- All right. Well, we'll get started. I'll call this meeting of the Bloomington Commission on Sustainability
- to order at 6 PM. And we'll go through the roll call. Tara Dunderdale. Here. Here. Justin Vassel.
- I'm here. Matt Austin. Present. Present. Zero Rose. Not present. Zach, is it Ammerman or Ammerman? Ammerman.
- Ammerman. I'm here. Perfect. Here. Katsima Varela. I'm here. Here. Quentin Gilley.
- here. Ross Carlson? Here. Here. Alex York? Not here. Jamie Scholl? Here. Here. Annalise Jenke? Not here.
- Diana Agrodowsky? Not here. And Shenghuai Xu? Here. Here. All right. We have eight people, and they're
- all in person, so we have a quorum.
- Okay, we will move on to the approval of the agenda. Is there a motion to approve the agenda? Motion
- to approve. All right, and a second? A correction to the agenda? Not the agenda, sorry. The meeting
- minutes. Okay, and we've got Alex and Quinton, Cheyenne and us.
- All right, so we have a motion to approve the agenda. Is there a second? Second. There's a second. Okay,
- is there any changes to be made to the agenda? All right. Since we have everybody in person, we could
- do this by a voice vote. So all those in favor of approving the agenda, say aye. Aye. All opposed, nay.
- Any abstentions? All right, the agenda is approved. That brings us to the approval of the minutes from
- November 18th, 2025.
- I could share my screen here to pull those up since we'll have a suggested change.
- have it so are there any suggested corrections to the minutes okay yeah so we could we can go through
- and correct all those instances any other corrections
- There was a misspelling somewhere. There was a couple of words put together. I don't remember exactly
- where. The gist of everything still flows fine. Okay. I think any purely grammatical things can probably
- get touched up. I guess the only one I have is here in number three with these placeholders here. So
- I think that just needs to be replaced with approve the agenda.
- The date of the meeting? It was November 18th. Alright, any other corrections to the minutes? Okay,
- do I have a motion to approve the minutes as they would be corrected given the changes we just made?
- Okay, perfect. All right, all those in favor, say aye. Aye. All opposed, nay. Any abstentions? I will
- abstain since I wasn't part of the commission. Okay, fair enough, one abstention. All right, the minutes
- are approved as amended, I guess, as corrected, I'll say. Okay, so that brings us to
- Public comment. So we've got about 10 minutes set aside for this, up to three minutes per person. Is
- there any member of the public either here in the room or on Zoom that would like to comment? We'll
- maybe start here in the room. I'm not seeing any motion here. Is there anyone else online? I don't think
- so. Nope. All right. Moving right along. That brings us to reports from commissioners. So we'll start
- with the chair report.
- legible okay try to keep this a little more condensed this time into fewer slides so this is the organization
- chart looks a little different than the last time you've seen it first I want to point out the the yellow
- items on the list there so those are folks who have their terms ending as of January 31st 2026 so if
- If your name is in yellow there and you're still interested in serving on the commission for another
- term, then if you haven't done so already, you should go to the onboard site or commission's webpage
- and click the apply button and fill out the form there. I've got a link in the slides here that'll send
- you there. Does anyone have any questions about that process for the appointment? Okay. And yeah, we've
- had a couple of...
- of other changes on the on the org chart here. So for farewells we have Nix who is with us since August
- 2024 until last month and so just want to express my thanks to him for for his time serving
- on the commission. He did a lot of work getting the the Cobb bench proposal you know put together and
- and getting the ball rolling on that project and that took a lot of vision and a lot of work to get
- done and so
- I definitely appreciate his contributions to the commission while he was here. And then we have two
- new commissioners with us today, Zach Ammerman and Ross Carlson. And usually when we have new folks,
- we just ask them to kind of introduce themselves, maybe say something about their interest in sustainability
- and any other relevant information you want to provide. So maybe we'll start with you, Zach. Yes, sure.
- So I'm Zach Ammerman.
- I actually just recently moved back to Bloomington after 10 years away in DC. I am very interested in
- sustainable transportation in particular, but not only a lot of other issues as well, wildlife protection,
- biodiversity protection, things like that. I'm a graphic designer. I don't know if that's what people
- normally say during this. But I'm a graphic designer. I specialize in maps, cartography, and
- data visualization. Yeah, I don't know what else to say really. I think that pretty much settles it,
- I guess. Perfect. Welcome.
- Ross Carlson, I'm the appointee from Monroe County. I work with Monroe County Stormwater. I have a background
- with the state, local, and county now levels of government doing water management, water characterization.
- So that's my main kind of focus as it relates to sustainability, but also have a lot of background in
- organic gardening and food security. So I'd like to bring some of that knowledge.
- as well. Excellent. Well, welcome to the commission. We're very glad to have you. And yeah, if you have
- questions as you start to learn the ropes and stuff, don't hesitate to send me an email or Sean and
- Jolie as well. And the nice thing is we'll be going through our sort of annual priority setting process
- here soon, so that'll be a good, it's a good time to get plugged in. Okay, any questions about the org
- chart stuff before we move on to general updates?
- Okay, first thing is just the meeting schedule for 2026. So I've put all the regular meetings, second
- Tuesday of the month on here in bold. I did a quick check to make sure there were no holidays or things
- like that that might interfere with them. But if anyone knows of something, let me know. And I've also
- put tentative work sessions on here. So we don't do every single work session every month.
- It kind of depends, but if we were to do that, this is probably what the schedule would look like with
- maybe some minor changes. So just to kind of give everyone a heads up and put it on your calendars.
- Yeah. I don't know if everybody knows this, but the city's BCOS website has a calendar that you can
- subscribe to so that when the meeting gets noticed, it'll show up on your calendar or it'll show up
- on a calendar.
- Yeah, it's like a Google Calendar kind of thing, right? Yeah, that's a good point. And then similarly,
- if we have a work session, those have to also be noticed. So basically, as soon as Justin puts the notice
- in for anything where there's a risk of a quorum, that'll then automatically show up on your calendar.
- It's very handy. I should probably do that, too, because I do it by hand. It hasn't failed yet,
- but someday. Yeah, no, thank you. That's helpful.
- And at the end of this report slide deck, I have some useful hyperlinks and stuff like that. And one
- of them will send you to the commission website where you can find that. Okay, so I tried to take all
- the news and updates from within the commission and beyond and
- slammed it all into one single slide, instead of doing it over several. So we'll see how this goes.
- If you hate the format, let me know. But I've sort of split it up into a couple of different buckets
- here. So just ongoing recent stuff within the commission here. So BCOS resolution 2025-04 is the one
- that we adopted at our last meeting. This is proposing the name change. So we transmitted this to Council
- President Stosberg, I think on November 25th.
- And I think I meant to put that in the, did I put that in the packet? Well it says C packet there and
- if it's not in there I will put it in. But it is on onboard. So we're kind of following the thread on
- that. The suggestion so far has been that the formal ordinance will need to be prepared by staff or
- somebody from council. We provided sort of the draft or template version or something like that but
- The suggestion so far was that that could go to the Committee on Council Processes, who I think is going
- to be overseeing a Title II overhaul later this year anyway. So this might be a good opportunity to
- bundle this in with other changes that are being made to that part of the municipal code. So we'll continue
- to track that as it goes when there's updates. I'll bring it back to everybody.
- The other resolution that we might want to follow along with that we passed earlier this year is 2025-01,
- which is the poultry flock sizing resolution. If this is something that we do want to actually see going
- to ordinance at some point, we'll probably want to just follow up on that and figure out what we need
- to do to transform that idea into ordinance on the back end.
- Try to push it forward. Yeah. A comment on that. That may need to be like the name change also because
- it has to do with lot sizes. I believe if I'm recalling correctly when I talked to Council President
- Stossberg, she mentioned that at that time. So that will be something we'll need to think about in that
- way. Writing some draft ordinance language for them. I believe so. Yeah. Yeah.
- We could certainly do that, because I know there's some language in the UDO that I think would need
- to be changed. And then there's another title, Title VII, or something that has also some information
- there. So I think it's two places. OK, good. Bloomington Energy Works is something that Sean had just
- announced via email recently. So this is something that we had agreed to support if we got selected.
- This is that project, right?
- You know, so, I mean, Sean had a lot of details in the email, and there's the website there. These are
- hyperlinks. You can click that and go to the website and read more. But really, it's a program that,
- you know, for owners of large commercial nonprofits or academic buildings, they can get free energy
- audits. And, you know, if there's enough interest, then access to low capital, but low cost capital
- for any upgrades. So there's a,
- Yeah. Another portion of that project is an education program for residents. Right. So they'll be doing
- a door-to-door campaign and giving group presentations. So it's for the whole community. Yeah, absolutely.
- Yeah, so please share with your networks far and wide. Try to get the word out. Do we have to meet a
- certain threshold by a certain date to move forward in the program, or is it?
- I'll talk more about this through my camp implementation. I'll go through the website a little bit.
- Oh, perfect. OK, awesome. Cool. Anyway, there is a kickoff webinar tomorrow. So if you're interested
- in learning more, there's an RSVP link. And I'm planning to check it out. OK, the local food resilience
- strategy that Jamie's been championing this year just
- No new updates on that since the last time we met, but just to say that this is something we'll probably
- keep working through and refining as we move into 2026. Sustainable neighborhood grant project reports.
- So we don't have new sustainable neighborhood grants coming our way anymore, but we still approved a
- couple right at the end of 2020.
- 2024, yeah, to be implemented throughout this year. And so the Grandview Hills Pollinator Gardens, they've
- completed their work and they've got a report ready. And I think it would be good to have somebody,
- if they're willing, come in and give a presentation to us maybe next month. And then TerraCycle 2.0
- should be wrapping up sometime soon, because I think we approved that last December. So if they're all
- finished with that and have the report ready to go, then maybe the following month of February we can
- have them.
- Do you want, do I reach out to the, I mean, like I can reach out to the Grandview Hills folks, or is
- that gonna come from ESD to get them on the, on the agenda? Does it matter? I think either of us could
- reach out to them, yeah. If you've already got, you already know them. I mean, yes. I can walk to her
- house. Feel free to reach out, yeah. Good.
- Okay sustainability assessment reports this is something we haven't talked about in a little bit. I
- just wanted to mention it here So so the original idea that we had for the report that the scope of
- that has kind of shifted as You know the ad hoc committee that we set up started working through it
- that ad hoc committee I think consisted of you and That's right. Yeah, and Andrew and Evan right and
- so it's a one-person ad hoc committee now so
- It might make sense to just dissolve that committee since the scope has changed so much and the membership
- has changed and then just, you know, the report that we're sort of eyeing now is maybe a little bit
- more of a meta report about, you know, what sort of data is out there and how do we actually go about
- assessing some of these things. Yeah, maybe like in an early work session or priority session we can
- redefine the scope or what we want to do with it.
- Yeah, exactly. But yeah, since we, I think we had a vote to form that, probably if we decided to go
- that route next month, we'll have a vote to formally dissolve it and see what comes next. Sustainability
- forums, we've had one so far and it was a good success, I think. And so I understand more are on the
- way. So stay tuned for more on that in 2026.
- And then I also wanted to note that the public library has had some hours changes. So they're only open
- until 7, I think, on Tuesday. Is that right? Yeah. Any day they were normally open until 9, they're
- now only open until 7. Yeah. OK. Gotcha. So when we do work sessions, they're usually there at the library
- from the same time we meet now, Tuesday, 6 to 7.30. So we may need to find a new location for that or
- potentially shift the times.
- to better accommodate that. Yeah, and you can't reserve a room more than past 15 minutes prior to closing
- time. Oh, yeah. That makes sense. So it would be, yeah. I don't think that they're going to, we don't
- have cleanup that they're not necessarily going to throw us out of a room. But technically, we would
- only be able to have the room until 645. Right. Yeah. OK.
- Okay, so some upcoming things that are sort of on our list here. The priority planning process, we'll
- talk about this a little bit more, but it'd be good to do that next month in January sometime. We'll
- talk a little bit more about scheduling. We will have officer elections coming up, so that's every year
- in March. So nothing more on that right now, but I think maybe at the next meeting we'll talk a little
- bit about the format of that and get people really acquainted with the process as we get closer to that.
- B cost commissioner handbook. I've mentioned this before, but it's been a little while. But every time
- we get a new member on the commission, I'm like, dang, I wish I would have finished that by now. So
- I'm really going to push myself to get a draft out in front of everybody in February so we can try to
- get that locked down. And environmental commission has something similar, and they've done a really
- good job with that. So that's kind of a nice template to follow.
- Another thing that's kind of been on the back burner for a little bit is bylaws reform. Probably another
- good thing to pull onto a front burner. So I'm thinking maybe first half of 2026. Again, we'll go through
- the planning process for next year, and maybe that'll kind of shift. This is just how I'm kind of thinking
- about it in my head now. Don't want to be too ambitious, but it's also good to be a little ambitious.
- Okay so resolution 2026-01 which is not an official thing that's been drafted or sent out yet but we
- had talked about a little bit the last working session when we were talking about some of the efforts
- that the mayor's office and city council was doing to try to support local food banks in the face of
- the lapse in funding for SNAP benefits during the government shutdown and so I know in some of the packet
- materials city council had had some
- I think they presented some of that at one of their meetings. And then, you know, the city also, I think,
- donated $46,000, I think, to support that. And so I thought this would be a good opportunity, speaking
- about resilience and general community sustainability, to applaud some of those efforts, you know, for
- thinking fast and helping people out when it mattered.
- I'll put something together on that and then bring it for next meeting, hopefully for a first reading
- and then we can go through it more in February for a second reading. Sustainable energy utility feasibility
- study. So this is the capstone project that we sort of commissioned from students at the O'Neill School.
- So I think we're still targeting spring
- this coming semester, spring 2026. I mean, we're locked in there. Oh, we're locked in, yeah. Because,
- of course, professors are teaching it and have a time slot. Perfect. If we back out now, it would look
- really bad. Oh, yeah. Definitely not suggesting that, no. Yeah, just to keep it on folks' radar and
- let you know that that's moving forward. Yeah, so I guess this will be the last meeting before that
- class actually starts. So if anybody has additional feedback about
- what good research questions would be, and new people have no idea what I'm talking about, but that's
- fine. Oh, okay, great. Oh, excellent. But yeah, feedback on what, like, good research questions or research
- angles, what things would be useful for the city to know. Any feedback is appreciated. Very good.
- Okay so moving looking outside of the commission around the city here a couple things caught my eye
- the first is a report that came out of the mayor's office called homelessness response and housing investment
- so I've got a hyperlink there encourage folks to take a look at it one of our priorities from for 2025
- was looking at you know housing issues affordability and accessibility and that sort of thing so I think
- this is a good
- Good opportunity to see where the mayor's thinking is on that and maybe look for, as we move forward
- in 2026, opportunities to work collaboratively on some of those issues. And then I was just mentioning
- a minute ago, council had considered a letter that encouraged a sustained Bloomington food resilience
- effort. It was back on their November 5th meeting.
- I don't know if that wasn't like a, was that an individual council member kind of signs off on that?
- Or I just saw it in the packet, so I don't know if it was like an official thing. But it was there in
- the packet and it was expressing a desire for kind of a sustained effort at food resilience. So we've
- talked a lot about that. I think another good opportunity to look for opportunities to collaborate with
- council on some of these issues that we care about.
- And I've got a space here for things that we're tracking, things that I'm not tracking that well right
- now, but aspire to. And maybe there's some other things we want to add to this list, so let me know.
- But a couple things come to mind right away. Number one is the budget process. So I think for 2026,
- it would be good to track this right from the beginning, kind of what the timelines are for this. And
- if we have inputs that we want to provide, being able to get ahead of that,
- get those in early will be important. So we'll keep an eye on that as the year progresses. I know tomorrow
- council has a deliberative session to discuss some of their outcome-based budgeting stuff and some basic
- priorities. But I think a lot of the process starts in maybe August or something like that, late summer,
- the real fast moving stuff.
- Um, 2026 UDO revision process. I don't really know what that process looks like, but we probably should,
- especially if we've got a resolution that would advocate making some amendments to the UDO. Um, I think
- that's something we, we could have some better visibility on and understanding of. Um, so something
- to keep track of. Um, and then there's two major development projects sort of in the works right now.
- There's the Hopewell development, um, and then the summit district. Um, so those are things we'll want
- to follow as they progress.
- So that was a lot. And going forward, and unless this is really not helpful, I'll plan to kind of keep
- this up and updated just so everybody gets kind of a bird's eye view of the things that we kind of have
- going on, even if they're kind of waiting for them to progress. So any questions on that? Or comments?
- I can make a few comments. Yeah, please. On Hopewell, I don't think we've made any suggestions
- comments to the administration or to council regarding any kind of talking about food resilience that
- there may possibly be an opening for some kind of design discussion in regards to that. When jumping
- down to the summit district, the summit district based upon food policy council's report from some years
- ago on that organization, it was
- placed in what at that time was considered a food desert that wasn't addressed during the time when
- all of this was assessed by council and therefore it was one of those things in regards to resilience
- that was not included in in approval for the developer
- So that was approved, and then I came onto this commission the following week. So there was nothing
- that I could do except for public comment at the time. So just kind of giving some background information
- on folks here and the new folks that may be interested in those items. Very good. Thank you. Any other
- questions, comments?
- Okay, great. I'll move on to my last substantive slide from this deck. It is December, this is our last
- meeting of the year, so I wanted to do a quick sort of recap on some of the things that we've accomplished
- this year. And it's a pretty long list, that's great.
- So just want to thank everybody for a great year. I've listed out some of the successes that we've had
- here. And if I've missed anything, please let me know and I will update these slides. But we passed
- four resolutions, which is more than we did last year, which was one resolution. But that was more than
- we did the year before, which is zero. So we are on a good trajectory here. So we did the scalable poultry
- size model, advocating for increasing allocation for urban
- forestry in the 2026 city budget, recommending clear definitions for urban agriculture and associated
- business structures, and changing the name of our commission to Bloomington Commission on Sustainability
- and Resilience. So some of those we're still tracking through into 2026, but this has been a great success.
- So keep them coming and I'm looking forward to seeing what we do in 2026 on that front.
- Thank you for your leadership and being able to get these things organized so that those items could
- be on there. I don't think myself or Tara, who were leading some of these, would have been able to do
- that without your leadership. So formal thank you for that. Well, I very much appreciate that. But I
- don't think I wrote any of those resolutions.
- It's on all y'all. Oh, yeah. Fair enough. Fair enough. We had a public event. We had a table at Earth
- Day this year. So that's great. We'll look forward to doing that again next year and probably with some
- fancier signage. So that's another thing that I consider a success this year was figuring out a pathway
- to getting better signage. We hosted the first sustainability forum.
- drafted a local food resilience strategy that we continue to enhance. And we've already, some of these
- resolutions came out of that. So we've already checked off some of those boxes. We made progress on
- the first sustainability assessment report since 2017. So that's been a little while. It's shifted a
- little bit like we talked about, but still it's been really good progress.
- of course the capstone project is really exciting we're getting that ball rolling and of course the
- commission turned 20 years old this year either in may actually maybe it was march or october depending
- on how you count so the earlier the earlier month is when the ordinance went into effect and then october
- was when the first meeting occurred
- I also wanted to throw in a couple honorable mentions here, things that didn't quite get to the finish
- line, but were still a really good effort from everybody and that I think were solid ideas that we could
- see revived in the future at some point, hopefully. So the Cobbench project is one that was a really
- exciting installation-based project. There's a lot of work that went into sort of planning that out.
- And then, of course, we didn't quite get there before the construction actually began. But I think we
- still learned a lot from going through that process, getting that grant proposal approved, and figuring
- out how to dig out some dirt and install a bench. So those are all lessons that we can take with us
- into the next year. The Pekashi Festival pilot idea was a really solid one.
- Obviously we don't have earth keepers anymore. The ability for people to compost without having a yard
- and the expertise for them to do it in, you know, still remains a problem. So the Bokashi concept is
- still a really exciting idea. Matching it up with festivals is a really great idea. So hopefully there's
- ways we can still continue to promote some of these things going forward. And then the downtown pollinator
- garden, if you recall a little bit earlier in the
- In the year we had a presentation from somebody who was looking at working with a sort of a local landscaper
- to turn a little corner of downtown into a nice pollinator garden with a bench. So we hope to see more
- ideas like this in the future.
- So I just want to thank everybody here on the commission. And also a big thank you to the staff who
- provides a lot of essential support for us. So Sean, Jolie, Jane, Audrey, Margie, Julius, these are
- all folks who have come to speak to the commission this year. So a big thanks to everybody here.
- All right. And then that brings me to my
- my perennial resources slide here. So you can find this in the packet. There's links to stuff like the
- home page I mentioned before. And that'll do it for the end of my report. So one final call for questions
- before we move on to the next agenda item. All right. And that brings us to our next item, which let's
- see, we've got
- Okay, continuing with reports from commissioners, Waste Management Working Group. Matt? Real quick,
- this week, not much of a report, just the CAC and Citizens Advisory Committee with the Waste Reduction
- District is losing their chair, Joe Winia, he also chaired BCAUSE, he's moving back to Michigan,
- great guy, real loss for the city, unfortunately. But the CAC needs membership, so if you're interested
- in waste diversion issues, we would love to have you apply and join. That's it.
- Can people reach out to you if they're interested? Yes, please reach out to me or you can go to the
- waste reduction website and they have an application on there. Awesome. Thank you. Okay, Council Ex
- officio. Well, a couple things. Justin, you mentioned that tomorrow night is a work session. Well, actually
- a deliberation session after work session. Work session starts at five to six thirty.
- And it will be with the RDC, which is the Redevelopment Commission. Among the activities of the Redevelopment
- Commission is to essentially overseeing properties that the city owns to redevelop. And the property
- in question that we'll be discussing tomorrow is the Bunga Robertson site, which is just north of the
- existing convention center. And whether the RDC will donate it to the hotelier that the
- capital improvement board, which has been doing the work on developing the expansion of the convention
- center, whether that donation will proceed. It's a $7 million property. The council opposes it. At least
- eight of nine of us oppose it. We had a letter to the effects in May of 2024 because we believe that
- the funding should be exclusively the food and beverage tax. That was the intention of it.
- of accumulating funds in that. And, you know, I have sympathy to the CIB. They have apparently $22 million
- that are so differential in terms of their negotiation with the hotelier, Dora. But this is, the property
- was bought with TIF funds. We should sell it to the hotelier or a hotelier of some kind or other. TIF
- funds should be used in other ways
- for infrastructure to redevelop the city. And frankly, I'm concerned about the equitable distribution
- of TIF funds around the city and whether or not it's being concentrated to localized in certain areas
- as opposed to in sacrificing other areas. So we wrote a letter on May 8th, I think of 2024, eight of
- nine assigned it to oppose this. And so we're going to talk to the RDC about whether they're going to
- go ahead with it.
- And then we go into deliberation session, which Justin mentioned, which is the topic is outcome-based
- budgeting, which is essentially looking to specific measurable results, specifically in the various
- plans that you put up, policy documents, like the climate action plan, the comprehensive plan. And so
- we'll be discussing that, the outcomes and city plans, and prioritizing outcomes.
- And that's at 630 tomorrow. You're welcome to attend, either or both. When is the redevelopment commission
- set to make a decision? Sorry. Well, is it their final decision, or is it subject to council approval?
- Interestingly enough, they can make decisions of $5 million or less. And this is brought to them in
- two parts.
- of less than $5 million, so it will not come to the council. OK. Just a coincidence. Yes, it just happens
- to be that way. But yes, if it's $5 million more, it goes to the council for our sake. So it's been
- parceled into two less than $5 million parcels totaling $7 million? That's my understanding. Effectively?
- Yeah, yeah. And it will be decided at their next meeting, presumably.
- set to decide their last meeting, and they postponed it to their next one. So. What information might
- they need to help make a decision? Well, I think that the convention center expansion has been pretty
- controversial. Does it serve the community at large? Do we have priorities as a city? We have a lot
- of issues regarding housing, homeless,
- people. We have obviously transportation issues. We have other infrastructure to worry about. And the
- fear has been all along that the convention center expansion could take on a life of its own and become
- a sink instead of something that would be, you know. So from my point of view, I've wanted a more modest
- sized convention center and one that is appropriate for the community. We definitely lose during off season
- times, events and things like that that would help downtown businesses. So I supported it, but I think
- that it's the prioritization of whether the RDC should surrender a property for Otellier to seal this
- deal, as opposed to that property getting some share of market value for the city. I think that's the
- crux of the matter. So if you have an opinion of that,
- It really goes to the prioritization of what the city should be funding. Ultimately, yeah. Is there
- any precedent for like doing something in this vein that could become like a income stream to support
- one of these similar goals or that the funding would typically be for? Well, the income stream was meant
- to be the food and beverage tanks, so there is.
- There's another tax that supports, remember, it's a hotel tax. It actually applies to the Airbnbs, too.
- I can't remember the name of it now. Innkeepers tax that basically supports the maintenance of the existing
- convention center and then the expansion. But this requires a lot of capital investment to build this
- new structure. And we have many multiple hearings on this.
- A lot of downtown merchants and bars and restaurants came forward and said, we're willing to assume
- a 1% tax to build up funds for this purpose. Because the seasonable fluctuations in activity and income
- is very severe for them. Summer months are pretty, and especially for their employees too. So I feel
- for service employees, a lot of them get laid off during summer months because there just isn't enough
- income coming in. And so this would sort of bridge the gap. So it kind of made sense to do that. But
- the food and beverage tax was explicitly the fund for that. So that's the money that's coming in on
- a continual basis to do this and building up an account for that. Yep. Has the city ever given away
- an amount of approximately $7 million as an incentive previously?
- question to a private business to a private business and then what would be the since it's not locally
- owned we're not going to have that local circular economy here and the jobs will not be high paying
- jobs so I kind of have a problem with that Sean do you know if any history I'm sure there have been
- I mean one a long time ago was that the city was left responsible for the
- destruction, the rehabilitation of the Thompson site, which should have been basically internalized
- to the company. And we assume that. And so yeah, those externalizations of costs are problematic to
- me. Because we're actually facing a time now, because of the state government, of pretty lean years
- coming forward.
- facing austerity. I think that we need to be very judicious about where we spend money. And I don't
- favor this. That's a really good question. I should look into the history of that. It's probably occurring.
- If we're setting a precedent as a city to do this, then that may be an expectation of other businesses
- and not just giving different types of
- write-offs like green roofs or something like that. Yeah. And this is to a hotel, too. It's not like
- it's too, which has been a set of sums to the community, but it's not like it's to like a food bank
- or to a... Or even a locally owned business. Yeah, the for-profit large company. It's not housed in
- Bloomington. So during 2008, we had this economic crisis, I think, where I've been anticipating something
- like this from what I've been seeing. And I think during that time period, Bloomington was
- quite resilient in comparison to other local, you know, other communities nearby. And I also traveled
- to Europe and saw how in rural England, anything outside of London was really kind of hollowed out except
- for Totness, which had the Totness Pound as a local currency they created. And that was the only vibrant
- location that I saw outside of London. Paris was fine, but you saw the other areas that were rural were
- being hollowed out, and my friend I was staying with said, well, France is up for sale, and it was being
- sold to other people from other countries. So having that as background information, I wonder how
- what kind of precedent this is setting, how are we going to reinforce our own local economy, especially
- if we're going to lose SNAP benefits that we get federal dollars in different ways that support the
- local economy. So I'm thinking about it in possibly in a slightly different way than others have conceived.
- Is it beneficial to council for there to be people present, like members of the public present at the
- Because the deliberation session doesn't have a public comment period or anything, right? Well, the
- deliberation session will. This working group. Sorry, the working session. I'm not sure about that.
- That's a good question. Well, just people in attendance would be all good.
- There's a communication impact of just seeing that people are paying attention to what the city is doing.
- Yeah, exactly. But making eye contact. Give them the stink eye to whatever. Thumbs up. But if it's a
- good outcome. And the other thing I've mentioned is that I think this puts
- It elevates one hotel versus others, so it gives an unfair competitive advantage, I think, to one hotel
- here, as opposed to the ones that are already operating downtown. I don't know what their finances look
- like, but I'm sure it's seasonal, and I'm sure they struggle at times. And why would we elevate this
- one that's just coming in, as opposed to the ones that are already established here? So that's at least
- my opinion, giving my opinion here.
- Thank you very much all right okay so that brings us to discussions and topics not the subject of resolutions
- so the climate action plan implementation update from Sean and let's see oh you've got it all sure great
- yeah thank you
- This update is everything that we've done since our previous city council presentation in July of 2024.
- Thank you, Jolie. So I'll just go through all the slides, and if you have questions, I'll answer them
- at the end. Okay, so here's our climate action plan. It's on our website. You can take a look at it.
- We don't have a whole lot of time, so I'll just kind of breeze through these. The first section is renewable
- energy. We have specific goals for renewable energy.
- Our total production from our sites is 22.7 gigawatts. There is a website here that you can see. This
- was from our vendor who installed all of our sites back in 2017 and 2018 ESG. This kiosk doesn't have
- all of our sites, but the majority of them, because we've installed additional sites since then. Is
- it total energy production since they were installed? Yes.
- On, sorry, on city property? Yes, all of our municipal sites. And so we've been working with VeriG for
- the past three years. They're our solar O&M vendor. They monitor production on an online dashboard called
- Power Track. They submit quotes to me to replace any broken panels, inverters, optimizers, and fix any
- wiring issues that may come up. So they're monitoring those, making sure that they're producing every day.
- One of our largest grant programs is our solar energy efficiency and lighting program or SEAL program.
- We provide grants to small businesses and nonprofits. We provide up to $25,000 for solar systems and
- we provide $20,000 for battery energy storage systems and that is only for nonprofits that provide essential
- services. We issued an RFP this year and we contracted with Solar Energy Solutions for our installations.
- Since August of 2024, we have completed 11 solar installations at these locations. You have these slides
- so you can read through these. We approved an additional six installations that will be completed in
- early 2026. This includes Mother Hubbard's Cupboard. They're going to be receiving our first battery
- energy storage systems. We feel like this is a really important project for our community because they
- do provide essential services.
- If they have a power outage, the food in their freezers and refrigerators will still be able to be viable.
- Low-income housing solar grants, we've been supporting solar installations at Bloomington Housing Authority
- for several years. In 2024, they were able to install solar in six buildings at Crestmont. In 2025,
- we have a draft grant agreement where they will be installing additional solar on their new Early Learning
- Center and additional buildings at Crestmont.
- So these will be completed in early 2026. So the next section is energy efficiency. And so we have goals
- to increase energy efficiency in the built environment. We've been working with Donovan Energy for the
- past year and a half. In 2025, they completed an energy assessment report where they looked at 32 municipal
- buildings. They determined the energy utilization index, energy use index for each of those buildings
- across our municipal portfolio.
- And that allowed us to see which buildings are the most energy inefficient and to target for energy
- conservation measures. And so because of that initial report, we worked with Parks and Rec and Public
- Works to identify nine buildings to move forward with level two ASHRAE energy audits. And those were
- completed at those nine buildings. And so because of those reports, we have completed all the ones with
- the green check marks. Those are the projects that we've completed so far.
- the additional projects, we will be continuing to work with departments to get those projects implemented.
- And so this year, we've completed LED upgrades at Allison Jukebox and Switchyard Park Maintenance Building,
- and we hired Cassidy Electric to complete upgrades at these five additional buildings, and those will
- be completed soon. The US Department of Energy's Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant
- called EECBG. We submitted a project with Donovan Energy's help to identify the City Hall LED lighting
- project for that voucher, and we were selected for a $141,000 rebate. I've worked with our controller's
- office, and we have submitted for that reimbursement, so we're waiting to hear back on that.
- And then Donovan Energy also has submitted a rebate application to Duke Energy. We'll be getting back
- $33,000 for that project as well. And so it's estimated that the city is going to be saving 67% on annual
- lighting costs because of that project. To give an update on our Indiana Office of Energy Development,
- Empowering Energy Partnerships in Indiana Communities, EPIC grant, we have been selected for a $508,000 grant.
- I required a minimum 20% match. We've added a little bit more to that project in order to make it feasible.
- We'll be upgrading the HVAC system, installing a solar system and a battery energy storage system. We
- have completed our DNR Historic Preservation Department approval process and we completed structural
- engineering verification of the roof as required by the Bloomington Fire Department. So we're in our
- schematic design phase right now.
- We also, because this is federal funding that's coming down from the department of, I know this is from
- EPA, we have to make sure that we're in compliance with Buy America, Build America, so BABA compliance.
- And so it's very difficult to find manufacturers that are compliant. And so we will most likely have
- to submit a waiver to EPA for approval and that will take some time. So we are hoping that the project
- will be completed by the end of October.
- So another part of our solar energy efficiency and lighting program is the energy efficiency and lighting.
- We provide $10,000 grants to nonprofits and small businesses. They can receive a free energy audit and
- a grant for these types of energy projects. In 2025, we added cool roofs, which has to be certified
- cool roof materials by the Cool Roof Rating Council.
- Whenever you install a cool roof, it lowers your air conditioning costs because it reflects more sunlight,
- and so it doesn't absorb as much energy. And so this year, our first project was at Wonder Lab. So IFF
- is our project partner. And since August of 2024, we've completed eight energy audits and eight upgrades
- at these locations. We have approved three additional projects to be completed at these three locations
- in early 2026.
- So to date, we have provided over a million dollars in seal grants. ITS helped us create a seal grants
- map. There's a link there. You can see it. It's on our City of Bloomington Geo Hub website. You can
- see where all of the projects have been implemented. Our Bloomington Green Home Improvement Program,
- this program's been around for a while. We completely revised it this year because previously you were
- required to take out a loan with a specific bank.
- for a solar installation only, and you would only get $1,000 rebate. And so that program really wasn't
- as effective. And so we revised this program. We no longer require a loan with a specific bank. And
- our rebates cover 25% of the installation for the general population and up to 40% for low-income residents,
- up to maximum amounts depending on the project type. And so you can combine
- our rebate with utility rebates and federal tax credits while they're available. The equipment is required
- to be ENERGY STAR certified or equivalent to energy efficiency standard. And in 2025, we approved 35
- rebates and these are the projects. I really want to thank Jolie for all of her hard work in this program.
- She administers not only the SEAL program, but also the BGHIP program. And so very thankful for her
- hard work this year.
- And so like Justin said, we have launched our Bloomington Energy Works program. We were selected by
- the Coalition for Green Capital in Ickley, USA for a $250,000 grant. This is a market building grant.
- It's to promote energy efficiency and renewable energy across the city. Our goal is to bring low-cost
- capital to Bloomington for project implementation. And our program partner is the Indiana Energy Independence Fund.
- This is potential funding. We are competing with 48 other cities across the US. This is our chance to
- raise our hand and say that Bloomington is ready for investments. And so we are required to submit,
- actually this has been updated, we're required to submit a clean energy public-private partnership plan
- to the CTC and ICLEI actually by April 15th. They gave us another month because of the delay in getting
- our grant agreement signed. And so
- We're going to offer free energy audits for any commercial manufacturing, nonprofit, building owner,
- academic institution, any type of large building owner. We're going to provide free energy audits to
- develop a list of energy efficiency and solar projects in need of funding worth a minimum of $50 million.
- And so instead of just one Z, two Z projects here and there, if we can combine all of our projects across
- our city, we're more likely to bring low cost capital to Bloomington.
- And so, like I said, part of this is also, we've hired Electrify Indiana to develop a volunteer community
- engagement program. It's going to have a door-to-door campaign and group presentation, and their program
- is very ambitious. They're hoping to knock on 7,000 doors between now and May 1st.
- And also, I can't remember the exact number of group presentations, but a high number of group presentations.
- So they're really needing a lot of help and looking for volunteers. If you go to bloomingtonenergyworks.com,
- you'll see all of the information, how to sign up to volunteer, how to apply for a free energy audit.
- And we're having our first webinar actually tomorrow at noon. So if you can help spread the word, help
- to get people there, we would really appreciate it.
- Okay, and the next section is climate resilience. And so really trying to make our city as resilient
- as possible to climate change and all the way that it impacts our city, it impacts our health, our safety,
- our infrastructure. And so there's goals in our climate action plan for that. And so what we're doing
- to increase resilience is we're planting trees. This year we've already planted trees in VHA Cresmont.
- Next year, we'll be planting trees in VHA Walnut Woods neighborhood with the assistance of
- Canopy Bloomington. I've been working with Haskell Smith, who is the urban forester in Parks and Rec.
- We have developed a tree assistance program. ESD has provided $50,000 for this grant program. And it's
- to fund the removal of hazardous trees and limbs from low to moderate income homeowners.
- And after looking at the pictures that were submitted for these grants, there are so many people in
- our community who have trees that are just hanging right over their houses. So this program is really
- beneficial to those homeowners. And then bus stop shelter installations, ESD will be installing six
- bus stop shelters hopefully by the end of January, depending on the weather. Those bus stops shelters
- have solar lights in them to increase safety.
- as well as some art to make them beautiful. Yeah. Just a quick question about the tree assistance program.
- Have you guys designated who the company is that's gonna take those down, or is that up to the homeowner?
- No, Haskell issued an RFP, and I think the bids were due, they're due December 19th. Okay, thank you.
- Yeah. Those need to be admitted? Oh, thank you. And then Stay Cool Bloomington ESD provided funding
- for this program again this year. And in 2025, we paid for over 15,000 free admissions to our city pools
- during extreme heat days. We also have our AC distribution program. We received 28 applications. We
- only approved eight installations. And the reason for that is a lot of the applications were from people
- who live in apartment complexes. And so we worked with our housing and neighborhood development
- department to reach out to those apartment owners and have them fix the AC units themselves. And so
- that's been a successful program. Also, I want to say that I felt really bad for people who lived in
- unannexed areas in Bloomington. I was not able to provide funding for them because they're not paying
- city taxes and belong to the city. So I felt really bad turning them away, as well as people living
- in the county.
- I had a phone call from a gentleman who was a veteran who said his AC unit went out and he didn't have
- funding to fix it. So my heart really just went out to him and there wasn't much that I could do. So
- Seco Bloomington Cool Kits, we distributed over 400 this year. We created cool kits that have, it's
- a water bottle with sunscreen, electrolyte packet, and also a resource guide.
- In the resource guide, it's really informative about where our city pools are located, where our public
- drinking water fountains are located, hours of operation, cooling centers that they can go to, which
- so far has been designated as the public libraries, and also what are signs and symptoms of a heat-related
- illness, and how to treat it, and how to get help in all the programs that we have. But isn't there
- only one virtual library in city limits? Well, if someone lives by the library,
- But that's the only cooling center in the city is the library, the downtown branch. So far, that's what's
- been designated. I should say that the Busker-Chomey Theater, that is also being developed as a climate
- resilience hub. Whenever there's a power outage, because we have the battery energy storage system,
- the theater will be opened and we'll have free movie screenings.
- And that's especially important during extreme heat days. People can go there for free and watch movies
- in extreme cold days. So it's turning into a climate resilience hub. We'll also have four climate talks
- once everything is completed. And I'll let you know about that. But that is serving as a resilience hub.
- And I wanted to give everybody an update on Project 46, our Southern Indiana Regional Climate Alliance.
- We have a new website. I highly encourage everyone to go to that. It's the climate alliance between
- the cities of Bloomington, Nashville, and Columbus. In July of 2025, the steering committee, which is
- made up of the two mayors and the town manager, they approved the bylaws and organizational structure.
- In September, they officially approved advisory committee memberships for Cummins Electron Chargers,
- Sierra Club Wind and Waters Group, and IU Environmental Resilience Institute. And at the last meeting
- last week, they also approved Gnarly Trees Sustainability Institute as an advisory committee member.
- They also elected myself as the chair. I'll be serving as chair for the next two years. And Sandy Jones,
- the town manager of Nashville, is the vice chair.
- We're also really excited about a grant that we're applying for. We have partnered with Purdue and IU.
- We're applying for a Capital One Foundation grant. It's Scaling Pathways to Home Ownership. And our
- idea is to work towards building factory-built, energy-efficient homes and also looking at a permitting
- process for those factory-built homes and try to reduce the time for those and reduce costs.
- It not only helps to reduce costs for homes, but also they're energy efficient and reduce our carbon
- footprint. So I'll keep you updated on that. So some food security grants. So we've been providing funding
- to Hoosier Hills Food Bank and Mother Hubbard's Cupboard to support the garden programs and to distribute
- locally grown food. Waste management grant. We've been working with Waste Reduction District of Monroe
- County for the last
- since 2023 to support One Sustainable Joe who is unfortunately leaving Bloomington. They created, One
- Sustainable Joe created and managed really beautiful multi-family housing compost projects and so we're
- really hoping that someone will pick up that project and continue. And then community engagement is
- our last section.
- We have our Zero in Bloomington online platform. It's where you can go and learn about all the different
- types of sustainability actions that you can take and that you can track your own actions. Since August
- of 2024, we've got 266 new users and they have tracked 543 sustainable actions. Spring into sustainability.
- 10 groups competed to complete the most climate-friendly lifestyle choices and actions, and we announced
- the winners at our Earth Day celebration. And then our sustainability spooktacular mobilized 69 residents
- to volunteer for environmental causes or join an educational workshop. And so again, I want to thank
- Jolie for all of her work on this room Bloomington platform and everything, all of the sustainability
- challenges.
- And if you haven't already, check out our climate action plan dashboard. We try to update this at the
- beginning of every year, so we'll be updating this soon. It has our annual greenhouse gas inventory
- on it. It has climate actions and incentives. So thank you. You mentioned you wanted to say to Joe,
- and you were hoping somebody would pick that up.
- How would that be? I mean, I guess how does that work? I sent an email to Tom Lassen to find out if
- they were going to pick it up. I think Joe said there was some staff internally that was going to try
- to work on that. I haven't heard back yet. OK, thank you. I just had a quick question. Is it maybe Donovan
- Energy? I'm not quite sure how it would be split up, but them and the Energy Independence Fund.
- Is Donovan an energy services company? Do they do the financing as well? They do have someone in-house
- who that is his background. He came from a finance background. And so he is very tuned into
- how climate-related projects can be funded through green banks and different efforts and the projects
- that qualify. Gotcha. Some of these companies will
- They'll look at whatever energy you can save, and they'll actually cost that out. And basically, you
- pay the same amount, even though you saved a lot of energy. And that's how you pay back the project
- over time. It's like a long-term financing thing. I'm looking forward to the webinar tomorrow. I also
- wanted to think about, and I don't know what the liability potential would be for this, but on that
- stay cool Bloomington thing, one of the things is people don't always know how to best take care of their
- air conditioning units. If we got people going around talking about this energy thing, there's a way
- to help them check on their air conditioning units and maybe keep them working longer. That might be
- something we could volunteer for. Yeah, that's a really good point. Yes. Maintenance. Maintenance.
- We'll see. Having to learn how to get the pollen off of my age back was like a big learning curve. Growing
- up in a window unit part of the country.
- I have a quick question on that. 46 corridor. You were talking about factory built homes. Is that just
- like a manufactured home? I think they want to get away from selling it as a mobile home. They want
- it to be more aesthetically and have energy efficient appliances and really energy efficient homes as
- much as possible.
- The typical mobile home is not energy efficient at all. It's most of them. But it's still the modular
- factor, the one where it's like a half a house on a semi, and then there's another half behind. Exactly,
- yeah. So there are going to be some smaller units, because I was researching some of this this afternoon,
- which is very interesting. I have this up there, so I'm very excited about it. And looking at some of
- these smaller type housing
- You know, for maybe even studio apartment size, it's more open concept that can be for one or two people
- or one bedroom that utilizes less lot space as well, which can either fit onto a smaller lot or could
- then allow for more room for food.
- So just wondering a little bit more about that. So I'm really excited about that. Yeah, I'm happy to
- share more information. The application is actually due next month, so we are working fast and furious
- on it. So Purdue was saying that they would like to develop a website where you can pick and choose
- what you want in your home, and it'll tell you exactly how much it will cost.
- Because I know this type of thing can reduce production costs and then can get those homes. But I've
- seen some of these other things like what Elon Musk has done that's very small. These octagonal, some
- things can be raised up. Each one has different types of benefits as well. Some, if it's more round,
- I don't know if that's going to be a part of this, that can
- are more resilient in earthquake situations, having been through earthquakes, as well as, say, tornadoes,
- because the airflow can go around them. So I'm curious about that. So thank you both for all of this
- work. I'm like, are you getting any sleep? I'll usually take a lunch break.
- I wanted to know with the dashboard that you showed at the end, if there's anything that myself or anyone
- else here can go into our own, you know, our special knowledge to help with maybe pinpointing some things.
- I know I've done that in the past that might help you as well with some of your time management. So,
- okay, volunteering myself. But if anyone else might want to.
- I think that would help you both out at the end of the year. A few things. One, your 22.7 gigawatts,
- that should be gigawatt hours. If we were producing 22.7 gigawatts, that would be an incredibly impressive
- amount. Yes, thank you for that. The SEAL program?
- For future iterations of that program, is there a reason that we don't do matching funds? Saying that
- we do, up to 50% of the project cost up to $25,000 because my understanding is that a lot of projects
- install $25,000 solar systems because you get $25,000 from the city for free and then once you hit the
- point where you have to put money in, you go, okay.
- don't want to do that, but if you matched 50% up to $25,000, then they'd have an incentive to do a $50,000
- solicit. Get that more private capital to participate. Thank you for that. So there are some installations
- that the owner did decide to expand the system that we're really excited to see that. Not everyone has
- that funding, especially nonprofits.
- additional funding to add to a project. Also, whenever we hire a vendor, we have to have in their contract
- what their maximum amount is. It's just easier. It's a turnkey program so that people can understand
- exactly what they're getting. And I do understand your point that it's nice when they have capital to
- add to the project, but that's not always available.
- I mean, maybe like a private company, non-profit, distinguishing your for-profit entity. You
- have dollar-for-dollar matching. I don't know, just things to think about for future implementation.
- I have bid to be the contractor for the SEAL program. Thank you. Then on the green home, the BG hip.
- You mentioned you don't require a loan with a specific bank anymore. And I actually know somebody who
- got kind of tripped up over that and couldn't access these funds because they didn't know about it until
- like right after it got done. They're like, oh, can I get this rebate? And they couldn't because they
- went with that credit union because that's who they bank with. But do you still require a loan with
- a bank or is there just no loan requirement at all? All we want to see is the paid invoice. OK.
- Does it have to be contracted work then? If you did a DIY heat pump install, that wouldn't qualify?
- It has to be a contractor. The energy audits as part of the capital that are available, are they also
- available to institutions that are, so I'm thinking of like,
- MCCSE or the Monroe County Public Library that have buildings within city limits but extend beyond the
- city, their full kind of service area extends beyond city limits, would they be eligible to participate
- in those energy audits for their buildings that are... I think MCC has participated in the past with
- an energy audit, I'm pretty sure.
- For the one for next year with this Green Capital competition where they can... Bloomington Energy Works.
- Yes, thank you for that question. Any large building owner located within the city limits is eligible.
- If there is a manufacturing firm outside of the city limits, we can't offer them free technical assistance,
- but what we can do is if they have a project, they can add it to our plan.
- On the BG HEAD program, I'm wondering why, is there a reason why you went with a rebate rather than
- a grant? Because while you're also means testing it for low-income people, that plus having a rebate
- means that how many low-income people can actually put up front the cost? I'm just curious by that.
- Yeah, I mean, you're exactly right. It does make it tough. There's trade-offs with the way we've designed
- the program. And I think at the end of the year, we're kind of evaluating things and seeing
- Can we improve that? I mean, you're getting at something that we've noticed. We are letting everyone
- know about the Indiana Energy Saver program that has funding available now to help them. OK, cool. Awesome.
- I'm glad you guys are thinking about that. That program is one of the most difficult paperwork processes
- that I've ever navigated. And we lost out on it because it was so arcane.
- the process. It was worse than enrolling my kid in MCCSE. It was like I tried it was it was really really
- like one like just I mean there's nothing I there's nothing you can do about it it's the state but just
- like as a knowledge that it's really hard it's really hard I have I am I am somebody with a lot of resource
- like into like resources of going through that and it was prohibitive electrify Indiana to potentially
- We're going to introduce them to Indiana Energy Saver Program. Aegis is the company that's managing
- that program, and Julie and I have met with them to come down to Bloomington. They have iPads, and we
- can set up a time for people to come in and apply.
- and walk them through the process. It was more all the follow-up things that they were asking for. And
- the timeline of it was just like, and it was very, the form itself was very confusing. It was also not
- mobile accessible. You can open, it'll open on a phone, but it's almost unreadable. So for folks that
- are, so doing it on an iPad may not get over that hump if it's showing up as a mobile set on the iPads.
- It might be better if they can bring laptops or Chromebooks.
- something because it was really hard like you know we have to like zoom in and like scroll over to find
- the checkbox kind of thing yeah it's rough I forgot something earlier I can't find it on here but you
- mentioned that the city will be getting back to rebates what is where when the city gets a rebate on
- something like this where do the funds go and then how is it utilized after that point
- All rebates and refunds, even our direct pay reimbursement, it goes back into the general fund. So that's
- bringing back quite a lot of money. Congratulations. Thank you. Is there concern that that DOE payout
- from the federal government will not come through, or just that it will be delayed? We were able to
- submit everything. The website's still up. Everything's there. We're getting emails occasionally from
- DOE about it.
- I don't know exactly when we'll get our rebate, or I just know that we've submitted it, and we're waiting
- to hear back. Yeah, one quick thing to share. So because I research green finance, so do you consider
- any assumption like idea of regarding issuing a green bond things? Because I know the city hall issued
- green bond in the past few years to support the building of the green building here in Bloomington.
- So there are so many other ways to raise funds to support your project. For example, the first US green
- stock exchange center will be open next year in New Jersey. So there are so many municipal bonds were
- issued in the past 10 years or 20 years over the states. So maybe you can also consider that channel
- to raise funds. Instead of applying for some grant,
- and weight some of that. I think there are many other ways to raise green finance to support your project.
- Thank you. I think the ability to issue bonds has been limited by SB1. At least for a few years. At
- least for a few years. Yeah, but it's a good idea to consider that.
- Well, I just want to say it's amazing work. We really appreciate it. Can't believe everything you both
- do. Thank you. It's pretty remarkable. Appreciate that. Appreciate it. It's very good. Yeah, thank you
- for the presentation. So we're getting close to the end. We have a hard stop at 730. The next thing
- that we have on the agenda is a presentation from Zach.
- on counting miles, so methods for estimating transportation related greenhouse gas emissions. If you
- haven't seen the slides yet, I recommend you go and look at them all because they are gorgeous. And
- there's a lot of really good data in there too. These are just really fun slides to look at. But there's
- a lot of good information in there as well. This is an area that you clearly have some expertise in.
- We don't have a lot more time today, I think, to really go through it all. And I know there is also
- interest in having the city's vendor that does the accounting for this sort of stuff. Is it climate
- now? Is that what it's called? Yeah. To come in and also be available to answer questions that the commission
- may have. So what I would suggest is maybe
- Commissioners are encouraged to review these slides between now and January. And then we can try to
- have Wes, if he's available, come into our January meeting. We can go through these slides then and
- have a broader discussion about that. Do we need a motion to move it to a future agenda or because it's
- not a subjective resolution? I think we would maybe just need a motion to skip to the next item today
- if that's what we decide to do.
- but I'll ask for people's thoughts on that. I would like to have time. I mean, it's really cool. I want
- time to learn. I completely understand. I just, when is the 2024 emissions inventory coming out,
- the report? That's a very good question. We keep asking Duke Energy for the data. OK. Asking and asking
- as soon as possible. OK. Well, once you have the data, then it's kind of plug and play and ready to
- go. Really, we're just waiting.
- additional clarification on our municipal emissions, and it's ready to go. Okay. Okay. I mean, I'm fine
- with postponing if we need to go to the next month. That's completely fine. Also, I was not intending
- to do a presentation at my first meeting. I just stumbled on this by accident. But so I'm fine doing
- if we need to postpone for a month, that's fine.
- I think it's worth not cutting it off. Do it justice and also be able to get additional input. So yeah,
- but this is fantastic. Thank you for putting these slides together. OK, so I guess in that case, I'll
- call for a motion to advance to the next agenda item, 7C. So moved. OK, is there a second? Second. OK,
- any debate? All right, all those in favor, say aye. Aye. All opposed, nay. Any abstentions?
- All right, the motion carries. We'll move on to 7C. I will go through this fairly quickly. I just want
- to have a couple slides here just to get the ball rolling on the 2026 priority planning process. So
- last year we did this in a work group session where we just brainstormed some ideas in the
- library auditorium. And we had like a piece of paper that we scribbled a bunch of stuff on. So we want
- to go through a similar process.
- First, just a quick look at what we came up with then as priorities for 2025. So we kind of. Oh,
- my bad. Thank you. Okay, so, you know, we came up with sort of two broad priority areas. One was housing
- and urban agriculture and the other was education outreach and coalition building. And I just went back
- and looked at some of our slides from
- during this time, and there were a couple bullet points under each of those, which I've listed under
- the areas of focus there. And so I've just listed some of the outcomes that we did that were related
- to those areas of focus in 2025. So you can see we made some progress on some of those. In others, we
- could use some more progress. But I think it would be good to go through the process again.
- you know, maybe we decide we want to stick with these same priorities or maybe we want to add something
- or adjust a little bit, but we should still at least go through that process. And so for 2026, I've
- just got some ideas here to get the wheels turning in terms of things that we might think about doing.
- And, you know, these are just things that popped into my head. So I just listed out some potential areas
- you know, on the left-hand side there that we could focus on. I'm sure I've left plenty of stuff off.
- And then the indented bullets are sort of like brainstorming how we could get at that, right? So like,
- you know, housing affordability. Maybe we wanna engage more directly with the office of the mayor since,
- you know, they just put out the report recently, right? That sort of thing. I'm not gonna go through
- all of these right now. It's just for you to take a look at and
- help get the wheels turning. And on the right, I have tools at our disposal. I put kind of a version
- of this on a previous slide that I presented earlier this year, just to give people thinking about,
- okay, what can we do as a commission, as an advisory commission, right? So we have resolutions. We can
- use those to declare a position or an opinion. We can also use those to make formal recommendations
- to parts of the city.
- We can ask for information if we think we need additional information to make decisions. We can author
- reports. We can search for funds and grants. And I had a couple more on there. Communication platforms,
- right? So if we wanted to get, you know, become active on social media, we've talked about that a little
- bit earlier in the year. We can move forward with that. You know, if we wanted to like,
- write an op-ed or something, or do a podcast interview. We could look into that. There's a really good
- local podcast called 812. Steve Volin runs that. And then, of course, we've also got creativity, ingenuity,
- and passion. So that's a tool that's not to be underestimated.
- So this is just to get you thinking a little bit. So what will this process actually look like? Well,
- I think that is yet to be determined. Definitely interested in some feedback here. I came up with a
- couple of ways that we could approach this. One is like we did last year, work session. Just do a normal
- work session, and it's at the usual time. The challenge is there that the work sessions aren't always
- as well attended as the regular meetings, so we don't get as
- diverse a conversation as we might want for something like that. And an hour and a half is a pretty
- short amount of time to distill a lot of brainstorming and then converge on a concrete plan for the
- next year. So we could split that up into two work sessions.
- And that would give us a little more time and a break in between to sort of digest and consolidate ideas.
- But of course, that takes some time to actually go through that planning, some additional time, which
- means we have less time to actually implement that plan once we have it. A new idea here that I had
- was we could do some sort of retreat where we find half a day
- you know, most of a day or something like that would probably have to be on a weekend when people aren't
- working and all that to really do, you know, multiple sessions, get into the weeds on stuff, maybe break
- out into some, you know, breakout groups or something and then come back. That's, of course, something
- that's a little harder to commit to because it's a lot of time dedicated all at once. People have families
- and all that sort of thing. But, you know, that option might allow us to really
- come up with a really kind of strong, well-formed plan that we can really hit the ground running with.
- Another option is just something completely else entirely that I haven't listed it here. So initial
- thoughts about how we should go about approaching that this year. Yeah. You had the same thought I did
- as I think doing something different as far as the work sessions so we can really push something through.
- I think I like your idea better. My thought was maybe we only do work sessions during these certain
- crunch times, and we try to hammer it out in a couple weeks. But I think something like a retreat would
- be good. I would vote for that, for sure. We would still need to be noticed and publicly accessible.
- challenge in finding space where we can do that? Because you can't book time at the library for that
- long. We can't do it in the city. We can't ask city staff to be here. I would volunteer the e-house
- at IU if you wanted to use that. Is that publicly accessible? Is it open to the public? Well, I mean,
- the door is open during business hours. OK. So yeah, that could be an option. We'd have to put the agenda
- notice on the door and all that.
- notice it properly, but yeah. Okay, good, that's an option. I agree, it's a better, like, yeah, I mean,
- as one of the people with kids and a lot of commitments, with appropriate time, I can usually make it
- work. Yeah, same. I need more than 48 hours notice. I know that's the legal minimum. Oh, yeah, we would
- notice this week's advance. Plan, yeah. The other thought I was gonna mention too, which is,
- sort of thinking through the priorities that you've lined it out. There's a lot of those I would kind
- of jump to, but I'm also thinking, like, what could we do maybe to, you know, put wind in your sails,
- right, in the sustainability? Is there anything that we could tackle and really support in that vein as well?
- I like the retreat because I find that whenever I've worked with groups and retreats before in different
- ways, we make a lot of progress in a very short amount of time. But I'd also like to ask for ESD in
- regards to the food area, since the food and garden is kind of my thing, do you have any plans for next
- year in the food system?
- I don't know. So basically grants to those two organizations. And we have the Sustainable Neighborhoods
- Grants. So it would be great if BCoS could help if you want to promote food security. There's $1,000
- grants for a neighborhood to install garden beds. I have questions about that because it's something
- I've worked on. So I can't remember if I have things with you. So I know since the commission is no longer
- approving those grants, is there a mechanism? Because I know that there were people that looked into
- it and then opted not to do it. And I know from my own neighborhood doing it that part of it is just
- the sort of daunting task of writing a grant with no experience. Is it possible for interested people
- to be referred to the commission for grant support in some kind of formal? I don't know what that is.
- relationship would look like or what that like sharing communication but I mean we can help people fill
- out the forms because it's hard and I know that there was it was like there was a lot of challenges
- for our neighborhood. Looking through and going through right now and I know whenever I was on Jack
- Hopkins there were a few
- few things that were done for the public, so two different meetings. Of course, that's a very short
- grant process and it's all very regimented. Is there a way that, I know this, do not want to add one
- more thing to your list, but a way to create like a video so that if somebody's interested
- in the application, you can just do kind of the asynchronous learning sort of thing of here's the video,
- here's the application, and then email if you have any questions.
- So I wanna do a quick pause because we're 20 seconds away from the end. It is a good question. You should
- come back to it. You have a hard stop. Was there anything ESD, like for the staff liaison report that
- you were hoping for today? Okay, okay, excellent. Okay, so what I'm gonna do is I'm going to send out
- just a little survey. It'll have these options, pick which one you prefer, and then maybe some dates
- that might be potential options.
- We can go from there. Okay, and we are at 730, so. Can I make a quick correction? Yes. The work session
- tomorrow is the RDCs. The council has been invited to it. It's their discretion whether they take public
- comment, I think. So it's up to them. And it's in the Allison conference room at 5 p.m. Perfect. Thanks.
- Thank you. All right. So since we're at the end of the time,
- We stand adjourned at 730. Thank you.