- Seeing as it's 630, I'm gonna go ahead and, and we have a quorum, I'm gonna go ahead and call this meeting of the Bloomington Common Council to order. Will the clerk please call the roll? Council Member Flaherty? Here. Ruff? Here. Rallo? Piedmont-Smith? Here. Stosberg? Here. Daly? Here. Zulek? Here. Rosenberger? Sorry. Here. Great, thank you.
- Before I do our agenda summation, I have been liking to start meetings with a little bit of interesting historical introductory information, trying to think of a good special name for these couple minutes and I haven't been able to think of one yet so I'll get there.
- I do usually like to have it apply somewhat locally, though tonight's doesn't quite as much. And I also like to kind of center it somehow in justice-related content. So tonight, though it's not local, I wanted to...
- news and things have reminded me recently of the Japanese internment camps that we had in the United States starting in 1942. And so I spent some time learning a little bit about those this week. So according to the Britannica Encyclopedia, concentration camp is defined as an internment center for political prisoners and members of national or minority groups who are confined for reasons of state security, exploitation, or punishment.
- Often persons are placed in such camps on the basis of identification with a particular ethnic or political group without the benefit of indictment or fair trial, usually by executive decree or military order." And I found that definition from the Britannica Encyclopedia website kind of interesting.
- So in terms of the historical information, after the Pearl Harbor bombing in 1941, more than 100,000 Japanese and Japanese-Americans were taken into custody and detained, losing their personal property and businesses. This was done in part through Executive Order 9066, signed by President Roosevelt, and that paved the way for the creation of these internment camps. The last of those camps closed in 1946.
- though the executive order, which allowed for their creation, was not actually formally repealed until 1976. So 30 years later, when President Gerald Ford officially repealed the order, a presidential commission in 1982 identified racial prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership as underlying causes of the internment program.
- In 1988, Congress passed the Civil Liberties Act, stating that a grave injustice had been done to Japanese-American residents during World War II and established a reparations fund. And detailed stories of Japanese internment camps can be found in both fiction and nonfiction accounts. And I wanted to highlight that today.
- said that history repeats itself. The establishment of new mass detention centers within the US and this new policy of shipping people to prisons and detention centers in other countries without judicial process seems to indicate that history is indeed repeating itself. And I can only hope and work toward not letting 30 or more years pass before current injustices and racial discrimination is recognized as such. So that is our moment of interesting history today.
- Moving into our agenda summation welcome back by the way from summer wherever your summers might have taken you Tonight we have three sets of minutes for approval We will have a section of reports where we'll start with reports from council members Then we have three reports from the mayor and city offices tonight kind of
- We like to keep each of these areas of reports to 20 minutes. I assume that we will have to extend during that time again today as we did before. Some unexpected reports happened over the summer. So we'll see how that goes. We will start with a report from our public works department about sidewalks and sidewalk plan that has been in development. We will have a review of the economic and sustainable development annual tax abatement report. And we will have to
- uh...
- make decisions about compliance tonight on that. And then we will have a public hearing from the Housing and Neighborhood Development with their presentation of Bloomington's 2025 to 2029 consolidated plan and 2025 annual action plan. So that public hearing part with the hand department will have public comment because it is a public hearing. That is not something that we usually have as part of the report section, but we will need to do that this evening.
- Next under reports is council committees. I do not believe that we have any council committee reports And then last under reports are reports from the public and that is our first set-aside time For the public to comment on items not on the agenda tonight We have no appointments to boards and commissions and
- We will have three items of legislation for first reading. We will have Ordinance 2025-23 enacting Title X of the Bloomington Municipal Code entitled Wastewater. Then Ordinance 2025-24, Title XIII of the Bloomington Municipal Code entitled Stormwater.
- And then, lastly, we'll have appropriation ordinance 2025 07 under first reading so we will just read those there will not be discussion for first readings. We have no second readings tonight because of course it's our first meeting after summer but we do have two resolutions, the first of which is 2025 10 to amend.
- the UDO regarding affordability incentives, and then resolution 2025-11 to initiate a prior proposal to amend the UDO regarding single room occupancy. After those two resolutions, we will have an additional period of public comment for items not on the agenda, a note about council schedule, and then we will adjourn.
- So if I wanna go back to the beginning, we have those three sets of minutes for approval. I move that the minutes from March 12th, March 16th, and May 14th, all of 2025 be approved as, be approved. Second. Is it March 26th, not 16th? I'm sorry, I'm seeing March 26th on our list.
- Yes, March 26 so March 12th March 26 and May 14th all of 2025 be approved second Thank you. We have a motion and a second to approve those minutes to council members have any questions or comments about them and
- Okay, I see that Councilmember Rosenberger has joined us virtually. So since we do have virtual attendance on this evening, we will need to do a roll call vote for all votes. So if the clerk could please call the roll on approval of the minutes, that would be great. Councilmember Flaherty? Yes. Ruff? Yes. Edmund Smith? Yes. Stosberg? Yes. Daly? Yes. Zulek? Yes.
- Sorry? Yes. Great, thank you, those are approved. Going right into reports from council members, I think in the last meeting there was mention by council members that starting at the ends might not always be fair, so I'm gonna start in the middle and ask council member Zulek if she has a report this evening. No report, thank you.
- Thank you, I hope you don't feel called out by that. Councilmember Daley? No report. Councilmember Piedmont-Smith? Yes, I do have a report this evening, thank you. I've been reflecting on President Trump's so-called big, beautiful bill, which is
- a total lie as far as the title. But anyway, it's really, its impact on the residents of Bloomington, my constituents and residents throughout the country is going to be devastating. People in Bloomington will go hungry. They will lose health insurance. Our children with special needs will lose in-school support funded through Medicaid. So I just wanted to go through a few of the major impacts.
- and kind of summarize what maybe we could do. So food assistance is being drastically cut. The bill includes cuts to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, SNAP, that go into effect in 2028, conveniently after the midterm elections. Indiana could be on the hook for as much as $360 million a year to keep SNAP benefits intact for the 600,000 Hoosiers who rely on it.
- And I don't trust the General Assembly to budget that much money for needy families, even if they are able to, which maybe they won't be able to. Next, health insurance coverage. The bill slashes over $1 trillion from Medicaid, putting coverage for 650,000 Hoosiers on the state's Medicaid expansion plan at risk. Nationwide, nearly 12 million people are expected to lose health insurance coverage.
- In addition to the Children's Health Insurance Program, CHIP, Hoosier HealthWise, the Healthy Indiana Plan, HIP. The cuts also include the home and community-based support services waivers, which allow seniors and children with disabilities to receive care in their homes instead of being institutionalized. Medicaid services in schools will also be cut. For example, services related to individualized education programs, physical,
- speech and hearing therapy, and behavioral therapy programs. Next category, energy costs. Because the bill cancels federal support for clean energy programs, the average energy costs for Hoosier households will increase by about $340 a year according to Energy Innovation, a nonpartisan energy and climate think tank, not to mention the impacts on our ongoing climate change
- disaster, which we see in flooding in Indiana. Next category is education. In my view, public education is essential in a democratic society, but this bill furthers the privatization of schools.
- The bill creates the nation's first federal voucher program to pay for private schools by way of a permanent and unlimited tax shelter. The voucher amount is still only a fraction of the average private school tuition cost in the US, making it highly likely that it will only serve to benefit families that already send their children to private schools, but will do little to expand access to lower income families.
- In addition, the aforementioned Medicaid cuts mean schools will struggle to get reimbursed for services and supplies for students with disabilities, which are required by law under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. So instead of education, health care, and food for needy Hoosiers, what is this bill spending our tax dollars on? Well, number one, tax cuts. Wealthy Americans would benefit far more from the tax package than those
- on lower income levels, according to the Tax Policy Center analysis. Big boost for military spending. The US military will receive a budget increase of $150 billion under the bill. They already receive a giant portion of our budget without this. Among other things, the money will be used to fund Trump's Golden Dome Missile Defense Project, which many experts say is not even feasible.
- and huge, huge increase in the budget of ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement. By allocating $100 billion to that agency, they are increasing it many, many folds. The ICE budget is currently $8 billion, so $100 billion extra for ICE.
- Plus, the bill puts $46.5 billion toward a border wall construction, which many experts have said, again, does not really address the problems of immigration system. Congress needs to pass immigration reform. These ICE and wall investments will not actually address the problems in our system. So lots of dubious spending and tax breaks for the rich.
- Congressional Budget Office estimates the bill will add $3.4 trillion to federal deficits over the next 10 years. This big ugly bill will hurt America and will hurt Americans. The purpose of government is not to enrich the oligarchs at the expense of everyone else. Government can and should uphold the social safety net, spread the tax burden fairly, and allow children equal access to quality public education.
- It should protect us from the real enemies, poverty, hopelessness, lack of opportunity, climate change. Instead of wasting our money on battling fake enemies, such as the immigrants who enrich our communities. As you, your friends and neighbors, feel the impact of this big ugly bill in the coming years, remember who created it and who voted for it. Donald Trump, Representative Aaron Houchin,
- Senator Jim Banks, Senator Todd Young. These representatives do not care about the wellbeing of average Hoosier families. Tell them as you experience negative impacts. Oppose them in the next elections. In the meantime, dig deep and support your community by volunteering, advocating, and donating to organizations that are trying to keep hope and people alive in Monroe County. Thank you.
- Thank you. Councilmember Ruff. Councilmember Flaherty. And down at the other end, Councilmember Asari. Thank you. And sorry in advance that this is
- following that will not seem as eloquent or lofty. But I was asked by a constituent to share some information about a extraordinary local resource that serves families right here in Bloomington. Today, I was able to tour Tandem's postpartum house. And of course, because we're expecting a baby to bring some levity to things. But anyways, more importantly, oh, thank you.
- Yay, we're excited. Less sleep is good. Tandem's postpartum house is the first of its kind in Indiana and one of only a few nationwide. It's located right here just next to, I guess, across the street from Viva Mas and that sort of third street area. Tandem now offers four beautifully furnished overnight suites.
- and comfortable day room retreats, each thoughtfully designed to provide new parents and their babies with restful spaces to bond, relax, and recharge, free from the interruptions and stresses of everyday life at home. But Tandem is much more than that. It's also a lifeline for a lot of families in our community. They have a dedicated team now of eight professional postpartum doulas. They provide around-the-clock care and support to people in this community. They have trained volunteers, many of whom are affectionate
- called Baby Rockers, who offer extra sets of arms to parents so that they can nap, shower, or simply take a moment to breathe. And beyond these soothing rooms, Tandem also serves as a vital perinatal hub for families throughout South Central Indiana. They distribute free maternity clothing, baby supplies, pack and plays, car seats, safety checks, safe sleep, education. And through their leadership of the Hoosier diaper program, they distributed last year more than 20,000, I'm sorry, more than 20,000
- 20,000 diapers each month to families in need. Anyways, why does this matter in Bloomington? Research tells us that one in seven new parents struggles with postpartum mood or anxiety disorders and conditions
- usually driven primarily by isolation and exhaustion. Tandem directly addresses these challenges by providing uninterrupted rest, nourishing meals, all of those things that I just talked about. Anyways, these new services started a sliding scale based on income. They started around $100 per night. Going up on average to about 250, they accept FSA and HSA funds. I share all this because in doing the tour, I wasn't there because we're having a baby. I was just rather there because I've
- been trying to better understand the non-profits in our community.
- became aware of the fact that they're facing, as many of our nonprofits are, very lean times with the possibility of closure. Now that they've sort of come to build and invested quite a bit, and I know a lot of us in this community have supported them, their board is going to be voting next week on whether to continue services based on their available funds. And so in sort of a last-ditch effort to share ongoing progress of things in this town, if you are so inclined to support
- by gift cards, give philanthropically, connect families who may be benefited by these resources to them. Now would be a wonderful time to do that. And so I just wanted to use this platform to make everybody aware of that. So thank you so much for the time. Thank you. Council Member Rosenberger. No report, thank you. Great, thank you. I also have a report.
- that I wrote out because I wanted to make sure I didn't forget anything. So first of all, I have my constituent meeting this Saturday, July 19th at 11 a.m., and I'm gonna be at the farmer's market near the mayor's tent with the planning department. So if anybody wants to come and talk about UDO-related stuff, that would be a great time to do it.
- And then I also wanted to give a mention last weekend, well, from Wednesday to Sunday. I spent that time in Chicago with Councilmember Piedmont-Smith, actually, at the local progress convening. And so I wanted to share a couple of things about that. It was kind of an energizing time to be so engrossed in local level politics for three days. And I just wanted to highlight a few sessions that I attended that I felt were
- gave me information and ideas that I can bring back to Bloomington in terms of making it kind of a worthwhile piece of my time. So first, I attended a session on staffing, council staff, and it was mostly geared toward larger councils where council members actually have their own personal staff as opposed to a shared staff, which was interesting to hear about, but it was still really valuable in several things that related to office organization and prioritization and division of labor are able to be
- translated I think to a shared staff situation so that was really interesting.
- The second thing I wanted to highlight was a session related to food security, food deserts, and municipal grocery stores, grocery stores that have some level of municipal involvement. There were a few different types that were discussed, and there was just a lot of interesting pieces of information that I'm interested in learning more about and determining what kinds of additional interventions related to food and food security might be helpful in Bloomington in terms of our population needs and also just our landscape and geography and how it works here.
- And then the last session I want to mention was one on budgets and taxation, which was also very interesting. It's always interesting to hear. Well, I'm kind of like math geeky in that way, right? So I thought it was interesting. And with SB1 just causing such changes in our local revenue streams and limiting ways that the state allows local governments to fund their programs and services, I think that it was a really important session to attend, even though it's one that everybody's taxation and revenue
- Streams are a little bit different all over the country, so nothing necessarily directly translated. But it was kind of interesting being in that environment. It was actually also interesting the pre-centers held up Indiana's SB1 as being particularly atrocious to local governments. So that was the dimension that Indiana got in that whole conference this weekend. So all in all, I'm just really happy that I was able to attend that this year. And then the last thing that I wanted to mention, both for public and also my colleagues, is at the planning commission,
- This week, we dealt with seven petitions proposing changes to the UDL. These were the petitions that were noticed to all property owners within the city of Bloomington because they had various proposals of change to the use table. There are state requirements about notice when you're changing the use table. What happened at that meeting was that two of those petitions got forwarded to a second hearing,
- which will be August 11th. And those two petitions were the single room occupancy petition and the urban agriculture position petition. Both of those UDO changes are a little bit more substantial. And there were several plan commission member comments and also public comments that are prompting staff to kind of look at that proposed language. So I encourage my colleagues and the public to look at what was proposed for those amendments and give feedback to staff
- staff as they make those adjustments over the next couple of weeks in preparation for that August 11th meeting. The other five petitions had less substantive changes. I think some of them especially were important, but they were just less complicated in terms of what was being changed. And so those five were all forwarded to the council with positive recommendations. So we will end up reviewing those at an upcoming meeting that is not yet scheduled.
- And I just want to be clear that at that review and discussion and approval, there will, of course, be the chance to change that. So if any members of the public go, oh, I really have an objection to this, or I'm really concerned about this, or similarly, I'm really supportive of this, there's still time to make adjustments to that. And so I just encourage people to get involved with that whole process. And that is my report for the evening. So now we get to move on to the mayor and city offices.
- so If you want to step up and introduce yourself for the record And I'm excited to hear about sidewalks. Yes. Good evening council members Adam Waisen public works director for the city of Bloomington Here today to just provide a brief update on our progress for a citywide sidewalk plan that we discussed during
- the last budget hearings. As many of you know, we are in the process of gathering data through contracted services on the conditions of our roadways, traffic signals, sidewalks, side paths, and ADA ramps. This is a technologically intensive process of data collection, scrubbing, mapping, and eventually will result in reports that will also show the necessary investments to maintain this
- critical community infrastructure. Our vendor, ICC-IMS, is an industry leader in providing these services, and we're glad to have them on board. By the end of the year, we'll have this project wrapped up and be in receipt of all key deliverables. That will include publicly accessible data sets, ratings, and visuals.
- At the same time, staff from Public Works, Engineering, Parks and Rec, Planning and Transportation, amongst some other departments have been meeting since the beginning of the year with the understanding that each of these departments has a major role or responsibility in the area of managing our transportation system and more specifically our pedestrian facilities.
- We've also pulled in other departments such as hand controllers office CBU and the mayor's office and those discussions, but primarily it's been public works engineering and planning from these meetings, it became clear that we needed to think more broadly than just a sidewalk plan.
- And incorporate a more holistic operational plan for all pedestrian facilities. So this team has come up with a working term of a pedestrian facilities operations plan that I promise we will not shorten to PFOP And while we've been working on some draft language for an operations plan like that.
- We also found that it to be perfect timing with the standing up of the Transportation Commission. So the Transportation Commission has had their first meeting last month and will be continuing to meet throughout the rest of the year. I believe they break in July or August. But our plan from this is to use that commission as the sounding board for what a pedestrian facilities operations plan would include. Some of the topics that we're thinking about. And this would be an operational
- operations plan that would supplement such things as the cop plan the transportation plan the safe streets for all plan it's not going to do away with any of those it would supplement in a lot of ways. So some of the topics that we're talking about internally that we think should be included and then you know obviously the commission will have their say in other topics that they might want to include but.
- Thinking about an action plan of how the limited resources we budget on an annual basis for pedestrian improvements are prioritized. On an annual basis, we go to the Board of Public Works with a sidewalk improvement plan to get their blessing for how we spend our limited resources. That would be something that we would look for input on this operations plan and from the Transportation Commission. What programs for repairs and maintenance should be available to property owners?
- So just a few of the things we're thinking about potential payment plans via coordination with other governmental agencies. Sometimes you can do a payment plan. That's part of the property tax bill. Other communities in Indiana have done that city performed. Performed repairs with possible direct payments.
- elderly or low income resident assistant programs to be more dynamic than what we currently do historic sidewalk rehabilitation programs. We've got we still got a lot of old WPA sidewalks in the community that while we work with the HPC closely on a lot of those are in need of major repair.
- Also talking about recommendations on winter weather enforcement programs, how do we go about enforcing city code when it comes to snow and ice accumulation, how do we.
- We know we don't have the resources to go by every single home throughout the community and see if they've cleared all the snow and ice from their sidewalks. Hand does the best they can in those times, but we know that it's not perfect. So, you know, what might we want to consider as an innovative or new way of approaching that? So in the end, we're thinking of this as less than a big planning document and more of an operations plan. How do we go about improving the pedestrian network? We've got a lot of stakeholders, a lot of
- City staff that are involved. Like I said, we're planning to involve the Transportation Commission as they're stood up and getting their feet underneath them and are While we're doing all that we're simultaneously using our budgeted dollars in the street division and other departments to invest in the sidewalk network as we Presented in our budgets last year. So that's where we're at right now and
- We'll obviously come back to the Council with any updates on the data sets we're getting through our data collection reports, updates on where we're at with the operations plan, and we'll be happy to continue working to improve the pedestrian network. Great, thank you very much. Do Councilmembers have any questions? Councilmember Piedmont-Smith. I think Councilmember Osari had his hand up first. Okay.
- Mr. Wason, thank you. How is the data being collected? How is the data being collected? Like on the data on the condition of the sidewalks? How is it actually being collected? Yeah, so for the sidewalks and the ADA ramps, they use, I have that information right here. Well, for the paving, it's called the Iris Pro-Pave, but for sidewalks,
- They use a sidewalk.
- Surface Tester SST. It is a three times go, it uses, I could go through some really, some things that I don't actually know what it means, but three times go cater point lasers, two times 12 MP Basler cameras front and rear, 5G accelerometers, 250 HG MEMS. They use a lot of technology on what looks to be like a golf cart, and they will go over every one of our sidewalk surfaces
- with that motorized vehicle to collect all that data. Okay, great. So they're actually going? Yes. In all the neighborhoods? Yes. As we talked about in our last budget hearings, we budgeted additional money to go to that higher level of analysis than the previously the way they would provide a sidewalk data is from our roadway data. They would have their LiDAR cameras on their vans that collected the pavement data, and it would also scan down the side of the road.
- If there is a car there, they're not going to get good information. So this is going up and down every city sidewalk or side path. Thank you. Councilmember, sorry. Thank you, Director Wason. Yes, I have a couple of questions, but the first one is just at this stage. What's the what can we do as a council? How can we help assist move this forward?
- I think the biggest thing that's happened so far is the creation of the Transportation Commission, a holistic commission that's looking at the whole transportation network. We were hopeful to be a little further along, but once we realized the timing of that commission being stood up, we thought this is the perfect example of something that we should be working closely with them on. Okay, excellent. Can I ask a follow-up? You mentioned quite a few different plans that are being tossed around, which I'm really interested in particularly in the context of our tax situation.
- But which of those are sort of rising to the top? And you sort of mentioned a lot of those in passing, as though we would all know what a pay for plan would be or something. So yeah, where are we at in the construction of those plans? So that's what we want the Transportation Commission to weigh in on. So there's a lot of options out there. What we've done is the back end research. We know Fort Wayne has a dynamic sidewalk improvement plan that they do differently than we do. So we're doing that kind of back end research of what's
- out there and then want to have that kind of conversation of what do we think would work in Bloomington? What do we want to try? Great, and how can residents and similarly council members give input? Absolutely, whether it's through the Transportation Commission meetings or we can be, I'd be happy to come back and provide an update after we kind of get further along in that process. Awesome, thank you. Are there any other questions? Council member Flaherty. Thank you, thank you Director Reisen. Yeah. I appreciate it.
- Greatly appreciate the investment in the granular data analysis that we need to fully do the conditions assessment, as well as the collaboration internally within the emergency administration so far on this, and also with transportation commission going forward. I think all of the operational things you mentioned are topics that have come up that we really do need to figure out and need holistic approaches to. Something I've also tried to bring up and emphasize over the last number of budget cycles is the lack of a complete or comprehensive assessment about
- pedestrian infrastructure, and I guess my desire to figure out where that goes. And so, the transportation plan has a bicycle and multimodal priority network for build-out, and it's prioritized and sequenced. We need to update it to get the next tranche of capital projects identified and prioritized. Safe Streets for All has a layer on that that helps us prioritize. It includes some pedestrian infrastructure, like multi-use paths.
- But we don't have, and I agree with you that this is bigger than sidewalks. It actually, like pedestrian infrastructure is the better maybe term. But it would be helpful to know where all the sidewalk gaps are. I think planning has that mapped. But also, like what the replacement time cycle is, where we just aren't gonna add sidewalks and make those determinations, actually, because
- building out sidewalks on both sides of the street of every street in the city probably would be, I don't know, $200-$300 million outlay or more. Like, we're not gonna do that, and we know that. So, for instance, Allen Street through Ryan Park, where we have a neighborhood greenway. We've kind of made that decision. We're not gonna add sidewalks to Allen Street, most likely. But that would be really helpful to know those things and identify it and actually say, here is what we ideally would like to build out in our sidewalk network over the next
- 15, 20, 30 years, whatever it is, and here's the capital outlay, and here's what we need to invest. You made reference a few times to the limited resources. I think we all understand well and agree that a few hundred thousand dollars on sidewalks annually is just really not going to get the job done, but we haven't had the data or the comprehensive vision to figure out what it is, what it would take to get the job done.
- Infrastructure investment, in my mind, is another need here. It doesn't have to be in this operational plan, per se, but it would need to be an update to the transportation plan, then, or something. And it's interactive, so I'm curious for what your perspective is on how we tackle that problem. Has that problem come up in the conversations to date? Thank you.
- data gathering that so they do the sidewalks after they do the roadways because they're able to then identify where sidewalks simply don't exist so then they're not driving the golf cart there. So we have I know planning's got some good data on where sidewalks don't exist. But that's all part of this conversation as well as where, you know,
- Not only where do we how do we prioritize the maintenance investment but then also that actual infrastructure investment of building new that's something that hits a lot of departments whether it's planning transportation engineering with their roadway projects parks and rec in some ways with the projects that they do so yeah absolutely a big part of that and identifying.
- you know, how do we prioritize those bigger investments that are necessary? We know we have neighborhood streets that have inadequate sidewalks. We know we have some neighborhood streets that don't have sidewalks on either side of the street. And those tend to be those big, big project investment, you know, big investments to make those projects happen. And so this would absolutely be part of that. Okay, thank you. I'm our representative on the Transportation Commission, so I look forward to hearing more and working with you in that capacity too. Thank you.
- member questions. Okay, I have one. Sorry, I think I think you covered most of the other ones that I had because I really started out with three. But it sounds like what you're thinking about is an internal plan.
- and what Council Member Flaherty mentioned was more of an external plan in terms of prioritizing and as a plan that might be an addendum or an addition onto our transportation plan focused on pedestrian infrastructure. So, am I kind of correct in thinking that what Council Member Flaherty was talking about in terms of how to prioritize build out especially is maybe different and most of what I feel like you described is
- Maintaining what we have yeah a lot of what the information that we're going to look at in a sidewalk in our Work is going to be more about the maintenance the upkeep the you know, how do we fix what we have? But that's also a huge part of the conversation when we think about transportation Holistically, like where do we want to make those bigger project investments, you know? and I think that kind of coincides more with our
- project list, like what are the things we're looking at for the next one, three, five, 10 years as far as larger projects, whether MPO or through engineering and such. So I think that's an accurate statement that that would be a little bit more external and that what we're really focused on is more of an internal, like how do we operate it? How do we maintain it? How do we make the investments? So I think I understood your question.
- You think what I said, I think I understood your question. Yeah, I mean, I guess I think that both of those things are really important. I think that we really do need to have that internal assessment and that internal plan. But I also think that we need to have a more long range plan on the I mean, honestly, what would probably amount to like a larger investment, because of course, that like, probably
- I'm going to say probably here, even though I think I could definitely say definitely, it's more expensive to build new than it is to maintain what we've got. And so those, you know, it's two different kind of planning processes of how to maintain the things that are already there versus where to build new things and how to prioritize which spaces in a limited budget get that attention first.
- So I Sounds like you're more focused on the maintenance part and I hope that at some point it can transition into Focusing also on that long-range and I think that's happening in other areas of what we do in the city, too I think I think that's an accurate statement. Okay, great. Are there other questions councilmember Piedmont Smith?
- Yes, have you in your internal meetings and with the consultant have you gotten a good handle on how much the city actually spends on pedestrian infrastructure and because it's from so many different sources and a lot of it is kind of opportunistic based on projects coming up. I've never had a good sense of how much we actually spend and I think it's part of our budgeting exercises that will become more clear just in the way we're trying to.
- look at some of the more outcomes based budgeting. And I think that is something that will come through that process, but we haven't actually gone across the departments and said, okay, what do you spend specifically on pedestrian infrastructure in our conversation so far? But certainly something that I think will be part of how we do our budgeting going forward. Okay, so perhaps in August, we'll get a better sense of that. I think that would probably be the time. Thank you. Any other last questions?
- Great, thank you very much Mr. Wason. So next we have our annual tax abatement report and we have expended about 16 minutes right now of this report time. So I'm gonna go ahead and extend report time until 730 to start with because we do have two other report times. So if there's no objection, I've extended this till 730 for now and if I have to extend it again, then I will. So who is here to do the,
- annual tax abatement. If you could state your name for the record. Hi, council members. Jane Coopersmith, Director of Economic and Sustainable Development. This agenda item is part of our annual tax abatement's compliance cycle. As you remember, we had a presentation before council recess started where each individual abatement was reviewed. We reviewed the commitments from the SB1s and the
- deliverables via the CF ones and then ESD staff Made a recommendation for each individual tax abatement of finding of compliance or non-compliance and then the next step That was just a presentation. You didn't accept it. I was just allowed to present it the next formal step happens this evening and this is where you
- make your determinations for findings of compliance or non-compliance based on the information that you received and any additional information that you acquired in the interim. I think that summarizes why we're here tonight. I don't anticipate that we're revisiting that entire presentation, but I'm happy to offer details on any specific abatements and answer any questions that you have. Thank you. Are there council member questions to start with?
- Council Member Piedmont-Smith. Yes, thank you. Just a couple of small ones. So for Southern Noll Milestone Ventures, there are, I'm sorry, I just looked at it again and now realize that I've answered my own question, so nevermind. I think Union on Crescent will talk about later
- Okay, the only other thing is in your report that you presented or you gave us for our previous meeting on this topic, you also had pilots, so payment in lieu of taxes from some affordable housing entities. And for country view, it said the 2025 payment had not yet been received. Is that on schedule to be received as,
- In the timeline expected or it was a little bit of a mystery and we've we've figured out what happened but And I apologize. I can't remember Why it was misdirected, but it was misdirected through an auto payment to the county and we recovered it So they had actually paid on time. It was just to the wrong location Good to know thank you Thank You councilmember sorry
- Thank you so much, Director Gruber-Smith. I don't know if this is a better question for you or for Attorney Laener, but a question around the compliance timeline. Just because we did not pass it on the last meeting, am I correct in saying that there's a timeline in which, from receiving the CF-1, we have to notice the outcome of the hearing, right? Or am I wrong?
- Are we okay with that? We're still within that timeline fantastic. Yeah, it feels like we've been gone for so long. So Okay, so that was the main question thing. I should have just counted that but thanks Thank you. Are there other questions? I Just have a clarification I guess because it has been a while since we saw this this presentation so you are recommending like the staff recommendations are to
- Find them all compliant or substantially compliant except for a union at Crescent. That's correct. Okay. So is there any new information that has been included? Because there were like a lot of pages in this packet. So I was kind of going through it and kind of trying to be like, okay, is there anything new that got distributed to us today that did not get distributed to us?
- No, there are not, there's not new information. We do have representatives of the company here tonight, as well as director Anna Killian Hansen of housing and neighborhood development. So there's additional context available. However, my understanding is that there would be a here. If, if the council chooses to have a finding of non-compliance, there would be a hearing scheduled at which time there would be ample opportunity to dig into the details.
- of those issues. Okay, great. Yeah, because I guess I did have a couple of questions regarding union at Crescent and the letter at the end from the annex group about
- their situation, so I'm interested to learn more about that. So I guess if I'm interested to learn more about that, then it needs to be found as noncompliance so that then we can go to a hearing, so then we can hear more about that. Is that the best thing to do, Attorney Laener? Yes. If I could ask a question also, would you be able to speak to the issue of whether the noncompliance
- was not caused by factors beyond the control of union at Crescent? Sure. There are challenging factors that are outside of the company's control. However, we believe that this non-compliance is related to factors within their control just based on communication with housing and neighborhood development and our communication with the company.
- So. Is this the moment to like go into more details about that? No, I don't think so. Because I think, you know, this is our belief and this is why we're making this recommendation, but I think you need the hearing in order to really dig into those details is my understanding. So in a way, the finding of non-compliance is step one. And then you'll have a thorough hearing where the property owner will really be able to provide, you know, detail and
- Council will be able to prepare questions and will present additional information in a packet. Okay, great. Are there further questions right now or do we want motions? Council Member Daly. Thank you. So sorry, just to clarify, if we do find a noncompliance finding tonight and then we hold the hearing, can you just clarify what the next step would be if after the hearing we say, oh, okay,
- then we can change our noncompliance to compliance. You have that ability to find them compliant at that time. You also have the ability, I mean, I think you have a range of opportunities or options at that time. So I think you could determine whether you wanna, if you find them noncompliant, you could rescind the entire tax abatement. You could find them noncompliant for that year, but the abatement remains intact.
- So I think you have a range of options in that moment. Thank you for clarifying. Yeah. Are there other questions before we move to any motions? Council Member Rosenberger, I am remembering to look up there. So if you have any questions, please raise your hand or anything. Seeing no more questions, I at this point would entertain motions regarding
- compliance or non-compliance of these housing, I'm not even sure what to call them, these housing units, these developments, these tax abatements, thank you. Do we have a motion somewhere? Well, I am looking at you. Sorry. Do you feel ready? Are we going with motion number one?
- Okay, I will move that the council as the designating body determine preliminarily that union at Crescent has not substantially complied with its statement of benefits and that the failure to substantially comply was not caused by factors beyond the control of the property owner. Second. So there has been a motion and a second to
- preliminarily find that Union and Crescent has not been compliant with the tax abatement. And so I'll kind of rephrase what Councilmember Daley said a second ago. That's a preliminary finding and not a final determination. Questions or comments about that from council members? Councilmember Fleary. Yeah, I planned to vote for the motion in favor and just want to note that confirming what you said, I look forward to the discussion of facts and circumstances and making a final determination then.
- And my vote now does not indicate how I will vote, certainly in that final determination, so it shouldn't be taken that way. Thank you. Thank you. Attorney Leonard, did you have something to add? Just to clarify, this vote tonight simply is a statutory requirement that allows this matter to proceed to a hearing, at which time
- Council and the parties would have an opportunity to review and discuss Factors in much more detail Great. Thank you. Are there other questions from council members? Okay, will the clerk please call the roll on the motion to find unit Crescent preliminarily non-compliant Yes
- Sasper? Yes. Daly? Yes. Zulek? Yes. Rosenberger? Yes. Asari? Yes. Flaherty? Yes. Great. Thank you. And that passes 9-0.
- I now move that the council hold a public hearing on July 30th, 2025 during the council's regular session beginning at 630 in the council chambers to further consider union at Crescent's compliance with the statement of benefits provided as part of the tax abatement granted under resolution 1730 and resolution 1731. Excuse me. And that council staff provide the required notice of this hearing to the property owner listing the basis for the council's determination.
- failure to allocate at least 70% of the units to households with incomes at or below 60% of the area medium income, and or such other finding the council may deem appropriate as the reason for its determination. Yes. I'll second that. I'm a little, but I'm a little confused about the second, the last sentence.
- Any other finding the council may deem appropriate? Yeah, I don't think that we that we decided on a on an additional Reason for that determination Besides what was presented in the packet to us in terms of the Occupancy If that's the case in the motion can and I
- Okay. With failure to allocate at least 70% of the units to households with incomes at or below 60% of the area median income. Council Member Daly, is that where you would like your original motion to end? Yes, with 60% of the area median income. Okay. End of story. Thank you. Second. Okay, great.
- So this motion is stating the time of the public hearing, which is our next regular session two weeks from tonight. Do council members have any questions about the hearing date? Will the clerk please call the roll on the hearing date? Council Member Rallo? Yes. Edmont Smith? Yes. Stasberg? Yes.
- Daly. Yes. Zulek. Yes. Rosenberger. Yes. Misari. Yes. Flaherty. Yes. Ruff. Yes. Great. Thank you. So that passes nine zero. So we as council tonight have found union at Crescent preliminarily non-compliant and schedule a hearing so that we can
- Exchange information and have a longer period of time to get additional information from Union at Crescent to have a final determination related to compliance with the tax abatement So that business done we still have I I didn't count them. I can't remember how many other tax abatements To Consider this evening that the
- staff has recommended to us are all compliant or substantially compliant. Is there a motion related to those or are there further questions related to those other? Council Member Daly. I move that the council approve the findings of compliance or substantial compliance for the remaining properties listed in the 2025 annual tax abatement report as recommended by ESD with the exception of Union at Crescent. Second.
- Thank you, so it's been moved and seconded to find the other developments in compliance or substantial compliance of their tax abatement criteria. Are there questions from council members about this? I do wanna say for the benefit of the public who might feel like wow, councilman didn't have asked very many questions about this. We did have a longer presentation about this at our meeting on I believe it was June 4th and there were several questions asked
- at that time and then we've had this information all summer to think about and ponder over. So that is one of the reasons why this is going a little bit faster this evening because a lot of that consideration and questions were already processed at that June 4th meeting. So if there are no other questions or comments, if the clerk could please call the roll on the motion to find everyone except for
- union at Crescent compliant or substantially compliant, that would be great. Council Member Piedmont-Smith? Yes. Stosberg? Yes. Daly? Yes. Zulek? Yes. Rosenberger? Yes. Asari? Yes. Flaherty? Yes.
- Yes, and rather yes Great thank you and that also passes nine zero, so I believe then we have properly managed all of the tax abatement reports Is that correct? Great, thank you so
- I know that I'll look forward to two weeks from tonight so that we can hear a little bit more about union at Crescent and understand that situation a little bit more to determine final compliance.
- We now have three minutes left in the report time. I'm going to go ahead and extend that until 7.45, given that we have one more thing to present and officially begin the public hearing related to the Housing and Neighborhood Development Consolidated Plan and Annual Action Plan. If you could come on forward with
- presentation and as this does include a period of public comment and that is of course Who knows how many members of the public might want to end up commenting? I of course am willing to extend this time again if necessary, so I will hand it over now Good evening. Thank you for having me tonight. My name is Anna Killian Hansen. I am the director of housing and neighborhood development
- As you probably are aware, we have been in the process of developing our new consolidated plan, which is a planning strategy tool to address housing, community development, and economic development needs. This is all part of 24 CFR 570 for CDBG, 24 CFR part 91 for the consolidated plan, and 24 CFR part 91B for our citizen participation plan.
- Since Bloomington's population is greater than 50,000, we are considered an entitlement community. This means we receive an annual allocation from Housing and Urban Development, also known as HUD, for community development block grants and home investment partnerships. Funds must be expended in a fashion that is consistent with community needs. These needs are identified through public outreach, needs assessments,
- market studies, strategic plans, which form the basis of the consolidated plan. You may remember that community development block grants objectives are to benefit low to moderate income persons, aid in the prevention of slums or blights, or provide urgent needs. 65% of the allocation shall go towards physical improvement projects and 20% towards social service agencies.
- Home Investment Partnership funds objectives are to provide assistance or construction, acquisition, rehabilitation, home ownership assistance, rental assistance, and housing counseling.
- The Consolidated Plan is a five-year spending plan to develop viable urban communities by providing decent housing in a suitable living environment and expanding economic opportunities to load moderate-income persons. This plan will focus on program years 2025 through 2029. Also remember that our program years do not start until June 1st and are delayed this year due to the federal government's allocation announcements.
- The consolidated plan process includes conducting citizen participation needs assessments and strategic plans to address the community needs for the five year term. However, we additionally provide two other reports, the annual action plan to indicate what our plan is for a specific year within the consolidated plan and the caper, which reports results of each year.
- Through the public participation and outreach, we conducted nine meetings with topics ranging from affordable housing, fair housing, enhancing access to community assets for low to moderate income households, workforce development, housing the homeless or near homeless, housing for special needs populations, healthy housing in safe neighborhoods, and several general meetings. In summary, Bloomington is the most housing cost burden area in the state.
- High cost, low wage. According to census data, our population has decreased despite IU enrollment being the highest count cited in 10 years. This decline may be a result of the census occurring during the COVID-19 pandemic and the impacts on student housing. Despite the student growth, IU only provides around 13,000 beds on campus.
- During the public outreach, significant concern was expressed that much of the newer rental housing being built in the city is higher priced housing being built primarily for students. The demand for rentals, particularly the student population, does place additional pressure on the housing market. Single person households represent a significant portion of the population, including students, seniors, and individuals living alone.
- Many of these households face challenges related to affordability access to resources and housing stability Despite high occupancy rates many of the studio and one-bedroom apartments in the city Dedicated as workforce housing units remain vacant due to high cost and or being in student centric complexes One of the most pressing issues in Bloomington is the affordability of housing and
- A large portion of households in Bloomington spend a significant portion of income on housing costs. The financial strain not only limits their ability to cover other essential expenses such as food, health care, transportation, and also increases the risk of housing instability and eviction.
- Characteristics linked to housing instability and increased risk of homelessness include new housing increasingly targeting students. Housing costs are rising. It is difficult to build housing due to costs, high interest rates, high costs of material and labor, land scarcity, zoning restrictions, and neighborhood resistance, and very few landlords will accept vouchers.
- vouchers assist low-income families the elderly and disabled afford decent safe and sanitary housing by providing rental subsidy the Bloomington Housing Authority in South Central Community Action Program administer housing choice vouchers while Bloomington Housing Authority administers project-based vouchers the main difference is that housing choice vouchers vouchers are attached to the tenant not the unit and Project-based vouchers are attached to the unit not the tenant
- At the time of the development, there were 987 people on the wait list for housing choice vouchers and 2,168 on the wait list for project-based vouchers. In the owner-occupied units, larger homes align well with the needs of larger families or those seeking more space. However, smaller owner-occupied units are rare, potentially excluding single-person households or smaller families from ownership
- opportunities. Currently, 79% of our single-family housing is three bedrooms or more, with 20% having two bedrooms and only 1% with one bedroom. Like much of the nation, developers face scarcity of available land, rising construction costs and interest rates, making projects difficult to pencil out.
- We are experiencing the golden handcuffs currently where refinancing or selling to buy a new home with current higher interest rates would significantly increase monthly payments, making it financially difficult to move even if opportunities arise. Local zoning and land use policies limit the development of affordable housing. The UDO presents barriers for developers such as minimum lot size and the sheer number of requirements to meet hinder and slow progress.
- The Bloomington market also has a growing presence of short term rentals, reducing the supply of housing, further complicating the housing market for low and moderate income families. The residential inspection program has demonstrated that it has helped mitigate housing problems in the city to ensure that there's no concentration of multiple housing condition problems.
- So the highest priority needs identified in the plan include improving access to and improved quality of affordable housing in the rental and sales markets. This includes the development of new units for rent and ownership as well as the preservation of existing units in addition to providing rental assistance for families.
- Public facilities and infrastructure improvements that deliver services such as solid waste disposal, flood drains, water sewers, streets, sidewalks, neighborhood facilities, and parks and recreational facilities. There is a need to make improvements particularly in low and moderate income areas for elderly residents in which the local jurisdictions are less able to leverage resource or attract investments that are necessary to improve the quality of life.
- Delivery of public services for seniors, persons with disabilities, youth, victims of domestic violence, abused and neglected children, as well as child care services, health and mental health services, food access, broadband access, transportation, non-homeless special needs and employment training. Affordable child care and food security were cited by stakeholders as particular needs.
- Housing and services for persons experiencing homelessness and near homelessness include including for homeless, domestic violence victims, and youth transitioning out of foster care. Many have difficulties getting into stable housing with very few landlords willing to take on formerly homeless or addicted persons as tenants. Successful implementation of any strategy addressing homelessness includes stemming inflow of people experiencing homelessness.
- Market influence can occur by providing tenant based rental assistance cost burden is the most dominant housing issue in Bloomington.
- Tenant-based rental assistance would facilitate housing individuals on the Housing Choice Voucher List, especially for individuals facing difficult circumstances. According to stakeholder input, there is a need to provide safe and accessible housing and remove barriers for elderly and non-elderly persons with disabilities, victims of domestic violence, and persons with substance abuse and mental health diagnosis.
- New unit production would help alleviate cost burden and the lack of inventory. Bloomington's greatest housing issue by increasing housing supply. Additional units would also mitigate competition between the city's student population and low to moderate income households.
- Cost burden can be mitigated through rehabilitation. The cost to rehab units in distressed areas are the same as an affluent area. The difference in neighborhood rehab projects is the return on investment between the two and can be zero or negative for improvements made to a property located in distressed housing market, thus making it economically unattractive for private investors to rehab houses in impacted areas. Incentives for private developers to preserve existing vacant units in distressed
- could alleviate the challenge efforts to acquire and rehab units for sale would provide affordable homeownership opportunities for city residents as subsidized units reach and in the period of affordability there needs to be an effort to preserve these
- The primary focus of implementation of this plan will be to sustain neighborhood stability, prevent homelessness, increase and improve housing supply, ensure accessible, affordable housing for people throughout the city. This consolidated plan has been developed with community input and reflects the needs of our beloved culturally diverse, vibrant city.
- Interesting do council members have questions or comments before we go to the public council members you look Thank you for the presentation I learned a lot. I just have a request to stop referring to luxury housing as student housing Over a third of our students at IU graduate with debt the average being around thirty thousand dollars There are quite a few students at IU who can't afford luxury housing and so by
- Grouping all students into one category. I think that contributes to the strain between students and other residents of Bloomington But I take all of your points and I appreciate that. I appreciate it Just to note this was all information that was compiled as part of the outreach efforts So this actually came from the constituents of Bloomington Thank you other questions or comments councilmember daily Thank you
- Thank you very much for the presentation and also separately for responding to my questions earlier this week. I owed you a thank you email, so. No worries. I wanna do it in person, thank you. But actually, Council Member Zulek kind of was on the topic that I was curious about. In your slide, you talked about new properties would eliminate competition between student housing and non-student housing. And that's something that's kind of been on my mind wondering about lately, like why
- This is seen as a competition. It shouldn't be a competition. It's just housing for all. So in what way would, how do you see that mitigating the competition, new properties doing that? Any inventory increase will help significantly.
- So it's just, yeah, okay. We have to create new units, but we are really strapped right now because we have such limited areas for opportunity. We have limited areas for any new housing starts, so we just really need any new housing. And this might be a bigger conversation for another time, but yeah, to try to figure out how to help people understand. It's not a competition, it's getting everybody in houses. It is. Yeah, thank you.
- Thank you for your presentation Do we have a latest count of Airbnb's and in the city short-term rentals off the top of my head I know that it was more than it was the last time we spoke which was in the high 700s and I do believe the last number that I heard was in the 900s, but the specific number is escaping me right now and I do know that
- We are aware that 80% of those are whole houses. What we are not aware of is how many of them sit vacant otherwise. So we don't know if they're only being rented out for graduation weekend or Mother's Day week or whatever it is. I can say anecdotally that we receive a number of complaints on Airbnbs from being vacant.
- trash cans being knocked over and nobody's picking them up, or there's trash left from whoever visited the units over the weekend, that kind of thing. So we get quite a few calls. Well, following up on that, 900s is quite a large number of houses now essentially off the market for purchase and is no doubt driving housing costs up. I understand the state doesn't allow banning them,
- but are we exploring ways to regulate them? We are. I hope to be on your schedule very soon. Okay. I got a couple more questions. Can I continue? Let's see if there's other questions first. Are there other first rounds from council members? Council member Piedmont-Smith. Well, just a very basic question. Where can we find your presentation and when is the actual report out?
- The report is out. It's been out for a period of time. In fact, right now, this time period concludes our public comment period. So the plan has been on display for I believe 30 days, at least 30 days now. It's on our website. It's in draft form right now, but a final version will be up shortly. Okay, as I tried to find it on your website. I tried to find it and I could not find it. It's under,
- Cody, can you look that up really quick? It's definitely there because I've shared it multiple times. But our website is very difficult to navigate in general. And can we get a copy of your presentation as well? Yes, your office has it. Okay, thank you. We received it shortly before the meeting, so we'll forward that and put it on board also. Okay, thank you. Thank you.
- Thank you so much, Director Hanson. I'm sorry, Council Member, sorry. I'm gonna extend this until eight o'clock, because it's 744. No, no, don't be sorry, this was very interesting, and obviously we have a lot of questions about it, and we still need to make sure that public has a time to comment as well. So, sorry, Council Member, sorry, go ahead. Critical, I have 10 minutes, that's good, no. The straightforward one, and I'm asking every time that we're talking about housing, is the status of summit. Since we passed that PUD,
- We've heard nothing about it. And so what's going on with Summit? But then likewise, what can we do? Because we talked about the dire situation of not having a lot of infill space, not having a lot of places to develop. But then we passed the largest development ordinance ever.
- then haven't seen any motion there. So what can we do about that? I do believe, right now, they have been working swiftly to meet all of the planning regulations and requirements. And there are a lot of conversations, but they are still working to meet all of the requirements. So at the moment, it's not a housing issue. It's with planning, or is it a because it's a process. They're in the process, but the process takes quite a long time.
- It's fascinating, because when I asked the planning director at our last meeting, he said that I should ask the economic development team. So I'm a little, yeah. That's interesting. Something for us to hopefully continue to talk about. We had performed a Karst analysis for them. And the last that I had heard, that was one of the last remaining requirements they needed to submit to planning. That was a couple months ago. So I have not heard anything since that time.
- Thank you. Thank you. Just to be clear to Ms. Killian-Smith, it's housing and neighborhood development, not economic development. No, we said economic development, which is Coopersmith. OK. All right. I'm aware, but I'm not as sure. I just wanted to make sure that the public didn't think that we were just passing the buck over and over again. Yeah. Yeah.
- Are there other first rounds? I have one really simple first round. On the timeline that you showed up there when all the meetings were, all of those said 2025. Were those typos? They should have been 2024, right? Okay, great. I just want a clarity on that. Council Member Arreolo, you had more? Yeah, a couple short ones. So I conclude that owner-occupied units, we have a shortage of those in the community.
- Therefore, it seems prudent to protect them. That is, we shouldn't be encouraging transforming those into rentals. Would you agree? Personally, yes. I agree with you. My last question is, this is anecdotal, but I was told by someone who
- was a new employee of a large multifamily development. And they actually said that the occupancy rate of this particular large multifamily was only 30%. Interesting. What is the vacancy rate in these large? Do we have a handle on that? And is it simply a matter of self-reporting because we
- there is no other means by which we can tell whether they're, to what extent they're occupied. Is that correct?
- That is correct. And it has been something that I've been really trying to pursue to figure out where exactly we are. I had a group of interns do sort of secret shopping to find out what the vacancies were, what information they could try and find out. I will say that based on that, we definitely had some vacancies in some units, and it may be that multifamily complex, but then others were really, really highly occupied. So overall, I think it was in the high 90s, I will say,
- that I am seeing that the occupancy rates are trending down. There are complexes that have historically been fully occupied that now have vacancies. So we are sort of starting to see that saturation point.
- and that is anecdotal. I do not have specific data to back that up. I do watch the market reports come through, and they are trending down. The last one I saw was in the high 80s, so still very high. HUD considers 60% where they should be to have a competitive market, so. Okay, well let's hope it gets more competitive. Thank you. Councilmember, sorry.
- Thank you. Super quick follow up. And the question about data comes up a lot when we're talking about housing supply. Where do you see the biggest data needs, pain points, areas that we don't understand the data or that we don't have access to it? And what can we do as a city to improve our ability to collect data so that we can act upon that data, particularly in terms of housing supply?
- I would really love to see some sort of regulation that would allow me to collect occupancy rates. I will say that I've had some resistance from some complexes that don't want to report that information. So I think that it will be an uphill battle to try and get that passed. Is your opinion that that's something we could do locally? Potentially. I don't see why not. I don't think that's regulated by the state.
- Thank you, sorry, I thought that that was regulated by the state that we couldn't actually require that. So that'll be something I think that I will, Council Member, sorry, maybe you and I can both talk to staff about researching that question. Well, let's have a conversation about that because I've brought that up to our legal team previously and certainly would love to share what we have discussed. Okay, great, great. Are there other questions from,
- Okay, one last one, go for it council members. And a super short one and then we could follow up as well. But the question of workforce housing, I know we've talked about before, but does the plan include efforts to make more accessible? I mean, because I know we also have a lot of vacancies in workforce housing. I think some of that will be addressed with like the AMI changes and those type of things. But what does the plan do in terms of addressing
- the available stock of workforce housing that is sitting unoccupied. We're working through that right now. I think they're kind of two separate things. Workforce housing in general, what is available is not in the AMI brackets that would be addressed by the consolidated plan. That being said, we're doing everything that we can to try and fill those units. Thank you. Let's go ahead and go to the public.
- comment on this right now, as I said earlier, as part of the requirement, this needs to have a public hearing. So there needs to be a time for the public to comment. So if any member of the public would like to comment on this presentation on the consolidated plan for the Bloomington Housing and Neighborhood Development, if you are in chambers, you can make your way to the podium and sign in and state your name and you'll have three minutes. If you're on Zoom, if you would use the raise hand function to raise your hand or you can
- send a chat message to the host. And I'll just give it a minute. I don't see anybody in chambers moving to comments on this. So I'll give it a minute for anybody online. Has anybody raised their hand on Zoom? Seeing nobody in chambers. I think then we will draw an end to this public hearing. And I would like to thank
- That's Killian Hansen for her presentation tonight and thank my colleagues for all of their questions and interest and we really appreciate you being here. So this ends the public hearing and also ends the time of reports from the mayor and city offices.
- So moving on with our agenda, council committee reports, I do not believe we have any tonight. And so that moves us once again into a period of reports from the public, public comment on items not on the agenda. So if you're a member of the public here tonight and you wish to speak to an item that is not on our agenda, if you are in chambers, you can make your way to the podium, sign in and state your name for the record and you'll have up to three minutes. If you are online, you can use the raise hand feature under the reactions tab to raise your hand
- or you can send a chat message to the host. I think we'll go ahead and start here in chambers. Is the timer ready from staff? Great. Go ahead and state your name. My name is Sarah Owen. I am the Community Engagement Coordinator for Exodus Refugee Immigration, the sub-office here in Bloomington.
- Exodus is dedicated to the protection of human rights by serving the resettlement needs of refugees and other displaced people fleeing persecution, injustice, and war by welcoming them to Indiana. First and foremost, we want to extend our thanks to Council Women Piedmont Smith and Stossberg for attending our World Refugee Day celebration last month, as well as Mayor Thompson for serving as a featured speaker.
- The event was a great success as we celebrated newcomers in Bloomington and we appreciated our local community leaders' show of support.
- But today, we wanted to take the opportunity to speak to the City Council about the impact on our clients in the weeks and months ahead, given the recent passage of H.R. 1, otherwise known as the Big Beautiful Bill. So I want to thank Councilwoman P. Mott-Smith for earlier this evening reporting on this. We are going to expound on that a little further. It was kind of perfect timing. Within the bill, there are several elements directly targeting immigrant populations' access to social safety net programs.
- One of the most nefarious examples is ending access for otherwise eligible refugees and humanitarian entrants into Medicaid, Medicare, and the Children's Health Insurance Program, otherwise known as CHIP, as well as the Affordable Care Act. Section 7-1109 severs access to Medicaid. This will take effect on October 1st of next year. Section 7-1201
- ends eligibility for Medicare. This takes effect immediately for those who were eligible for Medicare but had not yet enrolled. And for those who have already enrolled, they will be removed from Medicare benefits in January, 2027. Section 713.01 ends eligibility for coverage under the ACA and prevents access to the premium tax credit. And this provision will also take effect in January of 27. To be perfectly clear, these policy changes go against years of precedent.
- Another looming impact from this bill will be ending access to SNAP benefits, otherwise known as food stamps, for otherwise eligible refugees and humanitarian entrants. An estimated quarter of a million lawful immigrants are set to be cut off from affordable groceries throughout the country. What this means is that thousands of individual refugees and families will lose critical access to this resource that keeps food on the table.
- We have already confirmed with the state of Indiana that this will take effect within a matter of months, though even they do not yet know exactly when this will take effect. Lawful immigrants such as Exodus clients will soon lose access to supportive services for the basic human rights of healthcare and food, and this will have a destabilizing effect, not just nationally, but right here in Bloomington.
- In the coming weeks and months, we will be providing education to our clients on how to access more local food pantries. We are already purchasing grocery gift cards in anticipation of this loss, and we will soon be actively fundraising for food support. Thank you for your time today. We look forward to continuing to maintain a regular presence at city council meetings during the public comment period to help raise awareness for our immigrant neighbors in the community.
- Are there other public comments in chambers? And is there anybody who has their hand raised on Zoom? Yes, there's one. Okay, we'll go ahead and move to the one in chambers first, and then we'll move online. So if you could make sure to sign in, state your name for the record, and then you'll have three minutes. Seems like old times. This is Christopher Emge from the Greater Bloomington Chamber of Commerce. And today I did with Councilmember Zulek, we did a downtown sort of focus group on sort of
- vision strategies based on small projects and one of the things that came came about was The questions asked was what was what was gonna impede in that progress? We were hoping to make on downtown and we're getting some answers and I'm noticing one that doesn't come up and that was our issue with the unhoused and those Collateral damages that comes with that no one brought it up and I brought it up and it seems like we're not sort of addressing that
- As I talk with business owners, there's growing community costs on this. It's both financial and safety related, tied to homelessness, public disorder, open substance abuse in Bloomington. The issue is not just impacting business, but residents, neighborhoods, property owners across the city. We've heard that BPD is going to be working to beat, but we need to see that in action. We need to see shoes on the ground and eyes on the street.
- Public safety needs to be on the forefront. We had channel 13 news was here last week with The recent arrest on the beeline trail for the assault that same reporter was in the community year ago with the same perpetrator and Brian Park These things are just not acceptable families and employees are expressing fear in public spaces and walking downtown accessing parks
- The panhandling on Kirkwood has gotten more aggressive, especially during the summer months where we seem to have an influx. These concerns directly affect our quality of life, and when we're really competing to try to get a younger workforce, these things do matter. The cost of the crisis is being quietly passed from property owners down to renters alike. I met with, represented from WS Properties, this was six properties, and on security alone, they are spending
- over $500,000 since 2020. In 2019, that figure was only $26,000 compared to 102 that it is this year. At Winslow Plaza alone, which is just across the street from Crawford's home, they're spending approximately $3,000 a month
- on that. The rising costs of insurance premiums, liability risks, and taxes here in this community are adding $1.50 per square foot, and the cost gets passed down. I mean, that doesn't sound like a lot, but if you actually do the math, that gets pretty hefty. There's reported biohazards, including a needle injury stuck in a maintenance employee requiring medical testing for the next six months. There was a fire set at Dumpster at the Walnut Park Hoosier Alley, raising costs and safety concerns recently.
- And this all goes with the same thing with the syringe program that we Many man recovery Alliance goes there's there's one for this sort of needle distribution with no parallel plan for disposal cleanup and neighborhood safety mitigation Property owners are paying privately for these biohazard cleanups the costs get passed to us the residents that we just saw from Miss Hanson on her report on the housing costs this kind of plays into that
- I thank you for your time tonight. Appreciate it. Thank you. Let's go ahead and go to that Zoom commenter. When you're ready, I believe you should be asked to unmute. You can go ahead and state your name for the record, and you'll have up to three minutes. Yeah, Kevin Keough, real quick. On commercial property and the vacancy rate, it seems I've seen a lot of complexes where the first floor is commercial property. And a lot of times, it's vacant.
- And I would think that that would come into the calculation. So I guess it's kind of unrelated to what you were talking about before, but just to focus on the high volume of vacant commercial space on the first floor that you would think would also make great housing especially for affordable housing situations. Anyway, that was my comment. Thank you. Thank you very much. Are there any other hands raised on Zoom?
- Okay, anybody else in chambers wish to make a comment during this period? Not seeing anybody will move on to the next item on our agenda Just to remind everybody there will be another period of general public comment at the end of the meeting If you have something not on the agenda that you want to say them No appointments to boards and commissions tonight, so we'll move into legislation for first reading
- I move that ordinance 2025-23 be introduced and read by the clerk by title and synopsis only. Second. Thank you. Will the clerk please call the roll on the motion to introduce? Councilmember Stasberg? Yes. Daly? Yes. Zulek? Yes. Rosenberger? Yes. Misari? Yes.
- Flaherty? Yes. Ruff? Yes. Rallo? Yes. And Piedmont-Smith? Yes. Thank you. That passes with a vote 9-0. Will the clerk please read? Ordinance 2025-23 to enact Title X of the Bloomington Municipal Code entitled Wastewater. The synopsis is as follows.
- This ordinance amends Title 10 of the Bloomington Municipal Code entitled Wastewater. These amendments update the local limits for discharge by industrial users, specifically updating limits for cadmium, mercury, selenium, and silver. This ordinance also updates pH level and the fats, oil, and grease or fog program by including the Hydra Mechanical Grease Trap as an accepted device in the removal of fats, oils, and grease,
- wastewater leaving food service establishments prior to that wastewater entering the City of Bloomington sewer system. Finally this ordinance updates best management practices to recognize new software programming and to recognize hydromechanical grease traps. Thank you. I move that words 2025-24 be introduced and read by the clerk by title and synopsis only. Second.
- Thank you will the clerk please call the roll on the motion to introduce ordinance twenty twenty five twenty four. Yes. Councilmember daily. Yes Zulu yes Rosenberger. Yeah sorry yes clarity. Okay
- Piedmont Smith? Yes. And Stasberg? Yes. That passes 8-0 with one member out of the room. Will the clerk please read? Yes. Ordinance 2025-24 to enact Title 13 of the Bloomington Municipal Code entitled Stormwater. The synopsis is as follows.
- This ordinance amends Title 13 of the Bloomington Municipal Code entitled Stormwater to comply with the new statute that restricts regulation of construction site runoff to add new provisions for installation and maintenance of driveway culverts, to add new provisions to reduce illicit discharge for runoff pollutants from certain identifiable hotspot developments, to respond to stakeholder concerns or feedback, and to correct typographical errors. Thank you.
- creation ordinance 2025-07 be introduced and read by the clerk by title and synopsis only. Thank you. Will a clerk please call the roll on the motion to introduce? Yes, Councilmember Zulek. Yes. Rosenberger? Yes. Asari? Yes. Flaherty? No. Ruff?
- Yes. We'll go back to Flaherty or no. I'm sorry. Point of information. I was out of the room and the motion was made, so I don't know what it is. It's introduction of appropriation ordinance 2025 07. Yes. Thanks. Sorry about that. Council member Flaherty. We had you at yes. Rollo? Yes. Piedmont Smith? Yes.
- Sasseberg? Yes. And Daly? Yes. Thank you. That passes 9-0. Will the clerk please read? Yes. Appropriation ordinance 2025-07 to transfer appropriations in the general fund to various departments and various funds to align budgets with the 2025 salary ordinance. The synopsis is as follows. Appropriation ordinance 2025-07 appropriates various transfers of funds within the general fund
- from the human resources department to various departments and divisions, and from the general fund to various funds and various departments to correct the personnel budgets and align with the 2025 salary ordinance. Thank you so much. We will hear those three pieces of legislation for a second reading two weeks from tonight on July 30th. So now I'm gonna pass the gavel to my vice president as we move into resolutions.
- resolution twenty twenty five dash ten be introduced and read by the clerk by title and synopsis only. To move resolution twenty twenty five ten will the clerk please call the roll on the motion to introduce.
- Sorry. Yes. Clarity. Yes. Ruff. Yes. Rallo. Yes. Piedmont Smith. Yes. Stasberg. Yes. Daly. Yes. Zulek. Yes. Thank you. That motion passes. Will the clerk please read.
- Resolution 2025-10 to initiate a proposal to amend Title 20 of the Bloomington Municipal Code regarding preparation of a proposal to amend Chapter 20.04.110 incentives and 20.02.040 plan unit development.
- The synopsis is as follows. This resolution sponsored by Councilmember Stasberg, re-initiates in part the proposal in resolution 2024-23, adopted on November 20, 2024, to amend Title 20, the Unified Development Ordinance, or UDO, of the Bloomington Municipal Code, and introduces additional proposals related.
- Resolution directs that a UDO text amendment proposal be prepared by the plan commission to make changes to the affordable housing incentive qualifying standards. Resolution 25-10 be adopted. Thank you. All right, Council Member Stosberg, would you like to introduce this resolution for us? Yes, thank you so much.
- So, as a stated I'm at this point re initiating a part of the resolution 2024 23 that we passed last November. I wanted to take a minute to expand on the memo I wrote a little bit about why we're having to do this.
- So the original resolution, if you remember, had three overall topics. First, there was a request to lower the area median income or AMI requirements associated with the affordability incentive in the UDL. Second,
- There was an ask to assess the incentive structure to make sure that we were incentivizing projects appropriately, and third, add requirements to the payment in lieu option. My resolution tonight only deals with the first of those original issues, the AMI, and it also adds an adjustment of the planned unit development or PUD affordability requirements. Honestly, the PUD request should have been part of the original resolution, and I honestly forgot about it until the resolution was already passed, and that concept
- had been added to one of the resolutions from earlier this year that was not heard. But since that wasn't heard, I am adding it here since we have to do this. As the memos in the packet stated, according to state statute, the Plan Commission should have held a hearing within 60 days of passage of Resolution 2024-23, which they did. And then they also needed to have a vote within 60 days of the hearing, which they did not do.
- This oversight was due in part to a miscommunication regarding a working group related to the assessment of the incentive structure Miscommunication between Plan Commission the Planning Department and the office of the mayor Meant that the group was never created and so response regarding the entire Plan Commission petition was stalled and timed out So to be clear just for the public like I
- Prior to the resolution in November 2024-23, I spoke extensively with planning staff and the department head and they did not anticipate at that time that planning would be a problem. They did not know that the planning commission would request that working group and that that would create this kind of miscommunication and delay amongst the departments.
- I have once again spoken with planning staff around timing of this resolution, asking for this change. And that discussion is why that original resolution is being split into two pieces right now. So tonight we're dealing with the AMI piece, which is a whole lot simpler for them to deal with. And then in a couple of weeks, that is the plan. We will then deal with the incentive piece because it is that incentive structure piece that they wanna have a working group around. And so that's just gonna take them a little bit more time so they get a couple more weeks of lead time.
- around that. And there is clarity now within the administration about that working group and who should organize it and how that should all work. So this resolution, as it's simpler in terms of the AMI, they
- plan commission should be able to respond within statutory limits to this and I will double check with them before bringing the next piece forward to make sure that they still feel like they can respond within statutory limits to the future one. So please let me know if you have any questions and I hope that you're able to support this resolution as you all supported it last year. Thank you. Are there any questions from council members for council member Stossberg as the sponsor of this resolution?
- I see no questions. Well done, Council Member Stosberg. We will now go to the public. Are there any comments from members of the public on resolution 2025-10, a request to amend the UDO? Do we have anybody on Zoom who is raising a hand?
- nobody okay all right well then we can come back to the council are there any comments before we vote councilmember Stossberg I'll just comment and say that I hope all of your silence means that your
- interested in supporting this again so that we can keep this initiative moving so that our affordability incentives for affordable housing can be at least a little bit more in line with what is reality in Bloomington. Thank you. All right, any other comments? Council Member Flaherty? Yeah, just briefly that I have some disappointment in the administration for the need to reconsider these new legislation again.
- There have been a number of things that have concerned me over time with respect to the administration's administration's treatment of the council and its role and following ordinances and resolutions in particular. I don't think there was anything egregious here. It is, again, disappointing. I hope we learn from it. I hope we don't see something like this again. Thank you. All right. Any final comments? Clerk Bolden, will you please call the roll on resolution 2025-10?
- Councilmember Asari. Yes, clarity. Yes, rough. Rallo. Yes, Piedmont Smith. Yes, Stasburg. Yes, daily. Yes, Zulick. Yes, Rosenberger. Yeah. All right, while that passes with a vote of nine zero.
- And so this will be forwarded to the planning and transportation staff and the plan commission. Thank you very much. And I will take back the meeting now as we move into our second resolution for this evening. Yes, I move resolution 2025-11 be introduced and read by the clerk by title and synopsis only, please.
- Thank you, it's been moved and seconded to introduce resolution 2025 11. Will the clerk please call the roll? Councilmember Flaherty. Ruff. Rallo. Yes. Piedmont Smith. Yes. Stasberg. Yes. Daly. Yes. Zulek. Yes. Rosenberger. Yes. Osari. Yes. Thank you. That passes nine zero. Will the clerk please read?
- Resolution 2025-11 to initiate a prior proposal to amend Title 20 of the Bloomington Municipal Code by restating Resolution 2024-25 regarding single room occupancy.
- occupancy residential buildings as a permitted use. The synopsis is as follows. This resolution sponsored by council member Piedmont Smith indicates the prior proposal in resolution 2024-25 adopted on November 20th, 2024, which directs the plan commission to prepare amendments to the unified development ordinance to add single room occupancy buildings as a permitted use in the city with further guidance as to what should be considered regarding the definition, location, and use of
- such structures. 25-11 be adopted. Thank you. Councilmember Piedmont-Smith, would you like to present? Yes. I don't have much substantive to present because this is exactly the resolution that was adopted by this body with the same membership in November of 2024.
- It is regarding defining and allowing single room occupancy buildings in the city of Bloomington to provide more affordable housing options. It is exactly the same text. Again, the Plan Commission, well, it's a little different than in the case of the previous resolution. In this case, the Plan Commission did not hear it within 60 days. We offered an extension. They did not hear it within the timeline of the extension.
- So the first time that the Plan Commission heard the proposal for SROs was two days ago, which was way out of line with the required state timeline. The public hearing that was held Monday, July 14th, was announced in a mailing that was sent to all
- Property owners all relevant property owners along with other use table changes since this is a use table change. It requires that kind of mailing. So that did go out for the hearing that was held on Monday. The Plan Commission did continue the petition to their next meeting on August 11th.
- So we do want to take advantage of the fact that the information did go as legally required to property owners. So we just want to restate our intention to pursue this. And since the first hearing was already held, but it's being continued and therefore that continuance can be considered within the timeline of our intentions here at the City Council. So if you have any further questions,
- Either myself or counsel attorney later could answer them. We also have somebody from city legal if there are any technical questions Do you have any questions for Councilmember Piedmont Smith or the attorneys present regarding this resolution or the process? I
- Seeing none, I think that means that we are going to the public for public comment around resolution 2025-11, if you would like to comment on this requested UDO change. If you're in chambers, please make your way to the podium. And if you are online, please raise your hand using the reactions tab or send a chat message to the host. I may see somebody moving here in chambers.
- If you'd like to go ahead and sign in, state your name for the record, and then you'll have up to three minutes. Hello. My name is Joe Davis. Thank you for taking the time to listen to me. I'm sorry that I've come in here kind of at the
- later point, and I'm not exactly clear about what this resolution is, but what brought me here tonight is our concerns about the idea of expanding single room occupancy in Bloomington beyond three unrelated people.
- And this was always a way that the city of Bloomington protected the equity holders in the community, especially those that live within a general vicinity of the university because otherwise unscrupulous investors, landlords, would pack those houses to the gills and
- These houses tend to be the poor houses, originally starter homes. They're concentrated in the areas of McDowell, Bryant Park, the area where I live, around South Washington. And these homes were where people got their first chance at equity.
- Sure, we need housing, but we need people to generate equity. Single occupancy rooms do not generate equity for that individual. It's just another place to put their bed, okay, and park their car, and learn about how the city of Bloomington recycles and does garbage, and until they get those skills
- It just trashes and destroys the neighborhood, the peace, the pursuit of happiness that all of us equity holders, property owners, and tenants who just want a good place to live in. Expanding this issue of single occupancy, single room occupancy is only gonna bring in the
- private equity thieves who are going to buy up every single piece of real estate and figure out how they can squeeze more money for their private equity firm, which is not even located here. And it's only gonna burden those of us who are here. Thank you very much for listening. Thank you.
- If there are other members of the public here in chambers who wish to speak, please approach the podium. Do we have any hands raised on Zoom? No. Okay, I don't see anybody else moving in chambers. Still don't see anybody else moving in chambers, no hands. Great, I'll go ahead and end this period of public comment then around this resolution and bring it back to council. Are there questions that arise from the public comment or do council members have
- final Remarks around this resolution Councilmember Piedmont Smith Yeah, I did attend remotely and
- The portion of the Plan Commission meeting on Monday that where they did talk about the SRO proposal brought forward by planning transportation staff And I do think if the proposal needs work I think there are some real concerns among neighbors and about and among people who are just concerned about resident safety So I think that the planning staff, you know is consulting with city legal and is consulting with
- you know, people who spoke up and people on the Plan Commission to revise their proposal and bring it again in August. So I think that there is a real concern that allowing a single room occupancy building in a residential neighborhood will be no different from allowing multiple
- of people just to live in a rental house, like what is the difference really? So I think that needs to be distinguished either with a cap on the lease amount or with some specification that in some communities, for example, it has to be run by a nonprofit. In some communities,
- the owner must live there if it is in a single-family neighborhood or a largely residential neighborhood. I don't even like to use single-family because that's not what I'm going for overall. But there are some concerns about just packing houses full of people, whether or not that may be safe for the people living there.
- And so that's something I think that is going to be worked on in the coming weeks. So I do want to say I'm listening to those suggestions. The resolution itself doesn't go into that level of detail. It says please consider a list of things. It doesn't say here's the language we want you to enact. So the resolution at this point is just asking them to consider certain things. The same things we ask them to consider.
- November and I do want to say similar to what councilmember Flaherty said with the previous resolution I am disappointed at the administration that they missed two deadlines and then failed to communicate when it was clear they couldn't make the second deadline I think that's
- I don't know if that's just sloppiness or if that's a certain disrespect for what the council has set out as deadlines and as requests. But either way, it is disappointing to me. But I think that we can move forward in a positive way after this. Thank you. Thank you. Are there other councilmember comments? Councilmember Rallo.
- say that I appreciate my colleagues' comments and I also certainly want to say I appreciate Mr. Davis' excellent points and I think that we need to work on this, certainly opening up neighborhoods, Bloomington Core to predatory practices by investment firms or private equity firms
- whomever has the capital to come in and buy properties to simply kind of exploit this needs to be, we need to avoid that. And so my colleague has offered some excellent ideas such as owner occupancy and I'll be pursuing that as well. So thank you. Thank you. Are there other council comments? I'll go ahead and use a short council comment then.
- and also affirm what our public commenter said and make sure to clarify to the public that this process is one of those ongoing pieces where this resolution is the first step, even though right now it's happening in the middle because of some statutory snafus in terms of
- Comments in terms of input in terms of final language in terms of you know actual changing anything that we're It feels like pretty far away from that actual change right now in this moment where we're just saying hey we're really interested in this as an option for greater affordability and
- And then it is up to Plan Commission, Plan Department to write the actual language that they're proposing, which they did do and we did here at Plan Commission on Monday. And then we heard lots of public input that was actually really positive public input in terms of not just dissing the whole concept, but in terms of making suggestions and citing concerns and basically asking for edits, which is exactly what the public input process is supposed to do.
- Is supposed to say like hey did you think about this thing and this effect and how we're going to mitigate that potential negative effects because the hope is of course that SROs will create a positive effect will create greater affordability will create greater housing options in Bloomington and.
- to make that happen, we also have to consider all of the other possibilities in that. So I'm really happy to be in this process and very happy to support this as figuring out another
- Another path and avenue for housing and housing affordability and I look very forward to the august 11th planning commission meeting as well to see what staff has come up with in terms of better defining some terms and Better managing some of those concerns about overpopulation and health and safety concerns for residents So unless there are other councilmember comments Not seeing any will the clerk please call the roll on
- Resolution 2025 11. Council member rough. Rallo. Yes. Piedmont Smith. Yes. Stossburg. Yes. Daily. Yes. Zulek. Yes. Rosenberger. Yes. Sorry. Yes. And clarity. Yes.
- Thank you, that passes nine zero.
- That wraps up our legislation for this evening. So now we have moved on to the additional public comment portion of our agenda. This is just another time period where the public can comment on items not on the agenda. If you are interested in making a comment not on the agenda, you can go ahead and make your way to the podium and introduce yourself and you'll have up to three minutes. If you're on Zoom, you can use the reactions tab to raise your hand or you can send a chat message to the host. And as a reminder, if you,
- made a comment at the first general period of public comment. You cannot comment at this one. If you commented on an item of legislation, then you of course can make another general comment here. It looks like we have, do we have one comment in chambers? I can't quite tell. Has anybody raised their hand on Zoom? No. Mr. Davis, did you want to make a general public comment?
- Go ahead and sign in again and state your name for the record and you'll have up to three minutes. My name is Joe Davis. Thank you for allowing me to speak at this public comment period. I arrived earlier but
- I tried to download the packet for tonight's meeting on my phone, and I have one of those poor person's government assistance phones that you get for free, and it was taking hours, it seemed like. So I knew I had to run home and get my laptop. So I left and ran back home. And on the way, I passed through Seminary Square Park,
- I noticed that there's a bunch of standing water and the ground is all torn up from either parks and wrecks, vehicles that are going to clean the trash cans, take the trash cans away, or it's the rent-a-cops that are there patrolling regularly, but those little vehicles. But anyway, they're just running roughshod over Seminary Square Park.
- And can I see a timer here so I know where I'm at? Can we stop this so I can? I guess you restarted and that was our error. Okay, all right. So on my way through Seminary Square Park, thank you, I noticed how it was torn up by the vehicles. And you know, a lot of people would say, oh, it's the
- unhoused that are tearing it up and the other people hang out there. Well, they don't do any near the damage that those vehicles have been doing. And the waters stand in it can't infiltrate from today's rain. And it's a it's a mess. It's a mess. And I see this all over Bloomington, all these rent a cop vehicles, all these security people just drive those things like they're off road. And they just tear through everything all of our parks. They tear it up.
- They can't bother to get out and walk around. They gotta sit in their thing and listen to, you know, look at their phone or whatever. They're just hanging out there, you know. But at any rate, as I passed through, I then was walking on the sidewalk in front of Kroger at that ATM on the second street sort of area. And right there was a needle. And I wondered if any of you have a sharps container here.
- Or is there one in City Hall where I can put this? But syringes are all over my neighborhood. And you know, I would just really like to see the city kind of come in and address all the detritus that has been funneled into my neighborhood to, it looks like, degrade it. And so that it can be,
- condemned as, you know, and then just redeveloped on the cheap. And this really bothers me, especially because another redevelopment on the cheap, but not for the taxpayers, is the proposed convention center, or Hopewell. So much money is being wasted in Hopewell, why can't we
- use our public properties for the public. Why are we giving away the public's wealth, our best properties in the center of town? We could move the jail.
- to where the proposed expansion of the convention center is. That could solve a lot of their money problems. We could also move it onto that hillside where the hospital is. That would solve their problems. But why are we developing and giving away the public's good for the profit of developers and those who wanna wreak out economic return at our expense? Thank you very much. Thank you.
- Is there anybody else in chambers who would like to make a general public comment who has not done so already? Are there any hands raised on Zoom? No. Okay. Seeing none, we'll move on with our agenda to a note on council schedule. And I do have a note on council schedule, so let me find it. All right.
- Next week on July 23rd, we will have a deliberation session here in chambers at 630. At that session, we will discuss sidewalk committee and other sidewalk things related to sidewalks. So hopefully there that will be an interesting and active discussion amongst council members. For general information due to budget meetings, there will not be a deliberation session in August.
- September, the session will be with the planning department and will be a community input session related to UDO change processes that are happening right now that do not have to do with the two resolutions that we just passed this evening and also do not have to do with the petitions that are currently at the planning commission level. It's potential later changes. October, November, and December, topics have not been determined. And so I invite topic suggestions from colleagues and or planning assistance with any of these sessions. So if you have anything that you've been dying to talk
- talk about, please let me know, because that would be great. Our next regular session will be on July 30th. As I mentioned earlier, at that session, we will be having a second reading of the appropriation ordinance 2025-07. So council members need to be in person to participate in that funding allocation and the other business that night. I did receive feedback from colleagues before break that it would be helpful to have some kind of a system related to when appropriation ordinances were heard due to scheduling work-related travel.
- I just want to let my colleagues know I'm communicating with the controller's office about what more appropriation ordinances might be needed for the remainder of this year and how they might be able to be grouped together. And it would help me schedule if council members could email me as soon as possible if you know right now of any meetings that you are going to have to attend virtually. And so then I can communicate that with the controller and try to keep any future appropriation ordinances off of those dates.
- And I will continue trying to work with the controller to see if there's any kind of regular system that we could set up around hearing appropriation ordinances to make sure that council members can be in person for those. And I think that's all I have. Does anybody else have any notes on council schedule? Great. Council Member Piedmont-Smith. I guess I could note a couple of committees that I chair are having upcoming meetings.
- We have a Public Safety Local Income Tax Committee meeting tomorrow at noon. Thank you. In one of the rooms here, in the McCloskey room, sorry. And then the Special Fiscal Committee of the Common Council will have a meeting on
- Wednesday 23rd at 1 p.m. Room to be announced Great, thank you any other announcements for the good of the order Seeing none. Thank you very much meeting is adjourned