- This is the Economic Development Commission meeting of August 26th. And it's just about 4.03 in the afternoon. We're in the Klosky conference room. And I believe, in fact, I'm pretty sure this meeting has been posted. And we're meeting in accordance with
- Open door laws. All right. So we have to scroll down so I can see what we have. Let's start with just a roll call, since we're relatively new. We've got four people here. This is quick. Hey, I'm amazed we all made it. I'm Kurt Zorn. Vanessa McClary. Tim Hanky. He's like, sorry. All right.
- And I think we're going to get into approval of meeting minutes. And we have a few to do. We have meeting minutes of Tuesday, March 18th. And does anybody have any comments, corrections on those? I just have one small correction. My name is MCC, L-A-R-Y.
- Thank you. That's okay. You don't like the eating problem? My husband doesn't like it when he has that sound. Does that sound better? Yeah, but isn't it clearer if there's an eating problem? Ooh, I'll tell him. No! No, I don't know him, so I don't want to offend him. All right. So with those, with that one correction,
- Do we have a motion for approving those minutes? And we're talking about March 18th? March 18th, yes. I move to approve the minutes as shown in our packet on March 18th, 2025. As amended, rather. As amended. Thank you. Second. OK, we have a motion. We have a second. Any discussion? I'm assuming no. So how about a vote? All in favor, say aye. Aye. Anybody opposed? That passes you in.
- So let's turn to the meeting minutes of Tuesday, May 20th. Once again, any comments, corrections? I would like a clarification, maybe. So if we attend by Zoom, does it show as commissioner present? No. It does. Oh, it should. I was thinking I was Zoomed on this one.
- Maybe I didn't. You absolutely were, and I don't know why. Your name is not on there. I'm so sorry. I will correct that. But yes, I watched that one, and I did see you on there. Yeah. So I'll move approval, as shown with that amendment. With that amendment? There's a bunch of say your name spelled wrong and stuff like that, just minor typos if it matters to you.
- Oh my gosh, yeah. That is so my fault. I am so sorry. And who is that? I assume this is me, but the Isa Kasari person there. Oh, yes. Where is that?
- First line. All the rest of them are correct, though. And it refers to me as president, which I'm not. Was I not here? I think I was here. Yeah, I felt like you were here. I believe I was here. I 100% probably put the wrong version in there, because I know that I made all of these corrections. Yeah, because this feels like, yeah, this might be a field trip meeting.
- We can bring those back. So we'll just pass on this and bring these for the next. So sorry, guys. I just cut and paste the wrong thing. I usually wouldn't care. The only time I think this particular one matters a lot, because it was the assessments in case somebody comes back. Absolutely. OK. Sounds good. So we have next on our agenda
- business an update on Union at Crescent. Yeah Dean I just wanted to update commissioners that if you remember during the abatement review we recommended a finding of non-compliance to City Council for the Union at Crescent abatement that triggered an investigation and a public hearing process. They were ultimately found compliant and
- Sorry, non-compliant due to reasons outside of their control. And so it was that fact of it being determined that it was outside of their control that they were allowed to retain their abatement. So that was communicated with the county and business continues. I think the hearing itself was good to be able to communicate about the issues related to the property. So what were the non-compliant things outside of their control?
- Their occupancy rate was low and it was determined that that was outside of their control due to the high level of property damage because of the vulnerable population that had been living in the building. So the property had had year over year increasing challenges with just property damage and tenants and you know they're serving an AMI that's like
- 30 it was super low and so it's just a challenging situation and so they had made the case that they were in this kind of reset period where they had a plan to bring the property into compliance this fall but that you know a reasonable landlord couldn't have foreseen that this specific property would have experienced the specific volume of challenges so it was difficult
- And link the hearing so. But that's where it landed and we felt like you all would want to know that thank you and the hand department. Interestingly, I mean they they recommended that whereas the city, you know in the SD and we had all said, you know, don't pass the abatement hand it said they were quite concerned around long term ramifications of them losing it etc. So I mean it was a it's a it's worth watching, but it was a I mean, but ultimately we decided based on
- based on the provisions in Indiana code. And they're in a separate compliance process with hand regarding occupancy and the state of the property. So there's a separate kind of category of activity. Similar to Crawford House, we probably should get used to dealing with some of these kind of problems and figure out how to deal with it. Because if you just start pulling everything away, then they go to foreclosure.
- I think the issue that hand was able to really or director of hand Anna Killian Hansen was really able to talk about was the value of on-site property management and how essential it is for the success of these properties we know this from talking with Jeanine Betsy at Cambridge Square and Henderson Court that Glick has this really successful track record because they have on-site
- on-site support for attendance. It's got to be a special person. And it has to be a special person who is caring and technical, right? Absolutely. And GLICK has that. Union President has not had that in the past, even though it was recommended. And then I think as part of this turnaround, they have hired someone who is on-site daily. I don't know if it's 24-7, but they're there. But I agree. It's where we are right now.
- So in the new business, we have two things to review. One is the economic development framework. And the second one is a draft development incentives document. Yeah. I'm really excited to share this framework document with the Economic Development Commission. This is the first public stop on its tour. So it's a living document.
- and it is the administration's economic development framework. So the administration consulted a lot of resources and partners in putting this together, but there wasn't a huge public engagement session around it. We really felt like the groundwork had been laying, and we just needed to sort of assemble the action items. So this framework kind of highlights the big swings
- for the city and the Thompson administration. And then as this document lives on, the economic and sustainable development department will build out action plans under each sub-goal. So the framework starts broadly with our city values, which were established in 2024 after Mayor Thompson took office.
- work as co-creators with our community. We want to make sure that we're engaged with the public, that we're communicating, we're not springing surprises on people, and most importantly, that we're listening when there are challenges or needs. We want to be accountable servant leaders. And that's, again, just speaking about responsiveness and our way of engaging with the residents of Bloomington, the taxpayers and other people. Demystified government.
- You can't always tell, but we don't want government to be a mystery. We want it to be accessible, and we want to make documents available. I think under accountable servant leadership and demystified government, we've really worked, and we as office of the mayor, but we've really worked hard to make our new reports get answered more quickly, to turn around our public information requests, to be more responsive to media so that the answers are getting out there when people have questions. And then architects of joy.
- We want this to be a wonderful place, and we don't wanna lose the energy that we came to work with when we started in January 2024, and we wanna share that with the public. So those are our values. And then these two statements, I don't know that they need to live on forever, but the economic development vision is from one of Carrie's speeches, and she talked about for Bloomington to be a prosperous, inclusive,
- innovation and cultural magnet where businesses can grow and thrive, all residents can access economic opportunity and our natural world and resources are protected, treasured and celebrated. So really kind of touching on what makes what makes Bloomington great and kind of the vision that we want to have for our people. And then this is our old ESD mission statement. Sorry, which is fine.
- but maybe it's a little dated, to cultivate a resilient community built on shared prosperity, inclusive economic opportunity, environmental stewardship, and a thriving arts and culture ecosystem. ESD works to improve quality of life for all residents through dedicated service and collaboration. So on a departmental level, you can see our three subject matter areas are kind of triangulated here through arts, sustainability, and then economic development or business.
- And the goals, these are the big swings. This is what our community needs. We need to grow our workforce population. We know that Bloomington is missing a piece right now. We know that young professionals, young families are decamping to other communities where it's cheaper to live, easier for them to make it. And so we can see this in our statistics through our census numbers.
- We have a shrinking population and we have an aging population. And we don't mind having Bloomington be a hot spot for retirement. We think that's wonderful. But we just need the whole life cycle to be represented here. We need it to be balanced. And then economically, I'm sorry, this is happening again. My throat's getting so dry. Economically speaking, that's important because workforce are
- the primary taxpayers. A lot of retired folks are on fixed incomes and just aren't contributing quite as much to the tax base. So we need those. We need a more robust population. So our big swing is grow the workforce population. We know we need to grow wages that Bloomington is under the mark in this area. It's better than it had been for a long time. And I'm sorry, I didn't come armed with statistics today, which was an oversight.
- But we've really had suppressed wages in this community for a long time, largely because one of our single largest employers is a nonprofit that has been able to control that market. And that's driven wages down across the board for private sector employers. So our large biopharma companies in the years past have benefited from that as well. The whole ecosystem had low wages. But when housing and everything else was cheap, it was OK.
- Then the pandemic hit and we really started to see wage growth from that. The Defense Production Act really injected a lot of resources into our community. So we saw places like Catlin really driving wages up and having starting wages at, you know, 18 plus dollars an hour. And that really turned the tables for Bloomington or started to. But now we need to keep focused on growing wages and making sure that
- the people who are living here are able to earn a good living. And we actually, we think the low wages is contributing to our population loss. So a lot of young people who are graduating don't feel that they can earn the type of income that they want by staying in Bloomington. So they're decamping again. And then the third one, it's not rocket science, but we want to reinforce our economic base. We want to build on sector strengths to ensure a resilient economy with a variety of workforce opportunities.
- Dee, can you read that paragraph? Yeah. To accomplish them, we must leverage catalytic opportunities and make incremental progress. We will partner with the community, avoid duplication of services, and focus on the areas where the city can make the most significant impact. In all efforts, we will tell the story of Bloomington's identity as a leader in innovation, art, sustainability, and inclusion, and seek opportunities to strengthen that identity.
- So that's the big picture. Should we keep going and get into the weeds? Should we just keep reading through the document together? OK. Undergrow the workforce population. Contributing to those high costs of living is housing costs. We know that we don't have housing availability, and what we do have is really expensive. So we want to remove barriers to housing. We want to do that by looking closely at the city's policies and processes.
- so we know the policies are restrictive. ESD and the Economic Development Commission don't have control over those planning and approval processes, but this is coming up in all of our economic development circles, and so we're communicating with our partners at the city about that. And then we want to make incentives clear. This was an ask early on from this commission, and so I have been working on that incentives document forever,
- And of course, we sent the packet out Thursday, and two of those programs were nuked by the current administration on Friday. I think I had notifications. So it's a changing environment. But we want to make our incentives clear, easy to access, and impactful. We want to make sure that developers know what's actually on the table, what they can get access to. Another thing.
- thinking through the incentives. I'm really sorry. This voice thing happened during council presentation as well. You don't have to read everything. We don't have to do all of this. Well, let's talk about it. Yeah, the incentives. So it's interesting to think through the incentives, because that's largely what the EDC does, is it administers tax abatements. And I think you have the ability to issue economic development revenue bonds as well.
- talking with Judy Sharp, we learned that 52% of Bloomington's properties are tax exempt. So when we look at our revenue, landscape abatements really are not super appealing here, since we already have such kind of compromised property tax revenue in that regard. Another significant revenue source, could I get help on this, please?
- would be the local income tax. And that now is being redistributed. Can you help us on that? I don't know the details. It is being reconfigured. So our current local income tax stands through 2028. That's our last year. And then at that point, it shifts to a county approved flat tax.
- whether you're living in Ellitsville or you're living in Bloomington, my understanding is you're going to pay the same tax rate. The same tax rate? Yes. I'm so frustrated. And is it true that it's distributed differently beginning then? It's distributed differently, sorry. Than it is now. My understanding, the basic, is that now you pay based on where you work. And it's shifting to based on where you live.
- You pay where you live now, not where you work. We learned, is there a number for commuters in daily? It's like 16,000 people coming in from outside of Bloomington. So that D is working on another piece that will show up under small business, but is working on a downtown action plan with a really savvy consulting firm that has looked at different user data. And so what we're learning
- about the current state of Bloomington is that we have an influx of 16,000 people during the day. And so one of the ways to grow our small business economy is to focus on what they need surrounding those times, but kind of knowing that they're not here on the weekends, visitors are here on the weekends. It's, yeah, it's helpful. But property tax is being redistributed, correct, so that the county
- I thought the county expected more local income tax and the city less. Yes, because the city currently has a higher tax rate, county currently has a lower tax rate. And it's going to be in the middle. And so that's really going to change that allocation. And I think, you know, I haven't heard her talk about it in a while, but Kerry wasn't trying to make assumptions about Monroe County that we need to raise
- Therefore, we need to raise the tax rate because we're losing it. I think she was really trying to be sensitive to who was living here and what they're earning. So I'm not sure what the county commissioners are thinking, but they'll have control over that going forward. Curt, you know about that. There's not a lot of wiggle room. No, it's not. I mean, if you wanted to raise taxes, there aren't a lot of people. Yeah, it's captive. Yeah. And the other thing is property taxes are being constrained.
- Correct. Significantly. So even if they raise the income tax rate, it's probably going to be replacing as opposed to creating additional revenue. Exactly. Yeah. So grow the workforce population, that's kind of took us into the direction of local revenue because we really need workforce living here. So we know that they need housing. And we also know that they need access to child care.
- So we currently lack the volume of early learning and child care providers to support workforce population needs. We have a few precious providers in our downtown core. But I'll say from an asset-based perspective, what we do have is an amazing team of people at Monroe Smart Start under the community foundation, really working to figure child care out for our county, early learning. So Jane, is part of that discussion
- talking about compensating the people that provide the childcare? Because that's one of the difficulties to get people that want to work in that area. Monroe Smart Start has worked, I can't quote from it, but they have a whole kind of professional development framework where they're trying to help providers basically become certified through the state paths to quality. And that means that then they can drive
- drive up, they can charge more if they're on paths to quality, rather than if they're like an in-home provider. And it's safer, of course. And then at the same time, they also are working on kind of infrastructure, like a shared sub pool was something they were working on a few years ago, so that there's stability, even if you can't afford to hire. You have a staff of five, and you can't afford to pay a full-time six to float on your staff.
- They created a sub pool so that providers could share certified employees So there's a lot of work capacity building work happening through that organization and I think we just need to Have this articulated as something that we need to focus on, you know in the past we've had a
- so many different pet projects coming out of this department. And it's kind of unclear how they fit into the overall structure. But we know that this is a constraint. And so I think it's really good for us to train our sites on it. And I do want to say it isn't called child care. It's called early learning. So I'll update our document to say that. Increase in communicate about quality of place amenities appealing to young professionals.
- We get a lot of feedback about what we're missing. And I think we also don't do a very good job about saying what we have, which is a lot. We're a really rich community, even if we're missing some of the things you can get in Indianapolis. So this is just kind of making sure that we're trying to attract the right amenities and making sure that we're communicating about them. And I think that we have marketing materials
- people who are considering relocating here. And yeah, that's that. Build bridges to campus. 61% of college grads, this is a statistic from a company that should be cited, but wanna stay close to where they graduate with a new trend pointing towards smaller cities according to Tallo. Bloomington must leverage the opportunity it has every year to build relationships with and place students in jobs near IU.
- So since this was written, Visit Bloomington commissioned a study with a professor out of the School of Public Health, whose name I can't remember. But they interviewed, I think they interviewed 1,600 students. And so it was statistically significant. Is that the term, professor? So it was a statistically significant survey. And it revealed that it was like 49.5% of IU undergrads would like to stay in Bloomington.
- But it was 49%, and then 91.5% did not feel that Bloomington could provide what they needed. So there's a tough truth in there, but then also a really great opportunity, I think, to try to figure out how to meet that need. And so building bridges to campus, we're doing that with the CCC grant. And we honestly have really great partnership with this administration.
- look for opportunities to work together. They're responsive when we ask for things. And so I think just continuing to build those relationships and find ways to get students integrated in the community while they're on campus doing their schooling. This is one of my favorites, activate nodes of distinct identity for Bloomington's key commercial neighborhoods. So this just means we need to acknowledge that Bloomington is more than campus and more than downtown. We have a lot to offer.
- And there are a lot of people who kind of get different things out of our community. So our first big opportunity is on the north side surrounding Miller Showers Park. We have legislation going before council on September 30th to formally name that the stadium district, which kind of lifts it up from a marketing perspective and gives it an identity. Underneath that name will also be Riverfront District
- liquor license so those can be three-way permits and these are really important as a tool because they give restaurants another revenue stream so the restaurant industry is really hard right now it's really really tough for our local players to survive in the current market conditions fast casual businesses that are making it happen are making huge investments in technology so having something like a three-way permit that can be eligible just for county headquartered businesses
- gives them a leg up, and then that really drives our ecosystem in the way that we want it to go. So we're pretty excited about that legislation. And then Dee is also working on gathering East and West Side business groups to try to really foster community in those parts of town as well. Holly, our Assistant Director for the Arts, is thinking very far ahead in the future about what other nodes would be great for public art placements.
- We really have focused on this downtown corridor, and we are currently focused on it along the beeline trail from Switch Yard through the Hopewell, the new convention center, all the way up through the stadium district. And that's right for right now. But when we think forward into the future, I think it is exciting to think about what these other parts of the community might like to see. Along those lines, we want to become the Center for Creativity in Indiana.
- Bloomington is already known as the Center for the Arts, but retaining this mantle requires a dedicated effort. Creativity should inform our community at all levels, helping make sure we grow a creative economy of the future, as well as supporting practicing artists and destination tourism today. So just really making sure that we have the ability to retain working artists, give them professional development opportunities, have there be affordable studio space. With our changing economy in the last 20 years,
- with cheap real estate no longer existing. It's just been really hard for working artists to live here. But it is a unique attribute of Bloomington and something that we can leverage for our destination tourism. And then we think it can also fold into our innovation economy work and thinking about how, like, what are the creative economy jobs that can kind of fold into this other area? And what are the sector
- or cluster strengths that we'd like to see. So thinking about like marketing firms or consulting and design firms, just the other ways that these can be mutually supportive and yeah. Okay, grow wages, tell our story. This action item grew out of a 2016 wage growth, Hamilton administration wage growth task force. They had a number of items on their list and this one they didn't ever get to and I think when Carrie came in office, we thought, you know, we really need to
- figure out who we are so that we can tell other people and so Office of the Mayor has engaged with a company called Civic Brand and they just presented all the data last week that they've been capturing for about six months and in late October I think they're gonna release some of this to the public so it'll be the city's new brand strategy which is really again it's less about like a logo and making us look cool and more about
- Really just distilling our identity and kind of helping us understand who we actually are. Bloomington, it's like a tale of three or four cities. And so sometimes I think it's hard to find the line. So that's exciting. Target attraction of businesses in high demand, high wage sectors. This is really happening in partnership with the dimension mill, the mill and the forge.
- really working to drive business attraction in Bloomington. I know we put advanced services here, but because we have such constrained real estate, the model of looking for manufacturing jobs that are going to magically fit in Bloomington, especially with our UDO constraints, that's fiction. It's not going to happen. So we really need to be focused on the economy of the future
- What are the types of services and employers that can operate in office space? How can we attract a small office of a large tech company, for example? That's one of the big swings that the mill is taking right now. So we feel really optimistic about it with the mill kind of leading the charge and the support of the Lilly Foundation and IU underneath that. IU, sorry, I should explain that.
- IU is working with the mill as part of the CCC grant to attract alumni with startups who might like to relocate here. So there's just a lot of support coming together around these areas. Grow business and attract workforce to support those sectors. So this is again looking at what do we need in order to
- have businesses in high-demand, high-wage sectors be actually supported and be able to have our own ecosystem support them. It gives some examples. But I'd say this is like a secondary goal. It will happen. But numbers one and two will happen first. Any questions on that section? Fire. This is a living document.
- I've maybe had a little more time to think about it, because we talked about it. But I think this is such a great start. And I'm very excited about the next step, which is tactics. And I think that when I read this, the thing that I'm immediately like, OK, what I really can't wait to see in this document or the next document or whatever is, and I've written it down the way that I would like it to be seen, fixed permitting.
- like this, like this, like this, right? And then this is how we will know that we did it because all permits will be decided by this world-class benchmark, right? Use tax incentives in this way, in this way, in this way, and XYZ is how we'll know that this worked. Attract this many companies that look like this, like this, and like this, right? And then I think there's also an element of helping us identify tools and resources that we're missing, and I'm saying tools in a very broad way here, but like,
- talking about, and this particularly to our current context, and I think we have to start in this process changing the way that we talk about things like the UDO. We need to start talking about it as our current UDO because so that we're all in the mindset of this needs to continue to change and get better.
- Simple things like an ombudsman for the UDO is like a project that we could, you know, a guidebook for the UDO. Like, you know, those type of identifying things that we just are just missing in our community to make some of these things work.
- Exactly right I mean a chatbot we talked about you know like there's like things that I follow up for that with you but like so I really feel like if we could then develop a like a list of which goes together with tactics but it's just like here are the list of projects that that particularly them.
- you know, the economic and sustainable development ESD is working on. But then it's like, and other people can join in. It's like, oh, I could help with a chat bot, right? If I had a list of needs, I'm like, oh, I could do that, right? I could produce that. I could get my students to do that, right? So I think giving us that. And so I think that the only, from at this stage, the only thing that to me, and again, I've had a little bit more time to think about it, but the only thing that I
- in thinking about it that I think is missing from this is that I think we would all agree on these goals. I think it resonates with me. I'm like, yes, exactly. Thank you for saying it and making it very clear. These are the things we're focused on and not all these other things we could be focusing on. But I think that what's missing here is a little bit of rallying because I still feel like if I'm just a person in the community who could be a participant here, I'm like, OK, what do I do about that? It's like, sure.
- Do you think the rallying is in that we're missing certain actions or the language that we're using? Or do you think that's just easier to do when we have some actions we're asking about? I think it's a little bit of all of that. I was trying to contrast this with IU 2030 plan, right? I think that one of the strengths of the IU 2030 plan is that as a faculty member, I'm like, OK, I can judge my actions. Anything that I do, I'm like, does this do this? Does this do this? Does this do this? And so I maybe,
- I don't know how we get there quite with this in the sense of you want to connect to somebody at the mill, for example, to say, oh, we're interested in getting more alums. OK.
- If I get alums, therefore, there's some type of outcome. Do you see what I'm saying? Because otherwise, it's like they're just passive. They're passive recipients of ESD's actions, right? So I think this document is just a framework. And it is the first step. And so I think the parts that you are excited about, I'm also very excited about. And our department is, too, I have to say. Exactly. And so each number will have an action plan that comes out of it. And I hope that to be.
- Like you said, it should have metrics so we can determine whether we're being successful. But I hope it's pretty light on text, honestly. I hope it's just, this is what we need to do. Exactly. We will fix permitting. We will fix permitting by this, this. And it's just like a list. It's A, B, C. Fix it. And then Tim had mentioned something about AI earlier. And I heard that in Esauk's response, too. I wondered if that's the right time. I was going to get to that on the incentive. OK.
- But if I could comment too, and I'd love to hear what you guys think. I mean, I definitely agree with what Esau said. Just a couple of things that come to my mind. I think it'd be, it's useful if we could review what you say you learned from the census data. I wonder if you have access to the school board study that they did. Because it's a big study and it zeros in on
- losing, what, 25 to 35-year-olds. It's my understanding. Anyway, public paid for it. We should have access. But I would reinforce that, because being more targeted helps you choose what program should be your priorities. My belief is that our communities
- going to change in the next couple of years on housing expenses for singles, because we built 7,000 bedrooms in the last three years. And then those costs are going to go down? Yes, and there's a couple thousand more coming. And some of the things that have happened at UDO have been supportive of that as well. But that's not the 25 to 35-year-olds that don't want to live in a student complex.
- So again, it helps you focus on where we need to do the work. And then along the same lines, I think grow wages, item two, target attraction of businesses, high demand, high wage sectors. Everybody wants to do that. It's really hard. I think our advantage is earlier in your,
- data that students would like to stay here. So in my view, and a lot of this is personal experience too that's just one off, but a young person could go to work for a startup out of college and be pretty happy. But then they get to a point where they can't buy a house, or their partner can't find the right housing, and then they
- By then, they've developed some skills, and they're attractive to every other community. And we lose them. So in my view, I wouldn't focus on targeting businesses, which BEDC has not really. They've struggled, because everybody's trying to do it. But we have this mill of minds that
- come through here every year so I think I think make it easy for small business you know if my business can grow incrementally I could hire somebody out of school and then etc but anyway that's
- That's just my feeling on those subjects. I think that is all spot on. And I think a lot of that, again, is being driven by our partners at the mill who the city makes major investments, specifically the RDC has made so many major investments in the trades district and in the mill. Our department funds $175,000 annually in program funding that does help people start up and scale up.
- And it helps with some professional development work as well. And then the Redevelopment Commission funds the Trades District Partnership Agreement. And that agreement sort of facilitates the mill taking on that piece of all of our economic development. So they're really focused on leveraging. I'm just trying to talk about what's unique for us. So I think you're on it with the students. And then there's also this relationship to crane with defense tech and cybersecurity that's happening there.
- I-69 connection all the way up to Fisher's. So they're really focusing on building relationships in this entire corridor. And I think it could be helpful to have them and it will happen in the action items, but paint a more, a clearer picture for us about what they're doing. And that is good stuff. And I think there's a pretty good understanding of that. But in addition to that,
- I'll give you an example. I know of a retail business that sells product and provides a service as well. They wanted to double in size, and they would have had to hire people. When they came to the city, they found out that they had to reconfigure their parking lot. They had to re-landscape.
- Anyway, it was about a $100,000 bill, above and beyond what they expected, and therefore they didn't do it. Yeah, I mean, I had this conversation with a business earlier today that's evaluating the high cost of expansion. Yeah, somehow we have to make it less onerous to make an improvement. You know, an improvement, somehow there should be a way to judge, is that an improvement?
- And therefore, yes, make that improvement. It may not be what our rules says, that the sidewalk is 62 inches wide. But I feel like that point overlaps something we've talked about a lot in this group. And that's that connection between the tools and incentives and clearly saying, you know what, if you're going to, we need a veterinary hospital. If you're going to build a veterinary hospital,
- We have already pre-approved a thing, as an example. That type of approach. That is a good example. Well, it's a perfect example. Actually, we have a great example of it not working. Somebody wanted to put one in Hopewell, and they couldn't figure it out for the same reasons. But where we go, hey, you want to do a thing? Yeah.
- Here's what's available to you, because we want this thing. Trader Joe's, if you come here, we will give you a tax incentive. Maybe that's not exactly the space you want to be in. But something like that, I think, is really, really. Yeah. I would love to get Kurt and Vanessa's feedback. And also, that might be a good segue to that incentive sheet, too. Because I think part of what's interesting about this conversation,
- love to have all of your big brains thinking through this together. That's really supportive and helpful. But then there are the pieces that, like what are the pieces that this commission controls? And there end up being like relatively few, but we can look at those in a minute. So I don't, do you have any?
- I just want to say this all way too complicated. I like having something already a model that is already put forth. Because I think everything we try to do is complicated. That example was I didn't know about it, but that's terrible that they were caught up in the parking lot, the expansion with their landscaping to do something they need to do with their business. So I don't know what space that is for us to make that all easier, but I think that's what we need to figure out. I sort of piggyback on what Vanessa says.
- have no quibble with any of these strategies. I mean, they all make sense. And I think Isaac has already said this too, maybe Tim, maybe what we need to do is focus on things that we know are not working and are broken in the short run to get this started.
- And then have a vision of where we want to be five, 10 years down the road. Because there are things, Tim points them out all the time. We've heard about them here. Things that are broken, we know are broken. And we can fix if we all agree we want to do economic development. And right now, we keep on tripping over ourselves. For example, how are we attracting
- workforce when we can't approve home building or new developments for them to live in. So it's just the bottleneck. It's just pushed slightly down, but not addressed.
- I will say, though, to the question of what we can do also. I mean, and I speak for myself, and I will say it as though I'm speaking for everybody, and then they can say otherwise. But I would be very happy to volunteer so much time to, like, let's write the next bit. Let's, you know, like, let's get, you know, so that, because I think what's great about this group is that we're hyper-focused, right? And so we may not control the, you know, tool X or Y or Z, but we can certainly, we want to support in, you know, pushing this forward. So certainly use us in that way.
- Let me ask you what may be a sensitive question you don't have to answer if you don't want to. This may be unpopular, but at least from my observations over the last couple decades, one of the places where the rub comes is you have a mayor or an administration that wants to do some things,
- and we get to the common council, and they have different ideas. How do we get people thinking the same way? And I'm not talking about any individuals per se, but this is something I've observed and has frustrated me over time. And you know that my theme of conversation has always been along these lines, which is why I'm so thankful for something like this, because it helps to start
- if we all say the same things again and again, it helps to sort of bring people onto the same stage. I think that we're currently in a state where I think most of the council is, even those who might be, what do you call it, skeptic of, like economic development skeptics, let's say something like that, are very reasonable, like they just wanna have the conversations, right, and really think about the trade-offs and all those type of things. But I think what's been lacking up until this point is,
- is this part that we all said we're so excited about is that next step because you have two people go, yeah, we should grow wages. They mean totally different things when they say that. And so when we can get to the state of just saying,
- And the way we do that is A, B, and C. I think that's going to help things move really quickly. And you look at housing as a good example. The fact that we all, every single person, almost said the number one priority is housing. And then we get the biggest housing development ever put before us. And we're like, ooh, this was too much housing. It shows sometimes there's just a little bit of disconnect. But so this is what I think is needed, is just helping us organize our strategy.
- about more regular visits during the mayor's updates, just on small, like maybe on sub-goals or on like doing a better explainer on the population. What's happening with population. I don't think that's why they know. That's one of the reasons I asked for that. I agree. Because I think a lot of the public doesn't. The school system knows, because it hit them right in the gut.
- And it's getting worse. And I think that's something that I would like to have show up. I'm not sure how, but we need to lift up our school system in our efforts. And we need to also make sure, I think, that our efforts are not inadvertently harming them.
- That can come up, like if we were issuing tons of tax abatements, I think that would be. But I had a tough conversation with the administration when we were recommending approval of the pilots. I contacted them and explained how much this would reduce their annual revenue during the life of the pilot. And you really have to be standing up for a project to want to do that. So I think that they also need to show up in here somehow.
- One other thing that, and I don't know how we get to this stage, but it would feel like eventually it would be something that this commission would control is, some other cities in Indiana and across the states have adopted this menu of options thing for people who want to do business in a city. So you're like, if you build a fire station, you want this thing, here are five choices. Choose any from list A, two from list B, and one from list C, and that sort of gives you this combination. We've been very like, you know,
- It's jobs, and we have a very set criteria. I think it would be really interesting to explore how you might market the tools to people and put some agency in their hands to say, these are the things that we want to see in the community, and so here's your list of options. And maybe every year, that changes. Can we look at the, I mean, we're almost at an hour, but can we look at this other document? Yes.
- So this document, can you scroll through and show? So it's local, state, and federal. And it is very much a living document. The things that I think are going to grow. So obviously, EDC, we have a tax abatement pilot. We have economic development revenue bonds that I think we can also approve.
- a lot of RDC in hand incentives. But what I'm kind of learning is that the qualification for each of these is so narrow. I'm not sure how to thread the needle to make sure that people aren't applying for things they don't even qualify for. But the other takeaway is, well, there's a lot there, actually. And then if you scroll down D to federal, well, actually stay there. So the bottom line of that page is IFA,
- residential infrastructures housing infrastructure assistance fund it's called the riff and this is a state IFA program to support utility infrastructure and I think this program will Kurt you might know more than I do but I think this program will grow I know the Braun administration supports it the challenge is that it's only in year two I think and it's really focused on
- more rural communities too. Oh, it is? Yeah. So you gotta be a little careful. Okay. I mean, there are parts of it for communities like Bloomington, larger, but more than 50% goes to the smaller communities. Yeah. But we're, I mean, we're happy to fight for the 50% that we are eligible for. We definitely should. But the challenge, I think, for Bloomington has been that we have to back
- loans back the bonds with TIFF and so that ends up being challenging so I don't know when the lieutenant governor was here last week I asked some questions about this fund and it sounds like they think that there could be the possibility of expanding it to being solely developer backed more like the an economic development revenue bond so I don't know if that works from your
- but I think that's a growth. I'm curious how the rural communities are getting it done if they don't have TIFF or maybe there are different projects or products too. I couldn't tell you. I just know that there are lots of communities involved in this program. So I think that's a good one for us to get kind of savvy about and then if you scroll down D,
- I'll just highlight what I think is the main opportunity is in opportunity zones going forward and new markets tax credits. So the big, beautiful bill made both opportunity zones and new markets tax credits permanent. They're complicated to access on the front end. They require a lot of administrative work. But we're working. I don't think I can say too much about it publicly, but we're just really working on
- figuring out how to tap into the infrastructure of opportunity zones to make it really easy for people to invest in our community. So we're looking at the current census tracts that are approved, hope wells in it, and then we're looking at what we might be able to add or shift going forward. And those act as a shelter against capital gains, basically. So if you invest,
- in an opportunity zone and then earn revenue, you can invest that in an opportunity fund and it's protected. It's like a double investment. And in the past, it had to be real estate investment. And I believe in the bill going forward, and the big, beautiful bill, there is a small business component to it. So you wouldn't have to own the property. But if you are operating a business and making personal property investments, you could have that shelter as well.
- So I think those are the growth areas. And then I think that this can be cleaned up and posted on our website at any. I'm sorry. Go ahead. The blue print, are these links to it? Yes. OK, so we have this. Do we have this web track? Yes. And I will say the state killed the redevelopment tax credit. It dies on.
- Friday, and so does the historic redevelopment tax credit. Historic rehabilitation tax credit, those both go away until end of 2026. I think IEDC is just reevaluating. Yeah, they may come back if the fiscal state of the state improves. Yes. But this information, I think it
- can be communicated better than an award document. This was just kind of the first step. And I think the city is part of its branding. We're also redoing our website to make it more focused on user experience rather than governmental structure, which is not particularly friendly. And so I think there's a place in the new website that will be developed in 2026 for this information to live that will be focused on
- development. So the interesting thing about this list is it's good for an outward-facing document for people that might want to do something here in the city, but it's also good as an internal document because I'll just give the one example, the state revolving fund for wastewater and drinking water infrastructure. I'm on the IFA board and I had somebody ask me why Bloomington's never participated in that.
- a year ago, and I was unaware that we had not. I just assume we were, because it's so good. And I think that CBU is now beginning to look into that program. If they aren't, I hope they are. Because it's a very successful program in terms of providing low cost financing. What's that? Can they do fluoride? If it's drinking water, I'm assuming it can be. You know, that's a perfect example.
- we've been three or four years without fluoride because it's broken. So if you clicked on these links, what are you typically going to find? If it's a state or federal link, you should go to that resource and it'll explain the program. If it's a local resource, it should take you right to the application.
- perfect application for AI. I don't know if anybody's done this. Yeah, tell us. Well, it wouldn't be that much to download the information and the links into an AI tool and then just ask it questions. Yeah. Well, that's a really great. ESAC has an army of students that can do this. And when I was telling him about some of our procurement woes in our department, just ironing out all the different regulations,
- He said, well, you know, we had a team of students that made a DOD procurement chatbot. So I think that we, this is a great, it's like building bridges to campus, solving an efficiency problem, solving a communications problem. So I think you probably know. I mean, I would try something like Gemini or BookLM and put all these things into BookLM and say, I'm building three houses, which incentives might work.
- Mm-hmm. I agree. I mean, the intention is to do that this semester. I mean, this is a good start. Well, maybe we do it on incentives before procurement, too. I don't know. I mean, or UDO. I think there's a lot of things you can do, but on the basis of here's a huge bit of text. Look through this and help me make strategic decisions. Yeah. It's remarkable how well
- It's exciting. One thing also missing, and I know we're at time, but the business licensing. We need to talk about that. OK, cool. Yeah, because where does that fall in here? It doesn't. That's just a requirement. And these are actual.
- Oh, do you mean on the, where does it live in the economic development document? Well, yeah, because isn't that a tool that is also there, like, I mean, allowing people to sell and buy stuff, permits, liquor licenses, you know, like those type of things that the city may at some point. Like, if we market those as an incentive instead of think of them as a regulation. Correct. Gotcha. Like, you know, because I thought about that too, like, when we were talking about closing Kirkwood as an example, like, was there a way to do,
- like rapid, oh, you want to sell hot dogs on Kirkwood, and we want people to do stuff on Kirkwood, so we have a rapid way of selling hot dogs on Kirkwood, as an example, right?
- I don't know where that sits, but. Yeah. I am actually working with Public Works on the special event permits and some of the ordinance stuff and how we do that process because it can get kind of beleaguered by agendas and all of that. So we're going to be working on that at the end of the year to make it easier for these smaller vendors who are, this is their road to a brick and mortar is that. So trying to figure out how to make those things happen. Yeah.
- Definitely in the hopper. It's a ways, but it's in the hopper for sure. But I think that's somewhere in this strategy, too. It's like when we're thinking, to your point about not just attracting businesses, but growing current businesses. We saw this with the grease trap changes, for example. That's a really good example. That helps make it easier for small places to. So I think part of maybe our strategy is also identifying barriers to small business growth within town. Yeah, I think that's a direct.
- It's so rockstar. You guys want to see a picture of my baby? You seem relatively well rested. She's fantastic. I mean, she's sleeping. Are we finishing our feedback? I want to see it. We don't want it on the minutes. Possibly a different than me.
- Anything else? No, I don't know what the action item is. I just wanted to share and get your feedback, and I'll keep doing it. Thank you. Yeah, thanks. Anything else for the good of the call? I would say feel free to reach out to us individually, together, whatever, between meetings. Yes, 100%. This is obviously periodic. It's the most exciting thing ever.
- Well, I don't know what that is. It's exciting. Within the realm of economic development. All right, the hearing on this meeting is adjourned. Thank you.