I'll call to order this meeting of the Bloomington Commission on Sustainability and Resilience at 6.01 p.m.
And we will go through the roll call. Tara Dundale. Here. Here. Justin Vassel. I'm here. Rebecca Payne.
Here. Here. Chris Smiles. Here. Here. Zach Ammerman. Here. Here. Dave Rollo. I'm here. Here. And Terese,
is it Dorow? Dorow. Dorow. Perfect. I'm here. Excellent. Welcome. Ross Carlson. Yeah, he was on, yeah,
there we go.
Perfect. Drive safe. Alex York. Also here. Wonderful. Drive safe. My babysitter was sick and canceled
and my next backup babysitter was late. I will be in person soon. All right. We'll see you soon.
Drive safe, cool sunglasses. That's the compliment going around today. And Diana Ogrodowsky. Not here.
Okay, perfect. We have quorum. So we'll go ahead and get started. Did you call my name? Oh, I'm sorry.
You did not, though. I did not. I apologize for that. Maria Arstead. Wonderful. Thank you for catching
me on that. I swear you're still on the commission. Thank you.
All right, well, it's mid-October. It is 86 degrees outside. So it's good to be in an air-conditioned
room. So let's start with the approval of the agenda. Are there any changes that anyone wants to suggest
for the agenda for today? OK, seeing none, is there a motion to approve? So moved. Second. And there's
a second. Perfect. And we'll go through a roll call vote for this since we've got some people online.
Is this to approve the agenda? Tara? Yes. Yes. Justin, yes.
Rebecca? Yes. Yes. Christopher? Yes. Sorry, you? Chris or Christopher? It's true. You're an adventurer.
I know. And I feel like I do it inconsistently. It's fine. Zach? Yes. Yes. Councilmember Rallo? Here.
Or yes. Sorry. Yes. Sorry. I'm reading and speaking at once. Oh, and I'm getting a phone call. Terese?
Yes. Excuse me. Yes. Ross? Me.
Yes. Yes. Alex? Yes. Yes. Wonderful. Maria? Yes. Yes. And Diana is still not here. OK. The agenda is
approved. So that brings us to the approval of the minutes. We have two sets of minutes to approve today,
one from our last regular meeting on September 8, 2026, and then one from our joint meeting with the
Environmental Commission on September 15, 2026.
Maybe I'll open it up for just both of those sets of minutes if anyone has any corrections towards those.
And if so, we can handle them individually. Otherwise, maybe we could just pass them together. So any
corrections to either of those minutes? OK. I'm hearing none. So we can go on to evoke to approve both
sets of minutes as circulated. Tara? Yes. Yes. Justin, yes.
Rebecca? Yes. Yes. Chris? Yes. Yes. Zach? Yes. Yes. Councilor Verrallo is absent for this vote. Terese?
Yes. Yes. Ross? Yes. Yes. Alex?
He steps away. Maria? Yes. Yes. And Diana is here. OK. Wonderful. Both sets of minutes are approved
as circulated. We anxiously await Alex's arrival. Any moment now. Sorry. Does Councilmember O'Reilly
count as an abstention or just not present? I think just not present. Yeah. I think in effect, it works
the same way. But yeah, for record-keeping purposes, it's a good clarification.
Okay, great. That brings us to public comment. So we've got about 10 minutes set aside for this. We
try to limit it to three minutes per person. Is there anyone online or in the room? I'm sorry. Yeah,
no worries. Can you just tell me who did the motion and second for the? I do not recall. I should say
the names as they do it so that it's like more on the record.
Well, for the agenda, it was you and Gay in the midst. Was there actually one? I don't think there was
actually one. Was there not a motion? No, I think we just rolled right into it. Oh, jeez. OK. Retroactively,
is there a motion to approve this? Yes. OK, and is there a second? OK, and then a second. Wonderful.
Yeah, exactly. OK. Roberts rules-ish.
Okay, great. So that brings us to the public comment. Is there anyone online or in the room as a member
of the public who would like to comment? Yeah, there were some folks earlier but they were just interested
in the agenda.
He saw how disorganized we were. He nodded. I'm trying to keep us on our best. I'm just kidding. No,
that's on me. We're totally fine. OK. Well, seeing none, that brings us to Commissioner reports. So
we'll go into the chair's report. I actually put together some slides today, so they haven't been in
the packet yet. So I'll share my screen for them, and then I will email them to you right away after
the meeting so we can put those on board.
So let me switch over to those. It's been a while since I've done slides for these. So anyone who enjoyed
that, it's your lucky day. And anyone who did not, sorry. Let me see if I can full screen this. That's
pretty good. Yeah. Okay, awesome. Okay, so the org chart, which we haven't seen in a little while here,
but there's been some changes and stuff over time. So I figured it'd be a good
opportunity to get in front of people again. So currently, as of today, we've got three vacancies at
the moment. So you can see our quorum threshold up there is six out of 11. And we have a new commissioner
with us, Therese Doreau. Doreau? Doreau. Doreau. Thank you. And yes, normally when we have new commissioners,
we like to give them a chance to sort of introduce themselves to the group, say a little bit about your
background and maybe what your interests sustainability wise are. So I'll pass it over to you.
Hi, my name is Therese DeRoe. I work at Indiana University's Environmental Resilience Institute, and
I was appointed by the IU Director of Sustainability University-wide, who lives in Indianapolis. So
it's very convenient for me to be able to be here. I work at the Environmental Resilience Institute,
and I provide local governments with technical assistance on climate, energy, and sustainability projects.
All of those local governments in Indiana, if you can believe it.
Before that, I founded the sustainability office at the City of South Bend and also served on the Board
of Public Works for several years there. Welcome. I just want to make a quick note about terms that
are expiring in January, 2027. There's three of them as far as the currently filled seats go.
That's Tara, myself, and Diana.
Folks are still interested in continuing to serve beyond January, 2027 to start thinking about putting
in another application through onboard. I don't know if there's like a firm deadline there or anything.
I think we usually just kind of think around December-ish or something to get that in. But just wanted
to make sure it's on the radar for folks. Yeah. I haven't seen anything but maybe one application for
these vacancies, and I don't really know much about there.
qualifications that didn't have a resume or anything. So I just don't know where that one will go. But
there just hasn't really been much, many applications at all. OK. I was going to ask, so thank you.
Perfect. OK, news and updates. This is part of why I decided to do slides today. We can get a handful
of things on here. So I apologize if that's very difficult to read, but I will go through them kind
of one by one. If you have questions as we go through them, feel free to chime in. And then we can circle
back on anything at the end here.
but I'll try to be fairly quick with this. Okay, so the annual reports is now a pluralized thing because
we're coming up on the end of 2026, which means we'll have to put those reports together soon. I told
you I would get those to you before this meeting and give you all a chance to comment on it so we could
talk about it at this meeting for the 2025 report. Obviously, it's not on the agenda, so that didn't
quite happen. We had a pretty busy meeting and I didn't want to try to fit an entire annual report on
there as well. So that'll be
right away after this meeting that will go out later this week and give you a chance to provide comments
individually on that. And hopefully we can discuss it at our November meeting and then address any comments
that were received and vote to approve. And then the trip will be trying to fit that presentation on
council schedule in the last couple of months of the year.
And then, just to keep the momentum alive there, I plan to just roll right into the 2026 report and
try to get that done as soon as possible so it doesn't show up a year later. Okay, I just want to mention
officer elections, which are still a good ways away, I think like six months or something. Yeah, so
our March meeting in 2027 will be holding them. But I just want to kind of put it on people's radar
now. We've got four positions that we elect.
chair, vice chair, secretary, and treasurer. I'm just going to announce now that I'm not planning to
run for re-election for chair. So people should start thinking. Maybe they want to fill that role. And
if you think you might be interested, but you're not sure, I am happy to meet with people and chat and
talk about what it entails or what it could be and to work with anybody on that that's interested.
We don't normally have very hotly contested elections here, so I didn't even put a message to consider
running for office. But just consider volunteering. We need volunteers. OK. On the subject of flock
and mass surveillance type stuff, so at our last meeting, we approved a letter to the mayor requesting
information about the city's status on flock contracts and stuff.
We've got that as an individual agenda item, so we'll actually talk about that a little bit later. But
that letter went out to the mayor the day afterwards, and then we got a response on September 14th.
So both of those things are in the packet. And I just wanted to point out, and it's possible
that Councilmember Rallo will mention this in his report, is that tomorrow City Council is considering
an ordinance for first reading.
or I'm sorry, no, I think this is for second reading, actually, prohibiting the use of Flock automated
license plate reader technology. So it's related to the stuff that we've done here and definitely encourage
people to tune in. Flock, the specific brand? Yeah, I mean, the ordinance mentions Flock specifically,
but I think it also describes more general technology, surveillance technology of this type. So I think
they kind of cover all the bases there. I imagine that's going to be
late meeting so it should be a good time. I just want to mention for the proposed changes to the UDO
regarding forest and tree and forest preservation which is you know we approved a letter to council
at our last meeting making a recommendation about this so we sent that letter to council the following
day and then they
approved language there, I think, if my recollection is correct, they approved language there on September
16th, which included an amendment to strike the thing that we were sort of talking about. So I think
this was like, essentially what ended up being passed was what we were hoping for in the end, right?
And I think you attended that meeting and actually pointed out like a typo or something that was in
the amended text. I had it in the wrong spot and I told them where it actually was. So that's great.
Thanks for doing that.
Yeah, so that's good news. I don't know if it was exactly our letter that necessarily prompted that
change to come into effect, but we sent a letter and then that change went through, so who knows. Okay,
so resolution 2026-06, which is the joint resolution on dark sky stuff that we did with the EC.
We obviously passed that on September 15th, I believe the meeting date was. I attended the September
16th council meeting just because I wanted to make public comment about something else. And then Council
Member Aralo had mentioned that we had passed the joint resolution. And so I just decided to, during
public comment in general, just mention the fact that because NEC passed this and that we look forward
to sending them more information and working with them on that at a later date.
And so that resolution has been transmitted to all the recipients that were specified in the resolution.
And we did get a response from Deputy Mayor Knapp, and that's in the packet as well. So that's sort
of something we might want to follow up on another point. I don't think I have it on the agenda to talk
about today, but definitely read that. I want to mention RetroCycle. We had a presentation from them
at the last meeting about trying to do this.
Indiana Cup or Hoosier Cup, I think is the suggestion that Alex made. Following that presentation, Meredith
Katz reached back out to me with a project plan for what the specific numbers would look like in Bloomington.
I was remote for that. Do we have a copy of the cup? We do have a copy of the cup. It's with the B cost
supplies, the table runners and stuff that we have. We do have that cup.
Yes, I'd love to hold the cup. That can be arranged, yes. Ours was the Colorado Cup. I second that,
actually. Oh, yeah, it was the Colorado Cup. Structurally. That's true, yeah. That's going to make all
the difference. It will. It'll feel a little off, but it might feel a little better. Yeah, so on that point.
I think there's potential there for a pilot program here in Bloomington. And I think there's potential
for other groups that might be interested in it for us to do maybe some sort of cost sharing sort of
arrangement to get a pilot program going. So I'm planning to reach out to some other groups to see if
there's interest there. So if anyone else is interested in getting in on that and kind of helping with
that, let me know. I'd love to have some help.
I was thinking about this weekend and that some of the vendors at the farmer's market might be good
partners for it too, especially because we've been around farmer's market. And there's Brown County
Coffee, Saha Chai, Scholars, and Inkwell. Or no, maybe Scholars is not popular. Inkwell has coffee.
There's like four vendors that have hot beverages at the farmer's market all year. Yeah. That's a good
point. When do we need to decide on what we're
if we're giving them a grant or not, like soon, right? Well, I don't think we're going to fit it in
for 2026. We can't do it for this year. Because it would have to be before December. And there's nothing
else on the radar? I just don't like having $6,000 sitting there. It would actually have to be moved
before our December meeting by ESD. So it would be even like, yeah. Yeah. It would have to be encumbered,
right? I was going to bring that up. But yeah, basically, you'd have to vote on it the next meeting
from now in November in order to have time to approve it for spending this year.
And I think we'd have to get the proposal to them much sooner than that, so ESD can review, so legal
can review, and then we can vote. So I don't think we're going to fit it into this year. But maybe early,
one of the first things in 2026. I will say, in 2027, the budget line for this commission has been reduced
by quite a bit to $1,000 total, which is a lot different. I know that's not exciting enough.
but I wanted to give you that news as well. So that includes the administrative supplies type stuff
plus any project related stuff? Yeah, everything. Is that part of the overall budget? Part of the ESD
overall budget. Do you mean is that part of overall budget reductions? Yeah, if you had any specific
questions on that decision or why, I'd be happy to relay them or you can email.
Jane and Sean as well, but yeah. So if we did decide to try to get something to vote on for next meeting,
is the time between now and then not reasonable to have reviews and stuff done, do you think?
We'll try. Yeah. I don't like the idea of having $6,000 sitting there and then we're not using. I agree.
When was the last time we even did a grant? The canopy. Yeah, the working group grant was the canopy
last year. Do we lose the money if we don't spend it? I mean, we're going to, and they're going to reduce
our line item next year. But it also doesn't carry over. It goes into the general fund for the city.
It doesn't carry over for us. It doesn't carry over for us or anything. So yeah, so maybe, is anyone
interested on working on this?
And I don't mean is anyone volunteering to take the lead on it, but just we might need a couple people
to try to put stuff together on a short time scale. I'm very busy, but I can help if you need it, whatever
you need me to. I can help, yeah. OK, cool. I'll send out some emails. Alex, you had a comment? No,
I was interested. OK, perfect. OK, great. All right, I'll email you. We'll see what we can do. OK, this
is not really related
directly to our commission. But I just want people to be aware of it. It's kind of an interesting thing.
So the Environmental Commission, there's currently a proposed reduction in the number of seats that
they have on their commission. And I'm sure Councilmember Rollo could speak to us a little bit more
about the ordinance that's being proposed here. But basically, it would cut three seats from
the Environmental Commission, bring them down to nine total. And the rationale for that was really just
because there were some longstanding vacancies
for a while and for a while I was giving them problems with obtaining quorum they've since updated their
bylaws sort of the way that we have our bylaws so that you know it doesn't really matter how many vacancies
they are as long as they have a majority of the seated members they can still meet so that that problem
was solved but there's still been some long-standing vacancies there and so the idea was to try to make
things more efficient here instead of having all these vacancies so my personal
thought on this was that I don't think that's a good idea. Because I think there's more to be. The vacancies
is an issue. You do want to try to address that. And there are policy levers you can pull to try to
address that. But I was thinking just removing seats is probably the wrong policy lever to do there.
And we also have a handful of vacancies at the moment. Sometimes we go for stretches where we have various
vacancies.
I don't think reducing the number of members and B costs would be a good policy response to that. I
think it's something we should at least be aware of and be thinking about ways in which we can try to
encourage, try to get the word out there so that we can fill those vacancies, number one, but also think
about how do we think about how we're productive as a commission even when we do have vacancies? What
do we lose if we were to have fewer members? Because I think I crunched some numbers with onboard data and
If you look over the last decade, EC has, on any given month, on average, 10 filled seats. So by bringing
it down to nine, if you look the next decade ahead, best case scenario is on average they could have
nine commission members on any given month. That's the best case. It's probably going to be closer to
eight or something. So they're definitely going to lose capacity to do stuff. And they do a lot of stuff,
like a lot of angle programming and stuff like that.
So anyway, it caught my attention. I want to bring it to everyone else's attention just so you're tracking.
Tomorrow's council meeting is on the agenda. Yeah, the second reading is tomorrow. Is it likely to come
up with what else is on the agenda tomorrow? Yeah. There's a lot on the agenda, but I think it's certain
to come up because we've already discussed this. Okay. Shirley, do we have time that I could add?
Just a little bit. Okay. Well, my understanding is, so this is brought forward by Hope Stossberg, and
it is exactly the intent was to, because they have trouble getting quorum. There are a number of seats
that haven't been filled by the mayor going back to 2024. So my understanding is no one on the EC wants
a reduction. There was objection by a couple of us at the previous meeting,
I've been on the EC for eight years, and they're very active. I want to make sure that they continue
being active and have the number of people to allow them the freedom to be active. So I'm generally
not favorable to the reduction. However, there are 12 members now, and there was a point made that perhaps
we should reduce it by one seat, because then we would have an odd number
Maybe it's easier then to adopt certain policies and not have a tight vote. So I think that right now,
the debate is that staff, planning staff, where it's housed, the EC is housed, is favorable to reducing
it to nine. They may come and speak about that tomorrow. I don't know if the EC is going to turn out
or not. I was going to contact a couple of members tonight to see. But Hope Stosberg, who's the sponsor,
fine with 11. So we may well only reduce it by one seat and that would be a mayoral appointment. Are
there applications and the mayor is just not passing them? I'm not privy to the applications to the
mayor's... That would be the staff liaison would know that right?
Yeah, so I don't know if there aren't. I had an UC member recently reach out to me encouraging me to,
like, is there anyone you know who might want to apply? So I don't think they're sitting on applications.
But also, maybe they're sitting on applications, or they've gotten applicants and there weren't food,
or bars that were held for a long time. Well, and if they've had, I mean, it's a bit of a,
Self-fulfilling prophecy, right? If you don't meet, if you can't ever meet, then people drop off, and
nobody can. Nobody's like, why am I going to come to this meeting? I'm not going to commit to this thing
that is never going to happen. So they can have consistent meeting. They've changed their Bible. That's
what I mean. I say, now they're in a position to meet consistently and see if that is like, maybe let's
see if that policy lever works first.
before we take away public voice. My understanding, too, is that the staff, the planning and transportation
staff, feel that a lot of the duties of the EC are now within code. And so they don't need as many people.
And my view is that there should be an objective body to review development petitions. And the EC always
had that role.
And I would like that to continue. I'm not necessarily assured that a development petition is going
to be, I mean, I'm not necessarily speaking about the current staff. We could imagine an administration
that would be hostile to environment. And then you would, you know, so an objective body who would come
and write memos and say, we need to think about whatever, these cars features, this woodland,
setbacks, whatever it is. So anyway, so if you choose to come tomorrow night, it would be appreciated.
The idea that environmental concerns go away because you put it in code is slightly hilarious. Yeah.
It's fine. We fixed it. We wrote a law. Yeah. It's done. Yeah. So we'll see. Yeah, so I'm going to attend
that meeting. That's why I was at the previous one, doing public comment on that first reading.
And there were some EC members that did show up to that one, too, to kind of say they weren't comfortable
with that and they specifically requested more time to show that they can get those vacancies cleared
and get back up to a full staff. Yeah. Can members of the public, the same way we get letters, send
letters of support or not support to who does it go?
to council, just like to your council member or to the- Well, I would just say that generally to council.
Yeah, to the council. Yeah, love to have that. I think there is certain deadlines for things to get
included in the packet materials. I want to say for 10 days, but I don't know for letters to the public,
they might make some exceptions or something. Well, you could send an email tomorrow before the meeting
and we would, you know, okay.
Yeah, all right, well, stay tuned. Okay, so next bullet point here, these are just some future follow
ups, things that we've kind of passed or done, taken some action on before that we'll, you know, we
probably want to see through a little bit farther. So resolution 2025-01, it's been a little while since
we've done that one, but that was the chicken flock sizes where we're increasing the amount of chickens
people can keep. We were kind of just holding out on that for a little while until council could get
a sort of more permanent
a council counsel, a council attorney. So we might revisit that again soon to try to get that into an
ordinance form, which I think we actually already have like a draft ordinance kind of ready to go that
I think Zach you helped put together. So it's just kind of getting that ball rolling again. Resolution
2026-06, which is the dark sky one we just
There's probably some follow-on steps we want to take with that. I'm guessing maybe some engagements
with Duke Energy, with members of council, with IU or other folks in town. So be thinking about that.
And if anyone knows what those next steps should be, then we can chat. Maybe this is a question for
Councilmember Arroyo. Am I correct that commissions can request some time at council meetings to give
a presentation? Sure. I would like to, not immediately, but sometime in the next couple of months,
request like a 10-minute, we can give a presentation on the resolution. I think that would be a good
idea. Just to brief, because it's a complicated multi-moving part thing, and I think that would be a
good idea. I agree with that. I think that would be the obvious next step. That's in the text of the
resolution, right? That's already for the sponsors. I think we'd be limited to 10 minutes, so that's
a good target. I think that would be fine. Yeah. Okay, cool. We can chat about timing.
stuff like that. Good. And then, yeah, I just want to put the O'Neill capstone that we had earlier this
year on sustainable energy utilities. I don't know if there's any next steps for that. But if there
are, we can pursue those. So just trying to keep some of those things on the radar so they don't kind
of disappear. A couple of back burner things.
especially when Jamie Scholl was a commissioner here, she wrote up a lot of sort of policy recommendations
and strategy stuff about resiliency and food systems and stuff like that. Might be something we want
to revisit sometime soon. Some of those things we've already like passed, like changing the name of
the commission and adding resiliency to our purpose and that sort of thing. But there's still some stuff
in there we could potentially pick out. So I just wanted to put that on there as if someone's looking for
for things to pick at. There's potentially some projects there. And then the bylaws refresh, which we've
kind of talked about here and there over the last couple of years or so. I know Zach and I have kind
of exchanged some ideas about what that could look like, but I'd like to kind of pick that up again
and do an overhaul on the bylaws here in the next six months or so.
And then a couple upcoming events that might be of interest. The next Green Drinks is on October 28th
at Upland Woodshop. And that's about encouraging news about climate change mitigation. That's coming
from a couple physicists in my old stomping grounds here at IU. So that should be an interesting talk.
And you probably got the email, but there's a boards and commissions appreciation event that they do
every year that the city puts on. That's on November 17th this year at the Waldron Arts Center.
So yeah, RSVP is requested there for that. So see the email and fill out the form there. But yeah, it's
a nice chance to go chat with some other commissions and have some hors d'oeuvres and that kind of thing.
Cool. OK, so that's it for general updates. I've got one more slide before the end of my report just
to kind of give you a preview of upcoming meetings and stuff. But any questions overall on that stuff? OK.
Okay so just to give a little preview on some stuff on the upcoming meetings like I said for November
2025 annual report review and approval and we're expecting to have a guest from Hoosier EVA haven't
confirmed that yet so it's still still tentative but I'm thinking we'll probably have that there just
to give us an introduction to the organization. I'm hoping maybe in December we can have the first discussion on
on specifics for a bylaws refresh. And then in January, we would have another discussion on that. Our
bylaws say to amend the bylaws, you have to discuss it at regular meetings. February is maybe a good
time then to look at the 2026 annual report. I'm putting that up there right now to help keep myself
accountable. And then like I mentioned before, in March, we'll have officer elections. So just want
to make a note, if there's anything that
because we haven't talked about getting things on the agenda in a while. If you've got certain topics
you want to see the commission discuss or you've got a resolution idea or you want to maybe see a guest
speaker come in or something like that, just reach out to me and we can coordinate and try to figure
out where it would slot in well in the next couple of months. Any final questions before I finish my report?
Well, then I'll pass it over to Councilmember Rowland. Sorry, Justin. Yes. If your term ends at the
end of January, but our officer elections aren't until March, who is the chair in the interim? That's
a good question. So I am planning to at least stay on the commission. So I'm planning to put in a removal
from application. OK. So assuming that that does get renewed, it should be fine. If it doesn't and nobody
else gets appointed in my spot, we've got a couple of months before.
It totally rolls over. Or if they do appoint somebody else to take that spot, then it would default
to the vice chair. So that'd be Zach. Good question. OK, sorry. I just thought of the looking at the
dates. Yeah, it's a good question. It's always kind of wonky the way we have our elections kind of staggered
with the new people coming and going. Awesome. OK, well, I'll pass it over to Councilmember Ralla
This is your console report. I don't really have them very much. Did you already address just in the
APLR? I mentioned that it was coming up, but I didn't say a whole lot about it. Okay. Well,
this is sponsored. I just got a memo from Smith who is one of the co-sponsors of this. Essentially,
we had urged a number of us the cancellation of the flock cameras.
And then we found that from the police chief that they still had contracts with FLOC for four downtown
surveillance cameras. So this ordinance evolved from that. And it's a prohibition on the use of the
ALPR cameras in certain video surveillance technology. So that'll be heard tomorrow on which might be
of interest of, as you said, I think Justin, for the commission if you want to.
Zoom in, support it, or whatever you want to do. Because I know this commission has discussed it quite
a lot. We have final vote on the budget tomorrow and a number of other things. It's a busy agenda.
But that's, I think, the only thing relevant for the commission. The memo about the flock equipment
that was still up, when did you say that was?
When did the memo appear? It just came out. It was too late for the packet addendum. So it was just
sent to us. I can forward it to you all. Should I do that? If you're able to and you don't mind, that
would be great. Yes, I'll do that now. Okay. So there's still flock equipment up in some areas? Is that
what it's saying? Or that was- Four cameras that are still under contract. So the contract is not canceled.
And then I think the equipment, the other thing that our resolution was about is that there is still
equipment physically up, ostensibly not operational. OK. Yeah, I'm guessing those four cameras are the
PTZ Condor cameras, which are different from the other ALPR cameras. So yeah, OK, good to know, because
that was the question that we had. And we will circle back to that discussion here in a little bit.
Wonderful. Any other questions for Councilmember O'Rourke? Okay. Then we'll move on to our next agenda
item, which is a capstone project proposal. So I will pass it over to Zach. All right. We have a guest,
Albert. Is it okay if he comes up? Yes, please. Yeah, come up here, Albert. Yeah, maybe right there.
Yeah. I'm going to open the seat here. So I hope you all had a chance to read the proposal. I'm going
to assume you did for this.
Basically, this would be just kind of a repeat of what we did last year, last spring, where we asked
for the O'Neill School to do a capstone project for us. This one is special. It's focusing on social
housing. What I was particularly interested in is how we could repeat something that they've done in
Montgomery County, which is a really innovative program where they've managed to produce a lot of housing
units for a relatively modest sum of money and maintain public control of them. Anyway, it's a really
cool program.
asking for the class to take a look at that and what I'm particularly interested in, how different amounts
of money or slightly tweaking the parameters a little bit would give different outputs at the end, like
how many housing units we could get and how to maximize the number of affordable publicly owned housing
units by tweaking the parameters specific to Monroe County and Bloomington. So yeah, Alberto's here.
He would be leading the class.
Basically, just if you have any questions or comments or anything. What is your name? So I can put it
in a minute. Yeah, Elvira Sovertega. And the idea here, I think, so I'm going to ask that we vote to
confirm that we are committed for this, because we're committing ourselves to this project through May.
So I think it's a good idea for us to vote today to confirm that we're on board for that. And I think
the process-wise, the way this would work would be, I have this proposed
Proposal I guess I don't know is what it's called project proposal The idea here would be I think and
maybe you can correct me on this if I'm wrong But you would you would work with your students to come
up with sort of a proposed statement of work that you would use This is the basis for come back to us
with and then we would approve it again sometime in January Is that maybe yeah? Yeah, we need the last
project we approve the statement of work Okay, yeah early next year. Yeah so
The idea here is if you have any issues with what I have written here, now would be a good time to talk
about it. Or within the next couple of months, let me know so I can pass it on to Alberto. And then
he can use whatever that feedback is to inform the writing of the statement of work. And then we'll
go from there. So I moved here from Montgomery County. But one thing that I didn't see in this, but
I think is one of the
cornerstones of what has been really successful in Montgomery County is that because this housing policy
is integrated with their school districting policy as well. So this publicly owned but also their affordable
housing policy overall is integrated with their school policy where there are proportions of every area
of every community that are retained as
I forget if it's publicly owned. It's been a while since I've looked at this data. And that helps maintain
socioeconomic integration, especially in the elementary schools, which is more effective than even putting
more money into schools with higher populations of students living in poverty. So there's a cascading
impact of this mixed income.
that also benefits school policy, and that's one of the, that's kind of like a parallel policy thing
that goes on with this, but there's a ton of research in that, in that vein with regard to Montgomery
County and their housing policy and their affordable housing policy. Not necessarily specifically the
social housing, but that's the framework of the work. It has an impact on education. Yeah. Okay,
that's cool. I was the research assistant for one of the guys there.
get a lot of that research. But for his, I worked on his second book, not that book. Any other questions
or discussion, comments, thoughts? I have a question for you, actually. What class do you teach, or
what's the name of the class? It's a capstone course, so it's for master students at the O'Neill School
of Public and Environmental Affairs.
as part of their program, Nancy Capsum course, and it involves kind of doing something with the community,
the city, with the nonprofit, engaging in some project, and we're supposed to treat you all, whoever
the nonprofit is, as a client, so we take it very seriously, and essentially conduct a really rigorous
kind of research project. That's kind of the goal, the hope. Go ahead. What size are the student teams usually?
That will be a limitation for this capstone. So usually, they're between 10 and 15. For this specific
course, we started a new master's program. So there might be, we're hoping, at least five. There might
be five. I mean, there are going to be at least five, but we're hoping for a few more. So that will
definitely be a limitation in what we can provide. And the other thing is it needed to be quantifiable,
right? Is that what you're talking about? Yes.
One of the pieces of this, sorry, is one of the pieces is that we have to, for these specific master
students, there has to be a quantitative component. So it can't just be all surveys. There might be
some surveys that could be helpful, but they're just a part of the program. There has to be some kind
of data analysis or something. So that will be part of this project in some shape or form. And I don't
think that should be too hard because a lot of it revolves around public finance and how do we finance,
just exactly saying, how do we finance the social housing.
Yes. How are the other parameters for choosing topics like are there, you know, from a year to the next
something that you're looking to engage with or is it more like things that have to come up and feel
appropriate. To be frank, it's.
you know, the director of the Matching Forgiveness comes and says, Alberto, can you teach a capstone
course? And I say, sure. You know, I like doing research. That's what I do in my spare time, right?
Or part of my job is teaching research. And then I was in discussions with David Swindell, who runs
the Public Policy Institute in Indianapolis. And he has so many connections around Indiana and the country.
And I was in talks with him to see, because he gets requests all the time from localities all around Indiana.
But then Zach kind of reached out in some way to them and then I was like, oh, this sounds, I wasn't
aware of this program and this sounds fascinating. So I was like, sure, this sounds like a good project.
So yes, this is not something that I've been thinking about or anything. This is like literally me and
the students are supposed to do the work. So it's me kind of helping them and guiding them through this
process. There's four potential clients. There's an email inquiry process where you can submit
a request for a capstone course. Or you can just have graduated from the O'Neill School and reach out
to professors you know. Can we do a capstone course? However. I know you have
you and Alex's primary contacts, what, beyond sort of like the meeting's capacity do you need from the
rest of the commission? Any, or? I mean, if there's a, if something comes up and it's off and we end
up having to change the plan somehow, like we're not gonna be able to do exactly what we planned, I
will come back to you and tell you, ask for your input on what direction we should go, that would be
the main thing. I also said we can help facilitate, like if you need, if the class needs a contact,
you know, house it at hand,
department or something, or Bloomington Housing Authority, we could help put them in touch. But beyond
that, I don't anticipate a ton. Beyond the initial input that I'm hoping to get from you guys on which
direction we should go. And at some point, there will be a presentation. Yes. And hopefully, if other
people were there, that would be great as well. Yes. Great. Any other discussion? One more.
We're gonna vote on this tonight and hopefully commit to actually going all the way through to May.
I assume that won't be an issue, but when do you need to know if we have any changes to this? Bye. As
soon as possible. Because the statement of, that is the one thing with Capstone, it's like the semester
starts and students have other classes and things are kind of keep going and then before you know it,
it's February and we need the statement of work.
It's before January, basically. Yes. If you have any, I would ask if you have any changes, get them
to me by our next meeting. Any proposed changes, we can decide then and finalize it then. Does that
work for everybody? Should we just send directly to you? I think that works. Yeah. Okay. We're not doing
like a line item for resolution. Yeah. I think that's all right. Yeah. Then I'll summarize and bring
them to the next meeting. We can talk about it then. All right. Awesome.
Okay, so, and I, sorry if I just missed this as I was reading something. So you were going to be the,
so the BCCOS POC for this. With Alex's help, but maybe not probably yet. Okay, cool, yeah. So we can
move on to the vote if there's no further discussion. Yeah, can I just ask that maybe get people get
you before the notice date of the next meeting? Yeah, so one week before the next meeting. Yeah, so yeah.
So that anything can get into the packet. Yeah. Yeah, good. And so is the idea that if there were any
changes, we would vote on it? We can discuss it again. Yeah, if we need to vote, I guess. It's not subject
to revolution. Yeah, we can just discuss it in our next meeting, and I can adapt whatever needs to be
adapted based on that discussion.
Okay, so today we're basically voting to commit to this project. Knowing that this is the general scaffolding
of it, which might change a little bit. Yeah. Perfect. All right. Well, we can move on to a vote then.
Yes, thank you. Thank you, Ross. And there's a second.
Wonderful. All right, now we can vote for this project proposal. OK, Tara. Yes. Yes, Justin. We're all
in the room. Do we need to do a roll call vote? If people want to do a roll call vote for this, they
prefer a voice vote. I guess it's simple. Just making sure you weren't just still in. Yeah, it's a good
observation. Let's just voice vote as we go. OK, perfect. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. All opposed,
nay. Any abstentions?
All right, great. Proposal is approved. Thank you so much. Yes, thank you for coming. Thank you. You're
welcome to stay. OK, great. That brings us to agenda item 6B, which is Mayor Thompson's response to
our flock request for information that we approved last time. Scroll a little bit here.
Yeah, so we voted to approve this letter at the last meeting and then that went out the next day. And
then on September 14th, a few days later, we got back this response from the mayor. So she said, thank
you for forwarding the commission's letter. The administration is addressing this topic through our
ongoing collaboration with the common council and we will continue to move the work forward there. Thank
you for your continued service to the city. So I wanted to open this up and
give everyone an opportunity to discuss the response here. I think it's good that this was a prompt
response and it was personally addressed to us, so definitely appreciate that. I think it didn't answer
any of the questions that we had posed. We've posed six very specific questions. We also asked that if
the mayor could not answer any of those questions to maybe provide a rationale for that or the details.
He didn't get that. We also suggested that somebody from the administration could attend a meeting and
offer a briefing or discuss with us and no response to that either. I'm not aware of any recent discussions
that have happened at council between
the mayor's office and at common council meetings, aside from the ordinance that council is working
on. But as we just learned, there's still a contract in force, at least one, and there's still some
cameras up, which is exactly why we were asking these questions, to try to understand better what the
current state is. So I think we still have more questions than we have answers at this point.
So yeah, I don't think it really reflects the care that we put into putting that request together.
And yeah, so I want to open it up to the table just to get feedback, comments, views, suggestions. Question.
Yeah. What do we know the terms of the contract for the remaining four?
Yeah, I think that the copy of the contract that would apply there is public. And so in principle, I
think we know that. But I think we have to guess that that's the particular contract that's still in
force, because we were never told specifically which contracts were no longer in force. So we don't
know how long. I mean, we'd have to go reading. Yeah, I think we'd probably have a pretty good idea,
but we don't know for sure. And yeah, we definitely have to dig into that document. I just want to point
out that two days after this, the mayor
an interview with Indian Public Media said, the city has already decided to end our relationship with
Flock. That was an executive decision. We made it. I made the decision. We ended our LPR, our license
plate reader contracts back in the spring. There are other entities that may have Flock cameras in town,
which means that within city limits, you may still see Flock cameras. Those could be owned by the university.
Our LPRs are down. Are all down, she said. They're not.
Well, if it's if they're using the converse, that's not. It's misleading investors. Yeah. Well, the
question I would have about that has to do with claiming agency for the decision. I wonder if there's
a sort of narrow path for that to be true. But as we see in the letter that was transmitted, we have
different classes, 11 ALPRs for video cameras for mobile trailer systems.
My question is about, so the original terms of the original agreement were two years that we would still
be within, if I read the dates correctly. The council resolved to terminate the contract, but then there
was some foot dragging, it sounded like, from the administration, if I remember correctly, about
like being constrained by contract term limits or something like that, that there was some sort of wiggle
room in that. Are the four existing cameras, so A, under what circumstances were the ALPRs taken down?
Was that in response to the council, and people I know are very unclear on what's going on, what the
status of things is? And B, is there a second,
Agreement or is are the four existing cameras covered by the terms of the first agreement is you know,
like How could those still be up if they were covered by the terms of the original agreement and why
wouldn't we already have known about a second agreement if why wouldn't that have been divulged in sort
of like, you know, so to speak discovery When the council was addressing this problem back in the winter.
Does anyone know answers to those questions? I
And I think that the resolution did talk about the physically still existing cameras and the ongoing
contracts. But a lot of our questions were also around the data, the data access. Are you continuing
to partner with other entities that are using this data? Did you delete it? Did you verify it was deleted?
I don't know what ongoing collaboration with common council means, but I'm going to go out on a limb
and say, I don't know the answer to that question either. But what is the next available step? We can't
do anything. We're advisory. But what are the avenues available to get this information? Is it to send
a similar letter?
council and say, hey, the mayor's office says, you have this information. Is it a FOIA request on behalf
of the commission? Yeah. Are these contracts not publicly available information? Are they covered by
any kind of? They are. And I think most of them, most if not all of them, have been made public through
requests that various members of the community have been making. And this is part of what drove some
of these questions that we put into the letter.
was like, I've seen this contract. And I know it doesn't expire until, whatever, 2027 or something like
this. So when they were talking about how they reached the end of a contract and they let it expire,
I'm like, well, that one doesn't expire for quite a while. So what happened with that one? And that
was one of the big questions. So I'm guessing that's the one that's still in force, if there is only
one still in force. And I'd also be curious if down means they're off or they've been physically removed.
Yeah, the lay of the land would be a quite useful thing to have in relation to this, because otherwise
we're just saying random things in the dark while people who understand the actual organization of phenomena
around this continue doing whatever they want. I think we have to be informed in a concrete way about
these things. And I guess my question is, are there barriers to that, like legitimate barriers in terms
of things being confidential?
where I haven't done a lot of digging into public policy or these kinds of agreements, but I'd be happy
to try and do that if I can get pointed in the right direction. Could I just add that I sent everyone
the memo that I referred to before. This was dated October 12th, so yesterday from the sponsors. These
are good questions for tomorrow's meeting. But within the memo, it describes
on April 15th of this year, the mayor announced that the city had not renewed its contract for FLOC
ALPRs, which expired on March 5th. A report from Police Chief Mike Deakoff the same day explained that
the city still had contracts with FLOC for four downtown surveillance cameras and four mobile security
trailers. As of today, those contracts are still in effect, and the mayor's administration can still
legally engage
a different vendor to reinstate ALPRs in our community. I haven't seen those contracts, but apparently
the sponsors have. As you said, they're public, so we could have those to Murl's meeting. I could request
those. If you have any other questions, please let me know or other council members, so happy to ask.
This is just from a quick search, but data.bloomington.in.gov. If you just search for contracts in there,
they do have a data set that has all the city's contracts going back to 2018. And I just searched Flock,
and it comes up with the 2024 Flock agreement and then the 2025 addendum. So those two come up, and
then they're easy.
time just from this search. But yeah, I don't know what else exists. Well, they still have them. They
still have contracts that still say they haven't expired. Yeah. And I think there was another contract
or something that wasn't in that database originally that came out through a records request. And we've
had them in the packet before. So in the meeting where we passed the resolution on FLOC, I think it
was that meeting,
There was like a second packet, which was all just full of flock stuff. And all of the contracts are
in there. So go and look at those. We had also talked at the meeting where we heard this, where we did
the reading of this, about maybe a second resolution, or a request, or even our own research on what
is available in terms of what the data have been accessed. How the data have been accessed by
the city's police department. I do not have the capacity right now to do that, but if anybody wants
to, I can send you some of the research that I have. Because I think very shortly after we had that
meeting, there was like another, there was a, I forget the entity that did it, but there was a big study
that there was like, like the reasons, the like reasons column that police were using was like LOL. Like JK.
random string of letters, and then Flock changed it so that that wasn't an open text column anymore.
But they found something, and including in Indiana, there was a city entity in Indiana included in that
data set if I remember correctly. So I would love to move forward on that, but I can't do it right now.
But if anybody else wants it, I will give you whatever I have. Yeah, I think I remember too that there was some
Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but it was mentioned that there was some sort of internal audit
that happened or that was going to happen. It says, okay, we're going to audit these things. But it
either wasn't made public or it's not intended to be made public or something along those lines. So
I don't know if something like that would be public access request sort of thing. I'll try to go back
through and see if I can
I might have just made that up in my head, so don't take my word for that. We definitely talked about
it, about an audit being a good idea. We had talked about the fact that it would be good to do a third
party audit. Yeah, maybe that's what I remember. But I remember something like that in maybe the initial
conversation. And then the initial briefing that council had, I think they said something about it.
Paid for by hand. I saw that too. It's like, what? Why?
That's unusual. Oh, yeah. You're talking about why did it go to hand? Yeah. Yeah. I think that was somewhat
a procedural thing. But also, I think they were placing one of the cameras near some particular neighborhood
or something. It caught my eye at first, too. And then as I dug into it deeper, I'm like, OK, that doesn't
seem too crazy. But yeah, it is kind of strange. Yeah. Do you feel like?
council has better grasp on what's going on here, or are you guys just as much in the dark as we are?
Well, frankly, I knew this ordinance was coming, which I'm supportive of. I didn't know that there were
still operational cameras, and I wasn't aware that the contract was still active.
I do have questions about that, but I guess there'll be representatives from the administration that
we can ask tomorrow at the meeting. So of course, we'll have public comments. And so if there's any
questions that evolve, feel free to ask them during public comments, and then we could entertain those
questions. Did we? Well, I guess.
Do we want to authorize a member of this commission who can be there tomorrow to provide public comment
on our letter and the mayor's response? Add the council. We could do that. I'm not volunteering. I can't
be there. But if there is somebody who could do it, we can, as a body, authorize. That's a great idea.
Do we have a volunteer? I cannot.
I'm not sure if I could. I might be able to make it, but I might not be able to state that point of
meaning. I'm also liminal in terms of my fillability then. We can authorize volunteering Justin to send
a letter with our comments to general thoughts and just trust you to express a little. I mean, we can
also just authorize
Justin to forward the response from the mayor's office to the council. Yeah. She says you're working
on this. What's the objective for tomorrow specifically? Do we want to nudge the mayor to respond or
do we want to point out that she didn't respond or do we want to circle back and be like,
I think pointing out that she didn't respond and simply saying, here's the mayor's response to our carefully
thought out letter, and we find it inadequate, period. And that there are still all of these outstanding
questions, which I think are in line with what council is proposing in this ordinance change, is that
these are systems that are not secure, that are contrary to a functional democracy.
And that was what we got in the public support of our letter as well. If you were to draft something,
I could read it into the record. OK. If no one else can come, I'd be happy to do that. OK. Well, yeah,
we could do that. Sorry, I didn't mean to make extra work for people that I can't follow up on. That's
all right. Well, you moved to authorize Justin
write a letter on our behalf, forwarding the mayor's response in our thoughts on its adequacy. All right.
Is there a motion? Is there a second? Second. All right, it was seconded. So sorry to put this on you,
I guess. Oh, that's OK. Again, if it's something I could send out, and then if I can't be there, something
short could be read into the record or something.
Great. So what would we want this short letter to say? I mean, these would be attachments, I assume,
right? Like the first response in our initial letter. I think just attaching those two things and then
I would say, I think adding a qualitative statement on there that we find it inadequate would be sufficient
for me. I don't know. Something like if I were writing the letter, I like the way you opened up your
comments acknowledging prompt reply.
direct response, and then we'll go on to say, unfortunately, none of the questions we posed were answered,
neither in substance nor even kind of at all. And however you might want to diplomatically put that,
but expressing it clearly and saying, like, you can see the attached, sorry, what is it called when
you attach it? Not display.
Exhibits. For more information, I appreciate that. Just to add to the discussion that's going to be
happening on behalf of council, more information, more context, just to say, hey, we passed this back
then, we asked for clarification, we received none, and that seems to bear on the conversation happening
tonight. I think to your question also of what is the point,
I think that we're great, and everything we do is really important. There's not as many eyes on our
packets as there are on a council meeting about this, and so it's a way to get this response in front
of more of the public. I didn't mean to apply. No, no, no. I just realized I had a better answer for
that. I had a more- Yeah. Because we could go at it where we, yeah, we could take two tacks. My thought is,
I think that more of the public's eyes should see this response in contrast to how thorough our request
was. And I think, in the context, how reasonable it was in terms of public information for the work
of our commission. Maybe it would be useful. I should just write a couple of things down and send them
to you. I'm sorry. But maybe one thing that might be useful for framing this would be to say something
like, there has been substantial or significant
lack of clarity, public confusion about the status of the resolution that was passed last May. I've
talked personally with lots of people who have experienced what feel like contradictory kinds of information
around this or at least unclear kinds of information around what's going on. This is part of a broader
conversation. There are lots of other polities in the nation that are doing exactly the same thing that this
administration is currently doing. My home city did the bait and switch where they said, oh, sure, we'll
get rid of flock. Then started up with axion or whatever they're called. Therefore, seeing the procedure,
understanding what's been going on, I think adds context information that is useful for deliberation
with the council, something like that. I'll try and write something down if it's helpful.
Okay, so yeah, so including that context in there, and should I include a statement that's like, like
you had said, like, the commission finds this response inadequate? Should I put some sort of statement
in there, like this is what the commission thinks, or just lay it out context-wise like that? I would
be firing, but...
I think it's important to make it clear that nothing was answered. But I think doing that with,
you know, you can glove the iron a little bit. Yeah. Well, there's a, you know, this thing hasn't been
answered. Here's what happened. And then there's, here's what we think about it. Here's a statement
of what we think about it. So I want to put that out there because I don't want to make something up
on my own. It's like, here's, the commission finds this, blah, blah, when it wasn't supposed to. I would
say I find this inadequate. Have we taken that tone before with, like,
other correspondents or sort of stances? Not that I've been here, but I don't think I've had a response
to this in hours. So this is a new situation. I don't know. I would be fiery with it, but anyway, I'll
leave it at that. Yeah. I mean, given that what we're voting on now is authorizing Justin to write the
text of it independently of all of us, I think it would be fine to
say that we're authorizing him to write it as we said, this was what we asked for. This was the response.
And you'll note that none of the questions were answered. And these questions are still outstanding.
Yeah, that only is a disappointing response, but it's also left and right. It's a non-response. And
if we want to not put the qualitative opinion of the commission, because we don't really have the time
words meant that, I think that's fine. I'm happy to bring up a motion to specifically authorize you
to use the word inadequate. You don't need a separate motion for that. You can do that in this motion.
It's part of discussion. But you're advocating for specifically using that word? I don't think you have
to, but I am okay with it. I think there's lots of ways disappointing a
Disappointing response that did not answer any of our questions. I think is All of these things I think
are sufficient ways to kind of address it, but I would advocate for Saying something that directed clear.
I think it's a it's valid and legitimate to express that the the council is you know
Mispleased with the response in some way like this is not a response it If that's a gesture of respect
it is arguably a disrespectful gesture You know, I think express the layering lading it with some Negative
valence in that way is valid. However, you want to finesse that is good I think
Maybe I'm being like over cautious or something, but I feel like often raising hackles is not like the
best way to do stuff except for theater. To be fair, the audience for this is council, not marriage.
The audience of this is council and the public. Understood. Which I think underscores why we need to
be like, this is not really
I guess my thought. I'm not trying to be like tiptoe, I'm just saying like, it's sufficient to say,
here's what we sent, here's what we got. We've got no substantive advantages of any kind. So we are
submitting this to the public and to the council for consideration in relation to this. We are unsatisfied
by the response that we got. I don't care how it's worded personally. But that brings up a good point.
Are we just there to say that and that alone, or do we have some sort of follow-up? Is there any opportunity
to be like,
out, right, ask for her to answer the question. There is, within the work of our commission, we could
send her a letter every month for the rest of her term and say, we want you to do this. And she can
keep saying, no, we do whatever we want. But I think, given the urgent, the time that it's tomorrow
and that we don't know that any of us can be there, I also, so like, I, this, my,
The reason I suggested it is because I think getting more eyes on the mayor's flippancy with regard
to public transparency on this is a way to support the council's effort. Because the council is saying,
this lacks transparency. We don't know how these data are being used. These data are undermining our
democracy. And when we asked for more information about it, she said, no.
Yeah. Okay. I just, I just back to the objective. Like it's like, we're all good on, you know, raising
the fact that her response was not good enough, but then, and do we want to try to like use that time
to, I just don't, I guess I just don't like want to show up in front of council and be like,
We're bummed we got this bad response. It's because we can't be there. Nobody can be there to give public
comment. So it's an email. He's writing an email.
Dave's going to read it into this. But we can't write anything. I mean, I don't really know what I'm
suggesting here. I'm just thinking of like, be the problem solver, not the problem maker. I'm trying
to put an end on that. Yeah, we're unhappy with this response. And so here's what you can do to make
us feel better. But again, we're speaking to the council. Yeah, I think that some things we could say
is we're unhappy with this response. And we hope that
the mayor can address this clarity with the council. There you go. She did not address it with us. I
also think that we could say that in the letter to the council, we can maybe say something like, and
as you're doing this work, not just passing a resolution to ban these things, but also let's force a
third party audit on record access. That might be
Yeah. Too much. I would recommend not putting it just because that's not in the context of it. That's
not in the content of our existing letter. But where you were going originally with it, I liked. Yeah.
It's a good idea. I agree. Yeah. OK. I think I have a pretty good sense. It's going to be fairly concise,
professional, but firm, stating the context of what this is and why it's relevant to the issue at hand.
and throughout that expressing that this is inadequate. We got Stonewall. So I think it's reasonable
to say we put in a reasonable request for clarity about these things that there have been multiple
governmental requests or resolutions passed around and the response we got was a non-response. This
materially bears on the conversation happening and is relevant.
it's important for the public to know that the intergovernmental sort of conversations happening look
like this. So that's why I'm saying, like, that is itself a kind of performative thing in my mind. Like,
it's without having to be like, mm, you know, like. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And I might, so I'll draft
something up tonight. And Zach, I might send it to you in the morning for you to do a quick look over
and give me your thoughts. And then if it's all good, then.
I'll send it out so Dave has it. OK, good. Any other discussion before we move on to the vote? No, but
thanks for the email. I love writing a letter. OK, we'll move on to a vote. Do we want to do this voice
vote, or anyone specifically want to roll call it? All right, all those in favor of authorizing me to
send the letter that we just discussed.
We have an emotional discussion. Yep, this time we got it. All those in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed,
nay. Any abstentions? I abstain. One abstention. Wonderful. Thank you. OK, the motion passes. Great.
Palo also. Not present. Yeah, but it was a voice vote, so it doesn't have to be explicitly stated,
I suppose. OK, great. Thank you everybody for that discussion.
So that brings us on to resolutions for second reading. We are running very close to the end here. I
think it's okay if we start discussing, we can finalize in our next meeting. That's okay. On the retro
cycle? No, sorry. This is the resolution 2026-07, enhancing the city's protection of significant heritage
trees. Did you have a staff?
I don't want to cut too far into that if you had stuff to report. I have maybe just one point
of clarification since I already covered the budget item. Okay. Retro cycle, I think is item 6C and
is on one agenda, but not on the other. Sorry. So I've got the packet up. This is kind of confusing
because the packet has its own table of contents, which is the 6C you're seeing there.
Never mind. I could see why that's confusing. It's like, I swear I saw that as a sixth C. Yeah. So we
could start talking about for a couple of minutes if we think that would be useful or we can just send
the rest to the November meeting. Do you have a preference either way? I'd rather buy it. I have thoughts
on how we end our meetings.
Well, it's on the agenda, so we can go there. No, we'll go to Stafford. Stafford. Oh, we'd have to go
there. Yeah. Huh? We'd have to vote to the agenda. Oh, OK. Well, let's just then vote then. That's fine.
We can just push it to the next meeting, if that's what everybody wants to do. Is there insufficient
time? Huh? Is there insufficient time to be meeting the leaders? For tonight, yeah. Yes. Can you remind
me what is the difference between this and the letter that we talked about at the beginning?
separate but related topics. The letter that we talked about was a specific change to the UDO that had
been inserted by the planning department into the suite of UDO changes. This is a broad overhaul of
how the city handles heritage trees, which currently doesn't do anything at all with heritage trees.
And this would propose an entire framework for it. So why don't we chat about this for a couple of minutes?
It's on the agenda, so we can chat about it. And we just don't have to make a motion to go to the approval
stage. We can push that on. I mean, there's not really enough time.
if we're going to end at 730. So I would rather we just move into the staff report, if that's okay.
If we're going to end at 730. Okay. Do we need to move to table it? To change the agenda. Yeah. Why
don't we just make a motion to table it until the next meeting and then they'll automatically send us
to the next agenda item. So is there a motion for that?
I motion that we table this discussion for the next meeting. OK, is there a second? I second. OK, there's
a second. Wonderful. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. All opposed, nay? Nay. Any abstentions? I abstain.
OK, one abstention, one nay. OK, so the motion carries. That brings us to the staff liaison report.
Over to you, Julie. Great. Yeah, just one point I wanted to clarify. I know there was some discussion
around quorum.
around EC in the last special meeting. And I did get specific communication that just reaffirms that
the legal department is treating quorum the way it has always been treated on this commission. Your
bylaws have established the quorum. Nothing changes. I just wanted to make sure everyone was on the
same page with that, since there was maybe a little confusion with the EC last time. Is it total bond
Total appointed or total present? Total appointed filled seats. Yeah, not the total potential body size.
Total filled seats is how we calculate the core. And that's in the bylaws. Not in terms of butts in
seats at specific meetings. That's the state law. So we have to have, according to city ordinance, 50%
are total seats plus one for corn, or is it 50% for corn? I forget the exact one. Or whatever your bylaws
say. Our bylaws say 50% of our filled seats, but at least half of those have to be in the room. And
that's a state law. So was legal interpreting that for any commission, or just the ones that specify
that in your bylaws?
says, after their discussion, COREM was based on the number of currently appointed members not available
seats. This does not apply to statutory boards and commissions. If a board or commission has adopted
bylaws that define COREM differently, the bylaws prevail, as long as they do not allow for fewer than
a majority of currently appointed members to take official action. I'm reading an email I received from
Jennifer Crossley. It's just, I think, because it was just an internal legal department.
discussion that kind of affected the EC and if they had quorum last time or not. Yeah, so I hope that
helped. OK, awesome. Thanks for sharing. You're welcome. May I ask the follow up question about the
budget? Sure. I'm curious what expense item that $6,000 exists in. Yeah, so there is just a dedicated line item
in the ESD budget that is for working group grants for this commission this year in 2026. So it's money
that's meant to go out from this commission? It's money that goes out from ESD, but the commission votes
to decide on how it is spent. Basically, they present proposals for projects that advance sustainability
in the community in ESD.
But it's not specified to be supplies or the proportion we can use for supplies. That's what we did
last year to get our banner down. What is ESD? ESD, Economic and Sustainable Development, my department.
Which your department is seeing pretty significant changes in their budget overall, right? Yeah.
Just into next year from this year, sustainability hasn't seen anything like groundbreakingly major
changing. For contracts, the city of South Bend cut their budget, sustainability office budget by 70%
had to lay off. Yeah. Yeah. Like this ongoing budget, or this next budget cycle? Yeah. Well, the last,
they actually got on it early and took care of it the last budget cycle. So they cut some of their programs too.
This cut is not coming from the council, this is coming from the head of ESD. Is that correct? Okay.
Yeah, but we have seen some substantial changes in the department, but that's for sure. Question about
the remainder money. Is it technically feasible given two more meetings to spend it? Is it possible
to bring up something next meeting that is okayed in December? That's what we were talking about at
the beginning about the cut. We don't have to spend it.
but December, right? It just has to be kind of approved and committed. Allocated, okay. So it is technically
still possible for us to allocate this money. So I should go out. I've got some people I know who might
have projects that are viable candidates. Get them to write these up. Okay, cool. Basically, it's a
November meeting that we have determined is the last possible meeting to vote as a commission in order
to have enough time for the city to be able to approve that.
that proposal in the spending. So if there were a proposal for budget allocation, I should send that
to you by? The ASAP. Just go to them and review it before it comes before us. If ESD can review it first,
then higher chances. Because we could pass it and ESD could say no. Sure. Let's see what I can get.
I don't remember.
On that $6,000, was there a per-project limit? No. No. No, but I had some correspondence with Sean last
year, and she said that they should be at least $1,000 just in terms of the overhead required to administer
the projects, that less than $1,000 is. It's in our interest to try to fund one big thing than a bunch
of small things.
And why would we not do the cups? It's just a matter of if anybody has capacity to write the project
proposal in the next three weeks or less than that to get it. It was like $14,000. I mean, that was
just the presentation from the initial proposal from them. So I guess the amount of time to figure out
the entire funding source, the composition of funding sources
Probably skimmed it, but it seems scalable to me, like the number of locations that were served. I think
it could be scaled down. But yeah, we could put in the proposal, like we'd like to contribute this much
as a portion of the total amount. And then we're going to go try to find other partners that will cost
share and bring the rest of it. And this would be our contribution. So yeah, I'll start working on that
one. And I'll email a couple of you who expressed interest and worked on that. And we can try to get
something put together.
Does it have to be something that the commission does not administer, a program or a project? The commission
should work on it, right? But it doesn't have to be. It could be a partner. Right. It could be a community
partner nonprofit organization who substantially does the work with the commission's oversight and reporting
and agreements and just collaboration, for sure. But I mean, there's some types of projects that seem
like they would need to be
led by commission members, just depending on what it is. OK, thank you for the background. Yeah. OK,
yeah, any more questions? Yeah, any other questions on that? OK, excellent. Yeah, that's mainly what
I have. Other than that, I know Sean mentioned the solar grants for Income Qualified Homeowners. We
were talking about that earlier, too. We received quite a lot of applications. That's very popular.
program. Yeah, so that's encouraging. Yeah. Awesome. Okay. Well, that brings us to member announcements
with our last 45 seconds. Any member announcements? Anything anyone want to announce? If people haven't
gone to indianarenergiesavers.com, you should do that or .gov.
Whatever. Look at Indiana Energy Savers. It's the state program of the federal homes and hear projects.
I applied in April. I'm finally to the point where I can move forward. I'm discussing details with them.
But I'm going to get about $20,000 of free state funding for my house will probably be all electrified
by the end of the year. So yeah, people should do that.
I tried to do it last year, and the paperwork was so hard. It just petered out. It was like to get ready.
I think that they have gotten it a little easier, but they will help you. Oh, they didn't last year.
They will help you now. Now they will. I'll make a secret quick announcement if any of you
know and love an IU student. ERI is accepting student applications for the McCain Climate Fellowship
for next summer, which is a full-time work placement. But they're due November 1st. So if you go to
the ERI website, it will be front and center on the ERI website. Awesome. Yeah, thanks for that.
All right. Well, that brings us to the end of our time. So we will stand adjourned at 7.30 PM. Thanks,
everybody.