Okay, I think we'll go ahead and get started. So I'll call to order this meeting of the Bloomington
Commission on Sustainability and Resilience at 6 p.m. And we'll go through the roll call. Tara? Here.
Here. Justin, I'm here. Rebecca? I have regrets from Rebecca, so she won't be able to make it tonight.
Chris? Here. Here. Zach? Here. Here. Council Member Rollo? Here. Here. Therese?
Oh, perfect. She's here. You're just in time. Alex? Maria? Here. Diana? Here. And Ross? Here. Okay,
we have a quorum. So we'll move on to the approval of the agenda. I've got a couple of minutes I want
to suggest, but maybe I'll open it up to everyone else first and ask if there's any changes to the agenda
anyone wants to put forward.
I guess I could add, I just wanted to make a brief announcement about Bloomington Transit at the end
of the commissioner reports if that's, we can add that to it. Let me add that to my suggestion, we can
do it all in one go. Okay, so a couple changes I'd like to suggest and we'll just vote on all of them
as one package. So what Zach just said was adding a brief report from him on the transportation
after Councilmember Rallo's report. This is going to get a little bit confusing, so bear with me. The
next one would be moving Councilmember Rallo's report, that's item 5B, to after the public comment.
There's a council meeting tonight, so he won't be able to stay the whole time, so he'd like to be able
to do that.
The third thing I would like to do is move, well actually I wanted to ask Sean and Joe Lee if you guys,
if you had a report to give tonight, because I'd like to move that forward like into the commission
reports as well, just to make sure we have time to get through it before we get into the resolution
stuff. Okay, so then after Zach's report would be the staff liaison report. And then the final thing,
is moving the guest speaker presentation that we have from Hoosier EVA to I guess this would be after
Councilmember Rallo's report and before the rest of the commissioner reports. Does that make sense?
So yeah. So Councilmember Rallo is 5A. Hoosier EVA would be 5B. Chair's report would be 5C.
The staff report would be 5D, and Commissioner Amhermans would be 5E. Is that correct order that we're
thinking? OK. Yeah. And we'll try to, if it passes, then we'll try to keep that straight as we go through.
I'm going to write it down. Yeah, that's good. Thank you. OK, so those are my proposed amendments. Just
nothing crazy, pretty simple.
Yeah. Any other changes people want to suggest before we vote on those changes? Okay. Um, and, oh, it
looks like we have Alex online. Um, so welcome Alex. Um, okay. So we'll go through and do a, um, yeah.
Um, at least for the vote. Yeah. Um, okay. So we'll do a roll call vote to amend the agenda as
just stated. Tara. We need a second. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah. Perfect. Thank you. Okay. Tara. Yes. Yes.
Justin. Yes. Rebecca's absent. Chris. Yes. Yes. Zach. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Alex. Yes. Maria.
Yes. Yes, Diana. Yes. Yes, and Ross. Yes. Yes. OK, great. That is approved as amended. So that brings
us to the approval of the minutes for October 13, 2026, our last regular meeting. Is there a motion
to approve the minutes? So moved. OK, is there a second? Second. OK, are there any amendments or changes
anyone wanted to put forward to those minutes? Actually, can I propose an amendment
At the very top, the guest presenter, Alberto Ortega, O'Neill School of Public Policy. Can we amend
that? O'Neill should be spelled correctly, and then it should be School of Public and Environmental
Affairs. While we're doing that, can we change the approval of the agenda? It has me moving and seconding.
I didn't do both. I don't know who seconded it.
I have it in the original notes who did it correctly. So if we can, yeah. OK, any other corrections?
OK, so we will vote to approve the minutes with those corrections.
Tara. Yes. Yes. Sorry, go ahead. Justin, yes. Chris. Yes. Yes. Zach. Yes. Yes. Councilmember Borrella.
Yes. Yes. Therese. Yes. Yes. Alex. Yes. Yes. Maria. Yes. Yes. Diana. Abstain. Abstain. And Ross. Yes.
Yes. Okay, those minutes are approved as amended.
which brings us to public comment. So I don't see anybody online at the moment, so we'll start in the
room. Is there anyone in the room not presenting tonight otherwise who would like to address the commission?
All right. Seeing none, we'll move on to our next item, which I believe is Councilmember Barallo. Wonderful.
Thanks, Justin. So tonight we have a deliberation session because tomorrow's a holiday. So we're meeting
this evening, so I got this conflict. But this is a deliberation session where we'll review findings
from September 9th and October 21st deliberation sessions which run public safety.
which were very productive, had a really great discussion and quite great ideas. And then there's a
report I can circulate so you can see that for you. Then we will have a discussion on the Housing Development
Fund, which is the city support of affordable housing in the community and what our deliberation should
be going forward when utilizing that fund.
That's on tonight's agenda. I wanted to just refer to last week's ordinance that I sponsored, which
is Ordinance 2026-29, which prohibits artificial superintelligence from Bloomington, from the jurisdiction
of Bloomington. As far as I know, this is the first law against artificial superintelligence. So it's
getting a lot of attention. This is a technology that's not available yet, but it's on the horizon.
It's what companies that Frontier Labs are aiming to do. It's known to be extremely hazardous. The reason
is multi-fold, but one reason is in order to get there, they're endowing these models with what's called
recursive self-improvement, which is where the models themselves design the models. Right now there's
human oversight, but they're giving ever more latitude for the AI to utilize that.
So this has been warned about for years, that this could result in an iterative loop of improvement
to super intelligence, which would be impossible for us to control, potentially. People say, why don't
you unplug it? It resides on the internet. So where do you unplug it? It could be in any server anywhere
in the world. It's been known to escape. Already, the current versions form swarms, break into other
companies, break into its own company.
You know, it's being utilized to steal Bitcoin and other things. So it is not aligned with human well-being
right now, and yet they're going forward with this dangerous technology. Whistleblowers have come forward
and said this could result in catastrophe, essentially extinction-level catastrophe. It would disempower
humanity, and it would, we would be at the mercy of machine intelligence
So no longer would machine intelligence be subordinate to humans. This is a crazy concept. I realize
that people can't really fully wrap their heads around it, but this is what experts are saying right
now, including Nobel laureates. During my presentation, I refer to Jeffrey Hinton. I refer to whistleblowers
who had left companies, like Jacob Cox, who left before he was fully vested. He left before he would
get a couple million bucks because he was so concerned about this.
And there are AI safety researchers who have studied this for years, like Roman Yompolsky from the University
of Louisville. He's published over 100 papers on AI safety. And he's been warning about this for years.
So it's an imminent threat, just like we needed another. We have global warming. We have nuclear war.
Now we have this. But it's something that we can prevent from happening. And it's easier. I mean, there
are two ways to react to an exponential, which is what this is on. One is too early or too late.
And so we need to act now. So I'm not gonna wait. That was my motivation. This was a moral commitment
for me. I think we owe it to children today to protect their future, to ensure that they have a livable
world. And so I went forward and I'm not gonna back down on this. So let me say what it doesn't apply
to. And I said this very clearly in the meeting. That is, it doesn't apply to
the AI that we're using currently. It doesn't apply to narrow tools, which can be very beneficial.
We want to, you know, alpha fold, great technology. I used to work in protein folding when I worked
in a biochemistry lab. And it took months and months and months to understand how a protein folds and
how it interacts in the cell. This has made huge advances toward medicine, alpha fold, won the Nobel Prize.
There are other applications that could be very useful. Those are narrow tools focused on specific things
to do. We don't need an autonomous agent that has endowed super intelligence that can run amok on the
internet. So it's very risky. So it's not tool AI. And so I think that's been misunderstood by some
people who are very critical of this right now. I plan on a companion resolution, which is the support
the tech industry in Bloomington, because there's good things happening here. And we need to focus on
those and promote those. So I want to make clear that I'm for the tech park and what's going on there.
I've always been supportive of it. And there are good things from tech. So is there anything else to
say? It passed unanimously. So I'm very pleased by that. So anyway, are there any questions?
that you'd cost me, did you? No, Roman Yompolsky. Yeah. He apparently was the guy who coined the term
AI safety. So he's been working on it for quite a while. Yeah. And unfortunately, he gives a X risk
it's called of a certainty almost, like 99.99%. Maybe a few more nines. Unfortunately. But anyway.
Okay, I can talk all night about it, but I won't. Any other questions for Council Member Rubel? Great,
well thank you so much. Thank you. Appreciate it. Okay, so let's see, I'll try guessing with my memory
again at the next item on our agenda. Is it the Hoosier EVA introduction? I think so, perfect. Okay,
so I'll invite Paul to come up. We've got a spot here up at the very front. And I'll pull up the slides
that you sent me, and Sean and Julie, I'll send those to you as well so you can get posted on board.
While I'm doing that, maybe you could just introduce yourself to the Commission. Yeah, for sure. My
name is Bob Ordon-Kercher. I am heading what is known as the Hoosier EVA, or Electric Vehicle Association.
Hoosier EVA has been around since 2010 here in Indiana. The national organization, which we are fully
under, we're a full 501C3 under the national organization, has actually been in existence since 1967.
So this has been going on a long time, and we are fully under that 501C3 for our operations. The Hoosier
EVA is the only chapter in Indiana, so essentially we're responsible for the whole state. It had been
dormant in the past couple of years, and this all changed with my wife and I moving here. I was the
former president of the Nevada EVA in Las Vegas before my wife and I took advantage of the remote worker program
at Amplify in the mill and moved here back in March. And when I made that move, the national organization
kind of poked me and asked us like, hey, we could maybe use some help with Indiana. Would you like to
consider it? So after a little bit of talking to people like Justin and people in town with Project
46 and others, in August, I decided to step in. And so I've been leading it since August. Obviously,
we're very early on, so we've had a chance to do
just a little bit, just to get going, literally in the last couple of months. We had our first public
event since forming at the farmers market on October 10. That was just our way of, we set up an information
booth and we stole a few parking spots from over at Ragstock and parked some electric vehicles so that
we could see that.
It's part of what the EVA tries to do every year. We try to do at least a minimum of two public events.
So in September and October as part of, we call it Drive Electric Month, and then in April again as
a part of Earth Month, we will do another similar event. But we try to do other events as we can.
In Nevada, we were very closely tied with Clark County's Department of Environment and Sustainability,
and we did a lot of public events there. So we did EV 101 sessions at the public library. We did some
events at retirement homes and that kind of a thing. So to be a public voice, I like to say EVA also
stands for our mission, which is education, visibility, and advocacy. So that's what we try to do.
been doing that for quite a while. What we've got coming up, our next meeting, if anyone's interested,
will be actually this Saturday. We are hosting it at the mill, and we also do it via Zoom, just like
you do the events here. So we'll be doing that this Saturday morning. And we are already in preparation
for, of course, the events in April, part of the reason to meet with the board here and other organizations
so that we can be part of the Earth Day events in April. So as far as things that we've got upcoming,
We are pulling our board together. We have a total member of five on the board right now. I'm the only
one in Bloomington, but we have four members that are up in the Indianapolis area. Of course, that's
where the Hoosier EVA had been in existence before I got involved. And they are still a part of the
board. So we did do an event up in Irvington, actually. I forget the councilman up there who's very
big into electric vehicles, but we had a small event up there as well in September. But we're hoping
to do more of those things. We are still looking for a secretary. So if you know anybody who has an
interest in electric vehicles and would like to contribute, we are still looking for that.
We are, with our upcoming meeting, we're hoping to set some of our priorities for 2027, which of course
will include the event in April and then other things like partnering with other places and trying to
do some more public education events. So that is part of our plan. We have also just recently put in
for the, I always get the acronym wrong, CFBMC's community foundation grants for a tier two grant to
do an education campaign. Again, after
doing a lot of the research in town, I think the best place we can contribute is to be an education
and information source. I like to say we try to be like the Consumer Reports of electric vehicles. And
we do include things like bicycles and scooters and so forth. Most of our concentration, most of the
interest we get tends to be around personal vehicles.
you know, cars and trucks and so forth. But we want to be able to speak on all those and be visible
on all of those. So we have put in for a Tier 2 campaign to hopefully do a full media campaign about
benefits of electric vehicles, you know, countering a lot of the misinformation that's out there about
them and so forth. Because we do see, we have seen real advantages to the community
with high adoption electric vehicles. Now Bloomington is already fairly high adoption that we've seen
just driving around and seeing it. But the more we see it increase, we've also seen in previous studies
in Nevada where lower income areas actually are the ones that are most adversely affected by things
like air pollution.
And I'm told the state of Indiana doesn't rank terribly highly on air quality, at least the last one
I read. So we think there's a lot of different places that we can touch, whether it's lower income and
air quality and so forth. So that is part of our goal is to work with organizations like the city and
the county to continue to increase that. So that's really all I have. It's mostly to say hello.
We are here, and we're looking to be a tool. We're looking to be a help in any area that we can.
Well, thank you. Let me open it up to anyone who has questions, comments. Paul? I just want to know
if you are aware of the map that we have on our City of Bloomington website. It has all the locations
of all the EV charging stations across the city. I just wanted you to. I am aware. I am aware of some
of the other apps that have it. And that's partly what initially got me started because, of course,
downtown and the northern area is very well covered for electric vehicles. I live more towards the south
area and not as much.
So that got this idea going for Starz to be part of the campaign. But again, we realize y'all have so
many things well in hand when it comes to charging infrastructure. From what I understand, Bloomington
is one of the only cities also that has an ordinance that new multi-unit dwellings have to
have infrastructure for electric charging in it.
What a fantastic thing. So we hope to see more of those installed, and maybe we can help out in some
way with that, too. So we're installing our first DC fast charger at the trade system. Oh, fantastic. OK.
Excellent. I'm excited about all of that, excited about Bloomington. I can honestly say, my wife and
I have no negative things to say about Bloomington whatsoever. We absolutely love being here. We love
that it's not 120 degrees. And we're looking forward to getting back to snow. My wife was from Ohio.
I was from northern Minnesota. We know the weather, and we're looking forward to getting back to it.
It looks like Alex has his hand raised. Go ahead, Alex.
Um, I, as a, oh, I'm, it's like super Zoom to not be. Yeah, it does its own thing. You're too great,
Alex. Zoom is, Zoom is free, yeah. So, um, I have a question. So, uh, yeah, as an EV driver, I find
that there's incredible power in people experiencing that.
feel the movement of.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, really a large part of when we do our public events, you'll see whenever we
do our next one, we have a very large tent that says all the way around, talk to an EV driver. And our
whole point is to have people there who actually drive it. And they can talk about the good and the
bad sometimes about what that experience is like. But yes, the actual physically driving the vehicle
we have seen time and time and time again is almost the first immediate thing that seals the deal on
it. The biggest issue that we have with it, of
is insurance. So if somebody test drives your car, deals with that incredible torque, and puts it into
a light pole, it becomes problematic. So this is a part where maybe I'm hoping the city will help. We
saw this benefit in Clark County, where when we would have events, participation from dealerships was
not so great. But when the county or when the government agencies brought in and said, we want to do
this event, suddenly the dealership showed up. And of course, dealerships have.
ride and drive insurance we can do things where it's up to the drivers where they can let somebody ride
along with them and see the torque and see the speed but to literally let them drive the vehicle that's
where auto dealerships have the liability insurance to do that so that's the only reason we we don't
or we do when we have the opportunity when a
Tesla or Rivian or whatever officially brings vehicles. Here, I guess, it'd be Community Ford,
Royal South, Royal East, and some of the ones that have the EVs. If we can get them out to bring their
vehicles, they can do the drives. We can do ride-alongs, at least. But again, it's always up to the
individual driver's comfort with the potential insurance and so forth. So yes, but I totally agree,
Alex. We would love to always have ride and drives every time. Sometimes it's just seeing them is enough,
but getting in them and experiencing them,
firmly believe makes a big difference. Great to meet you. Our sustainability director is very supportive
of EVs as we know, but are there other things the city can be doing to expedite ownership and interest in EVs?
Well, I think we're in sort of a unique opportunity right now because we did have, of course, the federal
incentives that went away about a year or two ago. What we're running into is we found that a large
number of EV drivers somewhere in the 70 percentage range usually lease their vehicles. So we're hitting
a time period where we're going to have all those vehicles that were bought off the federal incentives
are going to be coming off lease. And if you'd ever seen any of my presentations back in VATA, one of
my big soap boxes is actually used electric vehicles.
Previous to COVID, they were a dramatic price drop over just a couple, three years from the lease. My
first one was $26,000 new, and I bought it for 10. Two years old and 20,000 miles on it, something like
that. So in fact, I just purchased a used EV this time, two years old, and it was literally half the
price of new. So we're big on that. We think that increases affordability. So that increases the opportunity
for lower income, again,
trying to help with that. The other part of it, of course, is the availability of charging. What we
found is the number one thing that makes EV adoption simpler is the ability to either charge at home,
number one, or second place at work. And so that ability to charge, and a lot of people don't realize,
you can charge a vehicle on normal 110 household outlet. But to have that availability is one thing.
And then if you drive a lot, of course, you'd want something more like a level two charge, which is
more like a 240 volt outlet.
But making that available, making it easier, having things like electric service firms here in town
to know how to install specifically level 2 charging, although essentially the outlet is the same as
an electric dryer outlet. That's what we're talking about, a 240 volt outlet between 40 and 80 amps
kind of an idea. Some homes, we realize, can't support that. Some older homes only have 100 amp service.
But there are even technologies now where
load balancers and things like that sorry I'm not an electrician but there are capabilities where even
in a lower amperage home that they can still do level two charging if they really need it but those
kinds of things and then from there it's like incentives from the utilities like I just saw Duke Energy
has a time of use program I don't know if it's specific to electric vehicles or if it's other things
I think it might be for everyone I'm trying to remember now but we had some of those programs out in
Nevada that were helpful as well but I think the the
lowered price of used electric vehicles, I think the ability for people to charge them at home at work,
I think those are really the two biggest contributing factors to increase that adoption, at least in
personal vehicles. The next trend that's coming in now, of course, is the ability to run your home off
the vehicle should there be an outage. We're very young in that. There's only a handful of models that
do that now, but that is moving very quickly. So again, same thing, especially in the rural areas. From
what I understand,
Electricity from Duke Energy in town is very good. Once we get to the rural cooperatives, it kind of
depends. So for people who are more outside the city limits, that ability, again, is going to become
a significant factor even just in the next, I would say, two to five years. Yeah. Well, that's very
resilient, which we're about to. So it's sustainability. Paul, I wanted to make sure that you're aware
of a city program. It's called Bloomington Green Home Improvement Program.
We provide rebates to homeowners who are installing a level two charger in their home. We provide a
rebate for the charger itself, and then a rebate if they need an electric panel upgrade. OK. I think
I knew some about that. I stopped looking because I'm technically outside the city limits. For myself
personally, but it's information we should have as a group that we promote. So I would love to get that
information so I speak correctly. Zach, I think you had a question, then we'll go over it.
Paul, is board membership in the secretary position open to anyone anywhere in the state? I'm sorry.
That was a child, I think. Oh, OK. Yeah, I mean, it's essentially, ultimately, we'd like to be statewide.
So we would love to have a Fort Wayne, a Lafayette, an Invincible location. Just so happens now we only
have the one. Like I said, four out of five of our board members are in Indianapolis right now. So someone
could participate remotely? Absolutely.
Yeah, we're definitely, I'm trying to get the tech stack sort of set up for the club so things can be
done remotely. And we're getting there. We're pretty good so far. I have one quick comment. Paul, I'm
going to pass your information along to our, I'm with the county, Ross Grosson. But we are looking at, we just
put more solar panels on the north end of this building. We looked at doing an array at the county over
the north parking lot, but there were so many utilities under the parking lot it wasn't feasible. But
they're looking at adding some solar chargers on the county side as well. So that they'll be connected
to our array and will be available when we're producing. Excellent, well it's good. Yeah, I'll send
them your information Sophia. Wonderful, thank you.
Alex, your hand is still raised. Did you have another question or comment? Yeah, I just wanted to share
that I know some of the RENCs have EV charging tariffs as well, so it's not just within the Duke network
that there's some utility support for them, but Hoosier and
Yeah, my biggest thing, of course, being new to Indiana, literally moving here knowing no one is learning
everything. So that's the other thing is to learn from people like you all about what's out here already
and just helping it along. All right. Any final questions or comments? OK. Well, thank you, Paul, so
much for coming in. And you've been able to do an impressive amount getting us stood up in a short amount
of time. So kudos to that. And yeah, definitely.
Come back, keep us posted. And if there's anything we can do to support, happy to work with you on that.
Excellent. Thank you all. I appreciate the time. Thank you. All right. Switch back to the other screen.
And I think it's my report next. Is that right? Yep. All right. Well, this past month was a very busy
one for me. So I don't really have much to report.
We don't have any changes as far as the organization goes, same number of vacancies as before. And maybe
just a reminder to folks whose terms are expiring in January that if you want to stay on the commission
to submit the renewed application on board. And yeah, I think that's mostly all I have, short report.
But any questions for me?
Yeah. We were talking about it before the meeting started. So for the record, do we know what vacancies
we currently have on the commission? Can we just review those briefly? Yeah, I can actually pull up
on board real quick. Yeah, three mayoral positions. So see M3, M5, and M6. And yeah, that's it at the
moment. Yeah, absolutely. Good question. OK.
Seeing no further questions, we'll move on to Zach. Yeah, just really brief. So I'm also on the Bloomington
Transit Board because I'm nuts. Didn't have enough boards and commissions anyway, which is recent. And
I don't plan on making an update every single meeting, but there's something big happening and I wanted
to make people aware of it. The new management and the board are considering a reduction in service
for five different bus lines.
The 2w 2s 11 7 and 16 would be reduced roughly by half Oh, sorry, okay Well, yeah, so anyway, they're
they're reducing service by roughly half proposing reducing service were roughly half on those five
lines The seven and the two in particular some of the higher ridership lines in the entire system. So
it would be a pretty severe cut the reason being is
The drivers have been on mandatory overtime essentially since August due to a significant staff shortage,
a driver shortage. They have a major driver retention problem. I have thoughts on this proposed cuts.
I'm not going to go into them right now, but I would ask people to please turn out and share your thoughts
on the proposed cuts. They're having a hearing, a public input session November 17th at 4.30 PM at the
Downtown Transit Center.
Immediately after that, the board will be voting on whether or not to approve the cuts. I am not convinced
that the cuts are going to actually solve the problem. I think we have a driver retention problem. And
I think this is my own opinion on this. This is not the opinion of the board or anyone else. My thought
is that it's being treated mainly as a recruitment problem. And we don't have a recruitment problem.
We have a retention problem. And over the past year or two, they've hired 95 people and only retained
12. That is an 88% loss rate.
You don't get to that level of a problem with not advertising for job posting enough. You get it from
not retaining drivers. So I think we need to look at pay. Our starting driver pay is below the 10th
percentile for transit operators in the state of Indiana, meaning essentially 90 plus percent of the
transit operators in the state of Indiana are making more money than our starting drivers. I think that's
something that we need to be looking at, and that is the real problem. And I'm not convinced that reducing
service is going for six months
is going to fix the problem without addressing that as well. So those are my thoughts. I would ask people
to please turn out, again, November 17th at 4.30 PM at the Downtown Transit Center. So that's it. Thank
you for that report. Are there any questions for Scott? So you said right after the 4.30 public input.
Immediately after that, we'll be having our? Is it a regular business meeting? Our regular business
meeting, yes, where we'll be voting on the cuts. Is there a way you can share that?
or is it publicly posted by the board? I don't think they posted it yet. It'll have to be posted 48
hours before. I don't think it's on the website yet, but yes, I can share it with you. Comments via
Zoom? I would hope so. Normally you can during board meetings. There is a public comment period. I don't
know if this public input session will include one or not. I can't tell you for certain. I think probably.
Thank you for that. Yeah, I appreciate that. Okay. And that brings us to the staff liaison of course.
Sorry. Thanks. I want to talk about a whole lot of things since you guys have a lot to talk about. So
I'll just give a couple of updates. We have hired Kim Lundgren associates to help with refocusing our
cap and they will be helping to write a five year cap implementation report. Our cap was five years
old in April of 2026.
Climate Action Plan. So the Climate Action Plan, yes, thank you. So I've been collecting actions from
all of the departments and so far we have about 230 cap actions that we're going to be reporting out.
We issued an invitation to bid for the Buskirt-Chinle Theatre Project. That's a project where we received
a grant from the Indiana Office of Energy Development to upgrade the HVAC, install solar and battery,
a battery energy storage system.
We issued the invitation to bid for the solar and battery. Unfortunately, the bids that came in were
too high. So we have to remove the battery from the project. So that's unfortunate, but that's the reality
of applying for a grant in 2024. And then with tariffs and everything that has increased since then,
it's not possible. So we're pivoting and I'm soliciting quotes for installing solar at the animal shelter.
installing heat pumps at the Allison Jukebox Community Center. And we're gonna have to do some electrical
upgrades there for the heat pumps. And we were hoping to install solar at the Allison Jukebox Center,
but I found out today that the roof doesn't look like it's in the best shape. So we're probably gonna
have to pivot to a different building for that. For our solar grants and income qualified homeowners
program, that was launched on September 28th.
already received 40 applications and so far I have approved 10 installations out of the 22 that are
available. So I believe right now there's one spot that's available. If there's anyone out there who
would like to apply, there's one spot currently available. So there's lots of applications that we're
processing still. So, so far we've got 10 approved. For project 46, we are applying for the Climate
Smart Communities Initiative Grant.
We are applying for funding for a feasibility study to mitigate flooding in the Cresmont BHA neighborhood
area. And then the other two member cities are also applying for funding for flood mitigation. So I'll
keep you posted on that. And then if anyone is interested, I am providing a climate action plan update
to city council next Wednesday evening. So I would love to see you all there.
I would also like to add, we've had some sustainable neighborhoods grant applications. We've approved
two of them. One is the Fritz and Terrius neighborhood isn't going to install pollinator gardens and
trees, much like Tara's neighborhood. Very similar project to native plants and gardens scattered throughout
the neighborhood. The Prospect Hill Neighborhood Association will receive a grant for twofold.
TerraCycle box is to collect hard to recycle items, and then the other one is to start neighborhood
compost collection. And then the Woodlands HOA, they're in process. We're likely going to approve them.
I just needed some more documentation about also doing neighborhood compost collection and native plant
installations. So those great three new grants that came in towards the end of the application cycle.
I have a quick question. So Crestmont is having localized flooding issues, or? Yeah, I can't remember
the exact streets, but there's an intersection there. There's a T. And when we have a really heavy downpour,
someone sent me a video. And there's just water rushing along the road and into people's properties.
OK, I just think of that as such a high area of town. Yeah, right. Yeah, it wasn't the first area that
I would think.
flooding than I think. Yeah, I don't think there's enough stormwater infrastructure there. OK,
very good. Yeah. What was the third, the still pending grant? Pending the Woodlands HOA, Woodlands HOA.
Yeah. For what's the project? Compost collection, leaf collection as well, and native plant gardens.
Oh, and the other thing is very soon, we are collaborating with
with city Bloomington utilities to relaunch the residential stormwater grant program. So CBU is actually
like, they're providing the funding, but ESD, we will administer the grant program. And so that's going
to be a small scale grants for residents on private property to install rain gardens, bioswales, just
different, yeah, green infrastructure solutions to stormwater issues. So that is coming soon.
launch the application just about as soon as I can here in November. And that's about $20,000 total.
The grants could range anywhere from $1,000 to $4,000, small scale, but could accept a number of applications
with that funding. And that will be due at the end of January. And we'll review applications thereafter
and announce the winners at the end of February. So that's not like a rolling application? That one's
more of a,
One deadline, one review set. Yeah, yeah. A little different, yeah. Great, any other questions? Okay,
well thank you very much for the report. Lots of good stuff going on. Yeah, I'm sure, I'm sure.
All right, well, I think we're back on track with the original agenda now, so it should be a little
easier to follow. So that brings us to item 6B, which is the grant proposal. So I'm going to pass it
over to Chris to intro that, and I'll pull up the... If you need me to zoom in on any parts of the proposal
itself, let me know, and I can... One thing I should say is I...
I don't know how it is possible, but you got an earlier, I sent you an earlier draft with the only difference
that I'm aware of. I have an email ready to send to everyone right now if you would like me to send
you the correct draft. The only difference is that the budget, I think the only difference is that the
budget has more line items in there that spells out specific costs. So it's like gloves, mulch, compost
rather than a lump sum.
It literally doesn't make sense. Can you show that to me real quick? Yeah, I can send it to everyone
or just you? I mean, I think we could send it to everyone as long as we post it on board after the meeting.
Is that all right? OK, yeah. Why don't we do that? And then I can pull it up on the screen so we can
all send. Basically, so Jasper is here as a rep for the neighborhood planting project. So if we have
any questions that I can't directly answer, we can direct them to Jasper. But do you want to sit it up?
It's your prerogative, whatever you like. So this grant is intended to come out of the $6,000 that we
identified last meeting that was not earmarked for anything and would just disappear into the budget
if it wasn't earmarked by next year.
The message out to folks, I contacted people I knew in town to see if there were any projects worth
allocating that money to and found out that there was a big budget shortfall this year for the neighborhood
planning project, which has been going on for at least five years. Ten years. Ten years, okay. This
is why Jasper is here. And apparently this
previous spring, which is when the event is hosted. The event is basically a distribution of thousands
of what are called small whips. They're very small trees that can be bought quite cheaply in bulk and
then distributed. The number we have for this is 6,000 that are going to be given away in town, and
that's what this funding is for. They actually coordinate with other projects around the state, so there's like
tens of thousands of trees that get distributed around the state. But this money is strictly for Bloomington.
It's a really cool project. It's a fun event. And they not only distribute trees, but they also have
plans to develop three areas. I don't know if Melissa's talked about this. Yes. So it's in the grant.
We're still in communications with several different projects about
where we would do basically micro parks of like here is a grove of native fruit or not bearing trees.
But we have a few different projects that we're are definitely would be viable for. So that would be
stepping stones shelter that is opening up on the location of the cicada cinema and friendly beasts
that just opened and
the Avalon Community Land Trust, I believe, was listed. So yeah, we are in those conversations and we've
done plantings like that before at other locations, including TreeLU Neighborhood Association. We did
two large groves there as well. I should emphasize that, I'm glad you pointed out, these are largely
fruit and nut bearing trees. They're native trees that get distributed. So it's very like, you know,
The idea is to increase sort of community level resilience and resources. So not only is this sort of
community developed and community coordinated, it helps grow ground level knowledge, experience, and
literally resources. They use WIPs instead of like the
$300 trees you get from nurseries because a they're much cheaper and you can get many more
of them distributed but be there is a school of thought that they Establish themselves better and grow
faster once they are established than those transplants from nurseries so This funding is to address
a gap that was unexpected and came through last year. Usually they get funding through
They get a lot of donations around the time of the project in April. And this year, for reasons they
have yet to understand, there was a significant gap, like around $4,000. And when I was talking to folks
involved, they said that they were going to have to put things on personal credit cards in order to
pool resources and buy these things themselves. So it seemed like a really good candidate at every level,
both in terms of theme and in terms of addressing this problem too.
put this money into Bloomington in this particular way. I sent that budget around so you can see what
all the, everything's gonna be spent on, but it's like compost, deer cages, trees, that kind of stuff,
and maybe some refreshments or things for the different events that people have. So it shakes out to
around roughly $4,000, depending on how things come through, and I think that's roughly everything
salient about this right now, but please, if you have any questions, we're happy to answer them. If
I can just add, thanks. The project is part of the Center for Sustainable Living, which is a long-standing
nonprofit that also hosts the bike project and a bunch of other projects. Redbook Books. Redbook Books,
The Overlook, and yeah. Co-op Housing. Co-op Housing is a separate organization.
Do you know, are you guys just ordering like 60 wildlife packets from Volonia or? No, great question.
We have already, we have selected what we want. I think there's a lot of pawpaws this year in particular,
but we get some. We don't just get the wildlife packets because we want to make sure that what we're
getting most of it is edible to humans. Okay.
And we are getting a variety of like we do get some big trees, but we're also getting a lot of shrouds
We're getting a lot of like gooseberries and hazelnut usually so big variation in size, right? I guess
edible but not readily like acorn right mass trees People you know, we're giving these trees to individual
homeowners in large part. So like people don't People want a little shrub
that they can eat in a few years. We give away pecans, but those will produce pecans in like 20,
30 years. And it's worth it. That started as whips. Yeah. Oh, that's awesome. I have a question. And
apologies for not being familiar with your project history. What's the distribution plan for 6,000 trees?
Because that does seem like
a lot for a community our size. It is a lot and we do it every year. Really? Yeah, so we have a big
distribution day. I believe in this plan we would have two distribution days because this past year
we had, I wanna say more than 150, 200 people come by our alleyway in one day and that was a lot. So
having two distribution days, but yeah, we have people come in
Some people will get just a tree, some people will get 15 trees. We have really high demand. We always
put out a Google form to sign up for trees and then we have to shut it off at a certain point. Oh yes,
I remember seeing the Google form. For the last four years, I want to say, we've done around 6,000 in
Bloomington.
Prior to that, like the six years before that, we were a bit smaller scale, but we've been operating
at this scale for four years. Wow. That's great to hear. Thank you. It's a really fun event also. Must
emphasize that. Any other questions? How big are these trees? Like when we are handing them out? Yeah.
It looks like a twig.
It's easy to distribute them because they weigh about an ounce. Do you have any kind of data on survival
rate of them? I know that would be super hard to track. I don't know. What I do know is I have lots
of friends who have planted these trees in their yard and are producing fruit now. So that's a very
anecdotal answer. It depends largely on the person gets this whip and then they need to do the step
of planting it, which is why I'm excited about
doing planting events where we're in control of the whole process and making sure that it gets watered
and all of that. Because we have a much higher likelihood of knowing that's going to survive. The Sycamore
Land Trust does a similar giveaway for Arbor Day, if you've ever seen those at Blooming Foods. And they
are little sticks. And anecdotally, I have about eight or 10 in my yard that have survived however many
years. I think I've had one.
whip dye of all the ones that I've planted. I would think that the hazelnuts too and some of the shrubbery
is pretty hardy. Some things like a shagbark hickory, for example, they really take a lot of care and
don't do much for quite a long time. Some of these that I'm guessing that you're getting from Bologna
are almost a weedy species. I guess that's a plus is what I'm getting at. These aren't necessarily the type of
trees that really take intensive care in the first few years. And most of them are native, or all of
them are native. So really, they should be native weeds. And I think the other advantage is that it
doesn't require a lot of resources to plant them. Like, I was eight months pregnant when I planted my
first set of them that I had. And so it makes it accessible to a lot more households
than having a big burlap root hole. Yeah, and you've got to dig a giant hole. And you have to dig like
6 to 12 inch hole to plant these. So I should probably, one thing I didn't say is that the gap that's
being made up here is for the orders. So without this money, the trees cannot be ordered. The orders
have to go in by early winter. So that's why the money is actually quite useful. It's serendipitous
that this money was available and this
hole had appeared in terms of their funding, but. Yeah, we were talking about like, who's credit card
can we put the money on? Is there a particular, you said early winter, but is there a particular kind
of deadline that you have in mind for the purchase? Last time you, so as far as the money goes, as long
as it's earmarked, it doesn't have to be spent in 2026 is my understanding, correct? That's correct.
All right, so that should be good, but I think that it's
Don't the purchases happen in like January or February? I think the sooner the better. We wouldn't have
trouble spending the money by the end of the year, if that's the question. Yeah, because they would
get obligated. It all goes according to plan at some point in December, probably. But it could be near
the end or something. Our deadline for setting up a new PO is December 10. So as long as I have a draft
grant agreement, we're good. OK.
Okay, so it doesn't sound like that will be an issue at the end of the time. Is that something I ought
to be a part of that process, or is that something that happens on the staff end? Well, if they vote
to approve tonight, I can start working on the draft grant agreement, and I'll get it in the queue to
review. I can't guarantee that it will be approved by December 10th, but as long as I have that draft
grant agreement, I can set up the purchase order and lock in the funding. But it wouldn't be actually paid out
to begin until 2027. That's the clarification. It all depends on when it's executed. If we vote on it
tonight, you're approved. I can get the draft grant agreement. Hopefully it'll be approved by legal
and we can get it executed by December 10th. That would be ideal. Is this a reimbursement based grant? No.
In the grant agreement, there would be specific reporting requirements. So one year from the date of
receiving the grant, you would want to provide us with copies of receipts for all the purchases. And
then you'd probably want to do some sort of tracking of making sure that those 6,000 trees that you're
giving away, that they are Bloomington residents. I don't know how you'll do that. Maybe when people
drive through with their car, you can ask where they live.
I don't know. You have the form. I think if we don't already ask in the form, that wouldn't be hard.
We just want to make sure that the finding that we're providing benefits Bloomington residents. Every
recipient of a tree have to be a Bloomington resident? Or we just want to see the majority of them went
to? I think 27,000 trees away, but 6,000 of them will be in Bloomington. Right.
So like an Allen'sville resident, if it couldn't come to this event in Bloomington, would they have
other trees to give away? Yeah. At least 6,000 of them have to be Bloomington residents, which I don't
think would be a problem. Just wondering. Yeah. No problem. That's a big question. Can I move to approve?
Yeah, I guess we haven't made a motion yet. So yeah, you're making a motion to approve. Is there a second?
I'll second that. It seems like a very deserted project.
Wonderful. We have a motion to second. Is there any discussion? All right. Let me just check on that.
OK. Great. Well, then we'll move to a vote to approve this grant proposal as proposed. Tara? Yes. Yes.
Justin? Yes. Rebecca's not here. Chris? Yay. Yay. Zach? Yes. Yes. Kutsma Baralo is not here anymore.
Teres? Yes. Yes. Alex? Yeah. Yes. Maria? Yes. Yes. Diana? Yes. Yes. And Ross? Yes. Yes. Great. Wonderful.
It passes. So thank you so much. Thank you both for your work and putting that together. It's an incredible
turnaround. Yeah, absolutely. And thank you, Heather, for being here tonight as well and helping us
understand a little better.
Thank you to the staff for helping get all this set up in time for the meeting. I mean, I saw the event.
I learned about it last year and it seems like a really cool organization and event. Well, thanks so
much. Thank you. You must stay until the end of the meeting. All right, great. Well, hey, let's not
deviate from the topic of trees. We'll go from whips to significant and heritage trees. Resolution 2026-07.
And so we've done a first reading on this already, so maybe what I'll do is ask for a motion and a second
to adopt this, and then we can discuss further before we move on to a vote. Move to adopt. OK, so there's
a motion. Is there a second? Second.
Okay, wonderful. Um, so it brings up discussion. So, um, Zach, did you want to say anything just to
kick off the discussion? I mean, you guys have had this since September. I sincerely hope you've read
at least part of it since then. Um, essentially it would add a sick, uh, it's a major overhaul of the
way the city handles heritage trees. Um, the city code currently has no major protections for heritage
trees. It doesn't mention them in the code, but it doesn't actually provide significant protection for
them at all. Um, this would provide that fill that hole and it would make Bloomington, um,
It would put us on par with sort of the national leaders in protecting heritage trees and development,
and aim to make Bloomington one of the first, the first city in the state of Indiana to provide at least
limited protection for heritage trees on private property outside of development as well, although in
a way that is targeted and to try to avoid preemption and provoking anger or anything like that. I can
go into detail on any and all of that. Process wise, this was reviewed by the urban forester, went through
multiple drafts. His comments improved it dramatically.
He's in support of the Tree Commission. He also took it to the Tree Commission on his own. He took it
to it on his own, and they voted unanimously to support it. There are several letters of support, and
I can go into detail on any of the different parts of this, but that's it in a nutshell. A few quick
questions for you. Sorry, I'm looking at this again. I did look at this two months ago.
One of the road, if you've already got the forester, so I assume some of these are already answered,
but everyone seems to hate silver maples, I understand why. They're still lovely, but people hate them.
They get gigantic, those are heritage trees, but people often wanna get rid of them because they're
afraid of them. So I guess the real question is not about silver maples, but are there species-specific
guidelines? Not species-specific, but there are exceptions for, I think,
So if a tree is dead, dangerous, highly deleterious to public infrastructure, which was the Urban Forester's
word, choice of language, invasive, I think that's it, they are excluded entirely from all
of the protections. Okay, so if someone says like, hey, I'm afraid of this branch, they can cut that
tree down. Not if you're afraid of it, no, it has to be something, so there's a process, either a licensed
arborist or the Urban Forester has to certify as one of those things,
And if a licensed arborist does it, the urban forester can overrule that. OK, second question related
to this. You said something about end runs or ways to address. I'm always concerned about property owning
people's relationship to their property and the way that, I mean, if I'm being bitchy,
People treat their yards like it's their living room and they're practically out there vacuuming them.
It's insane to me, but they manicure these. Long story short, people are going to be mad if they're
like, the city says I can't do stuff to my yard. There's nothing in here that says you can't. It just
says you have to contribute to the city tree planting fund if you take down a 24 inch tree. OK. So you're
still allowed to. You just have to contribute to the city tree planting fund to make up for the fact
that you're taking part of the canopy down. OK. And then last question. Thank you.
My big concern, I don't know, this is probably not rooted in anything like informed by data more than
my experience, but the major blight of trees in my experience in Bloomington and everywhere I've ever
lived are the utility companies, specifically like Duke in this instance. I've been through big fights
with them, they've ignored me, it's been insane, it's been insane. They lie to you, they pretend they
don't hear you, it's bad. Duke is responsible for the mangling of some of the
the best trees in town in my experience. Does this deal with utility company? Because part of what's
going on is it's not even Duke. It's the subcontractors they hire, and the subcontractors are really
afraid of getting dinged by Duke for not doing more than they should. So Duke is somewhat protected
by state law as a public regulated utility. They kind of can do what they want to a certain extent.
So the city code doesn't always apply.
to Duke, and I don't think it would apply in this case. This is primarily in development context, so
when a large housing development is going on, I'm in favor, we think we need more housing development,
but I think we should have to work around heritage trees that are older than the city itself, for example.
So it would provide really ironclad protections for heritage trees in development, and lesser protections
for what I'm calling significant trees, which are 12 inches. And regardless of whether they're taken
down or not, it would be hard to take down a heritage tree in development, period.
But there are some exceptions for it. If they are taken down, it requires replanting them at four to
one the diameter, either on site or contributing the equivalent amount into a city tree replanting fund.
So it's primarily in development. I wish I could do more with utilities. I'm not sure touching this
kind of an electric wire that you can't touch. We saw that with the student project. Thank you very
much. That really clarifies things.
I have a question. So it looks like in the, for the development portion, there is the distinction of
heritage and significant trees where on the private property. It's just heritage. It's just heritage.
So for the development, that's like, uh, PUDs and things of that nature. So not just PUDs, but also
any housing development at all. Anytime you're going, any, I, so back up a second. I'm all, another
thing it does is currently,
the tree protection requirements only apply on lots that have what is called a closed canopy wooded
area, end quotes. That is not defined anywhere in the code ever. They are, the city department of planning
is defining it as I think a four or five trees that are bunched together, but there's nothing that requires
them to do that. And they could completely change that any day if they wanted to. I am instead saying
it is the tree protection requirements now apply to any site that requires a permit period. And that
would include
heritage and significant trees. I don't know if that answers your question. Yeah, that does. I just
was at first I was reading it at that the three to one and the four to one and then I was under the
impression at first that like on private property there was a higher onus but now it's less. Yes. Yeah.
Okay. And then my other question for the city planting fund. That's those are pretty much all going
into the right away or
They would, yes, mostly. They would go into parks or the public right away, yes. And that is mostly,
that's, is that fund inclusive, I don't know if you know this, but of salaries for that department and
everything, or is that pretty much just? I originally had this in, I had a version where we created
a city tree planting fund that had a ton of rules, and I was, or before one of his requests was to take
that out because they already have one.
And he wanted a little bit more flexibility about where they go and where he wanted to be able to say
where they go and what type of trees, et cetera. And I consider that a reasonable modification. And
so adapted that into there. So I did not create or propose creating a tree planting fund because he
said there already is one. I don't know exactly. But it would be primarily trees in the public right
of way. And this would be more work for the urban forest. I mean, this is where you're going.
I had initially also included something about having a tree review fee or something, a nominal fee to
add more money to the Urban Foresters budget to compensate for the work, and he wasn't super interested
in that, so I took that out as well. Yeah, because I do like there's some language here about contractors
and trying to actually get buy-in from those taking down trees. Because they can't just go in and do
it and then, oh,
Yeah, so the method of enforcement, I think, is what you're talking about. So for private property owners,
if you're taking down a 24-inch giant tree, nine times out of ten, you're not the one doing it. You're
hiring a contractor company to come do it. So the enforcement mechanism for taking down a heritage tree
on your property and not paying into the tree, the requirement would be you're allowed to do it. You
could take it down if you want to tomorrow. You just have to pay into a city tree replanting fund. And
the way that would be enforced is the contractor that you hire
has to keep a copy of your notification to the city that you're taking down the street. And the contractor
would be punished if they took down a tree and didn't have that on file. So the homeowner would not
be punished at all. It's entirely on the contractors. It's similar to if you're decommissioning a septic
tank. You have to like, your contractor has to like provide you with documentation. Yeah, you have to
notify the city they're going to do it and the contractors keep a copy on file.
My question is, and I'm sure this has been addressed and I just don't have the background for it, for
private property owners that have financial hardship, I mean, I paid three grand to take out my silver
maple to then have to pay for 36 inches of tree is a lot of burden. So how can we address the burden
that a low income private property owner might have? I mean, if you have to take out a tree and it's
for a legitimate reason,
I would consider a legitimate reason. You don't have to pay at all. But if you're just taking it out
because you don't want the tree there, I think you should still have to pay. The intention is to create
a financial burden to make people have to jump over and make people pause and think for a second about
taking down a giant tree without there being a legitimate reason for it. For an aesthetic. Yeah. But
what you're saying is those exceptions would include not having to pay into the fund. Yeah. If the tree
is dead, damaged, highly deleterious to public infrastructure, invasive,
I think there's one more that I'm forgetting. None of this applies. So the forester has the flexibility
to determine how deleterious that tree is being. A licensed arborist can do so also, and the urban forester
has the final say. Yeah. And if you're going to pay a tree removal company to take down a tree, I don't
think they're going to charge you extra for the assessment of if it's... I don't think so. No. Yeah.
I don't know.
because they want you to do it. Yeah, exactly. I'm also just kind of pausing on the cost. So one question
is the four to one ratio. How did you arrive at that? It's to take into account the fact that these
trees, when you replant them, are going to take decades, if not longer, to actually fully compensate
for the quality that was provided by the original tree. So just planting one tree
that might one day eventually get to that, or that's roughly the equivalent. It isn't going to have
anywhere near the ecosystem value of a giant 200-year-old oak. And many of them probably will die. Some
of them are probably going to die. It won't even last the entire time. Only a portion of them are going
to last that time. And it will take decades, if not a century, for them to fully get to the size that
would compensate for the loss that was caused by taking down a giant tree. And I think that's standard
in tree law,
like a large ratio, like I've seen even larger 7 to 1 cost. The end of my memorandum has a table of
all the various other cities that I was looking at. Tree replanting ratios are included in there for
a couple of them. So that's kind of where I came from. Yeah, I think my thought on that is, especially
since they are primarily going into the right way, those trees have very hard lives.
Thinking about the equity question, though. So if a landowner has a single silver maple, that's 24 inches.
And they want to cut it down. Basically, the replanting, that would then be 96 inches. If you get two-inch
trees, that's 48 trees.
Most landowners probably aren't going to have the room for that. And that's got to run up into the tens
of thousands of dollars for all those trees. But I think that's also the goal. The goal is to say, but
some people, a wealthy landowner might say, yeah, I can afford that. I'm going to do it. And that's
a privilege they get because of their wealth that another private landowner doesn't have that privilege.
To me, if there's a legitimate reason to take the tree down, then all of this goes away. If there's
not a legitimate reason to take it down, you're just taking it down because you don't want the tree
there. That leads to if I can afford to take it down, I'll take it down if I can't. I don't know.
I mean, I think that the idea that ecological destruction is a right we should all have access to is like,
Especially when we're talking about things that are over the city itself. Misaligned with what the actual
intent of this is. This is for wealthy landowners who want to clear cut something to have a better view
to not be able to destroy our watershed because they have to pay four times as much. So the equity issue
that you point out is a real one. It's also, unfortunately, the universal equity issue of all fine-based
incentives or disincentives as far as I'm
It's a thing that I come across all the time in ag stuff, in dealing with agribusiness, in dealing with
general sustainability things, any kind of social regulation around this problem. It's a real question.
I think as long as you are creating carve-outs, and I do wonder about, I think silver maples are a specific,
a very specific problem that might warrant
a kind of carve out here in a particular way because they all got planted 50 years ago because they
grow so fast. And now they're all in this position. I think that's a sort of, there's a baby boomer
sized bump of that. And then there will be not that many problems with silver maples after that. But
my neighbor shut down, just for, because they didn't like the shade, the tree was like, no, it was this
big. So anyway.
The IDNR has a list of trees that they do and don't support in their grant-making process, and silver
maples are on the no list for exactly those reasons. They're overpopulated, and they're not very structurally
sound. But that could be a benchmark for if you were to go to a... But I think the city already have
a tree species plan. There's a tree species list, yes.
Silver maple is specifically a matter, and this might bear on what you're talking about here, is the
one caveat in your plan that has to do, you're gonna get a lot of appeals for this tree is dangerous.
So suddenly there's gonna be a lot of really dangerous trees everywhere in town. And I think that's
another problem with a fine-based or legislation-based
approach. That's what policy does. It's an intrinsic problem with policy in general. It brings attention
to the current problems. I think a good kind of corollary to this in terms of private property and public
good is the way that we find snow in Bloomington. It's a flat fee for the amount of sidewalk in front
of your property. It's like a $50 fine. And it's set sort of at
the thought of a private homeowner, that being an annoying amount of money. I have seen, anecdotally,
that many large properties, apartment buildings, and commercial properties don't shovel for days at
a time because that is a cost that they are willing to just eat. So in gearing the fine to the independent
homeowner,
we are seeing a large infrastructure damage because you can't walk for sometimes miles of sidewalk because
they just don't. There's like, why? So the point here is that like, yes, this is a prohibitive amount
for somebody who wants to cut down a tree that they just don't like. But really the issue is the developer
that is clear cutting
Yes, entire. And in some cases, taking down areas that they said they were going to preserve and they
just took it down anyway. Just to bring home what I was saying about policy, the whole point is that
I think these are intrinsic problems with policy across the board with any kind of code and therefore
are not a good reason to prevent, I think, this going forward because I think the spirit and the mechanism
make sense to me and I think they are. Big trees, trees matter.
A lot. If it was up to me, I'd let dead trees stand because they really matter. Seattle agrees with
you. You have to have a permit to take down a dead tree. Taking down trees in the city of Seattle is
generally prohibited if they're six inches or larger. I would love to do something like that here, but
I scaled it back a bit because I knew that was probably not fly. But there are other cities like that
that have done much further than what I'm proposing here. I also want to just
We've been talking about fines. This is not a fine that I'm proposing. It's a payment into the city
tree planting fund just to compensate for the fact that you're taking part of it. It's not a fine. You
don't need a permit. You don't have to ask permission. You can take it down tomorrow if you want to.
You just have to pay an amount into the city tree planting fund to compensate for the fact that you're
taking down part of the city's tree canopy. So I essentially did not structure it like a fine. Yeah, anyway.
Yeah for sure and this will be a that will be probably the most controversial part of it. Anyway. How
is the amount determined? The urban forestry would determine it. I intentionally left that to them.
Okay. Because it's a variable. Yeah I mean if you're taking down a giant oak. I mean how much how much
would it cost how much would the equivalent cost of replanting like 48 two-inch trees be
I'm just trying to think of what that actually is. 45 cents, and they're not even a quarter of an inch.
And it is a variable cost, because it depends on where they're placing it. I think a two-inch tree isn't
just going to scale up. Yeah, probably. That's what I'm kind of wondering. What is a caliper inch replacement
right now? What do you mean?
But there's no requirement right now. No, I know. I know. But like, but they have a cost that they are
incurring planting trees. I don't have that right now. It said that like buying trees from the big box
stores, like 100 to 300, I think was the number they used depends on what you buy. So like take that
high end 300 multiply that by 48 two inch trees. That's $14,000.
That's a lot. And some people could easily say, yeah, I'm just going to pay that because I want to manicure
my lawn the way I want to, but other people couldn't. And the goal is to stop them from doing that.
That's the goal. It's to minimize how many people have access. You're talking about of the poor people
can't take down a tree that doesn't need to be taken down. To me, the equity issue is keeping the tree
for other people to be able to. It's not about stop. It's like, oh, the poor people can't.
Rob a store, because that would be cost prohibitive. They're doing something that we probably shouldn't
be doing. We should probably be putting a cost on, is the way I look at it. And the equity issue to
me is keeping the tree, particularly in areas that are more affected by climate change, that are typically
poorer areas. Those are the areas where we need more trees. And so preventing people from taking down
trees that don't need to be taken down to begin with is a goal to me.
That's a success if we're stopping people from taking down the tree. Anyway, that's my thinking. Because
again, for individuals on a private lot, this is only ever going to take, have any effect if the tree's
over two feet dbh. Yeah. And if they are doing it for a non-structural safety reason. Yeah. Yeah. It's
ecologically destructive to do. Yes. There's going to be a relatively specific demographic slice, I
think two would like.
property owners who are of limited means versus like people who are living in apartments in
large developments where the developer is actually going to be the person who will be like having a
qualms about chopping things down and they're the one who I think this might leverage. I don't know
maybe it would
Some kind of appeals process or something might be a good thing to have as a part of this, but like,
you know, overall the spirit of the proposal. And there is an appeals process already to the tree commission,
which I had one in there and they told me took it out because there already exists a process that you
can appeal things to the urban forester and you can take it to the tree commission. So people can have
a conversation about this if they're like frustrated or they're like, this really is like a problem for me.
It's not like this is just a hard wall. They can talk to the city. There is intentional flexibility
built into the system as it exists already and as I put it into here, having the urban forester be the
one who can make the decision and can take it to the tree commission if they disagree, et cetera. I
do wonder a bit too, like trees of this size, how many folks even currently, if the replacement is such
a high cost, if they are the type of
If they're already removing those trees, because the cost of just removing a tree like that is high.
It's quite high. Yes. So I don't know how much of these trees are currently being removed out of aesthetic
purpose. Anyways, I would think most of the trees that are being taken down that are this size.
If it's a financially strapped person, they're doing it because it is an individual danger. Yeah, there's
a real reason for it. And I think most of the trees are being taken down in development. That's where
the vast majority of that's why the bulk of the resolution tackles development. And I intentionally
tried to step lightly on private property outside of development. I don't think it would hit that many
people except for people that are just taking a tree down because they don't like the tree. That was
the goal of the way I wrote it.
720, which probably, but yeah, like big development projects are gonna be interesting in relation to
this. All right, any further discussion? Okay. I think I have an amendment to make. It's not substantive,
it's just, it's, oh, here we go.
It's in multiple places. So I think in these clauses where it's talking about language that should be
added or amended, that the quote starts to open up what the language should be. And then we've got these
extraneous little guys here. So I think we just remove those so that it reads the way that it would
actually appear in the text instead of having I and then one. Does that make sense? Yeah.
And if we just went through everything in the resolved clauses and just took those out, that's what
I'd be offering as an amendment. So I'll put that forward, I'll move that. That amendment? Second. And
there's a second. Okay. Any discussion on that amendment? All right. We'll go through a roll call vote
then for that amendment. Tara? Yes. Yes, Justin, yes. Chris? Yes.
Yes, Zach? Yes. Yes. Terese? Yes. Yes. Alex? Yes. Yes. Maria? Abstain. Abstain. Diana? Yes. Yes.
And Ross? Yes. Yes. OK. That amendment is adopted. And so that brings us back to the main motion. Is
there any more discussion? Are we ready to go to a vote?
Okay, so we'll proceed to a vote, I should say, to adopt a resolution 2026-07 as amended. Tara? Yes.
Yes. Justin, yes. Chris? Yes. Yes. Zach? Yes. Yes. Terese? Yes. Yes. Alex? Yes. Yes. Maria? No. No. Diana?
Yes. And Ross. Yes. Yes. All right. The resolution is adopted as amended. So thank you, Zach, for all
the work putting that together. We don't have any resolutions for first reading. We've done the staff
liaison report already. Member announcements. Is there anyone who wants to make an announcement to the
group? I have one quick one. So the initial public meeting has already passed for this, but the city is
the City of Bloomington Utilities is working on a, it's called the Clear Creek Corridor Renewal Project.
So if you're familiar with the Campus River at Dunmeadow, it flows underground basically along Kirkwood
down to about First Street. From First Street to
Switchyard Park, it flows through a canal system that was built by the civilian consecration corps in
the 30s. That is in need of significant repair. So as part of that repair project, they're looking at
trying to alleviate some of the flooding issues in that area. So just keep your eyes open. They're looking
at a lot of different
ideas of what could be done through that area. I know right now Allen Street, the bridge over Clear
Creek on Allen Street was closed years ago with currently no plan and has become a pedestrian corridor.
That's one of three bridges that are within this area. And so they're looking at kind of all those.
I mean, the true goal would be to
widen and provide more flood storage, maybe green infrastructure. But they're in the initial planning
stages. I think Christopher Brook Engineering is doing a feasibility study. There's some interesting
land uses in that area. And so they're kind of just for it. Yeah. The transit facility there. Yes.
which is owned by IU but yeah so just I'm sure they'll be doing more outreach I think it's something
that you know definitely has to do with a lot of resiliency issues flooding through that Clear Creek
corridor is a known issue so just something to keep aware of and possibly something we could you know
make some recommendations on or
that's swept into the creek. Yeah. Well, thanks for that. Let me go to Alex online. Yes. I wanted to
make people aware that the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act, or ALTMA, is currently
The type of permitting reform bill, the type of permitting reform that this is, is essential to the
climate fight. It is being bipartisan.
I don't know how many of you have gone past the tailgating fields after an IU home football game. They
are filled to the brim with trash. There's potential avenues that the Commission itself could take through
Indiana environmental law. There's a creek that goes right through there.
an ephemeral stream actually that feeds right into the creek that goes into Cascades, and that creek
goes into Griffey Creek. Two of those are rated as polluted by the state. There's potential maybe an
avenue that I'm kind of noodling there about the fact that they just leave trash sitting there, including
there was an article about students finding human feces in the creek, and just horrible, which really
goes directly into E. coli contaminating the stream, et cetera.
There might be an avenue there of something to do about filing a complaint or something with the State
Department of Environmental Management with IU for mismanaging, not handling the trash very well. They
don't have trash cans out. They don't pick it up. It takes days for them to pick it up. I don't know.
I feel like there's something that can be done there. Anyway, so I'm working on that if somebody wants
to work on that with me. This is something that I know that our previous sustainability office commissioner
was interested in.
We had discussions about it at a meeting maybe like a year and a half ago. At one of our meetings, like
when the previous commissioner from IU Sustainability was talking about issues of trash collection at
Tailgater. The strategy seems to be just encourage everyone to throw all their trash on the ground and
leave it there for several days while people clean it up afterwards. It seems to be how they handle
it now, which is not managing it at all. It's disgusting, and other schools have managed to have
tailgating things without that. Anyway. Yeah. Yeah. Great. Well, that brings us to the end of the meeting.
We are adjourned at seven thirty one. Thanks, everyone.