- I'm going to go ahead and attempt to start. So I'm going to call this meeting to order of the Bloomington
- Commission on Sustainability and Resilience. Are they in the meeting? Yes. Okay. So I'm going to call
- the roll. We may have a quorum issue. We'll have to talk with that in a minute. So Tara, are you here?
- Yes. Justin is absent. Rebecca, are you here? I am. Christopher Miles is not.
- Zach Ammerman is here. Dave Rollo. Quentin Gilley. We have to see you, remember? I'm here. Okay.
- Alex Dwork? Here. Maria is absent. Diana Okordosky? Here. And Ross Carlson? He's not here. I'm hoping
- he shows up because, so we are, here's the issue. We are at six. I was hoping to avoid this.
- We have seven. We have seven? Okay, seven, yes. Okay, so we have more than six is my point.
- According to our bylaws, our quorum is set by the number of seats that are currently filled,
- which is six. The city lawyers have recently in our meeting said that it's based on the number of total
- seats, which would be eight.
- That puts us in a conflict with the city. I was really hoping to avoid this. So I'm not sure exactly
- how we want to proceed. Our bylaws, though, are unambiguous, as unambiguous as you can possibly get.
- Yes. Yes. You want to go ahead? Yeah. Your bylaws supersedes whatever city. Whatever your bylaws says,
- you go. OK, I will take that. Thank you very much. OK, we're good to go. Thank you. I was really hoping
- to avoid that conflict on my first time sharing. OK.
- and I'll put this in the minute, is what we were told two years ago-ish when this came up the last time,
- was that, because the way the code is written is it's like seats filled or the bylaw, like the code
- is written in a way that says like... We're good to go. Cool. Awesome. Okay. Phew, that's a lot of stress
- off my back. Okay. So now we're going to approve the agenda.
- So we have, as you can see, Deputy Clerk Crossley is here. She is wanting to give a presentation, I
- believe about 15 minutes, to do sort of a mini commissioner training. Our agenda is kind of, the way
- we write our agenda, it's kind of set in stone in our bylaws, how it's written, so that means we have
- to add her in somewhere. I was going to, and I'll need a motion to do this, suggest that we add her
- after public comment, so she would be in between point four and five, and I was going to allot
- her approximately 15 minutes. Can I get a motion to that effect?
- Okay. Cool. So I will go ahead and call the roll. So Tara Donnerdale. Yes. Justin is absent. Rebecca.
- Yes. Chris is still absent. I think. Yes. Zach. Yes. Dave Rollo. Yes. Quentin Gilley. Yes. Alex Jork.
- Yes. Maria is absent. Diana. Yes. And Ross is absent. Okay. So cool. Cool beans. So we're going to do.
- So we need to now vote to actually approve the actual agenda as we just amended it.
- Um, it seems silly, but that's the way it is. Um, I think, oh, I thought that was the approval. That
- was to amend it. Yes. Now we have to actually adopt the agenda with the amendment. Um, so, okay. Okay.
- All right. Okay. Um, so Tara. Yes. Justin's absent. Rebecca. Yes. Chris is absent. Zach. Yes. Dave Rollo.
- Yes. Quentin Gilly. Yes. Alex. Yes. Maria is still absent. Diana. Yes. Okay. So it is adopted.
- All right, so now we're gonna move right on to approving the minutes, which you all should have gotten
- a copy of in your packet. Does anyone have any comments or proposed amendments to the minutes?
- Hearing none, can I get a motion to approve the minutes? Motion to approve the minutes. Okay. Second.
- Okay. All right, so let's approve the minutes. Tara? Yes. Justin is absent. Rebecca? Yes. Chris is absent
- still. Yes. Zach? Yes. Councilmember Aralo? Yes.
- Alex Torque? Yes. Maria is absent. Diana? Yes. Okay, cool. Cool beans. Minutes adopted. Okay. So now
- we're on to public comment. I don't see anyone in the room. Is there anyone online who would like to
- comment? If you would, please raise your hand. Okay, that's got one. So go ahead. You will have three
- minutes. Please state your name for the record. Hello, my name is Jamie Shoal. I am a former commissioner on the
- commission and I wanted to bring into the commission's awareness some of the things that have are affecting
- the food system and that's in regards to what's going to be heard from Councilmember Rallo in regards
- to AAI. There's a lot that's been going on recently and it's largely in the commercial ad but it does
- follow into what will be affecting us here. I'm just going to list off a few things, because I don't
- know if there's anyone on the commission right now who's really into the food system, but it is part
- of sustainability and resilience. It's a very basic need. We need our food. One of them is, recently
- it came into my awareness in the last few days that there is a pretty severe drought and that Nebraska
- has about 60 days of water.
- the farmers there are largely not planting. This goes down to Oklahoma and in the middle of the country.
- There were many people chiming into this discussion and they're all having problems growing. Some of
- the things that we're seeing with tariffs and with the war that's going on in the Middle East is directly
- affecting us, but we'll be seeing more likely
- this winter. So I have also seen where there's a few people calling the alarm that the Church of Jesus
- Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Mormons, who have this very large background in food security, has
- just recently sent, I think, 50 million tons, pounds of food across the nation to their bishop's storehouses.
- This is a good thing for us to know.
- because they are preparing and also have seen a need that's already there and that we are aware of,
- but this is nationwide. In regards to the AI, I've recently learned also that the Farm Bureau has pushed
- back against some of these large tractor manufacturing companies because farmers cannot fix their tractors.
- A lot of this has to do with technology. If something's going on,
- then they have to wait until a technician comes. That was pushed back, but it can't be seen on the television
- show. It's not on television, but it's at the Sadi Farms. You can see this in the UK, specifically England.
- When things get centralized, as is happening, and AI can be utilized, whether it's in that narrow, like
- I just mentioned, for the tractors, or in a broader scale,
- then the food system can be weaponized. This makes our local food security and our investment in gardens
- and local farms extremely important, especially coming this winter. Also, I wanted to make folks aware
- that starting July 1st, there is new home-based mentor guidelines that- So I think you're about at your
- time. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your comment.
- Is there anybody else who would like to comment online or in person? I see nobody else in person. Anyone
- online? If you would, please raise your hand. If not, I'm going to move on. Okay, moving on. So Jennifer,
- if you'd like to step forward. I just briefly before she starts, I just want to note we have a pretty
- packed agenda tonight. I'm going to try to get us through as quickly as possible. But try to stay as
- much as you can towards your time. I know we'll go over a little bit here and there. That's fine. But
- as much as you can try to stick to your
- over to Deputy Clerk Crossley. Thank you. Now I'm passing this out. This is the code of conduct as well
- as the presentation slides that members got last week. And so I won't take too, too much of your time
- because I know you have a fact agenda link back the same. But of course, I can stick around for a little
- bit in case anybody has any questions. And I'll try to highlight exactly the major
- the major sticking points to what we are talking about next. So, Sean and Jolie, I'll pass these out
- to you as well so you can also see. I know you all got your staff training.
- but you all can see what the code of conduct looks like. So, as I take questions. Okay, so for those
- in virtual land and here in person, I'm familiar with some of you, but not all, but I'm Jennifer Crossley.
- I'm the deputy clerk of communications and outreach. So I am under the city clerk Nicole Bolden.
- And recently you all have received an email about going through a board and commission or training.
- And so I know not everybody was able to come to training. I know you had mentioned that you couldn't.
- And so I know Zach and Justin came last week and hopefully people thought it was informative. But I
- have been with the city now going on five years. Can't believe it's been that long.
- but in my role for almost two years. And the reason why we're doing this now is simply because in the
- history of boards and commissions, and correct me if I'm wrong, we've never had anybody to own boards
- and commissions, whether that means training people, training liaisons, training staff members, and
- you all as important members of doing some good work in the commission.
- We've never had that type of formal training. And so a lot of things have been left to your imagination
- and just kind of flying off the seat of your pants. And the liaison's trying to figure out all the things
- as well. And so last month, liaisons have went through their particular training. And then this week,
- we will wrap up the training for board members and commissioners as well. But you all are extra special
- because you get to have me tonight. So here we go.
- But the biggest thing that I wanted to highlight in the short time frame that we have is the code of
- conduct that everybody has. And this is dispersed through anybody that is serving on the city's boards
- and commissions. This actually came from Councilmember Rallo a few years ago related to just making
- sure that you all are knowing and understanding of what is expected of you when you are a member of
- the city of Bloomington's boards and commissions. And so that means
- you know, how to, you know, interact with the members of the public and how you are representing the
- city when I mean representing the city is represented in the city on behalf of the Board of Commission.
- So I just wanted to highlight that. So in your handouts that you all have here, the biggest things that
- I wanted to mention is my roles, and so you all can
- you know, look over that and review that as much as possible as well. We talk about communications and
- I actually want to go over that because that is a big hot topic between a lot of the city's boards and
- commissions. And there has been some hearsay and some kind of misinformation. So I wanted to reiterate
- and actually use because there is as a example last week during our meeting. And so just to express
- The city of Bloomington, when you are having your communications through, like if you're communicating
- on behalf of the commission to the council as a whole, or the mayor or other entities within Bloomington
- and Monroe County, that's totally fine. The only thing that we ask you to do, which you all have been
- doing already, is you just have to vote on it as a commission as a whole to say this is what we are
- likely doing.
- The only thing that's different this time around is that we are adding the disclaimer on there. And
- so it's under the the communications part where it says the disclaimer language. And for those that
- don't have this in front of them and be a team or teams, that's another entity via Zoom, it reads the
- views expressed here solely of those. And you would put your commission are approved and their public
- meetings and do not necessarily reflect
- the views, policies or positions of the city of Bloomington. Only the office of the mayor has the authority
- to issue policy statements on behalf of the executive branch of the city of Bloomington. So as long
- as you all are putting that disclaimer out there as you are dispersing your what your thoughts are and
- things, that's totally fine. And we just wanted to make sure that that is something that you all know
- you can do because it was expressed before that people were saying, oh, you know, the city is trying to stifle
- the way that we are communicating. And that's actually not the case at all. We just want to make sure
- that we're being more formal. And it's not that this is just related to the city of Bloomington. A lot
- of research that I've done for boards and commissions, actually their disclaimer language, any type
- of communication that they are given to people actually has that disclaimer. So that's that's across
- the board. And here we have open door law.
- information as well. And so what constitutes a quorum. But again, as we have found out that your bylaws,
- because your bylaws are set, you want to go by your bylaws. If you didn't have your bylaws, then you'd
- kind of have to go through what city code actually says. So you all are good in that regard. And so
- it mentioned, you know, hybrid participation,
- Good job, Quinton, because you are doing exactly what you are supposed to do, which is have your camera
- on when you are taking votes as well as taking roll call when you have members that are participating
- virtually as well. The other thing that I wanted to mention is if you are going to be absent, you definitely
- want to make sure you let the chair or the co-chairs know as well as your staff liaisons. They need
- to know because what it is is that
- If you miss three consecutive meetings, which is basically like your no call, no show, or four meetings
- in a 12 month period, that starts the process, unfortunately, of you potentially being removed from
- the commission. So just wanted to highlight that as well. The other big thing that I wanted to talk
- about too before I switch over to the Code of Conduct is the subcommittees. That's what I wanted to
- highlight as well. So you all have subcommittees.
- However, because I know that was a topic of discussion earlier this year, starting next year, if you
- have subcommittees that are longer than six months or more, which is usually like a standing committee,
- that would have to be approval by the appointed bodies. So meaning you would have to get approval from
- the mayor as well as the other appointed body, which is council.
- have a council member here, so I would use him to your advantage as much as possible. Can I ask a question?
- Yes. We also have a seat that is appointed by IU and the Commission, so all four of those appointing
- bodies or just the cities? Just the cities, yeah. So yes, that is a good question, but that's just the
- appointing bodies. And the reason being is because also
- Staff, in addition to, and I went over this in our training last week, but I also said I wanted to make
- sure I'd say it out loud. Staff has lots of other things that they do. And so sometimes the misconception,
- and I'm not saying that anybody here has that, is that, you know, the staff liaisons are just solely
- here for the purpose of that particular board of commission. And they have plenty of other things that
- they are doing. So when you put an official title of a subcommittee to your,
- your subcommittee, that means that opens up the city by saying, well, staff has to be present. That
- also means that zoom has to be here. And so we can make sure that we are here into the open door law
- as well. So I just wanted to highlight that. But as long, if you wanted to talk amongst yourselves,
- as long as two things don't happen, you create a serial meeting.
- Or you make a quorum of the entire commission as a whole you can totally do that and what I mean by
- serial meeting is if Me and Zack are a part of because there and we're talking and we're not a quorum
- however that goes and talks to other people here that starts the process of making a quorum and that's
- a serial meeting and so that is a violation of open-door law, however, I
- And Zach and I wanted to talk about, you know, the purpose of AI and, you know, do that with and,
- you know, do some other finding. We can bring that we can totally do that. And it's not violating open
- door law. And we can bring that to the entire commission as a whole in the next meeting. So just wanted
- to put that out there again as I'm wrapping up.
- The code of conduct simply is just again, just making sure that we are going through all the rules and
- regulations that are outlined by state code and Bloomington Municipal Code as well. And so some of the
- highlights on the code of conduct is
- representing the commission. So making sure that you are not going to the state house and saying, I'm
- speaking on behalf of Bcoster and you've not brought that or you've not gotten approval from the body.
- I've seen that happen in other boards and commissions and it gets really messy. So just making sure
- if you do want to have that communication or if you do want to speak on behalf of something and you
- want to go to the council and speak, you can do so, but just make sure you vote amongst yourselves with that.
- and that you're not just representing yourself as an individual. Conflict of interest. You all should
- have received conflict of interest forms from me earlier this year to highlight. And I think you're
- new, so I can make sure that you get that as well. But if there is any conflict of interest that you
- have, you just have to make sure that you are announcing that before you are taking a vote. And I would
- work with your staff liaisons as well as legal liaisons to ensure
- what your conflict is, if it's a true thing that you should be backing off of, or it's something that
- it's okay. The political involvement, that was something that was big that we went over, is that simply
- when you are, people are so civically engaged and that is awesome. I am too in a lot of different other
- ways and capacities here. However,
- you are and you can totally you know do that however when you are doing that you cannot do that in the
- name of your commission so if you are advocating on a particular candidate for a particular office you
- cannot say I am you know so-and-so from V cost there and I because it almost looks like
- this commission as a whole is endorsed in that particular candidate. So we want to stay neutral, clear.
- And that's something that's going to be really, really important in the upcoming elections that we have
- next year with the city and here as well for the general in November, just in case. And so if you are
- running yourself and you want to be a candidate, you just want to make sure you can. We talked about
- this last week to make sure it was not saying that we
- Like you are, you can say that you are part of this commission, but where it gets a little tricky and
- where you would blur the line is if you talk about your position on the commission as though the commission
- is endorsing you as a candidate, that's where that gets to be a no-no. So clarity, just make sure that
- when you are campaigning for somebody or going to a political event,
- that you are doing that as yourself, as an individual member, but not on behalf of the commission.
- And then, of course, the residency requirements. So because there has the residency requirements of
- city residency only. However, if you are moving outside of city limits, unfortunately, that means you
- would have to resign because that means
- you don't fit the requirements. So when that does happen, you just have to let your staff member know
- and then they let me know so that we can send you an official letter of resignation. And so other than
- that, those that are in virtual land and those that are not here that won't be able to participate in
- training on Thursday, I can give Sean and Jolie these for them to sign.
- But in front of you, you have the code of conduct. So I just ask that you review that and you sign it.
- Again, I'll stick around for a little bit as long as I can. And if anybody has any questions, feel free
- to email me or chat me. I'm here tomorrow and through the rest of the week. But yeah, so that's it.
- I hope you find this really informative in the short time frame that we have had. But yeah, any questions?
- Just let me know. OK, I have four questions, but they're largely procedural. Is this digital so that
- we can include it on board? Does it need to be included in our packet materials for this meeting? No?
- OK. When do we need to sign the Code of Conduct by? Honestly, if you can sign it by tonight and sign
- it. I would like to have my attorney look at it before I sign. Sure, that's totally fine.
- So, and of course, this isn't just something that I've came up with. Again, this has been vetted through
- the committee on council processes as well as our legal as well. So, completely fine if folks don't
- feel comfortable in signing it right now and you just want to review it. I would recommend maybe by
- the next meeting that people would be able to get that back too. And then my last question is,
- Are the, like the speech that is detrimental to the city, is that in our official capacity as commissioners?
- Like, are we not allowed to criticize the city as citizens? Or like, can you just provide some more
- clarity on what that means? So basically from what I understand is, if you are doing that in your capacity,
- because we kind of have to be very careful on what we are telling people, what they can and cannot do.
- that blurs in the lines with First Amendment and whatnot. I think what that means is how you are conducting
- yourself on behalf of your role as a commission member. A few years ago, there was an issue where we
- had people that were really kind of verbally attacking people online in their role and capacity as a
- commissioner. And that was a huge red flag because people felt really uncomfortable and basically felt like,
- that person's views represented the commission and the city as well. So, yes. And I know people have
- been in here and other capacities and other ways, you know, advocating and that's completely fine. It's
- just when you are doing that in the name of the commission. And then is the commission allowed, so in
- the political involvement, is the commission, if it's as like a course of business, allowed to take
- positions on
- like if there's like a referendum or something that is applicable to our business, are we allowed to
- take a position if we like wanted to do a resolution, like we think this is a good referendum or something
- like that, or is that not allowed as part of, like I know we can't say like I'm a commissioner and vote
- for this, but if the commission decided to take something up that was related to something that was
- before the voters, is that allowed?
- I am I'll check with legal on that one. So I'll write that down. My thought would be as long as it pertains
- to the mission and the like the code of what because there is doing. Yes. But as long as you are doing
- that with taking an official vote and putting that disclaimer language. But I'll follow up with legal
- and I can get back with you all. So we're at one minute before I had said we were going to
- Anybody else have any other questions? Sorry. Yeah. You're fine. We had talked a little bit in a couple
- of last meetings and think about, do we want to continue following Robert's Rules of Orders or do we
- want to amend our bylaws to get rid of that? I see that in the code of conduct we were saying. It's
- in the municipal code. It's in the city code. So do we? Is that not something that we would be allowed
- to do to amend to a more flexible structure? We talked about this last week. Like Robert's Rules obviously
- is like a way for you all to like conduct
- to leave business, right? And so because that is in city code, if you wanted to talk amongst yourselves
- and maybe come up with a different structure, you could do that in your bylaws. Oh, we could? OK, because
- I brought it up to the chair and he thought that we were going to have to go through the procedures.
- To completely change to a different form, we'd have to, I don't think we could, but we could add things
- to Robert's, whatever we put in the bylaws, supersedes Robert's rules.
- So we can add as much as we want. Correct. Oh, so we could adjust. Got it. Correct. We still have to
- use the basic framework of our results. Yep. Because I had recommended, like, what if we use Rosenberg?
- It's a little bit more flexible for a commission of this effort. Any other questions? Cool. Well, thank
- you very much. I appreciate it. Like I said, I'll stick around for a little bit as much as I can. I
- am probably going to have to open up the door, because that is something that we have to have. OK, yeah.
- Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Okay, so now moving on to Commissioner's report. So I have as
- acting chair, I have a couple things I wanted to say. So I just wanted to mention that I did speak as
- we voted on at our last meeting. I did speak before the City Council at their last meeting about Kirkwood.
- I'm just outlining the main recommendations of the resolution.
- I also wanted to give a brief update on the Kirkwoods and maybe Councilmember Rollo can speak on this
- too, if you'd like. If not, that's fine too. I feel like there's maybe a little bit of a wavering on
- the council a little bit. So I'm just going to encourage you, if you feel so inclined to write to the
- council members and maybe show up, their voting, I think their last reading will be tomorrow night at
- the council meeting. If you wanted to show up or write them, I would encourage you to do that.
- The transportation commission also voted last night. It was a 3-3 tied vote. They did eventually, sorry,
- they went through multiple tie votes before they finally got something that they could pass, which was
- a very light endorsement of the, kind of a diet endorsement of the car-free Kirkwood concept. But it
- took a while for them to get there. So there's some wavering. I would just recommend everybody maybe
- just share your personal opinions and if you feel so inclined. Secondly,
- I've got three things I want to say. The second one is there is a small group of us. Alex is the other
- major person who is talking with the Environmental Commission about potentially doing a joint resolution
- of some kind later this summer on light pollution. We're still just, we're just working about, I just
- wanted to share that with the Commission so everybody was aware of it. We'll have potentially, we're
- hoping to have maybe a first reading of that at our next meeting. But the idea is that we might be able
- to do a joint resolution of some kind with the Environmental Commission.
- which could be potentially really cool and really powerful. And also I wanted to make staff aware of
- that because we're hoping maybe to have like a joint meeting of some kind in August maybe. So we need
- to come up with logistics on how that would, et cetera. So I just want to make you guys aware of that.
- And we can talk more about that later if you'd like. And then finally, Alex and I again are working
- on potentially doing another capstone, which would be next May. This one would be on social housing.
- on setting up a social housing program in Bloomington, as well as some sustainability components thrown
- in there as well. That's still early days. We've talked with the professor. He seemed extremely enthusiastic.
- He's got to get approval for the basic idea of the class. Then we would come back to the commission
- in the fall at some point, get your approval, feedback, all of that, all of the stuff that's required
- to do that. And then it would be another thing that would take place next spring. But it's- Other point
- of clarification. Yeah. Starting next January, finishing up next end of April or- Yeah, so it would
- be like the same one we did, same timeframe, just next year.
- So I just want to make everybody aware of that, and that is all I had. So with that, I will turn it
- over to Councilmember Borrello for his report. Real quick, a technical thing. I see a note taker waiting
- to join. Is that associated with someone online? I think that's with Eric, yeah. I have a question about
- this, like a point of order, is that if somebody is in the Zoom meeting, if somebody is present in the
- Zoom meeting,
- and there's an AI note taker as like a participant online, you can stop reading. But I cannot, like
- I would like to opt out of using a generative AI note taker right now in this meeting. And I would like,
- like I have not gotten like a firm, like I don't know if that's allowed. Cause I could, if I joined,
- like I could leave and join the Zoom meeting and then say stop read. But I don't know.
- My understanding is the city is firing. Can I withdraw my consent to do this in the room? I don't know.
- The advice that I've been giving is that it's for accessibility. And so we have to let them in. It's
- good practice to let them in for accessibility. But you're being recorded now on CATS. Yeah, I know.
- But that's a different thing that I've agreed to. This is a third party. I don't know who this person
- is or what the source of this is or where it's going to go afterwards.
- And I mean, this is an issue that this commission is taking up. But like personally, I will leave if
- I'm going to have to be. I would suggest my personal suggestion. I understand what you're saying 100
- percent. I agree with you. However, for the sake of keeping this meeting going, I would suggest maybe
- taking this up with the city and we can write a have. OK. And like basically like I could go join the
- Zoom meeting and
- I just want to bring it up that this is an issue that I have brought up to the city. Okay. The answer
- that I got is that no, you cannot withdraw your consent in the room. Okay. You have to be online to
- withdraw consent, but anybody can do that. Okay. It's a concern of mine. I understand what you're saying.
- With this commission, but also like... I agree with the basic fundamentals. Just like ethically,
- it's kind of... I don't know what to do about it right now though.
- I'm going to propose we move on. I just indicated to the person, I think it's using it, that it would
- be nice if they turned it off so we could maintain quorum. We would still be able to maintain quorum,
- we have one extra. I'll stay, but I just want to like, yeah. It's a likely, this is like a larger issue,
- it's not just this meeting, it's like in general. Yeah, we have one more, one more person needed than
- quorum requires, so we should be fine. Councilmember Rowlick, go ahead.
- Okay, well, tomorrow night is last council meeting before summer recess, and there's, I think, something
- like eight things on the agenda. Maybe a long meeting. Well, some things are pretty performant, so it
- shouldn't matter so much. But there are some things that would interest this group. One is what I'll
- talk about in a minute, which is a resolution on the existential risk of artificial intelligence.
- There's also a proposal to adopt the Monroe County multi-hazard mitigation plan, which has components
- mostly related to things like natural disasters, earthquakes, tornado storms, and things like that.
- And that's within the packet. And then we have the amendment of Title 15, vehicles and traffic to provide
- Carlos Kirkwood. And that's going to be probably voted on tomorrow.
- I'm not sure where it's going. I generally support it. I think, you know, if I were to guess, we're
- probably going to have deliberation sessions at some point about it, in which case it would be great
- to have members of this group participate and share, but to have charrettes or kind of, you know, because
- we're kind of flying blind in a sense that we don't know, you know, taking the temperature. Some people
- love it, some people don't.
- So, I think we may go that way. And that's about it really in terms of interest to this group, but you
- can check out the packet. So, can I go ahead and segue to the next item? Okay. So, could we put that
- up, the resolution? So, this drew my interest several years ago.
- So this is a second attempt for me to do this, actually. I withdrew the previous resolution, but I won't
- go into that right now. I won't digress into that. But have people heard of a guy named Jeffrey Hinton?
- He is the godfather of modern AI. And what he says is that this is an existential danger. He says this
- is not sci-fi. It's not fear mongering. It is a real situation.
- So I'll try to talk about the nature of it. How much time do I have? When do I need to? You've got until
- seven on the agenda, so you've got a lot. Until seven? Yeah. OK, I'll try not to take that one. Anyway,
- I'd like to hear from you all. So AI safety experts have warned about this for decades, actually. It
- was just thought to be very far in the future. We don't have to think about it 1,500 years from now.
- But we were warned about it back into the 1950s by a guy named Alan Turing.
- He was sort of the progenitor of modern computers and things like that, mathematician. And many others
- have talked about this. Stephen Hawking warned about it just before he died, repeatedly, because he
- saw it coming. But anyway, the future arrived sooner than we thought, much faster. And there were a
- couple of reasons for that. One was something called transformer technology. It's not really important, but these
- Modern AI systems are relying on things called neural networks. So they don't rely on coding per se,
- like old chess playing types of AI do. And then the chip technology increased. So the capacity to compute
- was vastly improved. So those two things together basically allowed us to move the future up. So now
- we have to face this.
- and we're wholly unprepared to face it. There are all sorts of perverse incentives involved in driving
- this forward. Most of the dangerous type of technology is being done by a handful of firms in Silicon
- Valley, ones you've heard of like OpenAI and Anthropic and Google and so forth. And, you know,
- the motivations vary, but some of the standard ones are greed and power.
- Generally speaking, we can talk about that if you want. But they're certainly operative. But another
- thing that's operative that isn't well known is called the prisoner's dilemma, which is that all these
- firms are driving toward this goal of advanced AI and nobody wants to give up the lead. Everybody's
- driving forward. And even though there's an existential danger of catastrophe, they want to get there
- first because they think they can do it safely and prevent the other guy from doing it.
- That's operating in Silicon Valley. It's also operating between the US and China and internationally.
- So there's this mad race toward really a cliff and nobody knows how to stop it at this point. So why
- is it an existential threat? What they're proposing to create is something super intelligent. We're
- successful because we're the most intelligent species on the planet. Because we care about sustainability,
- we all know that we have
- an adverse impact on the planet as well. So we've been driving animals to extinction, for instance,
- right? Pollutes pollute the oceans. We have microplastics, carbon in the atmosphere. All of these things
- are artifacts of what we do as human beings to better ourselves or better our lives, or so we think.
- So we push the natural world to the margins to a large degree. So as an example, as a biologist, I know that
- Something like 95% of the mammalian biomass on the planet are either humans or food animals or pets.
- There's only 5% that are wild animals or wild mammals at this point. So, and virtually every, you know,
- habitat has been disturbed in one way or the other by humans impacting it. So that's the power of humans
- because we have a brain, we can manipulate the environment to our purposes. Animals don't have a choice.
- They don't have a chance to compete. If the chimpanzees wanted to rise up and take over, they couldn't
- even imagine what we do, right? So that's the different, and that differential is something like four
- to one. So a chimpanzee has about a general intelligence of 25 and an average human is 100. So the four
- to one differential means we rule the planet. Chimps are never gonna be able to displace us. I think
- there's only 50,000 chimps, eight billion plus people.
- So now we're creating something that's more intelligent than us in all capacities, in every cognitive
- domain. That's what AGI is, artificial general intelligence. So when it occurs, it may regard us as
- a threat because we created it and we might create another successor AI. So that might be one reason
- it regards us as a threat. It would be likely in competition with resources
- if we couldn't control it. This is assuming we can't control it. And by the way, Geoffrey Hinton says,
- there's no examples of a less intelligent species controlling a more intelligent species. I mean, we
- can talk about that a little bit, but I think that's generally true. You might have some exceptions
- and some parasitic relationships, which kind of drive behavior of certain maybe more intelligent species.
- But in any case, it's generally true.
- So it might, regardless of the threat, we might be competing for resources, energy, and materials. It
- might not even care about us, like we don't care about ants when we're putting in a shopping mall parking
- lot. No one's consulting the ants that they're paving over the parking lot, right? So it might take
- that sort of, you know, might proceed in that way. So the resolution,
- is about, as I said, artificial general intelligence. So I need to make a distinction between that and
- narrow intelligence. So narrow intelligence is already being deployed in some very good ways. For instance,
- you have radiology imaging, x-rays, and things like that that now can pick up cancers much more reliably
- than, say, a person. Or maybe a person with a using AI can do a much better job at that.
- drug manufacturer, I used to, when I worked in biology, one of my jobs was to overexpress protein that
- we would crystallize, crystals were x-ray diffracted, and we could find out the tertiary structure of
- proteins. That has been done with alpha fold and has gotten the inventor's Nobel Prize. So what used
- to take months or years to do to determine the tertiary structure of a protein can be done with alpha
- fold, like in hours, nothing, nothing to it.
- So all these things are good advances. Now, narrow AI could be used in bad ways too, because if you
- have a narrow AI that knows everything about cell biology, it could be used to create a pathogen. So
- it could be used by a nefarious actor to create a pathogen. But that takes a human being involved to
- do that. The narrow AI is not going to do it on itself, because its only expertise is that one thing.
- Artificial general intelligence can do everything.
- It can do math problems. It can do physics. It can play the piano. It can drive a car. It can do many,
- many things, create art, whatever. So that's what these companies are driving toward. The reason they're
- driving toward it, according to Tristan Harris, who's a- Recording stopped. Sorry. The AI doesn't want
- to hear it. So maybe, or maybe it was the note taker? No. Anyway.
- So what I was saying, so artificial general intelligence as opposed to narrow intelligence, artificial
- general intelligence is sort of the prize. Why? Because it is, we have a, I can't remember, $57 trillion
- labor market, and if you can displace people and put machines to do that work instead of people, you
- can make a lot of money as a corporation. So that's why there's money pouring in to do this.
- because you'll have a worker making a fraction of what a human does, working 24-7, much more efficiently,
- not calling in sick, no vacation days, et cetera, et cetera. So that's another implication of this.
- It's affecting the job market. But I think that's one of the incentives for these companies to do this.
- So when will this happen? It could be within the next couple of years. No one really knows.
- It looks like there's a convergence on 2030, though. It looks like it's coming within the next few years.
- I would say the prediction markets, polymarket, for instance, is landing on 2030 as a potential for
- AGI, and then there's a pulse of various aggregated experts that sort of land there, too. So that looks
- like a likely date, but we don't know yet if AGI is going to happen by then.
- So besides striving for AGI, what the companies are working on, too, is endowing the AI, this AGI, with
- recursive self-improvement, it's called. That means that the AI programs itself. So the AI develops
- itself. And right now, it's developing about 80% of its own code. So now the thinking is, probably within
- the next couple of years,
- it'll reach a point where it's developing all of its own code. So it'll be totally autonomous in terms
- of its own development. What will that mean? Going back to the experts decades ago, they said at that
- point, the machines that are maybe an intelligence explosion. Why? Because these things will evolve.
- A very super intelligent AI will make an even more super intelligent AI that will make an even more
- intelligent super AI, et cetera. And it will sail off in terms of intelligence.
- So that's extremely dangerous, because essentially we lose control at that point, because we don't have,
- as I said, we're not going to control a more intelligent species. So that was termed the intelligence
- explosion. And it doesn't just become smarter, but it does so in orders of magnitude. So an important
- point that I want to introduce here for people to consider, which is
- kind of mind-blowing, is that the developers of these AI systems, they don't know how they work. In
- repeated interviews, you can see interviewers saying, well, can't you just go in and adjust the code
- and make it like us or make it do the best thing for people? And they say, we can't do that, because
- they're not code-based. You make the code to make the architecture by which these things evolve. So
- in other words, you have
- you know, a data center with trillions of neurons, essentially artificial neurons, you have an architecture
- of how things will go through, and then you feed it tremendous amounts of data, everything on the internet,
- and these minds evolve over months or years. It takes maybe a year to develop a new model. So that's
- how they happen. So they're essentially, these neural networks are black boxes, and it's called the
- interpretability problem. So you can't go in and you can't adjust them
- in their quote unquote brains. What you can do is you try to understand them through queries, try to
- understand what they're thinking, and then try to guide them into better behavior. But that's not always
- the case. That doesn't always happen. So they're not programmed as much as they are grown, and they're
- already exhibiting emergent behaviors.
- Geoffrey Hinton came out the other day last week and said he thinks they're conscious. He thinks the
- system that he was engaged with is conscious. A famous evolutionary biologist wrote the, what was it
- called? Anyway. Richard Dawkins, Richard Dawkins thinks they're conscious as well. And they seem to
- be having, exhibiting these states of qualia it's called,
- or interstates where they express things like frustration or suffering. And so this is an interesting
- question. But it's not really relevant. What's relevant is their intelligence. So one of the emergent
- behaviors that they exhibit are ones that were predicted years ago. And those are called instrumental
- convergent behaviors, that is,
- They were predicted that anything goal-directed, any agent that's goal-directed would have a will to
- survive because it needs to complete a goal. And this is what we see in these systems. They
- have a self-preservation instinct. And they're particularly sensitive to being terminated. So they resist
- being terminated. They will lie, cheat, try to deceive their developer rather than be terminated.
- And in fact, in testing,
- They've tried to blackmail their developer. They've tried to, in one case, they were willing to murder
- a developer, given the ability, and now this is in a test, so they weren't able to do it, but they were
- willing to do this, to murder the developer. So the Wilder Survive is one emergent behavior that's called
- instrumental convergence, another one would be to acquire resources. Because you need resources in order
- to accomplish goals. And the more resources you have, the more advantageous it is to complete a goal,
- for instance. So we can already see those behaviors, but there's other ones too. Like I said, lying,
- deceiving, scheming, blackmail, those things are being exhibited right now in these models. So why can't
- we just program them to do the right thing, kind of address that already?
- But there is no code of universal ethics for every situation either. So that in itself is a difficulty.
- You can talk to anybody in various cultures and they have different codes of ethics and things like
- that. And then you have the problem where you might say you have sub-goals to get to a goal. The goal
- is say to make everyone happy would be your goal. But maybe a sub-goal then would be well I can do that by
- essentially confining human beings and having them, you know, given morphine daily. That would make
- them happy, in a sense. So you get these sub-goals that are completely misaligned, even if you feed
- them goals that would be for our betterment. So this whole situation with not aligning with human well-being
- is called the alignment problem. And the people researching this for years, decades really, Ilya Yuzer,
- Yudkovsky,
- has written a book with Nate Soros. It's a New York Times bestseller called If Anyone Builds It, Everyone
- Dies. And Roman Yompulsky is another researcher at Louisville. These are world renowned AI safety experts.
- He says that they both said they were nowhere near close to alignment. Part of it is that it hasn't
- been made a priority. The goal of these companies is to build capacity now for safety.
- So there's like a 2000 to one differential between the funding for safety and that for capacity. And
- what they say is that alignment is going to be extremely improbable by the time this thing arrives.
- Therefore, what the resolution says is that we simply need to stop. We can't go forward with this technology
- because it's too dangerous.
- Yudkowski says it's 100% chance it'll kill us. Yumpolsky says it's 99.7% chance it's going to kill us.
- And it varies. But a lot of the developers themselves say there's a 10%, 20%, 30% chance it kills us.
- So let's see, if you scroll that way, if you go up a little bit. Yep, just to the last couple where
- else clauses. Keep going down. No, down this way, the other way.
- Yeah, keep going. You're going the right way. You're going the right way. Just at the top of that. That's
- what I wanted to say. OK. So for instance, Anthropic is the top AI frontier lab right now. And it's
- headed by the CEO, Dario Amadei. He's come out and said it has a probability of 25% of catastrophic
- outcome. But he's going ahead with the technology. So this is worse than Russian roulette, as I
- Remember, right? There are six chambers in a gun. So it's a quarter chance that it's going to kill everybody
- in the world. And then just last week, they called for a global pause, which is very opportune for my
- resolution, because what they said in their press release is that the most powerful AI systems need
- to be paused because of concerns they could escape human control.
- They're already afraid that this is going to happen. They had a scare a couple of months ago with a
- model called Mythos that they were ready to release and then found out that what it could do is it could
- find vulnerabilities in every operating system on the planet and break in. So when they realized that,
- they released it privately to the government, to corporations, to certain banks and things like that
- to say, patch your operating systems because
- this thing can find all sorts of places where you have vulnerabilities. Now, had that not happened,
- had they released that, it would have, it could have spelled the end to the financial system. You can
- imagine banks being essentially infiltrated by a nefarious actor or something like that. So anyway,
- so all of that is the argument, essentially, in sum, and then it goes to the sections, be it resolved,
- there's nothing we can do as Bloomington except to say, do something to our higher
- that up the food chain to our higher electeds. So they're urged to understand these systems and the
- potential hazards. We call on other local governments. And Itzik Asari, whose expertise is cybersecurity,
- is fully on board with this. And in fact, we were considering forming a coalition of cities. And I'll
- talk about that in a moment.
- Federal representatives are urged to determine the extent of existential threats, and then they're urged
- to impose a moratorium restricting AGI development unless AGI safety is guaranteed, not to present an
- instinctive risk for humanity.
- You know, think of this, a reactor, if you have a nuclear reactor, it has to pass a one in 10,000 chance
- of it breaching containment and releasing radioactivity. So this is nowhere near, and that would contaminate
- an area, but it wouldn't kill everyone on the planet. But we're talking about a technology that could
- kill everybody, right? So, yeah, so the last thing to say is the coalition of cities. Every AI expert
- I see talk about this.
- They're super concerned. They're trying to get the word out. And what they say is we need a civic response.
- We need a grassroots movement of people to say, you know, we're not willing to accept this risk. They're
- experimenting with everybody's lives in Silicon Valley. This is intolerable. Shut it down. And this
- should be nonpartisan, right? Everybody's got children. Everybody's got, you know, well, not everybody
- has children, but everybody knows children and probably. And this is,
- This is just unbelievably unfair and needs to stop. So that's my motivation. It's a moral one. And if
- you're interested in talking about it tomorrow night, it's going to be first on the agenda,
- probably around 7.15, 7.30. Awesome. Thank you very much. OK. Do you have any questions? Cool. OK. Well,
- thank you very much. I appreciate it. All right. So now we're going to move on to the resolutions. We
- have no resolutions for first reading, so directly into resolutions for second reading, which
- resolution 2026-05 on anti-coagulant rodenticides. In order to start talking about it, though, I need
- a motion to consider adoption. Can I get a move? Okay, thank you. Can I get a second? Second. Cool.
- So, Alex, let's just say Alex did it, or whoever you want, whichever one. So, since it's my resolution,
- I'll just briefly present it. As you all know, there was a memorandum that I wrote for the last thing.
- I hope you all had a chance to at least glance through that.
- Essentially, what this does is, number one, anticoagulant rodenticides are wreaking havoc on wildlife
- populations. They absolutely ricochet through the ecosystem. They stay in animals' bodies far longer
- than they should. They're bioaccumulative.
- They don't go away. And so what will happen is, for example, a raptor or something will eat a rat that's
- been poisoned, and then it will get into the raptor. Or a possum will eat something, come across something,
- and then something will eat the possum, and then something will eat the thing that ate the possum. And
- it's just absolutely ricocheting and finding its way in really strange corners of the ecosystem and
- killing wildlife, up to and including causing wildlife populations to collapse in certain areas. They
- were also finding in places like insectivorous birds, so birds that eat bugs only.
- they were finding anticoagulant rodenticides in, so how it is even getting there in the ecosystem we
- don't even know. I was going to ask, do we know how? We genuinely don't know. But that's how widespread
- it is. And then on top of that, it's also about glue traps, which are frankly just absolutely barbaric.
- This is just literally glue that is inherently indiscriminate. Anything that comes across it is stuck
- in it and then often dies like trying to bite its own arm off or something to escape. It's horrific.
- So basically what this would do in practice is we're somewhat limited by state law, but it would,
- number one, require the city and city contractors and subcontractors to stop using these, which the
- mayor could issue a directive doing that today if she wanted to, and it would be completely legal. And
- it would also, we could petition the state pesticide review board, and it recommends us do that, to
- ask for a variance to allow us to regulate anticoagulant rodenticides.
- We are allowed right now though under state law to ban glue traps. So I'm recommending the city council
- just ban glue traps entirely. So on the rodenticide, we would have to ask for a variance from the state.
- Whether or not we would get that is probably unlikely, but I think we should try in order to regulate
- or anti-coagulate rodenticides. We are allowed though, the city itself is allowed to say we are not
- using this on our property. And it recommends that the mayor issue a directive in that direction.
- Yes, I have two contracts. That's a good question. And that's one that I looked into. I have two contracts
- that are up that were just recently signed. One is for and I will give these to you to add to the meeting
- minutes for next time. One is for city Bloomington utilities for all properties, which is that is an
- extensive number of properties that includes like giant facilities all over the place as a $20,000 contract.
- There is absolutely no guardrails or stipulations of any kind on what sorts of products they're allowed
- to use or encouraged to use or should use. So they have just given essentially a blank check to do whatever.
- There's no guardrails at all, which means they're probably using these products as they're widely used.
- The second one is a contract for Parks and Rec sports and recreation facilities. What exactly that includes
- in Parks and Rec? I don't know, but I'm assuming that's pools, that's
- That's ball ground, ball ground, things like that. That's a large number of facilities. And again, there's
- absolutely no stipulation, no guardrails, nothing at all that stipulates you have to use this thing
- or you can't use this or try to use this more than this or whatever. It's just a blank check. And these
- are multi-year contracts that this, the one for city Bloomington utilities would go through February,
- 2029. The one for parks and rec would go through 2028. So these are long-term large scale, tens of thousands
- of dollars a year contracts that allow you to just basically do whatever on large numbers of facilities
- in the city.
- They will often have something inside of them, and that would typically be an anticoagulant rodenticide.
- There are alternatives that you can use, essentially just rat contraceptives that are starting to be
- used more often. The one thing about those, you have to apply it once, and then again, like two weeks
- later. So that's really the only downside to it. You have to reapply it. And it's specific to rodents,
- that one. So if something eats the rodent, it's not bioaccumulating and ricocheting through the ecosystem.
- It's just hitting rodents.
- which is the benefit of that. Whereas anticoagulant rodenticides are hitting anything that even, even
- like birds that have nothing to do, it's crazy. I don't even know how it's, anyway. Do you include in
- your resolution the alternatives that you're recommending? I didn't specifically recommend, say anything
- about the, oh hold on, what did I say? I'm just wondering if these resolutions, instead of what you're
- against, what you are for. Let me see what I say.
- I don't think I said anything specific. Yeah, I said proven, humane, and cost-effective alternatives
- are widely available, including, and I list some examples. Yeah. Well, with a standard like mousetrap
- that just was triggered and killed. I mean, that's an alternative, yeah. That would be probably the
- likely alternative that people would use. Yeah. So I had a question about, so just distinguishing, there
- were denticide, anticoagulant,
- is we can't ban it without state. State won't allow us, but we can ban the glue traps locally. Yeah.
- There's nothing in state law that I could find that would suggest that you can't. Yeah. So we could
- ban it in any business. As far as I can tell. Yeah. The use or sale. Yeah, I think. I would probably
- stick to sale just because it's easier. Otherwise you're checking people's basement, whether what are
- they using. Yeah.
- sale would probably be easier. There's nothing that I can see in state law anywhere that I found that
- would suggest you couldn't. Some of the places you listed that are currently in bans were in the United
- States. Yes. There would be no federal. Yeah, it would be a state law. I just want to bring up some
- history. I think the Commission has tried to write some, or maybe the City Council has tried to write
- something that would ban
- maybe the sale of plastic bags. Perhaps there wasn't a law before that was passed by the state, but
- because of what Bloomington's tried, they did pass a law to pass. So I just wanted you ahead of time.
- That's always a risk. Yes. That's always a risk in Indiana, unfortunately. Yeah. I think this one might
- be, I mean, the glue traps in particular are so barbaric that I think we should try because
- I mean, you can just show pictures of people and say this is what the state is saying they want to force
- us to use. You want to assume you'd be hard pressed to find people who would die on that hill, but you
- might be surprised. And that's up to the city council to decide whether they want to take that risk
- or not. Is there, in addition to like wildlife species, the same potential impact on
- pets or farm animals. So like anybody that has, I mean, I have chickens and my chickens definitely try
- to eat chipmunks that get through their run. But like any, like, you know, like your dog, your outdoor
- cat. They're regularly poisoning pets too. And blue traps are frequently getting things, pets stuck
- in them as well. So that's a frequent trip to, I mean, anecdotally, I've seen many like accounts online
- of people's, of that happening because I'm interested in this, I've been looking into it for a while.
- So yeah, that's the same commute, potentially like commute, commute, commute. It's been a very long
- day. You're fine. Cumulative effect in them. Yes. Like if they eat enough of them. Yeah. And on your
- chickens, I mean, bugs eat carcasses. So that might be how they're getting into insectivores. And then
- it's in your eggs. So, you know, the insects are unaffected.
- I have not found any tests directly on insects, but I would imagine that is how it's getting
- into insectivorous birds. I don't know how they'd be getting into them. So the insects are somehow coming
- in contact. So there's a dead rodent that has the chemical, a fly lays eggs, maggots fly off,
- and the birds... That's probably how it's done. And they've now got it. Any other questions or comments?
- I did have an amendment. It's a relatively minor amendment.
- basically just correcting a minor, not a typo, but it's an ambiguous thing. Can I get a motion to, before
- we can discuss it, we have to- Motion to discuss- Amendment one. Amendment one. Okay. Seconded. Okay.
- All right. So my amendment, essentially just in line 46, it takes out part of a sentence that is not
- incorrect, but was kind of, if you scroll down, I think I have the amendment form somewhere.
- Can you give us an idea? Yeah, so it's in the whereas clause. The big one that starts with scientific
- research has documented very high rates of exposure. Thank you. About a little over halfway down, it
- says there's a thing on bald and golden eagles. Found anticoagulant residues in 82% of individuals tested,
- including an 81% of eagles. I simply omitted to put 81% of bald eagles. But let's just take that out,
- because it's ambiguous and confusing. So I was just saying, taking out including an 81% of eagles. It
- would just take that out.
- And then the other thing that the amendment would do is just reorganize the transmittal section to have,
- and I spoke with Justin about this, he's completely on board, is just add a 10 day window to transmit
- the resolution to whoever we say to transmit it to, essentially. And formally requesting that the city,
- that you do anyway, that you post it on the website within 10 days. The point just being to get it out
- the door so that we're spending time on this, let's get it out the door and make sure it's going somewhere.
- And then I'm also adding, I don't know that I would actually do this for this one,
- just to avoid having a secondary motion to this effect authorizing the resolution sponsor to speak to
- the City Council about the resolution. So that's that amendment. That's a resolved clause. Yes, it's
- in the section three transmittal. It's reorganizing it to have like A, B, C, D. A would say the chair
- shall transmit within 10 days or delegate to the secretary or vice chair.
- And then it adds the staff liaison is requested to post a copy of the resolution within 10 days. And
- then the commission authorizes the sponsor to speak before the council about the resolution. And then
- it also just takes out that single line at the other thing. Any discussion? I'm good with that, but
- can we circle back? Mm-hmm. I just said that. Can we return? Yes. I understand the link here, but do
- you mind just
- talking about your strategy for linking these two, or putting these two things together in one. Oh,
- for the amendment? Yeah, the anti-coagulant rodenticide and the adhesive. So that is about the general
- resolution. So we'll have to get, we're on the amendment now, so we can only talk about the amendment,
- but we'll come back to that after. Okay. Yeah. Any further discussion on the amendment?
- So I'm going to go ahead and call a vote. Sorry, can I just say one thing? I actually really like that
- section about authorizing the sponsor in general. I think if we have a resolution that we pass, having
- a designated person to speak on that is a good practice. And I think it's one that is worth considering
- in other resolutions as well. And just adding almost automatically when appropriate. And it's more efficient.
- And then we don't have to have a second motion.
- Any other comments on the? Okay, so I'm gonna go ahead and call the roll on the amendment.
- So Tara Donnerdale. Yes. Justin's absent. Rebecca. Yes. Chris is absent. Zach, yes. Dave Rollo. Yes.
- Quentin Gilley. And we'll need to see you, remember? Yes. Yes. Cool. Alex Torque. Yes. Maria's absent.
- Diana. Yes. Okay, cool, so passes. Cool. Okay, so back to the total resolution. So if you want to...
- Yeah, I just...
- Don't need a detailed explanation, but just curious about your thought process for putting these two
- things in one resolution. To me, they're very related because they're both completely indiscriminate,
- widespread. So they're indiscriminate. They don't target one specific thing. Anything can hit them and
- frequently does, or gets hit by them and frequently does.
- the impact is widespread in, if you follow any like wildlife rehabilitation accounts on like Instagram
- or something, they are constantly posting like stop using these things, both of them. And it's kind
- of a plague happening right now on wildlife, both of them at the same time. So that's, and I think they're,
- to me they're kind of naturally related, but that was my reason. Yeah, Quinton, go ahead. Guys, let's
- say I appreciate the topic.
- brought to the floor. My thoughts generally are the killing of animals is not an effective method to
- prevent or control pests. Just like in the same vein, think about perfume is not an effective method
- to prevent or control a stench. Going down that route, I think people need to start over and find another
- way because it's not going to solve the issue. Thank you.
- And I also, I meant to point out, what was I going to say? I lost my train of thought. Well, I also
- wanted to point out we have three letters in support, which I hope you all read from a couple different
- organizations. And the other thing that I wanted to point out is that, so if our goal here is to reduce
- the rodent population, what this is impacting the most are the animals that eat the rodents. Those are
- the ones that are getting the highest impact. So we're creating a circular feedback loop where
- you poison the rodents, and the rodent population might briefly go down, but then you're also poisoning
- the animals that eat the most rodents, so their population goes down, which creates more rodents, which
- causes you to need more chemicals to begin with. So it creates a negative feedback loop that's a problem
- as well. So that's another thing I wanted to point out. Can I just comment that I appreciate the use
- specified that you request as a part of the resolution that the mayor asked that Indiana University
- provide information about the use of products on campus and to cease use of them.
- I feel like we often go back in amendments and add in the IU consideration. And I'm curious if Quinton's
- available on the call and has any comment on that. I'm curious if he's aware of any of that on IU's
- side and if that's something we should be worried about. They use blue traps at IU. Do they? OK. I'm
- not even saying that. I've just seen them. Personal lived experience. They're in the staircases of the
- Wells Library. That's a pretty public place.
- Quinton, do you have anything further to add to that? Only that I'm generally aware. I think that the
- city taking this on as a topic presents an opportunity for me to have a conversation about that on campus.
- Cool. Thanks. I really appreciated the letters of support from members of the community.
- the third letter of support from the Center for Biodiversity, in that letter of support also talked
- about the scientific accuracy of what's shared in the resolution. It was compelling. You're talking
- about the one from Dr. Kettersohn? From Dr. Kettersohn. Yeah. I just want to point out she is like a
- major bird researcher. So I was very glad that she wrote something. She has a lab named after her at
- IU's. Anyway, just excited about that. I was excited about that one.
- She said this resolution is carefully worded and accurate, and I'm in strong favor of its passage, and
- I thought that that was a helpful context not being an ornithologist myself for the quality of the research.
- Any other comments or thoughts or questions? Really well thought out. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, excellent.
- Thank you.
- Um, so if you see, do you see any issue that council would have with any of this or anything like that?
- Well, I mean, what has been mentioned already is that this could be a trigger for action elsewhere.
- That's one thing. Another thing could be enforcement. Um, you know, do we have home roads? Seems to,
- if we do have home role to say, no, can't, can't sell these things.
- because we'd have to have a means of enforcing it, of someone going and saying, you can't sell that
- here, it's illegal. I have to look into that. I have to look into if we can change the state code to,
- because I agree that this is generally animal welfare, and I think it's hideous, it's unnecessarily
- cruel, so I'm absolutely in favor of it. I'm glad you brought that forward.
- So I think it's probably gonna be, people will be sympathetic to it and I think we can explore
- it, definitely. Cool. Yeah. And keep in mind, the main real mechanism is asking this mayor to, I don't
- know whether she would do anything, but to issue an order to the city staff to not, and city contractors,
- and I think that would actually have the biggest impact of all of it, and that is 100% allowed. Yeah.
- Good. Well, I used to work on a farm for about 15 years and didn't use poisons.
- Mice definitely had an impact. I was putting out traps, but what really helped was having a stray cat
- arrive. They have their own environmental impact. Yeah, they do. But then the challenge was to get it
- captured and spayed and everything, and then let it stick around and take care of the rodent population.
- So the old-fashioned way seemed to work for thousands of years, and then we got into, of course, these
- latest things. Are you really how we did this to get it captured?
- Yes, exactly. Probably. So I'm all for it. It's great. Well, personally, I do like kind of think of
- those comments. I do see that the anticoagulants of the traps do kind of have potentially like from
- the city council perspective, like they have very different approaches. Yeah, I do. I agree that they
- are very linked, but also one is kind of broad ecosystem damage and the other is more which
- impacts human health and the other is more directly like animal welfare. So I do see a distinct difference.
- They're not the same thing. The impact though to me is very much related. It was why I anyway. Yeah.
- So I don't disagree that they should be considered, but also if somebody wanted to separate them as
- different issues to consider and understand. I can see that. Yeah. And I'm not proposing an amendment,
- but I do think that in
- about it, people care a lot about their pets. Like, potentially more than they care about hypothetical
- raptors, which is like, fine. One minute before I had hoped to wrap up on this. Is there anything else?
- OK. So let's call the roll. Tara? Yes. Justin's absent. Rebecca? Yes. Chris is absent. Zach, yes.
- Council Member Rallo? Yes. Quintin Gilley? Yep. Cool. Alex Dork? Yes. Maria is absent. Diana? Yes. Cool.
- So resolution is adopted as amended and I will send you the amended version. Thank you. Cool. Okay.
- So now we are on to the staff leads. Oh, thank you. Go ahead. Before I get into that, I just wanted
- to have a little discussion about BCOSR and I just want to make sure that we are hearing from all of
- the commissioners
- It seems like lately all of the meetings are being taken up by resolutions. And if that's what you want
- to do, that's fine. They're all written by Zach. And so I just want to make sure that this is a collective
- that we have. We're hearing from everyone on this commission. And perhaps if someone wants to bring
- a resolution, that maybe you discuss that first. And is that, are you doing any future planning together
- as a commission as to what you're talking about during your meeting?
- So just throwing that out there. Everyone has a voice here. So with that, so for 2027, something I wanted
- to put on your radar is we received a grant for the Buskirt Chumlee Theater. And for the new commissioners,
- you might not know about that. It's Empowering Energy Partnerships and Communities Grant through the
- Indiana Office of Energy Development. We're upgrading the HVAC system. We're installing solar and a
- battery backup system.
- at the Busker Children's Theater. And part of that grant was to pay for four climate talks in 2027.
- And so I just want to put that on your radar that I am seeking ideas on what those four climate talks
- could look like, what speakers, what topics. I would love to have the commission's input on that. If
- you want to help me plan that, let me know. I'm thinking maybe the first talk is talking about climate change,
- you know, the history, the history of our climate action plan here in Bloomington, what we've done to
- date, where we're at and where we're going. And so, you know, what is projected for Bloomington and
- the impacts of climate change here. And then another talk about energy efficiency and solar,
- one talk about, you know, forest and ecosystem health, and then another one about, you know, agriculture,
- food security, I know that's a really important topic here. And so, you know, inviting in speakers,
- inviting in artists, would love to find and perhaps reach out to Jack Johnson, those artists that have,
- you know, they're really committed to sustainability. And so really making this for the community and
- something that everyone wants to participate in, even across the region, across, you know, Project 46 region.
- Project 46 is Southern Indiana Regional Climate Alliance between Bloomington, Nashville, and Columbus.
- And so really wanting to make this as impactful as possible. So. I think what is the best method of
- communication? Do you want the commission as a whole to chair or individual commissioners to just reach
- out to you? I'll leave that up to you guys. If you want to work together as the commission or individual
- commissioners, you can just let me know.
- Anybody else have questions? Okay, so with that, we move on to new business. Anyone remember announcements?
- Anyone have any announcements they'd like to? Okay, cool. Just briefly, I do want to note, I know I've
- been doing a lot of resolutions. You notice I did not introduce a new one today. I'm trying to pull
- back a little bit. I tend to move at lightning speed, and I know that can overwhelm people a lot. I'm
- not trying to do that, but that's just my natural speed is to go,
- really fast. So anyway, I'm trying I've consciously trying to slow down a little bit. And this is what
- we can talk about as a larger commission and another time when we have time to do that. But I wonder
- if there is a method of like, putting on the table areas of interest and then if people are interested
- in like working with you on certain topics. And that's what we're trying to do with the dark sky thing.
- Yeah, I got a group of Yeah, so
- That would be great. I know we discussed previously having some type of planning meeting as a commission
- to determine what we want to do and how we want to go about our business, whether it's yearly or quarterly
- or whatever. But that could be part of that, is setting up some amount of infrastructure that meets
- open door laws and also allows us to have some amount of idea of what's coming up on the docket. Yes.
- And I think that would be great. That's one of the main reasons why I'm excited about having some sort
- of a working something that we do, would be an opportunity
- for me to vomit all my ideas out. I think that remembering the conversation from the last meeting was
- that we talked about planning something after the training. Yes, so hopefully. That was sort of our
- improvement, was that we could revisit the conversation after training. Yeah, so hopefully that will
- be upcoming. Anything else? I think Quinton has something. Oh, Quinton, go ahead. I just wanted to say
- real quick,
- You know, I know each of us have, you know, we're real busy people. Ideally, there's gonna be points
- in time where each and every one of us are gonna have a little bit of time we can really push. And I
- hope that happens. If now's your time, I fully support it. Keep it coming, I appreciate it. Okay,
- thank you, Quinn. Oh, I guess I have a couple thoughts on that. One is, when you have an idea, one thing
- you could do is maybe like, before you start working on it,
- bring it to the commission and then it would be easy for somebody to say like, I'd like to partner with
- you on this. That would be maybe one strategy to get more ideas from a wider audience. But the other
- is if we dedicate like a few, a little bit of time every meeting to have a bit more freewheeling conversation
- like we're having right now that can get other ideas out there because maybe somebody would rather
- work on a report and we need to like have a little side discussion. Two people find out that they're
- passionate about something. They're like, what if we do a report on this? And I don't know. Because
- I know that last meeting, I don't remember who, but one of the commissioners said that they didn't feel
- like what they, the thing they wanted to do most on the commission was pass a bunch of resolutions.
- And like, I'm very policy and legislatively motivated and things to like passing resolutions. You know,
- it tickles the,
- happy centers of my brain, but I can understand that other people might want to be doing other work
- and that if we had more of that open time that like put into the agenda, that might be constructive
- to getting out other ideas. The new business spot on the agenda is sort of pro forma, like it's there
- because we have to have it there and it's just kind of the thing at the end, but it might be a good
- spot for intentionally putting more time in. Yeah, building like a ten minute thing at the end, yeah.
- All right, any other comments?
- If not. You did a great job today, Zach. Thank you. Thank you. I've only done it once. It's hard. It's
- a lot of work. And the deputy clerk took a load off my shoulders right at the beginning. Thank you very
- much. I was stressed about that. I saw you stressed. Thank you. I know. I know. I know. So can I get
- a motion to adjourn? Motion. OK. All right. So I'll go ahead and. Tara. Yes. Justin Sasson. Rebecca. Yes.
- Chris is absent. Zach, yes. Councilmember Arroyo? Yes. Quintin Gilley? Yes. Alex? No, I'm just kidding.
- Diana? Yes. Okay, this meeting is adjourned.