- Like to call this meeting to order is Wednesday August 20th 5 31 p.m. It is our second night of budget hearings for the twenty twenty six budget could the clerk please call the roll Certainly councilmember Stasberg Ruff Rallo Piedmont Smith Flaherty here Daly here Zulik here
- Rosenberger here. Sorry Thank you, thank you So as I mentioned, this is our second night of four for budget hearings spread over two weeks for the city's proposed 2026 budget for folks following along you can go to bloomington.in Gov slash city slash budget to find information and links to the budget book or proposed budget
- Also the city council's webpage, bloomington.in.gov slash council has links to our meeting packets of information which should include slide decks and presentations as those come to us along with the meeting schedule. Tonight we are hearing presentations from four departments and a board along with I think probably brief introductions or presentations for three priority areas.
- That are the framing device the administration has used this year for its budget proposal. So the order of that will be a priority at priority area introduction on affordable housing and homelessness the five minutes then housing and neighborhood development departments presentation at 20 minutes priority area introduction for economic development allotted for five minutes then a presentation from the Monroe County Capital Improvement Board five minutes and
- the economic and sustainable development department at 20 minutes, then a priority area introduction for public safety at five minutes, the fire department at 15 minutes, and finally, we will close with the police department slash dispatch at 20 minutes. The other thing I would like to remind council members and the public is that we took a motion at the first budget hearing on Monday this week to structure debate for the duration of the budget hearings.
- That debate limited council member question and answer periods following each presentation to a maximum of three minutes per council member. It also limited council member comment period to three minutes per council member per presentation and limited public comment to two minutes per speaker per comment period. I believe also we have a council member interested in making a motion to amend that structure for debate and I would entertain that now. Council member Piedmont-Smith.
- Yes I move that the following two points be added to how we conduct the remaining budget hearings. Number one after public comment on each budget presentation during the council member comment period council members may use their three minute time allotment to redirect questions made during the public comment period to staff. The three minutes would still include the question the answer and if any time remains any final comment from that council member.
- And number two, each three-minute period of council member questions and council member comments is limited to one turn for each council member to allow for accurate timekeeping. Second. Okay, we have a motion and a second. Any questions or comments on the motion? Seeing none. We can just take a voice vote. All in favor? Aye. All opposed? Any abstentions? Okay.
- That motion passes, so we will have those additional points to structure our debate for the duration of the budget hearings. With that, we can kick off with our priority area introduction for affordable housing and homelessness. And who from the administration do we have to present that priority area? I see Deputy Mayor Knapp raising her hand. Please step up to the dais, introduce yourself and position, and welcome. Good evening, everyone. Deputy Mayor Gretchen Knapp, I'll try to keep this
- Short so this is one of our I think a category that many of us in many of the public and all of us in the administration I know all of you on council are deeply concerned about I Want to talk a little bit about what we included in this in this
- budget book and the priority list, but just know, of course, as a reminder to everyone, we're very early in the process of defining what programs are, what they look like, how we cluster them, so this is all just for our understanding of what was in here this year and to help inform what we do in future years and how we improve and refine how we talk about these things. Let's see, so what's included in these allocations is
- Departments whose mission is largely centered in this work. And of course that is housing and neighborhood development, which we call hand here at the city There are a few other if you're looking at the list of allocations a few other Offices that have funds that we can already tell without having completed our process affect this area the office of the mayor has a role for a city homelessness response coordinator clearly relevant to this work and
- And the Bloomington Police Department also has funds that they use to give out to individuals who are in-house to assist with reunification or getting supplies to be able to keep a job. And you'll hear more about that from Chief DeKoff later tonight.
- There are a lot of other departments and offices that have work in this area that we can't calculate costs for, either because they give out money in grant form and we don't yet know who those recipients will be, but some of their grants would likely include agencies that serve these purposes and the non-profits that work in this area. There's also a lot of ARPA funding, which is not part of this budget, but will go towards these ends, and I believe Director Killian Hanson will talk about some of that tonight.
- So you'll see that we've clustered these under some kind of chunked out the programs into broad areas affordable housing initiatives and incentives community outreach education education engagement education homelessness and housing instability housing preservation neighborhood vitality as it relates to housing preservation and policy compliance and reporting and
- Now one of the things I want to point out is that we only included programs in here and listed programs that address the root causes of homelessness. In other words, my assumption was we wanted to talk about what are we doing to address homelessness and solve that problem.
- There are a lot of other programs and expenses in the city that deal with the impacts of homelessness on our community, the short-term solutions. I didn't include those here, but we could talk about whether we'd like to do that as a separate exercise or as part of this in the future. We also didn't include work that has to do with housing, but not necessarily affordable housing. So Han does a whole bunch of work, and some of that work is about preserving housing and making sure that it stays accessible to the community, and some of it is just about making a great neighborhood and a place to live.
- And so we can talk about in the future what we'd like that to look like as well. So some of our key questions will be and this will come up with some other issues as well as we moved from priorities based budgeting towards outcomes based budgeting. How do we within an annual budget cycle and outside of it.
- come up with what are our outcomes and our KPIs, our key performance indicators for these very long-term initiatives, especially as some of them are accomplished through partner agencies that we are funding or supporting in various ways, but we don't actually do the work ourselves directly. So we'll have to talk about what that looks like. We'll want to talk about which housing efforts are about affordable or attainable housing and just more housing. You can make an argument that all housing makes, having more housing period makes it
- affordable And how do we measure the effectiveness of those pass-through dollars to our partner agencies? As well as how do we present all that during budget season? So I'm happy to entertain questions if anyone has them or we can move straight on Thank you very much for your presentation Do we have any council member questions on the presentation of this priority area? I'm seeing none
- So we could move to public comment if there are any members of the public who would like to comment on the priority area of housing and affordable housing and homelessness Please either step up to the dais if you're here in chambers or if you are joining us online You can use the raise hand feature in zoom or otherwise indicate to the meeting host that you would like to make a comment I'm seeing none in chambers. Do we have anyone online? No, okay. Thank you very much and That brings us back to council
- Members, for any comments on the administration's presentation of that priority area? Any comments? Seeing none, okay. Well, with that, we will then jump right in to the presentation from the Housing and Neighborhood Development Department. We have up to 20 minutes set aside for that presentation. I believe we have Director Colleen Hanson joining us to present. Welcome, please state your name and title, and we're looking forward to the presentation.
- Do I need to sign in on the sheet as well. I don't think the clerk is tracking that for budget hearings. So OK. Don't worry about it. All right. Thank you. All right. And is the presentation coming. Oh it's OK. Sorry. Good evening. I am in Achille and Hanson and I have the pleasure of serving as the director of housing and neighborhood development lovingly known as hand as you know hand.
- is an incredibly diverse department with numerous programs covering many priority areas. Key hand priorities include affordable housing and homelessness, community health and vitality, public safety and economic development. Affordable housing, homelessness, community health and vitality, public safety and economic development are
- deeply interconnected. Each one influences and is influenced by the others. If one of these areas is weak, it affects the rest. A lack of affordable housing means a rise in homelessness, poor health and safety outcomes, reduced community vitality, economic stagnation. But the reverse is also true.
- An investment in housing and health and safety means stronger communities, economic growth, lower homelessness, greater public well-being.
- Community engagement is the foundation of healthy, resilient, and thriving communities. It transforms residents from passive recipients of services into active partners and creating solutions. It is what transforms housings from units into a home and from survival into a foundation for growth. Hand offers numerous initiatives to engage and build community.
- Annually, we host Residence Academy where participants learn about the challenges faced by city government as it balances budget limitations with community goals and service needs. We host Blooming Neighborhoods in partnership with Kona, an annual celebration to provide an opportunity for neighborhood groups to network, share, and celebrate accomplishments. We provide two monthly newsletters, The Hand Update and Rental Central to keep our community informed. Just this spring, we welcomed our newest community building tool, the long-awaited Community
- events trailer filled with the equipment, supplies, and games you need to throw one heck of a neighborhood block party or other community gathering. We also provide numerous grants to neighborhoods to gather, engage, beautify, and address special areas of concern and build community. Whether someone is renting, buying, or trying to stay housed, financial literacy supports housing success at every stage.
- Financial education is essential to housing because it equips individuals and families with the knowledge and tools to make informed decisions, avoid housing instability, and build long-term security.
- Hand provides housing counseling to provide that financial education including pre-purchase counseling budgeting credit counseling mortgage delinquency and default resolution Foreclosure avoidance reverse mortgage counseling predatory lending education fair housing education and rental counseling Tenants represent about 60% of our households within city limits and
- Being educated and supported empowers them to be stable, responsible, and a protected participant in the housing ecosystem. We offer a free course called R101, which helps tenants understand leases, tenant and landlord rights and responsibilities, financial management, city rules, good neighboring and housekeeping skills, and how to stay safe.
- We also provide rental deposit assistant and are piloting a new tenant based rental assistance program to provide support We also offer homeownership support by offering homebuyers Club Which helps first-time home buyers understand and overcome the obstacles involved with purchasing their first home and what to expect after buying a home we also offer
- two different kinds of closing and down payment cost assisted programs. And we are currently piloting an interest rate buy down program to incentivize movement in the housing ladder and unlock those golden handcuffs. As an entitlement community and participating jurisdiction, we receive an annual allocation of CDBG or community development block grant and home investment partnership funding.
- hand administers those programs. The Home Investment Partnership Program gives communities the resources to build, preserve, and support safe, decent, and affordable housing for those who need it most. The program focuses on construction, acquisition, rehabilitation, homeownership assistance, rental assistance, and housing counseling. Project examples include the more than $1 million we invested in the core building, the original hospital site, to develop 38 affordable units.
- Another is the construction material contributions we provide to Habitat for many of their builds, including seven right now. Community development block grants are an incredibly diverse tool, supporting community development activities to build stronger and more resilient communities. CDBG provides social service funding to food banks, childcare centers, homeless and domestic violence shelters, and more.
- while physical improvement projects can range widely, including infrastructure, public facilities improvements, economic development, and housing projects. CDBG social service and physical improvement projects must meet one of the three national objectives. Benefits to low or moderate income persons, aid in the prevention or elimination of slums or blights, or to address an urgent need.
- Each year projects are decided on by a panel of local residents to prioritize community needs. Please note our social service agencies rely very heavily upon CDBG funding. Without access to safe affordable housing people are at greater risk of homelessness.
- substance use of disorders, untreated mental illness, and homelessness often feed into each other in a cycle that is hard to break without coordinated support. Last year, we committed more than $6 million of ARPA funding for projects and programs to benefit affordable housing and homelessness.
- Projects included down payment and closing cost assistance to the community land trust rapid rehousing diversion support to domestic violence shelter Infrastructure development for the next phase and an affordable hat affordable habitat for humanity development housing stability services development of a four-unit townhome housing security construction funding of approximately 48 affordable units the lot acquisition for a homeless shelter case management
- and acquiring tracts of land for 20 affordable single-family homes. To increase the supply of decent affordable housing for community, we administer the Housing Development Fund, providing low-cost loans and grants to preserve our housing stock,
- offering stability to those in need and restoring the health and safety and habitability of a home we offer the Emergency Home Repair Program.
- We also offer owner occupied rehabilitation program to provide affordable financing to qualified homeowners to make property improvements. The program offers a zero percent interest loan of up to fifty thousand dollars to qualified residents without preservation efforts. Homes may be lost to disrepair gentrification or redevelopment reducing the total affordable housing supply.
- We offer a home modifications for accessible living program, which is designed to provide modifications for income qualified residents facing accessibility challenges at home. Modifications include, but are not limited to, ramp installation, doorway and hallway widening, additional lighting installation, and handle and grip bar installations and bathrooms. This grant helps support independent living and prevents displacement and housing instability, especially for low income residents.
- Rapid rehousing and case management are essential tools in addressing homelessness and housing security because they focus on getting people housed quickly while providing supportive services they need to stay housed long-term. We are providing funding for rapid rehousing to provide a combination of short-term financial assistance for items such as security deposits, rent, utilities, moving expenses, application fees, et cetera, alongside supportive case management.
- and case management to focus on assisting persons reach their goal of finding permanent housing and addressing the barriers. 60% of our households are cost burdened, spending more than 30% of their income on housing expenses. A job loss, medical emergency, or rent increase can push housing insecure households into homelessness overnight, especially when they lack savings or support.
- Addressing housing insecurity early can stop homelessness before it starts. That's why we are providing funding for diversion and eviction prevention services to prevent evictions and homelessness.
- I spend a lot of my time working on economic development with not only our federal programs, but also the Redevelopment Commission. One of the biggest RDC projects right now is the redevelopment efforts occurring at the former hospital site Hopewell. Hopewell has been an enormous economic development project that involves numerous city departments, including ESD, engineering, planning, and parks, and our dedicated commission.
- Hopewell is a once in a generation opportunity for the city to shape a new neighborhood. And with that comes a responsibility to get it right. We are extremely excited to be moving forward on Hopewell South with an approach that uses pre approved home designs to save time and money welcomes local builders to the table and supports a healthy mix of attainable and market rate homes. Hopewell provides an incredible chance to bring housing supply to our market which we so desperately need.
- We are incredibly excited to make more progress at Hopewell in the coming months. Our largest program by far is our Title 16 rental program, inspecting and permitting rental units within city limits on a three, four or five year cycle, which is determined by compliance. We also conduct complaint inspections for both landlord and tenants requiring repair of conditions when necessary.
- Confirmed through our consolidated plan outreach the rental inspection program has demonstrated that it has helped ensure there's no concentration of multiple housing condition problems within the city limits. My predecessor always said rentals in Bloomington don't have to be pretty but they do have to be safe. The title 16 rental program not only contributes to community health and vitality it also contributes to public safety.
- These same inspectors tasked with rental inspections are tasked with Bloomington Municipal Code Title 6 enforcement issuing tickets for trash grass snow and weeds between inspections as they patrol their assigned neighborhoods and when compliance is not met after several rounds of ticketing they are tasked with facilitating abatements. Enforcement of Title 6 helps preserve property values and supports healthy safe and livable neighborhoods.
- While HAND contributes to public safety through compliance enforcement of Title 16 and 6, we also contribute to public safety through enforcement of Title 17, unsafe buildings and construction regulations, issuing orders to repair, vacate, seal or remove when necessary. Compliance is a term used frequently in our department.
- compliance with numerous codes, we are tasked with enforcing, but also the onerous federal regulations associated with many of our grants that we administer. Our HUD programs require regular reporting, annual action plans, consolidated annual performance and evaluation reports, consolidated plans, financial reporting, risk assessments, the list goes on. Because we are administering these funds, we are also tasked with ensuring that subrecipients are complying with federal regulations.
- which are too numerous to count. A significant portion of our time is spent in grant management and compliance reporting. A lack of federal compliance means that we are liable, even for things our subrecipients do. A lack of compliance means that we increase our risk assessments and jeopardize further funding for everyone in our community who relies on it. Speaking of compliance,
- For every head project we are required to perform an environmental review to ensure that projects do not negatively impact the surrounding environment and that the project site does not pose adverse environmental or health effects on users or residents. Under 24 CFR part 58 there are 17 federal laws executive orders and regulations that must be reviewed.
- along with any relevant state or local requirements. Any ground disturbing activity on projects even hypothesizing the use of federal funds made prior to an environmental review is considered a choice limiting action and removes our opportunity to utilize those funds.
- We also house the city's historic preservation program and are so thankful to have a great preservationist who helps guide our community through our intricacies of certificates of appropriateness demolition delays nominations registries local historic districts and the historic preservation commission our efforts to support affordable housing and homelessness.
- Community health and vitality public safety and economic development are all essential to the long term viability of our city because they are deeply interconnected and collectively create the foundation for a stable thriving community. Our budget request includes changes to the personnel funding lines from the salary study implementation the removal of
- a computer and other supplies needed for a new position in the supply funding line and the removal of the City Council led Jack Hopkins program from our hand funding line, I believe put back in yours and a reduction in our housing development fund request for 26 as we finish up our 2025 implementations. Thank you for your consideration. I am happy to answer any questions. Thank you. Director Colleen Hansen.
- And thank you for coming in under time always appreciated All right Yeah, feel free to take a seat, but we'll probably have questions Also just to let council members asari and rough know who's had to step in a few minutes late That there was a motion in your email inbox proposed by councilmember Smith. It was approved So that is now part of our structure of debate for the evening Who has questions for our director?
- I see, uh, cause my Rallo then do not Smith. Thank you. Uh, it's my mic. Does your mic work? Um, thank you. So, uh, my question is, I have a couple of questions. One is, um, uh, hand enforces, uh, property maintenance code for the city, uh, and also landscaping plan enforcement.
- I wondered if that is still the case in other words Do I direct any sort of violations that might be have occurred to your department for enforcement? Notice notice of violations and forth. Yes. I'm not aware of any changes specifically Okay, my other question of me. I'll make a brief. Yes. In fact the motion Indicated that yeah, you need to use it all at the one time. That's right. I forgot and
- So my other question is about Airbnb's and this is sort of the perpetual Bugaboo that is you know plaguing us I guess in our community as probably a thousand residences have been converted to Airbnb's or verbose or whatever and I wonder if We we are going to take some sort of action and what kind of action can we take and can we at least have them registered so that we know that
- They can absolutely be required to register. We're already on that I Hate to comment on what we can and can't do because I've hypothesized all kinds of things that turn out to maybe not be okay To address them, but we do have a strategy that we hope to be before you You have a strategy that you're working on. Yes. Okay. All right. Well, I look forward to that Yeah, okay. Thank you
- Thank you Miss Kelly Hansen. I know this is a busy time of year for hand with all the new and returning residents. I wanted to ask about the housing development fund. How is it doing as far as revenues into that fund versus expenditures out of the fund. Can you speak to that.
- We're still in the green and I think that the controller can also comment on that but I do believe that we received at least it was well over a million dollars for I believe the core spaces project down on Its college North College the taller complex So there was a million dollars received this year it was a little more than a million I believe
- Yeah I don't have the exact figure but I'd be happy to get that back to you but we did receive that this year. We do. The fund is healthy. OK. So there's a good balance between revenues and expenditures currently. OK. My next question is about the.
- The long list of programs you mentioned that were funded by ARPA. And of course that's expiring at the end of 2026. Yes. Have there been discussions. Some of those were one time investments but some of them are for ongoing needs. Have there been discussions about how to continue funding those that are ongoing beyond ARPA after ARPA. No no discussions yet. SEA one sort of.
- through a wrench monkey wrench into the our gears, but you know, we have not discussed that we most of the programs are Started and off and running. So we sort of need to see how they go and what impacts they make All right, thank you Additional questions I see councilmember Daley Thank you very much. Thank you for that presentation My question is
- How does the average resident know about a lot of the programs that you talked about? For example, the Home Buyers Club, rapid rehousing services, eviction prevention services. Is there proactive outreach letting people know? There is. I speak at a lot of places. And yes, we advertise it as much as we possibly can. Angela Van Roy helps us get out our two newsletters. They're out in our newsletters as well.
- So if somebody's not subscribed, where would they see that information if they don't even know that it exists? I guess what I'm getting at is some budget money spent toward advertising services or what have you.
- We are advertising our services and we promote on Facebook. We are we send out our newsletters. We speak at various events. We table many events as well. So we do try to have it out there. It's on our Web site. It's not we don't want it to be isolated. Thank you. All right. Do we have additional council member questions. Council member Stossberg.
- Thank you. I'm just wondering if there's a couple open programs and your work chart or open positions in your work chart. I was wondering how long they'd been open for. I guess I'm especially looking at the grant compliance manager because I thought that we had somebody in there.
- Yeah, so we interviewed numerous times we extended an offer to one of the most qualified individuals for that department But unfortunately, they accepted a position elsewhere We have found that posting that position particularly at the grade that it is is challenging because it really requires a lot of federal background to be successful and
- We are getting ready to repost it again, and hopefully we will see a different mix of applicants, which we think that it's highly possible given the current climate with the federal government. There have been a lot of layoffs, so we're hoping that we can get somebody that's very knowledgeable.
- Okay great. And what about the program manager for rental inspection. The program manager should be posted very soon. HR has been reviewing the job description and so we're hoping that goes out in the next few weeks as well. And then there's also I'm not sure if it's reflected on your job chart or your chart or not but we have another open position for a neighborhood compliance officer which has been posted and we're interviewing right now. Okay great. Yeah I don't think that that one is on here.
- And then there's not enough time for you to address this but I also am just kind of interested kind of following up on a couple other questions about the resident numbers we have taken advantage of the various programs that hand has so that's something I'll follow up with through the written questions just an FYI in terms of I'm interested in some of that data. Thanks. Do we have additional council member questions. I see Councilmember Rosenberger.
- Hi thank you. Question about rentals. Do we have any programs to incentivize landlords to be long term rentals instead of short term rentals. And then.
- Do we have any programs that allow landlord participation. I know we have so many things that are occupied like we have the new program to help remove trees if it's owner occupied and there's rehab if it's owner occupied. But I remember some years ago assistant director Scanlon and planning said most of our
- Small landlords, so I think, I don't know how you all define that, maybe five homes or smaller, live here in our community. So they are, in fact, small business owners. And I know with ESD, we do so much for small business owners. But small landlords are just very much left out, I think, and almost seen as just like slumlords in a way, even though they might not be. It doesn't seem to be people we prop up in any way. And I don't know, is there anything in the hopper for that? Or do we do things that I'm just not aware of?
- I'm not aware of anything that we currently do to incentivize smaller landlords. We have to be very careful with our rental program. The state did try to take it away from us. So we have to be very neutral and make sure that we're which is why we do both landlord and tenant complaints. Right. So we have to walk a very close line. Whatever we do for the landlords we're going to have to also do for the tenants. So OK. Thank you.
- But we can think about it and I'm more than happy to collaborate and try and figure out something else. That could be fun. I guess another thing with our rental inspection program we don't inspect we really only inspect our long term rentals right. We don't inspect you properties because they have their own inspection program for their rentals and then short term we do not we're not allowed to the state will not allow us to inspect either you property or
- Short-term rentals, so we will inspect anything that has a lease that's longer than 30 days Thanks Additional councilmember questions Seeing none I will ask one that is kind of an accounting question in the budget book on page 157 where Kind of the the there's a table that shows the fund
- and all the account numbers within the fund and the 2023-24 actual amounts, the 2025 adopted amount and the 2026 proposed amount. The top of page 157, that first personnel services line and all of the account numbers there, there's like a dramatic increase in the 2026 proposed budget, which seems to be not reflecting, you know,
- 10x-ing of your budget budget but rather shifting what we're in categorized in like other lines in previous years it Could the controller or could you? Either one like explain to me like what's going on there? Like why it looks like a shift in practice of some kind of how we kind of maybe disaggregated and are now aggregating Expenditures across the department
- Good evening council controller McClellan. I see what you're looking at and this sheet looks Odd to me. It doesn't look quite right. I think that I'd like to rerun it and and just get a fresh sheet and probably send that out to you guys. I think they're There may be like a header missing or it's like combining funds. Yes, because
- Goes it starts with personnel services and then supplies and then other services and charges and then it goes again Personnel services supplies other and that's that's not normal So I don't have a full answer, but I'll get you that accounting answer as soon as possible. I'll work on that right now Okay, so just maybe some sort of error in the output. Yes. Yes. Thank you That's all I had and with that we can I
- Unless there are any customer questions for those who didn't ask any looks like we can go to the public for comment So if any members of the public here in chambers or online have comments or questions about this budget, please step to the dais or Raise your hand and zoom Any takers no takers, okay that brings us back to council members for comments
- the 2026 proposed housing and neighborhood development budget I Am seeing no comments. Okay, we are moving right along. Thank you very much director. Colleen Hansen And with that we are now at the priority area introduction for economic development We can welcome deputy mayor nap back to that
- podium. Is this the dais? I think I'm saying the wrong thing. That's a podium. Welcome back to the podium for the presentation of this priority area. Wherever I am, I'm happy to be here. So what we included in that allocation in the budget book that's showing numbers there at the beginning of the priority page is the funding from departments whose mission is largely centered in this work, which is of course economic and sustainable development, ESD as we call them.
- and external partners on significant projects with the city and have County with fiscal connections and that's the capital improvement board CIB who will be making a guest presentation tonight. There are a few other known costs. So before we go through our official process of allocating every single dollar to every single program, there are a few things that we know already, which is there are some programs that have staffing costs that you could
- put under economic development, and it's a little iffy on where these things go. So for example, ITS has their digital opportunity grants that give people training and access to tools and training on how to bridge the digital divide, and is that, I sort of categorize that as a workforce development effort, but you could probably categorize it in different ways as well. Also, programs like the farmers market have
- could be in multiple areas. It clearly has a deep economic development aspect for our community, but it's also a cultural event and a community gathering. So those are some questions we can decide later. There are also some interesting questions to think about when it comes to economic development in terms of, sorry, I forgot to advance the slide there.
- Where do we put planning? So planning's work has a huge impact on economic development, but they don't approach it. I think they're thinking about development. Is that economic development? Is that policy that goes under high-performing government? Where does that go, exactly? So I didn't put it here, but just wanted to note that for our future conversations. So I wanted to note, too, that when ESD presents tonight, if you look in your budget book on page 175, 176, the controller has done
- a little magic on New World for ESD covers many different areas, but including arts, transportation, climate and sustainability, as well as economic development and small business, and so the controller has found a way to make New World tell us what they are spending in each of those focus areas, which don't necessarily align to our priority buckets, but it is interesting information, and so we included it in the budget packet for you to look at, and it is in ESD's memo.
- So the kinds of programs that were listed here under the priority area are arts and arts economy specifically programs and there's a fine line between what we might consider falls under that or just arts. Culture and community building, long-term economic development, small business ecosystem.
- and workforce development. So we didn't include in the list of programs under economic development ESD programs for arts or sustainability that aren't directly, they don't exist to give an economic development impact, although they may have one. And which of those programs fall where, we can talk about that later, but, and ESD will certainly present on those programs and all of their work tonight.
- So again, as we look ahead in the future and as we go deeper into this, economic development is definitely an area of very long term impact. You could be a director of this department for four years and the true outcomes of your work might not be visible until long after you're gone. So how we evaluate outcomes in a short term of our budget cycle for something so long term will be an interesting conversation.
- And when we have programs that meet multiple priorities like the farmers market or others that will come across for many other Priorities will need to have some discussions about where we think they should go And unfortunately, it's kind of like the Navy Everything must have a place and be in its place when it comes to assigning numbers to all of this stuff Happy to take any questions if you have any Thank You deputy mayor nap. Do we have any questions on the economic development priority area?
- I'm seeing none Going to members the public does anyone on zoom or in chambers here have comments specifically on this priority area of economic development None online I'm not seeing any chambers back to councilmember for any comments on the priority area presentation That's more Allah
- This may sound trivial, but I thought I'd bring it up at some point. I don't like the misuse of the word ecosystem to denote things that are artifices of human activity. I mean, there are ecosystems. There are biological interactions with organisms in their environment. And it becomes difficult then to talk about things like ecosystem services when it's
- Used in conflation with human activities. So it's a it's a particular thing that I have trouble with I know it's becoming in as part of the parlance but It again, I think it has a downside should be considered. That's all. Thanks Thank you for your comment any other comments from council members on this priority area I'm seeing none. So that will bring us to the
- Presentation from the Monroe County Capital Improvement Board for which we've allotted five minutes. And who do we have from the board to present to us? Looks like Mr. Weicker coming forward and maybe the controller controller Colin as well. Good evening. I was gonna start off real quick with the controller portion of that budget
- This budget does live in the controller's office and there's a portion of that budget that that is the lease payment that pays the bond for the convention center. That total is three point three million four hundred and nine thousand five hundred dollars that is in the budget and the rest of the budget can be presented by the CIB for their costs. Thank you.
- Welcome you have a little less than five minutes Just let me quickly say that I'm here with Jeff McKim whose treasurer of our board Deb Coons who's the owners representative? Jeff Underwood our controller and I believe Buzz Crone is with us virtually So with that, I hope I don't have to come back up here again, and I'll turn this over to Jeff McKim. I
- Thank you very much, council. It's an honor to present the capital improvement board's budget to you tonight and answer any questions you have. First of all, just to kind of recap a couple of the accomplishments that the CIB has had this year. Of course, we have seen the issue of $52 million bond for construction out of food and beverage taxes. We've seen the groundbreaking for the new convention center. We've seen the demolition of the old Napa building. And we've seen the award of all construction
- guaranteed minimum or maximum prices packages for new construction. We may still see some for construction renovation of the old facility. And then two major milestones coming up, of course.
- new building target completion date is January 1st of 2027. And then we expect to see the completion of the renovation of the existing building in the convention center on July 1st, 2027. So that's kind of the context. So I'm trying to kind of put our budget into context. And here, the purpose of this slide is not to have you be able to read every tiny little number here, but this brings you back to the
- cash flow statement for the entire for the entire project that was presented by Buzzcrown when During the deliberations on the on the bond So it's just kind of tying us back to what we're presenting tonight into the big picture So there are a couple of before we actually get on get to the budget with that We are actually presenting and answering questions on tonight I just want to kind of tell you what's not in the budget that we are presenting tonight So first of all, this is not
- the construction budget. That budget has already been funded by the bond that you yourself have approved.
- Second, it does not include the architectural fees, because those, as in previous years, have been paid for with an existing appropriation out of an open purchase order. And the controller can address more questions about that if you have any. And then finally, the controller just addressed the other piece that's not part of this, and that is the actual food and beverage tax that is used for the annual lease payment. So ours is everything else.
- other than those items that I just described. So here's the budget that we're actually here to present and answer any questions on. A lot of this is going to be what you've seen before in previous years. We have the legal and controller fees for the capital improvement board itself. We have the professional fees for the owners representative.
- just so everybody knows what the owner's representative is. That's a firm that we hire to essentially protect the government's interest, to protect the owner's interest. And they work, the owner's rep works with the general contractor every day on enforcing contract terms and discussing the details of the contract and working with the general contractor and construction manager on the project. So that is our representative.
- We have a line that hasn't been identified before in the budget, and that's the insurance line. Up until now, that's been included in the contingency, in the broader contingency fund. This is basically builder's risk insurance. So it's the premium that we pay for insurance to make sure that nothing bad happens to the property due to, let's say, natural disasters while it's under construction or theft or something like that while it's under construction.
- We have our annual website costs. And then we have that really big number called Other. So let's move on to the slide that explains what Other is. And of course, we can go back. So this is essentially what you would call soft costs. And so it includes everything from testing and environmental, for arts, relocation services, furnitures, fixtures, and equipment. The commissioning agent, which essentially
- performs the role of doing testing of the construction and
- Equipment installation to make sure everything is installed properly to the appropriate quality assurance parameters Safely and so on and then we have contingency and just to remind everybody that these are the Contingency costs that are built into the soft cost budget But there's also contingency built into the construction budget as well And so I believe I'm out of time here, but we have again We have Deb Kuntz from our owners rep who can answer any detailed questions about these lines and otherwise
- We're here to answer any other questions we have. Yes Thank You mr. McKim. Do we have any councilmember questions for the CIB? presentation Councilmember Stossberg Thank you. So just so I understand like in past years we've had like CIB Budget requests kind of coming separately throughout the year of various times so this year just because of the timing like that is basically all wrapped up in this annual budget as opposed to
- Having to have special ones later on. I just want to clarify That's our intention. Yes Okay, thank you Yeah, the initial budget was set back in 2023 for 2024 there was initial budget we came for an additional appropriation later that year to get that full budget and then we got back on regular city
- Budget schedule. So we'll be before you this year and then again next year to finish up the project. Okay, great. Thank you Do we have other councilmember questions Has member Allah Yeah, could any updates on the this the debate about the sewer Sewer pipe anyone
- Let mr. Weikart answer that okay This is about a dispute do you want to describe yeah I would not describe it as a dispute I would describe it as we had a difference of opinion briefly
- I had asked the see CBU staff to consider a proposal I had on I was offering on the table. They thought about it. They treated their proposal very respectfully they came back and Didn't find it agreeable and we've moved on so there there isn't any there isn't a dispute at this point Any other councilmember questions Councilmember Zulek
- Thank you. Thank you for your presentation. This might be a question for Assistant Director Warren, and I'm so sorry to put you on the spot, but would you be able to talk about the benefits of allocating money towards public art? I'm so sorry. And let me just say that the
- Arts Committee did give a presentation earlier at the CIB meeting today. So if you'd like to hear more detail than can be provided right now, I encourage everybody to watch that meeting. It was great. I'm really excited about what they have in mind.
- Hey there, my name's Holly Warren. I'm the Assistant Director for the Arts for the City of Bloomington. Thanks for the question. I'm not gonna talk in specific numbers, but I will say the way I see it is there are two benefits when we think about economic development to investing in 1% for the arts projects and other public art projects here in Bloomington. The first is financial. When we put public dollars into public art projects, the community around it sees a financial return. There is a quote that is given by the National
- Endowment for the Arts, they see any time that they put an investment into something using grant funds.
- The community around whatever is receiving that fund has a $9 rate of return for every $1 that is put into it. That is not a statistic for Bloomington, but that is just like a general national statistic that the National Endowment for the Arts has been able to show. And as far as other economic benefits, we think a lot about quality of place in the Department of Economic and Sustainable Development. And we see public art projects like this as something that make this place more beautiful and more attractive for folks to both want
- to live in, but also to come and spend their tourist dollars in. We also see public art as kind of beacons of civic identity. When we do public art calls, we ask folks, what do you want to see of yourself and your community reflected in this art in hopes that when we present the piece of public art, people say, that is me in Bloomington. People feel more connected to their community and to each other.
- That's the short answer. I'm happy to answer any more questions about that in the future additional council member questions I Am seeing none We could go to members of the public for any Comments or questions on the presentation from the capital improvement or county capital improvement board If you're here in chambers, please come to the podium to share your comment and online Do we have anybody raising their hand or otherwise indicating they'd like to comment?
- Okay, thank you back to council for any comments on the CIB budget I See none Thank you very much members of the capital improvement board and mr. McKim for presenting tonight we can move on to our next presentation, which I believe is the Economic and sustainable development department welcome director Cooper Smith
- You have 20 minutes up to 20 minutes. Great. Thank you. Jane Coopersmith director of economic and sustainable development for the city here to present to you our twenty twenty six budget proposal for the night. Excuse me. Before we jump in I wanted to highlight something that Deputy Mayor Knapp
- Described but I think it will help when you're reviewing and evaluating the numbers in the budget book ESD went through two changes during this budget cycle one our numbers were aggregated under broad categories of funding so we had a general fund category and we had an ed lit category under those funds the bulk of our activities were categorized under grants and that was simply a
- Not super accurate and it was really difficult to track. So Council or sorry controller McClellan reorganized our budget so it in 2026 and beyond it will be organized by our primary activity areas. So we'll have a main category economic development sustainability arts transportation. So this year it's challenging when you're looking at those numbers but going forward it's going to help make those easier to tie to our priority areas and then also just help us administer it.
- Okay Our team ESD. Would you guys mind standing up tonight and offering a wave? So our team consists of ten staff members who are amazing Thanks for being here and five interns We support four primary areas of activity and we staff four boards and commissions We have one grant funded position that is not reflected in this year's budget The economic and sustainable development department drives economic growth by improving. Oh, I forgot about this our quality of life
- and quality of place initiatives that advance the business ecosystem. I use the qualifying adjective council member Rallo. So it's the business ecosystem the arts economy and climate work. We manage economic strategy for the city and we help support incentives for transformative city projects in terms of priorities based budgeting. ESD activities support high performing government economic development community health and vitality and transportation.
- Our transportation budget includes the $3.8 million ED-lit pass through to Bloomington Transit. So the bulk of that funding moves on. Continued population decline in Bloomington, an aging population, and a reduction in our general ability to generate local revenue means that we are at an absolutely critical moment for our local economy. In 2024 and 2025, the administration worked on an economic development framework that advances three key goals.
- grow the workforce population, grow wages, and reinforce our economic base. All of our activities in ESD's key priority areas support these critical goals. In my presentation tonight, I'll excerpt some details from our framework and I will provide highlights of 2025 accomplishments and some of our 2026 proposals.
- This is again not exhaustive but I want to share a couple of sub goals that are reflected in our twenty twenty six proposed budget. The first is to establish and activate nodes of distinct identity in order to make Bloomington a magnet for workforce population. We are doing this through the CCC grant.
- Partnership in the trades district to further advance the trades district as a hub for both art and tech innovation The mill has leased nearly 68 percent of space in the forge There is a letter of intent in place for a hotel in the trades district The mill is advancing a plan for expansion and with the support of the college and community collaboration grant the city is working with IU to develop additional public art and gateway pieces to solidify the identity of the district and
- Additionally, we are working to organize small business groups in other nodes across the community, including the area surrounding Miller Showers Park, which has seen significant changes since the adoption of the UDO in 2020, and which will benefit from additional attention in 2026. Staff is currently working on legislation related to the stadium district that it will bring to council at the end of September. Staff time will be the key resource dedicated to organizing this district, as well as the east and west side business groups that we're working to convene.
- The second goal listed is to become the center of creativity for Indiana. This means not just having great public art, but having a talent pipeline for artists that includes studio space, professional development opportunities, the ability to collaborate with our regional partners, and the ability to earn a living as an artist or a creative professional.
- The city is advancing this goal in twenty twenty six through its work in the trades district that I just described and through its advancement of the arts incubator a three way partnership between Indiana University the city and secretly Canadian. So we have a private public partnership. Yes. In the city seek additional opportunities to welcome graduates into the permanent community. We have a statistic that 61 percent of college graduates and a tala survey
- revealed that they would like to remain in their college town post-graduation. And actually, I received Bloomington-specific data today. So for Bloomington, it's 49.5% of our IU students would like to stay in Bloomington post-graduation, but 91.5 of them feel that that is not a possibility given lack of jobs and challenges in the housing market. So those are some serious numbers. Sorry.
- I lost my track, I lost track. Okay, so that's related to college students staying over and we see the incubator as a way, a critical bridge to campus that will help retain talented graduates as well as provide space for community artists. I would like to highlight work being done specifically to support wage growth, another major economic goal.
- Two excerpts from the plan are tell our story and target attraction of businesses in high demand high wage sectors The city launched its branding campaign in 2025, which was a direct output of the 2016 wage growth task force We have received initial findings and look forward to being able to communicate about the resulting strategy later later this year and that's being driven out of office of the mayor to be clear the second category of activity is happening in partnership with Indiana University in the mill and
- Since 2011, the city has been laying the foundation for a catalytic tech district in Bloomington. And under the leadership of John Fernandez at the mill and with the support of IU and the Lilly Endowment, the trades district drives our economic development. The $16 million investment from the Lilly Endowment provides an opportunity to move farther, faster, creating possibilities not just for Bloomington, but signals to the market that will benefit Monroe County and our entire region. The mill hosted its most successful startup summer
- Yet bringing in young tech entrepreneurs from across the country with one company deciding to make Bloomington its permanent home after they completed the program Founder Friday's programming has helped foster community collaboration for 30 participants and the pilot for 90 days to scale provides insights for later stage companies The mill has shown a clear focused in Bloomington specific vision that aligns with our city's goals grow workforce population grow wages and reinforce our economic base and
- 2025 ed lit funding is supporting mill scholarships Bloomington remote code it crossroads pitch competition Startup summer and innovation week the city will request or request again one hundred and seventy five thousand dollars in program funding for the mill in 2026 Small business efforts also play a critical role in reinforcing our economic base
- 2026 activities in this area will include supporting activation of the downtown action plan Which was seed funded with Creed funds in 2025 and is being managed by downtown Bloomington, Inc The partnership with retail strategies has already provided critical new information to us about how our downtown operates Who is visiting when and why and what can businesses do to capture those potential customers? the action plan which has had broad business participation will be released later this year and
- $25,000 in the 2026 budget will serve to implement low cost high impact actions from this plan in partnership with downtown Bloomington. We also seek to continue supporting destination tourism in Bloomington in 2026 we budgeted
- Almost $20,000 for a wayfinding audit and an update that will support updates to signage across the city Current wayfinding has not been updated since 2005 This will be important as we activate nodes of distinct identity and support the expansion of the new Convention Center We also requested $20,000 for targeted gateway cleanup to help put a shine on Bloomington during critical weekends These small amounts will go a long way to make sure that Bloomington is at its best when it greets residents and visitors alike. I
- It all starts with a visit, as Mike McAfee would say. In 2026, we requested an increase to the funding line for business safety and security
- business safety security and cleanliness grants, which helped businesses prevent or recover from damage to their property related to impacts from unhoused residents. While this grant does not address the root causes of street homelessness, it allows the city to help stabilize its small business ecosystem in the downtown corridor and beyond to make sure that they are able to remain in place as other departments and partners work to address root causes. This grant has helped install security cameras, replace and repair windows, provided power washing and myriad other supports.
- It is critical for these operators. I also wanted to highlight that while it is not reflected in our annual budget through the general fund or ed lit important economic development work happens via the Bloomington Urban Enterprise Association Which administers a separate fund that is applicable only to the geography of the enterprise zone? Residents can find out if they are eligible for BU EA grants by visiting
- bloomington.in.gov slash my bloomington or simply googling my bloomington the annual budget for the BU EA which is also supported by miss Dilla Rosa is around six hundred thousand dollars Further expanding the creative economy is a is a pillar of our economic development framework arts programming shows an increase in 2026 because Excuse me, it reflects the shift of buzz Kirk Chumley operating support
- from council budget to ESD budget, which we believe is appropriate and allows for better tracking of expenses. In reality, the 2026 budget is on par with 2025. Our arts programming hits three primary categories, grant funding for local artists and specific projects, funding for arts venues, and then public art and public art maintenance funding and operational support for arts organizations. I think I said that twice.
- As with small business, BUEA grant funding also mirrors citywide arts funding, supporting grant making for arts projects, artistic advancement, and operational support. In 2025, we saw artist parties, the painting of traffic boxes in the downtown corridor, a pilot public art tour, and many other events and arts projects launched in collaboration with the incredible artists and volunteers across the community. This fall, we look forward to the official opening of the arts incubator space adjacent to Switchyard Park.
- Losing my voice too many words Turning now to climate action and sustainability The city's efforts in these categories are funded by Edie lit I mean everything is funded by Edie lit now the activities hit three budget priority areas high-performing government community health and vitality and transportation While the city's activities are primarily supported by
- local income tax dollars sustainability leadership and Shawn Mia has done an excellent job in attracting outside funding for residents for the city and for the region. I wanted to offer a snapshot of our program categories and highlight the importance of our reporting monitoring and maintenance investments. These are high dollar tech interfaces that serve a range of functions. They help us. Oh gosh. They help us account for and report out on greenhouse gas emissions. They provide a point of contact for the public to engage in climate action.
- directing them to additional financial resources, and they track solar production and indicate when maintenance is needed. Sorry about that. Okay, so I think I need to go to the next one. Right, you may remember that a 2024 NOAA National Oceanic and Atmospheric
- Association grant supported a heat mapping study which provided Our team actionable data about where dangerous hot spots exist in Bloomington in 2025 the team directed dollars to improve infrastructure and tree canopy to protect residents in these areas in 2025 Shawn Mia and Julie Perry with the support of the city
- Grants manager Jonas Chang received an epic epic grant in the amount of $508,000 for energy upgrades and support to the buzz Kirk to turn the buzz Kirk Chumlee theater into a climate resilience hub The project is now in the schematic design phase For 2026. I also wanted to underscore the difficult choices that we've made in this focus area We reduced the budget for stay cool Bloomington to 25,000. We reduced the total volume of seal funding to 200,000 from 300,000 to
- We made smaller reductions to sustainability grants e-bike voucher and bus stop fun lines Sorry, I'm speeding up so I don't go over while we are deeply disappointed to reduce these funding lines We believe that the city's climate action plan goal of reducing emissions to 2018 levels by 2030 can still be achieved with our reduced and targeted 2026 budget
- And this slide highlights an important milestone for Bloomington. It illustrates the inaugural trip to Ivy Tech for Bloomington transit, helping connect students and employees on the West side employment zone to our city's core. Well, yes, these transportation line reads as the most significant component of our departmental budget. The bulk of this nearly $4 million is passed through funding for Bloomington transit. John Connell will present to you on the 27th and we'll talk in depth about what they have accomplished with this funding.
- I'm so sorry. The interlocal agreement that transfers $3,806,100 to Bloomington Transit for expansion of service expires at the end of 2027. On the continued theme of doing less with less, the 2026 TDM strategy represents a change for the city. We propose a funding reduction
- In the go Bloomington website and related marketing efforts the goal of increasing the number of people using public transit walking biking and Carpooling has not changed. We still want that the current strategy was a marketing campaign driving people to the go Bloomington website and incentivizing them to create an account the campaign itself was very effective great marketing and great people created accounts and
- But what we didn't have is evidence that people retained the accounts and kept using them after the initial incentive or that people who did use the accounts and enter data were actually changing their behavior. Entering a new bike ride versus entering what they already do every day. So we also don't have evidence that putting a lot of dollars into promoting this particular website that tracks usage of public transit is more effective at changing behavior than say,
- simply putting dollars into public transit directly with no middleman. I'm so sorry. For these reasons, 2026 represents an opportunity to refocus our TDM efforts and to update our strategy for our new revenue context while continuing to manage the remaining components of the program. And all of that said, I want to thank Jeff Jackson and the team at 1031 marketing, which is a local startup that we supported with these funds for their work in engaging the community in our TDM efforts.
- It will serve as a strong foundation for what comes next I'll cut it short with that. I'm happy to take questions. I just can't get another sentence out So sorry, sorry that you're yeah dealing with a sore throat Thank you very much for the presentation director Cooper Smith. Do we have questions from council members? Any council members with questions Council member Stossberg and then Piedmont Smith
- Okay, I wasn't planning on going first. I thought there would be another minute. So Hopefully I can use my three minutes wisely. I I guess I one of the lines in your budget memo was Other services reflecting an elimination of certain sponsorships like BEDC and SBDC So you didn't talk about that at all. I don't think in your presentation So if you could just talk about that for a quick minute. I think
- For both of those funding lines were really asking what's essential for Bloomington. So the SBDC is the Small Business Development Center and they provide technical assistance and a wide range of assistance to small business startups and extent businesses across the community. They have a number of funding sources and will continue receiving support from the B.A. for some of their Bloomington activity.
- They received five thousand dollars. We didn't feel like this amount was essential to their success and we have reallocated that to other programs that we think are essential for Bloomington at this time. And by the same token with our funding reduction or removal from BDC we are simply required to focus on what's working
- now and what is working for Bloomington now and our economic development strategy is coming out of the trades district and out of this office and out of the mayor's office and in partnership with our many wonderful partners we will retain a membership to the BDC and we will continue collaborating with them. But in terms of what we need to do to drive our real estate constrained 21st century
- Economy forward. It's it's a different model than the industrial model that has been largely advanced by the BDC. So for those reasons Perhaps others that won't be discussed here. We're we're not choosing to fund them in 2026 Okay, thank you I'll have other questions that I'll follow up with through the written comments both about
- participation in the various like grant programs and things like that similar to what I asked the hands department about and then also With the go Bloomington website not being a thing anymore more about how the focus of the TDM manager is going to change Okay, thank you talk right now in the next 30. Thank you. You're welcome. Thanks It's not a ploy to get out of answering questions I
- That would be some very fine acting there. My question is about the budget sheets. So the funding sheets that have all the budget lines. I am very confused. So I'm looking at the general fund. Nothing budgeted and everything is coming out of Edie lead which was not used at all last year.
- Can maybe the controller can explain what's going on there? The ESD department had
- They had six million dollars in their grant line and Edie lit last year and we moved over their salaries and their miscellaneous other Expenses into the Edie lit line because their entire department basically works on administering that six million dollars that is in Edie lit So we thought it was a better for their tracking to be able to put their entire department into the Edie lit fund
- And then I also realized what's going on at these legal sheets is that some of these departments like ESD they're broken out into programs ESD has their main they have economic development sustainability transportation and arts and So that did not come through in this macro that we use this year to create these legal sheets so I'm repulling those budgets those legal sheets right now, but
- That is why the general fund legal sheet has zeros for twenty twenty six and then all of those expenses were moved into you deal it. It's difficult to compare last year's budget this year's different funds but I will endeavor to do so anyway. That's all I had right now. Thank you.
- Additional council member questions. That's number rough. I was wondering if the department has any data has any idea about the number of Bloomington students that go to IU students from Bloomington from Monroe County from from our area.
- from our metropolitan area, or even our whole economic impact area right in this part of the state, that go somewhere else to college and don't return to Bloomington, because commonly we hear, okay, how do we get more students that come to IU Bloomington to stay in Bloomington? Do we have any idea about the numbers
- Bloomingtonian young people that go somewhere else and don't come back. We don't have that data now. I think part of the reason we work to capture these IU students is that they're very trackable, whereas some of our local students that leave after graduation, it may be a little more difficult to find and capture that data. But I think it is very much
- Line with this goal to work to attract workforce population. It would be great to have You know locals come home Other councilmember questions I Have a few thank you You mentioned I think the interlocal agreement with the Bloomington Transit runs through the end of 2027. Is that right?
- My recollection was that needed to be a multi-year agreement because they needed match funding that they could rely on for rapid electrification of our bus fleet, taking advantage of federal resources. Do you know, was that multi-year funding stream only needed through the end of 2027 for the duration of what they were trying to do? Or was it more like we didn't want to tie our hands for 10 years, so we picked four to give them enough
- You know Lee like lead time to like I don't know like I'm trying to get a sense of like this is gonna be a cliff for them Obviously we've really invested in transit if we don't renew that after 2027. So I'm trying to get a sense of Its impact potentially I don't have an answer to that I mean simply because I didn't work that was negotiated when I was in my previous role at the city But I wasn't working on that project. So I'm not sure why they chose that 2027 expiration date for the contract, but I mentioned it because you know
- It's it's on the horizon and it felt relevant. So yeah, no, thank you for that data point and then I guess I can say it the the grant agreement specs out a number of activities that are really related to expansion of service and so I know John Connell will be ready to talk to you all about that. Mm-hmm Yeah, thank you. So the other question I had I appreciated in your presentation some of the direct funding amounts, you know
- By program in the budget book itself. We've got you know programs Sometimes as the deputy mayor noted the other night sometimes that's much much more clear and discrete of a program other times less So but for the things that are fairly discrete Would it be possible to amend those tables to actually include a budget amount by program? So we've got these tables that have under high-performing government economic development, whatever the category is, you know subgroup of things
- Environment climate sustainability arts and arts economy program title and then a program description Can we add a fourth column that is budget amount or is that not feasible? I Think that we're gonna achieve that when we correct the legal sheets because especially with Jane's budget It's really nicely like tied together that you will it'll sell nicely tied together in the fund and it's divided by department and
- So that would give us a programmatic aggregate by focus area, but not necessarily each row in these tables in the budget book that I'm describing. So small business development is one of the programs named. Is that a thing we'd have a cost amount for? Or no?
- Deputy mayor now that will be accomplished when we complete the PBB implementation process with the software Once we know we have the right programs and we like how they're clustered and we think they're in the right buckets Then that step is to go in and assign dollars including fractional staff time So that would be the goal will be next year when we're looking at something whatever the program is There's a dollar assigned to it that includes all the people all the supplies everything for that program
- Okay, but not for this year's budget not achievable. Is that right? Not it not even remotely achievable. Okay, but I wish I were thank you Any other councilmember questions before we go to public comment? Because my morale up, please Thank you. Thanks for the presentation. Are we still deploying Solar panels Yes, we are Sean, would you like to talk about that that work right now? I
- And I and I have kind of a corollary and that is Are we anticipating that we might need a fund for replacement since they have a lifespan of a couple decades? Yes, we put in ten years ago or probably at half their life lifespan. So that's my question Yes, thank you. This is Sean me a assistant director of sustainability Thank you for the question the opportunity
- So, we are monitoring our solar panels every day. We have a contract with VeriG, who is our operation and maintenance vendor. They're monitoring production and making sure that if there are panels that are damaged that need to be replaced, they are replacing them, and ESD is covering those costs. And so, the typical lifespan of a solar panel is 20 years. And so,
- You know, we we are reserving panels in our warehouse for replacements throughout the lifespan of our 20 years. And so we have plenty of panels to replace them as they're needed. And I just thought of something else. Suppose we were to get like a big hail storm. Would that pretty much ruin many of them or are they are they up? Are they up to that sort of stress?
- They're designed to withstand typical storms if it's a major hailstorm, we probably will see some damage but again, we have Panels in our warehouse so we can replace if it's all of our 38 systems. We might have a problem, but I don't anticipate that Okay. Thank you for that. Thank you Any other councilmember questions
- Seeing none we can go to the public for any comments on the economic and sustainable development Department budget if you're here in chambers, please step up to the podium And if you're online joining us, please raise your hand in zoom or otherwise let the meeting host know you'd like to comment You could be first you could be the first public commenter of tonight Okay
- I take it we have none and that will bring us back to council for comment on the ESD budget Any comments from council members I see customer rough and then Piedmont Smith With the question I asked you know, I I think we need to further define and quantify some goals are
- related to the strategy of trying to capture as many IU graduates as we possibly can. I doubt that the state university, state university systems when they were created, I doubt the idea was let's send our kids from around the state to one place or two or three places and hope they stay there and further the development of that community at the cost, at the expense of every other town in the state
- Where they've come from in impoverish and brain drain all the other communities. I don't think it was just the opposite of that I think it's like we'll send our kids to a place where there's a critical massive educational opportunity like a big university and then hope they go back to their communities and Help those communities thrive throughout the state Now I know Bloomington, you know, I grew up here several others of us grew up here. We do have a lot of particularly
- University related young people kids of faculty etc that that do go off and stay they leave so some idea of of what that ratio is what the balance is and somebody some goal set for you know, what percentage of of what we see Drain away from Bloomington our young talented and best and brightest and Have our goal of
- of capturing our share here to remain here that came from out of town to come here have some relationship between us two I just I I just think it's just too rough of a of a strategy or an idea to just say we just want to retain as many as we possibly can that came to IU Bloomington and so
- Would encourage the department staff to you know to look into it to think about that and to You know and maybe come up with The more defined strategy or or not strategy, but you know plan for what the goals are what the underlying justifications are because The idea isn't just of course to just grow Bloomington and of course, we don't want to impoverish other
- sister communities and brother and sister communities in our state By trying to keep their best and brightest here. So anyway, that's all. Thank you I just want to say this department has done some of the hard work of cutting some programs or cutting some support Which I think all departments are going to have to look at doing in the coming
- years with the impact of SEA one. So I appreciate that. I think that's these are small cuts. Of course this is not a big department with a with a huge budget to begin with but we do need to start thinking critically about our investments and the biggest bang for the buck and such as far as implementing our city goals.
- I was going to say something else, but it has just gone right out of my brain. So thank you for your presentation. And with your own motion, that was your one chance. You can't have another bite at the apple. OK. Do we have any other council member comments on the ESD budget? I have a few. Let's see. So this is about the ESD budget and also kind of the budget
- writ large and some of our changes in our approach, which I appreciate that we're trying new things and reorienting in some ways. I'm having, at times, a little bit of a hard time getting the full picture. And I've been comparing to past budget books in some sense. That's part of why I asked about the list of programs we have and whether we could have dollar amounts with them. A little bit, to ESD's credit, you did that in your presentation for some of the things.
- I'm looking back at last year's budget presentations, for instance. We presented on goals for the departments for each year and just tended to have more granular detail across the board, all departments, with where the money's actually going. So last year, under climate action and climate resilience, we saw the 1.575 million allocation and then 70,000 for solar operations and maintenance. We had a kind of similar breakdown on slides.
- Today less less so in the housing and neighborhood development department for instance. We didn't really have any type of programmatic costs And I think that's important for us to have that type of visibility For the very purpose of making the difficult choices about trade-offs and about where we need to scale things back So too we need to know how how well things are functioning so when you only have one fund for a department you kind of see the aggregate figures for a fund and
- It's just really hard to get a clear picture and to be able to have real impact or even say in kind of like these trade-offs we should be collectively making together. So to the extent that we can, I think programmatic costs would be great to include. I recognize per the deputy mayor's comment earlier that I don't think that's going to be possible for everything, but it might for some things.
- So that would be really helpful. The other thing I wanted to comment on and I wonder if this was councilmember Piedmont Smith's other thought which is that the shift in the practice of This year to move all salaries and personnel into the ED lit fund When we approved the ED lit fund four years or so ago a major concern at the time was that it would sort of get swept into the general fund and there would be very little visibility or accountability to a set of
- priorities to do new things rooted in the outcomes we're trying to achieve in bold goals like the climate action plan like our transportation plan like our comprehensive plan and So the council at that time successfully got a separate fund for ed lit We knew priorities would change over time, but the purpose was to say this is additional We've got current staffing levels that kind of thing. We're going to do new stuff with this money That's matched with with our priorities and outcomes and by moving personnel into ed lit fund for this department
- That kind of happens in the general fund now instead and we lose sight of that and so it it creates like a It gets us away from the tools for accountability and visibility that we had put in place in the first place. I'm at my time But that that's some of some concern to me, too. Thank you Councilmember Alou Yeah, this discussion of Homegrown labor or Bloomington residents
- Going to school locally Got me thinking and just I just wanted to say for the record that If we if we have an economic development strategy that attracts businesses from elsewhere that is Predicated on high skilled labor that imports people from elsewhere That will inevitably add to competition for housing. So our housing costs will probably remain the same or or go up despite the
- You know our attempts to increase supply So I'm not saying that that is necessarily our strategy, but I think we have to be wary of of that and make sure that at least a high proportion of The workforce is employed locally or at least regionally so that you know, we can obviate that that competition for for housing which is Obviously in short supply. That's all. Thanks
- Any other final councilmember comments. Councilmember Stossberg. Thank you. I just mostly actually with my comment.
- call out Councilmember Flaherty and his comments and thank him for that little bit of a history about the ED Lit Fund through the Monday night stuff. And then also tonight, I was also kind of looking at that sort of new thing in terms of the number of things that were shifting into ED Lit as a funding source and kind of thinking like, why exactly are we doing that? And I kind of like get it from an accounting or bookkeeping or simplification standpoint. But it did kind of like raise the hairs on my back going, yeah,
- But in a few years with SEA one we're not gonna have the ED lit anymore and then we're gonna have to move everything back like like how is this gonna work so I guess I'm just glad that councilmember Flaherty brought that up as just sort of a thing that we're seeing in terms of understanding and that Councilmember Piedmont Smith also kind of mentioned it in terms of being able to compare this year's to last year's and how challenging it is to look across those spreadsheets which I also Have found myself doing a bunch so that
- This is definitely like that aspect makes things just a little bit more confusing I think kind of across the board and I do appreciate councilmember Flaherty is kind of like historical Viewpoint there of like when ed lit started and the origins of that because that's very interesting And it doesn't seem like that's the way that it's now being used and I just kind of wonder whether that was something that got lost actually in the transition and and that
- Maybe we didn't realize that that was the original purpose of trying to use that fund in that way. But it's also really large as well. So anyway I'm kind of rattling on but I just appreciate Councilmember Flaherty for bringing that up as something to consider and talk about. Thank you. Thank you. Any other final comments. Seeing none.
- We can move on. I believe that takes us in our agenda to the introduction of the priority area public safety. Deputy Mayor Knapp, welcome back to the podium and thank you again, ESD. Hello again, Deputy Mayor Knapp. So this is a fairly straightforward category in some respects. Obviously the departments whose mission are largely centering this work
- Bloomington Fire Department, Bloomington Police Department. The CIB is, that's a mistake, a leftover from another slide. Sorry about that. And then we do have departments that have staffer programs with known costs. In other words, costs that we already have a dollar number attached to that could be considered applicable to this category per Council Member Flaherty's comments about having dollars attached to things, and those are included here.
- As we saw earlier, the administrative divisions of fire and police aren't included here.
- I did include in the table of expenses in this category some parks expenses that are actually ARPA dollars but I included them because I thought it was important for our community to understand that there are significant expenses spent on public safety and we've been able to use ARPA money for that and will for a while longer and when the ARPA money is gone the question of how we fund all of the things that we've been funding internally and externally with ARPA funding and whether we can do that at all is of course
- yet to be determined. The categories that we created here cover a broad range. Both of our police and fire departments do all kinds of work that is both incident response but also a lot of public outreach. What we consider alternative response, we can define that in different ways, is that always only unarmed response.
- thinking of some conversations I've had recently, or could it include MIH, for example, our mobile integrated health unit? So there are questions about, of course, about how we categorize all of these expenses and what we hope to see there. So I do think we have some, as we go into allocating costs, and many of the costs that
- We have our people costs, and that's why it can feel a little tedious to have to split things across different programs and make these hair-splitting decisions about is the prevention program for domestic violence, for example, do we consider that public safety, or is that community health, or some other category? So I think we'll have some robust conversations about that. What we consider fits into this category under prevention, or whether we want to see that somewhere else, where we put administrative costs. Our consultants will also have advice on that.
- And we do have some questions too about actual spending. We have some annual grant money that we give out for CFRD, for example, gives out violence prevention grants. And we know the total number of that.
- at the beginning of a year, but we don't know who yet we will award it to. And so there may be some grants in there that we wouldn't think would necessarily fit into one category or another. So there's some decisions to make there. And of course, the ever-present question of how, in our limited time that we have, or however much time we give ourselves to present, how do we present all of these different programs without having 40 people up here talking to you every night? Or maybe we do do that. Questions?
- Thank you any questions. I see that's more Ella You're the first So Great I I like that presentation. Maybe this is a bit tangential, but my question is about You know, we fell behind on public safety now we're catching up Much gratitude for that but with the name of
- Concurrency that is keeping pace or even having infrastructure and services in place Anticipating new development. So say summit Big development four thousand two hundred fifty units. We're already lacking a fire station on tap road Where will our priority be to put that infrastructure in place before? the build-out occurs significantly
- Is that part of the you know sort of the grander vision of public safety? Let's keep pace or even anticipate be proactive That is a great question. That is a deep question. I don't have a great
- Preformed answer for that. I think our chiefs have probably been working on those issues or their departments have been working on it for much longer Than I've been in office and would know more about the kind of historic planning that's taken place for that As you know SCA one has thrown a monkey wrench into everything so plans that we've made in the past that
- We're going to work we they may still work in the future. We'll we'll find out but I think there's those are great questions to ask and we do need to consider them while we're also looking at how can we actually fund all of the pieces of making those neighborhoods happen all of the roads and infrastructure as well as the public safety that they will need support for Thank you, and I'm sure chief Kerr will have maybe something to add so thank you for that Additional questions for the presentation of the public safety priority area
- Seeing none we can go to public comment on this priority area as presented by the deputy mayor Seeing no one in chambers anyone online. No kidding. Okay. Thank you back to council for any comments on this priority area councilmember Piedmont Smith Well overall I I
- I think it's unfortunate that we don't have another category here other than police and fire, because community safety involves a lot of other ways in which to address emergency situations. A lot of that has to do with social workers, people with mental health experience.
- peer counselors and such that we're seeing throughout the country are being created and offered through programs that are known as community responder programs in many cities large and small throughout the United States. And I know we I've talked with the mayor's administration about this and the
- community advisory on public safety commission came out with a report that reviewed some of those best practices and and recommended that we do a study here in Bloomington to see if this might be a good investment here in Bloomington. When you look at just as a concept you know that OK something is going very wrong some of the community is somehow threatened and
- your options are to involve law enforcement or to involve the fire department, that is not a really big palette of options. When in many cases, especially as our mental health services have broken down, as the drug addiction crisis has continued,
- In many cases those are not the best responses to solve the problem and to get at the root of those problems. So just overall I would love in the future to see a third category in this in our budget under public safety to have a community responder category that is not under the police. I know we have social workers under the police and we'll talk about that.
- But I feel strongly we need to move in that direction. So that's my comment about this category is that we are still stuck in police and fire, whereas really studies have shown, and even historically if we go to a time before policing, that the community response, the unarmed response, the kind of response where you can't end up in jail. You instead end up with resources to get yourself on a better footing.
- Something that is missing and that we should really incorporate. Thank you Thank you other comments from council members on the public safety priority area I'm seeing none. And with that, I think we are moving on to the Bloomington Fire Department. Welcome chief Kerr You will have I think 20 minutes for your presentation. No, no, I only have 15 15. Yes. Thank you for it doesn't take that much but we'll see
- Well, Roger Kerr, Chief City Blank-to-Fire Department. First off, I just want to thank Deputy Chief Litwin, who puts this budget together every year and does a great job and does most of the heavy lifting. And then Chief Zeeks, who's back here, runs our operations side. And then Chief Drescher, who runs the training division, which we'll talk about here at the end. And then Chief Daffrin couldn't be with us tonight, who does the MIA agent prevention. So all that teamwork makes all this work really well.
- We are basically four big categories what you would consider operations response, which if you call 9-1-1, that's what you get We have inspections and investigations division. We have the NIH's and then we have training. So just kind of a quick highlight as you know, most of our Cost is driven by personnel. Our budget basically is flat other than the collective bargaining agreement, which was agreed upon last year and it was in the second year of its
- Of its agreement so then we'll work on that next year but 911 calls in twenty twenty three or five thousand nine hundred sixty one and you can see in twenty twenty four that went up eight point two percent. That number just continues to grow it has I don't think in my time here it has ever gone down it always continues to increase so our services are are needed more than ever.
- On inspection side, you can see that they've also gone up. That's because we've had now three full-time inspectors. One of them got started last year, so we've gone up. I'll just preempt. Next year, that number will go down some because we have taken on the sororities and fraternities on the IU campus. And so that has taken one inspector almost an entire six months to get through. So that has taken away from some other, but we're also protecting and inspecting a large population. So it's a trade-off that we're willing to make right now.
- The MIH division, and I probably said this last year, and I probably will say it every year, is probably one of the fastest growing divisions we have. What they do in the community outside of 911 calls is pretty amazing. You can just see there how the numbers have increased every year. They'll continue to increase. I'm sure when I come back next year, it'll be bigger than that. The one I will point out, the average client visit from five to eight, that just means they're spending more time with people who are on the margins and giving a chance to get them healthcare,
- They've gotten people's social security cards, they've got ramps built, they've got wheelchairs, that kind of stuff that just takes time when you have client interactions. So they're spending a lot of time with clients, which means that keeps them from calling 911, keeps them from in their houses, keeps them ability to get the medical care they need. They've started telemedicine, which means they don't have to go to the doctor. We can go to them, the doctor can log on and basically have a visit with them without them having to leave the house.
- They've started permanent car seat fitting a station now Here and then we're the only one in Monroe County So if you have somebody who needs a car seat, they can come to us and we can help them That's all grant funded. So the car seats are grant funded So it's pretty pretty amazing what they've been accomplished in just the last couple three years. I Wanted to bring this up because you talked to you know, we've talked about The collective bargaining agreement and what did it do? Well, I think this is exactly what we've hoped it would do and what it did what we wanted to do and
- As you can see in 2023 when we run a process we had 141 total applicants in 2024 when we were a long way behind that number was way down to 87 We just completed the process. They had 272 applicants Start we've hired as it says there on September the 15th when we swear in the two individuals we will be fully staffed for the first time in a long time and that is because
- of what you helped us do, which was pass that collective bargaining agreement and make us very competitive so that we can be fully staffed, like I said, for the first time in a while. As you can see, there are capital projects. That's a lot of big stuff going on right now. Station three, which is up on the IU campus, is just about complete. They're finishing up some minor stuff. They still got some grading to do outside, but predominantly it is ready to go. We'll be moving back into that here
- Hopefully shortly by the end of September and the operations and training center, which is south of town. You'll see now There's a big hole in the ground We've got that started and we're pretty excited about getting that up and going that'll give us a lot more space to store equipment store some reserve apparatus and just give us a lot more room to train they can do the training in the classroom and literally walk right down the hill to the training tower and put that practice into use not have to get in the car drive across town pack up their gear and that stuff's a lot more efficient
- And then lastly, I'll bring this up, I think Councilmember Rallo brought this up on the first night about how do we collaborate with other agencies. For the first time this spring, we did a joint recruit academy with Monroe Fire Protection District. So they had a hiring group and we had one and we got together and they all went through recruit academy together. So we supplied, as you can see in that video, there's instructors from Monroe Fire, there's instructors from Bloomington Fire, we housed it.
- They helped us with all the logistics and all that. So it basically was a joint academy. First time this happened, it was a huge success. I imagine we'll be doing a lot more. Such so that Ivy Tech was a part of this as well. So everybody who went through that academy got credits from Ivy Tech for classwork. And they got recognized at the state level for this cooperation amongst these three and got an award for Ivy Tech at the state level for this academy. And I think pretty much this is the model that a lot of people would like to use.
- I think with that, I will take any questions you might have. Thank you for your presentation. Questions from councilmembers. Councilmember Rallo. Thank you, chief. So one question I have is, you got more calls, 911 calls. How is response time? Are you able to meet those? Are you able to maintain your record of response time, which I
- As I recall memory service is quite good Yes, it's been a little challenging. We're better off now We've got back down into the new station and that put us back in a better position We got some equipment back where needed now the challenge has been we had to move out of station three So we've it's kind of hindered some of those recalls up on campus, but we're getting ready to go back So once we get back there, we'll be back to being able to respond just like we as we as good as we have in the past Yes, okay great and what accounts for that eight percent plus?
- Number of calls is it just across the board or is it anything in particular that you can I would I would say it's across the board But it's heavily involved in the on the EMS side. Yeah, that has been the fastest growing component I know we say fire But the reality is we do a lot smaller portion of fire than what we've ever done. We do a large portion of EMS Kind of work, which is predominantly where that run volume pass picked up is on the EMS side Okay, and then my last question is about that taps the
- Tepro fire station anticipated for that large development summit Can you tell us anything about that is that We have put working on that yeah, we have thoughts and discussions But as has already been mentioned Senate bill one has kind of put a lot of that on hold Just you really don't know what funding is going to be there and where it comes from Excuse me. Some of it is the the horse in the cart type thing
- Do you build the station in anticipation of the grow out of the residents or you wait till the residents get somewhat started halfway through and then build up to meet it? So that's a conversation that I think the administration and the mayor's office and all of us have to have at some point of how do we want to balance this and then with funding? How do we do it? It used to be that we were anticipating TIF funding to be utilized That might be part of it could be yes Okay. Thank you very much
- Additional councilmember questions councilmember Stossberg Thank you last year with state law changes the fire department decided that they wanted to do the fire merit commission Yes, and I just want to know how that's going It took a while to get it going finding commissioners was a little bit harder than we anticipated But we do we have found enough that we were one have one vacancy. So we do end up have a quorum they have done their first official act which was certified those two
- Hire ease will be coming on in September. They they took care of all that hiring process. So it is up and running Seems to be working really well and the union and and the and us are happy with the way it's going So we're glad that we got it accomplished Great. Thank you. And then to like totally change gears on that down into your
- the line item details. So and this was another one of those line items where as I mentioned before things went from general funds to to EDI lit. So I think that I successfully tracked the instruction line from like you know through those pages. And one of the things that I noticed that I just wanted to ask about and get some clarity. So
- this year it's budgeted for 112,000 ish and in 2025 and then in 2026 I think it's the same but in 2023 and 2024 the actual expenditures were way less in terms of instructions. So let me see if I can scroll up and find that so you know what I'm talking about. So in 2023 it was
- 34,000 in 2024, it was 46,000 and those are actual amounts. Oh, and actually then it was budgeted 97,000 this year and then even more next year. So I guess I'm kind of wondering in terms of, not that I think instruction is not important, I think it's super important, but if we have kind of a history of not spending that much,
- Have we spent or do we plan to spend that? 97,000 that was allocated in 2025 are there specific plans for specific training and instruction for 2026 that warrants that addition What I will say is in 23 and 24. We didn't have staffing to send anybody to training We were so far behind that if we send anybody to training it created overtime was just created more problems So we didn't send very many the other side of that equation is our department now is
- Off-the-cuff at top of my head is probably about 60 percent or 65 percent less than five years So all those individuals the more training we can get them which we have sent a lot already this year And so we continue to send because our staffing allows it now Off to training at other places so that they can get some of the they can't get the experience per se But they can sure get a lot of training before they have to have that experience so our hope is we spend every dollar that on getting these people up because at some point
- The department's going to be extremely young especially on officer side and stuff So this is our goal is to use that money to get as much Training as we can so that they can be ready to take those roles was the department ages out Great. Thank you very much additional councilmember questions Councilmember repeat Monsmith Yes, thank you chief Kerr I was also looking at the the budget sheets and it looks like
- There's quite a bit more budgeted for overtime. Could you speak to the overtime pay? needed well Historically we had to have it with us being fully staffed We hope we don't but as we go through you never know what happens people get sick people get hurt So that's in there in case we have to have it. Also you have to understand in that overtime budget firefighters earn a certain amount of that through
- FLSA because of the number of hours they work so that overtime comes out of that money automatically So it's not just extra hours work that some of their just salary comes out of there as well because they work You know what one cycle they work 96 which they don't get any but the next two cycles that work 120 they automatically get overtime by just being on duty And so some of that money comes out of that overtime budget Because of how they're scheduled yes, okay. Thank you Additional questions
- Councilmember Ruff. Thank you Chief Kerr. You mentioned earlier an increase in services provided to Indiana University relative to recent years. Has there been any commensurate deal where the university makes contributions in some way or shape or form to
- Offset the demand the increased demands on staff time and they you know We have a long-standing agreement with them, but they pay the salaries for everybody at station 3 and that's didn't continue to ongoing and so that I think just last year we had a meeting and that can we anticipate that ongoing it's probably a conversation we have to have especially within it with the inspectors having to spend some more time there, but right now, you know, we're
- We don't have a they're doing what they've always done in the past I don't know as we have a haven't had that conversation about going in the future with extra services needed Okay, thank you Additional questions I Had one about a shift a reduction in the amount of the fire department budget that's coming from the general fund and that
- corollary increase in the PS-LIT funding. So it's about 1.7, 1.8 million reduction in general that looks like it's kind of mostly just migrated to PS-LIT instead. A, I wanted to just confirm, is that accurate in my interpretation of the budget book? And then B, wanted to ask about any rationale or what changed in the overall PS-LIT funding umbrella that enabled that? Did other things have to shift? Yeah, a bit more about it. Thank you.
- Yes, you are correct. We moved we kept all of the salaries in the general fund and we moved the other Just administrative expenses into PS lit because PS lit wasn't being utilized fully and we thought it was a better use of that Dedicated funding source that can be only be used for police and fire to start paying for some of those police and fire expenses in the next couple of years It takes a little bit of the burden out of the general fund. We're completely aware that lit is going away There there's a lot to talk about the new
- Lit structure, especially for fire with the new lit rate coming that can be approved by the county There's a lot to talk about but for at least the next two years. We think that it makes more sense to put those administrative Fire and police expenses into the Public Safety Fund and use that use that funding that is coming in every year Thank you. And so the PS lit was I think adopted slightly prior to my service so two terms ago essentially mayorle and council terms and I
- My rough understanding was that the primary purpose of it was for capital expenditures and to make capital investments. I know we have no shortage of outstanding wish list or just many needs on the capital investment front. So this seems like a shift in some sense of the kind of underlying assumption of what that fund is for and what that lit is for.
- Does the state, do the state law changes and the fact that LIT's gonna look different in the future basically undermine the case that that should be capital, you know, used for bonding, for instance, to support bonding or for other capital expenditures the way I think, you know, was kind of intended for initially? I'm gonna hypothesize about the future of LIT. It looks like the future LIT will not have those kinds of
- Any kind of restriction on it, but it's yet to be yet to be kind of looked into Okay, but short answer I guess like so your orientation is no the PS lid is not something that we're saving primarily for capital expenditures Saving for capital expenditures or dedicating to capital dedicating. We're still putting all capital expenditures in PS lit and we're
- Doing other things like repairing capital. There's a lot of motor repairs and fuel and Insurance costs that are coming out of there too. That's probably the bulk of what's coming out of Okay, those expenses are thank you Any other questions from council members before we go to public comment Seeing none Do we have any members of the public who would like to comment on the fire department's proposed budget? I Don't see any here in chambers anyone online indicating they'd like to comment. I
- No, still no still waiting for that first member of the public I see at least one member of the public who could step up. Maybe there's others Okay back to councilmember. I'm ready before the end of the night. We're gonna get one Okay back to council members for comments on the fire department budget that's one for Stasburg Thank you, I think it's cause for celebration that we're about to be fully staffed in the fire department I think it's pretty awesome
- and I Have a couple more questions I'm gonna submit written just giving you a heads up for that and then the other thing that I wanted to comment on was Appreciating that councilmember rough used his time to ask about the IU payment in regard to the fraternities and sororities and I just really support a conversation moving forward to consider figuring out a way to compensate for
- for the inspector's time related to that service that we're doing for those students. And just kind of making sure that because the property tax situation is so different with IU-owned properties and some of those other related buildings related to IU's campus, I just think it's really important that if we as a city are putting services and resources toward that, that we're also figuring out some kind of compensation model for that. So thank you.
- Additional comments from councilmembers councilmember Rallo Following up and what I asked about and that is that Anticipating the largest development in Bloomington on the southwest side which is already lacking a fire station that Might have been Should have been built over the past couple of decades. I think that we should the city the council should be
- prioritize Having the land is dedicated or at least we've been promised the land by the developer but have a have a plan for building the fire station have it in place before It's needed so that it doesn't put further strain on the existing infrastructure and services Thanks Thank you additional councilmember comments
- I am not seeing any Okay, thank you very much chief Kerr and members of the fire department We are on to our last Presentation of the evening, which is the police department and dispatch I believe chief Decoff is presenting and we have 20 minutes allotted for this presentation Good evening council members. My name is Mike Decoff. I'm the chief of the Bloomington Police Department and I appreciate the opportunity to present my budget request
- So you can see in 2024, the calls for service that we had were 75,951. That was a 2.4% increase from the previous year of 2023. 2024 wins, violent crime decreased by 24% and our community engagement increased by 40%. The biggest decrease in violent crime was in the area of assaults and domestic battery.
- There was increases in child abuse and neglect. However, I will point out that our agency has four detectives that are a part of the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force that's operated by the Indiana State Police. In 2024, we were awarded the affiliate of the year for our investigation and our assistance with other regional law enforcement agencies in the investigation of
- crimes against children. We also were recognized this year as an outstanding agency, again, for the continuation of that work. Our community engagement, there's multitudes of things we do. National Night Out is one, we just had that. I thank all of you for your participation in that and showing up. We participate and do drug take-back programs. Pack the Cruiser, which is a food drive, food collection,
- Drive that we participate in we have our resident police academy where we have citizens Attend a 10-week 10-week session where we go over all aspects of the department Just answering questions for them. Our teen academy is for younger people who are interested in Possibly a career in law enforcement We do car set car seat fittings and installations and something new that we're doing is a bike index program where we're trying to register bicycles since we have
- pretty big bike theft problem in our community. Some more information on calls for service. You can see in 2019, it dipped in the COVID years and has increased ever since then. This is a comparison from January to June 30 from 23, 24 and 25. What is really interesting here is
- 25 we've already seen a 23.9 percent increase in that six-month period over our calls for service from 24 Spent a little bit of time on recruiting and retention again. We very much appreciate You supporting the increases in salaries for sworn police officers We had a hiring process earlier this year where we had the largest group of people that ever That we had ever hired and that was 11
- Of that 11, six of those people were certified. Five of those certified people are just about ready to get out on their own, so we're gonna be able to add police officers to help with the call volume. The other five that are not certified start the academy at the beginning of September. They will be done at the end of September, and then they will start their field training program.
- We have many partnerships with different social service providers in the community. Our DROs, our social workers, our outreach workers work with 41 different service providers in our community. That makes a huge impact in the people that we're able to work with, serve, and make sure that we get services for. Here's some statistics on some of the outreach things that we do.
- I will, the outreach statistics in the lower left corner, those are statistics from two people that we have hired that work for Centerstone, and they help us walk around downtown and along the beeline and identify people that they believe might need services. They usually start from our substation at the beeline, walk north to the downtown area and Kirkwood area, and they work with providers
- To provide those who need services with us with those services. I want to highlight one that they did Earlier this year what started last year and continued into this year There was a person that they were dealing with that was service and housing resistant Which means they did not want any kind of help they continued to work with this person the person started accepting services and eventually housing and so that
- And in and of itself, they continue to follow up with that individual to make sure that they're connected to the services that they need so that they can stay on course to keep housing and those important mental health services that they need. So that's just one example that they've done. They've done many other. I will tell you that the statistics on the right are from our social workers.
- Much of 24 was accomplished with only two social workers for the bulk of the year. As you are aware, we have been struggling to hire the fourth social worker for dispatch. We were able to do that just a couple of weeks ago, so hopefully that program will be moving forward once they complete the bulk of their training. Stride, there's been a lot of talk about Stride.
- In 2024 BPD diverted 122 people to this to this alternative response agency We are currently the city is working with them on a marketing plan that Cook incorporated is very active and also Cook helped kind of start the ball rolling for the discussions for this program to start they are still involved in that and we very much appreciate that and
- because they bring the business community into also looking at these issues and providing the guidance and the support that's needed to keep it going. So we're looking forward to increasing the amount of people that go to Stride with this marketing program. Stride also has a response team that is available 24 hours a day that they also utilize.
- And BPD also uses that team as well Some information on our downtown resource officers, you can see the total number of calls for service and 24 We currently that program started with six full-time officers we're still not back to that because of the staffing shortages that we still have and
- But we have three full-time people and three part-time people along with a sergeant that oversees that unit Something new in the 26 budget is funding for a reunification fund this fund We've we've other providers have that fund but it's not as easily accessible and when we encounter someone that is new to our community
- Many times when they're first here they want to get back to where they came from and so that's what this fund will be used for mostly We will also be using it for people who might need work related equipment to help them get jobs such as Safety goggles or work boots or something like that but there's money in the and next in the 26 budget so that we can help people get back to
- their own communities where they have support services and kind of that network to help them succeed. Talk a little bit about emergency response and investigations. You'll see the four categories that are on this slide. Our weapons calls have been down the last couple of years, but we still have them. There have been a couple of high profile incidents that have happened more recently on the B line.
- We were able to make arrests and and all of those where weapons were used But it part of this is is based on the forensic investigations that we are doing on weapons that we recover We utilize resources that that run tests on these on these firearms that help link them to other crimes Not only locally but around the state and that has helped us
- better to be able to charge people with weapons offenses and get convictions, which is, I think, a big component of why we have seen fewer gun calls. The drug situation, we still continue to have overdoses, we still continue to have dealers that prey on vulnerable people, and so we are focusing on dealers that do that. We've had several cases where we have arrested
- people for dealing resulting in death because of the investigations that we've been doing. We do not take an overdose case just as an overdose case. We also look at those as criminal investigations to see where that person might have gotten those drugs and how we can look to see how we can charge those dealers with providing the drugs that caused those overdoses.
- Human trafficking is something that we are starting to have more and more of those types of cases. We are partnering with other agencies in the state to investigate those cases because they don't necessarily just stay in one community. They are regional and statewide. And so we are working to make sure that we can put a stop to those types of cases so that those people who are
- in those situations can be freed from them and go on and live a normal life. I also already mentioned the ICAT cases. We are very active in those types of investigations and frequently are making arrest for child pornography and child sex cases. A little bit of information from our dispatch center.
- We are currently 14 telecommunicators short. We have a hiring process underway where we're trying to fill some of those positions We also are in the process of looking for a new manager that oversees the entire unit We are in the application process right now and hopefully soon. We'll be starting interviews to fill that position and
- Capital projects, the mayor has talked frequently about 714 South Rogers. It's the proposed site for the new police headquarters. We're excited about this location. It's close to downtown, it's close to the beeline. It's reuse of an existing structure and we believe that it will be a nice anchor for that neighborhood who has struggled in the past with things that have gone on.
- Project is something that we are still very much early early in the planning stages of it But I just wanted to touch on that and let you know that we we are still moving forward with that project And with that I thank you for your consideration and we'll take whatever questions Thank You chief you got for your presentation Councilmember Rallo Thank You chief
- Thanks for that thorough presentation. I'm so Anticipating your level staffing is increasing Will we reach a point where we can anticipate greater speed enforcement in the community? So we have done we've started to increase track of traffic enforcement the last couple of years as we add more officers
- Those calls that are coming in will be spread out. So yes, we should be able to to look at those types of complaints and Put out radar units to to work on those issues Your your calls so far in 2025 Have been up significantly. Is there something that particularly accounts for that?
- No, it's actually across the board Which is it's the last couple years. That's been the case There's not one particular area that we we can point to this as ah, that's the problem. It's it's literally across the board and I had a constituent asked me about We say a program called silent nights. I don't know if it's still quiet nights. Sorry quiet nights quite nights and
- Is is that still something that we can so we boy officers for yeah, we still do noise enforcement We haven't kind of used the term quiet nights a whole lot recently, but we we Unfortunately frequently when we have those units out they're pulled off to take other calls for service That tend to be more more pressing gotcha. I
- Okay, well maybe level of staffing will attend to that too. Thank you Thank you additional questions councilmember Piedmont Smith This may be a question for the controller but I noticed under and your memo When it talks about the different budget categories and changes in each it says under other services
- some of the Cost of increase but those were offset by the last Equalization payment being made to Monroe County for central dispatch. What is an equalization payment? So when we entered into the agreement with the county Many years ago when we built the new dispatch center the difference this the city owns the property the county paid for the equipment and
- And so that was offset. So those equalization payments are our reimbursement back to the county so that it comes out even So the city still owns the property She wasn't here. She said that that's what it had to do with it was payments back to the county to equalize the payments that both entities made towards dispatch
- Okay, so the goal is a 50-50 split of expenditures between county and city or I don't 50-50 but the city The city has an asset We have we have the building the county did not have the asset they had equipment that has to be replaced so that's Legal probably is the better question to ask for that because Corporation Council Rice is the one that
- Negotiated basically that she was here then Controller McClellan, do you have anything to add? No, I just wanted to make sure you knew the payments were over and we can dig out that schedule and kind of look at the language in that interlocal and You know and go from there and ask legal. Oh So it's it was those payments went on for a certain number of years. Yes We are we have paid off what we were supposed to pay and
- So we got you done. Okay. All right. Well, that's good. Yeah Thank you Additional questions from councilmembers Councilmember Stasberg Thank you on that same page in your memo it says that you know There's increases due to fuel costs and I'm wondering if there's been any investigation into electric vehicles for police usage
- So there have been some national studies of electrical electric vehicles and and and policing and There are not very many Agencies that do that because they just they seem to not hold up as well I know of one I think there's one agency in Indiana that has a couple of Tesla's that they use but they
- With all the equipment that are in police cars The the electrical system it just doesn't hold up as well as a traditional car Okay and then The other thing so I have like more questions that I'm gonna end up submitting written as well but I think the other thing that I want to ask you now is so we're like
- pretty close to fully staffed I think in comparison to where maybe we have been so if you could just take you know the last remaining time to talk a little bit about how Bloomington residents will see that change and what kind of effect that would have on them to have that greater staffing and similarly like within the department what kind of changes you have seen in terms of officers and culture of department and that kind of thing
- Because I assume there's like less overtime if there's more officers and that sort of thing So if you could just talk about that for a minute, that'd be great. Yeah, so so our overtime expenses have not really changed yet because Even though we just hired 11 people they're not out yet on their own So we had 20 I think was roughly 20 21 openings we cut that down to 11 We do have a couple of people. I think that are slated to retire and
- at the end of this year, but we also have another hiring process where we have, I believe it's six people that we are doing backgrounds on. So we're hopeful that we'll cut the 11 positions that we have open in half. So we keep making progress. One area that we are seeing a lot of improvements is we're not seeing other office, our current officers leave to go to other departments.
- That's been reduced dramatically because of the take-home cars and because of the salary increases. And so as we continue to hire people, hiring a cop is a lengthy process. There's a lot of training involved. So if we don't get somebody who's certified, it takes a long time to get them out on their own. But we will continue to work towards that and hopefully by the end of this year,
- We will have Less than ten openings so that as we start next year We can continue to fill those positions and get police officers on the street. What that means is that We should have less overtime Sorry, I just saw the time I'll follow up with that with a written comment so you can talk more about the community impact. Thank you Thank you additional councilmember questions
- I'm not seeing any Okay, members of the public. This is your last chance of the evening to comment this time on the police department and dispatch Budget proposal do we have any takers in chambers or online? Congratulations and thank you. Please state your name and You will have two minutes to comment Yes, Kevin Keough. Yeah, I want to discuss cyber security and cyber crime
- In recent years, unfortunately, police departments, like many organizations, have become increasingly vulnerable to cyber attacks and data breaches. In fact, it's been a little over a year, but no county government experienced an intrusion. It's not really clear how extensive it was, but I know our police department is connected to them.
- I know that investigation's ongoing, but we really don't hear much about it as a member of the community. But it seems like some of the data that the police department has would be very valuable to hackers. Personal identifiable information, your case files, your operational plans and some threat assessments, digital evidence, law enforcement databases, and employee data. Plus, as we heard earlier this week, the federal government is
- kind of reducing their support in this area, which concerns me too. But it seems, you know, why is, you know, a lot of the data the city has is public data, but this data is valuable because of ransomware. And I don't know if that attack was a ransomware attack, identity theft, undermining investigations, disrupting officer operations, even espionage, and also public shaming and discrediting, which is unfortunate. So that concerns me.
- security, also cybercrime. I know my time's running, it's not much time. But the Blooming Foods Incident, I think is a good example of a cybercrime, the skimming of credit cards. I know the police department was involved in that. I know there was a lot of people who were affected by that incident. It's a crime. And I know you helped
- Blooming Foods, you do the investigation, but all these people who suffered that crime. I don't know if you keep statistics on cyber crimes in Bloomington, because I know it's underreported. I just read an article today where it's $10 trillion a year. And I know my time's up already, so thank you very much. Thank you very much for your comment. I appreciate that. And please do feel free to follow up via email with the council if there's more you wanted to share. Do we have any other members of the public on Zoom who would like to comment this evening?
- Okay, thank you seeing none in chambers we can return to council members for comments on the police and dispatch budget Councilmember Stossberg I'll just quickly say I didn't get to we didn't get to talk about dispatch very much during my questions, but I just find it like It is a crisis that we have 14 out of 18
- Positions open in dispatch and three out of six supervisors open like that just feels like crisis level to me And I just wanted to call that out as part of my comment that and I know that there's work being done on that I know that there's been ongoing work being done on that since I've
- been sitting in this seat it has been being talked about as an issue. And now that our fire is is staffed our police are really really getting there. I just hope that there's going to be some real attention on dispatch and kind of going back to the.
- The line items in the end that I didn't get a chance to talk about that I will follow up on it also seems like there's been some in cuts To the instructional lines related to dispatch those were kind of hard to read and hard to determine So it's you know, like like I really have kind of the outstanding question that I don't expect to be answered right now of what can we do to support dispatch in getting staffed what what can we do to
- get them to stay and just how we can do that as a system because they are just a really, really essential piece of the whole public safety picture. I mean, it didn't get much time at the mic today. So that's just why I wanted to call that out. And if any dispatchers are listening, we really, really value you. And if anybody's out there going, oh, that might be an interesting job, look into that because
- It's a very essential service that we need. So thank you very much Thank you additional councilmember comments Councilmember Piedmont Smith Yeah, I just wanted to to say that Some of us here have been mentioning that we will put other questions in the written form and I wanted to assure the public that those questions and the answer those questions will be made available to the public and
- on the city council website it'll probably be part of the council packet when we actually get the budget budget legislation. So if you go to the city council website and click on meetings and documents for that upcoming meeting I think it's September 24th that's probably where it will be. In any case it will be available publicly and if you need any help accessing that you can contact the council office or any of us here and we'll be happy to let you know. Just wanted to clarify because we keep saying oh well ask that later and we will.
- It'll be public. So thank you. Thank you. Additional comments from council members. I am not seeing any. And that concludes our second night of budget hearings. I think we set a record and we'll be back at it Monday evening next week August 25th at 5 30 p.m.
- Thank you all for tuning in and presentations this evening. We're adjourned.