this isn't necessarily a question, maybe we've sort of looked at it, but just a sort of comment would be,
I know that utilities operate in some ways significantly differently from state to state, in some ways
the same. I know what that gap is, what the expectations might be, approaching it in Ann Arbor versus
Michigan versus Indiana, where the sort of things are, we have this regulated mandatory monopoly system here.
That would just be, it'd be interesting to sort of see a little bit of that early on, but yeah. Yeah,
that is, there are a lot of similarities between the two states, but there could be small nuances in
the law that in Michigan they found that they could do this, and Indiana this could be already illegal.
That's what we want to find out. I have two questions, mostly procedural. I read this, but I forget.
Do we need to specify that BCOS is the client here, or that the city is the client? BCOS is specified
as the client. OK. In terms of the research questions, like how
Do we want to spend time, like, wordsmithing research questions, or are you looking more at, like, how
in stone are these once we vote on it? I guess is the question. Like, could the students adjust it?
This is just, like, guiding materials for the students. This is the guiding materials. It's really your
menu. You're setting the menu, and you're setting your priorities on it. I would think of this as, like,
menu for which to choose and prioritize, amplify, and maybe modify, if you so choose, some of the verbiage
there and say, you know, you're really down a trail here. This is a sticking point. Because Alex is
somewhat shooting in the dark here. I mean, he sees a model out there. He thinks, how could it potentially
work in our community and through some things out there? I'm even further in the dark on it. I know
a bit about utility law.
The notion is to do the research to find out what kinds of facets are really important. So really, if
we're going to change research questions to just if something is missing that we think we want to suggest
to the students to choose from? Or if there are things in there that people feel like this isn't an
avenue. Because this is broad. So if there are avenues that aren't worth exploring,
moving research questions would get us more time devoted to the important things. I can get down the
rabbit hole on the research questions, so I'm just looking for some guardrails for myself on what I
should do. Dave's got something. Yeah, Councilmember Rowland, go ahead. May I? Well, one question that
I have that really isn't answered by us as a city as we've been implementing mostly solar energy
in the community is they're probably better framed as rebuildables in the sense that they require complex
global supply chains, a lot of fossil fuel energy, rare earth minerals, and periodic replacement every
20 to 25 years. And so there hasn't been really an attempt to have a full cost accounting of what
renewable energy really consists of. So that's one question I have. Another one is what kind
of infrastructure would be needed to make a dent in our consumption in terms of really providing, augmenting
in a meaningful way our source of energy. So that's what I would have coming out of the gate in terms
of besides the questions that are there, they're very good.
It's a bit different take, but as we expand renewables, we should be aware that really what they are
are rebuildables. They do need energy to make and also that's not really accounted for in their evaluation.
So thanks for that. I just wanted to provide a little bit of context.
to some of the background on this and maybe some of the project management side. Alex is heading this
up, and we talked to one of my lovely colleagues who does community projects with courses. That's her
entire job, or a big part of it. And so I think in maybe our next step after we kind of start on this
will be to have a more
official meeting and really figure out a clear scope of work. And that's already been somewhat stated.
But yeah, we don't have to get everything 100% sorted out right now. And I'm glad to hear that there's
some flexibility with the students. And we can create that clear scope of work as long as we have everything
somewhat included in this. If I may, part of the task is for them to create a scope of work. Amazing.
So I mean, that's like one of the very initial things they do.
I mean, obviously, in concert with the client. But I don't think we want to impose one on top of the
students. It is a way to move ahead. And you could do that, but I think it would be more meaningful
if you included it. Definitely. Thank you for that. This is a procedural question also. When meeting
with the students, are we running into quorum stuff if we are
like, depending on how many of us are present and do we need to think about that, like, either that
they only come to business meetings or working sessions or if there's, yeah. Yeah, I think they would,
you know, when they come to deliver their report, that that would be at a publicly noticed meeting.
It might be a special meeting of some sort or something like that. You know, for kind of day-to-day
stuff or week-by-week stuff, if they have clarifying questions or they're trying to get at kind of what
we're interested in, you know, the way I sort of envision this is that
here what we're gonna vote on is to approve to put our name on this and say, we'll be the client. And
then to sort of delegate some of that authority to these POCs, the couple commissioners here, primarily
Alex, who can then kind of be the representative of the commission and work with them on a week by week
basis when they need things. And if there's some sort of major change to the complete, you know, they
start digging into this, realize they have to go in a completely different direction, then maybe it
comes back to us to revisit as a commission. But otherwise, we kind of just hang tight and wait for
the report to be ready.
Personally, having worked in renewable energy, lived in Austin, Texas, where they have their own utility,
I absolutely love this. I wanted to move off Duke and push the city to have their own utility for a
long time. And I especially like the questions about the microgrids, which are further down. There's
a number of folks in the neighborhoods that have solar renewable energy already. And so looking at potential
neighborhoods that could have a microgrid, I mean, you're talking about sustainability.
climate change and all the nasty storms you have come through. That's really powerful stuff. So I absolutely
love this idea. Absolutely. Just to echo that, I think, well, not that I'm an expert on that, but it
is an amazing learning opportunity, I think, for a student. First of all, I also think that this topic
is representative of the things we need to be discussing. It should be prioritized.
And in the comment on the scope of work, that's really helpful, too. And I appreciate that. And also,
too, as the IU representative on this commission, if there's any way I can help liaison anything, I'd
be happy to help in that capacity, depending on how things work out. But yeah. Is this project, is this
vote subject to the special
bypassing of a first and second rating or is this just a one rating? I'd also like to make one extra
point about the idea of actually implementing this post feasibility study and conversations and everything
that but there is a reality that SB1 passed this year and municipal governments are facing significant
financial shortfalls so
one of the research questions is certainly to look at initial funding sources. Because if our expectation
is that the city of Bloomington provides the funding to start this, I think that there is no way that
it happens. So just recognizing that reality and making sure that we are all aware that the students
should be tasked with looking into that as well. May I ask a couple of questions? Sure. I want to reflect
back on the one.
More than three of you are gathered. Is there some threshold value? Is it more than half? Yeah, if there's
a chance that a quorum could be met, if there's a chance that half plus one could be present, then we're
discussing. The reason I bring that up is we had the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission as a client
twice, three times, I think, before. And part of the learning process for the students was, OK, this
is actually because
when you present, that has to be a public media brand. So it was a learning thing for them. As well
as the second thing I want to ask about was proprietary or confidential information, the idea of data
came up before. So early on, if they are made aware that there are things that are not to be disclosed
and all, that's possible. They can do NDAs. I mean, we did one with Cummins a few years ago. We can.
We can't even reply all to an email. So if there are sensitivity issues, maybe it's not that rigid.
Again, remembering that this is a learning experience for the students. The fundamental thing here is
for them to understand these dynamics that are in play in the real world. Yeah, so I think this is like
a win all around, right?
you know the students get this great opportunity to do this research do their capstone project we get
you know this nice report polish report at the end this this presentation sorry okay and then and then
you know and then we get to decide what to do with that information right because we're going to learn
a lot from that report and maybe
maybe it looks great and we're like, cool, we're ready to make some recommendations based off this report,
or maybe we need to follow some things up, but either way it'll set us off on a good path. It's really
in line with also a lot of the priorities that we set out at the beginning of the year around community
and coalition building and education. So it's stuff we've all said that we want to do as a commission.
All right. I'd like to move us onto the vote, but real quick before I do just want to ask if anyone has any
serious reservations about anything that they've read here that they want to bring up, any concerns
or anything. Okay, great. Then we'll move on to a roll call vote to approve. And again, what we're doing
here is just approving, being able to put the BCOS name on this as a client, right? And then to get
that report at the end and to designate Alex and myself and Annalise as primary and backup, you know,
POCs to liaise with the students when needed. Any questions about what we're voting on? Okay, great.
And we'll go through the roll. Tara. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah. Did you move to? I make a motion to take this
vote. Perfect. We have a motion to second. Thank you very much. Okay. Perfect. Tara. Yes. Yes. Okay.
Justin. Yes. Matt. Yes. Yes. Councilmember Rallo. Yes. Yes. Quintin. Yes. Yes. Alex. Yes.
Yes. Jamie? Yes. Yes. Annalise? Yes. Yes. Diana? Yes. Yes. And Shanghai? Yes. Yes. Perfect.
The ayes have it. So that is approved. And we're very much looking forward to seeing that get off the
ground and for the final report. And thanks, Alex, for taking the initiative on that.
A lot of work in a short amount of time. So that's awesome. Yeah, thank you very much. Yeah, I appreciate
that. One of the things that I love about these kinds of things is to help students get placed. If there's
potentially an internship or something with the city down the trail at the end of it. You get a chance
to look at students. They get a chance to look at you. Yeah. It's a big win. Exactly. Yeah, everybody
wins. Are climate resilience?
There's a lot of city commissions that need a seat. There's always good money there for all the great ideas.
All right well we'll move on then so that brings us back to our normally scheduled agenda items so that
brings us to reports from commissioners and we'll start off with the chair report and I'll probably
go through this fairly quickly so we currently have two vacancies on the org chart we were bidding farewell
to John Eldon who's been with us since December of 2022 so he's been here I think since I know right
he's been here I think since
before I got here. I'm still a scientist. Yeah, yeah. And so he will be very much missed, and I just
want to say thank you to him for his contributions to the commission over the last several years. And
if you know anyone who's interested in serving on the commission, I'd encourage them to submit
an application. We have one application already, actually. Oh, perfect. All right, there's one in the
hopper, so good in here.
Okay, not gonna really dwell on this too much, but just, you know, take a look at this at some point
when you get the chance and if I didn't add something that you sent to me, it probably just got lost
in my infinite inbox and just sent it to me again. I think we're mostly up to date at the moment. Okay,
Working Group Grant Awards.
So we're starting to sweat a little bit. But I think things are moving in the right direction. I've
moved a couple things from the idea column, sort of up to the proposed column, because I hear they're
starting to get closer to a finish line here. So I think we've got sort of two that are in the hopper
that commissioners are working with you guys on to try to get the T's dotted and the I's crossed and
all that. And I just put amounts that I could remember off the top of my head on here. 2100. 2100, okay.
Perfect. So those numbers are not quite totally accurate, but sort of in the ballpark. And I think,
Matt, yours is a little over. OK. Yeah. Excellent. So I think those are, if all goes well, we're hoping
to bring those forward at the next meeting. Any questions about that? OK. Perfect. Upcoming meetings.
Speaking of which.
So we've got a pretty busy meeting today. And then our next meeting is going to be November 18th. And
it's important to remember that because it's not our usual meeting time. And thank you to Jolie for
getting that scheduled for us. I think it was a holiday that our meeting would have landed on. And so
this was rescheduled for a time that worked with most people. I will also point out, just in case anything
comes up that we need to get passed soon before the end of the year or something like that,
It did look like there was decent amount of availability from people on November 4th or November 10th.
If we need to call a special meeting for those times, we could do it. It's just an option. Work sessions,
we've got one coming up on November 4th. I've got that scheduled in the books. I saw on my calendar
that it says election day. I'm not aware of any election that's happening here. So I don't think that'll
be an issue.
But that will be, I'll send out a notice for that, that'll be at the public library again. And I'm guessing
we'll probably talk about the sustainability assessment report, maybe, but. We pushed it from this meeting.
Yeah, yeah. But that's still sort of, you know, there's room for other things. We better serve in December
if we've got two grants to vote on. Sure, yeah, yeah, so it's a fair point.
Yeah, okay, so good. And then that just brings us to the resources page here that I always show. So
if you're not sure where to find something, just go through this packet and these links are all clickable
and stuff. And if something seems like it's missing there, let me know and I'll add it. I also want
to make a quick shout out because we have a birthday. It's this commission's birthday. We are turning 20.
years old. So I think, well, let's see. Here we go. I have the minutes from the first BCOS meeting that
ever happened. It was October 25, 2005, in this room. And there are some notable alums on the attendance
list. So one of them is, of course, Councilmember Rallo, who sort of got this commission going in the
first place, got the ordinance passed that created it.
And then I think for the first couple meetings sort of served as the interim presiding officer of the
commission before a formal chair was chosen. And that first formal chair that was chosen was one John
Hamilton, who ultimately went on to become the mayor. So yeah, some interesting history there.
Around the time that I first joined this commission, I was trying to get some background on kind of
what we've done. And so I went looking for the minutes, but I can only find minutes going back to like
2016 or something on on the city website. And so I did some archaeology on the Internet Archive and
I was able to find most of the minutes and agendas from all the way back to the beginning. So.
I think it's an interesting time to kind of look back a little bit on what the commission has done,
because I think most of us probably couldn't say, you know, what was this commission working on 10 years
ago today, right? And there's probably some good tidbits in there that would be helpful for us to kind
of keep in mind as we do our work. So over the next couple of meetings, I'll probably bring a few interesting
pieces out of the archives to share with folks. And these minutes are all in the shared Google Drive.
So if you ever want to go and just peruse at your leisure, definitely feel free to do that. But yeah,
this first meeting was mostly getting everyone together in the same room and trying to figure out, OK,
what kind of working groups should we have? What kind of things should we tackle first? One of the big
things was,
just process, you know, internal process. How should we organize ourselves? Another one was indicators.
You know, one of the big thrusts early on was that this commission is going to pick out a set of indicators,
metrics that we can track and track those over time and then make recommendations based off of those.
A lot of, you know, what we've done in the earlier sustainability assessment reports was based off of
those indicators. And yeah, so it was mostly just getting organized and kind of getting things up and running.
But yeah, happy birthday to us. I'm sorry I didn't bring cake. Less exciting than that, but what is
the best way if we have templates for the SOP stuff to show them? I built a template for the minutes,
just because I found it's easier than trying to put my notes in a format later that I can share for
whoever besides me is responsible for minutes.
I think for basic template stuff, you can just send it to me, and I'll add it to the Google Drive, and
I'll also send it to you guys, so you can have it on board if you want. And yeah, for things that are
sort of like, you know.
like really official policies that we're all expected to abide by. We probably have to vote on that.
If it's sort of best practices, I think that's fair game to just kind of add it in there. Somebody can
choose to not use it. Right, yeah, exactly. And then I can always make an announcement each meeting
when we have new stuff like that, let people know where to find it and what it is. Question? I was just
going to say, unofficially for the 21st birthday, I might be celebrating down the street here at the
Trojan horse or something. There you go.
There you go. Yep. Perfect. Any other questions about the chair's report before we move on? Excellent.
All righty. That brings us then to Waste Management Working Group report. Matt, what do you have for
us? Yeah. So finishing up the grant, we'll hopefully have it approved, send it in, need a few edits.
So hopefully we'll have it for the working session, for everybody to look over on the fourth. And then
There's the Indiana Composting Council. There's now that nonprofit, which there's 16 states that have
them. There's the overarching US Composting Council. So I think it would be great if the city or other
entities that are looking for members, because they need to fundraise. So that's awesome. And then the
Indian Department of Environmental Management is looking at a new blueprint to replace their long outdated
waste management plan. So I'll send the article out, but that could
that's gonna affect every waste management district in the entire state. So that could have some really
good, there could be mandating of food waste on a commercial scale, things like that. And speaking of
food waste, the CAC has a meeting on, the Citizens' Advisory Committee has a meeting on Thursday, and
I've invited Richland Farms to come down. Richland Farms in April got a permit for vegetative
Composting there's industrial composting which take like two years Vegetative took them only nine months
and they are looking for food waste and so they're specifically looking for Restaurant food waste they
can do more, but they've got 12 gallon and 21 gallon bins and so Please attend the meeting if you'd
like it's 530. Otherwise, it'll be on cats That's Thursday
This is the waste reduction district? Yep. Yeah, it's this Thursday. And so Richland Farms is going
to present for about 20 minutes. They're 90 miles away, but they are more than willing to drive down
here because they were hoping that Lafayette was going to be a good market. Turns out that Lafayette
offers food waste services as a city. And so people were kind of confused when a contractor came in,
private company. And so with restaurants that already participated with Earthkeepers,
seems like a no-brainer. So he would drop off containers, and he would do a one-day a week pickup. And
so I've already seen the operation was up there with the Neon Composting Council. And yeah, he's really
looking for a lot of food waste. So that could be, you know, there's no one single solution to food
waste. There are many different solutions that combine together. And I really see this as one, and he's
looking for it.
I don't have a list of what restaurants were participating previously with Earth Keepers. We've tried
to contact Earth Keepers to find that out. If ESD has any of those lists, please, yes. Yes. How far
are they willing to go? They were willing to go up to Lafayette? Would they go to like? They're 90 miles
away. So they're in Vietersburg, or near Vietersburg. Actually, they're more like Newtown, Indiana.
So yeah, so it's south.
west of Lafayette, or northeast of Terre Haute. But yeah, I've already confirmed with him, talked to
him and his wife, who are both owners. They actually live in Massachusetts. A family farm was gifted
to them, essentially. And so they really want to get this food waste. And they just don't have enough
volume right now.
Is this associated with the city waste group? Is that what you said? No, I'm just having him
do a presentation to the CAC for the waste reduction district. That's the county waste reduction district?
Yeah, county. They're the ones that operate all the recycling centers. Location and time on Thursday?
530, you said? 530 to 630. He's going to start out the meeting, and it's at the other side of the building.
Oh, it's here? Yeah. OK. On the Monroe County side, but it will also be on Zoom or Teams.
So I can send that out, I can email that out as well. So yeah, that is definitely one of the solutions,
besides the fact that I, he was already talking, in talks with Caldwell's, which is out in Shelby County
on a larger scale, and then trying to get in contact with people at Cook, somebody at the waste reduction
district has a contact there, and Cook is looking to take care of their cafeteria food. So I'm hoping
that maybe that could also fit in there.
So we'll see. We will see. We've got a commercial food waste dehydrator coming soon and there's going
to be a lot of back-of-the-house food, dehydrated food scraps. That's back of the house and then this
is front of the house. Oh, they don't want front of the house? No, they'll do front of the house. The
only back-of-the-house stuff they can do is cooked or raw veggies, I think. There's certainly
rules when it comes to vegetative, a vegetative permit that he can't accept and he can't accept. So
he couldn't accept raw meat, but he could accept cooked meat. Yeah, because the location we're starting
out at is an a la carte, so there's a lot of like, kind of like, popular food from... Yeah, and he's
looking for as much as he can get. So, but I mean, he's not, they just started in April, so they don't
have, I mean, he's got a big truck, but he's not
He's not Caldwell's, which could handle all of Monroe County's food waste. Yeah, it might be more than
what we need anyway. Right, so either way, I'm looking at every single avenue possible with that.
So yep, that's enough. Awesome. Thank you. All right. OK, our next item is an update on the Cobb Bench
project from Evan. All right.
So I feel like now's the time to make the announcement that I'm moving from Bloomington. So whatever
the process is for that to depart from the commission, well, Justin and I can talk about that and move
forward with that. But as far as the cop bench goes, I'm wondering if anyone would be interested in
taking over the project manageable
since we have the funding and the location and all of the initiation work done. If anyone would be interested
in that, we could talk. There's some other partners in Bloomington who could help, who have expertise
with CAW and are willing to volunteer to help build it. But someone would need to be the BCAS project
manager. Is anyone interested in that? Don't need to commit now, but if you're interested, you can talk.
Can I ask if any of the funds have been expended yet? None yet. None. OK. When are you moving?
Is it imminent? Very soon, like within the next month. Oh, OK. Yeah. Is there a no-cost extension for
it? Because it has to be completed.
form needs to be completed by the end of this calendar year, correct? That is true. There is a way to
extend. I'm not entirely sure what that full process would be, but I could help with that. Do you have
a contract in place with someone already or anything like that, or no? We have a contract in place with
Red Bud Books.
owner of the building and the manager of Redbud, which is the business that's occupying that space,
have signed contracts, committed to maintaining the bench, and have a network of people who are willing
to show up and help build it. So they have contracts with the construction manager? No, there's not
a contract with a separate construction manager.
project manager need to take on the no-cost extension or are you going to do that before you depart
the commission? I think we'd have to do that before we depart. They would have to do that? Well, are
you interested? Yeah, we'd need someone identified I think before we attempt to do that. So Evan, you've
had a lot of experience with Cobb Bench building and you were sort of the lead on this project. I'm
concerned that there might be other commissioners that really won't be able to fill your shoes.
Mm-hmm. At least for most of the stage now, it is coordination of scheduling with Red Blood Books and
kind of wrangling, which is an unfortunately annoying job. That's the main sticking point, is getting
response and contact. I've been traveling a lot, so I haven't been able to just go there. But if we
set a time for the build, I may be willing to come back
which have to act as, not through VHAS, but could help in the creation of the bench if someone can handle
the admin stuff in the eyes of the commission. I'm trying to remember, is this like a permitted project?
Like it is? No, because it's on the private property. But there's no like, you know, engineering permit?
They have to like call, you know, they gotta call 8-1-1.
to dig, but it's not. But we have called 811 before, and we know that there's no lines underneath the
spot we were planning on building. We have the maps. We would just need to call within two weeks before
the actual digging happens, just because that's protocol. Go ahead. I was going to ask, so who was going
to actually do the building of it, or has that yet been decided?
Is it like a company? I was going to help lead the building as well as Danny Weddle. And then he's got
this company, Tarrin Robotics. And there are some other employees there who seem interested in helping
on the experienced with cop side. And then we have signatures of 30 people, which I know that isn't really
a confirmation that they'll show up, but volunteers. And the way that I've run COD projects in the past
is you just kind of have a training at the beginning of the day. And making the COD is pretty
straightforward, which you know how to get the ratios right and just kind of oversee it. And a lot of
the labor can be done by volunteers. That's helpful. I appreciate the context. Sounds like it's sort
of just like a group project type of deal. How many?
building sessions are there and spread out how far apart? It would probably be over the span of three
different sessions. There would be digging and setting foundation, and then building the bench out of
the foundation in the roof, sorry. And then the posts of the roof would be the structure that we build
the bench around.
then that needs to sit in here for a week or a little bit longer, and then there would be a
day of plastering. If we did have a commissioner or two who decided they really wanted to take this
on and to file for the extension, how far in advance would you need that paperwork?
get really busy at the end of the year, so it would be good to have it by December 1st at the latest.
OK. OK, let's do it. Well, would that extension need to include the names of the new project manager
or managers? Yes. Yeah. And I would want some sort of confirmation from all the partners that they're
still on board. They're OK with this extension. They agree to the timeline, the new timeline. OK.
I have a quick question on the build, having a bit of experience, but it's been some years ago. Not
so much with cob, but straw bale construction, a little bit with cob. It can be done in one day. I know
with straw bale, you need to make two or three passes with your clay over top. So the bench itself?
could be done in a day? I have seen that much material get added in a day. What you might run into is
the weight, like the cob when you're just having it is slightly wet, and the weight can start to compress.
But the height of a bench I have seen done in a day, and that's about the limit. And it's full cob.
There's no straw bale underneath.
to kind of help with the structure. Underneath, we would pour concrete for foundation and then use limestone
rubble at the base. I'm sorry, I didn't explain that correctly.
Like if you're sitting, so if there's like some small, so you can have your straw bale and then your,
so then it's not completely caught, but you have some structure there from say two straw bales or three
straw bales. You have one that's the seat and then you break your straw bale down into smaller bales,
you know, and you flake it off and then put it in like that and then put your cob, you know, slip straw
or whatever
over that so it doesn't fall down. So that could be a way to ensure it's not going to collapse upon
its own weight. Anyway, that's just kind of, I know it's not, I'm not doing the project management,
but it's something to consider when, you know, if it's getting broken down into one or two or three
work days for someone who'd be taking that over.
If we were going to continue and we have to wait until I'm sorry, you can go ahead and respond to that.
Oh, no, just that that's a good idea. I have seen it be not necessary to add a structure in that way.
But that's because part of the bottom of the bench is like stones. So that is kind of taking the rule
that you're saying. Right. Yeah. And just so you know,
The bench also has an arbor on top of it as well, right? Have we missed a window to get this built this
season? Is the ground going to get too cold and then we're going to have to wait until the spring? Yeah,
I think that would be best unless we were doing the build very soon. But yeah, we would need to get
more enthusiastic confirmation
to think that that timeline is realistic. So it would be next year, next spring, probably April at the
earliest in time. I think the cutoff would be mid-November. You know, freezes and moisture and all of
that. That would delay the drying of the clay. So what I recommend, maybe,
open to input on this. I can send around the proposal that they had for this project originally, so
everyone can take a fresh look at it. If anyone reads through it and decides that this is something
they really want to take on, they can make it happen. You can let me know, and we can start to work
out the paperwork to put that extension together. And then when we come back at our November meeting,
we can vote on it, vote to extend formally.
In the meantime, maybe if I don't hear from anybody wanting to take it up within a week or two, then
we just assume that there's nobody to take it up. And we just look into getting the funds returned.
Input on that? Thoughts on that plan? Just so we're not, I don't want to have to rush you guys right
at the end of the year, the busy season, if we don't have to. Yeah.
Do you want me to say by the 31st, respond to you by the 31st if somebody wants to? Yeah, I mean. That's
almost too late, I think. I mean, why don't we say a week? I don't know. I think a week should be enough
time for people to mull it over, and if they're not feeling strongly about it. I'll just put it on the
minutes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. A week from today. That's what I was thinking. OK. Does that seem fair to
everybody? Mm-hmm. Do you think reasonable? OK. Great.
OK, great. Well, thank you, Evan, for that update. I appreciate it. OK, so that brings us to the next
item here, sustainability forum recap. So Shengwei just had his first installment of the sustainability
forum. Just wondering if you could just say a few words about how it went and sort of what you have
planned coming up. Yeah, sure. So we have already, first of all,
Last Friday, I think we had a very good conversation. I met one of my friends, Daniela, who's a data
manager at the Indiana Conservation Voter. So she shared her story, especially some of the turning points,
the way of her source of sustainability. I think that's a very good way to educate the public
or any people or stakeholder who are interested in sustainability. And we also got some support from
Julia and Sean and some other friends who attended the forum last Friday. And I think in the future
I'm going to, especially because there were not many people to attend, especially from the local community.
I think in the future, maybe I will reach out to the public library and maybe have some like our next
forum at the public library. So that's the main, local people can attend. Also, I will reach out to
some of the student association, IU, to attend that forum as well.
But overall, I think it was a very good conversation. And the people who attended that forum, they raised
questions and the engagements were very good. So I think I will continue to do this. And also, I encourage
other commissioners can join me. We can also host our next forum. It's good. Yeah. That's all. Thank you.
Excellent. Thank you. And yeah, once you have that next date, let me know and I can push out a notice
far in advance so that we don't have any quorum issues, even though it's not a formal meeting. Great.
Any questions about the sustainability forums? All right. Sounds good. Well, thanks so much. And I'm
definitely looking forward to attending the next one. It seems really cool. OK. Sorry. I'm so sorry.
I just wondered if you could
tries to stop sharing and then reshare, just like a start and stop again. I can't really tell on my
end. I'm just like, what's wrong? Thank you. Turn it off and turn it on again. Yeah, exactly. Real quick,
when is Evan's last meeting? Well, yeah, so he said within the next month. So I think that might be,
are you leaving Bloomington before November 18th? Evan? Yeah, I'm currently in Portland.
And I decided that I'm just going to stay here. So the closing of my lease and stuff like that is handled
by my friends to help move out and stuff like this. But I'm not in Bloomington right now. Could you
write us an email? We just need a letter of resignation to forward to the police office. Sure. OK, thank you.
still bouncing around or is it? It looks pretty stable for the moment. I'm just not going to touch it.
Okay, that brings us to a report from council. Councilmember Rall. I really don't have a report this
evening so I'll pass unless you have any questions. Okay, easy peasy. Does anyone have any questions?
All righty.
Moving on. Okay, so that brings us to 7A, which is the resilience strategy that Jamie's been working
on. We sent out a spreadsheet that people could copy and then put comments into and then send back.
And so I sent out what I had received so far from that, which I don't have in front of me, but it was
only one comment so far. It is a pretty lengthy document, so it does take a little time to kind of think about.
So I think ultimately, Jamie, your goal with that is this might be something that we would endorse as
a commission at some point once it's in a form that everyone's happy with. So I imagine we'll probably
go through multiple rounds of this process. We've got the one comment in the spreadsheet that you can
start working on now, but maybe I'll open it up for just a couple minutes for any other commissioners
who want to
you know, share their thoughts or recommendations with what they've read so far while we're all here.
This is something we can also workshop at the working group meetings as well. Can we use the same link?
Like, it's not a new one for each round of comments, right? Yeah, you can just use the same one. Unless,
let me think. I suppose if the comments
from the first round get incorporated, then I'd need to send out the new version of the, you know. But
I think for now you could probably operate off. Since you only have the one. Yeah. I left a comment
that was really just a clarifying question. It might not be anything incorporated. So I can ask that
here and maybe we can clear it. It was about, and I'm trying to remember the wording, but basically,
you know, growing,
edible landscaping in places where like rain water is collected and things like that or like in public
spaces. And I was just curious if there have ever been any sanitation concerns with that or any issues
that we could run into in that realm when having edible landscaping in those kinds of areas. I'm not
sure where in this document. Okay, let me go find it. That is...
Lines 442 and 443. I can pull that up quick. And please let me know if I've misunderstood what was in
there. Right here. Stream medians and storm water retention areas. For what it's worth, I took a
urban foraging class sponsored by Parks and Rec in Bloomington. And the city staffer who led it took
us through, I think it was RCA Park, and we foraged edible things. And one of the questions that came
up was around pesticide. And she said that that's a reasonable concern with urban foraging, especially
if you're foraging somewhere. And she said the city is very good about
signage when they, they have pretty minimal use of pesticides in general in the city parks and that
they're very good about marking it when they're doing like honeysuckle invasives or anything. I mean,
this is information like fully, like as a private citizen, I was in this class, but that's the only,
but it is something that like the city has sponsored before that like, if you find food in the parks,
you can eat it.
Yeah. And I have seen the actual signage outside of the community orchard where they did some spraying.
I was like, whoa. So I did see the signage. OK. Awesome. Thank you. They also use, sometimes they'll
use, it's got a blue dye to it so that you can actually see what plants have even been treated. But
it's not recommended to forage in an area where there's been any pesticide. Yeah. And some of this,
I think, if I
It's been a little while since I've written this. I think I might have been thinking of cattails. You
can use different parts of a cattail plant. So with the shoots, it would not be in the water. That's
like a griffy. You can find them there. But you have to be careful if
say, in highways and interstates because sand or the salts and things get in it. But in the city, we
do have so many more codes. And like Tara said, the signage that I think it's something that could be
incorporated. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, that was really my only concern. I think I've actually taken
two origin classes with Parks and Rec that let me think about it. One at Griffey and one at RCA.
I want a median only foraging class. Median? I don't think I would. OK, well, thank you. I appreciate
it. I was just wondering, I think this would be a good topic to workshop. Knowing specifically why or
why not we don't have that, I think, is a good thing to know.
As for what we're doing that I think Starting off sort of heading into that and I thought about it as
soon as we you mentioned it earlier was You know, we're 20 years old At some point in their time. They
decided to cause the Commission on sustainability I'd want to know because sustainability and resiliency
has been talked about since day one Like that's you know intertwined like you use resiliency as a term
to describe sustainability in the built environment It'd be great to go back and see what day
if there's anything in there that might give us an indication of why, because I feel like... I do have
kind of an answer to that. You do? I do. Well, yeah, I mean, I think that either way, I feel like I
could argue in support of this for an hour, or I can argue against it. It's almost like there's a lot
there. For an edible green infrastructure, like on edible trees? You're talking about the resiliency of the...
of the, was this the right thing? Never mind, I thought we were talking about resiliency. Oh, is this
the resolution that you're looking at? Oh yeah, hold that thought. I apologize. Yeah, well I think we
could, you know, we can work on the document a little bit more at the working group session where we
can kind of have more time to fluidly go through it and just kind of discuss.
Yeah, put that on the list. And for those who want to go through it, and it may be good to just go through
a section. Because if you go through everything, it does get into a lot of detail at some points. When
you go through, say, the first section and then the timeline, it allows you to stop and think through.
It took me a while to figure out a timeline, like an implementation, and how these things could fit together.
So it may take a little processing time to kind of do short little snack bites, sort of, and then make
some comments. All right, thanks. Thank you. All right, that brings us to 7C, the working group.
grants for the sustainability education outreach. Did you have anything you wanted to say about that
this meeting, Tara? Yeah, well, just so people know what it is. So I wrote a grant, a working group
grant proposal, which I've sent to Sean and Jolie. They've reviewed it. They came back with some questions
that I've answered. I think what is still outstanding is maybe some questions for the city attorneys
to figure out if this is for sure something that could be approved.
But we talked about this at a working session as an idea. But it is a grant to increase our education
and outreach efforts next year in 2026. So we did one event. We did Earth Day. And Quinn and I were
both there. We talked between 50 and 100 people. I counted the stickers. But a lot of people came and
talked and didn't put a sticker for the priorities voting.
But it's to buy some materials, so get us a tablecloth so that we are not, it's not just me and a piece
of poster board, some table stands for materials, printing for educational materials, and then ordering
custom seed packets that would have our logo and a link to our website, the BCOS website, so that people
can come to meetings or read our minutes, whatever, maybe a QR code.
And I've budgeted for ordering 750 of those. They would be native seeds from Roundstone, which is located
in Kentucky. I priced it out with a few different companies. The prices are pretty comparable across,
but Roundstone is in Kentucky, just south of the border, just very northern Kentucky. So their eco type is very,
similar to ours so those are the ones that are most likely to have successful germination and survive.
But just as like a way of like instead of handing out a flyer or handing out like native pollinator
seeds to people as a way of communicating, the proposal is that we would decide as a commission in a
working session in our priorities working session early in the year what events we want to target with
a goal of being at at least three events and trying to
interact with at least 250 members of the public over the course of the year. So one of the things in
there is a clear counter so we can keep track of how many people we talk to and how many seed packets
we give out and a plastic storage bin to store everything so that whoever is the person who's there
can carry it easily and it can be
shared. One thing that I learned through this is I was like, well, what if we buy all this stuff secondhand?
But we can't do that because I've got to have receipts that say, like an invoice that says what it is.
So that's why it's new materials, even though that's not the most sustainable option. I did think about
that. But because we have to deal with the city government and laws and accounting, we're not going
to do that. That's about it. Yeah.
The details of how we would select those events are in there, but just prioritizing events where it's
free for us to be there, things that are aligned with our priorities, or places where commissioners
would already be, like if the other grant, the Bokashi Grant Project 2.0, being at that event because
it was already, things like that. And it's $2,100.
is the budget. So as I think we talked about before, I was hoping this year for the Earth Day event
that we could do a fix-it clinic, or mending clothes, personal items people bring in, watches, or whatever,
and not actually necessarily do it ourselves. Provide some materials for people, buttons, so someone
gets what not.
I think it'd be a great way to kind of, it kind of hits on reducing waste socioeconomically. It hits
on all those things. I think people would get a kick out of it, too. I use acquired, like, a traveling
fix-it clinic. I'm thinking, like, if there was a way for me to get that there, and I participated,
if there was a way to kind of piggyback on messaging around, like, urban, if we could get space, I'd
love to do something like that.
I think that expanding on what we have at our table and what we offer is always, I don't think, as long
as there's no additional cost beyond the cost of the grant, I think we can do whatever we want. I put
in some money for printing costs too.
But yeah, we could add things like that when we decide on the priorities, I think, as long as it's not
an additional cost for the grant. This is just so that we have something. Because literally, when I
did Earth Day, I had a poster board and a bunch of stickers and two QNFC tags. It was real. It was rough.
You did great. I agree. All we might need to do that is a little bit more space.
That's the only thing. We can talk about that. Well, for Earth Day, we just have to ask Julia to put
our tables next to each other. That's what happens when we have a good thing. And yeah, awesome. Perfect.
Yeah, if we could just know how much room something would take up. Since last year, it rained out, like
the pavilion was completely full. And I'm trying to make sure it's not so loud and crowded and everything.
And I want to make sure we have that.
So somebody else who was there last year might drop out. Maybe we'll have plenty of room. And we promise
next year the music, it's either going to be outside or no music. I promise. I've done the same thing
and it's too loud on the inside. It was really, it was echoing. Yeah, it was echoing. You're adjusting.
I could use it to be an harp or something.
So I think the plan is to bring it for vote to the commission at the next meeting.
updated materials with all the feedback from Sean and Jolie already to them for review. So if there's
additional stuff that comes back from legal, I'll incorporate that in and have it at the next meeting.
Yeah, clarification on that by the end of the week, just to make sure. But great idea. Thank you. Awesome.
Thank you, everybody. That's good. Okay, great. That's the goal.
Okay so that brings us to item 9a which is a first reading of resolution 2025-04 to recommend adding
resilience to the commission's name. I'll pull it up here so it's on the screen and Jamie sent around
a memo with it but this is the text of the resolution. So just as a reminder this is a first reading
we're not really debating the merits of the resolution here it's really just a vote to advance it to
the second reading which is where we'll actually discuss it
you know, what we think, debate, offer up amendments and that sort of thing. So with that said, is there
anyone who'd like to offer a motion to advance this to the second reading? I'll make a motion. I didn't
know if we were going to, because Clinton had a... No, I was going to vote to...
taking you out. Great. Perfect. All right. Well, I have a motion. Councilor Barallo in a second from
you, Matt. Perfect. All right. Is there any discussion? So going off what you said earlier, it can be
argued either way. But since sending this out and seeing our political climate and being aware of what
is being said,
and how that's affecting many of us, if not all of us, some of us in stronger ways than the other, that
adding the word resilience when it's becoming so politicized. If I'm seeing Joel Salaton talking more
about resilience, and that's leaning one way compared to sustainability, which is leaning another, and
what we're experiencing now to add resilience, even though it's
part of sustainability, I think will be help us to remain relevant in this group, this commission remain
relevant in no matter in how things may change in the future. And we're in quite volatile times. And
I just think this is a good move. I know Dave has, he's a founder.
I wanted to have it as part of this as well. Perfect. Well, yeah, we'll have it on the- David has his
hand up. Thank you. Yeah, Councilmember Rallo, go ahead. Well, I don't know if it's appropriate since
we're not really debating this now, but just to say that I like the idea. I think that resilience is
implicit in sustainability, but it provides a clarification anticipating numerous shocks coming that
Jamie made explicit in the materials. Yeah, question. I just want to comment on the name. Right now
it's B cause and that will be BSRC. So I'd say Boundary Commission on Sustainability and Resilience
or otherwise it's BSRC. So just a thought. I like B cores.
We should move on with the with the vote here so this is to advance it to the second reading so you
don't have to be for it if you're against it you can still vote yes just to bring it to the next meeting
OK. Tara? Yes. Yes. Justin, yes. Matt? Yes. Yes. Councilmember Rallo? Yes. Yes. Quintin? Yes. Yes. Alex?
Yes. Yes. Jamie? Yes. Yes. Annaliese? Yes. Yes. Diana? Yes. Yes. Shenghuai? Yes. Yes. OK, perfect. It
advances to the next reading, so we'll see that at the next meeting.
All right, then that brings us to the report from staff liaison. Hand it over to you, Shawn. I don't
really have anything to talk about. Maybe the spooktacular, the remaining activities with the sustainability
spooktacular? Yeah, the sustainability spooktacular events. It's just been partnering with the community
organizations. And the remaining event after this is a tree planted with canopy Bloomington, the new
west side one.
Actually, that's fall. They've been filled up with volunteers, so that's really encouraging. But there
will be a block party in Butler Park on October 25th, following that, to kind of celebrate the progress
on the Near West side. What park did you say? Butler Park. Butler Park is called Sustainability Boot?
Sustainability Spooktacular. This is amazing. I'll be there. OK, awesome.
A few food trucks and busmen's holiday will be there. But outdoors, they'll be playing. Yeah, outdoors.
Outdoors, right. I guess one big piece of good news is our Bloomington Green Helm Improvement Program.
The rebates was full. It's complete. So we expended the whole budget. That means numerous Bloomington
homeowners have chosen a heat pump, or gone solar, or installed batteries. We had 33.
rebates this year, and many of them were quite big because it was the solar and the batteries going
in, lots of people pairing them. So yeah, successful. Have you received any sustainable neighborhood
grant applications? No, we actually haven't. We've had a lot of questions, clarifying questions about
how to approach it, which have been great, but no applications yet. Hopefully soon. That's a lot more
questions you've had previously, interest.
Yeah. Yeah, and all our neighborhood. I say this is myself and not a commissioner has offered that will
share like our grant application materials and everything because Megan did such a good job on like.
Navigating all of that that will share like our proposal and plan with any other neighborhoods that
want to replicate what we did. Perfect. Thank you very much. We have
Just under a minute left for member announcements. Is there anything anyone wants to announce, promote?
November 4th is another workshop at the community orchard on Bokashi. I think that's nice. Awesome,
if you'd like to learn how to ferment food waste. November 4th. November 4th. I think it's 1 to 2.30.
It's on the community orchards.
Facebook page as well. Do that and come to the working session. She's been having raccoons in her compost
pile. So she puts stuff in there whenever they want. So yeah, this will take care of that issue. Awesome.
Cool. Well, I'll just remind everyone the working work session on November 4th at the library. I'll
send out a notice for that. And then remember, our next regular meeting is November 18th, which is sort
of off cycle. Great. And that brings us to 730. So we stand adjourned.