Call this order, this meeting to order of the Bloomington Commission on Sustainability and Resilience at 6 p.m.
And we'll take the roll call. Tara Dunderdale. Here. Here. Justin Vassell, I'm here. Rebecca Payne.
Here. Here. Christopher Miles. Here. And just a reminder, you'll have to turn on your video as well.
I have to keep the video on? Just when you're responding or voting on something.
Okay, thank you. So you're here. We got you. You can go back on video mute for now. Thank you. Um, Zach
Ammerman? Here. Here. Councilmember Rowla? Here. Here. Quentin Gilley? Perfect. I'll circle back to
him. Alex York? Here. Here. Marie Allerstad? Here. Here. Diana Ogrodowsky? Here. Here. And Ross Carlson? Here.
And back to Quentin, Quentin Gilley. And I see your microphone. Okay, that sounds good. We got you.
Virtual soon to be present. Got it, perfect. Okay, great.
Well, everybody is here in one way or another, so that's great. OK, so we'll move to the approval of
the agenda. Are there any additions, corrections anyone wants to make to the agenda? Do we want to just
have a standing thing where we move the staff liaison report up, or we don't need to? We can do that
each time if we want. Until we change the bylaws, it has to get structured this way initially, but we
can always rearrange it here during the approval process. So we're welcome to. Did you have a report
from today?
Nothing super substantial. It'll take 30 seconds to say. Well, I'll leave it up to the group. We can
just leave it where it is then, I guess. Yeah. OK. I'm OK with that. Sounds good. OK. So hearing no
proposed changes, is there a motion to approve the agenda? So moved. Second. And a second. OK. Perfect.
We'll go through a roll call vote since we have some virtual folks with us. So Tara? Yes. Yes. Justin,
yes. Rebecca? Yes.
Yes. Christopher? Yes. Yes. Zach? Yes. Yes. Councilmember Barallo? Yes. Yes. Quentin? Yes. Yes. Alex?
Yes. Yes. Maria? Yes. Yes. Diana? Yes. Yes. And Ross? Yes. Yes. All right. The agenda is approved. So
that brings us to the approval of the minutes for April 14th, 2026, which was our last regular meeting.
Are there any corrections to those minutes? Okay, not hearing any, is there a motion to approve the
minutes from April 14th? So moved. So moved in a second? Second. Perfect. All right, we'll go through
the roll call vote to approve the minutes from April 14th. Tara? Yes. Yes, Justin, yes. Rebecca? Yes.
Yes. Christopher. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
All right, the minutes are approved as circulated. And like I mentioned in my email, we had some notes
from our special session on the 28th, but they weren't properly formally minutes yet. So we'll approve
those that are next meeting. Oh, no, you're good. You're good. That was mostly on me for just blindly
sending it out. I have a list of students that spoke. If you need that, I can send that to you. Perfect.
OK, so that brings us to public comment.
Is there anyone in the public who would like to address the commission? We'll start here in the room
and then we'll go to Zoom if there's anyone there. Yeah, please introduce yourself to the commission.
Matthew Austin. So the comment I wanted to make is the resolution around glyphosate since I'm the author
of it and I'm no longer the commission. With everything we learned, either my, I would pull it off because
it doesn't,
With everything we learned, it doesn't make sense. It makes more sense to focus on paraquat and the
ball fields. So either postpone it indefinitely or just vote it down. I did send a resolution around
glyphosate and paraquat, and I'm gonna send that to MCIRS and all the others that were here that presented.
So that's one thing. And then two, Wonderlab has their,
beginning summer blast off May 21st from three to eight. They're gonna have food trucks there and Garden
Quest has a warm composting system there. They are also gonna start collecting, Wonder Lab is already
starting Bokashi and they're gonna start teaching Bokashi. In September, we're gonna be doing a training
around Bokashi food-based fermentation. Garden Quest just had one out at Will Detmer Community Gardens,
had I think 11 or 12 households and nine of them adopted or at least started the TRY IT program
around that food waste, and then there's a workshop on June 6th, July 12th, August 8th, I don't know
when the September one is, and October 11th. So I'd encourage anybody that wants to be responsible fully
for their food waste and to learn how to turn it into soil quickly to look on either Garden Quest website,
gardenquest.org, or the Community Orchards website. That's typically where they're gonna be. So,
thank you. Cool, nice. Thanks.
It's strange to see you on the other side of the room, but glad that you're here. Thank you for the
comment. Okay, moving to online. I don't see anyone online from the public, and there's nobody else
here in the room, so that will conclude the public comment portion. Okay, so that brings us to commissioner
reports. I didn't send around a chair's report. This time there's not a whole lot that's changed aside from
the org chart, so we have a new commissioner with us today, and that's Rebecca Payne. And so in a moment,
I'll ask her to just introduce herself and then say a few words. This is not technically her first meeting,
because technically the April 28th special session was, so that was an interesting way to just dive
right in. We don't usually meet in the big room, but that was exciting. But other than that, not a whole
lot of changes.
Yeah, I've got it on the agenda to chat a little bit about sort of like finding times to do like working
group types, or not working group, but like working session type stuff, kind of like we used to do,
trying to figure out what that might look like or whether there's a need for that or desire for that.
So normally that kind of thing would go maybe in the chair's report, but it's got its own section there.
So not a whole lot else to share at the moment. Does anyone have any questions for me? How many seats
are open right now? Two? Three, I believe.
Any other questions? Oh, I'm sorry. Let me allow Rebecca here to introduce herself as the commissioner.
Sure. Hey, everyone. Yep, I'm Rebecca Payne. I'm a Hoosier, trying to. Grew up in Indianapolis. Skipped
over to Colorado for two decades. Over there, I got my degree in urban and regional planning. And then
in 2019, moved back to Bloomington to care for my aging parents.
got a degree in public health. And so I have a huge interest in sort of the intersection of urban planning
and public health, especially as it relates to community wellness and vitality. And so this commission
is very appealing to me. I'm impressed with the work that I see that the initiatives and input that
I see has been given over time. So when I saw that there was a spot open, I thought, Hey, I'm gonna
see where it goes. So I'm really, really happy to be here and was very impressed with last month's special
meeting with the IU students. It was a very hard-caliber delivery. Welcome. Thank you. All right. Well,
that'll conclude it for my report, so I'll pass it over to Council Member Ralla for the council report.
Okay. A couple things. One is
the council unanimously approved the Hopewell development, Hopewell South, which is the 6.3 acres last
week. And we had a number of reasonable conditions, some involving streetscape, wider sidewalks,
tree plots, and so forth. The important thing about affordability is that of the 98 units, we required
35% for permanent affordability.
15% of those units are to be affordable for households earning at or below 90% of AMI, area of medium
income, and then 20% must be affordable to households at or below 120% AMI. So the council worked hard
to get to that point, and I think it was a worthwhile process. And some of us would have liked a higher
percentage of affordability,
I would have liked lower AMI. Maybe it's something to consider in further iterations of the remaining
17, 18 acres of Hopewell that will be coming further on. So that's one thing. Another is that tomorrow
night is a deliberation session of the council and we'll be discussing snow on sidewalks and the removal
and it's been a
perpetual problem. And of course, for pedestrians, it's an obstacle after snowstorms that seems to be
continual. And so we need to think of ways in which we can make sure enforcement occurs or help with
people that have trouble with snow removal, et cetera. It's very important that the city remove snow
on the sidewalks that it controls. So that's part of the discussion. So I invite you to come tomorrow for that.
And then lastly, I've been mulling, actually actively working on an interest that I think you share,
which is AI and artificial intelligence. Just briefly, the county put a moratorium, planning commission
on the county put a moratorium on data centers.
for a year, and that expires in July of this year. I would like to encourage our county colleagues to
put a permanent moratorium on data centers, and this is happening around the country, and I think that
there's, without going into detail about the reasons why, you can probably find those out online, but
they use tremendous amounts of water for cooling because any sort of computational process produces
a lot of heat.
uses tremendous amounts of electricity, which drive up rates and so forth. And ironically, most of this
is going toward development of generative AI, LLMs, and eventually AGI, which is artificial general
intelligence, which is meant to replace people, which is a problem of its own. The second thing that
I'm working on is a resolution for moratorium to, we can't enforce it, but it's rhetorical.
a resolution to encourage our representatives at higher levels to adopt moratorium on AGI, artificial
general intelligence, which would replace people in every cognitive domain. So anything a person can
do cognitively, AGI would match or exceed the capability. And that's going to have a lot of effects
on, obviously, employment,
But it would likely lead to superintelligence. And there's a lot of warnings right now from AI experts
that once we achieve superintelligence of AI, it's anyone's guess what would happen. Because we would
be the second most intelligent species on the planet, in a sense, species, silicon-based species. But
in any case, it could likely compete with us. We would probably lose control of it and some
AI safety researchers warned that it could result in our extinction, simply because it would either
out-compete us, or it would see us as an enemy, an adversary. So, although it sounds like sci-fi,
I mean, this is a very real possibility, and the AI firms in Silicon Valley are racing toward AGI. It's
an explicitly theirs, and of course,
hundreds of billions of dollars are pouring in in investment capital to see that that happens. So maybe
it's a discussion for a further day. I would like to bring that resolution in June. Maybe, I'm thinking
of June 10th, so I don't know when our next meeting is. It's probably... June 9th. June 9th, so it's
April 4th. So maybe a few minutes I could have at that meeting if you're interested.
If it's to your liking, I could go through that resolution, maybe send it through email, like your comments
on it. And I think that's it. That's all I've got to report right now. Thanks. Alex? Do we know if there
have been any hyperscalers or anybody who have been interested in building a data center in Monroe County?
I haven't seen any overtures to the fact that they're popping up
Especially in Indianapolis area, and a number of counties here have been banning them. I think the mayor
in Indianapolis has encouraged them. I don't know about the source of this, but I think Monrovia is
totally getting scouted for.
Yeah, it's everywhere. Kind of between Monrovia and Marginsville, I think. There's one in Washington
and Indiana, too, that they were trying to build south of here. But none in Monroe County, though. Yet.
It's only a matter of time. There's no better view surrounding that. No sense in working on it until
the moratorium's over. You know, just as an aside, there's one in Louisiana that's the size of Manhattan.
It's developed by Meadow.
Yeah. I mean, the one that they're planning to do in Utah would use more power than the entire state
of Utah. Yeah. By, like, a set bite, anyway. Yeah. By a large margin, it's not. Yeah. Yeah. It's totally
reasonable. I have a different question. Is the deliberate obsession, does that include a public comment
period? I can't agree. We have some thoughts on that. I have thought. I was, before things happened
in my life, I had a resolution I was working on for this commission about snow on sidewalks. Oh, good.
And I have some thoughts on some.
ways I'd like to look at the data in the you report. Okay, so yeah, please come or zoom in or you know,
but I will. Yeah, I wasn't aware that Monroe County had a moratorium on that. It's something that just
didn't chat with people is something that we were sort of interested in looking at for a resolution
is to try to get ahead of any prospective data centers coming here and say maybe City Council should
pass something like that. But
So that's good news. I didn't know that Monroe County had done that. And yeah, it would be good to encourage
them to re-up it. Do you know how many, how long it was? You said it's expiring in July, but? Something
about, I think the date is July 26th, unfortunately. So yeah, it's coming soon. Yeah. Exploration on
that, but you know, some states like Michigan have banned the ability for counties to put in moratoria.
You can deny book data centers, but only as a zoning base. You can't proactively put a moratorium on
them, unfortunately. And by the way, something else, just quickly. In the big, beautiful bill, there
was provision that would have prevented any state or local authorities from prohibiting data centers.
And fortunately, that was carted out by the Senate with a vote of 99 to 1, which was bipartisan,
a good sign. So anyway, we have sympathies in some quarters. OK. I had a question about the Hopewell
stuff. Because I know one of the blockers for a period of time was this reasonable accommodations
for, is that what it's called, reasonable? Conditioned. Conditioned, yeah, thank you. Where did things
land on that? Because I know that there was some back and forth between what was allowed and what wasn't.
How did that end up? Yeah, so that was a dispute between the administration and the council that took
a couple meetings to resolve. It came at a bad time because we didn't have any council staff. Our attorney
had resigned.
We had to hire an outside council who affirmed that the council has that ability to have reasonable
conditions apply to PUDs, although the corporate council still maintains that it's not within our purview.
Just preposterous, I'm sorry. But as long as we've been in the council, we've been able to do that.
And in fact, I can point to a number of PUDs are in town where reasonable conditions have improved the
situation there.
dramatically. So I won't get into it now, but it was very clear to me, and I'm glad that we still have
that, because it would have been a terrible precedent had we said, okay, we're agreeable to no reasonable
condition. And it was only an out there down vote. Anyway, so that's, okay, that's what was left.
Thank you. Any other questions for Constable Rowland? All right. Thank you very much.
Okay, so that brings us to agenda item six, discussions not the subject of resolution. So first up is
the O'Neill Capstone presentation that we saw a couple weeks ago. I mostly just wanted to spend a little
time giving people the opportunity to kind of chat and reflect on how that went. I think it'd probably
be good to have a longer period of time for us to really brainstorm what we want to do with that information,
especially after people have had more time to maybe digest the materials. But I thought maybe an initial
conversation
just to start getting the ideas flowing. And then our next agenda item, we'll talk about, you know,
where we might have like these sorts of brainstorming sessions and things like this. So, I'll open it
up the floor now. If anyone wants to, it's just gonna be an open discussion between commissioners. Yeah.
I think, I mean, I thought it was like a fantastic session. I thought it was like a great partnership.
I think there was like a lot of really good information. And I think that,
it sounded like for, I can never turn off the teacher thing, like a good experience for the students.
One thing that I like kind of floated to Alex is putting together some kind of like guide or tool for
other commissions who might want to pursue similar partnerships. This one was driven largely by like
personal connections, but I currently work in the department at IU that includes the
community-engaged learning. And so I have some insights about what commissions need to commit to in
order to make sure that they are not blowing up somebody's school work. So that's something that I would
love to work on, some kind of tool to help other commissions. Because we have so many commissions, and
we have this rich resource. And it is hard for us to do everything that we want to do or research everything
that we want to research.
I thought the quality was great. I thought they did a great job presenting what they presented. The
information was dense and really well done. I don't really think they sufficiently answered the question
I most wanted them to answer, which was how to set up an SEU in Bloomington. And I don't think it's
illegal. Having looked at the law myself, I think it's difficult, but not illegal. And they presented
it as though it was impossible. And I would have liked to have seen them go a little bit more in depth
on ways we could get around it, even if it's hard. But I do think the quality was very high quality and very
in depth, and I learned a lot from it, that they didn't really answer the question I wanted them to
answer. Yeah. I do think that their alternative proposals were very interesting, and I think that,
you know, Justin, you're talking about more time to digest and think about next steps and things. I
do think that there are actionable items from what they proposed. I think that both
to the point of the SEU is not impossible, just potentially very difficult. And my takeaway from their
presentation was that a community solar system on existing property on Brownfield on something of that
nature would be the best thing that the city could do. And that engagement with Duke Energy is kind
of a very logical next step because
lots of what Bloomington can do farther from that type of angle involves engagement with Duke Energy.
And I don't know as a commissioner, like I'm happy to go to that engagement, but I don't really know
where I start crossing the lines between that should be staff led or like only staff and stepping on
toes or anything. But yeah, I do think that it is time to engage Duke, I think.
you're right on not being the pathway to doing something. I think that's really the question I was asked.
The only question I asked was, did you engage with Duke directly? And they said, no, it's something
they think we would do. But I think that the answer to whether or not this could be something would
be, it's all about building a relationship. If they have a need and we serve it, I think they help carve
out whatever legalities it is to make it happen.
Or they can stop it if we, you know, I think it's either way. Yeah, it would be good to know how much
and what Duke might be supportive of because that certainly would shape what we should recommend happens.
I don't think that with the current budget-constrained world that Bloomington is particularly looking
to also take on fighting Duke energy in legal battles, so.
If they thought that it was serious, then they'd probably talk to us. But yeah, I don't know how entertaining
they'd be with just sort of floating the idea out of them. We'll try, but. Other thoughts? Riffs on
those thoughts? Tara, to your point, my feedback from the SPIA representatives.
that they greatly enjoyed the experience, and they would love to do more of it. So I think your idea
of putting together that guidance is a good one. Yeah, I think so much of what we were able to do was
really reliant on your institutional knowledge there, and so whatever we can document. And then there
are some official channels that we can go through, whether it's through the engaged learning, but there's
also a government affairs person at IU who can connect us.
There are also other schools here. There's Ivy Tech, and there's also high schools and other ways to
engage with. There are other schools within IU. I think that SPIA probably aligns the best for city
commission work in general. I mean, we have an arts commission. We have commissions on aging. Depending
on what commissions want to do, there's all kinds of opportunities there.
the where do I start, and then making sure that the commission knows what they're signing on for in
terms of committing to supporting the students through the entirety of the project is important for
them to reflect on if they have capacity for that. Yeah, I like the idea of having a resource so we
can send other commissions and say, hey, here's the blueprint we followed.
This is a great experience for us and everyone involved. I think that would be really helpful. Yeah,
I think if we do feel like a near-term step would be engaging with Duke, we'd probably want to lay out
what exactly that might look like, what we'd want to get out of it, and then of course work with staff
to figure out what's the appropriate way to actually go about doing that. But yeah, I know the report
had a handful of recommendations.
Maybe there's some others that we can take up as well. We do have the full report available, which I'm
just realizing now hasn't been circulated to everybody yet. So we'll get that out, and then that can
get attached as a packet for maybe the 28th meeting that we had at the 28th. And there's also some other
supplementary materials there. There were some spreadsheets and stuff that they... They gave us digital
files for basically all of the tools they used.
For example, we should be able to go in and change some of the assumptions on the environmental
characteristics of a community solar program, assuming that you are using a brownfield instead of converting
existing productive natural land for a community solar program and see how that changes the emissions
and things. So we have a rich repository of
the resources that they use in case anybody wants to delve deeper into their analysis or take their
analysis and look at it from a different angle or anything. So Justin has all of that. Yeah, you sent
me the zip file there. They also gave us two flash drives with all of that on it. So if anybody's like,
I want that, I'm sure you could just probably have a flash drive to play with. I think it all needs
to go on onboard anyway, so it'll be all
I don't know what the best way to do that is for nested directories and Excel files and stuff, but maybe
just a zip file. But I'll send it all to you, and eventually you'll get up there. The rulemaking got
pushed back a year for the compliance, so there's a little time to make it accessible. Did it? Oh, yeah,
yeah. Well, I can say it in another thing, but if it's helpful.
Okay, yeah. Okay, awesome. I read the whole Federal Register announcement. That's good reading. I have
some insights or thoughts. Okay, awesome. Yeah, we'll circle back on that, but that's good news. That
makes things a little bit easier. Okay, awesome. Yeah, anything else about the capstone? Additional
thoughts? Secondary thoughts?
All right, well, why don't we chat a little bit about the potential need for additional commission time.
You know, last regular meeting was pretty jam-packed. And the good thing is we're getting lots of stuff
done. We've got lots of resolutions coming down the pipeline. The bad news is we only have so much time
to meet and to actually discuss those resolutions and pass them. And so it seems like there's a need
for more time to get together and work on these things, whether that is sort of
The working sessions like we used to do, which is very unstructured, kind of brainstorming, we just
pick a thing to work on or we just ad hoc it in the moment and just throw ideas around or maybe like
work on the wording of a particular resolution together or something more structured where maybe sometimes
we're doing two business meetings in a month instead of one when things are busy or something like that.
Of course, those sorts of things depend on everybody's availability and what they have going on in their
life. So I wanted to open up for discussion, spend some time brainstorming whether we want to add more
time for us to get together and chat about these things or not, if we just want to try to be more efficient
with the time that we have. And then we can chat a little bit too about what that might look like in
terms of staff availability, working around those constraints to find some networks for everybody.
Yeah. Go ahead. OK. Just to start off, from the perspective of staff, our encouragement is we definitely
want to support working groups through staff time, that we're there to support, make it happen
and everything. But just want to make sure that whatever kind of time we're setting has a deliberate
purpose. If there's a working group focusing on a specific topic or a specific type of task, I think
that would be most helpful. Just so we know, going into saying,
yes, let's dedicate this extra time and convene everybody or a portion of everybody that we kind of
know what that time is for going into it. I think just to help us keep structured. And yeah, and then
there's also options to individually work on things, which you have been doing. Two people can get together
to work on something that's perfectly okay and just kind of have a plan for,
set aside when we're coming back to the commission with ideas on what we want to work on. And I'm still
in support, super in support of having some time to prioritize what we want to work on as a commission
as well. We haven't really done the strategy session yet. I still think that will be really valuable
because, yeah, there only is so much time that we have in these meetings, and we recognize that. And
so to make the most of it, I think
strategic meeting would still be great, and I would support that, too. So anyway, that's just from my
perspective. Yeah. Thanks. This might not be popular. Maybe it isn't. I don't know. But I would like
to see us move to two meetings a month. Maybe we could do, like, every other month, one's an extra actual
business meeting, and the next month it's a working meeting, or something like that. I don't know. I
think we've got an ambitious agenda of stuff, and that is good. We should be doing that. And we just
don't have time to do it in an hour and a half a month.
right now. We need more time to work. I don't know exactly what that looks like. I would move to two
meetings a month, whether that means, again, two business meetings a month, and the next month we do
a business meeting and a working meeting, or I don't know exactly what that looks like, but I think
we need more time. I wonder if it's worth, whatever we kind of talk about it, finding out can we get
a quorum if we move to more meetings a month, regardless, because
I think I'm amenable to Tim, too. I think there's so much that I want to do. But it's hard when we haven't
had this issue as much. But I think the first six months I was on the commission, we had four meetings
canceled or something for quorum. So making sure that that is something that everybody can commit to
before we put the time on people's calendars. And one other thing that I mentioned this to Justin is
you know, we definitely get, in terms of using our time efficiently, we are somewhat bogged down in
that Robert's Rules of Order is like way too much rules for an organization like this, but we are bound
by statutes to use Robert's Rules of Orders. So we would have to make a resolution through Robert's
Rules of Order to the processes
There's like a, we would have to get counsel to change the law. The Committee on Counsel Processes is
the one I think you're talking about. Yeah, it's something we... Yeah, to adopt something like Rosenberg's
Rules of Order or something like a little bit more flexible for us, which also could be a benefit if
that's something that they're amenable to. There's also some
room in Robert's order for us to just suspend the rules at the beginning of our meetings as like a point
of practice, which could also be a way of freeing up some of the like this is
13 people at a conference. We can't just suspend them all, but we can suspend them all. We can't, because
there's some things that we have to do the voice vote if there's people online. There's certain things
that we have to do for open door, but I think there's a lot that we could suspend to, which we kind
of unofficially do in a lot of ways anyway. I think most commissions do. They could use the time better,
regardless of how often we're meeting.
I'm not opposed to changing. I don't really mind, to be honest with you. I just wanted to get a sense.
You've mentioned agenda. You've mentioned strategic work group. What is in the pipeline? How much discussion?
How many topics?
Yeah, at the moment, I know there's a few resolutions that are in development that people are working
on. We had, you know, at our last business meeting, we had like four of them on the agenda or something,
I think, and it's, I've got four coming that aren't on it. So can you just bring, sorry for the basic question.
If I have an idea I'm really passionate about, can I just bring the resolution forward? Yes. Okay, so
it's unbridled. That's where I kind of think, you know, that strategic planning meeting would be really
helpful because we do only have so much time to work with within our set meetings. I don't think most
city staff are going to support doubling meetings that we have every month, and it isn't the bylaws
one meeting per month, but that
You know, we have a strategic meaning to like upfront, say, as a commission collectively, you know,
vote on a rank or, you know, something like that, like weigh what issues matter to you the most and
sort of set out to then, you know, individual commissioners maybe take it and work on those types of
things. You know, I think, you know, Zach, you've done some amazing work. You know, Matt really opened
up a great conversation that I think everyone learned a lot, but there was maybe some earlier steps
in the process of like, does the commission kind of as a whole want to
spend a lot of time on this subject matter? Or are there any questions that maybe should be addressed
before the resolution comes up? But that's all just kind of my opinion and perspective that I think
would be helpful for staff time to even be maybe more aware of what resolutions are coming up even before
they get presented at the initial meeting. Because we have things we need to review and look into and
recommend you all to talk to important other connected groups as well. So yeah, that's just my perspective.
Thank you.
I just want to second that the idea of doing like a strategy meeting, you know, we'll know what we're
talking about, you know, six, eight weeks ahead, you know, we're going to be talking about these cat.
These are the categories. These are general topics. We know what's coming down the road. Um, I think
that will go a long way to sort of planning out the year and the, the, we gain a lot of the time that
we might get from having like a second meeting, you know, we might go to, to,
forgo that just by the strategy meeting. If we were able to get that, I think. Is the primary concern
that we're going to have too many resolutions to get through in our meetings currently? For clarification.
I think at least that's kind of the- Upcoming, yeah. That's the bottleneck that we've hit recently.
And I think if we had working groups, too, we'd just foster more collaboration. We talked about having
a retreat or something. And currently, we don't have any
non-meeting working groups happening. So I think it is prohibitive to more collaboration and getting,
as Julie said, some of these earlier questions taken care of before we get into a meeting time where
time is limited and we're asking more background questions that probably could get solved in a working
group. Christopher has his hand up. Oh, thank you. Yeah, Christopher, go ahead.
Hey, so in terms of spending more time working as a commission, in terms of whether we're doing planning
meetings or multiple meetings a month, the question I would want to understand or answer that I think
would resolve those further questions for me would be basically the nature of the purpose of the commission.
If it's a sort of engine for resolutions, you know, I think that's... If we were going to do some genuine
strategizing in terms of what it is that the commission is set up to do and how it can most efficaciously
accomplish those goals, that would be of interest to me and worth time. But I think in terms of
just kind of generating resolutions, I feel less inclined in terms of efficacy, I guess, or sort of
in an advisory capacity. I'm not convinced that that's the most efficacious use of time. So I guess
what I'm saying is, yes, I would support sort of more time or more planning
It was along the lines of genuinely strategic planning in a kind of systematic or institutional sense.
Not just a matter of sort of organizing a busy docket, which it very much is, and I appreciate that.
That's what I wanted to share. Thank you. Yes, good points. Yeah, Tara. I will share that we tried to
do a planning meeting, and my impression of the interactions with the city was that the city was not
in good faith willing to support that.
We had, we got, Justin and I got communication from city legal that like we cannot, we have to consider,
like we can't plan a meeting and then say like the staff, like here's when our meeting is, please staff
it. But, or sorry, city legal, the city attorney said yes, you can do that. Like you schedule a meeting,
it's my responsibility to make sure it's that the city clerk and the deputy mayor said no, that's not
their reading of it.
The impression that I got in those interactions is that we do not actually have the flexibility to do
more than we're currently doing, and that we can talk about it, but I don't know that the city will
support it. I think the goal is that the staff and the commission are aligned in that, yes, we both
agree that we are able to
commit the time to specific meetings. And the amount of time, I think the initial idea of the strategic
retreat was kind of an all day thing, which was a bit much on staff, the staff. And so we came up with
kind of some ideas. And I think, you know, Sean and I contributed what times it would be available for
like a couple of two hour sessions, which was a lot more reasonable. But yeah, really the goal is just
collaborating and communicating as opposed to something like
we call this meeting staff, now you have to show up. We just want to have time. Which is what the city
attorney told us that we could do. But that was contradicted by communication from other administration
officials. And it definitely goes back to my point that I would just ask that any additional working
group meetings or meetings outside of the scope of the normal meeting has a focus, has a task, like
what is the purpose of it rather than just kind of free for all.
Yeah, right. In addition to being respectful of staff's time, I think that's just generally good for
productivity, right? Coming in with an idea and a purpose, yeah. Do we know if there's any update on
the onboarding or guidance documents that the city clerk told us that they were working on and the city
attorney? Because I think a big part of the limitation to working offline and working groups is like,
when I first came in,
I was told that if we cannot work, like when I was doing the working group for the report, I was told
that any time that we worked together, we had to do it in a public place, noticed with a virtual option.
And there were only three of us. But because it was a quorum of that committee, sorry, if any two of
us were together. And so it became impossible
for us to do that. And so clear guidance of like, when are we invited? Because now I'm hearing like,
yeah, two of you can go sit and work. And that's not the guidance that I've gotten before. So knowing
the parameters of our out of business meeting time would be really helpful. I think I've gotten like
10 different answers in two years. There isn't a clear answer is the problem. In May, all staff are
being trained for
as liaisons, and then in June, like you all will be hearing about being invited to receive training,
and they will have new training available and developed for new commissioners as well. So yes, that
is actually coming. Yeah. And I think for that experience, the lesson that we learned there is that
if two commissioners randomly just get together and they say, hey, we both share this interest, let's
work on something, that's generally fine, unless
They both happen to sit on a particular subcommittee or an established working group that's an official
sub body of this body, and they constitute a quorum. Because then the open door law rules apply to any
subcommittee that gets officially. Because it's a quorum of that subcommittee? Exactly. And how do the
subcommittees? Or of a working group. We usually, I guess we would vote. In that case, we voted to establish
a specific ad hoc committee for that purpose. Or environmental.
just eliminated all of this. Yeah, because the city wasn't working with them on letting them meet. The
city is not a good faith ally on this, I'm sorry. The administration wasn't releasing her. That's been
my experience. I've gotten a lot of different answers and not a lot of answers to the actual questions
that I asked, but a lot of other words. Yeah, it has been confusing at times. I think in terms of
having a strategy meeting session, which originally started out as this idea of a retreat, just that
if we're really gonna think hard about what we wanna do over the next year, not just in terms of what
topics do we wanna focus on, but also some of the questions that have been brought up here that Chris
brought up. What's the best use of our time? Is it just doing resolutions? Is it other types of work?
How should we organize ourselves internally? Talk about rewriting the bylaws and stuff,
how we can suspend rules when we need to, and that sort of thing. Those are all things that take a while
to kind of get through and brainstorm. So that's where the idea of a retreat came from originally.
It's like, let's all just hang out for a day and kind of get it done. I think we can still achieve a
lot of those goals by having maybe a couple shorter sort of strategy sessions that aren't business meetings
like this, but do have a set agenda, do have a list of topics.
where we're going through and discussing this stuff. And it's sounding to me like the question of do
we need more meetings or not is maybe better answered after we've had a chance to have those strategy
sessions and really think about, okay, what is this commission doing? What direction is it going? Can
we just be more efficient and then we don't need the extra meetings or is this something that we truly need?
need at least one more one extra meeting to determine if there are more extra meetings. One or two extra
focused meetings. I just think that just reflecting on the conversation if if the commission desires
more meetings in the enabling language of the commission in the municipal code which is
2.02.120, if anybody cares. It's section F, meetings. The commission shall meet one time each month,
every month of the year, unless it decides to cancel the meeting. So, you know, if you want to change
code, that would require, you know, to have additional meetings, that would require council action,
but we would want to obviously coordinate with the administration because this is, you know, requires
administration resources to have those units. So we wanted to talk to the mayor and work out something.
But if that's what you, I mean, I'm curious to know if that's what you're proposing. I think it's talking
about like special, like calling special sessions. Just special sessions. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And then code
does give us that. Yes. Option. So yeah, the chair or the commission itself can say sorry to me.
Yeah, I was just going to say, I guess we, you know, in that reading, where it says shall meet once
each month, that probably says we can't just schedule two business meetings on a regular basis, the
exception being if something was a special meeting, you know, then that would be permissible, I think.
But of course, we wouldn't want to regularly be calling special meetings as an order. So if we decided
we truly wanted more meetings, then I think we would have to advocate potentially for some sort of change to the,
code to accommodate that. So maybe that's not a direction we end up going. Maybe it's a work smarter,
not harder kind of situation. Other thoughts? Do we have a timeline for when we want to do the strategic planning?
Yeah, I wanted to do it a couple of months ago. I mean, mostly I've been the bottleneck because it's
really just trying to coordinate with staff to figure out exactly, you know, like what durations and
what dates would work. And they sent me back some dates that would work for them. And I think all those
dates have passed now. So we have to kind of restart them. And if we are getting concrete guidance and
training. I was going to say, I wonder if that's not a good time to just go ahead and plan around after
we all get trained. Yeah, I guess I'm saying, like, I would want to see what
the concrete guidance we're getting from the city is because then we have it in writing in a place that
everybody's seen. That's why I was asking. Yeah, before doing any extra. Because I don't want us to
mess a lot of time into something that then we get trained in the city legal set. Actually, that's not
what happened. That's a good point. And you said June was the time that commissions would probably get
that sort of training? So we'd be looking at a July potential strategic planning? I guess so.
I feel like that being strategic is that's how we get something done that's, you know, more effective
or, you know, that's going to make it make a difference sort of to Chris's point we could run through
a bunch of
different things, or we could focus on one or two things for the year. That's what I was going to say.
I think we need big focus areas, if that's the concern with the resolutions, which I feel like is similar
to what Christopher was kind of talking about. Yeah, and I'm thinking, too, like on a strategy session,
we can each get some homework, maybe. Let's see what the other commissions are trying to get done. Maybe
there's a way to look at that and say, OK, we could position ourselves to focus on these things. It's
going to align with these other groups, and we might actually get something bigger across the finish line.
Absolutely. Okay, so I think going forward we'll stand by for the moment and once we get some training
on the books and get that done then we'll start planning around a strategy session as soon as we can
after that. And then we can chat then about if we actually have a need for more meetings or not. Awesome.
Well thank you everybody.
before that for the input. That brings us on to resolutions for first reading. So we're pretty much
exactly on time right now, which is pretty great. So generally, we don't really discuss resolutions
at their first reading. We save that for the second reading. And so we usually just introduce them at
the first reading, and then we vote on it.
For those that aren't aware, we do have to have two readings for any resolution that we pass. That's
in our bylaws. And there is a way to sort of get around that in special cases if you need to really
get it done in one. That's not the case today. So we've got a resolution here authored by Zach about
concerning anticoagulant rodenticides and adhesive-based animal traps and their impact
on the biodiversity crisis. So I would entertain a motion to pass this for a second reading at our next
meeting. Resolution 2026-05. Perfect. We have a motion and a second. Any discussion on that? Or questions
about the process would be appropriate too.
Yeah, and Zach did send around a memo to folks. I was going to say, does Zach want to say a couple words?
Yeah, do you have a couple words? I mean, just briefly, it would basically recommend that the city ban
stop the use of anticoagulant-renderedicides on city property or with city contractors. If you're unaware
of these, there's a whole memo that I wrote on here about the damage. They basically ricochet throughout
the entire ecosystem, hitting wildlife all over the place. They're horrible.
The city's somewhat limited by what we can do. So I try to suggest strategies of ways to get around
it. And then there's also a recommendation to ban outright ban glue traps, which I do think we'd be
able to do, which are also horribly inhumane and barbaric and awful. So look into it. I've always recommended
reading around there. We're at a three page memo. So four page memo. Thank you. Yeah. All right. Any
other questions about the process or anything before we move on to a vote?
All right, then we'll call the roll. This is to advance resolution 2026-05 to a second reading. Okay,
Tara? Yes. Yes. Justin? Yes. Rebecca? Yes. Yes. Christopher? Yes. Yes. Zach? Yes. Yes. Councilmember
Rollin? Yes. Yes. Quintin? Yes. Yes. Alex? Yes. Yes.
Yes. Diana? Yes. Yes. And Ross? Yes. Yes. OK. It is unanimous. We will see this as a second reading
in our next business meeting. Thank you, Zach. All right. That brings us to resolutions for second reading.
So first up on the list is resolution 2026-03, concerning the pedestrianization of Kirkwood Avenue and
sustainable transportation. And Zach is the author and presenter of that as well. So do you want to
give an intro to what this is? And then we can. Yeah.
So as many of you are probably aware, the mayor decided to stop the pedestrian program at Kirkwood Avenue
this summer. I think it was a huge mistake. Basically, this would suggest or recommend to the mayor
and the city council a couple of different things. The whereas clauses all go through the background
on that. And then we have some findings, but the recommendations really meat of it. And the recommendations
go that, number one, they should at a minimum reverse the decision to not pedestrianize Kirkwood this
summer and go back to pedestrianizing at least during the seasonally.
Strongly consider more long term, a permanent year round closure of Kirkwood Avenue, at least from the
sample gates to Kirkwood. Study existing streets that are really successful in analog cities and other
other parts of the country. Prioritize investment in permanent street skate improvements rather than
just doing ad hoc things every season.
move administration of the pedestrian program from the Department of Economic and Sustainable Development
to planning and transportation, which is better equipped to handle this sort of thing. I also don't
think, I think it was a mistake to frame it as an economic development issue, which it has been from
the start. I think that was a mistake. It's not an economic development issue. It's a public space and
pedestrian and sustainable transportation issue. So the planning and transportation are better equipped
to handle it.
And that's the next one. And then after that, finally, repeal a specific section of the ordinance which
created the streetscape program, which allowed the city engineer to unilaterally just get rid of the
program and either just completely repeal it or replace it with something requiring the council to weigh
in before it's gotten rid of. And then also just the mayor repeatedly has framed the Kirkwood program
as one in terms of like parking revenue lost versus the fees that they gained from allowing restaurants
to park to be on the street.
And we're talking, I think I put it in here some ways, 0.0004% of the city's budget that we're talking
about. It's not a big revenue loss. Like, why are we framing it? That's a silly thing. Stop doing that.
And then finally, a statement of values, which I think sums up the entire thing. The commission affirms
that sustainable cities prioritize people over automobiles, especially in the most central public spaces,
and that Bloomington's identity as a walkable, bikeable community should be reflected in the design
of its most prominent and iconic pedestrian quarter. So that's in a nutshell.
Thank you. So before we discuss, do I have a motion to approve this? Second. Okay, perfect. That brings
us to discussion, debate. Just FYI, Zach, I understand my colleagues in the council are coming to you.
Do you know that they are going to be considering an ordinance to close Kirkway? Yes. And I think it's
Councilmember Rosenbarger and Councilmember Daley were co-sponsoring it. So this again goes to a very
core question, which is who has the authority to do this? And in my previous experience, it always came
to the council to adopt a policy regarding permanent alterations of roadways.
That has been in dispute, and the administration maintains that it's up to the city engineer. And we
now have an interim council attorney who's working on that. So I don't have anything to report in terms
of, you know, where that falls right now. But that's going to be a core, you know, part of this discussion.
And that's going to be on May 20th. I understand it.
So it's coming next next week. Yeah, actually. So this is very timely and I was planning. If this gets
approved, I was planning to ask to. I think we have to ask the Council actually have to vote to authorize
me to go to the Council meeting and speak on behalf of the Commission. But obviously that's contingent
on a passing. We'll discuss earlier. Procedural question. There's a draft. There's an amendment for
this that's also on offer. Are we right now? We're discussing the
The resolution, yeah, right now we're discussing the resolution without any amendments proposed. But
at any time, a commissioner could move to make an amendment. So that could happen right up front or
after some discussion. It's mostly up to you. I think we can generally discuss it, and then we'll move
to an end, and then we can discuss it down at the package. Yeah, I just wanted to make sure I knew the
order that we were doing. Yeah. I love this. I'm highly supportive of it. I was thinking of.
something like this, and then you did it, and I went, great, I don't have to. Yeah, I do have a potential
in myself just to strengthen one of the whereas clauses for one of the lenses that I really viewed this
through. But yeah, I have been to multiple, I haven't been to the North Carolina City, but yeah.
I can't remember what that was. I've been to that one, but I've been to the other locations, and they
have fabulous boulevards that are core to their city that is just such an amazing place to be. And I
feel like this would only be beneficial in that way. I raised a question in the last business meeting
about this, and it's partially addressed in the amendment that was shared in the packet about accessibility
concerns, especially for people that are
trying to access public spaces like the library in there. And I think that I like the amendment that's
in the packet in sort of affirming the accessibility. Pedestrianization is at its core about accessibility.
I think anecdotally and observationally what I've seen, what creates a lot of the accessibility barriers
is like a lack of enforcement of the accessibility of the existing space. And I think that that's not
limited to
if Kirkwood is pedestrianized or not, I think that businesses right now block the sidewalk and it's
not accessible. So I think there's a question of enforcement from the city and seeing a commitment from
wanting to see maybe language in here or an amendment encouraging better, more consistent enforcement
and proactive enforcement of accessibility.
for these spaces to make sure that they are actually available to everyone. And I think knowing that
the council is also talking about snow removal and stuff, that's maybe something that's on their minds
already. So that's our concern. That's like my chief concern with proposing it. But I think if we can
talk about that language, I would love to see it. And then when we bring that up, which we can now if
you want, I'm happy to incorporate whatever language you want.
I don't think that's the words. So that May 20th meeting you referenced, is that when council's considering
this ordinance, this proposed ordinance, or just discussing the topic? That's a good question. I haven't
seen it, so it hasn't had a first reading yet. Now we could discuss it, because we've changed our rules
to hear it on that night.
So, but I'm not sure if that's the intent of the sponsors at this point. I assume that, you know, you
mentioned the fiscal impact of parking meter revenue. Probably the administration is probably going
to say that there's a fiscal impact regarding, you know, staffing and so forth. For sure. I don't have
a total picture of that yet. So I assume it's going to take a couple of meetings.
Does the city's measurement of the revenue from parking count the cost to enforce parking? I don't think
so. What they used was the $80,000 loss from the actual meter revenue. Because I know there are many
examples and I think Bloomington is probably among them where the cost to enforce meters
exceeds the revenue generated. Wouldn't surprise me because it's very cheap to park and load. Yeah.
I don't have an answer for that. That's a good question. And would that be before the concessionaires?
I'm not sure. Just like, are those not park mobile? I guess I don't know. Oh, I don't know.
Physical leaders. Yeah, they're both. They're both.
They're like Park Mobile. Park Mobile probably skips off of the $10,000. All I know is they had a total
that was $80,000 lost versus, I think, $17,000 in gains from the public space access. But that's literally
the difference. I measured it. It's 0.0004% of the city budget. We're talking pennies. That's not a
reason to cancel the entire program. It's silly. Nonsense. They were just grasping at reasons to cancel
it because they wanted to cancel it. Anyway.
Well, I think to your point, too, it's not an issue of money to you so much as it is an issue of priority.
Yeah. Well, should we move to amend, I guess? I move to amend. Perfect. There's a motion. Second. There's
a motion to amend and to amend as you provided, right? Yes. The amendment form. Yes. I think we could
pull that one up if that's possible.
What do you think? Should we look at the form, Zach, or the text itself? It's both, they're identical
so far. Maybe that's the form here is easier to see. Sorry, I'm taking notes at the same time. Minutes
at the same time. May I remember who to amend? Who? Did you? Second? Yes, me. Sorry. Sorry. Not used
to being secretary. Sorry. Thank you. No problem. OK. So should I explain?
Yes, please. Okay, yeah, so basically, most of the, several of these are just adding in footnotes that
got dropped inadvertently, so that's not really important. The main substantive one is one adding in
this line here at line 33. Sorry, there's no line numbers on this version of the draft. Oh, okay. Well,
it's there. I guess... If you just look at the... It's under when configured for auto-mobile traffic,
the next one after that.
at the bottom of page one. Just saying that accessible street design is a core component of exclusive
public space, and that pedestrianized streets, when you do it correctly, are accessible streets, essentially,
is what it comes down to. And that when you're actually expanding the pedestrian realm dramatically,
and not just reserving, literally, at most you can get maybe one fourth of the space on the street for
people versus cars on a regular configured street. This one, it's 100% for people,
that includes people with accessibility issues, that includes people with mobility issues. In the memo
I attached to this, it goes into my rationale behind it, they've done intense studies on accessibility
and pedestrian streets and they find that any, the vast majority, not the vast majority, the biggest
issues on pedestrianized streets for accessibility tend to be in places where they're having to, and
coming into conflict with cars. So on cross streets where they're not pedestrianized, that's where the biggest,
issues with accessibility are, and it's the cars themselves that often promote the accessibility issues.
There are other ones that are completely solvable, which are, the federal government has guidelines
on how to deal with these that are things like, hold on, what do they say? Detectable curb edges for
people that have vision issues, being able to figure out where the curb is, wayfinding for people that
have braille and things like that. Truncated domes. I'm sorry? Truncated domes.
What is it? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So like on maps and things, having things coming out so you can feel
where things are on a map, for example. What's another one? Oh, like having a texture of some sort on
the side of the road if the road is at the same level as the pedestrian area so that people can feel
when they're about to enter a place with cars and things like that. So these are all, there's federal
guidelines for all of this. There's solvable issues. And most of the conflicts that actually happen
come where cars are in play.
So it's just emphasizing that pedestrian streets really are accessible streets by design. It
is an accessibility thing. Yeah. I would go as far as saying that a pedestrian street will
drive accessibility by getting rid of the cars. Everything's going to start falling in place
for accessibility. For sure. And I also mentioned that a lot of people that have mobility issues don't
have cars. Disproportionately, people that are involuntary, car-free households are households that
have a high percentage of disabilities or accessibility issues of some sort.
It should be the center of civic life in Birmingham. Anyway, yes, so that's my spiel on the accessibility.
And then I also added something on the very one other substantive change, relatively minor, just adding
to the end of the study, these other streets and other cities example, just studying what they did on
accessibility that worked. Just adding that.
Safety is another huge one. When you have a place where there's a lot of pedestrians, you got vehicles.
I mean, I've looked at reports showing that walking around Bloomington is not as safe today as it was
23 years ago. Even with all the new safety improvements, it's still not as good. So I think I support
everything you're saying on that. Okay, wonderful. Any other discussion and debate about the submit?
Did you have any? No, I'm looking at the language. I feel like it's covered and I feel like I can't,
I don't know that I could write the words to make the city follow their own laws. Yeah. Well, I read
it and I thought it was really excellent. So I appreciate the care that you took with it. Thanks. As
a former alternative modes transportation planner, I think you hit all the high marks for a compelling
What do we call these? Resolution. Resolution. I had a brain blip. So yeah, I was really excited to
see this personally and professionally. Cool. I think it's in the, it's Sample Gates to Walnut. Oh,
it's Sample Gates to the Courthouse Square. Yeah, yeah, Walnut, yeah. And I think there's been like
a break or two
I'm wearing there traditionally the way it's been the last couple of years. All the cross streets have
still been open historically. Yes. Yeah. Which that's, I think, a different resolution. But I hate that.
It's worse. Let's get it pedestrianized first. Let's have a real pedestrian. All right. So on the question
of the amendment, is there any other discussion on that or should we move on to a vote? OK.
Hearing none, we'll move on to a roll call vote. And this is to approve the amendment that Zach just
lay down here to resolution. So there's already been a motion in a second. All right, Tara? Yes. Yes.
Justin? Yes. Rebecca? Yes. Yes. Christopher? Yes. Yes. Zach? Yes. Yes. Councilor Morales? Yes. Yes.
Quentin? Yes. Yes. Alex? Yes.
Yes. Maria? Yes. Yes. Dana? Yes. Yes. And Ross? Yes. Yes. OK. The amendment passes unanimously. So that
brings us back to our discussion on the full resolution as amended. Are there any further discussions
on that resolution or additional amendments that anyone would like to make? I have one additional amendment
and maybe a second one. Anyway, let's start with my first additional amendment.
What would it be? One of the things about the pedestrianization and everything that the oscillation
that drives me crazy is
of lines 50 through 52, the statement is, whereas the current uncertainty regarding Kirkwood status
oscillating between pedestrian and automobile setups prevents businesses and the city from making long-term
investments in streetscape improvements. And I think this is very true, but for me, this is one of my
core complaints, that the city doesn't see this great additional revenue generation from this
because we can't do the right things with it. So I would just strengthen that and build it out a little
bit more. Do you have language? The city themselves understands the value of this because they're shutting
it down one night every month for families and children to enjoy. We're planning to do a
study in the corridor, or it starts with a study, right, but a study to see, to model that future solution
as discussed here. So, I can send this language to somebody if he's told to put it up on the screen
instead of just reading it, but whereas the seasonal oscillation between pedestrian and vehicular traffic
creates a structural barrier to realizing the full potential of the corridor,
stifling investments in features such as, but not limited to, fixed public art permanent commercial
kiosks, which could easily raise the tax base to fully replace lost parking revenue, expanded outdoor
dining structures, and resilient environmental features like bioswales, rain gardens, or general permeable
landscapes, which could be especially beneficial given Kirkwood's history of flooding. Yes. Seconded.
Semicolon and, right? Semicolon and.
Yes. Move to amend. Is he moving to amend? I move to add that. I move to replace the previous mentioned
three lines, lines 50 through 52 of that whereas clause with my amended whereas clause. And if we approve
this, that is a pretty substantial change. You will send me that identical text. Yes, I have it in an
email. Perfect. Saved.
Perfect. Okay. I support that. That's fantastic. Okay. So there was a second, was that? Yes. Perfect.
So there is a motion, a second. Is there any discussion about that amendment? I love it. Thumbs up.
Yeah, I like it too. So, all right. If there is no discussion, we'll move on to a vote for that. Okay.
Tara. Yes. Yes. Justin. Yes. Rebecca. Yes. Yes. Christopher. Yes.
yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes
yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes
yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes
But Quentin, I know you and I have talked about your desire to have IU follow suit in some places and
do a little bit more road closures and things. Okay, I'm with you there. I wrote another, whereas successful
inflammation
That. Whereas successful implementation of such a change in our community could prove as a model for
Indiana University to take similar action in some of their core roadways where there is significant
pedestrian slash motor vehicle interface. Yes. Semicolon and. Second. Where would that go? I have no
idea. To the end. Before the last whereas clause so that we don't have to amend that one to be semicolon
and. What?
Can I ask a question on this? Absolutely. What is the appetite for having some sort of imagining there
was a like what we have the bus network right now, right? If there was a way to have something. Dedicated
for transportation to kind of move people, right? So I'm thinking like you have a football game. Like
you know they have. Maybe people want to park downtown and
and enjoy and spend some money after the game, dinner, whatever. If there was like a, you know, big
closed roads all the time with those, if you had a road that you could put people on like the things
they got at the state fair, those trackless trolleys. And if you could have a way, because those kind
of move in and out with people pretty well, have something like that, that could go up and down Kirkwood,
I think then you could move a lot of people
for events, and you tried out at events, but something like that, just if there was a space to have
some kind of transportation, pedestrian-centered transportation in that area. I mean, I don't think
this precludes that, like an ad hoc sort of, this is more for private vehicles, so I don't think this
would prevent that from happening. I think this kind of closure encourages that kind of creative approach to moving
large amounts of people around the city, both day to day and for big events. Yeah. I only ask because
I feel like if there was a way to have that language in there in some way, it might get people a little
bit more excited about it saying, hey, there's going to be, there might be some new way to bring a lot
more customers downtown that might not face the traffic otherwise. That might have to be a separate
amendment if we decide to add that language.
So Alex, you made a motion. I make a motion to adopt the whereas statement that I read about serving
as a model to IU. And that would be the second to last. As a quick, before I say that, should it say
Indiana University or Indiana University Bloomington? Indiana University Bloomington. Indiana University
Bloomington. And if there was a way to say that working to serve as a model and align with IU, I think
that would come off a little bit better, because IU's doing their own transportation
Model four and a line with? Okay, I might have to reread this one. Does that make sense? Because you're
thinking about a certain corridor, right? Is there any value in saying that?
I don't think it's just 10th Street. I think there's 10th, a bit of Phi, Eagleson, 7th, 3rd. I think
it could be pretty bad, too. And they have pedestrianized a big chunk of 7th. Yeah. And it's nice. Which
I was going to say, I think it's a work of art. I took my bike here, through that. The bike lane is
closed right now. I feel like if we just leave it out, don't specify it. Yeah. Pedestrianized bikes.
Should I propose we make this and then we just motion that we do this and then I get seconded and then
we would discuss the exact language and then we vote? God, I hate these rules. We already moved and
seconded, so we're discussing. Who seconded that, by the way? Okay. What's the current language that
you have right now?
Whereas, successful implementation of such a change in our community could prove as a model for and
align with Indiana University Bloomington to take similar action in some of their core roadways for
their significant pedestrian-motor vehicle interface. Seven colon and. I think that's great.
I like that. It still keeps the attention on Kirkwood, but also says that this should be after line
76. Yes. And I know- This would be the second to last winner's
Yeah, and the align with is good, also front end to your point. I know talking to the city that like
Kirkwood in Indiana is a place of like, I think that's the place where the most pedestrians get hit.
Which I understand why it's very chaotic. But you know, that is a place that would probably be a city
university alignment to discuss what to do with that corridor. Exactly. It's also a very iconic spot,
so changing anything
Oh, yes. Yes. Is this state highway there? Because that'll complicate it. No. No, it's not. Thankfully.
OK. Ten days farther. Ten days state highway. There are lots of terrible, terrible intersections of
robots in this town that are state highway. And yes, that gets internalized. I have a map somewhere,
but most of the streets going through the university are our city streets. They're not the university.
Any other questions or discussions about the proposed amendment? No. Well, back in the day,
Kirkwood used to be open in the east of Sample Gaze. I don't know if anybody had that. I'm old enough
to remember that. If you watch Breaking Away, you can see the cars driving. And then the 7th Street
was closed by the university, you know, at the auditorium to Eagleton as well. So there is a precedent
for having a pedestrian. Grow it. Keep growing it. All right. Are we ready to move on to the vote on
the amendment? Yes. OK.
This is the vote to amend as Alex had read, and this will be the penultimate whereas clause. That's
my word of the day. Tara? Yes. Yes. Justin? Yes. Rebecca? Yes. Yes. Christopher? Yes. Yes. Zach? Yes.
Yes. Council Member Rowler? Yes. Yes. Quentin? Yes. Yes. Alex? Yes. Yes. Maria? Yes. Yes.
Diana? Yes. Yes. And Ross? Yes. Yes. All right, amendment is approved unanimously. Okay, so that brings
us back to our main discussion on the full resolution. Are there any further discussion or amendments?
Go team. What's that? He said go team. Good job. Well, I have one more comment. Sure. I'm not sure if
it warrants an amendment because I think it's already very strong, but just something that it made me think of.
is that the public works recently designated Kirkwood as one of only three festival footprints in the
city. And I mean, and the other ones, the trades district, and then also the square, which basically
is Kirkwood as well. So it could, I don't know if it's worth adding that as a whereas to strengthen
the argument that like, you know, if you're gonna say this space is specifically dedicated for
pedestrian activities of 1,000 people or more. Doesn't it make sense to permanently make it accessible?
You said it was Public Works Commission who did that? Public Works. That's a great idea. I would want
his opinion on that. I think it's a great idea. Other bodies have referred to this as their opinion
is adjacent to this, and it's great.
proposed language for that. So we could just say somewhere, whereas the Public Works Commission has
recently declared Kirkwood one of three official festival corridors for pedestrian activity? Festival
footprints. Festival footprints? For events anticipating 1,000 or more attendees. Okay. So let me write
that. So. It follows to. So whereas.
The Board of Public Works, that's the name, right? Can I interrupt you? The Queen of Borders is 724.
Yeah, yeah, okay. We were doing so good there. Would you have an extra 15 minutes if we needed it? Okay,
thanks. Okay, so whereas the Board of Public Works has recently designated Kirkwood Avenue as an official
festival footprint corridor? Yes.
And that means a place that is zoned to have a festival? Is that what that means? If there is basically
a public festival that's anticipated to have 1,000 or more attendees, it can only be held in one of
these. In one of those three places up there? Yeah. So the 4th Street Arts Festival will have to move
because it's no longer one of those. So I've got the link. The 4th Street Arts Festival gets to be at
this year on 4th Street and then it'll be.
I'm trying like a designation person. It's a designation person. So a language. Whereas the Board of
Public Works has recently designated Kirkwood Avenue as an official festival footprint corridor for
public events of 1,000 or more attendees. Where do we want to put it? After yours? I was going to say
shouldn't we say like just something more like showing the
community importance that this is a place to gather, yeah, further strengthening. The reason for the
policy was stated as public safety. Further illustrating the importance of the corridor for pedestrian
safety and celebration. Safety and celebration. How about celebration of community?
I moved to amend it to do what I just said. Where do we want to put it? Oh. Let's do right after the
one he just added. Okay. So this would then become the... Penalty. Penalty. Who seconded? I seconded
it. Okay. First secretary. And any discussion before we move to a vote?
Could you give us one more full reading of? Yeah. So whereas the Board of Public Works has recently
designated Kirkwood Avenue as an official festival footprint corridor for public events of 1,000 or
more attendees, further illustrating the importance of the corridor for pedestrian safety and celebration
of community. Semicolon and. Perfect. All right. Fast talking comes in hand. We'll move on to a vote
then for the amendment. Tara. Yes. Yes. Justin. Yes. Rebecca. Yes. Yes. Chris. Christopher. Sorry. Yes.
Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
So there's a motion to extend to 745. Is there a second? There's a second. All right. Then we'll vote
on that. Tara? Yes. Yes. Justin? Yes. Rebecca? Yes. Yes. Christopher? Yes. Yes. Zach? Yes. Yes. Councilmember
Borella? Yes. Yes. Quentin? Yes. Yes. Alex? Yes. Yes. Maria? Yes. Yes. Diana? Yes.
Yes, and Ross. Yes. Yes. All right. We are extended to 745. Thank you, everybody, for staying a little
bit later. OK, so we are back on the main resolution as amended. Is there any further discussion or
amendments? So I was thinking of no. At least we have the amendment on.
Is everyone ready to move on to a vote? Yes. Okay. All right. So this is to a vote to pass resolution
2026, 2026-03 as amended. Tara? Yes. Yes. Justin? Yes. Rebecca? Yes. Yes. Christopher? Yes. Yes. Zach?
Yes. Yes. Councilmember Rowland? Yes. Yes. Quintin? Yes. Yes. Alex? Yes.
Yes, Maria? Yes. Yes, Diana? Yes. Yes, and Ross? Yes. Yes. All right, the resolution passes as amended.
Thank you very much. Congratulations. Thank you. Very well done. Thank you. Is this, I would like to,
I don't know how this works, but I think we have to vote for me, to authorize me to go speak in front
of the council, just to read the resolution, basically. Oh, yeah, that's a good point, yeah. So basically,
Zach wants to attend this May 20th meeting, and
speak as a member of the public, but also sort of speak on behalf of the commission as it relates to
this resolution. So basically staying within the lanes of what this resolution says. So I think it'd
be good if he's going to say that he's presenting this in sort of an informal way, I guess, to the council
on behalf of the commission, that we would have to vote to allow him to do that.
Yeah, I guess. A second. Perfect. There's a second. Great. Is there a discussion or questions about
what this entails? OK, perfect. We'll go through a vote then. Tara? Yes. Yes. Justin? Yes. Rebecca?
Yes. Yes. Christopher? Sorry, there's a lag. Yes. No worries. We got yes. Zach? Yes.
Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
in an email. That's perfect, yeah. Anyone who did amended text, please send it to me, otherwise I'll
have to go back to the recording and transcribe it all. Okay, that brings us to resolution 2026-04,
against the use of glyphosate in Bloomington's public spaces and environmental practices. Matt mentioned
during public comment that he would be fine if this didn't move forward based on the conversations that
we had last meeting and all that discussion. So I just want to note as a process, if we want to do that,
we could postpone indefinitely, which basically kills it. It doesn't mean we can never reconsider it.
If someone wanted to bring it back sometime, they could, but it would kill it indefinitely. But in order
to do that, we have to have someone make a motion and a second, and then we can make a motion to postpone.
Does that make sense? You have to approve it first. Yeah, vote to approve it, and then vote to postpone.
Of course, we also don't have to vote to postpone, but that's just an option. I want to make sure everyone
knows how that works.
So is there a motion to? I motion to consider resolution 2026-04. Perfect. Is there a second? All right,
there's a second. Are there any discussions or further motions? I move to postpone it, definitely.
I second. Did you want to discuss? I was just going to say one thing quick. That no matter what happens
with this, I do want to state that even after hearing from our experts last
month that I do have concerns about the use of glyphosate. I have concerns about the city use of some
of the other herbicides and fungicides that were provided in some of the emails that were lists of what
they do use. So I just would like to reiterate that no matter what happens today with this, I do think
there is merit. I also think there are merited
uses of glyphosate from the city, but it would take more than I think what was written in this to make
any full decision. Yeah, and I think that what came out of this process was like it's very clear that
the city, while the parks department does a reasonable job of being transparent about their
use of pesticides, that that is not necessarily true of all city departments that are
using pesticides and or, you know, departments might contract with groups that are using it and there's
potential for our commission to take up that issue and push for more transparency, more communication
from the city when they are using these tools. Yeah, I think we had a great discussion too. Yeah, and
I actually, I want to say I went into it thinking I was likely going to be opposed to it.
And I might be the only person to move this way. Actually, the more research I did, especially because
France has a similar thing, anyway, I actually came out a little bit more in favor of it than I thought.
I think it needs to be amended and changed. In its current form, I probably couldn't have voted for
it, but I think there's a version of it that I could have supported. Anyway. So, procedurally,
where are we? We're considering adoption. Okay, yeah, okay. And you did technically make,
I guess we're kind of in the discussion for that motion, right? The motion to amend it. Yeah, I guess
we technically are. Okay. So was it seconded? It was. Yeah, but I'm happy to pause for a moment. Well,
this discussion is valid for either.
I think, unless to postpone indefinitely is not debatable, but as the chair will say, I don't remember
right now, so it's okay. Any other further discussion before we move to a vote to postpone indefinitely?
Okay, then we'll take the vote to postpone indefinitely resolution 2026-03. Tara? Yes. Yes. Justin? Yes.
Rebecca. Yes. Yes. Christopher. Yes. Yes. Zach. Yes. Yes. Dave. Yes. Quentin. Yes. Yes. Alex. Yes, but
I think that you said to... You said 03 at 04. Oh, you're right. I apologize.
That's OK. Was anyone confused about what they were voting for? No. Has anyone changed their vote so
far? Just wanted to clarify for public. I was going to say something to you. I was talking about resolution
2026-04. Thank you for that. And yes. Yes. OK. Maria? Yes. Yes. Diana? Yes. Postponed. Yes. And Ross?
Yes. Yes. All right. The resolution is postponed indefinitely. So that brings us to the staff liaison
report. Julie?
Yeah, well, we kind of touched on what I was going to bring up, and that there is training for staff
liaisons and training for commissioners expected, you know, some of these are to help coordinate processes,
bring processes in alignment with the accessibility laws, which, yes, while our compliance date has
been postponed a year, the city's goal is still to follow the compliance rules.
Yeah, I'll just be in probably more contact with more updates to how we should align our documents with
that and just anything that comes out of the trainings that we can all discuss more to understand maybe
on the same page about any new guidance or things that you've learned from the trainings. That's pretty
much an option that we can discuss in future meetings, just how it affects this commission. So yeah.
Perfect. Cool.
Any questions for Julie? All right. We've got a couple minutes left. That brings us to member announcements.
Any member announcements? There is a pedestrianization of Kirkwood tomorrow night in front of the library.
It's like a block party thing that is encouraging people to go to local businesses and get dinner and
sit in the park.
there will be a free Zumba class because I know the person who's teaching it. So you know lots of stuff
yeah and an opportunity to talk to people about wouldn't it be great if this was all the time as private
citizens. I know housing is a listed priority of the Commission so I just wanted to share that who's
your action is hosting several events they're sort of open to the community to discuss housing practices
locally and so if you
me to send that information out to anyone if anyone's interested in any of those community conversations.
They do some advocacy around housing. There is a similar event outside of Friendly Beasts on Friday
related to housing in Seminary Square. I'm sorry, what's the apartment there? Seminary Point.
Seminary Point, yeah. The housing that's slated
For a potential demolition, people are throwing a block party. There's going to be music and things
like that there. It's relevant to the sort of civic firmament of the moment, I guess. So I thought I'd
bring it up in a similar sense. It's connected to salient issues of the moment, I guess is what I would
say, without trying to endorse any particular perspective.
Just to say, I appreciate the memo, Zach, that you included in the packet about flock size chickens.
The delay has really been just a consequence of lack of council staff. So we've had to do things that
were prioritized. And so I intend to keep going on that probably later in the summer. It'll probably
happen. And I need to talk to Animal Care and Control about it.
whether it requires additional staff or if there's any consequences that would affect the recommendations.
Anecdotally, when I had my, this is me as a private citizen telling you this, I guess, well, I don't
remember enough, but I had my chicken coop inspected by animal control and the inspector said, you know,
the city's thinking about increasing the flock size. And he said, and I love that idea.
I mean, you should still have that conversation, but the animal care and control is aware of this as
an option. Yeah, just want to make sure that they're at peace with it, because the onus is on them for
enforcement. It's good to know, though, that there is at least one enforcement officer. And it's better
for the animals, for the sake of keeping them warmer. Yeah, well, that's true. The last thing is the
final considerations for
the Jack Hawkins social service funding. We're awarding a total of half a million dollars.
It's May 26th. This is for the committee, the council committee at 6 p.m. And so we'll make our final
considerations then. We have nearly $700,000 in requests. So it's always difficult to have that process.
not giving people fully what they asked for in many cases. But in any case, I think we're willing to
be funding nearly all of them. So cool. And to some degree. Thank you. Any other recommendations?
All right. New business. There's no new business. So that brings us to adjournment. So we'll adjourn
at 741. Thanks, everybody.