- I'm gonna go ahead and call to order this regular session of the Bloomington Common Council on July 30th Will the clerk please call the roll? Councilmember Flaherty here rough here Piedmont Smith Sasberg here daily here Zulek here Rosenberger here. Sorry here
- Great. Thank you. Before I do my agenda summation I believe there is a motion regarding the agenda this evening. I move that tonight we amend the order of business at a regular session by removing item for the report and hearing on status of union at Crescent tax abatement and creating a special agenda item a new number eight also titled report and hearing on status of union at Crescent tax abatement.
- And then renumber subsequent agenda items as appropriate. Second. Thank you. So there has been a motion and a second to amend the order of business here this evening. For those of you who don't know our order of business is dictated by the maintaining code. And so to change the regular order of business at
- Regular sessions the full body of council has to approve that change by a simple majority This motion is debatable. So Do any council members have any questions on the change and agenda? And I'll explain the sunglasses thing at some point comes member Flaherty Yeah, just like to hear the rationale If the maker of the motion would be willing to share I
- Do you want to give the rationale councilmember daily or do you want me to talk about that? I believe the rationale was just that we wanted to make sure that we could get through the order of business That is subsequent. We have a lot of first readings which will move quickly, of course and we have a good handful of second readings, which we Don't anticipate will take a really long time but we want to make sure that we can accomplish everything and we suspect that the hearing is probably going to be a very long time and
- And we want to save that part for the end. Did I leave anything out. Yeah. I put a memo in the packet in the beginning of that suggesting that we do this move because the hearing itself in terms of hearing from the interested parties and giving it the attention that it is do I think needs to not be constrained during that report time.
- In terms of the 20 minutes on that report time and so we could just like leave it there and then I could like continue to extend the time Potentially repeatedly to make sure that there was adequate time for this But I thought that it made more sense to give it its own dedicated time Does that help yes, thanks are there other questions Okay, will the clerk please call the roll on the motion to amend the agenda I
- Yes, rough Piedmont Smith. Yes, Sasseberg. Yes, Bailey. Yes, Zulick. Yes, Rosenberger. Yes. Sorry. Yes Great, thank you. So I'm gonna
- Go ahead and explain the sunglasses right now. I was going to do that during my report time. I'm having an eye issue. So it is very bright up here. So without the sunglasses, it is just very, very bright. However, without my regular glasses, I can't see you all at all. So I will be kind of switching back and forth all night long. And that'll be real fun.
- Our agenda this evening we have two sets of minutes for approval and there were slightly modified or slightly amended minutes sent out a little while ago. So council needs to pay attention to that. Then we will have reports first from council members then from the mayor and city offices. We will have a report from the Bloomington Economic Development Corporation the BEDC.
- That will be followed by reports from council committees where we do have a report from the committee on council processes and then we'll have our first of two periods of general public comment where members of the public can comment on items not on the agenda. After those reports we will have appointments to boards and commissions and we do have an appointment this evening and then we will move into legislation for first readings.
- Where we have several ordinances up for first reading ordinance 2025 25 amending the UDO related to self-service storage Ordinance 2025 26 amending the unified development ordinance or UDO related to the use table for fraternity or sorority houses artist studios and workshops vehicle fleet operations large and small and Then we will have ordinance 2025 27 amending
- the UDO related to vehicle fueling stations, ordinance 2025-28 amending the UDO related to vehicle wash or car washes, ordinance 2025-29 amending the UDO related to a table amendment and a definition of tattoo or piercing parlor. Our last item for first reading is ordinance 2025-30 vacating a public parcel.
- a 12 foot alleyway adjacent to 909 East University Street. After those items for first reading we will move into legislation for second readings and resolutions where we will start with ordinance 2025 23 related to the Bloomington municipal code title 10 entitled wastewater and then have ordinance 2025 24 related to title 13.
- the Bloomington Municipal Code entitled stormwater We will then have appropriation ordinance 2025 07 Related to transfers of funds for 2025 salary updates and then we will end our legislation this evening with resolution 2025 12 An initiation to propose an amendment to the UDO related to affordable housing incentives
- After the legislation for the evening we will have this new agenda item number eight which is the report and hearing on the status of union at crescent tax abatement. After that we'll have an additional period of public comment for the public wanting to comment once again on items not on the agenda.
- During the legislative items that we discussed, the second readings and resolutions, there are of course opportunities for the public to comment on any of those during that period of time. And as a reminder to the public, you can comment in one of those two periods of additional public comment for items not on the agenda. Pick a time, doesn't matter which one to me. We'll have any notes on council schedule and then we'll adjourn.
- So it's quite a lengthy agenda this evening. Hopefully we can be efficient and effective all at the same time. So first up is minutes. I move that the minutes from May 21st and June 4th both of 2025 be adopted as revised. Second we have a motion and a second to approve the minutes as were presented this afternoon to us. Are there any questions or comments from council members.
- Great seeing none. I think we can do a voice vote on this because we're all here. So everybody in favor of adopting these minutes say aye aye. Any nays any abstentions. Thank you. Those minutes are approved. So let's go ahead and move on to reports from council members and
- I can't remember anymore who I started with last week, but councilmember Piedmont Smith was not present So councilmember Piedmont Smith will start with you. Do you have a report for us? No report tonight. Thank you. Thank you councilmember Ruff Councilmember Flaherty no report. Thanks inside out over here councilmember daily
- Yes, please. I just want to thank you. I want to announce that I will be having a district 5 constituent meeting on Saturday August 16th that will be at the southwest branch of the Monroe County Public Library room a I believe yes meeting room a You're welcome to come even if you're not in district 5. I'm actually going to have director Hiddle
- from planning come and be a guest speaker and talk about Udo changes that they're looking at and we can ask a lot of questions and we can all learn together so I hope to see you there. Thank you. Thank you. Council members you look. Yes. Thank you. So today I attended the capital improvement board meeting on the new convention center and I am very happy to announce that 86 percent of the contracts for the pre-construction
- contracts were awarded to unions and 64 percent of the contract was awarded to local contractors so I just want to thank the CIB and and everyone else involved for working with me on this and It makes me very happy. So yeah Great. Thank you councilmember Rosenberger. No report. Thank you. Thank you councilmember. Sorry No part. Thanks. Thank you. Um, I
- I have just a very small report tonight. I just want to remind or maybe inform those of you out here out there who don't have school aged children that school starts one week from today for MCCSE schools. So that is primarily a reminder right now that we all need to look out for our children as they are boarding buses and look out for buses as they are stopping. And a reminder that if you are approaching a school bus and they have their lights
- Flashing and they have their stop arm coming down You need to stop no matter which side of the street you're on and if you're a bicycle you also need to stop To make sure that our children can board those buses safely So I wanted to just make sure to remind people of that because not everybody has school-aged children And so not everybody is always in tune with that school schedule But the other piece of that is that if you know that there's a bus that might be down your street that might slow you down at some point Maybe leave a little early or leave a little
- Late so that then you don't have that frustration potentially of being stuck behind a bus Because they will go at a very consistent time once they get everything started So we all just need to think about our schedules as those things change Great So moving on to reports from the mayor and city offices we have somebody here from the BEDC tonight and I can't see where you are but if you could come on up to the podium and
- Go ahead and introduce yourself for the record and this section of the agenda has a 20 minutes dedicated to it including councilmember questions. All right. Thank you. All right. Good evening. My name is Jen Pearl and I'm president of the Bloomington Economic Development Corporation.
- For those of you that are not familiar with us, the Bloomington EDC is a nonprofit and we're dedicated to attracting and growing quality jobs in the community. We regularly work with all three of our local governments and so I regularly try to reach out, connect with councils and other counterparts just to provide updates on what's happening in economic development and other ways that we have opportunities to work together in the community.
- If there's actually, I'm gonna go back for one second. The main message that I want you to hear today is that in our local economy, we have some challenges, but local government is a really valued as well as a critical partner in economic development and council has an important role as a part of that. Local government is actually a part of our membership. So all three of our municipalities are a part of our roughly 110 members and we're roughly 80% private sector led.
- I want to give a shout out to both Mayor Thompson as well as Council Member Asari who serve on our executive committee alongside other municipalities. And you can see this is our leadership in our organization here. Many of you have met the four members of our team as well as our IU interns. That is our team here. So what's our community's position in economic development these days? Obviously we're a hub on the innovation corridor that runs from Indianapolis to Crane.
- We are part of an employment hub where you have 17,000 people traveling in for work. You have about 140 or so thousand people that live in this community. But we have around one and a half to two million people within 50 miles. So that's actually a part of our labor shed here. So it's important not only what happens in Bloomington and Monroe County, but we also are a hub for the region, which is critically important for the economy. Our key industries here,
- life sciences, advanced manufacturing, defense, because of how near we are to crane. About a third of their staff live in Monroe County. Technology as well as higher education. And I'm sure many of you are familiar with these leading companies that are pictured here on the screen, as well as additional details on the industry subsectors that they work in. So current trends.
- So these are trends in economic development at the federal regional state and local levels We've been seeing an uptick in foreign direct investment That's international companies that are looking to locate in the United States as an impact to the current trade environment And we are seeing projects economic development projects investments that are both positively and negatively
- impacted by tariffs, interest rates, and financing. A lot of it really depends on the industry that the company is in. We've also seen federal funding changes, which are starting to, oh my gosh, sorry. My phone just decided to start playing a video. Thank you. That was just coming from here. It was me. That's more fun than federal funding changes, y'all.
- Federal funding changes are starting to trickle down, and we're seeing how that is impacting local economies. Regionally, our other states in the region are actually starting to offer more aggressive economic incentive packages. Historically, Indiana has had lowest property tax rates in the region.
- Obviously the changes following SB 1 have had a huge negative impact on local government and school revenue and that's something that economic developers across the state have been deeply concerned about and speaking out against. That has an impact because local government and schools have an impact on economic development.
- We've been seeing shifts at the IEDC at the state level and then very locally we're seeing growth in life sciences and defense opportunities as well as increase in foreign direct investment opportunities. I think you've heard these things before. Our local wages lag. On this chart here, the blue line is the Bloomington MSA, which includes Monroe and Owen counties.
- And these are average private sector hourly wages. You can see the blue line. It lags the brown dashed line, which is the state average. Our average private sector hourly earnings are around $28.66 an hour. The state is around $31 an hour, and nationally it's around $36 an hour. However, our cost of living is 99% of the national average.
- You've also heard about challenges in our working age population. By 2050, we are projected to shrink by 2,100 people in that prime working age category. Everything on this map that's in orange is projected to shrink. Everything in blue is projected to grow. So we are competing for talent against other places in Indiana as well as around the United States. So how do we move the needles on these things? Because this is an all play.
- You know, from our standpoint, it's how do you grow quality jobs because that is what attracts and keeps people in a community, invest in housing and infrastructure, and enhance quality of life. I want to talk a little bit about some of our recent wins and unpack them a little bit because oftentimes people don't know how they come to be and what makes economic development work.
- The clients that I'll be talking about here are clients that we worked with during my six years at the VEDC and that we've been really happy to partner with our local governments on. We help these companies do everything from finding land and buildings to going through local approvals, finding incentives, finding workforce, and just overall doing problem solving. You're very familiar.
- with the acquisition of Catalan by Novo Nordisk, which was this last December. And Novo Nordisk spent over $16 billion on three sites. Bloomington was one of them. The other two sites were in Italy, as well as Belgium. What I'd really like to underscore here is this actually was the culmination of 25 years of public-private investment.
- and concerted efforts from folks across the community. In 1997, Thompson Consumer Electronics closed and laid off 1,200 employees at the site. That was a trigger of a loss of a million dollars per year in lost property tax revenues as well as local income tax. So city and community partners got together and they
- leaned in to redevelop the site. They put in a TIF, the CREED, the BUEZ, as well as a strategic plan and PUD. In 2004, Cook Pharmaca purchased that site and invested $45 million, 200 jobs. They expanded twice. Catalent purchased it from them in 2017. They expanded a couple of times.
- And thanks to you with support from the council for a couple of those incentives. And there was also investment in that site from state ready funds for infrastructure alongside the city investments as well. If that investment had not gone into this site, you would end up with a derelict building that lay empty. And it would have never been a community asset that would have attracted a company like Novo Nordisk. And they're a global company that continues to grow here.
- Other recent wins, so Simtra, which is formerly known as Baxter, they are in Monroe County. They just last week purchased the former GE site from Cook, which is really thrilling news because Simtra has been a growing company.
- in a growing industry. Last year they announced 130 new jobs, $250 million investment, and an average salary of $73,000 a year, which is above our average. So these are quality jobs for the community. This, as you saw with the former Thompson site, positions it for redevelopment into a community asset. Phoenix is another example of this. If you've ever seen the old
- Otis elevator site on the west side of town. That was purchased by Phoenix. They've done $55 million of investments through a couple of expansions this last few years. We've worked with them, and it's a beautiful facility if you ever get to go in and see what they've done with it. And that's set up
- our ability to land an attraction project earlier this year, Envoy, which is a Canadian company that does steel solutions for telecom, they moved in alongside Phoenix in that building. So if you hadn't been able to redevelop that site, you wouldn't have had a space that somebody could move into and grow jobs for the community. By the way, Envoy also really focuses on hiring veterans as well as justice-served individuals.
- And then, of course, areas like the trades district. I know this team has heard a lot about this site, so I will keep going through the presentation here. Overall, we work with around $350,000, sorry, 350,000 square feet under roof, as well as 1,000 acres of green field across the whole county with around 200 acres in the city.
- Something that I wanted to underscore here today is the importance of site readiness. Local government is a really critical partner in this. Usually when business attraction leads come to us, they're on a very short timeline. They actually ask for responses to RFPs within a few days, maybe a week, which is luxurious, because typically they are investing in a site because they have a client to serve right now.
- meaning they have to be able to produce something for them within a year, maybe a little longer. So within the course of a year, they have to do the following. They have to select a site following a national search, they have to go through any state and local approvals for their projects, complete incentive processes, build or remodel their site, and then oftentimes go through federal certifications, if they're in pharmaceuticals, for example, because they have to certify that facility, all within the course of a year or a bit more.
- So whenever a lead comes to us, what we have to be able to tell them right away is what the community wants or doesn't want there, full specs on the lander building, zoning, any restrictions on the site, as well as utilities in place, you know, stormwater, CBU, whatever it is, electricity on that site, they have to be able to go right now. And so it's really absolutely critical to have a clear streamlined
- and quick planning and permitting process for all of that. Typically, site selectors and companies tell us they're like, if that's not in place, we have to move because of the speed of business. And here's where I actually want to give a shout out to the city, ESD, planning, and hand, because I know that those teams are all going through the process of streamlining and expediting their planning and permitting. So my entreaty to all of you is anything that you can do to support those processes
- to help them move forward will help us move the needle on jobs and wages. Looking ahead, we're looking to focus on our employment sites in the city for infill and development with ESD, as well as connecting on housing needs and HR needs in our community. So I will leave you with this, what can be done to move the needle on jobs and wages and talent in this community.
- It's an all-play in the community anything that could be done to support housing and quality of life for great talent Infrastructure investments in the community for all the reasons I just mentioned Streamlined planning and permitting and talent initiatives are really critical and we're always grateful for the partnership and the support that you provide to these things in the community and Here is my contact Thank you For that presentation and all of that information
- Are there any questions from council members? Any questions councilmember sorry Thank you so much director Pearl, it's good to see you the
- When talking about the local approval and speed, particularly of licenses, permits, et cetera, the mayor and the administration have made, I think, this a priority into the upcoming year. And we put a significant amount of money in the budget last year to help move that process along. But I'm interested in the
- You told a handful of positive stories. I'm really interested in the qualitative experiences of people that show that need, that pressure point, particularly on speed of approvals. Would you be willing to share a bit more on what does it really look like? What do the speed of approval look like right now in Bloomington? So for how much time a lead needs to know
- Your experiences on how do we meet those things? Do we is it has that been a pain point for the BDC and dealing with the city? I think overall it can be a pain point in this community And I know that folks are working to address that So going back to that like year or slightly longer timeline so if somebody walks in the door today and says I have to be able to Be like producing for my clients in a year or a little bit more
- I mean, typically, if you take construction or redevelopment as a part of that, that's going to take the better part of a year already. And so you're looking at how quickly can you turn around approvals in three months, two months, or less, really. Typically, as soon as something hits our desk, we're turning around and reaching out to folks as quickly as possible to say, hey, how can we make this work? And so those are the types of timelines
- That we are oftentimes dealing with Yeah, and and then you said that anything that we can do to help improve that process What can we do? Better better more pointed question. What would you have us to do? Well, I think that's where I might ask back to you in terms of the power You know the council and your ability to do that, you know I think I'd really have to defer to the city and
- Departments that are trying to move those things forward and the ways that you would partner with them Obviously like, you know budgeting, you know for those things etc I'd be happy to you know, I would defer to those departments, but if you wanted, you know any follow-up or
- Well, maybe as a different way of phrasing my question, what does that look like? So if we do that well, from the BDC's perspective, when will we know that we've actually addressed this serious pain point of approvals, permitting, et cetera? Yeah, I think that would actually be based on the feedback from the companies themselves. And so we're in regular contact with private sector entities across the community.
- as well as our clients and if we land the projects that's when we know that it has gone well if we don't land them it hasn't and then for those that are here they provide us consistent feedback on you know what they're seeing and hearing on the ground. Thank you. Are there other questions.
- Okay, I kind of just had, I don't necessarily have a question, I just have a follow-up on what council member Asari was talking about in terms of pain points and that, like, what you described was a lot of more administrative policy stuff, and so I guess if there's anything that you run into that you go, oh, this is like legislative, or like, oh, this pinch point has to do with something that is in Bloomington code regarding XYZ, and oh, maybe there's a way to streamline that, because that would be something that, like, council could
- streamline in terms of our capacity And in terms of our purview So if you happen to run across those things when you're working with staff or if staff mentioned something like that like I I know I would appreciate kind of hearing that so that then that can be explored as you know, is that something that needs to change or is it there is a pinch point kind of for a reason because of
- whatever it is. Yeah, we'd be happy to share that. We'd be happy to share that. I think, broadly speaking, best practices are always simplicity of code, ease of navigating it, clear timelines, knowing how quickly responses will come, kind of consistency in answers on certain things. Those are typical best practices that we hear. And clarity on what is welcomed in the community, et cetera. Great. Thank you. Any other last questions?
- Great, thank you very much Letting us know a little bit about the economic development picture here. Thank you All right next a report from our committee on council processes Councilmember Piedmont Smith as chair of that committee. Is that you? Yes, thank you
- I'm chair of the Committee on Council Processes and I'm joined on that commission committee by council members Daly Zulek and Flaherty and we have two items to bring forward today. First of all a proposal for electronic sign in for public comment periods and meetings. So there was a memo in your packet about this. It was brought forward by city clerk Nicole Bolden.
- who has also agreed to help facilitate the implementation it would involve having people sign in on tablet computers here in council chambers and that sign in electronic form would be available also for people participating via zoom so we would know exactly the presiding officer could know right away how many people signed up whether it's for an agenda item or the open public comment and
- We just feel that this is a great way to make things more efficient and also help with record keeping and having people's correctly spelled and legible names and such. So we are asking for council approval to move ahead with this process. And of course we're open to any questions that you may have at this time.
- Are there any questions by council members regarding this kind of change to our process for public comment. Council members sorry just just to clarify the question on the table is is whether we should continue working on developing that proposal so that we can introduce it.
- Officially to us or what what's the question on the table? Sorry Since it doesn't involve any change in municipal code. We're just asking For approval to move ahead. I think that's all we need I believe But if we say yes if we say yes, we're saying that as of next week people would sign in Preliminary leave for comments. I think it would take more than a week to get it going and
- Okay, we're thinking maybe the first meeting in September. We might be ready But yes, that's that's what we're asking Other questions Councilmember rough So what what about would people be excluded if they didn't sign up so for example if someone thought of something that
- They weren't planning planning to talk about would they would they still be able to. So are we just trying to encourage people to know they want to speak to sign up. Yes they could sign up at any time during the meeting. So it would the sign up would open when the meeting starts and then they could either come up here where we have the computer tablets one or two.
- They could scan a QR code on their phone and sign up that way. They could, if they're on Zoom, that link, that web link to the sign up form would be provided in the chat there. So at any point during the meeting, they could sign up. Now if their agenda item has already passed, obviously they would be too late. But yes, if they decide, you know, while we're discussing legislation that they want to,
- make a comment, they could do that at whatever point in the meeting they want to. Can I follow up real quick? Yeah, go for it. So they wouldn't wait for any kind of approval. They just, as soon as they say, I'm signed up, then they're eligible to speak. It's like real time. So the Google form
- would be accessible to I believe to all council members but the most relevant would of course be to the presiding officer who's generally the council president to consult during the meeting. So for example people sign up right away when we start our meeting then at the first opportunity for open public comment which comes after council committee reports the council president or if
- the president wants assistance from either the parliamentarian or the vice president, we would look at the signup sheet and say, okay, you know, Stacey Jones signed up first, so they get to go first for open public comment. Unless Stacey Jones said, I want to comment on the vacation of an alleyway that is on the agenda later, and then we skip Stacey Jones and we go to the next person.
- So it's it's first come first serve reading that list as people sign up. And I invite Clerk Bolden to jump in if I'm misstating anything because she has thought this out very very well. Do you have anything to add to what counts my repeat Mott Smith is described. No.
- No I don't. I mean if Councilmember Ruff has other questions because you have that thoughtful expression on your face I'm here to answer them. Well yeah I did have one more. Go for it. Follow up to this line. So do we believe that this will actually in fact save time or add time needing to consult like
- The list and see if it's being populated with new names that come on during the course of the meeting Was that discussed at all as part of the deliberations in the processes committee on the council processes It was I we didn't specifically Consider the amount of time. I think councilmember Daley. Do you want to jump in? Well, I believe one of the
- Points that we did discuss when we were talking about this was that it it does then Eliminate that time of the speaker up at the podium signing in and getting settled and ready, you know Their name gets called up. They go up and they can start speaking right away So it is a little bit more organized and streamlined in that manner Also the golden had something she was trying to sorry
- One of the things that we've noticed over the last few years is that when you count call for council comment you're waiting for people to assemble at the podium reminding them to sign in if the presiding officer remembers to remind people to sign in they sign in they make their comment and they go when we turned people on zoom the same thing happens do we have anybody on zoom wait for a few minutes remind people how to raise their hand to comment and go through there.
- As far as a step-by-step breakdown on how much time it has taken, no, I don't think anybody looked at that. But part of what was looked at was is there a way to make sure we get everybody who wants to comment listed out so the presiding officer can say, okay, next up we have person A, person B, person C, if you want to step up to the podium and get ready to speak. It helps to kind of eliminate that wait and see, wait and see that happens during most of the meetings.
- Happy to track the time this evening and on other meetings that we've done minutes for to see if we can get a time comparison but I don't know that that's the best use of staff time. Thanks for that thorough response. I appreciate it. Council member comments or questions. And I'm just going to say that it's super bright in here.
- Just make sure that you're waving really far so that I can actually see you. Thank you councilmember Rosebacher Thanks, thanks to the committee for recommending something. I would say I'm all up for trying it. I And maybe this is not for now like in the change But I do want to say something nice about going to local progress is that you get to know other councilmembers and how they do things in their cities and I talked to a lot of little cities about like how they collect public
- commenter information and what they collect because as we know public comment does not tend to be a representation of our whole community but a subset of the population and I am interested in collecting some information from folks that maybe we like Boulder collects stuff like maybe the neighborhood where they live or how old they are you know where I mean just some demographic information I don't want to create barriers to people commenting and I think
- Boulder actually has the problem where every week they have way too many people commenting. And so they have a lottery system where you eventually get picked and you get to say something. So it's different than here. But I am interested in doing something like that later, just so we can take better notes on who we're hearing from and who we're not hearing from. I think this would also be good administratively, just that it's probably really hard for the clerk's office to read handwriting and then put it in our notes. So this would then be
- Typed out and it was skip a step in the minutes, which seems good to me. Thanks Thank you, are there other councilmember comments or questions Councilmember Piedmont Smith I think The benefit of this not being in code is that we can try it If some part of this doesn't work. Well, we can tweak it We can also add things later as councilmember Rosenberger said maybe we want to add some
- some required fields in the form to get demographic information that can be further discussed at the committee level. So it's not like this is chiseled in stone and this is the only thing we're going to do and the only way we're going to do it. But this would allow us to proceed just with the sign up with the name topic, whether it's on the agenda and whether they're on Zoom or in person.
- And then we could consider adding other fields later or if it takes an inordinate amount of time or if there are problems the public accessing the form or something we can always revisit later. Thank you. Are there other council or comments or questions. OK. I'm going to go ahead and make one. I have like as chair it kind of makes me nervous to think about having another screen that I have to bounce between in terms of finding
- Those people so I can appreciate how it's like efficient in a lot of ways especially for the clerk's office afterwards and how there can be a measure of Just making it easier for the public honestly when there's agenda items where there are lots of people who want to comment because then people don't have to feel like they have to race to the to the podium to get their say in or whatever but I
- I guess I really want to figure out a way that the onus of figuring out how many commenters I might be or whatever is not just placed on the chair all the time and whether that gets distributed up here or council staff might be able to kind of monitor that sheet in some way just because I do end up finding myself like
- clicking between a lot of screens. And when I do a public comment, I really want to just be able to focus on what people are saying there instead of like, oh, now I have to get back to the right screen where I'm taking notes or whatever. So that would be one thing that I would want to make sure systematically that we do. And the other thing is I clicked through the Google Form. And the other thing that I think would be helpful in that is once you click through it, if you say, yes, I want to comment on an agenda item, then it has you input the actual agenda item number.
- Onto the form and I think that that might be a barrier for some people and I would hope that maybe we can have check boxes instead but that would involve changing the form every week so that then like if it is an agenda item that you can Discuss then you just say oh, yeah, it's this one. So that has the number and the description. Is that possible clerk Bolden? Yes, it is possible, but I did want to clarify that it doesn't require that you put in the number just
- describe it. I think the example was an ordinance number case but you could say mayoral reports just as easily as you would say ordinance twenty five twenty three. OK. I think we can change it to attract and as it's set up right now it's set up so that you all can look at it and give me feedback play with it. Yeah I think that it would be
- like easier for the public to have a checkbox with like the item number and then like a very short just like a short description kind of like the way it is on the agenda. But I also recognize that that means changing the form every week. And so that puts a different level of like onus or time probably on the clerk's office to make that change every week. So I think balancing those two things is just something to think about as we move forward on this.
- I think those were thumbs up but I don't know you're just like you're yeah gesturing wildly from the side of the room. Yeah that was a thumbs up. Yes absolutely. We can try it if it doesn't work I will communicate with council that it's too much. Thank you. Great. So at this point because it is not a specific
- Vote I'm assuming. Well, first of all, are there any other comments or questions that have been raised at all? Councilmember is sorry super quick one just because because we're saying let's try this out It's just good for us to say what is our measure of whether this works? And I think the primary goal estate is actually to make it easier for residents to comment and so, you know One thing that we might be looking at is actually that at some point getting feedback from residents. Hey, did you like this experience? but then secondly
- I would just caution us to not take something that maybe has only been an issue sometimes and then make it an even more complicated process, right? Yeah, so my sort of sub-suggestion for us evaluating this is whether it's adding unnecessary complications to, otherwise something is pretty straightforward.
- I'm not sure where that leaves us right now in terms of I think the primary should should we vote on on Continuing the process and trying this out. Is that what we're voting on? Councilmember Piedmont I Think we need a motion Thank you, I move that we take a vote on trying out the new electronic sign-in process second
- Okay I think let's do a roll call vote on this just to make sure that nobody has any Like are there any other comments regarding that motion? Councilmember Piedmont Smith. I just wanted to mention one other point that I think would be a benefit to this system and that is that when there's a very controversial issue and a lot of people want to speak and a lot of people gather
- near the microphone and kind of make a line. It sometimes is intimidating for people to stand in that line if they're outnumbered, for example, or if there's a lot of passion on both sides of an issue. And so this would cut down on the line and the kind of gathering of potentially upset people because we would just be calling two or three names at once to get ready to speak.
- Council member, sorry, would you like to say something? That sparked a thought that you've mentioned before, so just bringing it back up into the conversation. Ages ago when this was first discussed colloquially is that there may be occasions where it might be nice to be able to indicate, do you want to speak for or against something, for example, as well? Because in those cases where we have had lots of people wanting to comment, sometimes it's,
- all of the people who have organized or want to speak for or against something, you know, they sort of line up and they all organize, they all speak. And sometimes some of those voices, they're here in the room, but then, you know, we run out of time or something like that. So it would give the opportunity to say, hey, we'll hear two and then two, and we can sort of jump back and forth. I think that could be a cool functionality that could be built into something like this. Not saying that we would do that all the time, but something that we could do. So another reason to do it. OK. Any other?
- comments or questions. I guess I have one. I feel like that was a really general motion and I'm just hoping that from the perspective it feels like of the clerk who would be kind of initiating and leading this whether you feel like you have enough guidance to move forward with something like this. Yes what I took from your discussion and the motion itself was that you would like to have the electronic sign in process ready to go for the first meeting in September. Did I miss anything.
- Yep is Do we do we need to make a more specific motion or are we happy with the clerk summary right now councilmember daily? Okay No, I'm I think that that the clerk is understanding something and I'm making sure that that is that I get verbal clarification from you
- Well with that let's go ahead and call the roll on that motion to proceed with The clerk's office working on an electronic sign-in to be ready for the first meeting in September Issues this evening's Let's see here councilmember Ruff. Yes Piedmont Smith. Yes Stasburg. Yes, daily. Yes Sulek. Yes
- Rosenberger. Yes, sorry. Yes clarity. Yes Thank you. Great. Thank you. Was there anything else from the committee on council processes this week? Yes. Okay. Thank you Councilmember Piedmont Smith you still have the floor Thank you in your packet addendum. There was a proposal for planning deliberation sessions of the council As you know, we last year started setting aside
- council meetings for deliberation which can be interpreted and enacted in various ways either discussion among council members among council members and staff or we had two instances last year where we had the public really engaged with council members in small group discussions and can come back and kind of try to give input on
- on issues, the issue of homelessness was the focus last year. So the Committee on Council Processes has been talking about, well, how do we get agenda items on such a deliberation session that's on the schedule? Who and how do we decide what merits a deliberation session and how it is structured and scheduled? So this proposal, I hope you've had a chance to
- to look at it, I'm sorry it didn't make it into the packet on Friday, but it would have a Google form that would go to the council president. The Google form would allow for certain fields to be required so that it makes sure that somebody has thought through all of the ramifications of having a deliberation session.
- What is the purpose of the session? Are you discussing a problem that people are concerned about? Are you developing legislation? Do you already have legislation and you want to get feedback?
- So that's one question and then another question is what's the format that best serves your purpose and how will the public be engaged? Are you gonna have council members just up here and people talking with us from the audience or just talking among ourselves? We've also had a rectangular formation of tables here in council chambers where council members sat around the table and talked with each other and with staff and then members of the public could just come to the table to
- to ask their questions or or give their feedback. And then as I said we had these breakout groups as well and there may be other ways to do it. And then finally what are there any other council members that you've already talked with that are also on board. So that would be part of the form. Yes I've you know talked with council member Daley or whoever who also wants this topic and then that way the
- President after considering the topic could reach out to both of the council members or three or four or however many are already on board and have already Had some one-on-one conversations that about making that a deliberation session so tonight, I guess I just like feedback on this and if if people don't have a lot of concerns we could vote on moving ahead with the
- implementing this as the process by which any council member can propose and Lead a deliberation session. I say lead because if if there's a There's a lot of planning sometimes involved with these sessions So somebody who wants to have a topic on the schedule should also take responsibility for organizing So that's the report I don't know if other committee members want to jump in this is I
- Something I worked on with councilmember daily, but of course the whole committee Discussed it are there councilmember questions or comments regarding this proposal Well, I have one as council president I
- have tried really hard this year to make sure to take feedback about any deliberation sessions. And people have given me various ideas for deliberation sessions. And I think that pretty much all of them I have tried to implement and have gotten very little to no help implementing any of them. So I think that it's a great idea to have some kind of a format and expectation that somebody besides council president is actually going to plan and do these. But my question and concern is what if
- People don't. Either they say that they want to do this thing, and then it gets to that night, or it gets to a few days before the meeting night, and preparation has not been done. Or what if nobody fills out the form, and do we then put it back on the council president to figure it out? Or do we cancel a meeting?
- talked about at all. I think these are really good good points. I think that you know ultimately if a council member says I want to do this topic in November and I want to have you know this kind of public engagement and then the November meeting comes and that council member hasn't prepared anything then it's going to be a pretty bad meeting and
- I don't know. We have no kind of power over each other. It'll just be a bad meeting, bad PR. It'll just look bad. So I don't think anybody here can say, well, I don't think any one of us, whether we're the president or anybody else, should feel obligated to follow through on somebody else's idea.
- So I don't know but but maybe there needs to be a degree of commitment. Maybe we need to put a checkbox on our form that says if this is scheduled I will organize the meeting or I will engage the facilitators. You know these are this was just a draft of what the form would look like. But before we went any further I thought we should bring it to the whole council. Well I think that it's a good
- Framework, I think it's a good framework for for trying to plan a meeting like that in terms of like the options. I just I I have some real concerns about like and it might be unpopular and like harsh feeling to say this I have concerns about the fall through and I don't want to sit up here with a poorly planned meeting and
- front of the community and I'll also just say I'm the type of person that like yeah I shouldn't have to jump in and cover for other people if they are not planned but I will so that I don't have to sit up here and look unplanned and unprofessional and so that I I guess I want to both invite that feedback but also
- I would just like each of us to hold ourselves accountable if we're saying yeah we want to do this we want to have these deliberation sessions we want to have these discussions with the community and yes I'm actually willing to do work to make those happen and I want us to each own that a little bit and I can't force anybody to actually do stuff though. Any other council member comment.
- this proposal I'm sorry councilman Zulek I Mean I think that we're all adults and we're all publicly elected officials and if we fail we should have to fail publicly So I think that that's a responsibility that we should all be comfortable taking on and no one not even the president is responsible for fixing another elected officials failure, but
- The public should have a high expectation for us and we should have a high expectation of ourselves. Thank you. I just wanted to also put this in context so I think that and correct me if I'm wrong. Other members of the committee but I think that we worked on this because it was unclear to to people how their ideas could be translated into a deliberation session.
- and it just seemed kind of haphazard, like, oh, I happen to speak with the council president and therefore my idea is going forward and I happen to not have time to speak with the council president and when's my idea gonna have a chance, you know, that kind of thing. So it wasn't any reflection on how the current president has conducted scheduling these sessions or anything. Other comments or questions?
- Yeah, you got to make your arms really big right now dude, you're very blurry Thanks, just a very simple and thought is that you know if we go back to the core Of what we're trying to achieve in establishing these sessions The primary function the primary goal was to give council some type of an opportunity to have slightly less structured conversations so that we could
- deliberate it's kind of more openly without sort of the constraints of You know all of the rules that we've written into code And so to me and you know, I've advocated this anytime that I get a chance I mean, I think that it's fine for us to schedule them out but you know, we have a portion of our of every single meeting where we say you know now let's have a conversation about council schedule and
- To me, the way I wish we used that time is for us to, they say, hey, you know, it would be great if in a couple of weeks we talked about blah, right? And that just seems like a,
- nice place and we can all say, and we can have a conversation, and you can say, hey, are you willing to do this that way? But I think a lot of the times, those sessions could literally just be us having an open conversation about a thing that we all wanna talk about. They don't need to be the super well thought out, we're gonna do this, then we're gonna do this, and this is how we're gonna, I don't think we need to schedule those out months in advance the way that we've thought about it now.
- That would just be my take. And in terms of evidence for that, I mean, I think, you know, we just did a session on sidewalks that, you know, perhaps was, you know, there's a lot of other things we could have been talking about, like budget and things like that, that are sort of closer to the need right now. But we had scheduled that out ages ago, so we did it. And so I think we sort of want to avoid the inertia that comes with, you know, the type of organization that we are. And, you know, just like,
- work more quickly on things that help our constituents. Thank you. I would like to clarify that the conversation about sidewalks last week was not something that was planned well in advance. The topic was brought up well in advance, but the preliminary plan for that was potentially talking about budget. But when I conferred with the administration, they said that there wasn't really an update that would be useful.
- terms of their work on the on the budget book and in terms of that kind of conversation and feedback and so that So that that was the the topic of sidewalks for a deliberation session was essentially like on a list on the scheduling sheet unscheduled for months and it got put there because
- It made sense because the administration decided that it wouldn't necessarily make sense to have that kind of budget conversation. Yeah. So just for clarity, those were not booked well in advance. And I appreciate that you think that they don't all have to be planned, because sometimes I feel like I have not planned them particularly well in advance, partly because I have been the one planning most of them, and I simply
- Run out of time and brain space to make all of them spectacular So, yeah. Oh Thank you councilmember Piedmont Smith for noting that we've gone well past 20 minutes for this section of the report So do I have a motion right now related to this?
- get as specific as possible I move that we adopt this Google form for planning deliberation sessions for deliberative well yeah for planning deliberation sessions for City Council all right we have a motion and a second to adopt the concept of a Google form specifically the model in front of us to help plan deliberation sessions in the future
- any last comment Councilmember Piedmont-Smith I would just ask that if if My colleagues vote yes on this that that yes vote would be a commitment to actually use the form And not you know try to I Don't I don't think anybody would purposely circumvent it but it's it's it's kind of pointless unless we all agree to use it So that's I just wanted to clarify if you don't
- Want to use it then I would suggest voting against it. Thank you Okay, thank you given that Missive clerk Bolton, would you call the roll on this concept? No, just in case somebody decides that they don't want to use the form so they should vote no So I just want to make sure that we're all buying into this publicly and clearly Ready councilmember Piedmont Smith
- Yes, Stasberg. Yes, Daley. Yes, Zulek. Yes, Rosenberger. Yes. Sorry. Yes, Flaherty. Yes, rough. Thank you. Great. Thank you. So we will work on that. Okay, I will try to
- Pay more attention to the time. Thank you councilmember Piedmont Smith for trying to keep us on time We have moved into reports from the public. So this is the first Comment period for general public comment for items not on the agenda So if you would like to speak to something not on the agenda and you're in the room You can go ahead and make your way to the podium and you would need to sign in introduce yourself and then you would have a
- to three minutes. If you are online on Zoom, you can go ahead and raise your hand using the reactions tab or send a chat message to the host. And I see something blurry moving toward the podium. So if you could go ahead and introduce yourself. And is the timer ready from council staff? Great. Go ahead. Good morning, Madam President. This is Krista Renji from the Greater Bloomington Chamber of Commerce, a 900 member
- 900 member outfit with 80% of those being small business. I want to do a part two from my previous public statement The chamber appreciates mayor Thompson's commitment to addressing the growing challenges of homelessness community Yesterday's press conference just demonstrated leadership and recognized that Bloomington Bloomington cannot bear this burden alone This closely mirrors the concerns raised by the chamber two weeks ago. I
- The mayor's statement that we base our decisions on safety first with regards to encampments echoes the core concern of the business community. That safety must be a foundation for any meaningful response. As I walk the streets talking with residents, neighbors, friends, there's an anxiety that runs deep, whether that's news out of Washington, actions out of the state house, whether their education that they come to know and love here in this community is in jeopardy with the war on public education,
- So Bloomington has long been known for a city of second chances, a place where we can rebuild their lives with dignity, but our empathy is running low. Second chances can only thrive in an environment with security, structure, and accountability, not disorder. We must reject any perceptions that our streets are a place for unchecked substance abuse, property damage, and just a free-for-all. The business community is not asking for punishment.
- As the mayor noted in her press conference, we cannot arrest our way out of this problem. No, we are asking for a partnership. We need more consistent presence on the streets from outreach teams, resource officers alike, to distinguish who's truly in need of help and those disrupting public spaces and harming others. More proactive enforcement, particularly for repeated trespass violations, is essential to protect property rights and restore trust among impacted business and residents alike. We urge the city
- to make sure there's clear enforcement protocols, particularly repeated trespassing and public safety violations on commercial property. Equip property owners with enforcement and accountability techniques. Commit to an ongoing dialogue with these commercial stakeholders whose properties are most affected. Bloomington's legacy is of a compassionate progressive community should never be at odds with safety and civic order. We must end
- We can and must do both. Let it be said, Bloomington, in this moment, that we have found our balance once again, that we've renewed our commitment to both heart and backbone, that we choose compassion with clarity, dignity with direction. I thank you. Appreciate the time. Thank you. Are there other members of the public in the room who would like to make a public comment?
- Is there anybody with their hand raised on Zoom?
- Thank you. Thank you Councilmember Piedmont-Smith for not seeing anybody else moving to the mic for the reminder that there are other ways to contact the council. If you have a comment for us that you don't necessarily feel comfortable saying at the public mic, you can always email us individually and you can find those email addresses on our council webpage or you can email council at bloomington.in.gov and that will end up forwarded to all of us by our staff. So seeing no more public comment during
- this portion of the agenda Let's go ahead and move on to appointments to boards and commissions. Do we have a motion for an appointment? I have a feeling that we're trying to find the paper Councilmember Rosenberger Yes, thank you Interview
- Committee a would like to recommend for the Public Transportation Corporation Board of Directors to reappoint Nancy Obermeyer to seat seat to second Thank you. We have a motion and a second to reappoint Nancy Obermeyer to seat seat to of the Public Transportation Corporation Board of Directors Are there any councilmember questions or comments about that reappointment? All those in favor of the reappointment, please say aye aye any opposed
- Any abstentions. Okay thank you very much and thank you for Nancy Obermeyer for continuing her service on that board. And now I do believe that we are on to first readings. I move that ordinance 2025 dash 25 be introduced and read by the clerk by title and synopsis only. Second.
- All those in favor of the clerk reading ordinance 2025 25, please say aye aye Opposed abstain. Thank you. Will the clerk please read?
- I move that ordinance 2025 dash 26 be introduced and read by the clerk by title and synopsis only Can I have a second to that Thank you, it's been moved and seconded to introduce ordinance 2025 26 all those in favor, please say aye aye opposed Thank you. Will the clerk please read?
- Sorry about that. This amendment would propose the following changes to the unified development ordinance and include the following fraternity or sorority. This amendment would remove the asterisk that is currently shown associated with the use fraternity or sorority that reference use specific standards that were removed in twenty twenty three. However the asterisk could not be removed at that time since that would require an amendment to the use table artist studio or workshop.
- This proposed amendment would add the use artist studio or workshop as a permitted use in the mixed use student housing district office. This proposed amendment would add these add the use office as a permitted use in the mixed use student housing district vehicle fleet operations. This amendment would add an asterisk to the use table to reference you specific standards that were introduced and approved earlier this year.
- However the asterisk could not be added at that time since that would require an amendment to the use table. Thank you. I move that ordinance twenty twenty five dash twenty seven be introduced and read by the clerk by title and synopsis only. Second. Thank you. It's been moved and seconded for ordinance twenty twenty five twenty seven to be introduced. All those in favor say aye. I opposed. Thank you. Will the clerk please read.
- Amendment or let me try that again ordinance twenty twenty five dash twenty seven to amend title twenty unified development ordinance of the Bloomington Municipal Code regarding use table amendment vehicle fuel station. The synopsis is as follows. This amendment would reduce the zoning districts where the use vehicle use vehicles fuel station would be allowed. The proposed amendment would allow this use as a permitted use in the mixed use corridor zoning district only.
- This amendment would also remove several use specific conditions since this use is proposed to no longer be allowed in those districts referenced. Thank you. I move that ordinance twenty twenty five dash twenty eight be introduced and read by the clerk by title and synopsis only second moved and seconded to introduce ordinance twenty twenty five twenty eight. All those in favor please say aye. Opposed. Thank you. Will the clerk please read.
- Ordinance 2025 dash 28 to amend title 20 of the Bloomington Municipal Code regarding use table amendment vehicle wash. The synopsis is as follows. This amendment would reduce the zoning districts where the use vehicle wash would be allowed. The proposed amendment would allow this use as a permitted use in the mixed use corridor zoning district only. Thank you. I move that ordinance 2025 dash 29 be introduced and read by the clerk by title and synopsis only.
- Second it's been moved it seconded to introduce ordinance twenty twenty five twenty nine all those in favor please say aye aye opposed. Thank you. Will the clerk please read ordinance twenty twenty five twenty nine to amend title 20 unified development ordinance of the blooming to municipal code regarding use table amendment and definitions tattoo or piercing parlor. The synopsis is as follows.
- This amendment would reclassify how the use tattoo or piercing parlor is regulated and would include this as a use associated with the use personal service. This amendment would remove the specific use from the use table and other related references and standards since it would be allowed anywhere that the use personal service is allowed. Thank you. I move that ordinance twenty twenty five dash 30 be introduced and read by the clerk by title and synopsis only second.
- It's been moved and seconded to introduce ordinance twenty twenty five thirty. All those in favor please say aye. Aye. Opposed. Thank you. Will the clerk please read ordinance twenty twenty five dash thirty to vacate a public parcel regarding a twelve foot public alley adjacent to 909 East University Street. The synopsis is as follows the petitioner Veronica Bardiner requests vacation of an alley right of way to
- Her that is enclosed by fencing and not currently utilized for any form of access. The alley is oriented along the northern boundary of 909 East University Street. Thank you. Those six ordinances will be heard for second reading next Wednesday at our regular session on August 6th. Moving on to second readings and resolutions.
- I move that ordinance twenty twenty five dash twenty three be introduced and read by the clerk by title and synopsis only second spin moved and seconded to introduce ordinance twenty twenty five twenty three. All those in favor please say aye. Opposed. Thank you. Will the clerk please read.
- Ordinance 2025-23 to enact Title 10 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 levels and the fats, oil, and grease program,
- by including the hydro mechanical grease trap as an accepted device in the removal of fats oils and grease from wastewater leaving food service establishments prior to that wastewater entering the service city of Bloomington sewer system. Finally this ordinance updates best management practices to recognize new software programming and to recognize hydro mechanical grease traps. Thank you. I move that ordinance 2025 dash 23 be adopted. Second.
- Great, we finally got into the part where we don't just have to introduce things. Who is here to present this ordinance this evening? If you could introduce yourself for us. Esteemed members of the council, good evening. My name is Stephen Stanford. I serve as the industrial pretreatment program coordinator for utilities. I'm here to request your approval for amendments to Title X.
- of the municipal code entitled wastewater. This request, this request is driven by CBU's quinquennial technical reevaluation of local limits, which is an obligation under the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permits
- that we operate the Dillman Road and Blucher Pool wastewater treatment plants under. What are local limits? Local limits are a set of pollutant discharge limitations for industrial sewer users calculated for conditions specific to each publicly owned treatment works. CBU is required to develop, enforce,
- and keep local limits up to date under its permits issued by the IDEM, as well as 40 CFR part 403.5. What pollutants are of concern? Fortunately, EPA helps us identify these. There are 16. Most of them are metals. Then we have cyanide, CBOD, total suspended solids, phosphorus and ammonia to consider.
- How does one calculate local limits? We have to consider seven criteria. Unique to Bloomington, we can cut that list down to five criteria, which is our maximum discharge limits on our permits. How much cadmium, for example, can we discharge to the creek without violating our permit? We also have monthly average discharge limits that have to be considered in the calculations.
- We have to look after our activated sludge, which is where the magic takes place and the CBOD is consumed. Nitrification, this is where our system takes care of the ammonia. And then finally, Indiana surface water quality standards. The state amended these just after our last permit was issued and this affected the calculations for the process.
- Results for the metals, we have four metals that we have to consider. We need to reduce our present limits for cadmium, mercury, and silver by about one half, and our limit for selenium by about two thirds. Another issue that we considered was pH. This is under our specific prohibitions.
- ordinance currently matches the federal minimum standard, which is five for the lower limit. That's still rather acidic and EPA encourages POTW is like us to set more stringent limits if we need them to protect against corrosion. I'm relatively new here. I've only been here a year now.
- and what I observed in our system is that we've got etching and corrosion visible throughout the wastewater collection and treatment system. CBU therefore recommends that we increase the lower pH limit for our industrial users from five to six. How are other POTWs handling this? Well, three of Indiana's 10 largest cities
- including Fort Wayne, South Bend, and Carmel limit their industrial discharges to a lower limit of six. Fisheries in Noblesville settled on a compromise limit of 5.5. Our permit requires us to discharge wastewaters with a pH between the range of six and nine.
- I don't see a lot of wisdom in continuing to be able to accept industrial wastewater that's outside the range that we ourselves can discharge. Next is fat soils and grease. We call this FOG. CBU has 527 registered food service establishments. And by registered, I mean these are establishments that are registered in our system for mitigation of grease discharges.
- Fog is a leading cause of sewer obstructions, resulting in interference to the wastewater operations. Hydromechanical grease traps, so we want to add, simply add the definition for this particular device, add them to the vernacular and recognize them as acceptable methods for fog control.
- The inclusion of hydrodynamic grease traps increases the flexibility and imposes no new requirements on our food service establishments. Fiscal impact, we studied this pretty carefully and we don't believe that there will be any significant fiscal impacts for us or for any of our industrial sewer users. And with that, I would just like to reiterate, we'd like to have your approval for the recommended amendments
- I will point out that in some regards the EPA has already provisionally approved The changes to the metal concentrations in particular subject to adoption by the City Council Okay, thank you very much for your presentation are there councilmember questions councilmember, sorry, I
- Thank you so much for the presentation and for the work in advancing this to us. I had a question around the grease trap issue, particularly around the changes in reporting required by
- By well, I guess restaurants primarily and whether you think that This is going to put or whether there's any thought been put into the burden that that might place on our smaller smaller restaurants Well councilman, we're not actually changing anything with the reporting requirement. We thought there was I
- Don't not sure I agree with the anything is being changed in that regard We use the particular cloud-based online system for our restaurants and our grease haulers to to report to us Okay, let me get back to then when give me one second, thank you are there other councilmember questions Okay, I I have one I
- You said that there's like no fiscal impact, but it also sounds like there are stricter guidelines around the the fog and So I'm like are there going to be changes that restaurants are going to need to make to their current systems in order to meet these new requirements in my view the recommended amendments simply add a measure of flexibility to
- To what the restaurants can use now it imposes no further requirements on them I guess I would I mean in section In section four of this ordinance as it's
- Given to us it says that all existing FSE is that discharge wastewater into the city's sanitary sewer system are required to install an approved properly maintained grease trap unless specifically exempted. So are you telling me that like whatever restaurants have in there now that is approved and properly maintained like isn't going to change that will not change. We already require all of our restaurants to have fog mitigation systems whether they're grease interceptors or grease traps.
- So I guess I'm gonna need to go to the to the red line for just a minute to figure out like what changed in that Sentence then that's requiring this ordinance change or do you know that off the top of your head? Do other council members have any questions while I try to find that red line I
- I guess I have a similar question about the pH levels because I mean if we're saying that the pH discharges can't be less than six now like that tells me that there must be some but you're telling us that that there's enough corrosion on it that
- there's evidence that maybe that we need to rise that pH level. So that means there's some discharges that are less than six right now. So like, are you gonna identify those and then require those discharge units to change something about their system? Because that would be a physical impact too. A couple of details in that regard. I personally reviewed three years worth of industrial discharge monitoring data from our 14 permitted industries.
- and the lowest pH that I actually observed among the permitted industries was 6.0. And so none of them will need to make any changes to comply with this. We have one industry that's on the north side of town that was discharging pHs, wastewater with a pH in the low fives range. And it was really, it was called to our attention by our operators of our north side treatment plant at Blucher Pool.
- we took a trip to that particular customer's location and had a very nice, polite chat with that customer and just asked them very nicely if they could reset the pH discharge set point on their pre-treatment system to target a pH of six rather than five. That will cost them a nominal additional amount of caustic soda to meet that limit.
- They voluntarily made that change in part because I explained to them that it was also going to preserve their own infrastructure, their own private lift station and our own private force main and prevent corrosion in their part of the system. And so they went along with it. And going forward, we would just like to be able to codify that limit so that we can actually make it enforceable if we had an industry that chose not to be as cooperative.
- Okay, so you currently don't have like issues with it now in terms of industries that are refusing or that are That's correct. We haven't discharged. Well, okay Councilmember sorry, did you find what you needed? I
- Yes, and I agree with your with that I misread so I I had because of the way that it was it was redlined it looked like it was an additional additional requirement and I hadn't read carefully were just replacing the fact that there wasn't faxes and such things but rather the fog system online so Okay Thank You councilmember Piedmont Smith who answered the other question for me Are there other councilmember questions?
- right now on this. Okay. I guess I do have one more with restaurants because you said you reached out to the industry that was having a pH issue. Have you done any reach out to restaurants at all about their fog processing. We do regular inspections on our restaurants already. Madam President.
- And so we work to educate them work with them help them choose a device that's going to meet their particular requirements for their particular situation Okay, so you haven't reached out to them specifically with this like legislative change to make sure that they kind of knew what was going on As a practical matter madam president, we don't monitor pH discharges for individual restaurants. This is for the larger industries I know I mean the fog discharge the grease trap stuff
- Did you reach out to restaurants about that part of this change. I didn't really see the need to do that simply because the only thing we're changing is we're adding an additional option that they can choose to use. OK. If there are no more questions right now let's go ahead and go to public comments if there are members of the public who would like to comment on ordinance 20 25 23.
- with amendments to Title X. If you're in chambers, you can go ahead and make your way to the podium and sign in. And then you would have up to three minutes. If you're online, if you could go ahead and raise your hand using the Reactions tab or send a chat message to the host. I don't trust my vision right now, but I don't think I see any blobs moving to the podium. Are there any hands raised on Zoom?
- Seeing no public comment, we'll come back to council. Are there any last council questions or comments on this ordinance?
- I don't know if you can see me, sorry. Just a general comment of, and I should have led with this rather than the question that I asked, but I think that it's fantastic that we're adding, you know, other approved uses. I know this has been a big burden for a lot of restaurants, the grease traps, and so hopefully that, you know, emphasizes again what was spoke about by the BDC. I mean, more opportunities for particularly small restaurants to flourish here, so big support of that change. Agreed, counselor. Thank you.
- Thank you. Councilmember Piedmont Smith. I just wanted to welcome Mr. Stanford. It's it's you've done an excellent job with your presentation and it's unusual to have people who are not department heads or members of the legal team give presentations. So welcome and glad to host you here in the chambers tonight. Thank you. So kind for being so kind. Thank you. Any other council comments.
- So we'll at this time will the clerk please call the roll on ordinance 2025 23. Councilmember Stasberg. Yes. Daily. Yes. Zulek. Yes. Rosenberger. Yes. Sorry. Yes. Clarity. Yes. Rough. Yes. Piedmont Smith. Yes. Thank you. That passes eight zero.
- On to the next. I move that ordinance twenty twenty five dash twenty four be introduced and read by the clerk by title and synopsis only second. It's been moved and seconded to introduce ordinance twenty twenty five twenty four. All those in favor please say aye. Opposed. Thank you. Will the clerk please read.
- 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 runoff pollutants from certain identical
- hotspot developments to respond to stakeholder concerns or feedback and to correct typographical errors. Thank you. I move that ordinance 2025 dash 24 be adopted. Thank you. Somebody asked a second. If you could come forward to present go ahead and introduce yourself and go ahead. Thank you.
- Good evening council members. My name is Kelsey the Tony I'm the assistant director for environmental programs for city of Bloomington utilities. So today I'm presenting amendments to our stormwater ordinance title 13. So our main reason for mending title 13 comes from the twenty twenty five Indiana legislative session. House enrolled 10 37 modified home rule and by adding a new exception to home rule.
- which affects how local governments can regulate construction stormwater runoff from land disturbing activities within their jurisdiction. Specifically states that we cannot pass any local regulation that is more stringent than or exceed in any manner the requirements of the Department of Environmental Management's construction stormwater general permit or CSGP. I'm gonna use some acronyms tonight, so I apologize. I'll try to define everything.
- The CSGP is a permit issued by item the Department of Environmental Management for construction sites disturbing one acre or more of land for a bit of background. City Bloomington is an MS4 community that stands for municipal separate storm sewer system. So all the runoff in our city turns directly to our local waterways and does not get treated at a wastewater treatment plant. So that means we have to comply with the state's MS4 regulations which is items MS4 general permit.
- So these are some terms I'll be using a bit frequently. The MS4 general permit is basically the Clean Water Act's way to regulate discharges from urban areas through a series of performance-based measures. And one of those performance measures requires areas in the city to develop and administer an erosion sediment control program. That includes developing an ordinance that at a minimum contains the requirements of the CSGP, the construction stormwater general permit from IDEM.
- For land disturbing activities within an MS4 item does not enforce the CSGP because the local authority the city is required to have a similar permit program in place. So if there's not compliance on a construction site in our city item would enforce on the local MS4 not on those construction sites. So title 13 contains our local regulations that serve as our local equivalent to the state's CSGP and it already pretty well mirrors the CSGP.
- As we are required to do so but to comply with this new law we had to make a few changes I first want to mention that our stormwater ordinance was just rewritten in its entirety and passed last year Because it was a requirement of the state that all MS4s updated ordinances at that time So we don't like having to make changes so soon because it can be confusing as Jennifer stated
- This new law voided some parts of this ordinance. However, so we wanted to act as quickly as possible. It became effective immediately So we had to determine which parts of the ordinance were voided And this is our best good faith effort to ensure our local regulations are compliant So some of the changes we made were to clarify our authority for
- to require certain things because title 13 isn't just construction stormwater regulations it's how our city regulates all stormwater discharges and how it manages our stormwater utility and it also contains our drainage regulations. So very technical and sometimes difficult to tease out exactly where we are drawing our authority from. So for compliance with the new law I've highlighted the main changes in the ordinance.
- The performance standards for construction stormwater management are in Chapter 5. And as I said most of our performance standards already align with the CSGP but we had a few that stood out. For example we removed item O from Chapter 5 Section 4 which states that disturbed areas are at a finished grade to be permanently stabilized within seven days. That's something that the city has enforced for a long time through previously Title 20. The CSGP states that stabilization must be initiated within the first seven days.
- And so we removed that section oh and now title 13 better mirrors the CSGP to say that they can initiate within seven days does not have to be completed. Other major changes we had to make involve our permitting process. So we've had to adjust the applicability of our construction and post construction stormwater standards to comply with the land disturbance threshold in the CSGP. So our stormwater permit is taking on a tiered approach now.
- So projects that require that state CSGP coverage have all the same requirements and not much has changed for those sites. But for smaller sites, our authority has somewhat diminished. So we are really only requiring a stormwater permit for sites with new drainage infrastructure. We've eliminated erosion control bonds because financial assurances were also called out in the new state law. But we are still requiring permits and performance bonds for new stormwater infrastructure because we're still managing drainage on new development.
- just not the erosion and sediment control side of things. So the new permit process will be more streamlined for some smaller sites. And alongside this ordinance update, we've also updated our stormwater design manual, and that has more detailed permitting procedures. So all the information is now available with this ordinance update. And our goal is to have the clear permitting requirements and to minimize confusion for our applicants. I think that just complements really nicely what Jennifer presented earlier.
- We've are also planning some outreach events as well to local designers builders developers and we hold an annual contractors workshop where we discuss all of our permitting any changes and get that face to face time with the development community.
- Um, you also have a couple other highlights to change with this ordinance update. One is a new text pertaining to property owner maintenance of driveway culverts. This is located in chapter seven, which regulates maintenance of permanent stormwater infrastructure. So requiring property owners to do general maintenance to their driveway culverts has been a longstanding practice of CBU and we ask property owners to keep their culverts clear of debris so they don't clog and back up with water. But this new section gives us something very clear to point to so that we are consistent.
- and clear in our expectations of private property duties. It gives us a way to point also to our stormwater design manual when anyone is sizing a new driveway pipe so it has to be adequately sized so someone doesn't spend money installing a pipe that ends up being inadequate. So hopefully we can catch those things sooner and that they are designed properly. The other section I want to highlight is Chapter 4 stormwater development standards.
- This is clarifying a requirement that has always existed. We wanted to call it out specifically now that we made some changes to our stormwater management permit. So this is the second bullet point there. This section makes it clear that when someone wants to develop a site, for example, if they're putting in a gas station, they'll need to install a water quality treatment device to treat the pollutants from those activities. So this requirement was always a blanket requirement for all development that's not single family residential related. So commercial sites, this is not a new requirement. We're just changing the wording, essentially.
- and just kind of like narrowing the scope a bit. So this is gonna apply to some of those industrial sites, gas stations, et cetera. We've required this all along, so like I said, it's just a clarification that it's going to be easier to see when you're developing a site what will be required based on our new tiered permit. Also I wanna mention the hotspot terminology is new to this ordinance, but it's taken from the state's model ordinance
- and is present in many other ordinances, stormwater ordinances throughout the state, including Monroe counties. So I don't foresee that being a new concept for most of our design community. And then just in summary, we've made changes due to legislation at the state level. We don't foresee major financial impacts from these changes. The permitting will, in fact, be more streamlined for some of the smaller developments. So that may be a benefit for them during plan review to help speed up the process.
- But during construction, we are anticipating having to pursue more enforcement for illicit discharges. So previously a site who may have had more oversight for erosion and sediment control, we were having to back off on that. And if they have discharges from their site, we as the MS4 still have the obligation to pursue enforcement if they are discharging sediment or any other pollutants outside of their site into a stormwater drainage system or a waterway.
- So that can affect our staff time. But we don't have a clear picture of what that will look like so far since this is so new. We also took this opportunity to make some clarifications and corrections and the text of the ordinance. And I'm happy to go over any of those changes if if you'd like and happy to answer any of your questions. Great. Thank you so much.
- Actually remember during your presentation that there's actually a very small amendment to this So I'm wondering if we want to move the amendment first and then have questions about the ordinance as amended Councilmember Piedmont Smith Yes, I move amendment one to ordinance 2025 24 It is just a correcting do we have a second Thank You councilmember Piedmont Smith It's just to correct the title
- The legislation which currently says to enact title 13 of the Bloomington Municipal Code and we're not enacting it We are amending it. So it should say to amend title 13 of the Bloomington Municipal Code Thank you. Are there any councilmember questions on amendment 1 to ordinance 2025 24? Councilmember Ruff Pretty much this is being done purely because of state
- Just on the amendment that changes the word Any any questions just on the amendment? All right, we have to go to public comment just on the amendment as well So if there's any member of the public that would like to make a comment just on the amendment one To change the word enact in the title to amend in the title and go ahead and make your way to the podium Remember, this is just comments on amendment one
- Or if you're online you can go ahead and raise your hand using the reactions tab. I don't see anybody moving in council chambers. Are there any hands raised. No. Thank you. Coming back to council then any closing comments about Amendment 1. Clerk Bolden if you could please call the roll on Amendment 1 to ordinance 2025 24. Yes. Yes.
- Yes Rosenberger. Yes. I'm sorry. Yes clarity. Yes rough. Yes, Iman Smith. Yes Stasburg. Yes Thank you, so that amendment passes eight zero so now we're back to questions about Ordinance 2025 24 as amended councilmember rough. Did you want to go first now? Yeah. Thank you The
- These changes do any of them would any of them would any of them have come from the city staff if it hadn't been for requirements by the state of the changes to our permitting process in response to the new state law. We would not have initiated that we just passed this ordinance last year that our staff spent a lot of time on to specialize it for our city because we know our city really well and it's sensitive areas.
- If I could have one quick follow-up, but just for examples that the inability to to bond for erosion sediment control But they could still be Science I taste to receive citation for failure to control sediment or somewhat adequately Yeah, so we
- Are going to have to take a more defensive approach to erosion stabbing control on some sites. So we still have the ability to regulate those discharges. We would like to prevent them in the first place by having a good plan in place and be able to enforce it as a project progresses. But if we cannot do that or have no way to do that because of this law then we may have to wait until something bad happens before we can enforce what we can. Yeah. OK. Thank you.
- Thank you. Any other questions from council members? Council members, sorry. Thank you so, so much. A question around the burden on permitting, just generally. So most of these changes are going to require new permits. And so how are we dealing with that internally as a CBU? And do we have the capacity to, I mean, how is this going to affect time, response, et cetera?
- So if anything it will speed up some projects none of these changes are going to slow down our permitting process and I'm actually pleased to say that our stormwater management permit is officially live in EPL so our staff have worked very hard to To make this permitting process easier. We just started rolling out our stormwater permits earlier this year Fantastic, and then could you can ask a follow-up question? Could you could you explain because I know we're moving the planning department has just instituted this new software that was
- a big part of the budget this last year, and we're so happy that that's happened. We've signed some things with the county to improve permitting. I know the mayor's talked a lot about improving permitting processes. Could you sort of just give us, while we're here, maybe a little bit of some grounding from CBU's perspective, the state of permitting, and what other changes you see down the pike? Because this is, I think, a really big challenge for us across the board. So what other things can we be doing
- doing to improve permitting Hi, it's Katherine Zegar utilities director I have one to speak on our permitting processes Generally, we've been putting a lot of effort into our permitting processes and improving our timelines We're also putting a lot of effort into getting into EPL where plannings permits are right now as well I
- We so I said we are tightening our timelines we are getting into EPL and then we're also working with planning right now as part of the I think it was announced that planning is doing kind of an audit of our permitting processes CBU is collaborating with them and with planning and is fully involved in that process as well. Excellent. So you think the move to EPL will also help.
- on stormwater Turn-around times for permits as well at generally with CPU Absolutely. I also think it'll include improve clarity because People who apply for permits can now see where it's at through EP out like they do with plannings permits currently Fantastic. Thank you. I have some follow-ups, but I'll let my colleagues Okay, are there other questions for first round? I have a question that kind of follows on what councilmember sorry. I was just talking about so I
- In the red line document one of the things that's crossed out is CBU needing to so it says after CBU receives the submittal materials a determination will be made whether the application is substantially complete within 14 business days and then that is crossed out. So I mean we're talking about being more.
- Efficient with permanent and being faster, but then I see like this kind of like Deadline of 14 days is being crossed out which kind of is like so they can respond whenever they want like what does that really mean and is that like a question that Like is that something that had to get changed because of the state thing or is that something internal that you're? doing differently
- So that 14 day timeline that is part of a state law anyway that we are tied to for our stormwater plan review time frames. I took it out of there for clarity because sometimes there's confusion between the state required timeline versus our own internal reviews that include other utilities that aren't tied to that timeline. It can get very confusing. So that was for clarity. It's something that we still are required to follow.
- But yeah it was causing some confusion so I cleaned up that section on permitting in general. OK. So so basically it falls under state law so it's redundant. We don't need to say it at all. OK. Thank you. Other first round questions.
- Councilmember, sorry, do you still have a second round question? Go for it. Thanks so much. On the topic of timelines, do we currently track how we do across the board in terms of turnaround times? I mean, obviously, there's a sort of deadline in some cases. But are we tracking that? Do we have some type of metrics? Like, how do we do, on average, it's eight days or something like that? So we set ourselves.
- To our deadlines and we set ourselves to giving right now we're giving a three week period between rounds of review and as far as tracking how we're doing with that metric I think that'll be a little easier once we have something like EPL right now. We're just doing a lot of internal processing that is not as well tracked.
- And then could you, on that note, talk to us a little bit about the rounds of review? Because that's something also when I talk to constituents, really businesses, developers, particularly in town, something that comes up a lot, both in planning and wastewater management, that we do a lot of rounds of review for things, and that sometimes new things will come up in round two that should have been caught in round one, and so on and so forth. And what are we doing to provide more clarity, consistency to people who want
- to do.
- things here in Bloomington. Yeah absolutely. So there's a couple ways to approach that. I think the first way that we are addressing this problem of having so many rounds of review is to make sure that we're very clear what the submission requirements are to begin with. I think we were getting caught up in multiple rounds of review because we were receiving and then reviewing incomplete submissions and then going back and forth like oh hey I'll review the rest of this when you send this other part. So now
- We can we're trying to get better about saying hey, this is everything we need so we can do a full review the first time And so as we have progressive reviews the comments are fewer and fewer Right now my goal for our reviews at CBU is three to four rounds Okay, okay, and what sorry can ask a follow-up sure why three to four instead of one to two I think you know three
- to four seems reasonable as far as having a dialogue back and forth with designers. So that first round of review may have a lot of comments. And so there may be a back and forth between our reviewers and the designers to get an understanding. And I think that can come within three to four rounds of review. OK. I have some follow-ups, but I'll let others ask. OK. Are there other second round? I actually have one second round, too, that is kind
- brings us in a different direction. But another one of the crossed out lines was related to plastic netting. So we had previously said we will not permit plastic netting or plastic mesh for stabilization and erosion control. And crossing that out means that now we're allowing plastic netting and plastic mesh. So is that something that the state is requiring us to allow or did you guys internally go we need to allow this.
- No, that was our interpretation of the state's requirements that list specifically is a list from the CSGP we added the plastic netting to that list and so in full-faith attempt to comply with the state we removed it Okay. Thank you Actually
- Member Stossberg's question reminded me of a question I had I think in your memo you said that the Planning and Transportation Department may be addressing the The plastic netting. Yeah question. Yes, so that used to be in the UDO It was moved over to title 13 when we wrote title 13 addressing all of these stormwater issues as a erosion control issue
- Now that we're not able to have that We're hoping to move it to plan back to planning Okay, and it could still apply in similar cases But not specifically not specifically to the CSGP or the stormwater permit. Thank you Other questions Councilmember Ruff Back to the reverse incentive control changes
- So it was said that after a problem manifests itself, then action can be taken. I mean, I know this speaks to, this is very effective or can be very effective with developers, to issue stop work orders upon notice of being out of compliance
- Even before there's would be an off-site Loss of sediment to an off-site location from the project Can can the city still do that can city issue a stop work order? In lieu of being able to go in and move on against a bond to do it to implement it to have the city have it implemented properly the erosion semitral plan Instead of waiting around
- waiting for a problem to occur based on lack of adequate implementation of measures could It came to a bond. But could you do a stop work order? Could the city could we do a stop work order? So The stop work order still remains a tool in our toolbox as long as we are complying with the state regulations surrounding issuing stop work orders
- requiring a 72-hour notification before issuing the stop work order But but we stop work or short order could be issued with the 72-hour notice heads Bay due to lack of compliance with the respect of sediment control measures yes, and so there's still going to be sites that we are able to
- Enforce erosion and sediment control measures. However on these sites that we're no longer able to we are going to be Kind of stuck enforcing illicit discharge So that's kind of after the fact in which case. Yes, then a stop work order could be issued Okay. Thank you very much Other questions Councilmember sorry
- so that my colleagues don't get upset with me asking so many questions. I'm just going to ask one combined question, and then I will hold my piece. So the question is, there was this mention about more education to some listening sessions and information sessions to let developers, et cetera, know the changes to things.
- particularly interested in how people will know that they qualify for hotspots, what was it called, hotspots, right? And then the sort of package to this question is whether we've had any conversations around, because I know we've started to have these conversations with planning, the ideas of sort of like tiered lists so that you might have like
- priority things that can get approved quicker, et cetera, et cetera. Have we talked about instituting anything like that at the CBU so that we might be able to prioritize certain types of permits or certain types of projects? Okay. Okay, so I will try to address your questions around hotspots first, and then I may ask for a reiteration for the second part.
- Sorry. Um, so in addressing hotspots, uh, like Kelsey had mentioned, um, usually designers and developers understand the meaning of hotspots. Typically it's, um, for example, gas stations and we have it kind of listed out. Um, we happy to inform people immediately in the review if, you know, additional water quality requirements are needed, um, you know, to treat things like,
- dripping gasoline. And so that is to address hot spots. And then you'd kind of mention, like, are we considering a system for
- Prioritizing permits or yeah, so so I mean, I think the you know, the way that it's been framed with With planning and I think that overlaps with CBU is that if like we were doing an affordable housing project And that's something that we've made a priority. It's like can we do a rapid permitting process for affordable housing not to say that it's less stringent just to say that it's like if you're doing the things that align with our greatest priorities in the city like, you know, We're not going to we will move this faster
- right we'll put priority in it and we'll move it faster though we'll put you through all the same stringency type of approach. So I know that the administration generally is looking towards kind of a fast track process for certain projects and CBU is you know obviously going to be working with the administration and planning towards what that looks like. But in general I would like to say that our goal is to
- Be very fast with every project we review so that that isn't an issue. Yeah. Thank you. Hoping there aren't other questions right now so that we can move on to public comments. So I would like to open it up to the public at this point if anybody has any comments that they would like to make about ordinance 20 25 24 as amended.
- You can go ahead and approach the podium Be sure to sign in state your name for the record and then you'll have up to three minutes if you're online On zoom if you could use the reactions tab to raise your hand or send a chat message to the host And I see we do have somebody here in person. So go ahead. Good evening again, madam president This is Christopher energy from the Greater Bloomington Chamber of Commerce and the ordinance itself I don't want to speak to
- Specifically other than I was it seems pretty innocuous just going on based on the presentation But we got a more general CBU conversation within the question-and-answer portion and I wanted to point out the wonderful work of CBU specifically for the Board of Realtors straight talk session that I attended a couple Thursdays ago at the Convention Center and especially Liz Carter was on there and sort of let a panel of
- I think Monroe County and Elizabeth was on there again, but really informed the audience and provided a lot of great feedback for me that I didn't know and just based on my workings with CBU what ends up happening how I get involved sometimes is I'll have a developer or someone go on and
- My permits stuck somewhere and then we'll find out where it's stuck and sometimes it's CBU that has not happened recently So I'm really encouraged from what I've been hearing on the fast-tracking and some of the technology advances to move these projects forward So I just wanted to take this opportunity to say that. Thank you Thank you. Are there any other members of the public who would like to comment on this in chambers and Does anybody have a hand raised on zoom?
- Thank you not seeing anybody move toward the podium and chambers I'll return back to counsel. Are there any closing comments from any council members about this ordinance as amended? Because member Piedmont Smith Well, I'll say I make a similar comment to the last ordinance and welcome miss the Tonya the Tonya Tonya
- And thank her for the presentation and apologize that our microphone won't go down lower As a as a short person I can relate. Thank you Thank you, are there other council comments Great will the clerk please call the roll on ordinance 20 25 24 as amended and
- Members only yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes and daily yes. Thank you. That passes 8 0. Moving on to the next.
- I move that appropriation ordinance twenty twenty five dash seven be introduced and read by the clerk by title and synopsis only second it's been moved and seconded to introduce appropriation ordinance twenty twenty five oh seven. All those in favor please say aye. Opposed. Thank you. Well the clerk please read.
- Appropriation ordinance twenty twenty five dash zero seven to transfer appropriations in the general fund to various departments and various funds to align budgets with the twenty twenty five salary ordinance. The synopsis as follows appropriation ordinance twenty twenty five dash zero seven appropriates various transfers the 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 twenty twenty five salary ordinance. Thank you. I move that appropriation ordinance twenty twenty five dash seven be adopted. Second thank you. Who is here to present about appropriation ordinance twenty twenty five oh seven.
- I cannot see who's walking in the door right now. I apologize. I apologize for not being able to see. We were ready to have appropriation ordinance 2025 07 be presented. Well somebody has to be somebody has to present it. We haven't heard anything from anybody right now. So hi.
- Go ahead and introduce yourself for the record, please. Sure sharp paycheck director of human resources I'm here to I thought present with Jessica. I'm sure she's coming soon the Controller I am here to share information and answer any questions that you have about the request to appropriate funds from the human resources department budget
- to be dispersed to the different departments that would cover what we have found to be our recommendations for prior experience. The prior experience project is a part of the salary study implementation. We started by looking at reviewing grades for all employees, and that was the first part of the process.
- as we promised we would go back and we would finish the second part of the process, which would be evaluating prior experience to see if any employees would be eligible for advanced step placement, which would equate to salary increases. We have done that work. We have those recommendations prepared, and that is why the controller would be requesting the appropriation. Thank you.
- I'm told the controller is here now would the controller like to add anything to the presentation? For those of you just walking in here this evening. I am either blind because I don't have these glasses on or Uncomfortable because of how bright it is right now. Good evening everyone controller McClellan. Thank you Shar for providing backup for me and we presented this appropriation ordinance, which is it's kind of a
- It's kind of misleading. It's not a true appropriation It's just moving money out of the general fund into some other funds that have salaries in them to fund these step increase changes Thank you, are there questions from council members about this appropriation ordinance council members, sorry Thank you so much. Just a super fast one is are we gonna get another one of these before the end of the year? Do you expect or is are we? done with
- The many transfers because I think we've done like three of these My understanding is that we're complete Thank you other questions councilmember Piedmont Smith Yes, I was wondering about salary increases for our ask me staff I believe the salary review for them was to take place this year, but it's also union negotiations So could you give us an update, please?
- Yeah, I'm happy to give you an update that is our priority now competing priorities with completing this prior experience But we are actively working on that right now We are already worked with crow who completed our market analysis and now we are continuing to work closely with our
- Independent consultant or compensation consultant and we are now in the process of making recommendations for the AFSCME classification and compensation Proposal for 2026 which you are correct would be a part of the contract negotiation All right, so the consultant work is done and now you're in the process of reviewing and looking at well, I feel like we are
- Continuing to tap our consultants for expertise So I wouldn't say that we have completely stopped working with the consultants because as we continue to get information Share information and get feedback from AFSCME
- They have questions. They want to make sure that everything is done appropriately and fairly. We want the same thing. And so sometimes we have to keep having conversations with our consultants, both the administration and also AFSCME leadership has been able to work with the consultants just so that they can make sure that they get their answers and their concerns addressed as well. So it has been a collaborative and iterative process. So it's still in the works.
- Okay, great and those Salary changes would take effect in 2026 correct. Okay. Thanks other questions Councilmember Flaherty Yes, thank you, I don't think these were addressed in the memo but just had a few questions in further characterization of the current changes Do we know either how many total people or what percentage of civil city staff are having adjustments based on?
- the implementation of this phase, addressing experience. So I was just looking at those numbers when I was upstairs, so I'll give you the best information that I have available, and if you have follow-up questions, I'll follow up with you. But for this part of the salary study, we looked at a total of 392 different positions. Of those 392 positions,
- 154 of them will receive a step increased Increased based on prior experience. So I believe that's about 48% 154 out of 392 about half of them now of the and the reason why the math may be a little bit off is because of the 392 that we looked at 71 of them were already at step 5 and
- So of the 392 I deducted the 71 there was nowhere for them to move. They were already at the max of their pay grade. So that really was 321 eligible employees and of those 321 eligible employees 154 of them have advanced so that's 48% of
- Half of the employees almost half of the employees that were evaluated would get a prior experience step adjustment. I also want to note that Of that 392 For those who did not receive it again. It was because they were already at step five. And so everyone else we believe has been Fairly evaluated They are fairly placed
- either based on the amount of time that they have already been in their position. So their step is just based on their tenure and their current position. They haven't changed positions, which means they are at the step where they should be basically based on their longevity, their tenure. Anyone else, we feel like if we evaluated them wherever they are currently in their step,
- is their appropriate placement. So no additional prior experience. And really what that means is if they're in a position right now and they didn't have a step increase, it means that they likely just met the minimum qualifications for their position, which is fine. They're qualified for the position based on the job description. You met the minimum qualifications. And so the way that you receive prior experience
- It would be any experience that you have above and beyond any relevant Experience that you have above and beyond your current position requirements Thank you, I'm I did a few follow-ups I can wait though if well Thank you go for it. Um, that's helpful. I Think I'm inferring from the memo and from your comments that this was um, I
- the evaluation was done and sort of the results were disseminated to I suppose departments or maybe all staff. Inevitably probably there's some level of interpretation and subjectivity sometimes in assessing things and unlike when someone's getting hired and you can go back and forth about what type of experience this was and what it meant and someone can agree here it's sort of like, it sounds like kind of handed
- hand it down in a sense, I don't mean that in a bad way, but I'm just curious if there's an opportunity for appeal or review of this component if people feel like they were unfairly designated with respect to the recognition of their prior experience and the step level. Yeah, so sure. Great question, I definitely understand it. Right now we have said that there is no appeal process. That doesn't mean that of course we wouldn't continue to be
- open to conversations, open to recommendations on how we can continue to improve our process in the system. What we don't want to do is give the, and have anybody believe that each individual employee would be able to come to human resources in order to debate
- or advocate for what they feel they should be paid. I mean, of course, if you were a new employee, you probably would have the opportunity to negotiate. We're trying to adjust current employees to the best of our ability. We know that not everyone is going to completely agree with the recommendation.
- Who does I feel like I should be paid more? I'm sure you feel like you should be paid more like we're never gonna make everybody 100% happy But we do feel confident that we were fair and we were consistent with how we evaluated it So that's a conversation that we're we've already explained to the department heads. We already put it in FAQ to the employees so again, you may not agree that
- But hopefully you will clearly understand consistently how we evaluated each employee. Our talent team looked at every job description. They pulled every single employee file.
- Every single one of them, the 392. They went back, they looked at their application on file and their resume on file at the time that they applied for the position. It was very detailed, it was tedious. There was a committee, so if there was ever any disagreement, then they talked it through and then they always erred on the side of giving the employee the benefit of the doubt. So I believe that these prior experience recommendations are very,
- generous Thank you and one more short I think short follow-up or I can hold it It's all related. Thank you The last question I seem to recall The mayor suggesting perhaps at some point that we would or maybe somebody else and I could be wrong about this but that we would hold off on the step implementing the step process for like the highest paid positions and
- like grade 14 I think is our highest because those ranges are quite wide. I think they go to like 180 or something like that. So is this applied across all steps and
- If so also, do you know what the highest paid position in the city government? Well, not not who but just what the salary is the highest paid position in civil city. Yes Thank you for thank you for asking that question because I did not clarify it So the highest grade is a grades 13 and grades 14 Those are the department heads the department heads were excluded from the prior experience evaluation so no Merrill appointed department heads will receive
- step advancement Okay No, sorry, I just had more follow-ups, but I said I had no more follow-ups that answer It did just triggered another follow-up. So I'll stop and just let somebody else talk So some of the higher paid positions those great 14s like deputy mayor Police chief controller Our attorney
- Fire Chief, I think, like those would be the highest paid, the grade 14s. ITS, Public Works, vast departments with multiple divisions. Member Flaherty, would you like to do your other follow-up? Sure, sorry, I think last one, which is that my recollection of looking very closely at the grades 12, 13, and 14 when we were discussing
- and council department head salaries last year was that we also had some grade 13s that are not mayoral appointed department heads. So when you said, that's my recollection, I could check, but you said we excluded the mayoral appointed department heads. Is it just that or are all grade 13 and 14 folks excluded from this step process? So for clarification,
- I'm pretty sure I'm thinking of this correctly. Only department heads are in grades 13 and 14. So no department heads that were in grades 13 and 14 were evaluated for prior experience. We do have some individuals in the city obviously that would have been
- Advanced to a grade 12 based on this first evaluation when they were regraded so that gave Opportunity for other employees to move up and pay Because the department heads were basically like moved out of grade 12 To make room for advancement for other positions. So no 13s or 14s No department heads receive prior experience. Okay. Thank you. I
- Number sorry, I Realized that my my first question I should have been a little more specific and so I'm going to ask it in a different way we we appropriated six million dollars in the Approved six million dollars in the first budget and then we've had a handful of transfers to fulfill these specific things and if I'm not mistaken, there's like
- Million dollars that we still haven't appropriated. So my question is what what what's happening with that? Well, where does that money go and are we going to see more things? We are not going to see more things come from that That's just gonna roll off the budget at the end of the year just expire from the budget and not be spent We don't intend on spending that Other councilmember questions for the first round
- Okay, I have one is this experience pay bump retroactive at all or does it start on like the date that we approve this ordinance essentially like when does it start for employees if you approve it then the pay increases will go into effect August 4th. So I believe that is the pay August 22nd that employees eligible would see their increase.
- Okay. So it's not retroactive. Thank you. Other other questions from council members. All right. Not seeing any. Let's go ahead and go to public comment on appropriation ordinance 2025 07. There's a member of the public in chambers who would like to make a comment. Please make your way to the podium where you can sign in and then introduce yourself and then you'll have up to three minutes. If you're online on zoom you can go ahead and raise your hand using the reactions tab.
- And it looks like we do have somebody here in person. So when you're ready, you can go ahead and introduce yourself and you have up to three minutes. My name is Linda where and I have been a records clerk at the Bloomington Police Department since 20. I'm sorry. Two thousand and three. Ma'am, can you pull the microphone down? Thank you so much. Just start over. Anyway, I have been.
- employed at Bloomington Police Department as a records clerk since 2003. In 2022 I applied for interviewed and accepted a position for the special investigations unit records clerk. At that time my supervisor and manager requested a pay increase for me but it was denied by H.R. I received my own office downstairs and weekends off. However I still work some holidays and I have to cover help cover upstairs when they are short staffed and records when the new pay change took effect at the start of this year I was advised that I would be paid the same
- as a clerk who has been at BPD records department for one year. It was explained to me it was because I had been under my new title less than three years. Mind you I was and still am in the same pay grade and same department but with additional responsibilities. The difference in the salary between a 10 plus year clerk and a one year clerk is eleven thousand fifteen dollars and twenty nine cents per year.
- At this point, it seems the 19 years I have worked at BPD records prior to my new position held no value or has been treated like it never took place. The position I took in 2022 was supposed to be a promotion, but with the new 2025 pay practice, it has become a demotion for me.
- Christina the supervisor of records Ellen the manager of records Captain Pettigrew and Captain I'm sorry Chief Decoff all spoke with or met with H.R. regarding my pay rate and pay grade situation. But nothing changed. I want to take a moment to thank them for speaking on my behalf and meeting with H.R. I also want to thank my co-workers husband family and friends for their support through this stressful and confusing situation.
- This is a, this is not the first time the city of Bloomington has deemed experienced employees to be of less value than newer hires. When the last administration increased pay for city employees, the difference of pay between older and newer employees was just pennies in difference per hour. I know for this fact, I know this for a fact, the situation affected several long time city Bloomington employees at different departments. This was never corrected.
- On Monday HR sent out an email regarding the advanced that placement or longevity pay as I call it adjustment. If I read and interpreted the email correctly and it is approved by you this adjustment phase will not help my situation. When our jobs and records were reviewed it was determined that records clerks in my position would remain at a level five. This means my promotion was lateral move therefore not eligible for pay rate adjustment for longevity. Again a longtime employee equals less value.
- Please don't get me wrong. I am appreciative of the increase in pay I received and the benefits I received daily as a city employee. However I do not appreciate my knowledge and experience being treated as if it has less value than other employees of similar experience and knowledge. I know I'm not the only longtime employee with the city of Bloomington ma'am. The time has run out.
- I'm very sorry. You can't finish if you want to send obviously you have a written statement if you wanted to email that in to us in Completion that is an option for you to do that to complete your comment. Thank you so much for your comment Are there is there any hands raised on zoom? No, okay. Is there anybody else in chambers who would like to make a comment? Okay Seeing none. Let's go back to council. Are there any
- Further questions or comments from council members? Council members you look Thank you for making a statement Ma'am, thank you for making a statement. We really don't hear those stories unless people come up and tell them so I appreciate your bravery Are there any other questions or comments from council members? Councilmember Rosenberger
- Actually was gonna say the same thing. I think it's a really hard thing to do being a city employee coming up here and saying you don't feel Compensated in a fairly way in a fair way. And so I I super appreciate you doing that. Thank you This isn't a period where you can go back and forth, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Thank you Are there other councilmember comments or questions? I
- I guess I have a follow-up question after that public statement and I don't want to get into a personal conversation about an individual employee because I don't think that that's appropriate. I just I guess I That's kind of a disturbing story to me in a lot of ways in terms of valuing our staff and you know amongst council staff we had some
- concerns and issues with that and there was some hard work done around job descriptions and making sure that job descriptions accurately reflected positions and accurately reflected the expectations related to positions so as to have an accurate reflection of the grade. And what that story kind of says to me is that there is a job description that, or there was an expectation
- Or there is an expectation of that particular job that it has more responsibility and if something has more responsibility than it should get paid more than something with less responsibility and that that is not being reflected in its grade. So is there.
- What is the process is their progress not just in that position, but throughout the city in terms of evaluating those job descriptions and and I kind of say that partly because like I don't want to like disrespect any Department or department head right now because these reevaluations take a ton of time But our counsel attorney spent a ton of time on this earlier this year so that that could get accurately represented and it was
- like time well beyond a 40 hour week that was spent on this to make sure that other council staff members felt felt appreciated and not every department head is able to do that. So I guess the question is how is HR supporting our department heads and supporting our employees to get that kind of work done because that also involves a certain kind of like skill and understanding of how HR is evaluating things.
- Yes, I completely agree with you. I feel that a job description is very important. It is key to make sure that responsibilities and requirements are accurately captured so that a job can be evaluated appropriately. We also need accurate job descriptions
- for employee relations issues because if there's a performance issue, we automatically go back to the job description to determine what actually is this employee supposed to be doing? Are they meeting expectations? Do they have the tools that they need in order to be effective? So that's at least two reasons why a job description is critical.
- Also, the job descriptions need to be accurate so that when we try to go out to match them in the market We actually have accurate information so that we can match our positions to see if we are being paid competitively I believe that the practice at the city of Bloomington before I started was that hiring managers and department heads were tasked with writing job descriptions writing job descriptions as you said is a skill and
- We don't right now have the capacity in human resources to have someone on our talent team specifically assigned to each hiring manager and department head. Now that we are wrapping up some of our current projects, I am hoping that we would free up capacity so that our talent team could provide a more what I would consider like a white glove service where they can
- help department heads provide more of a support so that we can have more accurately written job descriptions, even if that means that somebody in human resources has to go out and actually do job observations. That isn't an unheard of practice for human resources, and I would love for us to be able to do that so that we can take that burden off the department heads, save them time, and actually use our expertise for the three different reasons why I said a job description is critical.
- Have we we've started to do that work? But I'd like to be more intentional and have more capacity around it as we go into 2026 and prioritize it Maybe systematically there are several issues with across the city Is that the kind of thing that I mean is there a need for a temporary staff member?
- HR to be able to like to be added to HR to get that kind of thing done or Like what what is actually like is staffing the only kind of roadblock for you guys to be able to address this Yeah, I would say where we are right now in human resources We're halfway through the year and I feel like we have some priorities that we're trying to finish up this year and
- But I do feel like again that would be part of my strategic recommendation for twenty twenty six to be more intentional about that maybe even change the structure of human resources so that we can accommodate that support.
- But for right now, we're just trying to do the best we can to make sure that we're working with hiring managers to get an accurate job description. And I think that this experience that we had with prior experience is going to be telling. It does say that the job description needs to be accurately written. It needs to capture responsibilities correctly. So this is an exercise that I think is a lesson learned.
- an opportunity for us to grow and develop and hopefully now department has understand that we're not trying to be controlling in human resources. We're really just trying to get accurate job descriptions because we know the importance of an accurate and effectively written job description. Okay and then similarly I guess like are there like other resources like workshops or you know continuing education at all that HR could
- pursue for department heads and those other supervisors that are writing those to help, you know, kind of aid in a more group setting for now in terms of HR not being able to dedicate that kind of white glove individual service to people.
- Yeah I feel like I don't have to come back in August because you just lined up my twenty twenty six strategy for some you know budget requests for twenty twenty six but yes more training for hiring managers and just staff across the city is something that we have prioritized with any funding that we have left in our budget now and will be a priority for twenty twenty six. OK. I think that.
- Is the extent of my questions. Are there other council member questions or comments on this appropriation ordinance. Thank you so much to both of you for your presentation this evening. And I also want to say thank you to our staff member who I am a little blind but she may have stepped out for being brave enough to stand up and share her experience because that is not easy to do.
- So with that said if the clerk could please call madam president, sorry, I raised my hand after you councilmember Flaherty looked and looked away. Oh, yeah All good. Um, first of all point of clarification. Yes, only department heads our grades 13 and 14. Thank you for that note I was misremembering that somewhere 13s is 12s I just want to say I appreciate all the work that's gone into this and the structural approach
- to recognize longevity in, whether acquired in Bloomington in the job or, you know, experience that you're bringing along with you when you get hired. I think that's an important component of competitive compensation that can keep people here. I think it, I know folks across most departments over, you know, over time and it's just kind of like an endemic problem that was well recognized that to get a raise you have to leave your position, leave the city. And we need to address that.
- I think ideally, ultimately, I'd love to see some form of merit-based compensations and bonuses, too, on top of that. So I think this is all part of an important set of changes that are being implemented. I also, again, appreciate the hard work that went into it. And I guess I'm struggling with, this is a sort of, there's a finality to the determinations being made here.
- that would normally be subject to a negotiation and acceptance in the form of deciding to take the job or not. And I'm uncomfortable with the fact that it was ultimately unilateral, no matter how well done or done with good intent or that kind of thing. And I did lose some confidence in our own process and ability to
- fairly implement these types of changes last fall. We talked about that some at the time. I think there were some, there were some clearly documented and kind of like factually in my opinion like really indisputable errors that were made and rather than confronting those with like openness or honesty or you know like there was like a lot of defensiveness and some personal attacks that happened from the administration. And so I frankly just, again I don't think it was implemented
- anything here in bad faith or anything like that, I just lost my confidence in the ability to make adjustments based on input from staff, and I'm uncomfortable with proving something without a clearer set of appeals or balance in the process. We're charged, I mean, we don't have a very active role in HR. We do approve salary ordinances. We approve the compensation system and fund it.
- And so this is kind of our point of oversight, you know, so I don't know what that would look like ultimately By way of council involvement, but I guess I just feel like there needs to be Something more than was present here Even though this is kind of a one-time thing, so I don't think I'm comfortable supporting it tonight But again do appreciate the work. Thank you Thank you, are there any other last councilmember comments Councilmember Rosenberger
- Can't tell what little motions mean. I'm sorry. I I think I vote first on this and I Don't want to take up a lot of time I didn't know I say that a lot but I agree with a lot of what councilmember Flaherty said and I I Know this takes a lot of work and I know there's it's not going to be perfect I am still very hesitant based on what happened and
- Was that last year? Anyway, it doesn't matter. I just think I know people are going to be upset. I know that and I know people are going to be happy I just think there are parts of this process with multiple different departments, right and I I don't feel I don't feel comfortable tonight approving it. Thank you Are there other councilmember comments Councilmember sorry I'd say that I actually
- I actually think I generally agree with both councilmember Flaherty and Rosenberger that we need
- A clear a clear process for people to I mean I think that it is a breakdown in our processes when our and I said this the last time it happened I think it is a clear breakdown in our processes when when city employees feel that their only recourse is to come and publicly speak at That a council meeting I don't think that anybody in our city should be subject to feeling even like that's like a that's something they should do and and so so I really do think like like they do that we should
- be instituting a clear process that's also transparent, right, so that we can know, hey, somebody submitted a request and this is why it was approved or why it wasn't. And that the other city staff members can see that as well so that they also can sort of see into what's a little bit of a black box, I think. Now, the question that I would ask is whether approving or not approving this today has much of an impact on that.
- I mean, I'd be very happy if if if we were wanting to discuss I don't there's no framework here for us to discuss adding that for you know, like language Unless I don't know. Do you have some idea of how you would add such language to like this? Appropriation ordinance. I don't think it's possible, right? Are you asking me? No, I am asking councilmember clarity. I
- But you don't have to answer now unless you have an answer. But I support it. But I would be very happy to actually work on making that something that we do for this next budget cycle. I think if that's something that you want to put in the structural request for HR, that's something I support. So I don't know. I'm hoping it is a point of discussion, because I agree with the premise. And I'm just curious, what do we think the right mechanism
- mechanism to achieving that outcome is. So, and also happy to hear your thoughts on that, Director Paycheck. Was that a question for Ms. Paycheck or was
- It's a question if it's a point of discussion if anybody would like to comment on it. I'm just I'm thinking out loud. I think that Councilman Flaherty has made a very strong point a very valid point that resonates with me. And so the question is like how do we actually achieve that. How do we open up a clear mechanisms for people to appeal this process. And what's and what is. And I agree like we also have a process in demand and asking for that. So what's the mechanism that we should put in place to make that happen.
- Councilmember Flaherty, do you have any thoughts in terms of our purview on that before we move to? Miss paycheck Dr. Paycheck only briefly that I actually do think this is the right sort of moment at which to be talking about this and I think I kind of said said something that effect often we have crude crude tools for oversight as as a council and
- in the same way the budget is a point of oversight. And we can, like I think it would be very odd to sort of like via ordinance implement a process reform for how HR, a one-time HR thing is kind of implemented. But I think also in my experience, the sort of, the administration chose to pursue the process that they wanted to pursue, that's what was presented to us.
- I at least am asking for something different, and they're under no obligation to do so, I guess, after we vote to approve something, and so our votes are the sort of accountability point, so to speak, and I don't have a lot of faith in something like this coming ex post, I guess, or following from a vote.
- Again based on experience with this administration, but also with the previous administration. I think that's just generally true that It's much harder to get meaningful engagement on a topic like that when The approvals already been been granted Then what can I ask a question, okay, I
- Would you explore, I mean, we may not have enough support on the rest of the days for this, but I mean, the closest thing that I can think of to that is that you say, well, let's delay voting on this and come back next week with a plan of implementation of how we're gonna do an appeals process or something like that. The mechanism to do that would be to continue this. Exactly.
- Correct. It's true. Do you have a motion for that? No, I'm asking we're in a discussion moment at the at the time So but I'm saying is that the appropriate type of thing that we'd like to do for example And of course if others if you know if you are tired of this and would like to vote like I mean call the question or something but I mean and just Again, I do think that this is a it is a valid and important point I think
- I would have to consult my parliamentarian guide to is a motion to continue debatable parliamentarian. Do you remember that off the top of your head. Well because if we want to talk about a motion to continue then we should probably actually make a motion to continue and
- It is debatable. So would you like to Move to postpone the matter until the meeting next week councilmember, sorry No, not without further discussion, but I mean I don't want to waste time with procedural trauma I just it's if it's something that we're interested in pursuing if there's if other people on the on the days are
- I don't think there's any constraint in what I say at this moment. So I mean, if there's interest by anybody else in pursuing that, I'm happy to. I personally come from a slightly different position. But I support what they're saying. I'm happy to just work with you to make that happen. And I trust that we could do that. But I mean, Councilmember Fordy has said otherwise. So if we think that this is the right mechanism, I'm happy to have that discussion. Nobody's saying that.
- I mean I don't want to have like a two hour discussion about whether or not something's debatable. So I would rather just vote on this and move on. All right. Are there any other closing comments from council members right now on appropriation ordinance 2025. I think it's 0 7. I lost my number. Any other council member comments and no motions to postpone anywhere.
- So I think we're at the point if the clerk could please call the roll on appropriation ordinance twenty twenty five oh seven. House member sorry. Yes clarity. No. No. Piedmont Smith. Yes. Stossberg.
- Yes. Daily. Yes. Yes. Rosenberger. No. I think that by my count that that passes then five three. Great. I'm glad I kept track of that appropriately. Thank you to staff for your time. Thank you.
- And I look forward to continue conversation. Thank you. All right. Next I move that resolution 2025 dash 12 be introduced and read by the clerk by title and synopsis only. Second. We have a motion a second to introduce resolution 2025 12. All those in favor please say aye. Aye. Opposed. Thank you. Will the clerk please read.
- Resolution twenty twenty five dash twelve to initiate a proposal to amend Title 20 of the Bloomington Municipal Code regarding preparation of a proposal to amend Chapter two point zero point oh four point one one zero incentives. The synopsis is as follows this resolution sponsored by council member Stasberg initiates a proposal to amend Title 20 of the Bloomington Municipal Code.
- The resolution directs a UDO text amendment proposal be prepared by the plan commission to make changes to the affordable housing incentive structure. I move that resolution 20 25 dash 12 be adopted. Second President Stasberg has handed the gavel to me since she's the sponsor of this resolution.
- Would you like to present it? Sure. Thank you. I'll try to be fast because this meeting is running really long. This is the second resolution following up on the on the single resolution from last year in November. Once again we're having to do this a second time because we kind of the plan commission ran out their statutory limit in terms of voting on this measure.
- The first one having to do with AMI changes we dealt with a couple of weeks ago and then this one has to do with the incentive structure for affordability incentives in the UDO. And so this is actually like the more complicated piece for the planning commission to deal with and this was the holdup. They had wanted to have some kind of a working group around it and then there was miscommunication about how that working group was supposed to get set up and who was supposed to set it up and all of those pieces just ended up
- Leading to it not happening. So the it is a very general kind of request to examine the incentives incentive structure and Potentially create additional incentives for affordable housing including owner occupant unit development And then the second piece of it has to do with the payment in lieu option if you recall in the first ordinance I we
- asked for payment in lieu to a requirement for that to be that the development would accept housing vouchers and that has taken off of here and instead changed a little bit because in speaking with staff and in staff exploring that over the past few months its enforcement was a concern.
- with current staffing levels in the hands department in terms of like working that out and making that happen. So instead it is a more general assessment of payment in lieu options and considering increase in qualifying standards for developments to utilize that payment in lieu procedure. And so once again both of these are general because I think that they both take some element of like working group and conversation amongst professionals to really figure out the best ways to
- to optimize those two pieces. And while there have been some things that have kind of been kicked around by planning staff there is nothing like specific that rose to a level of identifying it very specifically in this resolution. So I think that I'm just going to leave it there and if anybody has any questions or wants any more specific information please let me know. Thank you. Council member Stossberg are there questions.
- from other council members. I see no questions. Very good. We will go to the public. Is there any member of the public who would like to comment on resolution 20 25 dash 12. I don't see anybody in council chambers. Is there anybody via Zoom who has raised their hand. No.
- Well we will come back to the council then. Are there any council comments before we move to a vote. Council member Stossberg. Well once again I'll hope that the silence up here indicates that you all are ready to support this resolution as you all supported the one two weeks ago and also the one in November. And if that's the case thank you very much.
- I think we're ready for a vote clerk Bolden. Could you please call the roll on resolution 2025-12? Councilmember Flaherty. Yes Ruff. Yes, Piedmont Smith. Yes Stasberg. Yes Daley Yes, Zulek. Yes Rosenberger. Yes. Sorry. Yes Thank you resolution 2025-12 passes with a vote of 8-0
- Great thank you very much. Now we have moved to the public hearing for this evening. Let me get to the right page. So this is that if you recall from the beginning of the meeting we amended the agenda to put this report in hearing on the status of union at Crescent tax abatement.
- here in its own category. So to explain that a little bit council will hold this hearing as required by state code to receive information from interested parties regarding the tax abatement for union at Crescent interested parties who have contacted the council with information to share are the city of Bloomington represented primarily by the economic sustain and sustainable development department and housing and neighborhood development.
- And the property owner union at Crescent and their representative the annex group We're not aware of any other interested parties in this matter at this time after the hearing from interested parties and Deliberation council will need to decide whether union at Crescent has substantially complied with the terms of their tax abatement And we need to base that on things that we hear in the hearing this evening as opposed to other things that we have heard prior to now with regard to this
- And then of course of councils in need of more information Then the body can choose to continue or postpone this hearing until our next meeting and I do believe that we have a motion from our Parliamentarian regarding the structure of the hearing this evening. I Move to structure the tax abatement hearing for the Union at Crescent property in the following way city departments and Union at Crescent owners and their representatives the annex group will
- Each have up to 25 minutes to provide information to council any other interested parties will each have up to three minutes to provide information This will be followed by an untimed question and answer period by council to the parties and then a period of deliberation among council members Council may decide the matter or continue the hearing to a subsequent date Second
- We have a motion and second on how we are going to conduct the hearing mostly or partly in terms of putting time limits on presentations from the interested parties. Are there I believe that that this is a a debatable motion. So are there questions from council members council members who look I think there should be a time limit on council member questions.
- thoughts on that 30 minutes 30 minutes total Councilmember sorry, I Did not raise my hand I was just counting sorry Okay, I couldn't tell from here Are there other thoughts on
- time limits for questions. Is our attorney, Lainer, raising her hand? Attorney Lainer? Yes, sorry. I just had a question, point of clarification. Thirty minutes for questions, including responses. Are those questions that would be directed with respect to the information presented tonight
- I'll explain my reasoning. I think we've had access to this information for several weeks. Any questions they should be asking should be clarification questions from the presentations before us tonight for new information presented. Council leader if I could speak to that for a moment. The Indiana code refers to information presented during the hearing. So tonight.
- as the hearing that's been noticed in which the different parties are appearing, the interest of parties are appearing. So I think that the provision of adequate time for the interest of parties to provide that information is important. And I would consider whether the 30 minutes is adequate time to
- ask quest follow up questions on the information that's presented it. I'm anticipating our considering that it may be different than any written materials for example that have been provided in the past. So I would request consideration of that.
- Are there other questions or comments regarding setting a time limit on councilmember questions. Councilmember Piedmont Smith I would prefer to err on the side of allowing more time because we don't want any doubt that we have fully aired the question in case of future legal action and I think
- We can we can still postpone our final decision if it does get too late. Other comments. I think that's that's that's true that if there's a concern about the duration of the meeting tonight I think that this hearing can be continued by moving to postpone to a date
- certain and identifying the next council regular session for it for that purpose. If that helps your consideration with respect to the hearing tonight I think a continuation is possible under the Indiana code. OK. So right now we have a motion on the table to limit
- presentations from interested parties to 25 minutes for the known parties and Was it three minutes for any other parties that might crop up And make themselves known during the hearing And then there was the question of considering also adding a time limit to councilmember questions and and I am with both
- Councilmember Piedmont Smith and also our counsel attorney liner that I think to make sure that we are giving this matter adequate consideration because we are not supposed to be deciding this based on prior information we're supposed to be deciding this according to state statute based on information that we received this evening that
- I don't think that it's wise to limit our question and answer time because I want to make sure that we all can say that we have total clarity before we make this decision and that it would be better to postpone it until next week if it feels like it's just dragging and that we need more information than we're getting Can I ask for clarification? Thank you. Um at what point do we
- Determined we feel that it's dragging on and we need to continue it You know, would we be able to say maybe half an hour questioning tonight? And if we're not ready to vote after half an hour, we move for a continuance I think that
- The motion to postpone consideration of something can't interrupt a speaker. I'm looking at the thing right now. It can't interrupt a speaker. But you could be recognized by the chair and just say, I move we postpone this matter until such and such a date. And then that is a debatable motion and an amendable motion, actually. So at that point, I think that any one of us could go like, hey, I'm done. There's a lot of information here. I'm going to move to postpone until next week and then enter into that.
- conversation. I think that that is a means of addressing the concern that I raised. One thing that became apparent to me tonight is that there are representatives of hand available for example and I don't know that they've specifically spoken to this issue and in the past in the hearing presents that opportunity for that tonight.
- I think the point is well taken, though, with respect to putting limits on questions and answers in general. Are there other comments? Councilmembers, does that address the overall concern of the lateness of the hour? I mean, that's fine. I totally take your point. I did not anticipate that the legislation this evening would mean that we've started this hearing quite this late. I'll just encourage everyone to be responsible with their questions.
- Message taken and received are there other? questions or comments about the Motion for For how to frame this hearing All right, I think then we're ready for a roll call vote on Actually, do I need to do a roll call? Sorry could I ask for the motion to be restated? I think I was out of the room. Yes councilmember daily
- Can you repeat the motion for councilmember Flaherty, please? Yes Sorry, I closed that document bear with me. Okay, so I moved to structure the tax abatement hearing for the Union at Crescent property in the following way City departments and Union at Crescent owners and their representatives the annex group will each have up to 25 minutes to provide information to counsel any other interested parties will each have up to three minutes to provide information and
- This will be followed by an untimed question and answer period by council to the parties and then a period of deliberation among council members. Council may decide the matter or continue the hearing to a subsequent date.
- Does that help? And just to be clear, like I had said earlier, no other interested parties had made themselves known at this point. But in terms of state statute, it was important to acknowledge that maybe there's somebody in the audience who is an interested party that we just don't know about yet. So if you're in that category, if you're in the room, maybe raise your hand right now. I'll put on my other glasses. And it's really bright in here.
- And if you're on zoom and feel like you're an interested party if you could send a chat message to the host and our Council staff will suss that out for us so Can we do can we do a voice vote on this? Okay, great I heard a yes from my vice president so I'll go yes Thank you. So all those in favor of structuring the hearing in this way, please say aye. Aye opposed
- Thank you. So we will have 25 minutes for each The city departments and 25 minutes for union at Crescent Either owners or their representatives the annex group. So let's go ahead and start with city departments And it does our staff have the time clock set? Jane Cooper Smith the director of
- Economic and sustainable development here tonight to talk with you about the unit crescent tax abatement my colleagues Anna Killian Hansen director of housing and neighborhood development D Della Rosa assistant director of small business development and Audrey Brittingham city attorney are here To provide information this evening. So in light of the staff recommendation of a finding of non-compliance I'll present some contextual info information tonight to you. My initial plan was to do a cursory
- overview but I think I'll go back over the abatement slide in a little more detail just taking the point that you need all of the information presented in this hearing. Oh thanks. Yeah I've got it.
- Okay, Union at Crescent is a residential multifamily 146 unit building on the northwest side of downtown in the Crescent Bend neighborhood The project received a 10-year 100% abatement on the taxes on the increase in assessed value to support the construction of the building in exchange for which the city would benefit from the allocation of 102 units at or below 60% of the area median income in the HUD metro area 60% AMI and
- For a one person household is forty one thousand seven hundred and sixty dollars or for a four person household is fifty nine thousand five hundred and eighty dollars Just for your context
- The initial so this is a summary of the abatement information the initial real estate improvements were completed and property management responsibilities Which were originally with Mecca have been transferred to the annex group. The abatement was activated via form 322 re in 2020 pay 21 the property has been found compliant with the tax abatement through 23 pay 24 and
- Housing data submitted as part of hands compliance process indicated that occupancy rates were low 72 units in September 2024 and 43 units in May of 2025 so they filed their Compliance report with hand in September And then when we looked at the filing ESD staff had requested additional information from them in May which they very promptly provided I
- That's fine This just summarizes the new Investments that they made exceeded the original amount that was anticipated We recommended a finding of substantial or we found them substantially compliant on the employment They didn't hit the five person metric, but at the time of filing but it was you know closer than
- the occupancy of the housing The salaries exceeded the anticipated amount and the assessed value is is just informational And then again, it's just the the housing units there that we're looking at We have a question about the overall value of the abatement For 2025 is a 161 thousand nine hundred and forty seven dollars and the value to date of the abatement of
- That they've received is approximately five hundred and fifty two thousand three hundred and fifty six dollars. Those are my numbers. My that's my math not the county's but it's based on their information so should be accurate. Sorry I know this is really exciting. This is a comparative slide that kind of shows you the performance over the last few years.
- Sorry. Yeah. It's past my bedtime folks. Okay. And then here we're just comparing again year over year the housing units occupied so you can see in 2022 when they were out of the gate they were really not just meeting the standard but they were exceeding it. And then again really successful in September 2023.
- It dipped in 24 and then further declined in 2025. I wanted to summarize some of the information that we've received as well from the company. The property owners state the property has faced significant challenges including ongoing trespassing biohazard situations and disturbances from individuals seeking shelter. These issues have affected their leasing
- Efforts or they say that they've it's affected their leasing efforts necessitating ongoing intervention and remediation The annex group has stated that in response they are taking the following actions or they have taken the following actions So this is current state. They've engaged pro 24 7 security for on-site presence and compassionate intervention They've contracted a professional cleaning service to address biohazards They've committed over five hundred thousand dollars in property improvements
- And they have set a target of November twenty twenty five to fully restore all one hundred and two units for occupancy. And I think I think I'll just set it down there. I mean my conclusion conclusion statement is while the developer has taken significant steps to address the site challenges and improve conditions the low occupancy of the affordable units does not meet the city's objective in issuing the tax abatement for the allocation of one hundred and two units.
- So I think I'll pause there. I know that council members had requested that Miss Killian Hansen would share some additional information from the hand department's perspective on their interactions with this property. So I'll welcome her up to the podium. Thank you. Good evening. I am Anna Killian Hansen director of hand. So I want to just give you a brief overview of some of the efforts that we've been taking over
- Taken over the last year here are 18 months or so. So union at Crescent offers 70% of the total units to families earning 60% or less of the area meeting income and 30% at market rate the project received initially five hundred thousand dollars from the housing development fund and three hundred thousand dollars in home funds So a total of eight hundred thousand from our department prior to my arrival, of course
- Since the winter of 2023 we received numerous complaints regarding the property management or lack thereof in addition to safety and condition concerns Hand has been working with the property management and owners since that time Often we would hear that there was no one to contact and no one in the office of note the property management was from Indianapolis and a subsidiary of the company or the owner and
- In March of 24 unit Union at Crescent reached out to the hand department for a funding request of three million dollars of additional incentive from the city to implement enhanced security measures Due to complaints from tenants that there was never a property manager on site We requested that the company do an evaluation of their management before we considered any funding when security was
- It was found that it was there from 7 a.m. To 5 p.m. Monday through Friday Residents were scared to leave their units after 5 p.m. Or on the weekends
- Office staff was pulled from the site and only managed remotely Security costs were not identified in the initial performer or in their initial operating costs Units were being extensively damaged and abandoned by residents Feces urination needles were found throughout the project lights were damaged exterior doors were damaged elevator service companies refused to service due to the urination needles and feces
- Service refused service due to safety concerns of needles There were no clear rules to find in writing and visible for tenants to see no signage Restricting the use of gathering spaces after hours where nefarious activities were occurring late at night The woods adjacent to the property were overgrown and lacked lighting which attracted an encampment we met with the owners and other successful property management companies to discuss how to implement best practices and
- We supported the owners as they pursued possible ownership changes as the owners wanted to divest of the property and even offered the property to the city Union at Crescent worked to evict approximately a dozen troubled tenants at that time The city worked with the owners to block the road adjacent to the property which was serving as an access point for criminal activity to the adjacent neighborhood
- We discussed tenant selection criteria and possible changes for success We attempted to provide support the best we could we met dozens of times nearly monthly until the end of 2024 these meetings included owners of TNH and the annex group and
- In the meantime, we also addressed numerous complaint inspections to address conditions of the tenants. The rental permit expired in the first quarter of this year. A new rental registration form was received in April indicating that the new registered agent is now the annex group and that TNH is no longer the registered agent. So there has been a change here recently that we are aware of. As soon as we received that registration form,
- They scheduled their Cycle inspection pretty promptly. So we just actually got that done based on our schedule and availability So in June that was performed at that time They identified approximately 34 life safety violations that need to be addressed They do have until September 5th to get them taken care of so there's they're well within their window They still have time to do that
- It is unfortunate that we are here tonight and ultimately I believe that taking away their abatement is not going to help the situation. I think it just exasperates the problem which is that.
- Initially the pro forma was not looked at correctly I mean we really need to be careful that when we're looking at projects and what we're gonna fund that we're looking at their pro forma and their operating expenses and making sure that what we're Investing in has enough room for when these issues arise that they can take care of them Otherwise, we end up right back here
- So I want you to know that that is something that I am doing as we're evaluating future projects but this is obviously something that was not looked at closely initially. So I'm happy to answer any additional questions. A lot has occurred over the last year.
- There's 13 minutes left for the city to give us any more information is there any City staff are wanting to use that time for anything Okay, I have my regular glasses on now I just my eyes hurt so we will move on to the annex group and or Union at Crescent who is the Representative there if you want to come on up
- Please state your name and your role just so that then we know and then you'll have 25 minutes Thank you. My name is Sam Hurley. I'm with the annex group Can can you state your full name again Sam Hurley Can you spell your last name for me H you are le why? Okay. Thank you So
- Thank you council members for having me here tonight and for hearing you know our side and for you know taking taking you know what's going on today to into into consideration we we certainly don't are not happy with you know the performance of the property the occupancy of the property a lot of the issues that the hand folks have brought up we acknowledge we accept that those those those issues have occurred
- It's been an extremely challenging property for us Primarily due to a lot of the issues that were brought up security Life safety with from from folks coming on the site Complete through access on the site where you know, there's people drive through the site people come through on both sides driving through walking through it's it's easily used to to get away and to
- To avoid, you know confrontation or issues that might be caused drug use illicit activity crime has been has been a problem and and we we we acknowledge that and Similarly, you've already heard a few things that we're going to talk about today. But if you want to go to the next slide My main goal here tonight is to explain
- A few different a few different pieces here. So one I want to explain the changes that have happened this year the changes that the annex group has made. This is not an acceptable level of performance or how we want our residents to feel or to be. We don't never want a resident to have.
- have concerns of safety and it's just absolutely an unacceptable event for us. So what we've so basically I want to talk about the changes that have made from an ownership perspective and from a property management perspective on the property starting this year. I want to talk about the efforts we've made to date when we took over on March 1st of this year. I want to talk about the success that we've seen just in that short time frame.
- And then finally I want to just talk about the legal aspects of the of the tax abatement resolutions that were signed at the original at the original closing date of this of this transaction. So like like it's been it's been said before but we did take over 100 we were 50 50 partners with TNH as the managing member of this project.
- We are we are taking over Effective as soon as we can get all the legal documentation completed Taking over a hundred percent ownership of that managing entity we took over property management on March 1st and Have a plan in place to Really address a lot of the issues that were brought up mainly first and foremost the the staff being on site
- We've we've have a really strong team that we've put in place there. They've they have already shown some some great turnaround we are Investing significant amount of capital to to Get the get the security into a more robust state adding cameras adding door door security adding lighting
- You know, we're just getting getting getting the property cleaned up getting You know trying to manage the the issues that That we do have with with keeping it clean and keeping it maintenance maintenance Keeping the maintenance issues at bay just giving the challenges at the property and the amount of Hard use that that goes into that asset and that property so
- So we are we are in a full we are in a full turnaround mode. We are you know we've there's been significant amount of move of you know getting rid of the illicit activity getting rid of folks that either or not tenants and are using the property as you know to sell drugs or to do whatever you know issues that are not acceptable for us. We've been successful at that.
- You can you can go to the next slide. I'm sorry So we've been successful with that and Unfortunately that that is causing more occupancy issues in the short term while we get things cleaned up so that we can you know clean it up and get it back on track for We view this as a very temporary and short-term issue and and expect with with this
- with this investment you know with our new team in place and you know with the with the support and help of the city and partnership with the city. We truly expect this to be a property that that we and the city of Bloomington can be proud of in the future. So we like I said we were in the process of the capital expenditure now and increasing the security increasing the all the
- You know life safety concerns obviously are being actively addressed and will be completed well ahead of the September time frame and then You know the next phase after after we're fully, you know got all the all the units back to move in ready and And have addressed the security concerns and and the safety issues on site We're gonna that's when we're gonna really start
- back with the community engagement and marketing and rebranding of the of the property to get it to get it back to full occupancy and back in you know good standing with with with the tax payment. So if you want to go to the next slide some six just you know just a little bit of proof of what I'm saying is actually what's occurring. I've added some we've added some things here.
- We've received a couple of five-star reviews from residents just showing their their Their happiness with with the change and management and things that are kind of turning around We've we've received some anecdotal conversations from the fire marshal and from the police department in our in our efforts and and they've been they've been happy with with the with the change that they've seen
- So just we really are committed and we really are Doing the things that we said we would say we are going to do and getting this property back on track So lastly this is more of just the legal discussion around the the actual tax abatement documentation as as as you all might
- Have read already in the resolutions passed. It specifically says that the units are allocated to The units at 60% AMI or below We are meeting that requirement all the units that we had originally Allocated to the 60% AMI level or below are still allocated to that level They're simply not rented just due to the issues that we've discussed previously so in our in our minds we we are compliant with the abatement and
- And and we we we do need the abatement to continue this, you know continue this Re you know reach Repositioning of the property and getting the property back on track. It's it's it would be more detrimental And and and make make it even more of an uphill climb to get this property back on track In the event that we were unable to keep the tax abatement in place
- And that's really that's really all I had I'm happy to answer any questions. I appreciate all your time Council staff did anybody Approach you via chat about being an additional interested party in this matter. No, okay
- Great. Thank you to both groups for your presentations and now we go to council members for a period of questions who has questions Councilmember daily Thank you Thank you to everybody for those presentations quick question. Do we have a number on what percentage of? market rate units are occupied at the moment and
- If you could come to the microphone to answer questions, that'd be great. Thank you I do not have that information on on hand tonight. I'm happy to follow up with it But it's I would assume it's very low. Okay, thank you. I would assume most of the units occupied are Under the 60% am I level if if you could get that number for us, that would be helpful Thank you, are there other questions Councilmember Flaherty Thanks in
- some of the data that staff presented, city staff, noting the number of affordable units occupied in September 2024 versus May 2025. It was a little below the 70% level in 2024. And then, yeah, you know, seven, eight months later, a little over half of what that was. Can you describe a little bit more your assessment of the main or main few causal factors there? I think you addressed
- that You see a dip in in currently occupied properties and leases as a function of addressing illegal or unsafe behavior and Kind of like a temporary transition point is that is that the primary cause I guess if that dip or other other factors that have caused that change from September 24 to May 2025 in terms of the number of occupied units affordable units
- Sure. Yeah I think the main factor is it's a function and a product of us really having to reposition the property in full and remove residents that are not following the rules are not are making other residents feel unsafe things of that nature. There's obviously just a normal turnover that occurs and we're not actively
- Leasing right now we I mean obviously we're not turning people away but we really want the property to be secure and safe and and in a spot where we feel that that bringing on a resident will will have that resident will have a great experience and that we would be able to keep that resident long term so that so it's a function of those two things that we're not we're not actively marketing at this stage in our in our reposition and
- And then just the just cleaning cleaning up the property and getting rid of some some residents that aren't weren't like I said following the rules. Thank you. Councilmember Piedmont Smith. Yes I had a question about the current lease rates. So in the slide from the economic and sustainable development department.
- It has September 2024 Average tenant paid Lease rate is four hundred forty six dollars twenty cents and then May 2025 the average lease rate is eight hundred eighty one dollars and thirty cents so why is that such a big increase in the lease rate in just six months It's likely due to eight months
- It's likely due to the drop in occupancy that probably has so the there's there's less units being occupied. So the average rent is going to be a little bit higher especially if they're most I don't know what the breakout is of three bedrooms or four bedrooms or two bedrooms. But the if a lot of the higher bedroom units are the ones that are occupied that will obviously have a higher rental rate associated with it.
- Also we are raising rents a bit at the property to it's just it's still under the 60 percent in my level but it is necessary and to drive the quality of resident that that that we want and need at the property and that too is part of that function.
- Explanation doesn't really make sense to me. I mean, it's an average lease rate. So if you have Fewer renters then That shouldn't impact the average because if divided by a lower number so And these are all according to another sheet their maximum two-bedroom apartments a lot of one-bedroom and some two-bedroom So there are no larger apartments Oh
- I'd have to look into it further. Four hundred and forty dollars for a 60 percent AMI unit is extremely low. That would be below 30 percent AMI. So that number just seems off to me but perhaps it's not. And I can look into it further and try to if you have what's the data source. I'm sorry. I think this is what was reported to ESD to the city first in September of 24 and then in May of 25. So maybe.
- Director Cooper Smith has insight This is from Sorry the September 24 data was from the properties filings for their home Compliance reports and then they sent an updated version of that in 2025. The raw data was included in the council packet and I mean I can look at it while we're sitting here and see if I can I
- Extract a clearer answer or perhaps miss Killian Hansen might Understand no Total rent plus utilities It did go down quite a bit between 23 and 24 but then Even if we're comparing 23 and 25, it's a $200 $250 increase so I'm just wondering what's going on with those rental rates and
- Yeah I'm not I'm not saying that the I'm saying I guess I'm questioning what the 24 data that was provided of the accuracy of that. We can certainly look into it and get back to you. I don't have a I don't have an answer for you but I can tell you that the the rates that are being charged the average rate being charged around the 800 dollar mark is still under the 60 percent AMI threshold. Thank you.
- As I'm as I'm looking at this spreadsheet The category is 60% and below but that can fluctuate Depending on the AMI of that tenant. So the actual AMIs go down to 1.5 Percent, you know like as they're describing their baseline income so
- We can articulate an answer with a little more time to unpack it. But, you know, there are just a wide number of variables involved in the way these rents are calculated and the way the the units. Yeah. I mean you think you have the looking at September 24 that that low low release rate you think that the average percent of area median income would be lower.
- But it's actually lower in May of twenty five. So I just don't understand. But I recognize that you cannot give me an answer currently. Are there other questions from council members council members sorry.
- Thank you. So so my understanding is that there's three questions that should govern the decision making here. Question one whether or not there's been substantial compliance with SB 1 and the sort of arrangements that were made
- report, rather, whether there's been reported substantial compliance on SB1. The second, whether that was outside of your control. And the third is whether you've made reasonable efforts to do anything about that. So my question to the three of you, if anybody disagrees, has there been substantial compliance with what was reported based on what was reported on SB1? Is there any evidence that there was substantial compliance?
- Think I can summarize the positions. I think that When ESD was initially processing this abatement We were looking at the intent of the MOU. So mr Hurley is correct Allocation is the word that's used in the MOU But when I have to stand up here and account To you all into the taxpayers of Bloomington, you know, are we are we getting the bargain for exchange?
- Had some Cindy significant questions about that. So the issue of the 70% in my mind Wait, I think I said I would give a summary and so I don't want to make my case also So I think there's a different interpretation and then I hear mr Hurley saying, you know focusing on the word allocation and saying they are compliant because the units are allocated even if they're empty Mr. Hurley is that how you is that is that correct summation of your view? I
- There's there's no word occupancy anywhere in the resolution Occupancy would have been something that we couldn't have agreed to just simply because it is outside of our control to some extent and While it does not us do us any good for having 70 units 50 units empty We want to fill this thing as soon as we possibly can but we want to do it in a way that
- Is going to be sustainable long-term Thank you. I have some follow-up questions. Can I ask them? Can they show you until the first round Councilmember Rosenberger. Thank you Questions about ownership. So is the annex group the original owners of Union at Crescent The company is not the owner of the annex group is the
- managing member of Union aggressive I Guess okay, so because I saw it's Kyle I guess that's correct sign the papers in 2017 at annex student housing I think and then the annex group owns it now So is it I mean it was very successful in the beginning a couple of years, right? so when did annex sell it and When did annex get it?
- Annex never sold it. It's just that you've had different management companies property management company property management companies and the management company now has never been there before and It's it's us internally Okay, you're taking it on now. Yeah. Okay, and then when we're looking at salaries for employees Maybe I'm wrong about them. This is like $13 an hour or 27,000 a year. That's that's not right, right?
- That is not what our current staff is getting paid. They're getting paid substantially more due to the challenge of the property and The need to have really strong staff at there. Okay. Okay, great That's it for now. Thank you I think the $13 an hour was original from the original SB 1 so we have to repeat that number every time there's a filing so it might and we have to compare against that number but
- That's where it originates from Other first rounds councilmember questions Okay, I have one And I think that this one is maybe mostly for director Killian Hanson one of the things that you said when you were up there was that you weren't sure if if Removing this abatement was gonna actually fix the problem right
- So I think that I heard everybody acknowledge that there's a problem with the property So what in your professional opinion is going to fix the problem? Well, I think that any any property like this needs really strong management out the gate and when you don't have a presence on site you are inviting unwanted guests and essentially that's not attractive for anybody that wants to lease it up if you have an intruder
- that is broken into the building busted out the windows of the main level has left feces and urine and needles in the hallways. Are you going to rent a unit. No.
- You're not gonna run a unit. So I think we have to have strong property management. We have to have some security on site We need to make sure that the doors the exterior doors are locking appropriately That was one of the issues lighting was an issue making sure that we're deterring folks from hanging around get rid of the Shrubbery and make sure that the trees or the wooded area is not an inviting what we call an attractive nuisance, right? So we have some lighting we're not having campers back there. So I think that there's
- There's a number of things that need to be done to correct the property. I can't tell you why it happened or what the history was prior to my involvement. But I know that when you don't have folks present you run into issues. OK. So do you feel like you know in that list of of remediation that's needed is the current property management company working on all of those things. I don't know.
- I have not had much interaction with the current property management company since they have taken it over I Don't know I do know that the owner of the annex group was part of a lot of these conversations over the years So they they knew these issues needed to be addressed. They didn't have the capital to address it. They were very clear about that so that's why I feel like potentially removing the abatement is just
- going to worsen the problem. I don't know what their cash flow situation is now or their operating expenses now that T&H is out. But I'm really happy to hear that they're going to address some of these problems. But we need to make sure that we're in a position that in a year from now, we're not right back here. Mr. Hurley, do you want to address any of that at all in terms of the capability that you guys have to remediate those types of things that Ms. Killian Hansen was bringing up
- Yes I would like to actually that the property itself the cash flow generated from the property is negative. There's there's not cash flow being generated that is used that can be used to be put back in the property and that is a function of it being very low occupied. Once we get you know this plan worked out and the the occupancy back on track then the property will operate well with our current staffing plan and our current
- Expense load that we expect and the rents that we have in place. It's it's it's a short-term problem get get the occupancy up we as the annex group and our sponsors are Dedicated to the project and we're putting fresh new capital out of our own out of our own balance sheet Into the property in order to make these to make these upgrades so that that is
- We are committed to doing it but it's not it's not a function of the properties generating cash flow to pay its own bills. We are funding it for now. OK. Thank you. I think we're on. Is that around this around one question. Council members look director Kylian Hansen. Can you confirm that all of the affordable housing units would be compromised if we were to find them noncompliant.
- Well I don't know I think it's a simple math problem right. They need to have enough operating capital to address these issues and if you take away their abatement how are they going to do that if they're already in the red. They've been in the red. They asked for three million dollars. We're not able to give them three million dollars to address these concerns especially after giving them eight hundred thousand already. So it's a really it's a rock and a hard place at this point but I don't
- I feel like taking away their abatement is going to be fruitful. That being said I don't think that they're compliant with it. Is it out of their control. I'm not sure. I do think that there's some conversation that needs to happen around tenant selection and.
- You know and that's true with a lot of properties when you're dealing with lower am is we need to make sure that the tenant selections are Happening correctly. We're interviewing folks. We're setting them up for success. You don't want to set somebody up for failure so I don't know if that answers it but happy to answer any other questions Thank you other first round questions before we go to second round Okay second round questions councilmember, sorry
- Probably a follow up for director, I'm Killian Hansen, and perhaps to all of you, but so where would you lean in terms of if you have to make a call on whether it's more out of their hands or in their hands? Because when you told the narrative, there was a part of the story where you said, look, they made mistakes and that led to some of these issues. And then there's another part of it where you're saying, and here are some things that were not necessarily knock on effects from those decisions that were just happening.
- Would you where would you sort of place the balance in your judgment on those two things. So where is the balance between what's in their hands and what's out of their hands. Oh boy.
- It's really hard to say. I mean we all live in Bloomington. We have a problem right now with our own house community. I do think that it's become an attractive nuisance in that area for one reason or another. Is that in their hands or out of their hands. I don't know. But that has been a lot of their problem. But I don't know.
- I really don't. I think the good news in this situation is that we have somebody that's willing to try and invest the capital to get the improvements made which is in their hands. So that's tough. And do you feel. And then I'd like to hear also from from the others. Do you feel that they've done since taking back over management that they've done reasonable efforts to change these things.
- I don't know yet. They gave us a registration form in April and they scheduled their inspection in June. So I have I don't have enough of a relationship with the new annex group owners to say are they going to do something different. So far nothing's different. They still have a significant number of life safety violations that need to be repaired. They're still within their window to get it done. So they have until September.
- I like that they're responsive. I like that there's hope because ultimately this we weren't going anywhere without additional money in the property. And I really I hesitate to put more money into a property if you know you're going to end up back in the same spot again. Thank you. If anybody else would like to speak to either of those questions I'd love to hear. Otherwise I'll hand over. I guess I would just like to address if we would love to have
- a better relationship. I'm sorry. We would love to have a better relationship and to work with you on all the things that you've seen be issues in the past. And I know you mentioned that we've been a part of the conversations historically. While I'll acknowledge, yeah, we've maybe added support, but we weren't nearly as involved as we are now, or perhaps we should have been. But we were not nearly as involved
- As we are now and and we we are dedicated to to getting this fix So we would certainly love to you know, have further follow-up conversations and meetings to address these issues Councilmember Piedmont. Oh, I didn't know if you were looking for everybody to weigh in I don't need to Well, I I think I would just sort of following on
- Miss Killian Hanson's comments. I think the environment is very challenging for these properties and in ESD I can say we're devoting a lot of resources to trying to help businesses not not necessarily Multi-family housing but to help businesses address these issues because it is So so very challenging in this current state. So I do think it's a complicated and
- Decision I think it winds up being a little bit of a judgment call For you all and that's difficult But I just do acknowledge that Bloomington's a difficult place to do business right now Thank You councilmember Piedmont Smith Yes, I have a question well I have many questions, but My question now is kind of a legal one. So what happens with
- the property owner and the property if they do not address the title 16 violations and I mean I guess I guess I both want to know what what generally happens if the title 16 violations are not complied with. And then secondly since we have if their property doesn't have rental permits
- Does that have any relationship with a tax abatement? I Can address your title 16 question, but I'm not sure about the second part that's gonna have to go to Lisa So with title 16 they have until September 5th to get those repairs done and schedule a follow-up inspection for us to get out there if so
- A if they have not scheduled and have not documented that the repairs are complete they will receive one remaining violation report with generally it's somewhere around a week to 14 day deadline to get that handled and inspected. If they don't do that then it goes to the legal department and file suit.
- So we generally have one remaining violation. Now if we go to the property they schedule and they say that they're complete and we go back out and we find that some things are still missing that that happens often people miss little things little details here there then we'll give them another couple of weeks to try and get those done. But if they don't have them done after that point and it goes to legal to file suit and and then we would be talking about
- revocation of rental permits. Thank you. Attorney Lanner can you speak to any relation between those violations and the tax abatement. The tax abatement refers to some general statements and there is a 70 percent allocation statement as well.
- I don't know exactly how the rental permits impact that 70 percent allocation with respect to the tax. Is that getting to your question. I think we have another lawyer willing to chime in. OK. If you could make sure to state your name for the record that would be great. Yeah sure. Audrey Brittingham city attorney. I think that this would I mean
- Theoretically put them further out of compliance and under the MOU that was signed with them originally the ESD department would have the authority then to To move to request I think one annual off-cycle compliance report from them and could move forward at that point with essentially another
- review of Request to counsel to review the tax abatement for non-compliance that's my understanding from the the MOU that we signed in 2017 There is a process outlined I can point it out further if you guys want to know the section of the MOU I'm looking at It's four point four a
- So it's titled if the ESD if ESD believes Mecca is not substantially compliant with its commitments And then the off-cycle compliance request I believe is In 3.1 be additional reporting requirements and
- So sorry I'm just looking at 3 1 B. So does this tie back into rental property inspections that if they fail to bring their property up to code then that could bring into question the MOU compliance.
- No, I'm sorry. I think that the the Failure to obtain a permit and failure to have a license to rent would Presumably detrimentally affect their occupancy rates and if we continue to believe that they're if they if they fall further into non-compliance Or we continue to have a problem with their occupancy rates. We can likely come back and request a
- that the abatement be rescinded at that point. The MOU does not tie itself to whether or not they receive their permit. This is assuming that the failure to receive a permit would affect their occupancy rates further. But the MOU also doesn't talk about occupancy, does it?
- No, the MOU doesn't talk about occupancy. The MOU does refer to out does say that these units have to be allocated I mean we'd argue that a 10-year tax abatement For a company to set units aside Being designated as affordable Doesn't that that that setting those units aside merely designating them doesn't justify ten years worth of tax abatements from the council
- I think that is ultimately a contract interpretation question but we firmly feel that that 10 years of tax abatements does not equate to Setting these units aside and I think again we're talking about substantial compliance You know if if we were looking at a much smaller number of units not being filled We wouldn't we wouldn't be here. We're not going to hold them to strictly to that to that number and
- But this is a pretty large number of units that are not filled. So that's the city's position on the allocation versus occupancy issue. So the mayor's administration's position is that they are in violation. Yes it's that they are in violation.
- I think however that That director Killian Hansen and director Cooper Smith are much better suited to talk about the impact to the community of removing this tax abatement Thank you. Thank you other second round councilmember Flaherty Yes, thank you I'm sorry. I forget the gentleman's last name who is with us from the
- Mr. Hurley, what is it Hurley early? Thank you. Mr. Hurley a question for you again looking at some of the kind of the trend lines over time I talked about from September 2024 to now in my previous question also presented the materials from ESD staff were Occupancy numbers from September of 2022 and 2023 which were also much better than 2024 so there was
- exceeding compliance at that point in terms of occupancy anyway. Can you speak at all to that, maybe it's the same answer, but to that trend from 2022 to 2023, I would say, you know, a slight decline but fairly stable, a pretty significant decline to fall of 24 and then even more so since, which I know this last round was kind of a product at least of kind of this change strategy that you're implementing, but what about from
- 2022 23 to September 2024 kind of before that management changed and that Yeah the the crime and the safety and the security issues have been an issue from really inception We we were we filled the property But those residents weren't paying the rent they weren't following the rules there was
- a lot of issues with the residents that we had in place, although the occupancy was high, the economic performance was low and the issues were there. It got worse, the occupancy as time went on, we did evict those that we could, but also good residents left because they didn't feel safe and there were issues.
- so it the issues have always been there the the decline and occupancy over time as a function of those core problems that that I've been mentioning and we're trying to address and prior to this most recent change in management practice and and Who's in charge? I guess were there major changes over that? I don't know 2022 to 2024 period with respect to how the property was managed I
- There was a manager before TNH. They had similar issues. TNH took over as management company because they were we as an ownership group were unhappy with the with the performance and thought that TNH would be a better fit. That turned out to not work out the way we'd like. We liked it. We would have liked it too which is the reason for the recent pivot.
- Okay. Thank you. Are there second round questions. Councilmember Rosenberger first generally speaking I'm wondering if we're going to want to I mean I know to continue this to a later date I know I think all parties have said they would appreciate that. So I just also want to talk about if we're going to do that how long we want to do this before we continue. I am happy that I have questions. So I will just ask a question though if that's okay.
- Yeah, I think that I will just continue with the questions until somebody wants to motion a continuance So if you want to motion a continuance, then that would be the course ago And if you want to ask a question like right now you have the floor. I'm gonna ask just a tiny bit We talked about your pro forma and it doesn't work without the tax abatement Yeah, it's not working now right, okay, do we have an opportunity to adjust the
- MOU over the years like I like I guess my perspective is I'm not really inclined to get rid of the tax abatement right now because we've had other apartment buildings come and say they want to get rid of their affordable units and I'm not really a fan of that but I think sixty percent is very low and then looking at your average incomes of ten thousand dollars like I I mean we're talking about seventy percent of units rented below sixty percent of
- AMI and it's just I don't know how even easy it is to then rent market rate units out. Just like is the mix good enough. I would as a question I have like in general about the property. Yeah. So the the project was financed obviously through the help of the city of Bloomington but also through the affordable housing tax credit program. So our our
- Our AMI mix is locked in. There's no there's no it's a federal issue. There's no way of changing that at this point in the compliance period. But did I read right now the average AMI is 19 percent. I read that. Yeah I did not study the document you all keep keep mentioning but perhaps. Did I read that.
- Company yeah, let me pull up the slide and see it is very low. All right, so it could be different. It could be different basically I toured the property is in my district So I toured it last term and I mean there were already so many problems are the streets there also private streets inside Like just BPD Go there or is it just private security They are public streets in there that is a
- You know I think you know regardless of what happens today and here there's there's some things that would be really helpful to work there with the city to help with some of the stuff and that that access issue is significant. OK. So may I answer the question. So it's it was 19 percent was the average am I in May 25 and it was 20 point 31 percent in September 24.
- and then slightly you know hovers so twenty three it was twenty eight percent and in twenty twenty two it was twenty one almost twenty two percent. Okay thank you. Members you look a motion to continue this meeting on the next regularly scheduled council meeting which takes place at six thirty p.m. on August 6. Second to have a comment or question.
- Yeah postpone consideration of something is debatable. I Is there a difference between postponing the matter and continuing the matter counsel attorney later? To be more in line with Robert's rules of order the terminology postponed to Then the next regular session Okay council members who look would you like to reframe your? motion or like
- Remove your first motion and then reframe it. Yes, I withdraw my first motion and I move to postpone This hearing until our next regularly scheduled council meeting on August 6th at 630 p.m second, all right, so there's been a Motion on a second to postpone consideration of this hearing until our regular session next week, which yes is debatable yes is amenable and Needs majority vote to pass councilmember Rosenberger. Thank you. My question is is
- I think there is a September deadline for making property the units rentable again or something right and would it can we or does it make sense to postpone until we have Passed that date where hand can tell us if the units were brought up into We have to decide within a certain attorney liner, would you like to take that one I
- To take which question to answer the question about whether or not it's possible to postpone until September. I think it's possible if if certain things are met. I think the parties here would need to agree to that date for the postponement because arguably it lies outside of the 30
- days. However we have the interested parties here who could go on the record as being in agreement with that postponement prior to tonight's hearing. The city did confer with the county to see if a September hearing would still be permissible with respect to the real property.
- tax timelines and Our understanding is that does not pose a problem to continue until September That's just an idea and I'm happy to do it next week or wait until we have that new info You wanted to add to that is that your understanding as well I
- Sorry city attorney Audrey birding him. Yeah, that's my that's my understanding as well. I agree with attorney laner Okay, so director Killian Hansen would that be useful in terms of because like it sounds to me like they're supposed to like comply by September 5th, but that doesn't mean that your Inspection is also going to be a symptom by September 5th. So can you clarify? correct, so
- The question is, will they comply? I'm sorry, can you repeat the question? So we're discussing postponing this hearing until later on in the year. And so originally the postponement was until next week, which is usually we just postpone things one week. But if all parties would agree to going beyond the 30 days for the hearing allocated by the state, then the suggestion to postpone until after hand was able to go in and inspect the conditions of those units
- I think that makes perfect sense. So at this point that we would need to postpone it until a certain date I would say by October we should have I mean, I know that's a pretty long time though And I don't know what your timeline for repair is if you guys would be able to be done by September 5th or not We generally expect August is our most busy time for turn so
- I would say even if he called today, there's a high likelihood that we won't be able to get it done On or before September 5th Okay Other questions about the motion to postpone until next week August 6th Because that is the motion on the table right now councilmember Piedmont Smith
- I guess I would also be in favor of a later date. I mean, even if we can at least get an update from Annex about what they've done, even if the inspection couldn't occur, I don't know. It just seems like they're, it's more likely to have more information if we wait a little longer, I guess. After September 5th, the next,
- Common Council regular session would be September 17th. Does that sound better to everyone. I guess I'm concerned that like I'm trying to figure out in terms of like the actual finding of compliance I think that it goes back to that that MOU piece about allocation versus occupancy. So I'm not sure that that's even relevant.
- And that's something. So I would like to keep it postponed until next week to be able to think through what's relevant in terms of making that decision from the perspective of what it is that we're supposed to decide about. I think that there's some question about what's relevant, and there's some debate about that. And so I think at that point, if we're still not sure, then it could be postponed again, or if we think that it is relevant.
- I'm happy to do that. I just think we should make a decision. Yeah, I agree. A council member. Sorry. I'm following on on that. I had a question for attorney leaner specifically. Are we allowed to make this decision on any basis or or must we follow the things that are clearly written in Indiana code in terms of how this decision is made?
- You need to follow the Indiana code Okay, so so in the finding of whether or not they've done reasonable efforts to ameliorate the thing are we able to think about things that happen from today to September 3rd or do we need to think about the things that happened prior to us calling this this this hearing I Think you are required to think about the information presented in
- In the hearing so if the hearing is continued to An additional date later date, then I think you could Consider information presented then as well as activity So so so for example if they if in September they come back and they say all of the units are now rented we can we can We can make our decision based on that information then
- not it has nothing to do with what we what was filed in on the CF one et cetera. Do you have an opinion on that.
- Don't because I mean I do have an opinion I can tell you that's not clearly outlined in the code regarding this hearing I think that you would be able to consider Additional information presented at that meeting even if that means additional things being done Because you've made the decision to continue the hearing itself I think you could consider
- additional instances. But there is no direction in code as to whether or not that can happen. And then just one last clarifying question. And I'm not suggesting that we do this. I'm just curious. So as a thought experiment, if there's issues with the original MOU, et cetera, and I also
- Okay. I'll just ask the question and just, you know, call me stupid. It's fine. Why don't we just start a process again of giving them a new tax abasement with new can with new agreements with the city.
- Okay, can I actually interrupt that and say that right now we should be talking about the motion on the table which is totally It's totally about the motion the table because it sounds I mean it feels to me like we we came into this this meeting with the intention to postpone which then leads me to ask why do we waste all this time to begin with if there's a clear set of decisions that we have to make and the question that you asked is like how can we even make this decision
- Why postpone it all if we have a clear outcome associated with the conversation? So if there's other things on the table, we should discuss that. Because we could make the decision now and then move in the direction that we want to move in. If we're going to be outside of this clear space that I think, it says there's three things that we should decide. So if there's other things that we're going to bring into the conversation, then let's see what else is on the table. So it is very relevant to the motion. So please answer it.
- Think that you could rescind If you I think that you could find this current tax abatement to find them to be not in compliance with this further with this current tax abatement if that's What council chooses and then I'm not sure why there's a reason that council through That I think that that council and departments I think would have to get on board
- With working through a new tax abatement agreement. It's just an entirely new process. And so I think it's possible Thank you, yeah, so could I speak to that for a minute Council's not a party technically to the mo you so I think that that's something that would have to be like negotiated within the city Speaking though to your prior point though the Indiana code
- it, if you were leaning toward making findings and a determination for substantial compliance tonight, I mean, we have potential motions that you could could vote upon. And as a general rule, those would require making a determination that reasonable efforts were made to, uh, for substantial compliance.
- And then really a second finding that there were no deviations or failures caused by the property owners outside the property owners control. So I would like to remind us that we have a motion on the table right now to postpone until August 6th.
- No, the motion is until August 6th Councilmember Rosenberger. Yes. Thank you. I am still on board with a September whatever 17th because one someone made the comment that Getting the units up to comply into compliance is not related to this but I think it is because part of our determination is about
- Whether or not the owners have made reasonable efforts to comply and like right now these units cannot be rented So I am more of a like fool me once kind of person where like maybe the owners haven't been that great in the last two years Okay, I apologize for that But maybe they are getting it together and this is like the first step in my opinion and getting it together Like they're the units aren't rentable right now. So for me, I would like that I would like that I would say number two if we really are just talking about allotment versus
- Whether it means occupancy I can vote on that next week because I kind of know what I think about that but I would love some case law if there is any Are there other councilmember questions about the motion on the table to postpone until next week August 6th I won't be here so
- I don't know if that's a determining factor or not. You're more than welcome to proceed without me but just know that it's good to know. The other thing I'd like you to know is that the property management and owners did come to us and asked us for money. They knew that there was an issue so they were actively trying to resolve it. We were unable to give them the capital for it. So please consider that as well. OK. So.
- There is a motion on the table. I think that I would like to vote on that motion on the table. If you want to postpone it until next week, of course, vote yes. If you want to postpone it until a different date that is not next week, then you should probably vote no. If you want to move something entirely different, like making an actual decision that they are compliant this evening or substantially compliant, then that should also then be a no vote.
- If there are no other comments from council members of the clerk, please call the roll on the motion to postpone until August 6th Councilmember Ruff Piedmont Smith. Yes Stasberg. Yes Daly no Zulick. Yes Rosenberger. No, sorry. No Clarity no
- That motion fails so we are back to the deliberation either questions or The other piece that we haven't really done is in our council deliberation and debate Or is there another motion that somebody would like to put on the table with regard to this hearing? Councilmember Piedmont Smith I
- I have a question about what findings we can come up with. I thought that two years ago when we had a tax abatement where the petitioner did not file the CF one in a timely manner. I thought that we then had a hearing and we were waived.
- We waved that element of compliance. We didn't find That they are compliant. We didn't find they were non-compliant. We were able to waive it somehow. Is that an option? Is that a thing? Maybe that was only an option because it was a missed deadline and not the actual meat of the matter. Yes, I think that's the difference That was a missed deadline. And so the county never the county didn't receive the filing on time. They didn't honor it
- the county has received this filing and Documented it and at this step we're well we you are determining You know if if finding of compliance then nothing would be changed with the county if finding of non-compliance We would then have to communicate that with the county so I think that's one aspect of it and I just want to say I think we have had an excellent and very careful reading of the state statute the MOU and our local standards by
- Attorneys here in miss Brittingham and miss Liener so I think that we now have a very clear understanding of process and and how the council can move through this Thank you, are there other council questions or potential motions Oh Council attorney liner
- I wanted to speak to a comment made earlier. We have researched Indiana case law and there is no case law on point with respect to tax abatements. The Indiana code with respect to this hearing is two or three sentences long. There really is very little guidance. I think as long as the hearing displays notices
- due process and deliberation and so forth which I think this hearing is then you're following the requirements. I do think if you want if you're interested in continuing until September it would be appropriate to get some confirmation from the interest of parties tonight.
- that they're amenable to that in particular the property owner who is being represented tonight by annex group. Thank you. Are there other council questions or motions. If somebody has a hand up down there you really have to wave it at me. Oh council member Rosenberger I'm happy to postpone or vote tonight. So I don't know I don't know what other people want.
- I'm happy with either one Well, it did so anybody have a motion all councilmember Daley. I move to find the annex group substantially compliant second Okay, so we have a motion and a second to find the Wait, you said the annex group didn't you? Can you friendly and then at Chris Chris Union at Crestmont Union at Crescent
- Crescent Union at Crescent substantially compliant Would you care to state your reasons Because I think we're Because I think they are meeting the definition of allocation versus occupancy that is my my main what I'm hinging it on
- I think if we decide to postpone, I think we need to postpone until the end of the year To give them that time So I we can't do a conditional Conditional compliance so it's either postponed till the end of the year or vote for tonight and I'm voting for tonight because They've met the allocation requirements Are there other councilmember Flaherty
- Yeah, I'm inclined to vote no on this motion. Maybe because I'm less comfortable with the conclusion about allocation. I take, Ms. Brittingham, is that right? Points that we don't have a definition of the word allocate that's clear. I don't know if it is synonymous with occupancy, but I think the concept of occupancy
- wrapped up in it and I think it's kind of an absurd conclusion to say that all they have to do is allocate the units and zero percent occupancy would be fine and so to me I'm not comfortable making that conclusion I guess that there is substantial compliance on the basis that simply allocating regardless of occupancy is all that compliance means and so I think I'm a no vote here what I would support in the form of a different motion would be
- They have made reasonable efforts to substantially comply and that that would on that basis I would I would not Feel a need to end the abatement at this time. So that's my perspective and how about a motion. Thanks Other accounts member rough Yeah, I Also believe that and with tax abatements that aren't
- Related to residential we constantly Find things like free market forces. So they couldn't have foreseen that so it's beyond their control That they didn't that that firm that business that corporation didn't Reach the goals Right. Well, that's a gamble of a business and investment right that that's to me is
- This is just as much out of control of The owners or the managers the petitioners that as as other tax abatements that we constantly find Stink that they're out of compliance, but it's beyond their control I mean we've seen these kind of things that not that's the same exact kind of project we see these problems at Crawford homes we see
- My question is to what extent of course there could be management improvements and they're committing to doing it but to the extent that that I hold them responsible for these kinds of Behaviors I'm I intend to vote yes on on the motion Are there other council yes
- Question, I think, for our attorney, but does the substance of the motion in this case, like whether, as Councilmember Flaherty said, why does that matter? Can you explain it to me? In the context of the hearing? Could you explain your question? Yeah, so the motion was to find them substantially compliant. The objection was that
- that our reasoning shouldn't be that they're substantially compliant, but rather that they've gone through sort of thing two, right? They've done the reasonable efforts to do it. So we're, actually I've answered my own question by saying it out loud. So the question is about the motion is the official finding of this body, correct? Got it.
- Yeah, the motion is to substantially comply I asked councilmember Daley to explain why she got it did that just partly as a conversation starter starter and partly as a like This is the reason why she thinks that they've got it Ruff has a slightly different reason for substantial compliance. I don't think Council attorney liner, please correct me if I'm wrong. I don't think the reason for the substantial compliance is
- Goes into the motion, but I think that I appreciate hearing different councilmember perspectives on the matter right now Attorney laner is that I? Wanted to clarify one point I don't really have an opinion with respect to whether there's substantial compliance or not but I think if if members are inclined to Make a motion or vote to that effect. It's it's really two prongs and I think
- The motion would be that the property owner has made reasonable efforts to substantially comply with the statement of benefits and that any failure to comply was caused by factors beyond the property owners control. There are two two parts to I think within the context of the hearing.
- a substantial compliance determination Thank you, are there other councilmember questions or comments I think we're on comments Councilmember Piedmont Smith I am very much in favor of what attorney laner said as The motion but it's not exactly the motion we have on the table. I
- No it's not. So I guess I would have to vote no on the motion on the table although I don't want to ever send the tax abatement but I would rather phrase it. And I in the way counselor counselor counsel attorney counsel attorney later has has done so because it's it's they're not really in compliance but it was factors beyond their control. I think.
- Daily, would you like to? Resend your motion and have a new motion that Phrases it slightly differently. I withdraw my motion Would you like to make a new motion? Madam chair, I'm glad to make a motion councilmember Flaherty Okay, I move that the council find that the property owner has made reasonable efforts to substantially comply with the statement of benefits and I
- Any failure to substantially comply it was caused by factors beyond the control of the property owner second Do we need to repeat that motion for the clerk Thank you Can can you restate it councilmember Flaherty just so that just cuz it's late I'm more or less quoting Indiana code. I will do my best to restate it verbatim I move that the council find
- That the property owner has made reasonable efforts to substantially comply with the statement of benefits And that any failure to substantially comply was caused by factors beyond the control of the property owner Okay So now we have a slightly different motion and second on the table Are there are there? Councilmember comments and no council members who look we can't just vote. This is called due process Are there councilmember comments
- Now we can just vote. Will the clerk please call the roll on the motion to that council member Flaherty just made and I'm not going to be able to repeat that. Council member Piedmont Smith. Yes Stasberg. Yes. Daily. Yes. Zulek. Yes. Rosenberger. Yes.
- Sorry. Yes clarity. Yes. Yes. All right. So that passes with a vote of 8 0 and predominantly maintains the tax abatement for the unit Crescent property for this year.
- I want to thank everybody who stuck with us this long. Thanks staff and thank mr. Harley from the annex group for being here this evening We've now reached the period of additional public comment so maximum of 25 minutes is set aside for
- the public to comment on items not on the agenda this evening. So if there's any member of the public in chambers who would like to approach the podium they would have up to three minutes for a comment on something not on the agenda this evening. If you're on Zoom you can raise your hands using the reactions tab or send a chat message to the host. I don't see anybody moving in chambers. Are there any hands raised on Zoom. Yeah. Great. Moving on to matters of council schedule.
- we do have our next regular session meeting next week on August 6th and Then just through the month of August just to make sure that people are aware the community is aware We will have budget hearings starting the third week in August I believe there are four budget hearings this year spread over two weeks on August 18th August 20th August 25th and August 27th
- Are there any other notes from council members regarding schedule? Thank you. We have reached a germ and then we are adjourned. Thank you.