I'll call this meeting to order. This is the Bloomington City Bloomington Common Council budget hearings
for 2027 and It's our final evening. This is Wednesday, August 26th, and we have a number of departments
and Commissions the Monroe County Capital Improvement Board the office of the city clerk office of the
Common Council office of the mayor office of the controller legal and risk management department and
Human Resources Department and Information and Technology Services Department ITS and each one is allotted
ten minutes So let's begin Excuse me councilmember Rallo. Would you like me to call the roll? We should
call the roll. Yes Councilmember Flaherty Stossburg here Piedmont Smith Zulek here as sorry Daily Rallo here Ruff
Rosenberger Thank You deputy city clerk McDonald so with that we'll begin would you the controller like
to speak first or Okay, mr. Allen did you have something to say all right, let's begin the Monroe County
Capital Improvement Board Mr. Weichert. Thanks for joining us I'm here this evening with Jeff Underwood
our controller Jim sober Stein
Treasurer Doug Bruce, who's your appointee to the Capital Improvement Board and Talisha Coppock is here
with us this evening from the Convention Center So my my nervousness tonight is not the presentation.
It's the ability to advance the slides. So all right An update on what's happened in 2026 the Convention
Center expansion building envelope is completed and
There were property transfers that occurred For properties south of the current Convention Center that
came from both the Redevelopment Commission and the county Requests for those transfers were made in
January in keeping with the interlocal agreement they were
We were told they could be transferred in April and we agreed to the transfers It was in June 5th that
those transfers actually occurred and the deeds were transferred So those properties have been in our
ownership since June 5th Selected a major art installation project and contracted for design of limestone
arts projects Some of you voted on the public vote on the art installation you know that we've selected
a the wisteria wrap around the bridge and
We had $520,000, which was the 1% appropriation for art. $400,000 of that was designed or committed
for the art installation. The remaining $100,000 is for the next phase of that art project, which will
include local art for exhibit. We awarded alternates for the existing building. And I want to mention
that among those alternates, in February of 2025, we approved the final design of the convention center.
And at that time, we set aside six project activities that were identified as alternates. We weren't
sure that we could commit to the funding of those alternates. Those alternates were in the current convention
center. And they included an IT upgrade, a kitchen upgrade, a new HVAC system, a direct outdoor air
system, new window replacements, all to improve the efficiency of the building, and some masonry work.
We were able in September of 2025 Looking at our contingency budget to commit to the IT upgrade in the
current building So the two buildings could this is an English major saying two buildings could talk
to one another because that's how I understand IT and For the kitchen upgrade, but that left four other
alternates that we were not able to fund in September in April we approached the Convention and Visitors
Commission
Asked them if they would commit to funding the remaining alternates for the current building at a tune
of 1.6 million dollars and the Convention and Visitors Commission voted to do that and in fact that
1.6 million dollars will come from the budget of the CVC so we are able to Fund all of the alternates
all six of the alternates for the current Convention Center staying within our budget and with the assistance
of the CVC completing those alternates and
Accepted operating responsibilities for the Convention Center's day-to-day operations in July The new
building target completion date is it says January 7th. I happen to know it's January 8th Because January
8th is Elvis's birthday and so I've put a picture of Elvis and the construction office and they know
January 8th is the completion date for the Convention Center will then move over into the
Targeted completion of the current building and the renovations in the current building which will include
those alternates that I identified for you just moments ago We will let me turn this over now to mr.
Underwood who will talk with you about the the budget both for the Convention Center And for our project
and Talisha Coppix here as well for any questions you have later. Thank you
Good evening, Jeff Underwood controller for the capital improvement board. We're here to present two
budgets for you this year the last budget for the food and beverage funds that the city set aside for
related to the construction of the existing and current facility and then the interlocal agreement calls
that Both fiscal bodies the county and the city's fiscal bodies will approve the annual operating budget
For the Convention Center going forward. So we're going to present the 2027 operating budget as well
as noted for this request These this funding comes out of the food and beverage fund It is included
with the controllers office as well and a part of the larger appropriation for the full city budget
for 2027 we're proposing no personnel costs
In category two, supplies, $1,000. In category three, professional services, internal, for legal, controller,
and owner's rep, insurance, website, and then other. And if I can figure this out, all right. And in
the other category, which is the majority of the expenses, you can see commissionings of $60,000,
communications, AV and IT for 400.
Security issues a hundred thousand graphics and signage five hundred thousand relocation services 50
furniture fixtures and equipment of 400 and then a contingency of just over two point six million dollars
for a total of four million four one nine and the total budget request then is five four million five
one three six one six and this would be the end of this will be the last food and beverage budget and
That we would present to the City Council With that I'll move on to the operations budget and it looks
a little different because we will be collecting revenues For the rental space in the Convention Center
of estimated to be around three hundred and sixteen thousand Then service revenues and this is catering
and 80 IT and IV services of a million five seventy four and
and then to close the gap between expenditures and expected revenues in keepers revenue of 1.397 million
dollars for total estimated revenues of 3 million 288 on the expense side you can see cost of sales
of 1 million 361 and that consists mainly of additional services for catering and AV and IT and those
are billed directly to the
compliance, comprehensive insurance program that covers both the operations and properties of the convention
center of 200,000, utilities 377, building maintenance 340, office of 58, membership and service enhancements
of 29,000, and professional services contracts 922,000.
In this budget, there is no city subsidy, so there is no direct city revenues provided to the convention
center. The only additional revenues that come through are through the county and innkeepers tax. That
money is appropriated to the Convention and Visitors Commission and then we have an agreement with them
to both provide sales support and the funding gap. With that, I will stop talking and we're happy to
answer any questions you might have.
Thank You mr. Underwood, we'll go to council questions now for the Monroe County Capital Improvement
Board Councilmember Piedmont Smith Yes, the professional service contracts in your operating budget,
what would that include That's will be our contract with the Convention Center management company
That provides the personnel and operates the day-to-day operations. So all the staffing and related
cost to providing us that service so delicious delicious works for that company they this is the company
that has Managed the Convention Center on behalf of the county from its inception and the CIB is going
to continue to employ them to do that as well Separate from visit blooming and Bloomington and DBI
Yes, so what's it called? so the innkeepers tax is is Managed by the convention and visitors commission
and that's in a county appointed board They contract with visit Bloomington for their part of it and
then they contract with us to provide funding and sales support For the convention center itself the
the day-to-day operations are then through the the CCMC
CCMC Convention Center management company, so that's what it's called. Yes. Okay, you can see that there's
yeah many entities It's taking a while to wrap our heads around all the different groups that are involved
but Our relationship the CIBs will basically be with the CVC and with the CCMC Okay my other question
is so you expect all Construction
and Renovation costs to be completed and closed out next year. You say you don't expect to bring us
a budget for 20 No, we will not need to bring you a budget next year for food and beverage We expect
to be closed out. The actual construction will finish up July 1st It'll take us several months to close
out all the final invoices the commissioning the handover I would anticipate that we would be fully
done no later than early 2028 but
We wouldn't need any additional funds for that. Okay. Thank you Council council member Zulu, you know,
I hear that we've been doing very well in sales Moving forward. I was wondering if anyone could speak to that
Tell us a copy Convention Center management company and yeah sales have been going great in communication
with the different meeting planners We have 70 proposals out 29 sign and
Events going through 2032. We're super excited about that Like some examples the asphalt paving association
600 people for three days and that's next year the Indiana Dental Association We have 700 people and
that's going to be for three days. They were very excited about
Indiana Parks and Recreation, Indiana Community Corrections. I like sharing those names just because
they're such different entities. They all have a connection with IU in some way. They want to come back
to Bloomington to visit. We've been providing tours to meeting planners and organizations that work
with meeting planners. October 12th and 13th, we have two days of tours to show them the space.
We've had connections with these folks for years, and it's finally time that we can start offering them
something. The building's working out really well for groups of 500 that they can have their general
session, move into exhibit space for sales, then move into breakout rooms.
a great group we just talked with, a local person is the band director for IU's School of Music and
he wants to bring 300 band directors from other colleges here and as they start talking, they've got
these three main presentations they need to do but then they bring bands along and the students and
then they need to have space and then they'll have
different performances at the end from the different students. And so they'll be going back and forth
between the convention center during the day and the IU School of Music in the afternoons and then coming
back downtown for different breakouts. So we're super excited about that. The downtown visitor center
opening at the 4th Street parking garage is going to be a nice way to
connect them with the community as well and tell that story. That's supposed to open in December. So
I am pleasantly surprised that these planners are as excited as they are and they like the space. And
our local groups also, the Food Bank, Suit Bowl for example, they've been at capacity for years and
tickets sell out in like two days. And so they are so excited to
go into that larger space, and that'll be in February. So I think it's good. I'm really excited, and
thank you for all your support through all these different conversations for 20 years of how do we make
this happen. So we're working with the different hotels over the next two to three years.
so we're doing different packages and incentives so that you know, because we don't have that host hotel
yet and That'll even go to a next level whenever we do have that I'm excited about it. So I'm Thank
you miss topic. Thank you so much. Congratulations. Okay. Thanks for the question other questions from
council I have got one
Mr. Underwood perhaps I should ask it of you because you mentioned that there is a contingency under
the other services Column you've got a contingency of 2.6 some million dollars What happens for to that
if it's unspent it would revert back to the city. It's coming back to us Okay. Okay, great
And just one last thing that mr. Weikert mentioned is that I was pleased to hear because we're all concerned
about the volatility in markets and costs and things like that, but you've basically You've got already
contracts with the various Professional services contractors and so forth that It's you're not subject
to any price volatility going forward. No, we have everyone under contract for both the base and
Construction and the alternates. Okay, great. Good to hear Okay, if there are no further questions,
then we will go to the public Is there any public here that would like to speak on the Monroe County
Capital Improvement Board? budget Please state your name and you have three minutes Hi, my name is raised
a devil and I just wanted to say I think that giving four and a half million dollars of public funds to
An organization that's gonna destroy affordable housing And replace it with for-profit activities is
not For the public good. Thanks Thank you for your comments and My other question would be if the operating
budget is a net zero after you include non-operating activities would there be a net loss a Net loss.
Okay. Thank you for that. I
Let's go online to see if there is there anyone in line that would like to To speak user raised hand
function. Mr. Allen will attend to you Anyone? Yes to two people. Okay, please state your name and you
have three minutes. I Guess I'm up. This is Paul Rousseau In the recently published Bloomington 2026
community survey the greatest concern of the respondents was the shortage of affordable housing and
The City Council also has made the issue a top priority. Your concern was evident during the debate
over permanent affordability for the Hopewell South development. But seven days ago, the Monroe County
Capital Improvement Board stated its intent to tear down about 30 units of old apartments that have
become relatively affordable, what many would call naturally occurring affordable housing.
According to its own bylaws, the specific purpose of the Capital Improvement Board is, and I quote,
to select the site for the expansion of the Convention Center expansion components, contract with operation
and management organizations, oversee the process for hotelier partner selection, name the expanded
center, hire and retain support staff, and determine the need for additional amenities, including a
parking garage, end quote.
Note that the purpose of the Capital Improvement Board is not to make decisions regarding housing.
Nonetheless, the board is preparing to destroy the apartments at Seminary Point even though the hotelier,
Dora Hospitality, does not need and will not be purchasing that part of the land that was purchased
by the Capital Improvement Board. The board intends to divide the land into a hotel on the north side
of the six and a half acres and land for resale on the south side.
There's no evidence that the land to be sold off the part on which the apartments currently exist would
be directly related to the Convention Center If the capital improvement board has become a rogue agency
that exceeds its mandate in a manner in direct opposition to affordable housing Then I question why
the City Council would want to continue funding it Thank you Thank You mr. Rousseau We'll come back
to chambers if you would like to
Speak please state your name first. Thank you Hello, my name is Barry herbers The CIB is a fundamentally
corrupt and anti-democratic body this year The CIB was given 29 units of super affordable housing and
several affordable commercial spaces in downtown Bloomington essentially for free They have since thrown
out every single person living or working in them I have of course talking about the tragedy of seminary
point here are some CIB highlights from 2026 and
Under the CIB's watch, a family recovering from addiction and expecting a second child was forced out
of their apartment. Under the CIB's watch, a young man's rent was raised 20% every month until he was
forced to leave his home. I doubt any of them even know that happened. Under the CIB's watch, a 70-year-old
woman with cancer was forced to leave the home she lived in for 10 years. They messed up businesses,
too. Friendly Beast Satire and Blue Tip Billiards were the only social venues within walking distance
of my house. The CIB forced them both to close last week. There are now zero social venues within walking
distance of my house.
Sounds like friendly beasts narrowly managed to scrape together a new location, but Blue Tip is destroyed.
The CIB is destroying my neighborhood, and now their president, John Weickart, that guy over there,
real bad dude, is parading around calling Seminary Point a public nuisance. These buildings are covered
in beautiful murals. I watched one of them get painted, and until last week, this place was a hub of
communal activity. The CIB is destroying my neighborhood, and for what?
a corporate subsidy so taxpayers can buy Dora Hospitality, a new hotel to service wealthy tourists while
they walk around on my neighborhood's corpse. But it's actually even worse than that. They're not even
building the taxpayer-subsidized hotel on Subsidary Point. They're building it next to Seminary Point.
All of those people's lives were ruined and businesses uprooted because the CIB never wants a wealthy
tourist to see a poor person. At this point, any rational person starts thinking, Jesus Christ, who
elected these people? And that's the rub. Of course, you know this.
The CIB is an unelected body with no public oversight and no accountability of any kind, other than
the money local government gives them. Throughout the tragedy of Seminary Point, you, city council,
are the only relevant body that has not shown abject corruption. The CIB are the worst of the worst.
It is their job to make life harder for poor people so that it can be easier for wealthy tourists. And
it is unconscionable to give these villains another cent. You cannot keep letting them do this.
Make your term on City Council means something. If you give them one more cent, I will never, ever forgive
you. These people are scum. Thank you. OK, thank you. And let's go to the online. Mr. Allen.
Hello. Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Please state your name. You have three minutes. Excellent.
My name is Seiforth Breeze. I wish to mirror many of the comments other folks have made, concerns over
the CIB and how it has handled itself on the matter of Seminary Point. I believe that it has acted in
ways which are counter to the public interest and
I mean really some of the comments before I've covered much of what I want to talk about. One of the
points that came up during this public comment or sorry during the Commissioner questions though was
about the two million dollars. I was curious if there would be a way to earmark that going forward for
affordable housing to provide some sort of like stopgap measure to just prevent those funds from disappearing.
when they are so closely tied to the CIB to the entire saga with Seminary Point. I want to also echo
previous comments stating that I think the City Council has taken concrete steps through this sort of
like, you know, through the Seminary Point saga and that that has been noted and has been appreciated.
Many other sort of like individuals who are tied to this have made, you know, sort of statements alluding
to the fact that they support affordable housing, that they think that, you know, like there should
be a land swap when that was still viable, things of that nature. And those steps that y'all have taken
have been noted and it's appreciated. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your comment. Anyone else
in chambers?
I'd like to please state your name, and you have three minutes. Awesome. My name is Matthew Joseph.
I just wanted to use this opportunity to want to obviously talk about the budget a little bit with the
Capital Improvement Board, but also just name what's going on here. This is very clearly a classic story
of gentrification. I mean, we're talking about a decade and a half of deferred maintenance from the
county level
I know people that live at Seminary Point that was requesting maintenance for a very long time, it wasn't
getting that. In fact, the roof that they love to reference as falling down was requested to be fixed
years ago, was not fixed, and then that land is now owned by the Capital Improvement Board,
and has now been, no longer is the reason for destroying Seminary Point is for a host hotel. Literally
the only case that
John Wehrkart and the Capital Improvement Board is making for why they're destroying it is because they
think that the buildings are too far gone. Do you see the pattern that we've gotten stuck in, right?
We don't listen to the tenants asking for their needs and then we justify the destruction of where they
live for the sake of something like a convention center, but in this case it's not even, it's really
just to keep the land empty and I'm sure, because the Capital Improvement Board has
has only one interest, and that is to build a convention center. So it's in their legal bounds to sell
it to the highest bidder, which is likely going to be student housing, and then use that money to build
more of the convention center. And that doesn't help any of the locals or encourage any of the locals for us to
care more about Bloomington for us to stay, for us to care about the culture that we live in here. I
just want us to know that this is the story that's happening. The Capital Improvement Board is telling
you another story of gentrification. This is not Harlem, New York. That's what we think about when we
think of gentrification. This is literally a perfect example of it. You guys are perpetuating that system
continuing. I'm just disappointed in y'all.
Because I think that you guys know how politics works. Excuse me. Yes, please address the chair when
you when you speak. Okay, forgive me. Yeah And I think just like and then so I just when it comes to
the when it comes to the budget I think that's There is is there room here is a question, right? Like
is there a world where you take the money out of the budget that they use to demolish affordable housing?
I wish I knew all the nits and grits of like what exactly it could look like but like what is the leverage
that we can do so this doesn't happen again and then also like just keeping this story if Seminary Point
does get destroyed like I don't want this to happen in vain I don't want this to happen again for our
community because we want to keep Bloomington have that charm. We don't want to just keep Kicking our
own people out. Thank you Thank you for your comment Is there anyone else in chambers?
to speak Anyone else online mr. Allen? Okay, we'll come back to council for final comments on Monroe
County capital improvement board budget Anyone interested in councilmember Piedmont Smith Two comments
first of all, I did ask mr. Underwood for a more detailed like a
spreadsheet showing revenues and expenditures and comparing it to 26 so that should be issued as a Dandem
Probably next week and then on the other hand I Appreciate the members of the public who have been actively
trying to save the super affordable housing a seminary point and I do recognize that
We have some leverage here because they're asking us to approve their budget. So I'm going to be reaching
out and talking to folks at the CIB and talking to my colleagues and seeing if we can do anything to
either preserve the housing or some of the housing that's there or have some funds from the sale of
that land or all of the funds, all or some designated for low income housing.
So I I will continue to pursue that. Thank you Thank you other comment Councilmember Flaherty Appreciate
the comments from members of the public There have been a number of decisions the CIA bees made over
the years that I've Really disagreed with and thought were not at all in the public interest. I've also
been bothered by the structure and
but I believe to be a general lack of accountability of that body. So yeah, that's not new. I think
the case of this housing at Seminary Point is just such a shame that this is what has come to the, I
think the last speaker, Matthew Joseph maybe was his name, really outlined a part of the story here,
which is that it wasn't cared for appropriately by local government for many, many years, ostensibly
because it was going to be used for a convention center site.
That was always a stretch, because it's so far from the designated site. And it's just sad, because
it was so avoidable. Maybe it still is. Maybe there's some other benefits that can be salvaged.
But yeah, it really is a shame. I appreciate folks advocating to preserve affordable housing that we
have occurring near our downtown, and appreciate your comments tonight. Thanks. Thank you.
Councilmember Rosenberg, I also appreciate the public comment today I Think it is a huge shame and just
great disappointment where we are. Thanks for the other comments I don't want to say the same things
I mean it was either nine of nine of us or eight of nine of us that asked for a land swap and
It seems to have not mattered and not been really considered well by the RDC the administration and
the CIB I live right there, too So I say I think it is the best place to live and I think it is the
most awesome place to have affordable housing You don't need a car. You literally walk across the street
to a grocery store I think it it was like a challenge to maybe keep
keep it and but like we can do hard things and a lot of times we choose not to or we again choose to
just give money to I mean Tourism in a way that I think is not helpful and I was against the convention
center from the get and this just makes it even Harder that not only do we have this convention center,
but we also have lost so many affordable units I also find it ironic that we did a you know PUD at Hopewell
and there's
Plaza affordable housing happening there. This is caddy corner to that but for some reason I Don't know.
It's not shiny and new maybe that it just wasn't cared about or thought about in the same way But this
could even have been an extension of Hopewell that It feels like really wasn't considered I had something
else. Oh, I think you know it is hard when you're advocating against some entities that have a lot more
access to the media and press releases and all those things
These units had hand rental permits so they weren't I mean maybe they needed some long-term maintenance
and it was ignored for the decades but they were legally rentable in our city and so like the narrative
that like no one should ever be living like this is like this city gave Gave the landlord authority
to rent these and I mean, I know there's like
dead rats and things that definitely needed to be addressed. But I'm just saying the narrative that
they should be torn down because they were so gross. It's like, well, we gave them permits, so they
must have been good enough to live in, is what I'm saying. And they were good enough to live in. So
I just wanted to put that out there, too. So thank you all for coming. And I think, too, a lot of us
are in contact with you all and continue to ask for things and keep us updated whenever you want.
Thank you any other comments from council I just want to say thank you for the comments regarding this
it is tragic and I The last speaker I think really made some very salient points about how the intention
of particular bodies that are not malicious but are working in a certain with certain tasks and priorities
in mind are motivated to do
Something that would be contrary to the interest of the general public in some case and I think that
it is ironic that affordable housing exists here while we're trying to build it literally a block or
so away So the council recognized comes my Rosenberger said the councils recognize this We made requests
They weren't they didn't materialize But I'm looking forward to speaking with my colleagues some more
about What we can possibly do and what our priorities are because clearly there are a lot of expenses
that we're going to be looking forward to in the future not looking forward to in the in the sense of
you know happily anticipating but there are expenses that we will need to make and we have affordable
housing as our highest priority we say and
So it is something that we need to obviously recognize and work toward in any way we can so Appreciate
your comments Thank you to the members of the CIB for your presentation And so now let's go to the office
of the city clerk clerk Bolton Welcome
Okay, true confession. I'm not great with this So good evening. My name is Nicole Bolden. I'm the Bloomington
City clerk Thank you very much for taking the time to listen to our budget presentation. I want to give
you all a fair warning I'm going to try and talk fairly quickly Because I wanted to make sure that if
you had any questions about the memo that I submitted to you You have time to also ask for that so in
our office, we have five full-time staff members including the clerk and
Our budget is going to see a roughly 5% change this year. Most of that is in the COLA increases that
are in place for all staff members. I did not account for, and my apologies, for any step increases
that we may see in seniority for clerk staff. So that might vary or change a bit prior to the final
budget being presented. But I want to make sure you actually have that flagged.
Other services now includes about $4,000 for insurance premiums that I think has been consistent for
other departments where you've seen that and we've kept supplies flat We have over the last several
years tried not to do major increases unless it was dictated by increases in supplies And we've tried
very hard to do more with the same whenever possible. So we've continued that process in 2026
You know the highlights we've talked about them a bit, but we have continued to update our legislative
record We've kept the code up current and updated. We've also looked for a new codifier Part of that
is so that we can actually get a faster turnaround on our city code and have fewer errors We've improved
the boards and commissions recruitment. Thank you very much for adding that position last year We've
seen some really amazing things come out of that
program, and we've continued with our adjudication of parking citations and citation trends,
tracking them. This is the role of the clerk's office. For all of you, I think you're at least vaguely
familiar with what the clerk's office does. I joke just a bit.
And when we talk about being the cornerstone stone of transparent accountable and accessible local government
I do want to emphasize that that is not always just literally being in the physical space But we were
talking about making sure that the records are available and apparent to the public making sure that
we're responsive and Making sure that when people have questions about what the council did and when
they did it whether it was last week or a hundred years ago we can actually get it to them and
So these are our priorities and goals. We're going to continue the work for boards and commissions,
archives, and records retention. We have a five-year plan for evaluating council records and preserving
them. And then our financing and compliance is continuing to analyze and audit our citation appeal data.
Key programs.
Still more of the same. We're not adopting any new programs We've got all of our existing resources
and we're going to continue in that space And this is our budget at a glance. It's largely flat and
it's largely non-discretionary so numbers And our conclusion to the questions that I received from council
members prior to today
The reason you didn't get it until a few hours ago is I had some personal matters to attend to. And
while the raw data was available in our office, we collect a lot of data for almost everything that
we do. I did need some time to actually give you some context for that data. I didn't want to just send
a bunch of numbers and have you look at it and say, great, that doesn't help us. So if you have time
to look through the memo that we sent, it gives you a broad overview of the office and all of the positions.
It also gives you a breakdown of each individual position in the office including our internship program
for a question From one of the council members asked about the office being locked. We have tried to
be in alignment with the administration City departments in this building there are over 10 departments
Maybe 12 roughly most of them are actually locked throughout the day and have been for
Over four years now if I'm correct Including when the council office was co-located with the clerk's
office The signage has not changed the door has not changed in terms of it being locked So part of that
is being an alignment with the rest of the city part of it is for safety reasons and part of it is to
actually make sure that when we have upset or agitated folks who come in which we do have from time
to time there's always somebody available and
to actually be a witness or intervene if necessary, which is not always possible in a small office with
a very limited staff. I think I just ripped through my entire presentation faster than I planned. So
I am here for questions and more information. And I also am very lucky and grateful to have my Chief
Deputy McDowell with me, Deputy Clerk Colleen Williamson, and Deputy Clerk Jennifer Crossley.
Thank you for building Other questions for the clerk and council Councilmember council president. I'm
sorry Thank You clerk Bolton, could you tell me the last time that you in the clerk's office did a wedding ah
The last time I did a wedding was a few months ago And we actually have been discussing when we're going
to get the office open back up again on a regular basis for performing weddings Right now we have a
lot of council records that are spread over the space So I don't think most people would be thrilled
to actually get married surrounded by boxes of aging records So when we get that under control and actually
have an appropriate view on the
scope of work, we can actually remove it from the space and start actually using it for performing weddings.
Thank you. And asking to lead to my next question, which is if you were to think about
currently the load of Of the clerk's office the excellent clerk's office who does wonderful work Thank
you for all the work that you do when you think about their workload on a scale of one to ten Where
would you where would you say they're sort of utilization rate is right now? Right now I think we're
running at about nine point five In terms of utilization we are now
At this moment just in the last couple of months fully staffed and not working on additional projects
training supporting other staffs or offices that are understaffed or no stuff So right now we're actually
fully able to work on all the work in the office without Some of the shortfalls that we've had in years past
What would happen if we if we were to underfund the clerk's office by one position, for example What
would the impact be on this on residents in Bloomington? what you would see would be a Loss of council
records. So in years past there The office has historically been understaffed and or underfunded or
underutilized so what we saw was when I came into office were
Over 25% of the council meetings that didn't have minutes or memos You would also see the records retention,
which right now there are council records that are Not to be too graphic
but are covered in mold and feces in some of our storage units. Those are just some of the things that
actually need to be handled. And it's not a one and done thing where you can clean it up and say,
we're good. I'm still going, I'm sorry. But I do want to underscore also, you'd see a slowdown in services.
So those parking ticket appeals that are handled, instead of being handled in three days, which is the
median number right now, you would actually see it slow down to two or three weeks at a time. So the
public would feel the impact in ways that are not like, ah,
Trash can get picked up. But when you need the service It slows down or disappears. Thank you. I have
a follow-up, but I'll ask it at my next chance. Okay Okay in the meantime, are there other questions?
Councilman Rosemarie. Hi, thanks question about the cola And if it is divided out in some way, I think
this is says personnel services 5% And is that I think the city was doing 2.7. Oh, yeah, I didn't
Those are numbers that I got from the controller's office, but from the numbers I've seen so far It's
going to be just in the base salary. Yes, but there are also differences in oh There are other costs
that are associated with salary. So your total compensation per person is not just the base salary It's
also additional things and I insurance costs. Thank you Okay. Thank you. Mm-hmm for the questions I'm
gonna ask one
Go back to you president. Sorry Yeah, I was a thank you first for going through in great detail about
your staff duties and Responsibilities is very helpful one thing that I really noticed brought my attention
to this was the median parking appeal resolution time has dropped significantly from 15 or 13 days to
On average now for the last couple of years. That's pretty astounding That is largely due to now staff
having staff. Yes That can take that on As I see right both two deputy clerks one 75% of the time any
other 25% It's important to me and I would also mention that It seems to me that we've been much more
efficient with boards and commissions and
Thanks to chief deputy clerk cross Lee who's done an outstanding job Are we in your mind? Most efficient.
I mean are there is there still is there still? Efficiency is it you ask Councilmember sorry would like
to know if we if this is optimized right now or we could even
there are there ways in which we as counsel maybe could step up and and Provide greater efficiencies
for you. For instance. It is a better like I don't see herding cats here on your Documented duties,
but that's one of them anyway, if you'd like to speak on that or you want to that is a
Loaded question. So I will say no, we're not fully optimized I think we can always do better and we're
still exploring ways that we can actually streamline and be more effective in our roles because Ultimately,
the goal of the office is to serve the public and to make sure that 50 years from now We're usually
looking at things through a 50 year lens. Like what's gonna happen in 50 years? How will this actually
play out? so
The goal is to make sure that we're getting better throughout time and that it's replicable and that
it's repeatable. So a lot of it is we can do so much better, but I don't know how much further that
will be. So to that, and then as far as the council being more helpful in making the job easier to do,
it will be always the things that I always ask of you all, which is, you know, respond to emails,
Answer phone calls bring cookies the usual Yeah It seems like one measure would be boards commission
sometimes because they were lacking a Complete commission didn't reach quorum and now it's just my assumption
I don't know but they seem to be I mean just anecdotally they seem to be able to reach quorum or I haven't
heard many problems now we didn't we're not in control of attendance and
We are in control over and there are appointments. There are ongoing issues with attendance and Membership,
but if you have deeper questions about that, I'm sure Jennifer would be happy to answer them Great.
Thank you. Would you like to? Councilmember Stuspert, I Just want to officially yield my three minutes
of question time to councilmember. Sorry if he wants to I
My follow-up question was just about so then thinking sort of following up on what Councilman Rallo
just asked when you look at the rest of the city And particularly council but but any other operations
within the city Do you see duplication with things that the clerk should be doing could be doing and
is doing? Over Yes Could you please specify?
I'd prefer not to Well, okay Let me let me rephrase I mean it's not it's not totally I think there are
duplications and layers but to be clear the clerk is a separately elected office so there may be duties
that are being handled through the administration but appropriately they are supervised through the
administration and they are speaking for
Other departments as opposed to the clerk's office while speaking for the city is not speaking in the
same way Similarly, there are duties that in the past council staff have done that have traditionally
belonged in the clerk's office It is not now
It's a duplication of effort and or time, but that is the choice that you have as a body have made and
that is absolutely your right to do so. I do think moving forward, you have had this opportunity to
look at your staffing and how your office is organized. It is entirely up to you as to how you follow
through and what you continue to do over the next few years, but I do think that you have gone, you've
had nine staff members get hired
and leave the city over the last six years. So it might be worth looking at what you're doing and deciding
if there are duties that can be spread out or moved into other places. And that's why I didn't.
really want to answer that, because I didn't want to. That's exactly what I was trying to get at,
which is, I mean, obviously, in this second, we're going to talk about council budget. I mean, I think
that that's a relevant question. That's where I started with trying to understand how much workload
you feel like we're having. But I think there's another side of this, which is I've been talking with
department heads with different, I basically asked the same question across the budget, which is, what
happens if this position doesn't exist, if we don't backfill this position, or if we just eliminate
a position?
And what's interesting is, in a lot of cases, one of the answers that comes up is, well, then who's
going to deal with Commission X? It's kind of like a fascinating answer that comes up a lot in a lot
of different spaces. And so it seems to me that we
do a sort of disproportionate amount of work with commissions and boards. But then we've created this
new position. So I'm just sort of interested if that can be better leveraged, if that can be changed.
And then if we were to lean more on those things, like what that would mean for the staffing in the
clerk's office, budget, et cetera. So not enough time to answer that question now. But so it sort of
ended up being a quamant more than a question. But I'll send that to you in writing as well to follow
up. OK. If I may, I know there was time seated.
Absolutely can There was a study that was done that said they needed to have one person take ownership
of the boards and commissions to take the broad overview and look at appointments communicating with
the public Applications all of those things and so the council looked at that study looked at the position
what was needed what the public was saying they wanted and they actually created that position and put
in the clerk's office which was recommended I think
Personally did not grasp the breadth and depth of the issues related to boards and commissions despite
having been next door to it or part of it for years and now watching and listening to what ownership
really looks like in terms of developing training for staff members for the commissioners themselves
working with legal department the mayor's office Communications everything that's involved in boards
and commissions. It is an enormous job and I appreciate the fact that
The person who's doing the work actually has a background in communications and marketing the person
who's actually doing it is already deeply deeply nerdy and Involved in municipal government at a level
that most people are not so yes There are other people who are doing it, but this is her whole position
so for other departments when they have staff liaisons or people who are doing it that is not their
only purpose it is a portion of their larger job and
Whereas for this department that is the job Does that help Good. Thank you very much If there are no
further questions, we'll go to the public on the office of the city clerk budget if there's anyone in
council chambers Anyone in line mr. Allen, okay, we're back to council for Any other questions or final comment?
Seeing any I just like to say thank you and your staff for your service to the public and your invaluable
help to the council We really appreciate it Okay, let's go now to That was a good segue that discussion
for the office of the common council Council attorney Allen
Allen interim attorney to the extent that the clerk suggested that I'm redundant. I'm happy to accept
that So and I just really appreciate her taking that on Additionally, I would also like to thank all
my full-time staff for joining us tonight It's been wonderful In all seriousness the council's office
says you all are aware well aware, but maybe the public isn't as aware has a fairly
broad sense of duty and I do want to take a minute to At the start of this just to shout out some of
the excellent customer service that's been done over the years by council staff I think that the primary
visibility that council staff has is Informing and making this accessible for the public and to the
extent that the prior staff Set up systems and has been trying to incrementally improve that over the
years I really applaud them because at the end of the day
All we are is to make one, the council be able to do their jobs as effectively as possible, but also
make sure that public meetings, the information that's flowing through the council office is accessible
as possible. Just a little bit about the office generally. It's budgeted for three full-time staff,
two attorneys, one legal assistant slash researcher. The attorneys are also your chief administrators.
The changes in the budget for those three positions, which currently are vacant. I am interim. I'm serving
on a contract role.
basis at this point, so a lot of hiring to be done. The budget change then for 2026 appropriately is
mostly salaries. So not only cost of living increase, but understanding that these are open positions
and to bring it in line with the potential ranges. So if you get experienced candidates, you could actually
offer them the full range of salaries. I don't expect that you will actually end up spending that full
amount necessarily.
but it needs to have some flexibility to allow the council to hire appropriately for the next year.
As I mentioned, the key budget needs for 2027, hiring and retaining personnel, continuing to enhance
public accessibility and dialogue, which I'll talk about just a little bit, and then continuing the
great work you all already do with community grants that improve quality of life, and also getting that
message out and exactly what those do, I think, would be a great enhancement to the council office.
In terms of 2026 highlights, one, also in great seriousness, thank you to the clerk staff and the city
staff for helping aid us during this time of transition. It's been no doubt a challenging year for the
council office. However, people have stepped up, have aided us, and have been very understanding. And
that's obviously when the city works best is when we're all working as a team in the same direction.
The council itself has issued $500,000 in Jack Hopkins social service grants which end up being in large
part some of the lifeblood that goes into our great nonprofits providing services throughout the community
Additionally, although these were allocated last year the $500,000 for the pedestrian safety committee
committee on improving Access alternative transportation methods and safety in that regard also a great
community service that committee is set to meet
at the end of this year, another $500,000 is proposed in this budget for those grants as well. And then
also this year, you know, just the council, this is more your highlight that I'm stealing from mine,
so thank you. The utilizing of deliberation sessions to foster not just understanding but information
sharing between the entire city, so with council. And I think we could go further in that regard and
particularly with future business, but it's something that has been
It's good to see that come back and see the council working together in that dialogue. And to that end,
enhancing the public access and dialogue is important to continue for 2027. So one of the things, obviously,
there's the public documents accessibility piece, which has been widely publicized and understood, trying
to make those documents conform with current ADA law.
And to bring them up, although that's been delayed by a year It's still an important thing and the clerk's
office has made great strides in helping with that and making that a much easier transition And so to
the extent that council staff can further that and further that with your packets and information I
think that that's a great thing to do. I think also rethinking and taking time to be really strategic
about how meetings operate and
and whether people are getting the most out of them. Are we bringing everybody to the table? Are we
making it as easy as possible for people to be here, to comment, to participate in the process? And
the wonderful thing about having kind of a, I don't wanna say reset, but a new opportunity in the office
is to take a very deliberative look at those issues.
And and I think continuing to enhance the opportunities for dialogue and collaboration So those could
look like on top of the current deliberation sessions that are happening certain consensus building
activities Having public meetings having public information sessions and utilizing even the space that
council has now So council's office has obviously moved out of the clerk's office It's on it said showers
west on the other side of the building It does have the capability to host certain public meetings
potentially have the public there have time
that they can engage with certain members of council as long as you're not violating open door law.
And then, I mean, this seems like more of a high-minded bullet point to improve the quality of life
for residents, but I think at base, that's exactly what our grants do and the council grants do.
And so, to the extent that, again, the council staff in the past has done a great job of administering
these grants to the extent possible and with the support of city staff,
And continuing to support those policies, but also looking at reviewing Everything that comes before
council with an eye toward the comprehensive sustainability practices that that the city has adopted
So whether that be the comprehensive plan the sustainability plan etc being a little bit more intentional
about utilizing those in decision-making and how Legislation is getting put forward in addition to the
grants in addition to being a service to public service providers
And I think, again, taking this time, basically, I'm just gonna summarize these three bullet points
in the following, which is taking this time to make sure that this office is working exactly how you
want it to be and making sure it's working appropriately for the public. There are plenty of strategies
that we could do. I think one of the things is just making, this is my own thing, so please just understand this.
Making the language itself accessible to the public what we're talking about whether we're talking about
a tiff bond whether we're talking about Traditional appropriation ordinances or anything like that trying
to make that that language in the presentation as accessible as possible to the public so that they
understand exactly what's happening who's on the hook and
How much it's gonna cost them things like that. That's kind of what we're talking about here And then
I think also honestly just celebrating what council does as individuals but also collectively and so
having a better external communication strategy to work with the administration or Individually to promote
those things and then also internal communication So making sure the flow of information between the
council and the administrative staff are working very well So everybody in city staff understands what's going on
Happy to take questions, of course Are there questions for us? Other questions for mr. Allen I'll go
ahead and ask a question It was the memo and these goals was that mostly written by you or was that
in collaboration with a subset of council members or
Yeah, it was taking a lot. It was mostly by me It was taking the priorities from previous years and
kind of enhancing them in terms of what the goals were So so that was where the memo came from Okay,
I don't necessarily object to any of them. I was just curious. Thanks other questions Okay, see none
then we'll go to the public Mr. Allen do you want to
See if anyone's online to ask you a question or to make a comment Anyone in chambers No one in public
Anyone public? Okay, so we're back to the council for comments on our budget of the common council Yes,
come council members like
Thank you, I just want to say I am very very grateful to have had the opportunity to work with attorney
Allen and learn from him and I Don't know how many times I'm gonna get the opportunity to say that but
I am definitely going to say this on this budget He presented so thank you Councilmember Stossberg I
I think that this was maybe the clearest presentation of the challenges that council office has had
over the last six, seven months. And I also want to send a huge thank you to attorney Allen because
without him, I don't know how things would have stayed together because he has done a phenomenal job
serving so many different
roles that are very clearly needed from meeting facilitation to legal advice and services to assistance
with legislation and all of those pieces and This job that we're doing up here like sometimes it might
not look like a lot but it's a lot and one of the ways that it can be managed successfully is to have a
an attorney who helps us figure out the law and the legal aspects of what it is that we're doing what
it is that we're being asked and what are the consequences to that in terms of legal ramifications and
all of those pieces and I just I can't like Overstate that enough. I guess how much I appreciate Him
having helped us with that this year and how challenging it is as a council to
You know make sure that we have all of our eyes dotted and all of our t's crossed When we have one person
who's helping us do that as opposed to three? So he's just done a phenomenal job. Thanks Thank you any
any other customer and Piva Smith Yes, I also want to express my gratitude to mr. Allen We
You know a very difficult we're in a difficult period for the council. We have no staff Mr. Allen, of
course is a contract attorney Administrator and we very much appreciate the work that he's done and
we're very lucky that somebody with his expertise was available but I do think that you know to put
a Positive spin on this the fact that we have no staff
is an opportunity for us to rethink the office and to rethink, to think about, okay, why is it we found
ourselves in a position of having no staff? And how can we organize the work in a way that is more beneficial
for the public, for council members, and for the staff members themselves to have a balance in their,
their work and their life and to have clearer expectations and reporting lines and that job satisfaction
that I think may have been lacking in the past. So, I'm choosing to see it as an opportunity and I think
we, for the rest of the year, we hopefully will hire somebody in the top position and have an opportunity
to rethink the other positions to get back on solid ground in 2016.
I mean 27 Other comments I would also like to I guess third or fourth our gratitude to mr. Allen for
your your work and I'd also like to extend thanks to our council president is sorry for your work without
of well any staff for a while, but without full staff for your
tenure as president of the council and I I did want to make I think a rather modest request since Mayor
Thompson is here Regarding council budget and that is and my colleagues as well that I was very grateful
that Mayor Thompson increased the Jack Hopkins budget to $500,000 and
I know we have a lot of priorities in the city and we have a lot of difficulty in terms of Our challenges
related to revenues and so forth but I think that it would be Prudent to at least keep parity or keep
up with inflation every year With the Jack Hopkins budget because I think that it tends to fall behind
after a few years and that could be that's consequential
even increasing 3% $15,000 would be equivalent to funding one organization generally If inflation is
5% next year, that's 25,000. That's that's a significant amount of money for for one needy organization
and having served on the committee on the committee it's challenging so if we could at least keep pace
Although the needs are greater
Then half a million certainly under the circumstances At least if we could keep pace, I think that would
be a good effort so With that let's go now to the office of the mayor and Deputy mayor Gretchen Knapp
welcome Happy budget has council members who look like party continues I
Gretchen F deputy mayor very happy to be presenting the budget for 2027 the proposal for the office
of the mayor a Little bit about us here. We are some of us along with our most popular staffer Probably
the most popular staffer in all the city hall deputy dog We currently have eight full-time staff. There
is one open position, which is nine positions total Probably could have worded that a little better
and just for comparison when we took office the I looked at the 2023
office of the mayor, office structure. They also had nine positions, but it was structured a little
differently. There was one part-time position, and one of the positions was there was an additional
cabinet-level position, which we eliminated. So we had a lot of questions about our staffing levels
in advance, and I'll talk more about that later. Our budget change from this year's budget is about
a 6% increase, and I'll go into those details as well, but it's down to just a few things that are impacting that.
So the office of the mayor is involved in a very broad range of activities, both within City
Hall, externally, very often as a bridge between City Hall and external stakeholders, constituents.
I've just highlighted a few highlights from the past year, and I'm more than happy to go into detail
on any of these during the Q&A, but when I timed myself going into detail of all of them, it was too
long. So I'll just pull a couple out that you may know may be less apparent or that relate to questions
you've asked.
One is, I think you're aware, obviously with the mayor's background and her deep involvement with housing
and working on Hopewell South, asking for the development process review to help us figure, solve the
question that was the subject of a cabinet leadership retreat, which was what is standing in the way
of making Bloomington a housing production machine? What are the obstacles? And that audit will
Has showing us lots of ways that we can make our process better and you'll get a presentation from that
and from planning in the future They are also looking at the firm that did that analysis is also analyzing
Conflicts in the udio. So there are places in the udio where we say we want this and another place where
we say But we also want that and those two things cannot be done at the same time. So they're gonna
help us with that
Homelessness response the addition of the city homelessness response coordinator has been a huge benefit
to the entire city organization Every single department works on homelessness deals with homelessness
either root causes or impacts every week if not every day and This is the only position in the city
that does nothing but work on homelessness and it is largely a coordination position this person is
not a frontline responder and
But what they ensure is that city staff and the service providers who are out there doing the groundwork
that we are aligned in our efforts strategically at the very top and in our daily activities that we
are rowing in the same direction and Addressing issues immediately before they grow and become unmanageable.
So when we came in we had
12 encampments on city property and some very significant private property encampments. We don't have
any of those now that are major, and that is because we are staying on top of them and able to work
with service providers when we hear, hey, a parks person was out and saw a couple tents in this area.
So then Brian can contact the service providers and say, can someone go out and see if those folks need
services and how can we help them?
and prevent that from becoming a dangerous situation. So, what does coordination look like? Some of
these are taken from things that we've learned from other cities that we've asked or visited to say,
what are you doing that's working so well and how can we copy it? A 10 to 15 minute daily check-in between
city staff, that means
DROs downtown cleanup crews mih Rep from heading home attends that as well and that is anything that
popped up overnight or the previous day What do we need to know to be prepared to address it today?
Which is very helpful at times like these when the county has cleared a major encampment There is also
a weekly check-in that began with just city staff and then eventually nonprofit
Providers and service providers join that meeting and now that time is largely being used for streets
disability discussions There's a monthly meeting with cabinet level and key personnel to make sure that
our top-level strategic actions are aligned with what's happening out in the field and and on the streets
every day and there's much more that goes on with that, but that has been a huge
Asset to to everyone in the city to have one-stop shopping if you hear something about homelessness
If you have a need if you have a question if you need a contact of a resident or a business calls There
is one person that they know that we can send them to who will take action on that We also do a lot
of work with capital projects planning the controller will speak later about the efforts to create a
capital plan very excited about that
I want to talk a little bit about the 911 analysis that is happening with the law enforcement action
partnership or leap So this was negotiated in 2024 Thank You councilmember Piedmont Smith who advocated
for that and put into the 2025 budget and we sometimes hear Why did you wait so long to do it? So I
wanted to give a little background I think many of you know that dispatch has really struggled with
with retention, and I have to give a huge shout out to dispatch staff who really laid the roadmap for
us in 2024 about what we need to do to make it a better place that can retain workers and keep them.
So they got a whole new work schedule in July of 2025, a new leadership structure, new leaders in place,
interim leaders starting in October 25, and was made permanent in January of this year. And so we really
wanted to wait to start this project before we asked
dispatched to do more to stabilize that department. And then we had to wait for our partners at LEAP
to be available to actually start the work. So they just became available earlier this summer, and they
have the data, and soon we will be learning more about how we can integrate alternative response into 911.
We also have community survey, branding website, union negotiations, lots of other topics that I can
tell you more about as you are interested in hearing about them. Priorities and goals remain focusing
on increasing housing, reducing homelessness and addressing the impacts, supporting our asset protection
that we're all interested in and critical capital projects.
Improving city communications through a new website and other methods modernizing city operational systems
which you'll hear more about from the controller and from HR in particular the need for an HR is and
HR information system and a better accounting program that can talk to each other would be great I can't
stress enough the amount of the lack of talking to each other between those
to right now, there is no HR information system. So for example, when we're in union negotiations and
someone says, what if we increase certifications by X percentage, we have no way of calculating that.
It has to be done manually, and it is incredibly time consuming and hard to figure out, to forecast
and predict, much less to just do payroll. Payroll is a nightmare.
and then continuing to bolster public safety both in its traditional forms and alternative public safety.
So there are many new laws that keep popping up and we will continue to work with our partners to figure
out how to best address those and support the providers who are out there on the ground providing that
and advocating for all rowing in the same direction on a shared vision and service area boundaries.
Continuing to develop Hopewell can't wait to see some shovels in the ground there and moving on to the
next section and also implementing the lessons that we've learned as learning by doing as being an entity
going through this process and learning what developers go through and what the obstacles are practically
to developing affordable housing Continuing to work on building a safe city rewiring our city systems
launching new communication tools Challenges again the technology is
What what happened? I will say that I've been impressed at the city in my time here at the number of
MacGyvers We have here and people really are great at finding workarounds But these are very people
intensive workarounds and as we enter a time when we have to be very careful about staff Those really
aren't options anymore Funding our infrastructure dreams also a problem But those are probabilities
where we can collaborate with the county do some capital planning and continue working on how can we
make visible progress and
So personnel, last year you had kindly added a part-time emergency management specialist to work on
building safety, starting with City Hall. We turned that to a contract position for a number of reasons.
One, we were concerned about SEA-1, but also the person that we wanted to hire has some other obligations
with the city, and we wanted them to keep being able to do that, to serve on the utility service board,
and to be able to take on other clients. So it worked out nicely.
The big changes, so that $50,000 moved from personnel to other services, which is a big chunk of why
that number looks so high and why our personnel number is flat. And I did detail in the memo where the
other money came from, but essentially $5,000 to support the winter shelter, which is more
easily administered through the general fund and the mayor's office than hand and HUD rules. And some
other things that I can tell you about on request.
That's it. Thank you, and I welcome all of your questions Thank You deputy mayor now, we'll go to questions
now from council Any questions for the office of the mayor's budget Councilmember Stossberg a Little
bit more about what you ended with with the moving that
part-time position to be a contracted position because the person you wanted to hire was on the utility
service board? Is that what you said? That's one piece of the puzzle. That was not the entire puzzle.
So to back up a little bit, when we first started talking about this position, we talked with IU and
other places who have more experience with these kinds of roles. Should it be full-time? Should it be
part-time? Should it be consultant? And the advice was either consultant or part-time. And at the time,
we thought a part-time person would be better.
On staff because that would allow someone to get to know all of the units in the city and they they'd
need to have those connections As we interviewed for that role We did have many candidates who were
from not from Bloomington or even from out of state and we had candidates from inside Bloomington who
already knew the city very well and so both of these present situations where you don't really want
to ask someone to move from another state for a part-time job that if funding is cut and
You know first in first out might be one of the ones to get cut and also if you have someone who on
deck who already knows many of the
Issues of governmental life and municipal life and all of the people involved that that's a great candidate
but there can be a conflict of interest if you have someone who's working for the city and serving a
paid position on a board and Our candidate that we really wanted not only was on a board and serving
well that we wanted to keep but also had the opportunity by Becoming consultant to then form an LLC
and take on other clients. So it's kind of a win-win We're still getting all of the great work done.
We have a they've been on the job for about a month
Now and moving through the list of things that we decide to accomplish in our first check-in He said
he thought we could get through more than what we had put in our scope of work For the first year then
we had planned so all good on that front Other questions from council councilmember Piedmont Smith Yes,
so since You're planning a new
planning a first time human resources information system. I'm shocked that it doesn't exist. And of
course a new financial system. I'm wondering what change management techniques are employed by the city
when new systems are put into place. As somebody who worked at IU for 27 years, systems were always
changing and those changes were not always managed well for the employees. So what strategies does the
administration use
Well that's a great question and I think the starting point is listening to staff when they say either
we can make this work or we can't make it work. That's step one. If you have a system that people have
been making work and they can continue to make it work, you lose a lot of efficiency just in the process
of adopting and learning how to use a new tool. In this case, since we have no tool for HR and the financial
system, if anyone of you have ever tried to use it,
very opaque even to someone with a little bit of an accounting background. I think it's fair to say
whatever systems we use will be better in terms of being easier to train people on, but there will need
to be very in-depth training and it is a great opportunity to make sure that the processes that we're
following also make sense.
For example, is it the right thing to do to have someone fill out a word form for a contract cover letter
turn it into a PDF Attach it to an email with a bunch of other things and mail it to email it to someone
to get something approved The answer to that is no So I think there will be a great sigh of relief and
it is generally felt throughout the city that these are both
really big needs so there will be growing pains and I'm sure the office of the controller and HR will
be working very carefully on those transitions, but The relief factor I think will provide a huge will
be the wind at our backs as we go through this implementation Thank you for the questions Seeing none
we'll go to the public
anyone is in council chambers who would like to comment on the office of the mayor's budget or online
Please use your raised hand function Any takers? Mr. No one. Okay, seeing none then we'll come back
to council for final comment Okay seeing no comments, thank you very much for your presentation I
Moving on to the Office of Controller, Mr. McKim. Welcome. Good evening, council members. My name is
Jeff McKim, City Controller, and I was hoping to introduce Deputy Controller Cheryl Gilliland, but she
just stepped out for a moment to pick up her charger. The Office of the Controller exists to ensure
that the city's finances are accurate, transparent, well-managed, and positioned for long-term sustainability.
We have 12 full-time employees, including me, and much of the work of the controller's office happens
behind the scenes in support of the entire city government. Our staff make sure that over 1,000 city
employees are paid accurately and on time, that vendors are properly vetted and paid promptly, that
receipts and payments are recorded and accounted for accurately, that bank accounts are reconciled daily,
and that attempts at fraud are identified and prevented.
We maintain the city's financial system and budgets, oversee purchasing and procurement, and provide
the financial controls and processes that allow departments across the city to do their work. Before
I go further, I do want to recognize somebody who's played an extraordinary role in that work.
This Friday, our purchasing manager, Julie Martindale Long, will retire after 36 years of service to the city.
That is an exceptional amount of institutional knowledge, expertise, and dedication to public service.
I just want to recognize Julie and thank her for many years of expert and dedicated service, and wish
her a well-deserved retirement. As you know, I began serving as controller on January 11th. There's
certainly been a substantial learning curve, and the transition has not been without its challenges.
But throughout that transition, we have maintained the city's day-to-day financial operations without
significant disruption.
One of the most immediate challenges we inherited was the city's delayed annual financial reporting
and audit schedule, a situation that had developed over a number of years prior to this administration.
And as a result, we've effectively had to complete two audit cycles in a single year.
We successfully completed the city's 2024 ACFR and audit and laid out April and then immediately had
to pivot to doing the gap financial reporting and audit process for 2025 We're currently on track to
complete that process by September 30th And our audit exit conference is already scheduled for September
22nd with councilmember Stossberg participating on behalf of the City Council
Second significant challenge is the retirement of our purchasing manager, which I mentioned earlier
This is a critical citywide position responsible for overseeing procurement across the civil city Not
simply within the controller's office with Julie's retirement. We're losing 36 years of purchasing experience
Recognizing the importance of maintaining continuity in this function Our staff has been cross training
on key purchasing responsibilities and we currently have an active recruitment underway for her replacement
And then finally, we've devoted substantial time and resources to understanding and preparing for the
restructuring of Indiana's local income tax system, resulting from SEA 1 and HEA 1210. These are complex
changes that will have significant implications for city revenues, budget, and long-term fiscal planning.
Additional legislative changes remain as well. So while much of our attention this year has been devoted
to maintaining continuity catching up on financial reporting Managing a significant personnel transition
and responding to major changes in state law I believe we're also beginning to put the office in a stronger
position for the years ahead
I want to talk for a couple of minutes about some things that I believe we need to accomplish for 2027.
One thing you will notice that's not on this list is OBB. But hold on, I do think there is a path forward
on OBB, which I will discuss after I go through these priorities. If I run out of time, please ask me.
So what are our goals for next year? I've already talked about the struggles with getting caught up
with the audited ACFRs and how we're now and will continue to be caught up on the ACFR with the deadline
of September 30th. However, the Government Financial Officers Association standard for timely financial
reporting is to issue the report within six months of the end of the fiscal year, which means June 30th.
Timely financial information is important because the information becomes less useful to policymakers,
investors, and the public as it ages. Our goal going forward is to consistently meet that June 30th
standard, three months ahead of the deadline, and as we continue to prove our year-end close and audit
processes, look for opportunities to complete the ACFR even earlier.
We also intend for the first time to produce a popular annual financial report or PAFR. This is also
an established practice in government financial reporting recognized by the Government Finance Officers
Association. And while the ACFR is necessarily a detailed and technical accounting document, the PAFR
presents the financial information in a shorter or accessible format using plain language, charts, and
graphics to explain where the city's money comes from, how it's spent, and the city's overall financial
condition.
One of the major goals is to develop a more systematic and long-term approach to capital planning We've
been working with our municipal advisors at Reedy Financial Group to develop a capital improvement plan
And we now have a first iteration based on input from our department heads about their anticipated capital
needs This is very much a living process. We'll continue to refine it as needs costs and
and priorities change, but it gives us a framework for evaluating and prioritizing projects across the
organization, particularly important as we work within the new revenue and borrowing constraints of SEA 1.
And this follows on to some comments that the deputy mayor made we are increasingly constrained by an
aging enterprise resource Planning or ERP system that supports some of the city's most critical functions
including finance HR payroll and utilities
The city has used New World for more than 15 years. It has served us adequately and it continues to
receive necessary security and compliance updates. But the city's operations and the technology available
to support them have evolved considerably over those 15 years, while the capabilities of our existing
system have not kept pace. I want to emphasize that this is not the case of a system that's fundamentally
broken. It works.
The problem is the amount of staff time and manual effort required to make it work. From the controller's
perspective, routine financial processes involve far more manual intervention than they should.
Reports and data extracts frequently require substantial reformatting before they can be used for budgets,
state gateway reporting, audits, or other purposes. Invoices have to be entered manually. Payroll requires
significant manual processing. Financials aren't integrated with the human resources information system,
which requires more time consuming manual processes. Vendors and residents have very limited self-service
capabilities.
Our ability to categorize and analyze revenues and expenditures is constrained by the structure of the
chart of accounts rather than allowing us to tag and analyze transaction across multiple dimensions,
which comes into play when we're talking about OBV. I am definitely running late, so I'm gonna have
to move on. Another goal, as you know, the convention center lease rental bonds are supported by food
and beverage.
tax revenues, local income tax revenues were also pledged as a backup, which helped the city obtain
more favorable financing terms. At the time the bonds were issued, the council was told we would establish
a revenue stabilization fund equal to one year of lease payments, providing an additional buffer in
the unlikely event that F&B tax revenues were insufficient to make a payment. We now intend to fulfill
that commitment by establishing an interest-bearing revenue stabilization account with the bond trustee
and transferring the equivalent of two lease
from the Food and Beverage Tax Fund into that account. If those reserves are never needed for stabilization,
they will ultimately be used to make the final two lease payments. This accomplishes two things. First,
it provides an additional layer of protection should we ever need to rely on the lit backup pledge.
And second, it provides a clearer picture of the actual available balance in the Food and Beverage Tax Fund.
The controller's budget has been reduced by $250,000, which has been moved to the surety bond proceeds
fund. The 2027 budget request includes a $500,000 transfer from the surety bonds proceeds fund to the
fiber connectivity fund. As part of our agreement with Meridium doing business as M Street fiber, we're
required to deposit $1 million total in the fiber connectivity fund.
which funds half the costs of connecting low-income households to the network. For the past two years,
we've transferred $250,000 from the general fund for this purpose. However, this year, we're paying
the remaining balance of the commitment out of the surety bonds proceeds fund, which was created by
you to receive $1 million in proceeds from the surety bond called due to failure by the Meridian
subcontractor, AEG, to properly install fiber within the city limits.
With respect to services, we are working with our municipal advisors on several issues, including overall
financial planning, capital improvement planning, and in particular, analyzing and preparing for the
impacts of income tax changes. We also continue to use the services of our GAP compiler to convert our
fund accounting system to the GAP financial reports required for the ACFR and audit. We don't expect
to see any reduction in these needs.
In the past the city has used two different municipal advisors extensively and we found ourselves using
one of them primarily and so we'll be closing out in an existing three hundred thousand dollar encumbrance
from an existing open purchase order with one Municipal advisor but to ensure that we have the funding
to deal with all the upcoming financial requirements our budget proposal adds a hundred nine thousand
to the services line so that we can ensure that we have the support to continue to evolve our financial
plan capital improvement plan and prepare for lit restructuring
And I am out of time, so thank you very much, and I am here to answer any questions that you have. How
much time would you require? Another minute or so? Yeah, that would be great. Okay, well...
Question time. All right. For three minutes. Great. Why don't you proceed, then? Well, then, I did want
to say that I did find out in reanalyzing our budget yesterday, I did find some lines that I can cut,
so when we submit, we can...
reduce that increase to $58,510. And so finally, what I will take the opportunity to do then is move
back to outcome-based budgeting. As you know, we did not move forward this year with an OBB project.
With me being new in the job and learning the financial system, with the amount of manual work that
needed to be done with our financial system and other priorities, including two audits in one year,
accessibility mandates, and a new state budgeting application,
All that combined with the feedback that we received from council that the work done last year was not
useful in providing you with a more informative budget process, we decided to suspend OBB and instead
engage in a broader discussion with council about shared priorities. We communicated that to the fiscal
committee early on and the council engaged in a subsequent discussion of priorities which the administration
used in formulating this year's budget. However, I do think there is a path to success if the council
still wants to use an OBB framework.
That approach would require a project charter that defines what the minimum viable product is, a council
administration working group that would be very hands-on, and a pilot or phasing approach that would
allow for a limited number of mutually agreed-upon programs or priorities crossing at least two departments.
The pilot should test the proposed data structures, measures, crosswalks, reporting processes, and public
presentation before those requirements are imposed citywide.
Remain an enthusiastic supporter of an outcome based budgeting approach. So I Think like I said, I think
there is a path forward So in conclusion the office of the controllers budget and plan for 2027 focuses
on strengthening our financial transparency Investing wisely in the city's long-term infrastructure
and systems and preparing Bloomington for the fiscal changes that lie ahead. Thank you for listening
Thank you controller Kim. So now we'll go to questions from council councilman Piedmont Smith Yes Mr.
McKim, even though you had extra time it was kind of fast about the outcome-based budgeting So I just
want to follow up make sure I understand So will the ability to track expenditures in order to implement
outcome-based budgeting be a mandatory criterion for any new financial management system that you select and
Yes, and let me you know come back to kind of what the obstacle with the current system is like I said
It's not that there is anything fundamentally broken about it. We accurately characterize and store
transactions we can accurately output them the problem is that the whole reporting framework of the
existing system is just so clunky that everything takes and
an enormous amount of time and manual data cleaning, manual reformatting of reports, and we lack the
ability to have any kind of consistent data pipeline from one system to another. So the ability to report
both accurately but also quickly and in a flexible format so that that data can be extracted and pipelined
into other systems
Absolutely essential. I mean, yes if we did not have that ability to to To report in a more flexible
and efficient manner, there'd be no point in doing it The short answer is yes. It is absolutely a central
criterion okay, and Because it went so fast. Can you go back and talk about what steps you envision
next year to? Take us closer to OBB well, so
Don't even know that it needs to wait till next year. I think what what I thought the really the kind
of Initial steps that we would need to take if the council was Interested we first of all have to develop
some sort of project charter that really that says what is your definition of success? What is your
what is a? Minimum viable product I think was the term that was used in one of the questions
from councilmember Asari
We need to know that kind of understand what that looks like in advance. I think we also need to have
hands-on working group of both administration and Council members to make sure that we're not this is
not something where you can kind of give direction and say go off and do and then hope we come back
with something that works it is something that would need some kind of really fairly
Intensive I guess is the best word but hands on and then the third is just is a phasing structure that
lets us pilot something that And that doesn't have to be at budget time I mean that reporting that that
piloting could certainly be at a stage much earlier than budgeting
So I think if we had those three things, I think there is a path forward It is still going to be until
we're able to upgrade the financial system It is still going to be still going to be stuck with the
clunkiness of the existing system and doing a lot of manual reformatting of data as it comes out Thank
you Further questions from council councilmember Flaherty. Thank you
We don't hear presentations from Bloomington Transit or the Housing Authority anymore because we don't
approve their budgets But one thing with Bloomington Transit that we did commit some years ago with
the economic development lit was an annual appropriation To support among other things rapid
fleet electrification Can you remind me? Does that is that through the end of 2027 that that commitment
correct that this budget includes the last payment of that commitment and
The ED lit as it currently exists sunsets at the end of 2028 essentially a year later. Is that right?
Correct Have there been any conversations between the mayor's administration and? limiting transit either
the board or it's its director about that about what the implications of The final year of the the prior
commitment that was made being next year like what happens when if that money isn't there in 2028 What
they're using it for? What needs they have that kind of thing?
I do have notes on that that I Pulled up because I thought this might come up. So What they used it
for was seed money for electric buses and charging infrastructure on the new facility It's never been
operational money. They've never used it for that Microtransit might have been an exception, but it
was more strategic to use it for to increase the federal funding match essentially from
from the feds for electric and charging so They Here's a quote the city stepped up with the five-year
commitment and gave us an opportunity to tackle big projects Now we need a special taxing district for
BT that the county Could create and that would continue the narrative and so it and this is again coming
from the former GM who as we know is outgoing but the vision was to transition to Monroe Transit and
have a bigger
service area and that would allow a different mechanism to include rural transit and IU that might be
more attractive to them as subcranked contractors and get that writer should up ship up to really Massively
increase the federal share which is the the big money that really would make the transformational impact
So they are not expecting it to continue They don't use it for operations. So it will not impact their
daily operations to have it go away and there is a bigger plan to
Recoup that and much much much more if they could move to a different funding structure essentially
Thank you. Maybe just one last question, which you may not know the answer to but if you do Do you know
if they were able to like what percent of their fleet is electrified like what they were able to accomplish
essentially? I believe it's almost entirely electric at this point. Okay. I don't know that I see mr.
Askins is shaking his head. I don't know the answers that I can find out though Yeah, I can ask as well.
Thank you. Appreciate it
Council questions Councilmember Stossberg Second to you mentioned having had a discussion about outcome-based
budgeting at the fiscal committee meeting and what I pulled up and what I recall was A list of seven
priorities that the mayoral administration came forward with
And five of those, it looked like, had specific things that were trackable in terms of outcomes. And
that is what was in our packet. So can you clarify exactly, like, were any of those things actually
tracked? I mean, here it's trackable priorities were assets, maintenance and enhancement, homelessness,
homelessness mitigation, transportation, implementation of zero fatalities, and safe streets for all plans.
And then housing economic development climate didn't seem to have any specific thing in it at the time,
though I was also told this might be a draft. And then public safety had alternative response in as
something trackable. So were any of those things, I mean, that's how it's labeled as trackable priorities
in that packet from, I think it's June 12th.
I have no doubt that some of the responsible departments are tracking those metrics. They are not being
tracked at the central financial system level for the reasons we've already talked about. Okay. Would
the Deputy Mayor perhaps like to speak to that in terms of the budget instructions or creation that
you gave to cabinet
So I think the short answer is we did ask people to indicate and to pull out, if they could, what the
amounts were that they were spending on those priorities. There are some ways in which it's really easy.
You can look at, for example, obviously police and fire. All of that is public safety. That's easy.
But when you're looking at other departments where, let's use CFRD as an example, where the staff are
very intermingled in what they do, it is harder to separate out staff time by person for what percentage
you spend on this. And honestly, it's just a time problem of, as we're approaching the budget and putting
the budget book together with a busy controller, trying to figure out how do we collect all of that.
I guess an example would be the grants spreadsheet that we shared with you all in notes last year We
were able to provide a more detailed list this year It was much harder to pull together because of everything
that was else that was going on earlier in the spring with Accessibility and a new controller just didn't
have enough time to do what we would have liked to do Okay, thank you Councilmember council president sorry
Thank you. I was really fascinated by, you know, the wonders of ERP. Could you tell me all of the things
that it will actually do? Well, we don't have a product chosen yet. I mean, there are certainly
some options that we have that we talk about, but we do have to go through a procurement process. And
obviously we'll talk about this with ITSC here in a second, but I mean, the question that I'm really
interested in getting at is the, I mean, I guess if I would just ask it quite directly, it's whether
or not the administration wants to do outcome-based budgeting, because the council's been very clear.
We voted nine-zero that that's what we wanted, and so, and I'm trying to understand a little bit between
what's the actual technical
Difficulty I think you know yeah like we can't do crosswalks and find things out, but like will this
system help us identify programs? Or who's owning them or what we want to achieve with them well again.
I think this is where we have to kind of set up this Charter with a with the definition of what success
is so if that's you know if that's something that you and the council considers essential to to success
then that becomes
a criterion that we use to move forward with. I think like I mentioned before, we didn't have any one
technical obstacle before. It was just new me, a huge number of priorities that absolutely had to be
done, two audits, staff transition, and just a really clunky system. And so there's just not enough
time in the day.
And then we feel like if we get a new technology, it's going to change our ability to approach to approach
this sort of like holistically So I wish you had asked during my presentation this you could have asked
this question of me and then I could have given you this answer So hogging Jeff's time. Sorry Apologies,
but you know, I really want to stress we need counsel to be actively involved in a very detailed and
probably tedious boring way for you in defining what this looks like
We spent, staff spent hours and hours and hours last year developing program inventories, putting them
into the system that we tried to use last year. I spent days and days and days organizing them. I received
zero feedback from council about the level of intricacy. We need that from you. We need to know before
we start, how detailed do you want it to be? Which programs do you want us to look at?
So it's going to take more than we want this It's going to take you showing up to meetings with us over
and over again and saying not like this like this What about that? It's going to be hands-on. Sure.
Thank you Other questions from council councilmember rough Top priority or goal for the coming budget
year for your office
one of them is strengthening fiscal transparency. Is that all sort of the incentive or the motivation
or the drive for that prioritization? Is that mainly sort of state-initiated ACFR auditing types of
requirements or is there, does the administration see your office and you see sort of other strong incentives for
Strengthening fiscal transparency. Well, yeah, I think that We put a lot of work into these reports
and audits. I want them to be useful I think that's that's a big thing It's not just shouldn't be just
checking a box and meeting the minimum requirements of the state I mean, of course that that's a minimum
we do need to meet the minimum requirements of the state but it's it's a priority a because I think that
Financial information is more useful when it's more timely. I want to be able to get and just and You
can ask the your colleagues who are on the fiscal committee We have worked to get more more detailed
financial reports to To committee members and I think it's I think it's been useful. I'll ask the committee
members. I think those have been useful I think more and information in a more timely manner is a
Useful to everybody it's useful to the public and it's useful to council members and other decision-makers
And then also I think it needs to be made more user-friendly. I think I think we all know that state
reports state audit audit documents are not written in a way that and and for that matter the budget
book are not written in a way that really is very public friendly really, you know, I really think it's
important to
Part of transparency is also just explaining things and making it clear how the different pieces get
to each other So yeah, it is sort of a passion of mine that is combined by combined with I think the
need to just to be good stewards Thank You mr. McKim in in my last 30 seconds, so just sort of add on
to that do you see Sort of the budgetary implications or the the demands or opportunity cost of
Really making that a priority Would you say sort of it dovetails in any way with outcome-based budgeting
approach or is it more of a Zero-sum opportunity cost type You know, it's I mean that that's a fair
question and I think had we attempted to do a
The full OBB this year. I think it would have been a zero sum because one of the things that's really
important to remember is that OBB is not replacing one budget system with a better one. It is doing
all the same things. We already have to do Which includes, you know passing the budget the way that
we do with funds and departments and lines Transferring that information over to the state's gateway
system and approving it in using the state prescribed format
Plus some additional stuff. So I mean that's a that's a fair point and that's why to really make it
work That's why we've got to get these efficiencies and reporting. We got to make this stuff easier
for ourselves. Sorry Thank you. Thank you If there are no other questions We'll go to the public There's
anyone in council chambers who would like to comment on the office of the controllers budget Seeing
none anyone online
Please state your name and you have three minutes Kevin Keough Bloomington resident retired CPA and
practicing IT internal auditor with many years of experience in financial accounting internal controls
and information systems auditing
I attended last Friday's public safety local income tax rate committee meeting. Page 16 of the budget
book put me on notice that this is a critical issue that I need to pay attention to. Since that meeting,
I've been trying to understand what happened to the two public safety funds between 2017 to April 2nd,
2020, I believe 2025, for which the city is responsible. Let me try my best to make this simple. I think
of these as two checkbooks.
One is the Public Safety LIT Fund, money for public safety purposes, police and fire. The other is the
PSAP Lit Fund, which is associated specifically with the Dispatch Center. These are different pots of
money for different restricted purposes, but instead of being able to open the city's financial system
and clearly see the activity and balance associated with each fund, the PSAP revenues and expenditures
for the period around 2017 through 12-31-24,
were maintained in a public safety lit fund. Somehow these funds were commingled. And here's what concerns
me even more. The PSAP detail of activity was separately tracked on a side ledger. This is like a separate
checking account register, completely outside the city's financial system. That makes following the
money very dark and very difficult. This
This concern is directly relevant to tonight's controller's presentation and the information technology
budget to come up. Mayor Thompson said recently he should describe the city's 15 year old financial
software as a bottleneck requiring extensive manual work.
Replacing that software may be necessary, but a new system alone will not correct weaknesses in financial
processes and controls. Automating a flawed process merely produces errors and more inefficiencies.
A financial system replacement is not simply an IT purchase. It's a redesign of the city's financial
operations. I think three controls are essential.
First, conduct a comprehensive current state assessment. A qualified steering committee should identify
and document off-system spreadsheets if they still exist, subsidiary ledgers, manual reconciliations,
and other workarounds throughout the whole city government. Second, establish data integrity before
migration.
Fund balances and historical transactions such as the PSAP balance should be reconciled and independently
validated before you enter it in a new system. Questionable data should not become a new system's opening
data. Third, require rigorous user acceptance testing.
Final approval should depend upon documented testing of the fund accounting and all the different basis
of accounting to use segregation of duties audit trails reconciliations access controls and compliance
requirements not met word not merely whether the software was installed successfully.
Thanks to Jeff I thought he did a great presentation and I think where he's guided where he's going
mr. Keough good place to go. I just wish I had Thank you Thank You mr. Keough for your comments are
there is there anyone else online anyone else in chambers I
We'll come back to council for final comments on the office of controller budget Councilmember Sasper
Thank you First I just want to say that it I've really enjoyed working with controller McKim this year.
I think that the efforts toward explaining things in ways that people understand are
are successful. I think that the financial reporting that he's provided to the fiscal committee has
been incredibly useful and incredibly easy to understand and grasp, and I really, really appreciate
that. But I also wanted to address this outcome-based budgeting thing, partly because I first noticed,
and I don't think that this is
necessarily for Controller McKim as much as other pieces of the administration, because in one of the
written questions from Councilmember Asari, it was referenced that a March meeting of the fiscal committee,
there was a discussion about outcome-based budgeting and deferring it, and I looked back at that meeting,
because I don't remember that discussion, and I don't have that anywhere in my notes, and I think that that's a
mischaracterization perhaps of what happened at that meeting in terms of those discussions and I also
Really kind of when I when I did then look back and go, okay when did we actually have a discussion
about trackable priorities and that sort of thing and it was at that June
12th meeting when we were talking about this, and it did get presented as, instead of tracking everything,
like this attempt was made last year to do that, it was like, okay, we're just gonna take out, we're
gonna pull a few things out instead of all of the things. But I haven't seen those few things pulled
out particularly well or comprehensively that I have seen. Some department had budgets that say like,
oh, this particular 2027 goal, you know,
has to do with maintenance and it spends this much, but I haven't seen anywhere where it totals that
up anywhere, and so then it's left going, okay, I'm gonna have to total that up myself. I appreciate
the administration's request and need for a dedicated task force, perhaps, to help work on the outcome-based
budgeting, and I want us to all remember back to 2025 when we had a budget task force, and at the early
part of this year, it was like,
What did that task force do? Is it still needed this year? And the answer that I received and passed
on to Council President Asari because he would be the one this year who would have had to make that
happen was no.
That that task force was was not particularly helpful last year and that it didn't need to continue
this year So I I don't feel as though communication around outcome-based budgeting has been particularly
smooth this year and I think that it's Just ended up disappointing all around in terms of how it's been
laid out in the budget this year. Thank you Thank you further comment counselor Flaherty I
I know it's from the fiscal committee. I don't recall any type of decision being communicated that outcome
based budgeting was off the table for this year or kind of You know not relevant. We did talk about
outcome based budgeting and I've said this in other meetings, but I Don't think that the financial system
is the barrier I think it's a desire to have a consistent set of outcomes that are shared between the
mayor's administration and the council Structurally, it is very difficult for the council to advance
its priorities
And I think that just favors a system that kind of is the status quo It is frustrating as a councilmember
because it's very hard to Really hold ourselves accountable. I mean the absence the things that we do
have are the planning documents and Legislation that we've adopted things like very high-level ambitious
outcomes like zero deaths and serious injuries in our streets by 2039 things that are contained in our
comprehensive plan and and some transportation plan safe streets for all action plan and
There are some other plans that are relevant, but planning and transportation does tend to have a lot
of them because they're state-mandated processes or just areas of priority. But if we're gonna actually
do something like outcome-based budgeting, it starts with outcomes, and we have to have a process to
define what that would look like to develop shared outcomes with, of course, a set of metrics that are
sort of consistent in the way we are measuring and thinking about outcomes. None of that's a financial
system, and so I just don't...
I'm not convinced that that will make any real change at all, and I guess I'm curious, I'll ask some
follow-up questions in writing, but just like, is there commitment to this concept or not, and what
are the plans to advance, not the technology piece that might underpin this later, but the development
of outcomes piece of it. So that's all, thank you. Thank you. Any other comments before we move on?
Thank you, Controller McKim.
We'll move on now to legal and risk management Margie rice welcome Hi Margie rice corporation council
and I'm here to present the budget for both legal and risk The legal department just in general overview
the legal department has ten full-time staff. We have eight full-time
full-time attorneys, one full-time paralegal, and one full-time administrative staff. I'll talk about
this in this slide and the next one as well. Our big budget change in legal is that we are transferring
$272,000 from our 03 line, which is our services line, to the risk division.
Mentioned in the past few years The fact that we've needed extra money because the annexation litigation
has been going on that's wrapping up we that the County residents against annexation is almost over
We just have an issue over how much in attorneys fees the city has to pay plaintiff's counsel And that
is still pending the case of the waivers
The waiver of annexation that case we are still waiting on the State Supreme Court to rule on our petition
to transfer That if you remember correctly, we had an October 30th 2025 oral argument and the Supreme
Court has yet to rule The other change other changes in this legal budget really are just the step increases
and the 2.7. Cola and
I know I'm going to try to answer some of the questions that the council asked I haven't provided written
answers yet to the court to the council But I'm going to try to answer some of your questions in this
presentation I know one of the questions was about our outside legal services. So as I'm mentioning
litigation and The annexation litigation I can tell you that in 2025 we spent in our oh three category
three hundred and ninety two thousand ninety two dollars and seventy five cents so far this year and
In 26, we've only spent a hundred and twenty six thousand seven hundred and fifty eight dollars and
eight cents in outside legal services The general overview of the risk division we have three full-time
staff a risk manager a director of safety training and one administrative staff person We promoted our
administrative staff person to director of safety training after we had somebody retire after more than
I think 25 years so we
We promoted Jasmine forte plunket to the director of safety and training and we've had an opening in
our admin staff For a good number of months, but we've recently offered the Offered it to somebody and
she's accepted. So we're just pending HR approval
But we are asking to move $272,000 from legal to the risk division to look at and we haven't picked
it out yet, but we're looking at buying some technology to some telemetrics to monitor vehicles of Our
employees who are driving to check things like speeding how hard they stop if they roll through stop
signs driver in attention that is not intended to be big brother ish, but it is intended to keep our
employees safe and
To reduce accidents again haven't purchased anything We've tested a couple of products that was last
year We tested one of the products we liked was by Sam Sarah, which is a publicly traded company But
again, there will be a lot more opportunity to have conversation about what we purchase if we purchase
Something as we move forward
Supply line is being reduced by 64% part of something we negotiated in our asked me agreement was to
pay for to give Union employees a stipend for shoes and clothing and so because each union member will
get six hundred and forty dollars per the CBA and that's new We typically paid that out of risk and
so the controller moved money from our supply lined
another line so that that asks me to another line outside our budget so that that could be paid and
what's remaining in my budget will pay for non-union members shoes and Winter clothing so that line
was eighty two thousand eight eighty three. It will be twenty five thousand three hundred in twenty
seven This is just a general overview of our budget see total risk and legal is three million three
hundred sixty four thousand and
the bulk of that is personnel and then again the services you can In our mostly ro3 category Just some
highlights of What legal does legal is not the most exciting department in terms of variety of what
we do. We do the same thing every year We handle public records. We handle contracts. I'm going to go
through some of these highlights right now as at the end of July 2026 we had received
more than 500 public records requests Popularity is increasing because we use next request. I can tell
you that I checked yesterday and we were at 588 public records that compares to in 24 we had 570 requests
in 25 we had 580 requests so we're surpassing that right now in August the end of August and
I am fully aware that not everybody is happy with the way we manage public records, but I'll tell you
we are doing our best to increase our response time in 23 it took about 54 days to on average to get
records to people in 24 that was reduced to about 36 days in 25 that's about nine point seven one and
so far in 26 we're averaging about eight day turn turnaround time and
We do a lot of contracts in the city of Bloomington Tell you in 2022. We did eight hundred and five
contracts twenty three eight hundred and seventy four twenty four nine hundred and five and Year to
date at the time I did the slider was six hundred and as of yesterday was about six hundred and sixty
So yeah total for 25 was 1102 and I think we're gonna pass that up So every department we we do contracts
for every department and I can tell you that
We divide up our time somebody asked the question of how do attorneys spend their time and do we keep
track hours or percentages? We don't track hours as frankly one of the benefits of being in a municipal
law department as opposed to private practice You're not tracking your hours by every six minutes But
I did ask my attorneys to kind of estimate how much time they're spending on things They spend about
80% of their time on their primary departments. That's giving advice. That's doing contracts
answering their questions about various laws and and about You know, they all do specialty stuff like
litigation a couple of attorneys don't don't do litigation but they other miscellaneous tax tasks take
up about the other 20 percent of their time, but And we do as I mentioned litigation we do a lot of
litigation right now We have about 16 open litigation cases that that ranges anywhere from ordinance
violations to some federal
Litigation like the turning point case which is pending in front of the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals
right now We do that some of that in-house some of that with outside counsel because we buy insurance
We also get the benefit of having insurance defense in some cases But our goals are always to protect
the city's interests remember that the client for for
Our department is the city of Bloomington. It's not any one constituent Within the city it is the city
itself and that is a function of the professional rules of conduct So we're very careful to make sure
when we're making decisions. We are doing what we think is in our ethical and professional Discretion
what is in the best interest of the city? So the risk division they do a lot of work on
Reviewing tort claims that come in you can't sue a city for an accident unless you file a tort claim
first We manage workers compensation Secure the insurance coverage. We do trainings a lot of other things
I can tell you that in year-to-date We've received 31 tort claims. Not all of those will result in litigation
in 25 we received a total of 60 tort claims and
Somebody asked I think I heard this week somebody asked about workers compensation accidents gear to
date. We've had 66 incidents Across the city 42 of those have resulted in claims where we have paid
You know, we have paid for medical care or something for somebody who was in it injured We have had
spent about a hundred ninety two thousand dollars to date on workers compensation
Priorities that goals really are just like everybody else said we want to try to improve Efficiency
uniformity we do struggle with lack of technology to help us keep our data But we are trying we want
to want to get technology to improve service and to reduce incidents and accidents we also want to provide
consistent communication and training and
Challenges are just you know, if there are a lot of federal changes with accessibility, that's gonna
be a pro and a con We are working on our contract templates to make them accessible But it also makes
challenges like we can't just turn on every public record request because not every PRR is accessible
at this point We do have a higher volume of work and increased with no increased resources But we are
hoping that with technology we can do a little bit better And that's it. Thank you
Thank You mr. Rice We'll go to council now for questions Council President sorry, thank you so much.
Thank you. So so very much attorney rice similar question to what asked the clerk on how would you estimate
as as Corporation Council the sort of workload or a work utilization of City I'm gonna have a very similar
answer miss. She and she said I think said nine nine
0.5 out of 10 I'd say we're right there too. We years ago I think the last time I was corporation council
We were reduced by a one attorney and we reduced by an admin staff. I know that my staff would love
to have more resources One of the things I've thought about is you know Could you reduce special legal
services and use that to fund staff person? I don't know that it would equate because there's sometimes
like annexation and
Kind of a specialty thing bond work. You're always gonna have to pay bond counsel, but we're pretty
we're pretty maxed out Again, it's not a 40 week, you know 40 hour week job. We know that people work
over but nobody is Absolutely killing themselves working 60 hour work weeks, but we are definitely You
know definitely busy but to that end then
Thinking about records requests specifically, I mean, with the increase of records requests, does it
make sense for those all to live in...
and legal I Share some of the concerns that people have said is that legal thinks differently or lawyers
think differently than somebody Maybe who has a library science degree or a technology degree I would
be open to other ways of doing it One of the challenges we have is that no, you know, we're not increasing
staff really anywhere across the city We do devote we have two attorneys who are sharing responsibility
to work on public records requests and
We have our paralegal working on it just because she's been here a very long time and has a
lot of institutional knowledge knows to where where to look for things and We meet in legal weekly.
I meet with that staff to go over we open up next request We see what's there we see how close we are
to deadlines if we need more time Could you estimate how much time is being spent? Yeah, you know
I know that's yeah, you know, I'll tell you I had an attorney last week who said do you mind if I you
know Just take Friday to work on kind of getting some of these things taken care of so I'm saying I
think that they spend Alex Pratt and Chris Wheeler are the two Attorneys that are doing it Alex that
she estimates about 20% of her time. Okay, I think Chris said about the same. Okay, so that's that's
that's like a I mean, that's a significant portion of time Yeah, and and we certainly you know, that's
the the law is that you have to
answer these in a reasonable period of time. And what's reasonable is based on what else you have on
your plate at the time. We love to be able to meet people's expectations in terms of getting them the
records when they need them. And if we can, we will do that. It's just sometimes you gotta communicate
with different people. My biggest fear is that somebody asks for a record that they maybe already have
and we in our search don't find it. And so I'm always
Really? Emphasizing to our staff ask the staff person who's got the records, but then go check Google
to see you know Because I don't want to withhold something that we should be giving to somebody Thank
you have a number of questions Councilmember Stasberg then Piedmont Smith and Zulek Thank you, I just
have Kind of follow up of what you were talking about with the workers comp
claims and the workplace accidents so you guys handle through the risk department like like all of the
accidents for Like any city work like including sanitation or anything like that because I know that
we got the sanitation the new sanitation trucks to try to reduce those Pardon me. What was that? We
got the new sanitation trucks a few years ago to reduce workplace accidents and so but you handle all
of them Yeah, so then this year have there just been
Year-to-date 66 claims is that what she said 66 incidents? So there's a there's an accident report that
comes through if there's an accident Not every employee is injured to the point that they need treatment
But we like to know what incidents are happening so that we can then train to the incidents, you know
Like hey that was a near miss. Let's train that department. So that doesn't happen again we but we've
had 43 cases where
This year where there's been some treatment and again running a report and this is where To what every
you know kind of a broken record what people have said is, you know We keep data in a lot of different
places in a lot of different ways. And so Are we use Highland? One of the reasons we went with Highland
recently was a couple years ago. They had a
Pretty good technology to help us out, but I can tell you we we ran a report We have four hundred and
ninety five thousand dollars starting each year in our workers comp budget. We are self-insured and
then we have an excess coverage policy for excess coverage, but We've spent out of that 495 this year.
We have we have spent a hundred and ninety two thousand seven ninety one and so That's not frankly
A huge amount and we were doing pretty good. I think and and it's all it's not about them. I mean, it's
really not about the money It's about the employees and how do we keep them safe and going home at night? and so we
We do look at these accidents, and we do regularly follow up. Again, it's Gary Connor, our wrist manager,
Jazz, our director of safety and training. We will have our admin. That's gonna be a huge help. And
then Taylor Brown is assigned to the wrist division, and he regularly meets, again, weekly to try to
look at patterns. I hate to interrupt you, but I only have 40 seconds left. Yeah, sorry. That's okay.
I just wanna follow up real fast. So those other incidents where there's not been some kind of a treatment,
they probably just like,
Weren't might be like a scratch it so in terms of like those incidents like every little thing has to
be Reported in terms of like it if we find out that there's something happened and didn't get reported
We do ask about that and we're like, hey, we need to know that so we can help you. Okay? Okay, great
That's kind of what I wanted to clarify because I think it's actually it feels pretty good that there
have only been 66 incidents this year here to date is that like is that a good trend line over the past
few years and
Yeah, I think we're yeah, I can get the statistics. That's something I can follow up with and tell you
what the you know, 25 26 25 Numbers were okay. Yeah, I'll follow up with okay. Thank you comes Mary
Piedmont Smith Yes, um, I am a little bit concerned about this telemetric technology that you're seeking
to purchase to track city-owned vehicles and the possible
surveillance aspects of such technology. Can you tell me more about your own cost benefit analysis of
the benefit of reducing risk versus the cost of perhaps tracking people who are just using a Citibank
like making a stop on their way to city business? Yeah, we wouldn't the purpose of that technology would
not because we
Allow employees to make you know de minimis incidental stops when there so that wouldn't be even a violation
of policy But we've when we tested some of the technology we could see You know that there were you
know, there's maybe a driver early in the morning nodding off or somebody regularly rolling through
a stop sign that can be a safety issue for that employee as well as a
you know, one of your constituents. A speed is a factor. Often we suspect that speed may be a factor
in an accident, but the employee report's not speeding. A few years ago, you know, we had a large piece
of equipment being hauled and it went into a roundabout. We thought speed was a factor. We couldn't
tell. This technology would allow us to do that. So again, it's not intended to spy on employees, but
it is intended to be used for training purposes so we can keep employees safe.
But I will say I I know that council is concerned about that. And so we haven't purchased anything We
will want to make sure that we go through a process even talking to the union about what we're purchasing
Looking at what people's questions and concerns are in addressing those before anything is purchased
Yeah, I guess my concern would Increase if this were data that's somehow stored on a cloud and accessed
by other communities or insurance agencies or any other
Actors. Yeah. Yeah, that's one thing we'll be looking at is where is the data stored? Okay I also want
to ask does the increase I Mean, it seems like there's been a big increase in public record requests
Does this tell you anything about the transparency of our local government like that? So many people
are asking for these things, you know, I'm in a way I'm encouraged by it because people
Know that we have a system that's easy to use and so I think that's one of the things that's happening
is next request is fairly easy for people to use and So to me, it's a good sign that people are you
know, they know we're responsive. We're getting them the records They're asking for them. So I think
it's definitely an increase in transparency. I don't I Don't think that it's that it's You know a bad
sign. I think it's a good time Thank you That's my resilient
And thank you for your presentation. Could you let could you estimate about how much money we've spent
on the annexation lawsuit? Yeah, you know I I can get you the full figure from beginning to end But
I don't have that with me now I can tell you that in 25 and 26 combined we spent four hundred and seven thousand
$840 and 88 cents now there were you know, this started many years ago and so we can get those numbers
for you I just don't have them with me but I can tell you in those two years It was a little over 400,000.
Thank you. And could you list all of the defendants included on that lawsuit? Not maybe not off the
top of my head But council is one of them Yes. Yes Could you elaborate as to why we've only had the
executive session related to this matter I Haven't felt like executive sessions have been necessary.
But certainly if you if we want one we can schedule one Are you familiar with rule 1.4 of the American
Bar Association? So keep clients and informed. Yes, we again
Yeah, and and so I when I think about the city as a whole I do think the city includes, you know, the
executive branch and the legislative branch Council has obviously their own attorneys and We've you
know at any point that we get questions from council attorneys about litigation or annexation we certainly
talk to them and try to answer their questions so if this is a request for an executive session and
On the annexation litigation we can certainly get that scheduled This is a request to be continuously
informed on all matters related to the annexation lawsuit and every time there is a decision made in
court Okay, sounds great. And I think we look forward and we've had a great relationship with Larry
and with former attorneys and I'm looking forward to working with Whoever it is that you hire going.
Thank you. Thank you very much. Yeah Further questions from counsel
Councilmember Ruff Council Resulix Inquiry about the annexation litigation. So you're the first slide
says that It's nearly over and annexation litigation is nearly over Is it nearly over because It's run
its course there's no other places that
to go to make a decision to take it another step or is it over because the administration has decided
enough is enough I I think it's not the latter so the we did not prevail in the trial with the county
residents against annexation so that ran its course the waiver
Issue is still pending before the Supreme Court. We're waiting to see if they will take the case up
It was a petition to transfer so we're waiting on that ruling and depending upon how that goes It may
actually if if we were to receive a favorable ruling, you know areas So 1a and 1b are done because that
was the the trial that we lost Aries 1c 2 and 3 could be annexed if we get a favorable ruling and
In that case and so we would continue in that regard and then Aries four and five would depend upon
if there were Remonstrances and if there were we'd have to decide at that point if we were going to
go forward with a trial so the first case CREA is over just by a function of ran its course and we did
not prevail and We're waiting on the second one. So we are continuing to pursue it But we just are now
waiting for the court So so we're quick to follow up so
Depending on some of the outcomes There if there was pushback then from those affected who were opposed
even though the city got favorable ruling they might We might be drugged further into so it You can't
really say and against annexation litigation is nearly over It's I think the the
bulk of the you know, the CRA case is over so that's that's more than half of it is over and and You
know again by function of law if those waivers are deemed to be you know waivers of remonstrance We're
not invalidated by the state law and they say hey, those are still good waivers three of the areas would
would have we would have had the numbers to annex them and so that would happen as a matter of law those
would be annexed and so then the only decision would be those areas four and five and
And and whether and again, you'd have to wait to see if there were monstrous happen And then if there
were whether it was worth the while to go for or with a trial So I to me when I look at the percentages,
I think a lot of it's behind us You know and it's it's it's out of our hands if the waivers are are
are You know if the state law was okay, and they could have validated waivers then we're not going to
be able to annex one one C two and three and
Okay. Thank you. Yeah other questions I had one a constituent was you know is concerned about the public
records requests and Why? Maybe you've addressed this but could you just restate why why wouldn't if
you're going to provide public records requests Why wouldn't you issue it to the public? Yeah and
Not only for transparency, but just to prevent Public records requests for the same item, right? I do
think that's makes logical sense and this is gonna this is a nice segue to when you talk to the IT but
about accessibility so if we were to turn on all of those public records requests and make them public
facing that our next request they would have to be accessible per the federal law and we don't have
the resources to
At this point in time to make all of that archived material accessible. They aren't they haven't been
fully accessible So we would need to make that if that is something that the council Felt was important
and wanted to do you could certainly put your you know money towards that and then dedicate resources
for us to get that done We don't currently have the time or the
Human resources to do that not that we're opposed to it. It'd be fantastic Because we could then say
hey look there if somebody could look through it and peruse it and see what's available It's just that
turning them on means we're gonna need to make them accessible and there are a lot of them that are
not maybe Okay, so maybe this is a naive question, but you you've got the material and you can't put
you need human hours to evaluate and
Determined to accessible documents and you know a lot of them were scanned as PDFs or whatever and they'll
have to be Turned into accessible documents and and again, it's not an impossible thing to do. It's
just a matter of time and resources Okay. Well, maybe this question for mr. Dietz director Dietz when
it comes time for IT Okay, seeing no other questions then well, mr. Chair, yeah did have another quick
question if that's okay I haven't asked
Lot of questions during the whole budget process. I was wondering if I might ask another quick one,
please make it quick. Yeah Do we anticipate a much? expense legal cost in the coming budget year for
eminent domain type activities Not that I'm aware of So we don't have projects. Are you thinking maybe
things like CB use project on the waterway or the
Creek Restoration or I guess that's that's still in early in stages right the studies. Yeah, I'm talking
maybe about some of the transportation type projects I I guess I I'm not aware of a lot of we the most
recent thing that we've done in terms of right-of-way acquisition was High Street and we did a lot of
acquisition now not a lot of eminent
Domain in the sense that we had to go to trial and fight with people over that But we did acquisition
so there may be right-of-way Acquisition and I may be being too technical you may be talking about just
right-of-way Acquisition not in a domain when I think of them in a domain I think somebody's never gonna
sell me their property and we're gonna have to push this to a trial and That rarely happens. Yeah, I
was actually
Talking about both. Yeah, you're right. There's I understand. Yeah, we have a You get the different
chat. All right. Thank you. Yeah, okay Seeing no other questions. We will go now to the public anyone
in chambers Mr. Allen anyone online no Okay Come back to counsel for comment on legal and risk management
Seeing none Councilman Smith Yeah, I just want to follow up on a question I asked about the increase
in the number of public records requests I don't know the reason but I think it's worth reflecting on
what Depending on if there's any trends in what is being asked for It would be wise to
Look at ways we can preempt these public record requests by being more transparent in the first place
But I don't know if Director if corporation council rice actually heard that since she was but that's
okay It was not a question. It was just saying I think that it would be worthwhile to look at
Ways of preempting public records requests since there seems to be an influx and a greater number of
them Maybe there's a way to preempt them by being more transparent about things that they're asking
about in the first place. That's all thank you I agree and I think that it seems to be a priority among
some constituents that and some commonality that public records requests of a certain
Topic or something seems to be shared in terms of interest. So we should try to Aim to make it accessible
to public Okay, thank you for your presentation and We will now move on to our last item. No, I'm sorry.
We have two more human resources department director paycheck welcome Yes, IT is very very last
Last but not least Good evening sharp paycheck HR director sharing our 2027 budget proposal. Thank you
for this opportunity HR drives the mayor's organizational priorities and partners with departments to
meet workforce needs through talent management compensation and benefits and employee relations While
we don't directly deliver on every city goal
We do support the staff who do helping foster a workplace environment where everyone feels welcomed
and valued The police department is a good example of HR in action We're supporting marketing campaigns
and hiring events to help them achieve their staffing goals This budget season department heads express
excitement about full or nearly full staffing better applicants that are of quantity and also quality and
the impact of newly negotiated union contracts Perhaps these trends reflect HR outcomes and as we have
more mature advanced technology We can better assess HR contributions and a return on investment HR
has a full staff of 10 plus two new interns overall HR's budget increased 4% for next year and
Personnel services increase 8% mainly from Cola and tenure and recently reclassifying a position to
talent acquisition specialist supplies increased 54% but that's a relatively small budget the percentage
may look more significant than it really is and
The increase is about $8,000, but 4,000 of that is for technology, like laptops. And the rest supports
increased staff and also enhanced employee recognition programming. Other services decreased 7%, reflecting
lower spending in some of our operating areas, and also we reduced reliance on some of our outsourced services.
short the 2027 budget stays lean on operations while investing in people technology and Recognition
and that will tee us up for our priorities for next year Before I share 2027 priorities I'd like to
highlight our progress this year in 2026 we advanced high-performing government through one HR and
That is our approach to a more consistent HR experience citywide Every department and every employee
has different needs, but they all rely on HR one HR Supports the city by standardizing policies Optimizing
people and technology and building a base for continuous improvement Next I'll share some examples of
HR one HR and practice so that council can understand we are
with intention in human resources Employee relations and operations continue strengthening consistency
across the city They updated the employee handbook launched the supervisor brief continue lead cohorts
trainings for managers and they coordinated the pay action committee with a
HR and ITS office of the controller and Department HR partners one HR Department described that effort
related to time track and payroll as They said wow the changes exceeded our expectations Talent and
engagement improve recruitment speed and reach while continuing to strengthen onboarding and employee
engagement events
Coffee with the mayor received positive feedback along with some suggestions on how we can make the
event even more enjoyable. One attendee at the wellness fair shared how much they appreciated having
all of the vendors and answers in one place, no website portals or long phone calls needed, and asked
us to keep that event going. The red carpet employee appreciation lunch is coming up on October the 6th.
We want that to be our greatest employee event yet and we invite council to join us Total rewards is
now fully staffed they focused on both compensation and benefits Being fully staffed this team has been
able to strengthen audits data integrity benefits administration and system functionality and
A recent win, they partnered with ITS to separate medical and dental deductions so employees can elect
them independently in 2027. In response to Council Member Asari's questions, I also reviewed several
HR performance measures. Time to fill has dropped to 72 days compared to 104 days average for some of
our peer organizations.
Turnover is currently six point three eight percent year-to-date and that is down from fourteen percent
in 2023 Those are encouraging and indicators But I want to be careful. I don't want to overstate what
that data tells us until the end of the year Plus as you've heard our technology our technology still
limits some HR reporting Next year HR will build on
The one HR foundation focusing on support standardization and technology Our first priority strengthen
workforce well-being and engagement Focuses on support for managers leadership development and the employee
experience which could be assessed through turnover absence benefit utilization and event participation
our second priority
advance one HR policies and procedures and practices brings more standardization across departments
which could be assessed through progressive discipline grievances and policy documentation completion
our third priority optimize and standardize optimize and modernize HR systems advances technology to
reduce manual work and strengthens data that could be assessed through productivity era and accuracy rates and
Want to reiterate some data is still hard to assess and report today So I don't want to over promise
and under deliver, but we hope that a new HR is will help close that gap In 2027 HR's priorities support
broader city goals positioning the city as a high-performing employer of choice through a shared commitment
to organizational excellence for example
If engineering is hiring a project manager for capital infrastructure work, HR clearly is not providing
technical expertise for construction activities to guide regulatory compliance. We don't even know what
that means. But my point is that we don't have to be an expert in all things. We can just stay in our
lane, and we can do that well. Our role is to help attract
hire, and retain the right person, offer competitive compensation and benefits, and provide the policies
and support that employee and their manager need to succeed. The same relationships exist across the
city, rather employees are working on transportation, asset maintenance, homelessness, housing, economic
development, climate, or public safety. This is how OneHR connects shared priorities
We strengthen the workforce behind the work. Next year, we'll keep showing up for employees wherever
they are at the city, turning priorities into meaningful connections and sustainable progress. To close,
I'd like to recognize everyone who helped lay the One HR Foundation in 2026, and those who will partner
with us to ensure the right people are in the right roles at the right time.
I want to thank the HR team. They are a group of skilled, experienced, and dedicated individuals who
make this work possible. I also want to thank the administration and department heads for their support.
Thank you to all city employees for your respect and patience as we build trust through fair, consistent
practices. And finally, thank you to the council for your past support and your future consideration.
And I welcome any questions. Thank you, Director Paycheck.
Are there questions? Yes, here's one Council president sorry First for your wonderful leadership and
just for all the patience and time that you always give us and for this is now I know seventh time that
you had to talk to us in a couple of weeks So thank you and I realize as I'm asking this question This
might actually more be a question for the controller, but I'm interested in in the methods by which we do
the COLA increases, and so do those go to each department sort of in a bulk fund? Do we sort of attach
those to positions themselves and those increase? And what type of flexibility do we have? So specifically
I'm looking at what it would look like in the city, especially because we have some vacancies and there's
some seasonal workers and things like that. What it would look like to, for example, reduce it from
2.7 to 2.5, but then they still have the same sort of bulk money they can distribute amongst people
who already work there.
That's a possibility or if it has to be tied to specific positions. I would definitely punt that question
to controller Well, I mean I'm not sure I can I can answer all of it first of all where the number came
from the 2.7% we use the December December urban CPI
I'm asking is just about what flexibility do we have with because because council gets a chance to make
amendments to the budget efforts efforts Proposed and should we want to reduce that we can't increase
it But should we want to reduce that what flexibility do departments have if that were to be decreased?
Our practice as far as I know I'm gonna have to defer to people who have been here a lot longer than
I have is to apply that to every position and
Including including vacant positions, right? So we don't have a Okay, and we and do we have any flexibility
in in that regard I Mean the short answer is yes, but that would be a pretty major Change that would
have to be kind of rolled out thoughtfully to make sure I think that if you're talking about like giving
certain people a
Full amount and other people a lower amount. I mean, that's certainly something to be done But it would
need to be done in a very thoughtful way, of course in a way to not create inequities Right. Okay.
Thank you. Thank you councilmember Stusburg If you could you know, one of the things I've been asking
about often is the other services and charges for things and
I was noting your other services and charges, which is budgeted a little over 300,000 for this year
and a little under for 2027. And very little of it has been expended as of quarter two. So I was just
kind of wondering what that line is used for.
So other services include like some of our Consulting budgets that are reserved. We also have it for
Training so for our staff for some of the systems that we have now like NeoGov and Tyler and it also
includes other things in that other services category like our telephone a postage travel printing and
advertising for I specifically mean the
Line and other services and charges that's labeled other services and charges. So it's like the other
within the other What is the dollar amount again it's specifically for 2027 it's 292 540 one moment
It's line 53 53 990 That one is for
Give me one moment, I'm sorry. That's okay. That is the one that is, I actually believe other services
and charges is reduced because we were able to bring some of our services in-house.
An example of what that could have included, for example, at one point we had a Crow contract for like
$300,000. That could have been a bulk of it. And so we haven't used that yet because we haven't had
a need for a consultant like Crow. But we have used other consultants such as Robert Half to come in
to do some consulting for our payroll
Pay-action efforts, so I believe and I can double-check but I believe that specific Budget line that
you are talking about is related to our consulting dollars Okay, and I guess the larger question which
I don't know if you can answer in 15 seconds or maybe a controlling question controller question why
aren't those consulting charges under consultants and
Further in 53 170 and instead there and other services and charges And I can follow up with that Since
I'm out of time, I'll follow up with that in the written stuff. I'm just kind of curious and the other
services I'm sorry. I have Assistant directory Hillary Kanye here. We're trying to answer your question.
We may have to follow up with you one of those account lines also includes the money for
education reimbursement So that could be a part of those dollars as well Okay, I'll follow that up with
the written questions. Honestly, probably not tomorrow Probably be Friday before I managed to get back.
It's okay. Thank you. And I'm sorry. I thought it was fully prepared I have everything printed here
is like I'm gonna be able to answer all these questions this year. So It's all good. Thank you a for
effort, right?
Yes, thank you for the presentation In your memo you talk about that the goal for 2027 is to develop
a sustainable HR model Is that does that refer to the one HR is that yes? Yes and so what that really
refers to is and I realize prior to me HR did a lot of great work but when I came into the door I
I don't feel like I was handed a playbook, like an actual documented system of how things are
done consistently within human resources. And so, this year, we have been spending a lot of time looking
closely at all of the services that we provide,
All of the steps that are involved who the key players are so that we can assess we actually did like
an internal assessment where we graded ourselves And then we look to see where some of the best practices
are to see how we can most closely align
with some of the best practices in human resources. One HR is looking at how we do things to try to
make things as consistent as possible across the city. It shouldn't matter if you're onboarded in sanitation
or if you come through utilities or if you are in the animal shelter. We should have very similar policies,
procedures, practices.
for everybody to have a similar HR experience. And I got some coaching from Director Dietz that if you
want to best prepare yourself for a new system in 2027, the best thing that you can do is make sure
that all of your policies and practices, your procedures are as concise, as accurate, and streamlined
as you can possibly get them. And then, that will help
puts you in a better position for when you implement a new system. Very precise. Thank you. Other questions
for Human Resources Department budget? Okay, seeing none, then we will go to the public. The public
would like to comment. Anyone online?
Nobody online. Okay back to council for final comment Okay, seeing none, thank you director paycheck
very very appreciate Okay, our last item is information and technology services department ITS Director
Dietz You can end our party tonight
Yes on a high note good evening council I Do I do appreciate the opportunity to be The last presenter
on the last night of the budget hearings when we're all at the peak of our faculties I hope that pays
off for all of us I
Thank You councilmember Rallo, I'm Rick Dietz director of the city's information and technology services
department Also known as ITS and I appreciate the opportunity here to talk with you and present our
2027 budget proposal for your consideration And ITS our mission is to provide the IT services tools to
Training and resources necessary to maintain mission-critical city systems empower city staff to excel
in their work to expand digital opportunity in our community and electronically engage our residents
in their own government ITS provides
broad range of services across seven activity areas administration innovation process Improvement and
data services enterprise applications management geographic information systems IT infrastructure technology
support and training and Broadband and digital opportunity initiatives other cross-border
cutting activity areas for ITS include our work with transparency, open government with digital
accessibility, cyber security, and IT procurement. Our work in ITS is as much about people as it is
about technology. We have a great team of creative technologists.
with 21 full-time and one permanent part-time staff member and ITS and I'd like to take this opportunity
to acknowledge and commend the ITS team for their continuing hard work and excellent supporting our
public and staff customers So what's happening in the ITS budget for 2027? Looks like it's starting
to rain Or it sounds like it's starting to rain
The overall budget change from 2026 is seven hundred nineteen thousand eight hundred ninety three dollars.
This is largely due to investment in the ERP enterprise resource Procure I'm sorry enterprise research
management, but primarily the financial
system component of that, but also those expenses are from newly budgeted accessibility and cybersecurity
tools, as well as general inflation that we've experienced in recurring costs.
Other elements of the budget you should be aware of the telecommunications non-reverting fund which
drives its revenue from cable franchise fees continues to decline so we need to shift shift
our Appropriations and expenses away from that and then we have a number of budgets I would say you
know transfers across the
Funds from general to digital opportunity from telecom to 80 lit and the full funding of the
fiber connectivity fund all of which are essentially budget neutral transfers between funds But before
we dig too deeply into our 2027 budget Let's look at the 2020 at 2026 and the work we've been doing
over the last years Here's some highlights
It's been a busy year for us thus far Our tech support team has updated the council chambers monitor
replaced copier unit citywide moved dozens of staff to and from
West showers from City Hall as well as replace dozens of computer workstations our GIS team in addition
to winning this year's IGIC excellence and GIS award work diligently to map accessibility standards
and create new maps our infrastructure team completed an enterprise
a voiceover IP phone system, deployment, deployed critical infrastructure to the IU data center, and
updated our network capabilities and facilities, including some areas of west showers. Our enterprise
apps team has deployed dozens of online business licenses, permits, plans, code cases, and benefits
applications, as well as updated our onboard and time track and other critical tools.
And our team also deployed across the board accessibility training tools, scanning, new business processes,
improving accessibility and efficiency across the organization. And this work continues to this day.
The next slide, I'll show our main areas of activity in 2027. Those include cybersecurity, accessibility,
Standing up presence at the IU data center the enterprise ERP system which includes Financial and HR
components as well as broadband and digital inclusion and cyber security
This is a consistent and constant focus for us in ITS. In the 2027 budget, we're expanding tool usage
and invest in several new systems and support services that have been recommended and partially subsidized
by the state of Indiana Office of Technology. And accessibility.
Over the past few years we've coordinated City and city departments have engaged in significant process
changes and tool adoptions to improve digital accessibility At the city you heard that mentioned by
a number of my colleagues earlier this evening this work continues and this budget reflects the incorporation
of new accessibility systems and support into our annual budget and
on Data center work in 2026. We deployed Networking and storage hardware to the IU data center, which
not now serves as our primary data center for city IT operations I want to congratulate our infrastructure
team for making this long-term vision a reality in 2027 will consolidate additional data center operations at the
At I use data center and will begin to fully lever redundant ISP and fiber route connections
HR and financial systems were planning major upgrades and investments in 2027 these updates will increase
the capacity of these foundational operation operating systems and increase the efficient efficiency
of human resources and final financial operations
Broadband and digital opportunity we can continue to support and coordinate city broadband activities
Including the citywide Deployment of fiber with meridian and M Street fiber will continue to support
digital inclusion activities through through
community engagement and the award of grants to local organizations to help bridge the digital divide.
But beyond these areas of focus, we do see a number of challenges and opportunities in the coming year.
Of course, budget constraints, as Comptroller McKim has mentioned, we're working in an environment of
funding uncertainty with state taxations, plus as I mentioned earlier,
specifically for ITS, the continuing decline in telecommunications non-reverting fund revenue. We have
high demand for training, support, and services on an enterprise-wide basis that we continue to work
to meet, but we know that that demand is high and increasing. We also have demand for new tools across
the organization.
in areas of cyber security accessibility, but also just in general operating areas of our various sister
city departments. As mentioned, we do have a number of transfers that I do want to highlight. We've
moved digital opportunity grants to the fiber connectivity fund. We've moved computer capital replacement
away from the declining telecom.
funds into Edie Edie lit and then we also as controller McKim mentioned fully fund the fiber connectivity
fund which will end our funding obligation Under our agreement with with meridian In conclusion, thank
you for consideration of the
2027 ITS budget look forward to helping staff meet their goals and potential with technology tools and
support in 2027 and we appreciate the opportunity to serve our sister city departments as well as the
Bloomington community and with that I'd be happy to answer any questions that you might have Thank you.
Thank you director Dietz. We'll go to questions from council Councilmember Piedmont Smith
Yes, does it have an inventory of AI systems used by city employees? We have some visibility into Traffic,
you know on our network. It's not actively managed in an invasive way and that it's not sitting
on individuals Computers, but we can see that some some traffic is going out. Also we have
tools that we know are are being used and at least informally support in addition, we have a process
ongoing right now to you know flesh out a You know policy regime around, you know AI use in the city
that we're currently reviewing with the with the legal department and will expand that circle to HR
and other other departments for feedback and
Okay, that's good to know but Do you have an actual like list of the systems or programs that use AI
that are used here in the city? Yes, and no there's a number of AI specific tools that we know about
I think one of the challenges and anybody in the IE or anybody in the IT field can attest to that and
to this, that systems that were not AI tools now are, and an update that would seem to be innocuous
on an operating system or on a web application, or even an update that you might not be aware of may
incorporate.
AI tools into it. So, you know, we think it's important to have that AI policy guidance that we're working
on Thank you
I'm just looking at the, because there's the mention within the budget about a general increase because
of the technology that we want to use for accounts, but it's unclear to me where exactly that is in
the budget. If we wanted to cut that out of the budget, what would be being cut?
Funding for the financial upgrade for instance. So that that is currently in you know what we generally
describe as the Capital budget for ITS, but that is in the ED lit. Oh, it's it's from an ED lit. We're
okay Yeah, yeah, that's where that and then you and you estimate it to be six hundred thousand dollars
That is our
initial budgetary estimate, but that is in tandem with the investment in HR is which is Okay, so that's
600 figures referring to all of the different IT systems that people have talked about legal system
HR system and the no that is referring to the financial the core financial management payroll all of
the components you know accounts payable
Accounts receivable all of that is in the six hundred thousand Okay component is previously budgeted, okay
I think it was at 300,000. Okay, fantastic. If you could tell me later just as a follow-up. Yeah, I'm
happy to break it all down. Yeah, I was just going to say as a follow-up and to distinguish between
the bits that are supposedly being spent on outcome-based implementation and the things that are sort
of other technologies that are being adopted. Right, this would be separate from that in a sense, but
as has been discussed, it's an underlying platform
Upgrade that will certainly help with that. Sure fantastic and I'll have some follow-up questions on
that but the the other question I was gonna ask was Related to a procurement sort of building off of
and purchasing building off councilman Piedmont Smith's question Could you explain just a little bit
the the like where ITS plays a role? When the city is purchasing any type of technology if at all it Yes
You know our there's a number of different roles. It depends on The you know the function of the system
if it is a overall enterprise touching You know pervasive system then you know, we are largely leading,
you know that process You know with with in partnership with other departments if it is department specific software
I'm just gonna throw something out like the tools that you know park parks uses To you know to manage,
you know its operations then you know, we will be a partner and you know facilitate that and ensure
that it's meeting our You know our IT standards But this the selection the determination will you know
largely be? That departments not not
Clarifies it perfectly. Thank you so much, sir. Thank you Thank you so much I just have a couple follow-ups
about that non reverting telecom fund And so I don't know if this is more for you or the controller
or kind of a tag team Is that a fund that's unique to Bloomington or is that a fund that other municipalities
have to? I
Because I'm I guess I'm looking at the origin of the fund and it has to do with cable franchise fee
revenues And so it's no surprise that declining but there's yes, there's a convoluted story, you know
to that we used to I'll try to be quick. We used to write our own franchise agreements with cable providers
Municipalities used to have that power the state of Indiana at the request of you know a largely AT&T
Stripped that authority from local governments. It's now state has franchise authority, but in that
transition they retained I believe a five percent, you know cap on Revenue that would come to local
governments because of the of the franchise That was the called the franchise fee which was negotiated
and we still retain that but as you rightly suggest
That five percent is not what it used to be and has declined significantly over the years so it's no
longer a source of fund that we can rely on at the at the level that we have in right so I guess since
that is not say I mean so that's not a unique problem to Bloomington per se yes, so I guess I'm just
wondering if there have been conversations anywhere about recouping those revenues through other
Like fee is related to say streaming services for example because of course, you know we cut ties with
cable and then people just have streaming services instead and You know in terms of like a household
budget that feels sort of equivalent But in terms of what we're talking about right now in terms of
government funds, it's not so has there been discussion about about that at the state level or a lot
of discussion about that and a lot of local governments would you know would like that but the federal
government does not allow a
I think generally speaking local governments to tax Or create a fee structure for streaming streaming
video And does that apply to state to does the federal government also not allow I have to look at what
the current FCC? Guidelines are but that that very thing has been a topic of discussion as the kind of decent
Stripping of local governments of that authority has moved across across the United States but To my
understanding there's no source of revenue that we are able to tap from Streaming you know streaming
internet-based streaming video services. Okay, great. Thank you. That's just very interesting Further questions
We will go to the public then for comments on information technology services department budget for
2027 Any takers Okay We're back to council for final comment on our last budget item
I'll make a very quick final comment and thank anybody who has hung with us this long through four budget
meetings Thank IT for wrapping us up here. I thank them generally as a department Cybersecurity is incredibly
important and I appreciate that that is a priority that you guys have had this year and will continue
into next year there's
all kinds of pieces of cybersecurity and all sorts of really really important Stuff that the government
needs to protect in terms of I mean There's a lot of information out there and I'm glad that that we
have some folks paying attention to how to protect it securely. Thanks Other comments on the ITS budget
Okay saying none thank you so much for your presentation good work Without objection I'd like to provide
the council with an opportunity for for comments on the budget overall No objection anyone anyone like
to take a moment I Guess I did this for selfish reasons, so I'm gonna say something I
Yeah, well here's very briefly What what what strikes me is The tremendous numbers of needs we have
in in capital investment coming soon and Those proposed things like utility service center police department
building construction public works facility parks and recreation capital needs What I hope to be a tap
road fire station
These things are adding up to big big money like over a hundred million dollars so How will they be
paid for? Obviously we're going to be taking bonds at a time when things are very volatile in our economy
And we're going to have to think about because of the state action for limiting revenue from property
taxes I think we're gonna have to be looking obviously at income taxes and
We're gonna be looking at We're also looking at increase in water and sewer rates. We're looking at
increases in sanitation fees Some of these reports are just necessary to keep up with costs inflation
and so forth, but It's it you know it It gives me great pause because I think of all these needs are
important but some are more important than others and to me I need to think about them relative to their
importance and
And I'm not going to give away what I think is most important right now But just to say that I think
that you know, it really requires some kind of judicious ranking of them The last thing I want to say
last three things I want to say is that I think it's a modest request just to keep Jack Hopkins Essentially
increasing relative to and on pace with inflation I
We found out during this budget hearing that deer are real concern in the city obviously they've been
but we have a count of 90 deer per square mile and I looked at the report this evening it was sent to
me by the DNR and it's in some areas there over 100 deer per square mile, which is an extreme it's a
critical level of of deer numbers we've had a very wet season and
This means there's lots of forage, but that's not necessarily going to be the case And so we're getting
a lot of deer population increase And that is concerned for people with obviously safety gardening food
food production and and public health So that's a concern that's going to be required I think some resources
and the first thing to do is I think continue tracking their numbers and
And then the last thing was there was some discussion about a food policy coordinator, which I think
is a very prudent thing to think about going forward because food's important for people, and
it's particularly important for people in hard times to understand how they can access food, grow food,
and have a resilient food system at a time when we might experience things like
Supply disruptions and so forth so Communities have taken that as a priority and I think that we should
we should we should learn from their experience So that's what I have to say is any anyone want to end
with anything? Okay, and Controller McKim requested that we have that he be given a few moments because
we have our budget legislation introduction on September 23rd, I understand and
Do you want to tell us? Essentially the process from here on. Yeah. Thank you very much. It'll just
take a moment I think as you know everything that we've already been doing is Internal pre-work to the
formal budget submission the actual budget submission happens through the state's gateway system And
our intention is to advertise the budget via gateway around September 9th or 10th The drop dead date
is the 13th
which is a Sunday. Once the budget has been advertised, it can still be lowered but not increased. And
so if there's any council interest in increasing the budget anywhere, those discussions need to start
pretty much now. And I know we've heard one example from Councilmember Rallo on that. Then after the
advertisement, the public hearing for the budget is scheduled for Wednesday, September 23rd at 630.
And the final budget adoption hearing is scheduled for Wednesday, October 7th.
Also at 630 and so that's really bad. That's the budget process here in a nutshell So thank you for
giving me a moment to just let her make sure we're on the same page Terrific. Thank you a question I
do have a question in terms of it can only be cut and not increased Could it be cut in one place and
increased in another for a net zero? Within a fund. Yes within a fund. Okay. Thanks
Any other questions for the controller? Anything else for the good of the order comes my rough When
you say within a fund you mean with where the funds come for to fund that Thing you're talking about.
I mean like the general fund the Edie lid fund Okay, anything else Thank you to the administration and
it's been a very productive process
We're adjourned.