- I'm gonna go ahead and call this regular session of the Bloomington Common Council to order here at 630 on Wednesday, August 6th. Will the clerk please call the roll? Councilmember Rosenberger? Here. Rallo? Piedmont-Smith? Here. Stosberg? Here. Daly? Here. Zulek? Here. Nassari? Here.
- Thank you. Thank you. To open the meeting today, since today was the first day of school, I went down a rabbit hole today looking at the history of education. So for some of you who know, I actually have a master's in teaching. So it was kind of a fun little rabbit hole for me to go down. But of course, the history of education is huge and massive. And there could be whole classes and books written on this topic. So I thought that I would highlight
- these few pieces of education in Indiana. So I was surprised to learn that Indiana was actually the first state to implement a state-funded public school system as part of their 1816 state constitution.
- And that's an interesting aspiration, apparently. There was not actually enough tax dollars to properly fund it. But they did want to create it. And so partly as a consequence of that, there were lots of local schools that popped up that were actually run by various public groups, including various faith groups. And what that meant was that black people, according to the
- Let's see if the source the Indiana the early years from old print shop portfolio in 1966. So that black people moving into the state actually fared pretty good and securing education for their children. And between 1816 and 1831 they could attend public school without as much discrimination and that private schools run by Quakers and.
- Other sectarian groups, Methodists, Baptists, tended to include black children. But then in 1834, a resolution passed taxing black people $2 for the school fund instead of white people who were only taxed 50 cents. And then in 1843, the General Assembly prohibited black children from attending district schools. So it was
- kind of a backwards evolution in some ways, in my opinion. In 1869, the General Assembly required that school trustees organize separate schools for black children. And that was all very interesting to me. And then, of course, I ran into the fact that education was not actually compulsory until 1897. So all of these schools, they were state-funded, in theory, property was given, but you didn't actually have to send your kid to school
- 1897. So I could go on and on and on, but I won't. And instead, I will move into our actual meeting, trusting that if people are interested, they'll do a little bit more school research, because it is really, really interesting to think about the history of education in this country as a whole and in the state.
- So moving into our agenda summation first we have some minutes for approval and there was a slightly revised version of those sent out this evening with or this afternoon with a spelling corrected then we'll move into reports reports from council members and then from the mayor and city offices where we have a report from the Bloomington Monroe County Human Rights Commission will have reports from council committees where I believe that we have
- report from the committee on council processes and from the public safety income tax Committee and then we will have reports from the public and that will be the first time in the agenda that a member of the public can Make a public comment on items not on the agenda After those reports we will have appointments to boards and commissions. We do have some appointments this evening and
- We have no legislation for first reading tonight, but we have several pieces for second reading. So we will move into second readings and resolutions starting with ordinance 2025-25, which is a UDO amendment related to self-service storage. Then we will have ordinance 2025-26, a UDO amendment related to fraternity or sorority house, artist studio or workshop, vehicle fleet operations.
- Then we will have ordinance 2025-27 amending the UDO and the vehicle fuel station part of the use table. Then we will have ordinance 2025-28 amending the UDO related to vehicle wash. And then ordinance 2025-29 amending the UDO related to tattoo or piercing parlor. Then we will end with ordinance 2025-30 vacating a public
- parcel related to a 12-foot public alley adjacent to 909 East University Street. After those ordinances, we will have an additional period of public comment. So if people want to comment on anything not on the agenda, they're also able to do it at that point. And you may comment on one of those two sections. And of course, each piece of legislation will have a public comment area associated with it. I have a couple notes about council schedule, and then we will adjourn for the evening.
- Going back to the beginning we have minutes for approval. I move that the minutes from April 2nd 2025 be approved as revised. So we have a motion and a second to approve those minutes. Does anybody have any questions on them. Clerk Bolden.
- Would you be willing to change the motion to indicate not that they were revised but that they were sent out again this afternoon since they weren't revised in this meeting? I'm sorry. Can you repeat that? Yes, would you be willing to change your motion to indicate that the minutes were sent out again this afternoon with a revision as opposed to indicating that they were revised because they were not revised in this meeting happily? Yes. Thank you. Sorry. I will withdraw this motion
- And I move that the minutes from April 2nd, 2025 be approved as revised earlier via packet to council. Is that, is that okay? Okay. Are there any other questions about this? Okay. Thank you. Um, I want to note that council member Rallo is now virtual. So if the clerk could please call the roll on the motion to approve the minutes. Rallo.
- Yes. I'm going to move on to Councilmember Piedmont-Smith and come back to Councilmember Rallo. Piedmont-Smith? Yes. Stosberg? Yes. Daly? Yes. Zulek? Yes. Asari? Yes. And Councilmember Rallo? Yes. Can you hear me?
- Okay, is the could the volume be off in chambers because I did see the microphone mute thing go and then It does not appear so councilmember Rallo is muted I'm not muted. I'll continue talking. Can you hear me? We're seeing that's closed captioning I
- Just not hearing him verbally look at that so that we can read you councilmember Rallo That must be something to do with the sounds in chambers. So By the way, none of you are visible. The volume is up Are the speakers on Yeah, I believe so because these are working, okay Clerk Bolden
- We generally want to see and hear folks online. How does seeing the closed captioning but not hearing the person work? I vote yes. Oh, there we go. Thank you to the tech team to make that happen. Am I audible? Yes, you are audible now. Very good. You're not visible, by the way. None of you.
- The presidency is a seal of Bloomington. It's just FYI. Okay. Thank you very much for that information. We will continue. Oh, the video had been disabled. We will work on the video situation for any of other Zoom participants. We're clearly having a little bit of tech difficulty this evening. So, Clerk Bolden, you have received all the votes now, correct?
- Wonderful, so those minutes passed unanimously Moving on to reports first. We have reports from council members councilmember Rosenberger Tonight thank you councilmember Piedmont Smith Yes, I have a few things to report on First of all today is the 80th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima So I wanted to to note that the significant world event on August 6 1945
- A USB-29 bomber dropped a 15 kiloton uranium bomb on Hiroshima, killing an estimated 140,000 people by the end of that year and many more through the course of the following decades due to the radioactive fallout. The group Nihon Hidankyo is a nationwide Japanese network of atomic bomb survivors who are known as Hibakusha.
- And this organization was established in 1956, and it has worked to keep the legacy of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings alive. It has advocated for the abolition of nuclear weapons and the ratification of the UN treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons. And the organization did win the Nobel Peace Prize last year.
- Today, the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said in a statement that the very weapons that brought such devastation to Hiroshima and Nagasaki are once again being treated as tools of coercion. Guterres did add, however, that Nihon Hidankyo's Nobel Prize was cause for hope, saying that countries must draw strength from the resilience of Hiroshima and for the wisdom of the hibakusha.
- So these are people who actually survived, who have spent the rest of their lives advocating for the abolition of nuclear weapons, which I also and this body have actually spoken out in favor of as well. Unfortunately, the United States is one of many countries that has not signed on to the UN Treaty. So I want to mark that. And then on a lighter note, I wanted to congratulate
- the organizers of the Taste of Bloomington, which occurred this past weekend. It seemed to, as a participant, I don't have any stats, but as a participant, it seemed to have been a big success. So I wanted to thank the organizers, the restaurant and food truck participants, the musicians and everybody who attended. It was a great way to activate Kirkwood Avenue.
- And it was a free event. Of course, if you wanted food or drink, you had to pay for that, but free music, free good vibes. And so that was a great plus. And I also wanted to thank the nonprofit organization, Garden Quest, who provided Bokashi composting buckets so that at least some of the food waste will be composted. And finally, I do have my monthly constituent meeting this
- Saturday at 11 o'clock, you can join via zoom or here in person in the McCloskey room of City Hall and that zoom link is on the City Council website Bloomington.in.gov slash council That is it for me. Thank you Councilmember daily Yes, thank you. I just wanted to briefly remind everybody that I mentioned last week
- I have a constituent meeting coming up on August 16th, which is a Saturday at 2 p.m. at the Monroe County Public Library, the Southwest Branch Meeting Room A. This is for District Five, but you don't have to live in District Five. Everybody is welcome to come. I will be joined by a very special guest, Director Hiddle from Planning and Transportation to talk about UDO updates and changes. So bring your questions.
- Hopes to see there. Thanks. Council members you look you a couple things. I just want to acknowledge that the final construction bids for the convention center have been awarded and they are at.
- $51 million, which is $1 million under their $52 million construction budget, including funding all alternates for the new expansion. So I just want to say thank you to everyone who was involved, including our design team, Schmidt Associates, Weddle Brothers Construction. Jay has held our lovely capital improvement board members, including President John Whitehart, who has been very lovely to me and walking me through the whole process. So thank you to them. And then secondly, I would just want
- Second councilmember Piedmont Smith's comments about taste. It was lovely I signed up to volunteer in the opening shift to set up and we were really only needed for like an hour and a half because there were so many people so it was very Inspiring to see so many people in the community come together and then even more people once it hit three and taste started and the food was incredible, so please
- go out and try all of our amazing local restaurants. Thank you. Thank you. Council member, sorry. No report. Thank you. Thank you. Council member Rallo. Yes, I just wanted to echo Council member Piedmont Smith's recognition of the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and then later Nagasaki 80th anniversary. It brings to mind
- a personal relationship I had with a member of the team that worked on the atomic bomb, the Manhattan Project. He was a chemist. His name is Howard Guest, and he was a microbiologist at Indiana University. He was first a chemist, and he was involved in the purification of the isotope that was used in the bombs. He and about 80 other
- physicists and chemists who worked on the Manhattan Project signed what was called the Szilard petition because it was begun by a physicist named Szilard. It was meant to essentially give the full information to Truman about the effects of the atomic bomb and that they were urging it to be demonstrated before it was used on a civilian population. That petition never made it to Truman.
- it was intercepted by the military and Truman never saw it. It also brings to mind the fact that nuclear proliferation is still a problem. Many countries have them. We have multiple weapons of mass destruction, of course, synthetic biology, bioweapons, AI is involved, advanced robotics, and so forth. We very much need international treaties
- that can essentially bring the world community into some semblance of pulling back from the abyss. We withdrew from the ABM Treaty back under Bush 2, W. Bush. We withdrew from the INF Treaty under Trump, his first term of office and the only remaining
- nuclear treaty is the START treaty, which is set to expire in February of 2026, which gives us the means for verification and transparency regarding nukes, which is important. It's something to keep in mind and to urge our lawmakers at higher levels that the future of humanity, if you listen to Annie Jacobson's work, she's written numerous books on it. It's a wonderful speaker and she talks about
- that we're just one mistake away from such a terrible accident of a nuclear holocaust. We should all keep that in mind and urge our lawmakers to negotiate in good faith with other countries in the world to back away from this risk. That's all I've got. Thank you.
- And I just have a short report this evening. I also wanted to mention my constituent meeting, which is supposed to be
- I just looked at the date and then I forgot it on August 16th. Usually I have it on the third Saturday and I haven't officially canceled it yet on the calendar, but I will need to cancel that and change it because with school starting comes the start of sports competitions and my Saturday mornings change. So I will probably reschedule that as a Zoom meeting. So if you're interested in attending that, you can just kind of keep your eye
- on my council member calendar and council member page and that will end up going out. So moving on down our agenda, I have to go back to my agenda. Next we have reports from the mayor and city offices and we have a report from the Bloomington Monroe County Human Rights Commission. If you want to make sure to state your name as part of your report, welcome and thank you.
- Good evening council members, I'm Ryan Shaddy and it is my honor to stand before you tonight as the chair of the Bloomington Monroe County Human Rights Commission and present the 2025 Bloomington Monroe County Human Rights Award. Unfortunately, we live during a time of high housing prices and lack of affordable and adequate services to alleviate the root causes of homelessness. These folks are some of our most vulnerable and underserved in our community.
- We believe, as members of the BMHRC, that humans have a right to shelter. In fact, housing status is a protected class under our city's human rights ordinance. Ordinance 1516 and 2015 amended the human rights ordinance and passed by city council by a vote of 9-0. The amendment stated,
- Whereas the city of Bloomington seeks to protect its citizens in the enjoyment of civil rights and promote mutual understanding and respect among all who live and work within the city. And whereas prejudice, intolerance, and discriminatory practices directly and profoundly threaten the rights and freedom of city of Bloomington residents. And whereas there is reason to believe that people who are perceived to be homeless are discriminated against and employment
- public accommodations, housing, and education. While we continue as a city to strive to achieve the lofty ideals of our human rights ordinance, including the right to shelter, there are so many individuals and organizations who help build the foundation needed to serve this mission. One of those organizations is the Bloomington Severe Winter Emergency Shelter, or BSWRS.
- According to BSWR's nominator, in 2024, the organization provided shelter, community, and dignity to some of Bloomington's most vulnerable neighbors. As a new organization operating on a minimal budget, they mobilized quickly to open on the coldest nights of the year. They offered no strings attached shelter and support to those without other options. BSWR's is a collaborative effort led by a dedicated group of volunteers and local faith communities.
- Shelter space was provided by two downtown churches, First United Methodist and First Christian Church. Their nominator praised the tireless work of volunteer coordinators Ali Jewell and Caleb Hoagland, along with the BSWR's board of directors, the reverends John Nyota and Sarah Lynn Gershon, along with all the shift leads and shelter volunteers. 196 volunteers, to be exact.
- who tirelessly served 100 unhoused community members over the 42 coldest nights of the year. They provided shelter, community, and dignity to some of Bloomington's most vulnerable neighbors who had limited to no resources to survive those evenings. The BMC, HRC, that is such a mouthful sometimes, is pleased to present
- the 2025 City of Bloomington and Monroe County Human Rights Award to the Bloomington Severe Winter Emergency Shelter. This commission recognizes and appreciates your hard work, folks, back in the back here, and perseverance, and we look forward to seeing how you continue to serve our unsheltered neighbors in their most vulnerable times. If you guys would please come forward to be honored. Oh, over here.
- Let's all continue to work together to build a thriving and compassionate community where everyone feels safe and respected and valued. Thank you, council members, for your time tonight. Thank you. Are there any council member comments or questions? Council member Daly. Just thank you very much. Appreciate that really important and hard work. And I know that was a lot, and it was
- Very needed and very appreciated for the people that you helped. So thank you Councilmember people Smith Yeah, I had the honor of working with these folks last winter and I think that This organization will be needed for the foreseeable future. I know that we have Heading home and we're working very hard to make homelessness brief rare non repeating but
- In the interim, there are folks who risk freezing to death in our winter environment. So I'm just really, really grateful for these folks for pulling this together. And I'm proud to be part of it. Thank you. Thank you. Any other council member comments or questions?
- I will just echo the thanks that other people have already said, and also thanks to the Bloomington Mineral County Human Rights Commission for the work that they do, not just in presenting this award and recognizing the work being done by others in our community, but also you guys do really important work too. So thank you very much. Moving on to council committees. Councilmember Piedmont-Smith, I think that you're chair maybe of both of the committees giving your reports tonight, so what do you wanna start with?
- start with committee on council processes. I mean you heard from us last time. So hopefully you're not sick of hearing from this committee but we have a short thing this time which is revising the rules for public comment because currently our rules for public comment talk about citizens being allowed to comment. And of course we want to hear from residents of our community whether they are citizens or not.
- So we propose to change wherever it says citizens change that to residents So as you can see displayed here are rules and it's just I think they're maybe four places where we're changing that word Questions or comments on this change to our rules for public comment and
- I think that we need an official motion to change the rules for making public comment on agenda and non-agenda items to represent the change before us. Do I have such a motion?
- Council members you like so moved Second I Think I think that that we actually need a motion that isn't just a so moved based on mine. Is that correct? Clerk Bolden? I Think if you restate the motion that was so moved that would be sufficient if I do President okay, the the motion is to
- Change the rules for making public comment on agenda and non agenda items to the document Brought before us by the committee on council processes, which changes the word citizens to The word residents in all places on the document It's not good works great Now that there is an official motion are there any other comments or
- this motion Okay, I have one I just want to say thank you because I thought that we had already done that at some point and maybe we change citizens to residents somewhere else, but I'm I'm glad to To have this change done any other Great. Well the clerk, please call the roll on the motion to adopt new rules Councilmember
- Rollo. Yes. Piedmont Smith. Yes. Stasberg. Yes. Daily. Yes. Zulek. Yes. Sorry. Yes. Rosenberger. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. So that motion passes seven zero. So those are our new rules for public comment. And so those should be updated on our website in the coming days.
- Councilmember Piedmont-Smith next. The second report is from the PS Lit Committee of the Monroe County Income Tax Council. That's the Public Safety Local Income Tax Committee, comprised of representatives from Ellisville, Steinsville, Monroe County Government, and City of Bloomington. We met in July to determine what the
- proportion of the 0.25 percent of that local income tax rate should go for our central dispatch budget. So we decided to keep that proportion the same as last year, which means that we don't need to take action as a Monroe County Income Tax Council because there is no change. So we
- We, as required by state law, we issued a call out for proposals from emergency service providers that are not part of city of Bloomington, Ellisville or Monroe County government. We received no applications. We looked at the budget for central dispatch and the reserves that they had available to them. And we determined that the amount that was received for 2025 would be sufficient for 2026.
- We don't have actual new figures, but we based it on on the current year figures. So we decided not to change that rate. So that will come off the top for central dispatch. The rest is distributed among the, um, the four governmental units. Great. Thank you very much. Are there questions for council member Piedmont Smith about the PS lit committee's decision?
- Great. Thank you very much. Thank you to other council members who are also on the committee.
- Moving on, oops, we have our first period of public comment next. So if you are a member of the public and you wish to make a comment on an item not on the agenda, if you're in chambers, you can approach the microphone and you will have up to three minutes. If you're on Zoom, you can go ahead and raise your hand using the reactions tab or you can send a chat message to the host.
- and I do see somebody moving in chambers, so if you could make sure that you sign in there, which I think I see that you are doing, and state your name for the record. And I'm just gonna check our staff. We have the timer ready. Fantastic. Go ahead and start when you're ready. Thank you. Good evening, Madam President. This is Christopher M.G. from the Greater Bloomington Chamber of Commerce. I first want to start off by thanking Mr. Shaday from the Human Rights Commission, sort of putting a spotlight on the compassion of our community
- Bloomington Severe Winter shelter that they put together. Amazing what they were able to do in such a short period of time. Tonight I wanna talk about my third part on homelessness, specifically public order and budget accountability. As we've gone through this budget cycle and future budget cycles, it's important that we evaluate real outcomes on our local homelessness strategies. We believe that the future must include safe, vibrant public spaces,
- and compassionate, effective care. We don't think the values are mutually exclusive. So we urge you to have outcome-based processes when you put into place to ask these questions, what are we getting for money we spend on homelessness-related services? How much is reactive? Cleanups, crisis, emergency housing. How much is it preventive? Preventive, easy for me to say. Leading to permanent housing, reduced recidivism, reduced emergency calls, and restored community spaces. Our community is a very generous one.
- as we've heard earlier today, but our service system is saturated. Local nonprofits are stretched thin, case managers face unimaginable caseloads, and we heard from the mayor in her recent press release about the Crawford apartment situation, which illustrates what happens when we fund housing without fully funding supportive services. So the chamber urges all of us, all residents, to hold service providers accountable
- for results, not just good intentions, that we prioritize data-driven funding that demonstrates which programs truly help people transition out of homelessness and not just maintain it. And a recent Indy Star column highlighted a difficult but very important truth. Public order matters. When public disorder is allowed to escalate, whether through encampments, untreated mental illness, or lack of oversight in supportive housing, a ripple effect throughout the community.
- This isn't just about criminalizing homelessness, which is not the intention at all, but just having realistic intentions. We have to have, we can't pretend public disorder doesn't come at a cost. It does to businesses, families, even those experiencing homelessness who deserve environments where they can recover.
- Downplaying concerns about public safety often becomes a luxury belief, one that ignores the daily realities and one that I have been guilty of as well. You can support mental health care and housing first model and still expect streets to be safe and public parts to be usable. Ignoring it doesn't make it go away. Our members want Bloomington to be known for its compassion and for its functionality. A progressive community should never be at odds with safety and civic disorder.
- We can and must do both. I thank you for your time tonight. Thank you. Is there anybody else in chambers? Is there anybody raise their hand on zoom? Okay, seeing no more public commenters for now we will move on to appointments to boards and commissions. Councilmember Rosenberger.
- Thank you, I would like to recommend for the board of housing quality appeals. We have two seats I would recommend that we appoint nav nav deep bad knee to seat c1 and Zoe Zollman to seat c2 We have motion a second for two appointments to the board of housing quality appeals are there councilmember questions Great
- If you could call the roll on those appointments councilmember Piedmont Smith Yes Stasberg, yes daily. Yes Zulik. Yes. Sorry. Yes Rosenberger. Yes, Rallo Yes Thank you Thank you that unanimously passes and I want to thank mr. Bodney and miss Solomon for their service to that board and
- We have no legislation for first reading, so we're right into legislation for second readings. Council member Daly. I move that ordinance 2025-25 be introduced and read by the clerk by title and synopsis only. Second. It's been moved and seconded to introduce ordinance 2025-25. Will the clerk please call the roll on that motion to introduce? Council member Sosberg? Yes. Daly? Yes. Zulek? Yes.
- Sorry. Yes. Rosenberger. Yes. Rallo. Yes. Thank you. That motion passes. Yes. I'm so sorry. I forgot where we started. That motion passes. Will the clerk please read.
- Yes ordinance 2025 dash 25 to amend title 20 of the Bloomington Municipal Code regarding use table amendment and use specific standards storage and self-service. The synopsis is as follows. This amendment would reduce the zoning districts where this use would be allowed. The proposed amendment would allow this use as a permitted use in the mixed use corridor and mixed use student housing districts only.
- New you specific condition has been proposed that would only allow this use in the MS district if there are more than 20 dwelling units Thank you, I move that 25 be adopted second Thank you. It looks like we have member planning here to present if you could go ahead and introduce yourself for the record Thank You Eric Grulick development services manager and
- So I am here to present a series of UDO amendments tonight There are five of them that are coming to the council tonight These were a packet part of a package of seven that went to the Planning Commission in July Two of those were held back for further discussion for the next hearing coming up next week So there were five of these amendments that left the Planning Commission that were forwarded on to you So we'll step through those five tonight So real quickly these are there are five amendments
- amendments that are coming to you, a total of seven that are packaged together. And a lot of these deal with reducing the zoning districts within the UDO where certain land uses can occur. A lot of these uses have certain negative effects that we've seen over the years in terms of a lack of street activity. A lot of these are vehicle oriented uses. They are not high employment generating uses. Some of them can be very environmentally unfriendly.
- They are not very employed. They don't
- offer a lot of jobs, can have some negative impacts on adjacent properties, and in general, you know, these are things that we certainly feel like we have a lot of, and these take away from land that is available for housing. So I'll real quickly just kind of go through the first one. So the first one that is here tonight, this is ordinance 2025-25, deals with the use storage self-service. So we are proposing in this UDO amendment to reduce
- the zoning districts where this is allowed to just the mixed use corridor zoning district, the MC zoning district, and to allow this as an accessory use in the student housing district only.
- So real quickly on this screen here, you can see a map of the MC zoning districts. So all of the uses that we are going to be discussing tonight in regards to vehicles, as well as self storage units, we're proposing to reduce to just the MC zoning districts. So you can see where those zoning districts are. These are the portions of the city that are adjacent to our arterial roads. So certainly the more heavily developed commercial corridors along South College and South Walnut.
- West Third Street, College Mall Road area, North Walnut along the bypass. So while we are proposing to reduce the zoning districts where these uses are allowed, there's certainly still a lot of land that is available for them.
- So for the self storage unit use specifically as I mentioned we are proposing to allow this in the MC zoning district only and we're also proposing two new use specific standards to help further Regulate this use one of those is that the maximum footprint that is allowed for this use Shall not be more than 1,500 square feet or 20% of the property whichever is less
- And then the second one deals with this use within the MS, which is the mixed use student housing district that allows this only as an accessory use if there are more than 20 dwelling units on the property.
- So as I mentioned, you know, we're proposing just to reduce the districts where this is allowed To help give more land for other land uses that the community needs a lot more and certainly for housing So the Planning Commission did hear this and voted five to zero to forward this to you with a favorable recommendation And so I'm here tonight to answer any questions Thank you very much. Mr. Grulick does council have any questions?
- No questions from council members on this ordinance. Okay, thank you very much. We'll go ahead and go to public comment. I have a question. Oh, council member Rallo, I'm so sorry. I did not see your hand up there. Thank you. Mr. Grelick, I had a question about, is there any discussion at the planning commission? I see that some of these, although they're arterials and high traffic and so forth, and so there's probably a good rationale to place storage units there.
- But these are considered gateways to the community. Is there any discussion about the aesthetics and whether this is appropriate for certain areas, for instance, North Walnut?
- question, and this is something that we deal with a lot with self-storage buildings, is that they are held to the same architectural standards as every other building, meaning they have to have a certain amount of modulation, projections, windows and awnings, which can be very challenging for self-storage units, but they are still able to meet those. So they are held to the same standards that all buildings are held to.
- just drill down a little bit more. There is a very large facility on North Walnut, and it doesn't seem to have windows. It has a lot of doors for storage and so forth. Am I mistaken about that this is referring to self-storage? Do you know the facility I'm talking about? I don't know the name of it. Well, there have not. There's only been
- two or three self-storage buildings that have come in under the UDO and met being able to meet the architectural requirements. It's possible the one that you're thinking of is on way far north Walnut and that's actually in the county. Oh, it is. Oh, so that's county jurisdiction. Yeah, if you're thinking about the one where Walnut almost emerges with I-69, that's in the county. I see. Okay. And obviously their architectural standards are
- quite different. Is this something that- Yeah, I can't speak to their standards. Yeah. Well, it's something maybe to address at a later time with our colleagues in the county then. Yeah. But I appreciate that. In other words, there are architectural standards that we would say superior and wouldn't render a building
- like the one I'm describing. Is that fair to say? Yeah, so the building that you're thinking of, if it's the same one that I'm thinking of, those would certainly not meet our architectural standards. Okay, all right, thanks for that clarification. Thank you. Are there other Councilmember questions? Councilmember Asari? Just a really quick one, and thank you so much for the presentation. And I'm sorry if I missed this, but will there be any current storage facilities that will become non-conforming?
- If there are any, and I'm sure that there are probably a few of those. I don't have a map of every single self storage building that's in the city. So there are certainly some of those that could be rendered nonconforming. They're allowed to certainly continue and remain in business and exist. They just can't expand if that use isn't allowed in the district where they are.
- Wait, okay. And then just a similar question as whether we think there's any market sort of, I don't know, implications of limiting storage units. Like, you know, is this going to make, because it's something I've actually often wondered is that are all of the storage units, do we have any sense of are they all at capacity? Is there still a lot of pent-up demand for storage, et cetera? Yes, we get a lot of requests, a lot of inquiries about self-storage units coming into town and new locations.
- There's certainly a lot of demand for them. I think what makes them appealing is, you know, it's a lot of low overhead, and so they're very easy to install and a long-term
- benefit to the property owner, but it doesn't really activate the street as I was mentioned. You know, it's just a very negative low land use in terms of providing much amenities beyond, you know, income for the owner. And, you know, there's certainly a lot of better uses for the land that we've identified that we would like to try to make it a little bit less likely.
- but my concern is just that question about if there's a lot of demand for storage in Bloomington for users, right, for residents of Bloomington to store their things, and we restrict the possible development of storage, does that, as a storage owner, do I raise the prices? What does that do to the needs of residents of Bloomington who want to store their things? Well, so that can be a very,
- Multifaceted answer in terms of you know, acquiring goods and just storing them, you know If you don't have the place to store the things do you really need all those things? But to get back to your main point there and going back to the map that are showing for the mixed-use corridor district areas There is a lot of land where this use can certainly still occur, you know, we're maybe taking off 5% and
- That that area so there's lots of land that this use can still occur But as I mentioned, you know, we see other higher uses for this land Besides self storage units and we want to try to take some of these low-hanging fruits that don't have a lot of return for the community as a whole And make them, you know offer this land for other uses that could be better. Thank you. Very clear. Thank you so much Other councilmember questions Okay
- Now we can go to public comment, I think. So if there's a member of the public in chambers who would like to comment on this particular UDO ordinance amendment to further limit the use of self-service storage, approaching the microphone, and you would have up to three minutes. If you are online, you can raise your hand 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?
- Okay. I'll come back to council then for sorry. There's one right now that I keep on getting surprised by zoom tonight. Um, go, uh, go ahead. When, whenever you're unmuted, uh, please state your name for the record and then you'll have up to three minutes. Hi, I'm Paul Russo. I just have one question. How will the proposed changes affect access to people who don't use motor vehicles to get their things stored? In other words, pedestrians and bicyclists. Thank you.
- I feel like I need to ask for public comment again just to make sure. No other hands raised on Zoom. Okay. Thank you very much. Now let's revert back to council then for council member comments or any last questions. Council member, sorry.
- Who wants to go first? Councilmember Rallo, go for it. I'm thinking we probably have the same question. So I think Mr. Rousseau had an excellent question. Mr. Garley, could you could you speak to that? Are we limiting access for people who don't drive cars? Yeah, so this
- Ordnance change doesn't really acts or change how buildings are accessed You know as I kind of briefly discussed the the mixed-use corridor or are the portions of the city that are along our more Highly traveled arterial roads that probably have better access in terms of pedestrian improvements and road connectivity So if anything, I'd say that we're allowing these only in the places that have that better access to some degree and
- I see, okay, so there are pedestrian and biking facilities along these arterials that could be utilized. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Any other council member questions or closing comments? Council member Asari? I think sort of, it's kind of a question and a comment.
- that sort of what do we know about people who use storage in Bloomington, right? Because I think on paper, I have no qualms with the sort of theory here, with the theory of change, with the argument that's being made. I agree. I'd rather that we had houses than storage units. I think all of that makes a lot of sense. However, I'm trying to understand just to be sure. I mean, we represent the people of Bloomington as well.
- you know, my thought is that the vast majority of people who are using storage are, you know, my first thought goes, okay, it's the student population, they go, they come, okay, there's lots of, maybe that's a large portion, but there's also a lot of people who maybe are in between moving houses or, you know, who are here only for a portion of the year. You know, I can think of a lot of different uses of storage, and so I'm just trying to understand what we know and how much thought went into
- the actual existence of storage to begin with, right, and just like what the residents of Bloomington need and how they're interacting with storage and how these changes would change their interactions with storage. Yeah, and that's a very difficult question to answer because, you know, we don't have information on who rents these storage units. You know, that would be kind of protected information that the owner of the unit has, and they're not asking questions of why do you need this unit. So all of the things that you touched on certainly are
- range of needs of members of the community in different situations. It's just a balance, I guess, of what we have looked at of land that we continue to see that is used for this use that could have better uses. There's still a lot of land. I guess I really want to emphasize that there's still a lot of land within the community that is zoned for this use where it can occur. And so we're certainly not severely limiting the places where this can happen.
- There's still a lot of areas where this certainly can be allowed. So where we're pulling it out of, the districts where it's allowed use now, for instance, the mixed use medium scale or the downtown or other areas, some of those areas that have a lot of residences in there or are embedded in neighborhoods, and these uses aren't always appropriate in highly residential areas where you have a lot of people coming and going. As I mentioned, it doesn't really activate the street presence.
- Dead space, you know along these street frontages that are oftentimes in neighborhoods And so we're trying to find better uses that can activate street presences And so just slightly reducing the districts where these allowed, you know, it might have a very negligible impact Honestly, but you know, we're trying to just make some small adjustments to the code to get More land that is not getting swallowed up for these that could be used for better things Councilmember Rosemarger
- Thank you. I I'm excited about this. I am I wish it was actually a little Larger I guess for many storage for something but I would be up for just saying no more new mini storages in the city of Bloomington one time I had a constituent meeting and Someone did say it saved their marriage because they were combining homes and they got to put things in mini storage for a while So I also think like that's a valid use
- And just to also like touch on the the residents question or who called who who on zoom we have many storages already kind of all over the place and there is at least one well I can think of two right now right on the beeline so if people are walking or biking their belongings there's one right on the beeline it reminds me of the
- Book the goldfinch right where he does take public transit to store his famous stolen piece of art. Thanks Thank you, are there other councilmember comments
- I'll go ahead and make one then, not seeing others right now. I wanted to address Council Member Asari's point about storage unit demand with an anecdotal story that last summer I did some research into if I needed a storage unit. Was there one available? Kind of thinking to myself, if a lot of students need to store items over the summer, then that might be peak demand. There were plenty of units available, and I was honestly shocked about how much they cost.
- hundreds of dollars a month and I was just floored at some of those prices in terms of speaking to Mr. Gulick's kind of early point that they are real money makers for whoever develops them, but they are not really beneficial.
- to the city in terms of activating the street, in terms of being a place where community members can congregate and socialize and have activities. And they don't have employees, so they are not producing jobs. They're really not an economic benefit. And I think that we have, at this point, plenty of storage options. Once again, that is based on my anecdotal personal research.
- And then in terms of kind of your other concern, like who are people using self-storage? Do they care about this change? At the Planning Commission, there were zero public comments related to this ordinance. And it was something that had to be noticed publicly on postcards to the entire city, and there was nobody who commented on it in any way.
- I will certainly be supporting this change this evening Are there other councilmember comments Seeing none will the clerk please call the roll on ordinance 2025 25 Councilmember daily. Yes Zulik yes, sorry. Yes Rosenberger. Yes
- Rallo Yes Piedmont Smith. Yes Stasberg. Yes All right. Thank you. So that one passed seven zero on to the next 2025-26 be introduced and read by the clerk by title and synopsis only second It's been moved and seconded to introduce ordinance 2025 26. Will the clerk please call the roll on that motion? Councilmember Zulek. Yes
- Asari. Yes. Rosenberger. Yes. Rollo. Yes. Piedmont-Smith. Yes. Stosberg. Yes. Daly. Yes. Thank you. Will the clerk please read. Ordinance 2025-26 to amend Title 20 of the Bloomington Municipal Code regarding use table amendment, fraternity or sorority house, artist studio or workshop,
- vehicle fleet operations large and small. The synopsis is as follows. 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, asterisk, asterisk, that is currently shown associated with the use of fraternity or sorority that reference use specific standards that were removed in 2023.
- 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 the use office as a permitted use in the mixed use student housing district. And vehicle fleet operations.
- This amendment would add an asterisk to the use table to reference use 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 2025 be adopted. Second. Thank you, Mr. Grulick. Go ahead.
- Really development services manager again. So these series of amendments actually represent really more of kind of a housekeeping to the use table in that changes to the use table require notification to all affected property owners and so because of some of the uses touch multiple zoning districts within the city and
- Oftentimes, in order to meet all of our legal requirements, we have to send a notice to every member, every property owner within the city if we do changes to the use table. So we don't do those very often because that's a big undertaking for us financially as well as physically. So the amendments as part of this ordinance just are kind of some cleanup. So there was a change to the use specific standards that was done to the UDO last year, I believe,
- that dealt with the removal of you specific standards for the use fraternity or sorority, but we could not remove the asterisk that reference those standards in the use table because as I mentioned that.
- would require notification of the entire city for changing the use table. So this change is simply removing that asterisk that is associated with the use fraternity or sorority house that previously referenced some use specific standards. So by removing those use specific standards, this also involves a slight renumbering to the use specific standards. There were three other uses that the numbers for those change. So this has a minor housekeeping
- Um,
- cleanup as associated with this one as well. And then another change that has been long on the list to try to give some more flexibility in the mixed use student housing district. Oftentimes when we have projects come forward that have ground floor commercial space or other uses, sometimes they struggle to fill some of those uses. So there's been some requests to allow for office space within the mixed use student housing district to give some more flexibility for that use.
- They're proposing to add that as a permitted use within the mixed use student housing district, as well as adding the used artist studio or workshop as a permitted use in mixed use student housing district as well.
- Excuse me, again, earlier this year in the beginning part of the year when we did our annual series of use table amendments, we introduced some new use specific standards for the use vehicle fleet operations. But again, we could not add the asterisk that referenced those in the use table because that would involve changes to the use table itself. So at this time, we are adding the asterisk to reference those use specific standards that were already approved. So these were part of the amendments
- That were heard earlier that the point that the council approved about a month and a half ago So those are already in place. We're just doing some cleanup here to add the asterisk that references though So again, this was heard by the Planning Commission last month And they voted 5-0 to forward this to you with a favorable recommendation and I'm happy to answer any questions Thank you. And excuse me I'm gonna pass the gavel over to councilmember Piedmont Smith because we have an amendment for this one and
- There is an amendment Brought forward by councilmember Stossburg. So so I guess I would like to move amendment 1 to ordinance 2025 26 All right councilmember Stossburg, please describe the amendment so Mr. Grulick actually already described what the amendment does. It's regarding the fraternity and sorority section the as it's written
- The attachment related to this only included removal of the asterisk which tracks to a particular section of the UDO that describes what these special requirements are for that and there are no more special requirements and so but the a change that was made at the planning commission level that was not in the original packet and not in the original attachment a was to also then delete that
- reference that attract back to that 20-03-03-0 B10, I think. And so then really it is literally just deleting the heading fraternity and sorority house and then renumbering, excuse me, renumbering everything else past that, so making 11 into 10 and 12 into 11, et cetera, et cetera, since that's no longer needed.
- Any questions about this amendment. All right. Seeing no questions. Is there anybody in the public who would like to comment on this amendment which is just taking out a section that doesn't have anything in it anymore. I don't see anybody in chambers. Is there anybody on Zoom who would like to comment. No nobody on Zoom.
- All right, we will come back to council. Any final comments on the amendment? I cannot see council member Rallo, but I assume I will see if he has a comment. Nope. Okay. All right. Clerk Bolden, could you please call the roll on amendment one to ordinance 2025-26?
- Councilmember sorry Yes Councilmember Rosenberger. Yes Rallo Yes Piedmont Smith. Yes Stasberg. Yes Daly. Yes Yes, thank you Is adopted the vote of seven to zero I'll turn the gavel back over to the president Stasberg great. Thank you
- So now we are back to ordinance 2025-26 as amended. Are there any council member questions about the ordinance as a whole? All right, seeing no questions. I think that means that we need to go to public comment. So are there any members of the public who would like to make a comment on ordinance 2025-26? If you're in chambers, you can make your way to the podium.
- If you're online you can go ahead and raise your hand using the reactions tab. Do we have anybody raising their hand on zoom. No. OK. Not seeing anybody still. Let's go ahead and come back to counsel for any council member comments on this ordinance.
- Seeing no comments. Will the clerk please call the roll on ordinance 2025 26 as amended Yes, councilmember Rosenberger, yes Rallo Yes Piedmont Smith. Yes Stasberg. Yes Zulek. Yes. Sorry. Yes Thank you
- Great thank you very much that motion passes 6-0 Now we're on to the next one lacking a parliamentarian who would like to make that motion? Councilmember Piedmont Smith I Move that ordinance 2025-27 be read and introduced by title and synopsis only by the City Clerk
- Seconded to introduce ordinance 2025 27. Will the clerk please call the roll on that motion to introduce? Yes Piedmont Smith. Yes Stasberg. Yes Zulek. Yes. Sorry. Yes Rosenberger. Yes Thank you. Well the court please read
- Ordinance 2025-27 to amend Title 20 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 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 is
- Since this use is proposed to no longer be allowed in those districts referenced I Move that ordinance 2025-27 be adopted All right, mr. Gerlich you are up again
- Thank you. So again, as I kind of prefaced at the beginning of the overall presentation, there are several uses that we are looking to slightly reduce in the UDO use table of the districts where those are allowed. So this particular amendment would amend the zoning districts where the use vehicle fuel station is allowed. So we are proposing to amend the zoning
- You stable to allow this only in the mixed use corridor zoning district. So as I mentioned with other presentations, you know, there's still a lot of land that is available for this use within the community that is zone mixed use corridor. We're just simply reducing the areas where those could be allowed. With this, since we are proposing to take this out of some of the zoning districts that are referenced in the use specific standards, there are four of those use specific standards that need to be modified to remove language referencing districts
- where the use is no longer allowed. So as I mentioned, this was heard at the planning commission just a few weeks ago, July 14th, and they voted five zero to forward this to you with a favorable recommendation. And so with that, I'm happy to answer any questions. Thank you. Are there any questions about the vehicle fuel station change for the use table?
- Councilmember sorry Question is just them about whether there are any non-conforming ones and the impacts on non-conforming Yeah, so again, just like self storage units There are certainly a few of these that probably do exist in the zoning districts where we are proposing to remove those from those would be grandfathered They are allowed to continue and remain they just just can't expand on the sites where they are now
- So by expansion, what I mean is adding new fuel pumps or expanding onto the physical building itself. It doesn't prevent them from changing out fuel pumps, you know, if something goes bad or if they have to change out the underground tanks or something like that. It does not prevent them from remodeling the inside of the stores or doing general maintenance to the buildings or the tanks or anything like that. It just prevents adding new tanks or expanding the building.
- And if they were to expand, for example, to provide more food services, would this also count as expansion? So that's a great question. If they were expanding to add a permitted use, such as a restaurant, then that could be allowed. But they couldn't add the component that wouldn't be allowed, which is the vehicle fuel pumps. Thank you. Other questions?
- I have a quick one just for clarity. What if they wanted to add electrical charging stations? Yep, so though that would that would be allowed Because we don't look at those as a separate vehicle as the gas pumps themselves Okay, so that's like a separate use. That's not yeah. We yes, it gets categorized separately. So if an existing non-conforming fuel station with this wanted to add electric charging stations and
- that would be allowed? Yes, I believe so. I don't see anything that would prevent that from being expanded. Okay, thank you. Council Member Aralo. Mr. Gorlick, I'm supposed there's a transfer of ownership. Does that affect the use? No, that does not. Okay, thanks. Other questions?
- All right, not seeing other questions. Thank you very much. Let's go ahead and go to public comments on ordinance 2025-27 vehicle fuel station. If there's any members of the public wishing to comment on this, if you're on Zoom, you can raise your hand or send a chat message to the host. I don't see any. Oh, there is one person in chambers. Go ahead and step forward. Please make sure that you sign in on the pad there and state your name for the record. And then you'll have up to three minutes. OK.
- I noticed at the college mall there is a brand new charging station, probably at least a dozen for electric cars. Possibly maybe they would. If you could state your name for the record. Virginia Southern. Sorry, I was writing it as I was. That's okay. Yeah, so it was puzzling to me because it said fuel station. I was thinking maybe they should say fossil fuel station or something like that because it's still a fueling
- facility. And even though this facility is not open yet at the college mall, it's probably a good use there. It's on the backside where nobody parks anymore really. So anyway, I thought it might be uncomplicated things if they don't have to notify everybody again, that maybe they should use fossil fuel in some places instead of just fueling. That was my only comment. Thank you. Thank you.
- Are there are there any hands raised on zoom? No, okay Not seeing anybody else in chambers. We will come back to counsel Councilmember Piedmont Smith Miss other makes a good point and so I looked up the definition of vehicle fuel stations
- And it says a facility limited to retail sales to the public of gasoline biodiesel electricity ethanol fuel blends hydrogen natural gas or other fuels for motor vehicles. So it seems to me that it does include electrical charging stations for electric vehicles. So I wanted to go back to Mr. Grulick and see if if there's a nonconforming prior use and they did want to add
- electric charging stations, it seems like that would count as...
- We have not considered any time that a business wants to add charging stations as the use on there That's just an ancillary use that occurs on the property that they have that so we've dealt with this in lots of situations where certain businesses have had Charging stations installed whether it's a Tesla, you know businesses or churches or other situations where you're actually You know required to have certain charging stations once your lot gets over a certain number of parking spaces So it's not a separate use
- you know, you still have a main use that is occurring on the property. So the electric charging stations, you know, we don't consider that a separate, we don't consider that a vehicle fuel station use in and of itself. Certainly we can look at making sure that the UDO is clear. You know, since we're removing this use from some districts and this question has come up, you know, we'll certainly put this on the list of things to make sure that we're clear in the UDO that the installation of electric charging station is not this use in and of itself.
- Because certainly we don't want to discourage that you know, we want to promote that as much as possible So we'll look through and if you know, there's anything that's gonna be cleaned up to make that clear. We'll certainly do that Yeah, I think it would need to be clarified in the definition, but I appreciate hearing that that's currently not considered Equal to a gasoline pump Thank you Questions or follow-up councilmember Rallo
- Yeah, following up on that, Mr. Garlic, so we don't specify where to put electric charging stations so they can occur in all districts. Is that correct? Yes. Right now, as I mentioned, we have not looked at that as a separate use in any situation or applied a setback requirement for those pumps or charging stations. Okay.
- So this is something for future consideration. I don't know. I mean, like you, I would like them to be much more available for people, but I don't know if there's a downside of where they occur and so forth. So anyway, look forward to maybe that discussion sometime later. Sounds good. Yep. Thank you. Are there other last questions before we go to comments?
- Are there any councilmember comments then related to this ordinance? Councilmember Rosenberger Thanks for doing this. I know councilmember Flaherty is not here, but it's great too that he Got the ball rolling on these things I think it is I mean these are in our climate action plan and it's neat to see us taking steps to change the UDO to reflect what our
- Residents stated as our goals. So thanks Thank you other councilmember comments I will make a short comment that I also think that it's worth clarifying that definition of
- of vehicle fueling station. And I also want to point out that we also have a definition for electric vehicle charging facility. And so my guess is that the definition for electric vehicle charging facility is newer than the definition for vehicle fuel station. And so it was potentially overlooked at some point that
- the definition for a vehicle fueling station included that electricity piece. And I also want to clarify for the member of the public who brought this up, like thank you for bringing this up, but also to change that definition would not require the broad mailing notice that was required for a use table change. And so that kind of change would just be called a text amendment and could just be done kind of in the normal course of things where it goes through the planning commission and then goes from the planning commission to here.
- mentions and opportunities for the public to get involved, but there's not that cost associated with mailing a letter or a postcard to every single resident. So that is a change that I would encourage us to look at, and I will commit to following up on that with planning to make sure that gets done as it's able. So unless there are other comments,
- Will the clerk please call the roll on Ordinance 20 25 27 Councilmember Piedmont Smith. Yes Stasburg. Yes, Daley. Yes, Zulek. Yes, sorry. Yes Rosenberger. Yes, Rallo. Yes Thank you
- Thank you very much that passes seven zero on to the next one It's been motioned and seconded to introduce ordinance 2025 28. Will the clerk please call the roll on that motion? Councilmember Stasberg. Yes Daily. Yes, Zulek. Yes. I'm sorry. Yes Rosenberger. Yes, Rallo Yes
- Yes. Thank you. And just to clarify for the public that are here when we have a member participating by assume all all votes have to be by roll call. So that's why this is happening every time. So will a clerk please read ordinance 20 25 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 they use vehicle wash would be allowed. The proposed amendment would allow this use as a permitted use in the mixed court mixed use corridor zoning district only. I was waiting for. I'm sorry. Thank you. I move that ordinance twenty twenty five dash twenty eight be adopted. Second. Thank you. Mr.
- Thank you. So again, just kind of following up on earlier comments.
- you know, as we look through the zoning code for certain uses that we felt like could be modified in terms of the zoning districts where those are allowed. Vehicle washes or car washes was another one of those things that's long been on our list of things to look at and reevaluate. So as we are looking to kind of reduce the zoning districts where a lot of the automobile-oriented uses are located, vehicle wash was certainly one of those, and so we are proposing, in keeping with the other uses that we've briefly discussed,
- to make this a permitted use in the MC, the mixed use corridor zoning district only. That would be the only change associated with this proposal. There are no other changes to the use specific standards or anything that would pertain to this. So the Planning Commission heard this petition as well and voted five zero to forward this to you with a favorable recommendation.
- Thank you. And we also have an amendment on this one. And Councilmember Piedmont Smith is away from the dice. But if somebody would like to move that amendment. Introduce Amendment 1 to Ordinance 2025 28 second. Thank you. Councilmember Piedmont Smith is not
- present at the moment, but I think that it's on page 35 of our packet if you're uncertain. It is simply a replacement of the original attachment A. I think there was just an error in putting the packet together and the wrong table got inserted as the attachment for this particular ordinance. So the amendment just inserts the correct
- part of the table Are there any questions on amendment one to ordinance 2025 28 All right, I'm seeing no questions. We'll go ahead and go to the public so if you have any comments in the public for amendment one to
- Excuse me ordinance 2025 28 replacing the the attachment to include the correct allowed use table Can approach the podium or you can raise your hand on zoom? Are there any comments on zoom No Thank you very much coming back to council. Then are there any councilmember comments related to amendment one? I
- None, will the clerk please call the roll on amendment 1 to ordinance 2025 28? Yes councilmember daily. Yes Zulek. Yes. Sorry. Yes Rosenberger. Yes Rallo Yes Piedmont Smith. Yes Stasburg. Yes
- Passes unanimously. So now we are back to councilmember questions on ordinance 2025 28 as amended So are there any questions by councilmembers for the ordinance? regarding vehicle wash councilmember, sorry
- I promise this question is not about people who fall out of the zone. The question is only somewhat relevant. Well, I'm sorry. It is totally relevant so that Roberts doesn't jump up in his grave or something. There has been this question about whether or not on the East Side crew car wash why we weren't allowed to have vacuum cleaners, and I know that
- The introduction of this legislation was then talked about in the press by the planning department saying, oh, we're about to introduce some legislation around car washes. So could you help us? It's our first chance to talk to you this evening. No joking. But can you help us understand a little bit why there are no
- Vacuums on the east side car wash. Yeah, there was nothing from the planning department or the UDO that said they could not have those So that was something they chose on their own. Okay, that's good to know and then do any of these do any of these changes I mean with the with the fact that there is a I mean, there's quite a demand for car wash I mean I you know
- particularly liked the Taco Bell on the east side, but I mean, my wife is very happy that there's a car wash there. It's like you have kids, you need your cars cleaned. But are we concerned with any of these changes affecting the supply and affecting market needs for car washes in town? Yeah. Again, just as I touched on with some of the other ones, the zoning districts where this use is allowed still is very plentiful.
- within the city in terms of where you can have a car wash. The MC Zoning District is found in a lot of places. So, you know, this use can certainly occur. You know, as I mentioned, we're just trying to slim down a little bit of some of the places where this use can occur. But there's certainly lots of areas where it can. You know, we're still working. There's one currently under construction on West 3rd and another one that's possibly starting right across the street from it. So there will certainly be plenty of supply of car washes.
- Thank you so much and thank you also for clarifying that it was not the city who did not put in or did not allow for the vacuums. Thank you. Thank you. I want to clarify that I actually contacted CBU about the vacuum question too and it also was not CBU. So yeah. Are there any other council member questions. OK. Seeing none let's go ahead and go to.
- Public comments on ordinance 2025-28 as amended. If you're a member of the public who would like to comment on this ordinance regarding vehicle wash, go ahead and approach the podium. If you're online, you can raise your hand using the reactions tab. I don't see anybody moving in chambers. Has anybody raised their hand on Zoom? No. Okay. I'll revert us back to council then. Are there any
- Closing comments from council members regarding ordinance 2025 28 as amended Seeing none will the clerk please call the roll on ordinance 2025 28 as amended Yes Sorry, yes Rosenberger. Yes, Rallo Yes, Piedmont Smith. Yes, Stasburg. Yes, Daly. Yes, I
- Thank you that passes 7-0 on to the next 25-29 be introduced and read by the clerk by title and synopsis only Thank you, it's been moved and seconded to introduce ordinance 2025 29. Will the clerk please call the roll on that motion? councilmember Asari Yes Rosenberger Yes Rallo Yes Piedmont Smith. Yes
- Stasberg. Yes daily. Yes And Zulik, yes Thank you. Will the clerk please read Ordinance 2025-29 to amend title 20 of the Bloomington Municipal Code regarding use table amendment and definitions tattoo or piercing parlor and
- The synopsis is as follows. This amendment would reclassify how the use tattoo or piercing parlors 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 twenty nine be adopted. Second. All right. Mr. Good luck. You're up for one last time. Thank you. So this is a minor amendment and as opposed to all the previous ones that we've kind of been discussing
- We are not proposing to remove this use or restrict the areas where it can occur. In fact, kind of the opposite. This use tattoo or piercing parlor has always been just a specific defined use in the zoning code and it's kind of an antiquated approach to this use that's certainly not what is prevalent in society anymore in terms of where you can get businesses that offer this service.
- This is something that's very common with a lot of personal service businesses, to get piercings at the same time as you do other self-care
- things. We are proposing to redefine how this use is treated within the UDO and places within the use personal service and that would then allow it to be occurred in a lot more zoning districts. So you can see on the use table now the use is only allowed in the MM and MC zoning district and the MD by placing it or classifying it as a personal service it allows it to be in a lot more zoning districts. So with this
- We are removing the references to tattoo or piercing parlor in numerous places within the zoning code, within the parking table, some of the use specific restrictions, other definitions. So this is really just kind of moving where this use occurs within the UDO. So the planning commission heard this as well and voted five to zero to send this to you with a favorable recommendation. Thank you. Are there council member comments about ordinance 2025-29?
- Sorry councilmember questions. Oh my gosh questions councilmember questions a Little on autopilot they're not seeing any questions right now. We'll just go right to public comment If there's a member of the public who would like to comment on ordinance 20 25 29 Can make your way to the podium if you're online you can go ahead and raise your hand. I Don't see anybody moving toward the podium in chambers has anybody raised their hand on zoom. No, I
- Thank you very much. I think that reverts back to council. Are there any council member comments regarding ordinance 2025-29? Seeing none, I'll just go ahead and say thank you for making this amendment so that tattoo and piercing parlour can get treated as other small personal services are. I think that that's a move in a positive direction. So with that, if the clerk could please call the roll on ordinance 2025-29.
- Councilmember Rosenberger? Yes. Rallo? Yes. Liedemann-Smith? Yes. Stasberg? Yes. Daly? Yes. Zulek? Yes. Asari? Yes. Thank you. Bless you. Thank you. That motion passes 7-0.
- Thank you, mr. Grulick and the planning team for this and the Plain Commission for these many little small UDO amendments Moving on I Move that ordinance 2025 dash 30 be introduced and read by the clerk by title and synopsis only It's been moved and seconded to introduce ordinance 2025 30 if the clerk could please call the roll on that motion Councilmember Rallo
- Yes, Piedmont Smith. Yes Stasberg. Yes Daley. Yes, Zulek. Yes. Sorry. Yes Rosenberger. Yes. Thank you Thank you. Will the clerk please read? Ordinance 25 20 25 30 to vacate a public parcel regarding a 12-foot public outdoor
- I'm so sorry a 12 foot public alley adjacent to 909 East University Street the synopsis is as follows the petitioner Veronica Bardiner Request a vacation of an alley right-of-way to her that is includes 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, I move that ordinance 2025-30 be adopted I
- Second. Thank you. So this process here in hearing this ordinance counts as the public hearing on this alley vacation. And as such it needs to be conducted pursuant to Indiana Code 36 7 3 12. So we will hear presentations first by the petitioner themselves then by planning staff. And then the third group of presentation could be any person aggrieved
- by the proposed vacation, who wants to object, and that those objections are limited to the following categories, questions of access, use of public ways, and the orderly development of the neighborhood or unit as a whole. Then we will have council questions, public comments, and then a vote related to the ordinance. So who is here to present for the petitioner?
- Thank you, if you could make sure to introduce yourself for the record, and signing in would be helpful for the clerk in terms of the spelling of your name. Thank you very much. Appreciate the introduction on the procedures. President Stossberg and members of the Common Council, my name is Dan Sear. I'm an attorney with Pagnelli Law Group in Bloomington, and I'm representing Petitioner Veronica Bardoner for the petition, as mentioned. The alley is oriented along the northern boundary
- of 909 East University Street and is within the Elm Heights Historic District. This neighborhood is about seven or eight lots wide for that block. A petition to vacate begins with the City Council, as mentioned. So this was not previously heard by the planned commission or the BZA, so we appreciate the council's time on the initial hearing. As an overview,
- What I'll briefly try to touch on is the alley itself going giving you some pictures showing you the access routes as mentioned in the statute there's some mandatory objections and
- Those are not met by anything in this petition as far as it doesn't block off any access to a public building. It doesn't block off access to any public road. And we'll go into those in a little bit more detail with the history and the legal framework for this proceeding. We'll show you some pictures about the alley restoration efforts by the petitioner because we think that's part of the beneficial use and also showing you that there's no future public use of this alley. We'll have some comments on the draft ordinance and some benefits that we
- for the city Here at the picture on the right side. There's a label for the petitioners property So you're seeing there a garage near the north end of the property. It's a it's a garage in the backyard And this picture is taken from the 15 foot wide public alley But the alley we're seeking to vacate is 12 feet wide It remains enclosed has remained enclosed for we believe up to 40 years
- years of similar use to this And then the adjacent property owner at nine ten east second street has a fence that partially encloses Said alley and so that's where we show you in blue. This may be hard on this screen But we do want to emphasize that the 15 foot public alley does facilitate various modes of transport vacating the alley in question does not
- impact any pedestrian transit. It's not used for a walkway or pedestrian. Imagine this is an alley that has essentially encroachments across it throughout the entire neighborhood. It's never been used as a public alley as far as we can see. So it does not impede any service vehicles or emergency access. There's been no responses from fire or anybody else other than utilities. There's some overhead utilities.
- regarding utilities, we can get more into that. This will not limit any parking access. Quickly reviewing here the points in the packet. We started with the city Bloomington resolution 87-2. This outlines some extra criteria that Bloomington applies to the state statute. That's where we analyze some of those in our submissions and the notice to the property owners.
- filed that even before this petition. We did contact all neighboring property owners to request any comments. I don't mind any questions, but I understand if you wanna stick with the order. I'm so sorry. It was sent out in a packet. Yes, and it's really just more of an index. It's our draft ordinance and the memo from the council, so that may not be necessary.
- Sorry, I hope you're not missing too much there. As far as the past review, we found approximately 70 ordinances where the city has used this resolution to vacate alleys for all kinds of different reasons, and we supplied just a sample of some of the ordinances that we found. Going back over the years, they're typically titled to vacate a public parcel. That's why we wanted to review. It's not super common, but it has, of course, been received by the City Council, and these have been approved.
- This image shows the black walnut tree. This is part of a longer process of just trying to improve the backyard, going through the Historic Preservation Commission, receive a certificate of appropriation to have that tree removed. It was causing all sorts of problems and that our client paid for that, of course, and these are just part of the contributions and trying to propose the beneficial use to this property and putting it back into private ownership.
- So that black walnut tree was 32 inches in diameter and it's no longer there. This is sort of a before and after. Wanna give you an overview of some of the investments and maintenance that has been done. So we're just hoping to continue that with the alley being vacated. This is part of the genesis of the problem. Just generally trying to avoid these fences that are encroaching into the public alley.
- removing that debris Petitioner has of course incurred the costs going through the city process with the Historic Preservation Commission We would like to be able to install an in-kind replica of the historic fence The issue there. I think if you can picture it I'll show you later is that the the historic preservation of course cannot authorize us to put a fence into the alley and so they would like the fence to be up to the garage and
- which is sort of difficult and creates a practical problem. Can't maintain the garage or clean gutters, or it would impede actual parts of the petitioner's property. So much of this is hopefully just the last part in a process of trying to clear up this alley and what we think would be a good public benefit, all following, of course, the historic district guidelines with regard to any improvements. And the planning memo does highlight some of those effects.
- This is just another angle of the ongoing fence and the history of tax payments on the petitioner's property and sort of the history of tax delinquencies and noncompliance on the adjoining property owner.
- You can see it there. So just an overall issue, it would be best, we think, to put this land back into private ownership. It previously was private ownership, of course, before it was dedicated. We do think it will have all of these enhanced benefits that are on the screen. And as far as we can tell, no negatives. I think your major concern would be access, but with the adjacent public alleys, a 15-foot alley on the west side of the parcel,
- There's hardly, we can't see any real impact of vacating the alley to the public. And so, as you will see in the planning and transportation department's submission and
- correlating with the state statute and the city criteria they identify as far as we could tell only one Potential concern is that it might impact future use We think that is a very minimal objection We think that the alley has been enclosed for 40 years It's too narrow to allow any future bike path or pedestrian path. It's fenced in and there's already We think lawful non-conforming structures that already block portions of the alley. It's a low traffic residential zone
- So we think the limited or no public use concerns there. So we had some additional proposals for the ordinance. We just want you to see them. We understand we've worked closely with, of course, the county attorney on drafting that ordinance, but we did have some additional findings for you to consider. Briefly just saying we've complied with the city resolution on it and we don't have any, there's no objection that
- that violates that criteria. Centerpoint Energy has no objection to the petition, and Duke Energy is not opposing vacation of the alley. They, of course, would request that their easements be protected, and they would request some customary findings. We, of course, would like to review those, but no major problem with what the public utility needs at Duke Energy for the overhead lines. So here in the end here,
- You've seen these before we thank you for considering the petition look forward to answering any questions We do think this is good policy and and would continue to allow the petitioner to enhance her property Thank you Thank you very much Moving on in the hearing section now, we'll hear from planning staff. You could make sure to introduce yourself For the record. Thank you
- Good evening council Jackie Scanlon assistant director planning and transportation All right, so you received our memo I'll just briefly go over it if that's all right and add a couple of things Okay, so as mr. Sir described the petition is for a request of a
- a portion of an alley that is north of 909 East University Street. It's roughly about 708 square feet between 909 and the property to the north, which is 912 East Second. We did hear back from Centerpoint. They did not have an objection. Duke, as Mr. Sur described, requested an easement and City of Bloomington utilities objected to the vacation.
- The petitioners requesting something slightly different than most of the vacations council sees which is vacation and full ownership of the vacated 12 foot right of way typically when vacation requests are seen the right of way is split equally between both adjacent property owners and In your packet you received there was some information from the owners of 912 II as well as from a representative from
- of those property owners that they would prefer to receive six feet if you are to approve the vacation, as is the common practice. Otherwise, they request that you deny the request. So a couple of things. The petitioner submitted in their packet seven examples of previous vacations. We wanted to point out that the most recent one is 29 years old. It has not been the practice of council in some time to approve right of way vacations in residential areas.
- largely for the reason that Mr. Sur mentioned, which is potential future use. So 12 feet wide is wide enough for a path. If we were to want to do that in the future, we have paths that are eight or 10 feet wide here in Bloomington. And so we would typically request that right-of-way be maintained for those potential future connections. Additionally, with the request for denial from City of Bloomington utilities, that is something that they could use that right-of-way in the future if there were some needs.
- For example, further west in the same neighborhood, there are east-west alleys that are not improved, that are 12 feet wide, that are used largely by those neighbors and neighborhoods as pedestrian connections. Again, this alley is not being used that way at this time.
- on this block because it is blocked off by fences on almost the entirety of this block. But as the city in the future or now, we could request that those encroachments be removed and allow that space to be used by more people than just the adjacent property owners, which is again,
- Improved alleys, or excuse me, unimproved alleys further to the west that are being used by pedestrians and do have some City of Bloomington utility infrastructure in them, so something that could be done here in the future. Okay, I just wanna make sure I get all my notes here. So the,
- The issue appears to be, so in the fall of 2022, the petitioner started asking the city about removing a large black walnut tree that was in the right-of-way because they were doing work on their garage and weren't able to get a warranty for that work because of how close the walnut tree was to that structure. So went to the HPC, asked to have it removed. It is part of a local historic district, and I believe that was denied the first time. So then the petitioner worked with a number of arborists in town
- as well as Haskell Smith, who's the current urban forester, about the health of the tree, and would it be okay to remove it, and got permission to approve it, excuse me, remove it, as I mentioned in the memo with COA 2355 to take it down. So the HPC did eventually approve that they could remove that tree. They also requested at that time to remove the tree,
- fixed the fence that you saw in one of the last pictures Mr. Sears showed, which was in the alley. So it was on property they do not own, and so the HPC said that the property
- You know, he mentioned that it would be in kind. So the HPC actually determined that it wasn't the same fence, but it was very similar and that they would let them go forward with that design, but it would have to be on their own property, which makes sense that they're approving for them to build on their own property, not city property. They have not apparently gone forward with that based on the pictures that have been submitted, but do have an approval to do that.
- So again, as they pointed out, encroachments into this particular alleyway, especially on this block, are common. It's not actually even clear that the garage on 912 East 2nd isn't encroaching. When you look at the
- survey that was submitted by the petitioner, and this is all they needed to do was describe the legal area of the alley. But oftentimes when there are structures close to those areas, those will be cited as well. So their garage is on the survey, but the neighboring garage is not. And if you measure the separation, they don't appear to be much more than 12 feet apart, and so it's unclear that that garage isn't actually already encroaching.
- The neighbors to the north also have a fence. So if you were to approve the vacation and give the entirety of the 12 feet to Dr. Bardner, then what would that do with the improvements that the neighbor to the north has put on this property as well in the public right of way, what would happen to that property? Excuse me, to those improvements. So I mentioned here a little another issue that could be created in the fourth paragraph in the memo.
- if you vacate the full 12 feet, then now they can put a fence at that 12 foot line. And that would be 12 feet closer, obviously, than now to the existing accessory structure to the north. So when that accessory structure went in, I'm sure a long time ago, there was an expectation that there was a separation there. There's a planted alley there. So instead of,
- Splitting like you would in a normal vacation situation They're asking to retain all of the 12 feet and now they've got their neighbors fence 12 feet closer to their property than anyone could have expected Previously, so that's just something to consider that also means that any new structures or expansion of that garage that can be built can be built much closer to the Existing garage of the neighbor as well if the vacation is approved. So I just wanted to address a couple of the specific Findings from the petitioner
- The tax revenue increase on this would be minimal. It's a 708 square foot area. The liability here in this alleyway is no greater than in any other alley location in the city and obviously we have lots and lots of miles of unimproved alleys that people use, have encroached in that we don't go in and do enforcement on. We let people to continue to use as we did in this situation until the fence came down.
- The municipal costs, again, are minimal at this location for the city, for the existing situation. Doing the vacation doesn't support historic preservation in this area, as mentioned by the petitioner. The historic preservation pattern is alleys, unimproved or not. I think that is also evident by the fact that the BHPC, Bloomington Historic Preservation Commission, said they could rebuild the fence on their own property, that the retention of that alley was important.
- It's interesting that the petitioner talked about that it used to be private ownership, because I'm pretty sure this is part of a subdivision that is more than 100 years old. I mean, this house is almost more than 100 years old. Per county records, it was built in 1929, which means the lot was there before that, and so was the platted alley. So though improvements may have been in it for the last 40 years, the actual platted alley and potential public use have been there for much longer.
- So again, if the city would like additional pedestrian connection here, we can compel removal of any items in the right-of-way There's a definite public use opportunity for pedestrian and utility use in the future Even if vehicular access is not needed at this particular site So for those reasons the department has recommended that you deny the request for the vacation and I'm happy to answer any questions. Thanks Thank you and so then carrying on with
- the hearing. The next presentation is any person aggrieved by the proposed vacation who wants to object.
- I'm going to again note that the objections are limited to the following categories, questions of access, use of public ways, and the orderly development of the neighborhood or unit as a whole. So if you think that you are a person aggrieved by this vacation and you want to object to it, and I see somebody standing, so apparently there's somebody in the room, if you could go ahead and approach and first introduce yourself and
- why you fall into this very specific category of aggrieved. And I also wanna mention at this point, there's also a separate period just for general public comment by any individual as opposed to somebody specifically aggrieved. So please go ahead, sir, thank you. Good evening. My name is Jim Boer from Clendenin, Johnson & Boer, and I'm here to represent Tim Miller and Jenny Southern who own the property at 910 East 2nd Street. It's legally described as Merkers Lot
- 17, it adjoins the alley which is being asked to be vacated. Dr. Bardanner has proposed that the entire alley be vacated to her, and so this alley adjoins the property owned by my clients. Typically, as was just mentioned, the alley would be vacated one half to each of the adjoining owners
- but that's not what's being asked of you this evening by Dr. Bardanner. She's being asked that the entire alleyway be vacated to her, and that's what we object to. The 70 ordinances that have been cited to you by her attorney, many of them are very, very old, and I'd also point out that many of them, the owner of the property,
- was the owner of both parcels on either side of the alley and that the owner was going to erect a new structure and that's what was preventing the erection of the new structure was the vacation of the alley. That's not the case in this case in either situation. Dr. Bardoner does not own both sides of the alley
- and is not going to erect anything but a fence. In this case, the alley vacation will restrict my client's access to their garage, and so that is why it is imperative that you not grant this petition. Their garage has access from the existing alleyway, and if you grant this, it will
- make it more difficult or inconvenient for my clients to access their property. That in and of itself is a valid reason to deny this petition as it's been presented to you to give Dr. Bardonner the entire alleyway. And that is enough reason under Indiana code 367312 to deny this petition as it's been presented to you.
- So I would also mention that Dr. Bardanner could build the fence the way she would like, but she just doesn't want to. She'd like to build it out into the alleyway. She just doesn't want to build it onto her property as close to her garage as she'd like. So please deny this ordinance.
- As it's been presented to you, it will restrict access to my client's property. That in and of itself is enough reason under the Indiana code to deny it. And as you've heard from your planning staff and also from the utilities department, they do not want this to be granted as it's been presented. Thank you very much. Thank you very much.
- Are there any other persons that consider themselves aggrieved persons regarding this ordinance? Has anybody raised their hand on Zoom regarding being an aggrieved person? No. Okay. Thank you very much. So not seeing anybody else move forward as an aggrieved person wanting to make a presentation. We are then to counsel questions.
- Councilmembers, who has questions related to this ordinance? Okay, I'm surprised that there are absolutely no questions. Oh, Councilmember Daley. Sorry, thank you very much. My question is for Attorney Sear. You mentioned in your presentation that this alleyway was not wide enough for a pedestrian
- or a bicycle path, which according to NACTO Urban Bikeway Design Guide, a width of at least 10 feet is often recommended for bike paths and much less for pedestrians. So how do you come to your conclusion that it is not wide enough for a path? It's a good question. Thank you, Council Member Daley. The adjacent property owner's garage has not been surveyed. So I think there is maybe some agreement that we don't know the exact distance between those two.
- we don't think it is very wide for that proper use. It certainly wouldn't be good for a vehicle traffic. And it has overhead power lines. So additionally, there are encroaching structures. So in order to make a passable pedestrian pathway, there would have to be numerous structures that would have to be looked at that could be within that pathway. And essentially, that is the focus of our response to
- The width of the alley it's not been measured and we would have to go along the entire block and it's also noticeable that there's already a public walkway and a vehicle alley on the west side of the parcel and so it would be extremely limited use if there were going to be clearing for a pedestrian pathway if that makes sense, there's already sidewalks on both sides of the houses and
- And so it would be minimal and it seems unlikely to us I can't stand here before you and say that it's impossible that the city could not turn that into something but it seems highly unlikely and would have pretty limited benefit to the city or the users because there's only seven or eight houses wide Are there other councilmember questions councilmember Rallo
- Sorry. Yes, a question for planning. If it's going to restrict access to Mr. Mueller and Ms. Southern's residence, I mean, this seems to be problematic, perhaps unfair. Isn't it better that we consider an alternative proposal that would be
- equally split because I don't want to favor one resident versus another if we are surrendering, vacating this alley that both of them have been adjacent to for decades. Good question. Jackie Scanlon, Assistant Director, Planning and Transportation. Yeah, I mean, our recommendation is that you don't approve the vacation at all. If you were to approve it, we would prefer that you do the split. I mean, even as attorneys here just noted,
- they don't actually know where the accessory structure on the Northern property is. It could be in the alley. So vacating the alley without knowing that and giving the full 12 feet to the South property owner, I think could be problematic. We don't think you should vacate it at all. But if you do, I think the preference would be six and six. But your preference will be to deny. Correct. That's okay. So,
- Very good. Okay. Thank you. No problem. Thank you. Are there other councilmember questions? Councilmember, sorry. Thanks so much. Question for, I think the petitioner most appropriately, but the thing that's somewhat unclear to me is what is it?
- What is it that you're trying to solve? What is the outcome? I get the outcome that we want, the end goal that you want, but I don't see the problem from the petitioner's position. So I think as best summarized in the history of what the petitioner has been trying to accomplish is improving the use of the backyard and these accessory structures
- In order to get a roof on it had to get a tree down went through the approval process for that but the most that she could get from the HPC is a fence that is at the corner of the accessory structure so she would be basically giving up part of her property to put in a fence and so that seems unpref not preferable to
- Locate the fence at the corner of the garage because that isn't even the property line She wishes to be able to put the fence on the property line But if it's there, it's you can't even you can't get around the garage. So so what can I ask a follow-up question? Would I be? correct to characterize this as a step of last resort to being having looked at other options and
- I would definitely agree with that this is the next step and hopefully the last step in the process. So I guess the core question is, what are other options? What are other potential ways of solving this problem that don't involve vacating an alley? Well, I don't know that there are any. Okay, so at its core, at its core, the petitioner
- Concerned that they'll lose some space if they put in if they put in a fence. I Would say it's slightly differently But it is that is the genesis of the concern the ability to put in an in-kind fence on the north end of the property and the current location Given the city's right to the right-of-way. We can't put it in a very good spot So it presents a practical issue and we think that there's we've we've
- We've gone over our position already, so I don't want to make you hear it again But you know, we don't think there's a real harm here and we think that this is a good candidate for a vacation so that we can Get a better use of this part of the property Thanks, I might have some follow-ups, but I'll let somebody else's question. Thank you The petitioner as well if this is a question about just the property line and the fence or
- Why what's the motivation behind requesting the entire alley and not requesting to split it with the other property owner? Thank you for the opportunity to ask about it I think it's more of a question of fairness toward going through The cost of incurring the cost of removing the black walnut tree entirely on petitioner and the cost of a survey and other costs of course just throughout the process and so it doesn't feel fair and
- give both sides of it the same benefit when Only the petitioner has been essentially coming to you and asking you to vacate it. So You may disagree, but that is essentially it feels unfair to to benefit both property owners when both of them don't go in on Trying to support the process and improve the the property such as through the HPC Okay Thank you. Okay other councilmember questions
- Council Member Piedmont-Smith. I guess I'm not sure who is best positioned to answer this, but because Mr. Sears said the petitioner has spent money on the tree removal, I wanted to ask whether our urban forester has actually said that the tree needed to be removed.
- which I know the answer to because I emailed him, but I wanted to get it out there in public because if somebody's going to claim credit, so to speak, for undergoing the cost of removing a tree, is that tree just removed because the petitioner didn't want it or because it structurally had to be removed?
- Okay, I'll tell you what I know, which is pieced together. I watched the old Preservation Commission meetings to try to figure out what was going on at this location, and then Mr. Sear can correct me, but I believe that the request was approved kind of begrudgingly. As I said, I believe there was an initial request that was denied, and then,
- more our risks were involved and I don't think it was, the email that I saw from Mr. Smith indicated that he could see why they would want it taken down as far as like there was some potential health issues but it was definitely, he thought at that time that it could stay and then they didn't end up getting the approval for another year so I don't know if that situation changed after that. Does that make sense?
- Sorry, the email that I saw from the urban forester in 2022 indicated that he could see that it was unhealthy, but he was not willing to say that it needed to come down at that time. And then they worked with him some more after that. Thank you. Councilmember Daly. Thank you, Miss Scanlon to follow up on that. Is it is that why?
- Why the petitioner paid for the cost of the removal because why did the city not pay for the cost of the removal? Was it because they were not wanting it taken down?
- Yeah, I believe because it was the petitioners request right so they were indicating that there was a tree in the right-of-way that they wanted to take down for reasons which I believe as I mentioned I believe it was a reroofing of the accessory structure and then there were issues Getting warranty on that because of how close the tree was And so yes when you request something from the city you are the one who typically pays for it So, you know like all some of the other things that were listed in the packet were like paying for this right-of-way vacation or paying for a survey like
- If you're going to request a petition, you pay for all of the stuff. Right. Okay. Thank you for clarifying. That's helpful. Thank you. Are there other council member questions? Council member, sorry, did you indicate that you had a round two or a follow-up or something? Do you still have that? Probably should for good measure to the petitioner.
- You referenced resolution 8702 that establishes a clear, I think guidelines, additional guidelines that we've set up as a city council to make these type of decisions. And one of those is this, I mean, what we might think of as like a public need test or something like that.
- I'd love to hear your position on how this meets Public need I think we've heard a clear position on particularly that underlying out. There's one element of that which is You know future use is sort of a disqualifying Factor just as or how do you see this as meeting as meeting that public need test? Sure. Thank you for the question and At the present time it doesn't essentially have any
- Use and we do think it would be improved by the continued Better maintenance of it for lack of a better term. The city doesn't maintain these And so by allowing a private property owner to have ownership of it. It generally would improve the growth and value of the properties if you allow them to be, you know selectively
- Expanded I know it's not much. We're talking about as miss Scanlon pointed out. So I think that has a benefit I know that there's a lot of ways to look at that but allowing something that doesn't get taken care of Essentially to be put into private ownership does have a benefit for for the overall neighborhood I think you could see that we could see the ripple effects through that
- I get it. I mean my initial question right is that so If the city cleaned up the alley does that solve the problem? I don't think that They would do that across the unapproved alleys across the city and so we're just hard-pressed But that's but this is where I mean if I mean I
- The question is hypothetical, I get it. So take it at face value. If the city did do that.
- would the petitioner be happy? I mean, because if the argument rests on the fact that private ownership would take care of the alley, but we're not gonna have an alley anymore, and so the person's gonna put the fence and close that alley, but then your argument is that it's going to be of public benefit because it's going to add value to those properties. So the question that I asked was, what are all alternatives?
- So I'd love just a little bit for us to deal with like what other things could be done here because otherwise the argument that's being presented is simply that The petitioner wants a little bit more land and we should facilitate that well is as Previously discussed about the tree problem and the location of the fence and the structure that's there the tree caused a problem and whether they wanted
- You know they don't want to remove trees as a matter of course no one does but it was necessary to preserve damage from being caused by the tree in this case and being able to get a roof replaced and get a warranty that's a general that's that is a private benefit but that kind of policy is good and so.
- with the lot lines essentially as they are now, the structure won't be able to be taken care of as well for the same reasons as you got a private property under coming before the commission to get a tree removal and to be able to pay for that. So it complicates things, I think, when people cannot improve what is largely acknowledged as seen
- taken over by encroachments and things like that. And so we just don't think that that type of area is good and that we acknowledge the value of alleys, but not always. And I think especially when there's already a 15-foot alley to the side, that's just a balancing. It's a balancing that's hard to do. And my final question on this is that why does a 50-50 split not satisfy that need?
- Don't have anything else to add. I'm really sorry It's it's generally just the way that our client is a petitioner taking care of the property and just the benefit that that would provide Thank you. Thank you. I don't think thank you for your time. Yep Your councilmember questions
- All right, seeing none, we'll move on to the next stage of the public hearing, which is public comment. If there are any members of the public who wish to comment on this matter, you can go ahead and approach the podium if you're in chambers or raise your hand if you're online. And then you would have three minutes to speak. I don't see anybody moving in chambers. Do we have any hands raised on Zoom?
- Okay, thank you very much, Zoom commenter. When you're unmuted, you can go ahead, please introduce yourself, stating your name for the record, and then you'll have three minutes. Hi, I'm Paul Rousseau. I'm surprised I'm the only one to speak out. It seems like a really easy call for you to make to agree with the Planning Commission, I mean, the Planning Department, excuse me, and deny the request because
- I see a public cost and a historic district and a right of way that has existed for over a century and all for basically a private benefit having to do with tree removal. It just doesn't make any sense. Thank you. Thank you. Are there any other public comments? Anybody else raised a hand on Zoom?
- Okay, thank you very much. So that brings us back to council member comments and I would like to take this moment and I've been meaning to.
- remind us all of this. But last year, as a council, we passed a limit on this comment and debate portion. If you guys remember that, it was before our current staff was our current staff. And so I've been meaning to bring that back and go, hey, by the way. So it limits us to twice upon a question in terms of comment. The first comment has a maximum of five minutes, and then the second comment a maximum of two minutes. So in terms of timers, we
- We also set those time limits upon ourselves and I wanted to remind our staff of that. So, because now I'm gonna ask council members for any comments on this matter. And I see council member Rallo's hand raised and I just wanna make sure our staff have the timer all set. We all set? Great, council member Rallo, go ahead. Thank you, President Stusburg. Well,
- The removal of the tree may have been a benefit to the petitioner, but I'm not convinced that it was a benefit to the city or the public. So that's is moot to me. And while it might be good or benign to vacate the alley, since it seems to have no utility for pedestrians or public access and so forth,
- In principle, I don't have an objection to the vacation per se, but I do have an objection to benefiting one resident versus another, benefiting one while restricting access of the other. I think it sets a bad precedent, frankly. So if this were to come back with an even split, then I would
- I would certainly be probably favorable unless I hear something in the meantime from constituents, but I'll be voting no. I'll be voting to deny the petition on those grounds. Thank you. Thank you. Are there other council member comments? Council member Asari. Thank you. You know, in these type of cases, I always
- especially when things are brought to us directly from members of the public. Sorry, can the staff restart the timer? Don't worry, I was not gonna take five minutes, I promise. That's okay. I will speak just a little slower now. There you go. When things are brought to us from members of the public, I think that first and foremost, thank you for bringing them to us. I think that everybody,
- deserves to have the full hearing and let us question and give due process, if you will, to the conversation. But we have a criterion that we have to follow. And it was mentioned by the petitioner's lawyer. And there's sort of three issues that I have with it. The first one.
- is that it says very clearly that we have a criterion that this should be for the necessity for the growth of the city. And so we're directed to consider the future potential for public utilization, possible future need for the right-of-way due to future changes in land use. And in this case, I think we have a clear statement from the city utilities, both in terms of some unknowns, but just saying that they oppose the vacation on this basis.
- signals some unresolved future public need and that there are active utilities in the corridor and vacating the right of way could limit access for future maintenance or upgrades and we didn't have enough, I don't think evidence that any type of an easement or something like that would sort of solve that. There's also this need for us to have this compliance with regulations that's mentioned very clearly there and
- One of the things that was presented by both arguing sides was that, in fact, this vacation would present a issue with compliance in that it would put two structures closer to each other than would be allowed in our
- code, and then generally also I think the staff that pointed out, our wonderful planning staff, and thank you for taking so much time and being also just also thank you to the petitioner for being so patient with all of this, but I think that they pointed out that this is, aside from being part of a historical district, that there's connectivity with this alley to other broader networks that are part of our comprehensive plans, et cetera, and so for these reasons collectively,
- I can't vote any other way than no for this vacation as much as I appreciate the fact that it was brought by you and apologies for not being able to support your needs, but I'm going to have to vote no on this. Thank you. Are there other council member comments? Council member Rosenberger. Hi. Thank you so much. Thank you for everyone who is here tonight.
- I have some bullet points, what am I, five minutes, okay. And I'm just gonna kinda go for that. I do wanna say, and I don't think we've talked about it tonight, that you can use an alley that is not yours and is not currently in use. So my neighbor has a garage that encroaches on the alley, and I think if the city ever wanted that alley, she would have to tear down the garage or move it a few feet. And that is an option, and I think a lot of people do choose to build something
- in an alley that's not getting used. I'm not saying everyone should go, well, you can't build a house in an alley. But it's a little bit of your own risk, I think, in how much you want to use it for your own good and benefit that might one day be taken away. But I don't know what you plan to do for the alley. But I do think potentially maybe you can do it as it is, a public space. One thing we didn't talk about, too, really, is we talked only really about the alley vacation.
- in our city code, if you don't have access to an alley, you are allowed to request a curb cut on the street for a driveway for your car. And that takes away very much on demand on street parking, and curb cuts with driveways or drive cuts are just adding danger for everyone involved, drivers, people on bikes, and pedestrians. So I do think there's a lot that we didn't even get to tonight about
- what then becomes allowed for someone who doesn't have alley access. I did look up a little bit about alleys. They've been, when we were talking about historic preservation, it sounds like they've been around since as early as 432 BC in Greek cities. So in the very beginning, they were building streets and they were building alleys, which is a really neat thing and very much, I think, pro-historic preservation. I think, too, Councilmember Daley
- mention Natco and multi-use paths, but Natco also has so many articles about how awesome alleys are and how cities are creating these huge projects to bring alleys back to life as places for green space and gardens and for kids playing and storage of waste and cars and things that maybe you don't want to have cluttering the streets.
- A neat example also of an alley that grew up to be a street here in Bloomington is in my neighborhood, Prospect Hill. And it started as an alley, and now it's a street. And it gets to have homes on it. So there are at least seven houses.
- that are on their own properties that front the alley or street. And it's adding much-needed density in small lots to Prospect Hill that would otherwise not be allowed under our code. So I like taking alleys that direction. I think, too, about alleys that might not be in use for traditional purposes, but some of my friends here collect what they call alley fruit, and they go around with their wild fruit
- bushes and trees all over the place like I have a pawpaw tree in my back alley and people take the pawpaws and I have a persimmon tree that people just take the persimmons and they're like blackberries around and it's just really neat that you can get this kind of like urban agriculture a little bit like or like really local fruit from our alley system I think to just that Councilmember Asari did talk about this that though that
- it's really hard to get something like an alley back if we were to make it a public, a private space and it actually might be impossible to get back. So it is I think for me saying I'm gonna be here some more years but not forever and like maybe that alley should be because people might have big plans for it. A city might have big plans for it later on, especially if we're looking at alleys from 432 BC. I would also say,
- History shows that the city is not in the practice of vacating alleys for private use and uses that do not benefit the public. As the petition notes, we have done a few alley vacations and those ended in 1996. So it's been about 30 years it looks like since we did grant a vacation for a private use like this.
- And I think then if this city for some reason is interested in vacating alleys It should be a whole systems approach and we should look at all of our alleys and what is used and what isn't And what might be better uses for them if we would like to do that So I will be voting. No, thank you Thank you. Are there other councilmember comments? Councilmember Piedmont Smith Yes
- I will be voting no for the reason some of my colleagues have already mentioned. I see no public benefit to vacating this alley and it could in the future be a detriment to the development of the city. I also recognize the impact on garage access for the property owner at 910 West Second Street, which is problematic.
- I find the whole framing of this question to be somewhat disturbing to me because the arguments have been made based on so-called payment or investment by the petitioner, including the tree removal at $6,500, but it was removed because the petitioner wanted it to be removed. It was not removed because it had to be removed.
- My communications with Haskell Smith, the urban forester, were that he wanted to do a further root analysis, and then he said there could have been ways to mitigate damage to the structure that was near the tree, but that the petitioner wanted to go ahead and have it removed. Well, that is the petitioners. Oh, there seems to be some,
- Is anybody speaking somewhere? Okay, anyway. So I find it disingenuous to say, oh, this petitioner has invested so much already. Well, it was their choice. Furthermore, it disturbs me that this petitioner has brought as some kind of evidence that they have always paid their property taxes on time, as opposed to the other property owner. This is totally unnecessary, and it's unfair,
- It just seems like throwing your neighbor under the bus seems to be the modus operandi here, which I totally disapprove of. There are many reasons why somebody may be late with paying property taxes. They shouldn't be judged for that. So just the whole thing leaves a bad taste in my mouth. But just on the legal merits, I think I have to vote no.
- Thank you. Are there other council member comments? All right, I'll go ahead and make a comment. My colleagues have shared many things that I've also been thinking, but there's a couple of things that I want to mention in addition to what they've shared, one of which is just generally speaking, if we vacate this one end of an alley, then we have a dead end alley.
- And I think that that's especially kind of a misuse of publicly. And I think a dead end alley is especially not useful. So if we want to consider vacating this alley, I think that then it needs to be a broader look at the whole alley, which Councilmember Rosenberger kind of mentioned as kind of like this larger plan on vacating alleys. And that is not here. So I find that problematic.
- Secondly, I also just want to second what councilmember Piedmont Smith was mentioning in terms of some of that evidence and some of this Presentation I just think is kind of in poor taste in terms of how it was sent out in the packet and presented on the screen and that also leaves kind of a bad and nasty taste in my mouth and the idea of going like okay, I just want you public entity to give me a
- 760 square feet of property and that's essentially what this ask is this is saying hey, I would like you to give me property and That's not the way property transfers tend to work in this country if we want to Acquire more property usually we have we have to buy it
- And so to be a public entity that then is just going to gift it to an individual, it feels just really wrong to me. And lastly, I want to highlight a piece of our transportation plan that was adopted in 2019. And this paragraph can be found on page 51 of that transportation plan. It says Bloomington has many unimproved alleyways throughout the city.
- Bloomington should consider investing in improving targeted alleyways as a tool for redevelopment and improved urban design. Additionally, Bloomington should require that alleyways are improved by developers where feasible. Based on the many benefits of alleyways, Bloomington should work to preserve and not vacate its alleyways.
- So honestly once I read that with regard to like my research into Bloomington vacating alleyways I was just like yeah, I mean we have these plans made in 2019 that basically say we shouldn't vacate alleyways unless Like we just shouldn't vacate alleyways Unless there are real special circumstances attached to it. So I will also be voting no on this this evening
- So I think that that's the last council member comment. So will the clerk please call the roll on ordinance 20? Oh, council member, sorry. And as a reminder, that's it. Now I'll take my three, my two minutes. I just want to say one thing that, you know, I mean, maybe to all of us that when, because of the format of our debates,
- And the way that we get the final word, I don't think that it's appropriate for us to speak on the intentions or approaches of the
- petitioner who is a resident of Bloomington. I think that we really as we wouldn't ourselves to each other we are at least we could be called to order for doing so I really don't think that we should you know be addressing the petitioner in that way. And so again I mean I think that
- We've said clear arguments for, you know, our position here, but I don't think that it's appropriate for the petitioner to have to go through us telling them, you know, how we feel about their personal motivations or anything like that. And so I just, you know, on behalf of, and I know that wasn't the, I'm not assuming that that was the intention, but, you know, just
- sitting here having to hear it, if that was the way that it was received, apologies. And certainly anybody who has to come before us should not feel like we're going to talk down at you or talk at you or anything like that, because again, you're not gonna get to say anything when we're done. And so, I mean, just speaking personally, that's not my intention. Personally, my hope is just to say, look, this is what, these are our rules, and this is how we have to make our decisions. And so based on that, that's how I'll be voting, but certainly no,
- disparaging on your motivations, I think you have every right to come and ask for your rights and your interests to be respected. And we represent you and we want to make sure that you have every opportunity to have the best life you can in Bloomington. So even though we might disagree on this case, it certainly is no disrespect to you personally. Other comments?
- I guess I'll take my two-minute rebuttal to that, too, just kind of in the spirit of conversation about it, in the spirit of my own intention. And just, I suppose, in the spirit of who I am as a person is I appreciate honest feedback. And so part of my honest feedback is the presentation of this just felt a little bit ugly.
- Perhaps not the petitioner intention, and I'm not trying to imply that that was the petitioner intention, but that that is maybe how it came off. And I also want to take this opportunity to highlight once again our rules for making public comment, which we had amended earlier this evening, and that the last rule of public comment does encourage civility and refraining from personal attacks against private individuals. And so when I first went through that slide show, I was like, wow, we're really
- bordering on something really personal against a private individual of the city. And so that was kind of, I'll say, a tricky thing for me to navigate, going, well, but it's a presentation time, not a public comment time. So how does that work with our rules? And it doesn't say that you can't do those things. It's that we encourage those things, because there's a whole freedom of speech piece. But I just wanted to share that that was how I received
- some of this information, whether or not you intended it. And that is actually a conversation that I, as a parent, in my last 35 seconds, this happens all the time when you have kids, right? Is your kids don't realize.
- white, how they're sounding. And that that's a part of learning and growing is to recognize, oh, I sounded a little bit harsh there. And I think that as grownups, we still sometimes have that problem. And I'll own that sometimes I have that problem too, which is sometimes why I try to preface things and be like, I know sometimes I'm just blunt and get to the point, but that's just who I am as a person. And I'll take that back from you all too. So anyway, thank you very much. Any other last comments?
- All right seeing none now will the clerk please call the roll on ordinance 2025 30 Councilmember Pete not Smith. No Stossberg no daily. No Zulek. No, I'm sorry. No Rosenberger. No Rallo no Thank you
- Great, thank you. So that ordinance fails 07. Now we have moved on to the additional public comment period for our evening. So if there's any members of the public who wish to make additional public comment on items not on our agenda tonight, who did not speak during the first period of public comment, now is the time to either move to the podium or to raise your hand on Zoom.
- I see lots of people moving, but I don't think any of them are moving to the podium for additional public comments. So if you are, you need to give me a really big wave. Are there any hands raised on Zoom for public comment? Yes, we have one. Great. Thank you. When you're unmuted, please state your name for the record, and then you'll have up to three minutes. So they send us directly through chat, so I'm going to read it right now. Perfect. Thank you so much.
- Maybe I should time myself. Yes. Okay. Unless it's really short and you know, you don't have to. So for a city council member to review per city when describing work experience, January internship, seasonal jobs and temporary part-time positions with city as well as internship and volunteer work outside the city are not included. How is that ethical or correct in any capacity?
- paid labor, whether seasonal or part time, is just that labor work experience. This notion clearly shows bias towards those with the privilege and advantage of not having to work part time to attain degrees, certification, et cetera. In order to finalize
- attain a full-time role, how is one supposed to gain experience if means of getting experience, internship, part-time, or otherwise, is not accounted as such. This seems like a very biased internal policy decision and means of discounting experience and employees across the board. This should be highlighted and incurred about the upcoming council meeting, regardless of outcome for the legislation to be read.
- Thank you. Thank you. Was there a name attached to that comment? Yeah, as Samuel and without last name. Okay. Thank you. All right. Are there any other hands raised on zoom or any other comments that have come in through the chat? No.
- Okay, thank you so much. I don't see anybody in chambers, so we will move on to notes about the council schedule, which I do have notes about the council schedule. This is our only regular session this month, and so August is a little strange, so I just wanted to highlight that.
- We only have this one regular session because we will have four sessions related to the city the civil city budget proposal This year presentations will be focused more on our outcome or priority based budgeting model So it's a little bit different than it has been in past years And these are kind of like preliminary plans in terms of how how the topics are gonna go down but our first budget meeting will be on August 18th and that will be a general overview of how presentations
- We'll go and then we'll talk about high-performing governments and here are presentations around those budget areas August 20th will be affordable housing and homelessness economic development and public safety August 25th will be community health and vitality
- August 27th will be transportation and Bloomington transit I do want to again like emphasize This could be subject to change until it is officially posted in terms of those topics on those particular dates But the dates of the meeting are set August 18th 20 25 27 so that is four meetings spread over two weeks
- Councilmember sorry, you have a question on this. Do we know yet when? when we're gonna be getting the packet information on it because Have we even I don't think we've discussed that in any committee. Yeah Council attorney later. Do you know that? Yeah, I mean I know that that that packet is actually just ran in To the deputy mayor on my way in I know it is being currently assembled But I don't know if there's a certain date on when she wants to send it out
- When do we want to receive it is the deputy mayor is working on the budget book currently for the budget hearings We may receive that tomorrow or Friday. Oh, okay. Okay, so it's so we should and then we'll go through the process of Disseminating that to council members and placing it on board. Of course the controller Controllers office would be involved in putting it
- on the budget page of the city's website and so forth. Great. Am I recalling correctly, last year we got it much later than we were supposed to, correct? I think by statutory open door law kind of posting necessity, I think it only has to be distributed 48 hours in advance of the first meeting date. No, I think the budget we have to get.
- Do we have to get the budget feels like a question. I just want to make sure we do it right because last I mean last year it was very difficult to read and I read it but it was very difficult to read in the time that we're given. I think we only had I think we got it on Friday for sessions that started on Monday if I'm not mistaken. Yeah.
- Clerk I think you're asking a slightly different question than councilmember Stossberg was answering about the statutory guidelines versus what has traditionally been asked for and provided by the administration Yes last year was a little bit tighter timeline. It was a new administration They were trying to get your updated salary grade chart and with it as well But I think this year you're going to get it much closer to the time the council has asked for and that'll be the first time in a while
- A while meaning several years. So so usually we asked for what two weeks to have it or I would have to go back and look honestly councilmember sorry I haven't looked at that in a while because that hasn't happened but You're getting it. It looks like you're gonna get it more than a week before the hearings, which is an improvement Great. Thank you. The other thing is this year we've spread those four meetings out over two weeks and last year they were all in one week and
- So hopefully that will also allow members more time to be able to look at each of those sections Regardless of when we get it, honestly, yeah, but in terms of statutory guideline, what would be the final date? Do you have that? Don't fold it off the top of your head. No, you know, I think attorney later might have some information on that but Do you mean for publication or do you mean for adoption or I mean for publication? No idea. Okay cool. Do you
- Do you know after off the top of your head? Are you talking for passage of the ordinance or simply for the hearings simply for the hearings? Is there a I'm not aware of a specific Deadline that would be in the nature of two weeks prior to to the budget, right? hearings, but you know, I think you'll certainly have access to the information and
- farther in advance than 48 hours before the meeting. Certainly that's our intention. Fantastic. Have you thought at all of how to structure our pre-questions prior to the hearings, collecting those or anything like that? I believe that
- Yeah, I'm communicating with the deputy mayor and the controller regarding that as well and the intention is to Potentially start receiving questions in advance of of the hearings Last year last last year I put together like some Google Docs and we had them per day per
- Presentation so I mean, but it would be great to have some guidance on sort of how we all want to do them. So So we're not sort of doing that at the last minute maybe if council members have Preferences or ideas about that they could send those to council attorney later and CC me on that and maybe CC I mean maybe something to discuss a fiscal committee though for this week I was about to say maybe CC councilmember Piedmont Smith as chair of fiscal committee because that is something that the fiscal committee should be kind of active in helping facilitate
- Yeah, but we're not meeting until the 21st for that, right? Yeah, yeah Any other questions about those four budget meetings because I did have another note about highlight I two other schedule highlights base councilmember Piedmont I believe those budget hearings start at 530. No, not our usual 630. So that's correct. I like that
- The annual schedule adopted by council reflects that the budget hearings begin at 530. Thank you so much for that correction, because it's 630 on my calendar. That was recently changed. We found, for some reason, the calendar times were set up at the beginning of the year in January at 630, as opposed to 530. OK. That would be why they are like that on my calendar, then. Thank you.
- My other scheduling notes, I wanted to make sure to highlight that our next deliberation session is on Wednesday, September 10th, and that might seem like a long way away to you right now.
- I think that I have mentioned before that Director of Planning, David Hittle, is going to be with us for that night, and we are going to be doing community-focused groups about UDO stuff. And as Councilmember Daley mentioned, he is going to her Councilmember meeting this week, and he's also been meeting with other small groups around the city to get feedback around certain topics. So that deliberation session is going to be used as a session so that he can receive feedback from the community around various topics.
- on planning that with him right now in terms of being able to advertise some of those specific topics and questions that he wants to talk about. But I just want to make sure to get that date out there, if anybody managed to listen this far into the meeting, that on Wednesday, September 10, I'm hoping to have a lot of community members here to participate in that conversation. And if anybody has any suggestions on specific organizations maybe that you work with,
- or have experience with, who might have mailing lists that would have folks applicable to this conversation, let me know, or let Mr. Hittle know so that we can make sure to advertise to those folks. And then our next regular session is September 3rd, and that is it. Thank you. Councilmember Piedmont-Smith. We will have a Committee on Council Processes meeting on Monday, August 11th, 1215 in the Allison Conference Room.
- Thank you very much. And with that, we are adjourned.