To order this regular session of the Bloomington Common Council on September 17th 2025. Will the clerk please call the roll? Pete Mott Smith here Stasberg here daily here Zulek here Rosenberger here. I'm sorry here Thank you Great. Thank you Starting off the meeting tonight just a little bit of historical information I found it notable that on this day in 1787 the US Constitution was signed And before today, I probably had not actually read the Constitution since I was you know in some US history course as a teenager and I did that today and it was very interesting and related There's been you know conversation and news stories related to whether or not we're in a constitutional crisis, and I'm not gonna speculate on that but it was really interesting to read the Constitution as an adult and as a legislature a Legislator and it just hits a little bit different than it did as a teenager So if you haven't read it in terms of the duties and responsibilities Related to the different branches of government in a while. I would recommend that you revisit that Just because it is interesting and The next going on to our agenda summation before we do that, I actually believe That we need to amend the agenda tonight So I Guess that I need to make a motion to move agenda item 7a ordinance 2025 33 To the last item under legislation for second readings and resolutions Thank you the reason for that needs to be related to the staff that would need to present that ordinance So we just need to move that down the agenda due to staff schedule Yep, so ordinance 2025 33 moving down to the end of the agenda. So we have a motion in a second to do that Will the clerk please call the roll on that motion? Councilmember Flaherty, yes, rough. Yes Rallo Can we do anything about the sound from councilmember Rallo because I'm having a hard time hearing him Piedmont Smith Yes Stasberg. Yes, Daly. Yes, Zulek. Yes, Rosenberger. Yes. Sorry. Yes Heard that thank you. Great. Thank you so much So now for our agenda summation first, we will have one set of minutes for approval from February 19th of this year That will be followed by reports starting by reports from council members and then the mayor and city offices where we will have a report from the Bloomington Housing Authority we will have any council committee reports, which I do not believe we have any tonight and then our first Period of reports from the public where members of the public can make a comment on items not on the agenda tonight We do not have any appointments to boards and commissions this evening We have four pieces of legislation for first reading We start with ordinance 2025 35 to amend title 9 of the Bloomington Municipal Code entitled water and then ordinance 2025 36 an ordinance authorizing the acquisition construction and installation By the city of Bloomington of certain extensions and improvements to the city's water utility Then we'll have appropriation ordinance 2025 08 transferring funds from the general funds the fiber connectivity fund And then appropriation ordinance 2025 09 to appropriate General fund expenditures not otherwise appropriated and then we will have legislation for second readings and resolutions. So per the Change that we just made we will start with ordinance 2025 34 To establish a fund for the proceeds of the surety bond related to the fiber optics network Then we will have resolution 2025 16 requesting the food and beverage tax advisory commission to make a recommendation for expenses from those revenues Then we will have resolution 2025 15 to establish expectations and procedures for councilmember liaisons to boards and commissions And then finally as our last item of legislation for this evening We will go back to ordinance 2025 33 to establish the fiber connectivity fund for digital opportunity in initiatives Then we will have an additional period of public comment if there are any other members of the public wishing to make a comment on Items not on the agenda any notes on council schedule, and then we will adjourn So if we could start with those minutes I Move that the minutes from February 9th be approved 19th 19th yes, February 19th. I'm typo. Sorry Thank you You have a motion and a second to approve the minutes from February 19th of this year And just as a note there was a slightly revised Version of those sent out this afternoon that was made a small grammatical adjustment. Just anybody have any questions about those minutes? Great will the clerk please call the roll on that Piedmont Smith, yes, Stossberg. Yes, Daly. Yes, Zulek. Yes Rosenberger, yes. Sorry. Yes clarity. Yes. Thank you. Great. Thank you All those were approved now. We're moving into reports from council members Let's go ahead and start to To my left with a council member Daly Yeah, thank you I just wanted to quickly put a shout out for anybody who might still be interested in applying for any boards and commissions There are still some openings We would love to have some more applications come in and also if you've applied Previously and did not get appointed to a board and Commission That not necessarily was, you know a personal thing We only have so many seats available and we have so many great applicants that we don't always have seats available for everyone So if you're still interested, please go back and reapply again because I know We would love to have some of our former interviewers Put in another application and possibly have another chance to get on a board and Commission So we hope to see you at some of our interviews. Thanks Thank you councilmember Zulek No report. Thank you. Thank you councilmember Rosenberger No report. Thank you councilmember. Sorry no report. Okay councilmember Piedmont Smith Yes, I do have a report and my request that staff put I have a little PowerPoint to go through This is about Requesting that the council Sign on to a letter to oppose The Environmental Protection Agency's reconsideration of the 2009 endangerment finding So I did reach out to some of you individually about this So if we go to the next slide what what is the endangerment finding so in 2009 the Environmental Protection Agency made a formal determination that the concentration of six major greenhouse gases in the atmosphere such as carbon dioxide and methane endangers public health and welfare and That finding serves as a legal basis for the EPA to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act Next slide, please So if the EPA repeals that finding That would have major impacts across the country including in Bloomington It would effectively remove the legal basis for many current regulations on climate pollution It would also pave the way for the rollback of federal standards for vehicle and industrial emissions Leading to increased emissions of those pollutants next slide so it is relevant to all communities including bloom Bloomington because ultimately a Reversal of this finding would increase air pollution threatening the health of our population it would increase the pace of climate change impacts such as severe storms flooding and heat and eventually Of course, it would increase the societal disruption due to climate change which will have impacts ranging from food distribution climate refugees Local financial burdens that we are unprepared to face So there's a letter that has been drafted by the public rights project that is going to be submitted as part of the comment period to the EPA as they Consider whether to repeal the endangerment finding and the letter says And these are direct quotes from the letter. These are actual subject headings if we could go to the next slide The endangerment finding is grounded in evidence and sound science including federal climate assessments and the letter has footnotes to actually point to those studies Local governments rely on the EPA regulation of greenhouse gases and the proposed rule Which is the repeal of the finding? The proposed rule fails to consider the significant harms to local communities So some examples extreme heat is now commonplace Transportation emissions and air pollution are worsening across the US flooding and major weather events are bringing grave consequences Local communities are bearing unprecedented infrastructure costs and The EPA's proposed rule will have disproportionate impacts on Low-income people and my communities of color So Next slide. What is the public rights project? Why are they why am I coming forward with this letter from them? Well, it's an organization. It's nonpartisan nonprofit National organization that provides litigation support legal representation and training to help local government officials protect their communities And this is their word use their tremendous power for good So I like that wording So what I'm asking this evening last slide, please is a vote on the letter which I have forwarded To council members and it will be part of the official public record Once we take a vote So a vote from you all to sign on to the letter the deadline is September 22nd So I'm sorry. There wasn't a lot of advance notice on this, but The deadline is before our next meeting. So That is my report and I would appreciate if somebody could make a motion to support the letter Motion so are so moved or do I need to give a full motion? Motion Okay motion that the council adopt the letter as written Second all right, we have a motion and the second to Sign on to the letter as it's written Are there any comments from council members? Councilmember Flaherty just a brief. Thank you to come over here not Smith for bringing this the endangerment finding and EPA's obligation to regulate greenhouse gas emissions as a pollutant that is causing harm in our communities including Bloomington is really important. So I appreciate This opportunity for Bloomington to weigh in along with other communities. Thank you Thank you. Are there other comments? Okay, I'll also echo some thanks and also point out that through our economic and sustainable Development department we have various grants and things like that different programs for Bloomington residents especially with regard to extreme heat and there's been various studies about like tree canopy and that kind of thing so it climate change does have this very like monetary local impact in terms of what we need to do in order to support our residents in In these in these times and in this climate change, so I also appreciate her bringing this forward So with that if the clerk could please call the roll on the support of that letter Councilmember Rallo Yes Piedmont Smith. Yes Stossberg. Yes Daly Yes, Zulek. Yes Rosenberger. Yes, but sorry Yes, clarity. Yes rough Great, thank you. Thank you And we're still doing reports from council members so councilmember Ruff Thank you councilmember Flaherty no report thanks and moving online councilmember Rallo Yes, briefly just my mic working Yes Okay. Thank you Briefly, I just wanted to address that political violence Has no place in our society I want to condemn what occurred last Wednesday with the assassination of Charlie Kirk We should hold ourselves To a standard of civil debate Debate of ideas debate of policy propositions, but we must condemn political violence Cannot be the means by which we settle political differences and To add to that neither should government Use political violence as an excuse to limit our free speech and expression Thank you, I also have a report I need to get back to it I Had a couple things that I wanted to mention One was at the Planned Commission meeting on September 8th. So it was last week. This is the first regular session since then The Planned Commission did forward language related to single-room occupancy Which was a resolution that council sent to them So what they did was they decided to change the residential rooming house used to single-room occupancy And then they have updated related definitions and standards so the Planned Commission voted 7-1 to forward this with a positive recommendation and So we will take it up at council I'm trying to think of the calendar off the top of my head probably after budget stuff in Late October early November Second a little update on the MPO the Metropolitan Planning Commission Last Friday, we voted on several changes to the transportation improvement plan or TIP and two of them that I wanted to point out Which I think that I've mentioned before but I can't remember for sure and I think it's worth repeating because I'm excited about it is construction of a sidewalk along the bypass between North Walnut and Kinzer and then also reconstruction of the pedestrian bridge that Goes over the bypass there by Arlington that pedestrian bridge apparently has inadequate clearance and so they are going to replace it and Both of those projects have the majority of that funding in 2029. So those are just two things that hopefully will improve some of the pedestrian infrastructure in that kind of northwest quadrant of Bloomington Third I want to point out that I scheduled a constituent meeting for this Sunday September 21st on zoom It is at 1 30 on zoom. Usually my constituent meetings are Saturday mornings in person But as I mentioned a few weeks ago cross-country season really changes my Saturday mornings in the fall So I will have that constituent meeting this coming Sunday on zoom and you can find that link on the calendar And lastly, I appreciate that councilmember Rallo pointed out that political violence has no place in society but I also want to point out that there was a school shooting last Wednesday as well and School shootings also have no place in society and it is Absurd to me that there is has been greater reaction over one person Than over hundreds of schoolchildren who have been shot over the last 25 years So, thank you Moving on to reports from the mayor and city offices with a report from the Bloomington Housing Authority You can come up and Introduce yourself for the record and go ahead Good Good evening. My name is Nathan Ferreira. I am the new ish executive director for the Bloomington Housing Authority Tonight I wanted to give you kind of a broad overview of what we're doing. There are some budget numbers like in years past, but I don't know if we're behind this year or or what but I don't have a full budget to Present her to share with you tonight So I'm gonna jump right in there. Feel free to stop me if you have questions or I can answer questions at the end As it says on our seal there we strengthen opportunity beginning but not ending with housing Essentially like other housing authorities were responsible for administering public funds using whatever resources we can To allow us to provide affordable housing in in the in the community And to foster self-sufficiency through creative partnerships Some Stats that might be interesting. So you've probably heard about the rad the rental assistance demonstration So in April we closed on our second second rad, which basically means we technically don't have public housing in Bloomington anymore We have switched through what is low-income housing tax credit deal. That's just available for housing authorities all of our units so that's Walnut Woods Reverend Butler and Crestmont are now part of these investor supported Housing authority properties so that changes a little bit about how we operate it means we're accountable to more than You all we have investors that we have to answer to on a very regular basis. I'm discovering so Housing authorities we are we were established federally We're chartered through the state of Indiana And we're accountable locally. So that's that's kind of how we operate locally what that means is our seven commissioners are appointed by the mayor and they Provide kind of broad guidance of how our organization operates not so much day-to-day not personnel decisions not even residential decisions, but more policy and Financing and So they guide us in that way 90% of our funding is federal The rest of our funding comes from tenant rents and from various grants so we are This year has been a roller coaster in terms of watching what's going to happen with the federal budget as you all probably Also realize it's looking like it'll probably be a continuing resolution at this point, which is probably our best-case scenario so our numbers that we're creating are based on kind of Maintaining the levels that we're at Section 8 we serve just over 1700 households There's several different kinds of vouchers mixed in there, which I'll touch on in a moment. That's about 3,400 individuals We have long long wait lists. So this is by no means meeting the need and Residents pay no more than 30% of their income toward housing the dependent on the project You it's your AMI and what you can qualify for depends on the project our rads Are all less than 50% area median income is is how they qualify for our units This is I would say all of our programs housing choice vouchers I'll get into a little more We are growing our resident services. We have found that it's really critical to add supportive services in-house We don't we're not really interested in becoming a social services agency, and I really don't think that's our role but our we can add some things to Tighten up the back end where sometimes families get evicted that if they had had some services intervene They probably wouldn't have been evicted. So those are family self-sufficiency, which is a savings program, which is designed To get people off of public assistance set some goals and actually move toward Leaving public assistance altogether. That's about 80 80 participants Normally, we actually have a position that we're trying to hire for at the moment in that program We have the Ross program, which is resident opportunities and self-sufficiency. This is our Partnering with any number of other organizations in the community to bring in services for our residents It's community events. It's we have a grocery shuttle because we're in a bit of a food desert Which has been super successful That's through the health department a grant through the health department landlord risk mitigation, which is an incentive program for landlords to work with us It's been a bit on pause, but it sounds like that funding is coming back. We've actually noticed a decrease in our utilization of vouchers and Meaning the number of people that have vouchers we usually hover around 70% We're down to about 68% this year and it seems pretty clear that it's tied to our landlord risk mitigation program Having their funding paused so that should be coming back in and then we can continue to increase that utilization And then eviction prevention. This is pretty limited, but for our most vulnerable families, we're trying to offer services again, so They are not evicted from our our program I'm gonna go into more depth with Summit Hill in a moment, but that is our nonprofit It is controlled by our commissioners. It's a separate board that has a couple additional board members in addition to the commissioners and I will Say more in a moment So housing choice vouchers we have 1721 Project-based vouchers you can see the number there most recently we Middle way applied for some project-based vouchers and we were able to grant those and as they have more units get inspected We'll be able to add some more project-based vouchers there We have vash, so that's for veterans We have some single-room occupancy and before you get excited about that Given the other changes that are coming with the UDO. Hopefully you HUD has no interest in granting more SROs in terms of vouchers We've already checked but the project-based vouchers that we can grant are pretty flexible So it could be that we can use those in SRO developments We're looking into that now The emergency housing voucher program started with kovat relief and those are going away those phase out next year So we are working to get those remaining voucher or holders on to our housing choice voucher program So they don't they don't lose housing or housing assistance And then we have 12 currently in our hop Which is the homeowner program where you can actually convert a voucher to a mortgage payment And so we're using that through our community land trust But also in the community several participants have just used that to buy a house on the market We have over 18 million and HAP that passes through the housing authority and pays landlords and I had some numbers crunched because I wanted you to see how many of those are just local mom-and-pop landlords that have you know, probably less than five units that are working with us and Just if that HAP if the voucher Subsidy gets cut federally you can imagine the impact that's going to have on our local economy so it's really critical and we've been doing the advocacy that we can to Ensure that that does not happen But anybody listening, please call your senators and Those are our weights currently so our rad weights are by bedroom our housing choice voucher We just closed that waiting list in April so you can see it's quite high and so that's already Before we open the waiting list we go through and kind of cleaned it up and a lot of people have found housing and it climbed this To that number and basically about six weeks, so it was very quick Summit Hill Community Development Corporation, this is our nonprofit that was established in 2019 You may have heard of core community flats It is underway. If you drive down Rogers, you will see the historic core building being redeveloped We are actually I'm I'm quite shocked. We're on target in terms of our timeline. So those 38 units should come on early summer next year That does include nine PSH. So permanent supportive housing units, which are the same kind of units in Crawford We are doing something a little differently in that. There's also project-based vouchers there. So it's It's kind of mixed between the PBVs and the permanent supportive housing units So we're hopeful about that Chandler Early Learning Center. This is named after the Reverend Dr. Chandler Marvin Chandler who is a local locally Born and mostly raised up on the hill civil rights leader and world-renowned musician So we will be dedicating the Early Learning Center in his honor that'll have 28 seats for infants and toddlers on the first floor and then Three two-bedroom affordable apartments on the second floor and then we have the Summit Hill Community Land Trust We still hear the question of why the city of Bloomington doesn't have a land trust and I just want to set the record straight There is a land trust. It's different than many land trusts. It did not start as a grassroots project It's a bit odd in that sense because it was started by the municipality But this is a trend there are more and more Municipalities that are giving land and funding to basically get a land trust started. So We've got nine homes right now over off of What's it called atlas on 17th north of there's where our property is we are on the search for new properties Potential projects we have funding partial funding for a four-plex pilot that will be part of our land trust The thinking here is that we can replicate this and maybe get pre-approved plans and some of the other new developments such as Hopewell or the larger development on the southwest side That we could have a model for plex to be able to go in there at a middle income range So a eighty to a hundred and twenty percent AMI We are getting pretty far down the road in partnership with mother Hubbard's cupboard to purchase the four and a half lots east of mother Hubbard's and partner with them on a On a development that would incorporate gardens and community space for their services and a cottage development as part of the land trust So we're excited about that. We're obviously trying to generate funds at this point, but that would be the next step for our land trust You've heard of transit oriented oriented development. There's also food oriented development. That's kind of the model that we're we're looking at Essential function bonds is something else. We're exploring housing authorities as a semi-governmental agency. We can actually issue bonds and Some housing authorities are beginning to do these projects for workforce housing. It's totally separate from HUD You're not under their thumb for any of that kind of development so you can actually set the income up to 120 percent and last Faircloth's a rad just really quickly Faircloth is the The Faircloth limit is how much every housing authority how many public housing units they are permitted The ones we have developed is are well below what we're permitted So there's another light tech deal that could be possible where you do the light tech with your Essentially creating more public housing that immediately converts to rad at closing So we're excited about that. That would be potentially 185 additional housing authority units, so we'll we will see that's probably years off, but So this is what our revenue is looking like for next year That HUD admin is basically what operates our our authority We have a number of ARPA grants that are being spent down, but will primarily be spent down in 2026 One of those I'll just mention with a land trust. There's additional money To make the land trust homes affordable to buyers under 60% AMI So that's where some of that ARPA money is going from I think it originally was with heading home And then a number of other projects including the one with the health foundation and the grocery shuttle We have a number of miscellaneous grants and then we're also working with the digital legity equity program program I think it's called digital opportunity now and Hoping to grow that So I will wrap up here and answer any questions you have Common denominator for us about why we've been able to develop affordable housing. It's you know, it's partly funding and partnerships But really the land has been contributed in every case so I don't know I My request is that the city really consider how do you free up land for affordable housing development? Because that is what makes it possible for us the land trust the rad housing we already owned it the early learning center is on a long-term lease so Pushing that however we can happy to be a part of that conversation, obviously Continuing to reduce barriers to missing middle housing. I was sorry to miss last week's meeting but We're definitely in support of anything. That's gonna reduce lot sizes allow us to split them There's a whole long list of things. We would love to see happen more plexus opportunity for Small apartment buildings all of those things are things we can develop So if if given the right tools, I would love to see incentives based on housing type Instead of tied to the buyer or renter income. I think that could free up Some some energy there to actually buy the kind or build the kind of housing that we want Partnerships are really key to our long-term success In my short time in this role The families that are really struggling in our services Are only successful if we have partner social service providers coming in So that extended case management that you've probably heard about is absolutely critical the whole homelessness conversation and press is absolutely critical, but it kind of sucks all the air out of the room and We need to also consider the families that are at risk of being evicted And focus some energy on keeping those folks house so they don't end up unhoused so Those are my I'm sure I have other things. I'm forgetting, but those are the things I really wanted to stress with you all and I appreciate you having me here tonight I am also happy to share more budget numbers as we Solidify that so happy to come back so any questions I can answer. Thank you questions comes member Sorry, thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you director for area This was the first time and I don't know I might just be particularly uninformed that I had heard about the freezing of the Risk mitigation fund the landlord mitigation fund Could you tell us a bit more context who who froze it? What are we talking about when you say this? froze might have been the wrong word it It originally was ARPA and that we discovered that you cannot use ARPA in a rotating Account essentially so money coming coming in and going out ARPA cannot be used that way So we've been scrambling to find another source to cover that and it sounds like the city's gonna help do that We're just kind of waiting on That budget to get approved and can you help us understand the size the the size of that fund we requested 200,000 200,000 hand 200,000 was was how much we had allocated from ARPA funds that were sort of in a revolving No, we had already spent quite a bit of those ARPA funds. So 200,000 was closer to what was left. Okay. Yeah Thank you. I have another question, but it's on a different topic. So I'll come back in a second. Yeah Okay councilmember Piedmont Smith Yes, thank you very much for your presentation Your slide about budget said you get nine hundred thirty six thousand dollars in grants in city grants Is that can you tell me more about that? Yeah, they various grant programs It's it is predominantly ARPA So and these those funds are actually funds that are not associated with Early Learning Center or core so the fourplex pilot is for her is 250,000 the Eviction prevention that we got from ARPA is 60,000 the You're gonna test my memory here. Oh The CLT subsidy the land trust subsidy is another two hundred and fifty thousand And that's I think primarily what we're getting for the remaining ARPA and that was primarily from the heading homes funds and then we were all we had also applied for CDBG and were awarded but those funds haven't been released to us yet, so That's gonna pay for playgrounds at Walnut Woods I can get you a breakdown of specifics, but I don't I don't have it all in my head. So Okay. Thank you. Yeah councilmember Rallo Thanks for your presentation you mentioned involved city involvement in free Could be direct purchase maybe these might be one I'm sorry, I didn't I didn't catch all the all the question Can you repeat that again mentioned freeing up land having land for affordability for four thousand? Do you have ideas? I Know that right now to get land there has to be two appraisals and it has to be purchased That's my understanding of the process. I would love I don't know if there's a way to change that but Making it so land can be donated for affordable housing to projects. I think would would be great I don't know the full list of what land the city owns It could also be you know partnering to purchase land We will continue to request funds for for that purpose as well But yeah freeing up the land that's city-owned that may not be doing anything right now would be Our primarily what I was thinking of I see okay. Thanks for that clarification. That's interesting. Sure look into that great Thank you, there's 20 minutes reserved for this section of the agenda and we have gone through 20 minutes at this point Are there further questions that? Can't wait Great, thank you so much. Mr. Ferrera. I appreciate the report. I might follow up with a couple of things Thanks for having me. Thank you All right, there were no council committee reports so then we move into our first period of Public comment so if you're a member of the public and would like to make a comment on an item not on the agenda You can go ahead and make your way to the podium You will have up to three minutes. If you're online, you can go ahead and raise your hand using the raise hand function Or you can send a chat message to the host And it looks like we have somebody here in chambers So please state your name for the record and then you'll have up to three minutes Okay, thanks everybody it's good to see you all I was here Last weekend three minutes really wasn't enough time It actually pertains to housing affordable housing our neighborhood a Very nice house beautiful little house on a wooded lot has been bought and now they tell me they're gonna tear it down Turn it into a fourplex Okay One thing I should say just to start with my dad was the head of urban renewal here in Bloomington They built literally hundreds of houses out there on the west side of the town and man We needed it. I mean people were living in in houses with the wooden floors or wood floors with dirt floors, so I'm not opposed to to Housing for poor people what I am opposed to deeply is this idea that you can just Come into a neighborhood and say hey You know we've decided this and it's for you know The greater good and so forth and the neighborhood has no say in it. I think that's wrong Okay, I've written this down. I don't know if you all got it. I don't think you did I'd like to form a request that a vote be taken by the council for an amendment to the Udo code that would allow for a vote by all residents living within a neighborhood Associated to have the final say about whether or not a four-plex goes on okay Running out of time May I ask you? With a show of hands who is not in favor of a measure To give members of neighborhood not just formal members of the neighborhood Associated to side by a vote whether a four-plex you do yo should be built in their Neighborhood could I have a show of hands the people who are not in favor of that? We don't usually have a back-and-forth with members of the public right now We don't usually have a back-and-forth with members of the public. I can't ask that or you can ask it We're just not necessarily going to answer it I Can't ask by a show of hands Well anyway, I I think yeah, I don't know read what I read what I had to say I think there should be an amendment to this Udo thing that allows for the neighborhood to decide neighborhood to decide Whether this thing is gonna progress Okay Zero Yeah, your time. I don't know. Could you pass that down? Yes, it was passed down Um, okay. Thanks everybody in the future. I don't mean that I think you guys Mr. Linmeyer in the future in the future if you have something to hand to council members if you could give it to council staff When you come in instead of approaching the podium, that would be great I couldn't hear a word you said In in the future if you have something to give to council members at a meeting if you could give it to council staff Instead of coming up to the podium. That would be great Um, I think we have another person here in chambers for public comment Go ahead and state your name for the record and then you'll have up to three minutes Um My name is sarah owen I am the community engagement coordinator for the exodus refugee immigration office here in bloomington Exodus is dedicated to the protection of human rights by serving the resettlement needs of refugees and other displaced people fleeing persecution Injustice and war by welcoming them to indiana First and foremost, we'd like to extend our thanks to councilwoman zulik our district representative for taking the time to come and tour Our new office space some weeks back and for sitting down to learn more about exodus's work We would also like to recognize the bloomington police department for their support in recent months We have utilized bpd this year for several crisis situations All situations were handled professionally and with care ensuring no further escalation of the situation In one instance in particular officers went above and beyond to ensure care of our clients So we appreciate their efforts and their approach to our clients in these situations Today exodus wanted to take the opportunity to speak to the city council about what we believe is an essential need for city operations And that it and that is to work into its budget the cost of a contracted language line or language interpretation service This would be a major step in ensuring equitable access to city resources for all bloomington residents Naturally the highest priority for a contracted interpretation service would be to serve as a resource for our first responders In times of crisis intervention people need to be able to make need to be able to understand all essential information Whether it's making decisions, excuse me decisions about urgent medical care or fully understanding their rights if they are being questioned or detained In reference to the thank you that was extended to bpd a moment ago I would be remiss if I did not note that exodus has on more than one occasion Been the conduit to ensure that interpretation was provided in instances of police intervention Had we not had our own contracted language line available to call who's to say how much frustration and confusion and even fear May have been factors in those situations It's worth noting that of the nearly 500 people that we have welcomed to bloomington our clients alone represent over 20 different languages And the necessity of a contracted interpretation service does not end with the need for emergency situations If our immigrant neighbors need to be connected to more resources through cfrd Or if they need to report a negligent landlord to hand Or if they even wish to register their child for bloomington youth basketball through the parks department We believe that exodus clients and any other non-english speaker who calls bloomington their home Should have the right to easily access any and all city services If the city were to prioritize the cost of such a contract and have a language line that was readily available to all of its department That investment comes with a promise that exodus refugee will personally provide training free of charge to all city departments So that city personnel are knowledgeable in how to properly use a phone interpretation service. Thank you You Thank you, um, I don't see anybody else here in chambers right now for public comment has anybody raised a hand on zoom No, okay Seeing none. We'll uh move on from the public comment period. Uh, there are no appointments to boards and commissions So we're on to legislation for first readings and I am without my uh parliamentarian right now So does somebody want to make the motions? I moved it. Thank you. I move that ordinance 2025 - 35 Be read by title and synopsis be introduced and read by title and synopsis only by the clerk second second. Thank you. It's been moved and seconded to introduce and read ordinance 2025 35. We need to do a roll call vote on everything tonight because we do have a member online. So will the clerk please call the roll on the motion to introduce. Piedmont Smith. Yes. Stasberg. Yes. Daly. No. Zulek. Yes. Rosenberger. Yes. Asari. Yes. Laherty. Yes. Ruff. Yes. Rallo. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Will the clerk please read. Ordinance 2025-35 to amend Title IX of the Bloomington Municipal Code entitled Water Rate Adjustment. The synopsis is as follows. This ordinance amends the rates and charges in Title IX of the Bloomington Municipal Code entitled Water to reflect increased costs of supplying water and services to customers and to make debt service payments on bond financing for required capital improvements. I move that. Thank you. Go ahead. I wasn't sure if she was done. Yeah. Do the next one. I move that ordinance 2025-36 be read by title and synopsis only by the clerk. Second. So moved and seconded to introduce 20 ordinance 2025-36. Will the clerk please call the roll on that motion? Councilmember Stossberg? Yes. Daley? Yes. Zuley? Yes. Rosenberger? Yes. Osari? Yes. Flaherty? Yes. Ruff? Rallo? Yes. Piedmont-Smith? Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Will the clerk please read? Ordinance 2025-36, an ordinance authorizing the acquisition, construction, and installation by the City of Bloomington, Indiana, of certain extensions and improvements to the city's Waterworks utility, the issuance and sale of revenue bonds to provide funds for the payment of the cost thereof, and the collection, segregation, and distribution of the revenues of such Waterworks utility and other related matters. The synopsis is as follows. This ordinance authorizes the City of Bloomington to issue one or more series of its Waterworks revenue bonds in the aggregate principal amount not to exceed 71 million dollars, a portion of which are anticipated to be issued in 2026 and the remainder in 2028. The bonds will be issued to finance all or a portion of the cost of design, engineering, acquisition, construction, equipping, and improvement of capital projects related to the Monroe Water Treatment Plant, the Waterworks Distribution System, and WaterMain, and a new service center and maintenance buildings and pay costs of the issuance of the bonds. Thank you. I move that Appropriation Ordinance 2025-08 be introduced and read by the Clerk by title and synopsis only. Second. Thank you. It's been moved and seconded to introduce Appropriation Ordinance 2025-08. Will the Clerk please call the roll on that motion? Yes. Council Member Dailey? Yes. Zulek? Yes. Rosenberger? Yes. Asari? Yes. Flaherty? Yes. Ruff? Yes. Rallo? Yes. Piedmont-Smith? Yes. Stasberg? Yes. Thank you. Thank you. That motion passes. Will the Clerk please read? Appropriation Ordinance 2025-08. To transfer funds from the General Fund to the Fiber Connectivity Fund and especially appropriate funds not otherwise budgeted. The synopsis is as follows. Appropriation Ordinance 2025-08 transfers funding from the General Fund to the Fiber Connectivity Fund and appropriates that funding for the ITS Department per the City's Master Development Agreement with Meridium / Hoosier Network / I'm not sure if this is a typo or not M Street Fiber or Fiber. Sorry. Thank you. I don't believe that is a typo. I think we looked that up. Thank you. Moving on to the next. I move that Appropriation Ordinance 2025-09 be introduced and read by the Clerk by title and synopsis only. Second. It's been moved and seconded to to introduce appropriation ordinance 2025-09. Will the clerk please call the roll on that motion? Council Member Zulek? Yes. Rosenberger? Yes. Asari? Yes. Flaherty? Yes. Ruff? Yes. Rallo? Yes. Piedmont-Smith? Yes. Sasseberg? Yes. Daly? Yes. Thank you. Thank you, that motion passes. Will the clerk please read? Appropriation ordinance 2025-09 to specially appropriate from the general fund expenditures not otherwise appropriated. The synopsis is as follows. Appropriation ordinance 2025-09 additionally appropriates funding from the general fund for expenses in the ITS department, for expenses in the engineering department that have been reimbursed by Indiana University, and to approve a transfer between categories in the clerk's office budget. Thank you. Thank you. Those four ordinances will be heard for second reading at our next regular session meeting, and I really wanted to put a note on this. That is on Tuesday, September 30th. Tuesday, September 30th, because the Wednesday of that week is Yom Kippur, so we are not meeting on that day. And the second reading for those will count as required public hearing on those pieces of legislation that require that. So moving on to our second readings and resolutions. And as a reminder, we voted to amend the agenda earlier this evening to change the order of these. I move that ordinance 2025-34 be introduced and read by the clerk by title and synopsis only. Second. It's been moved and seconded to introduce ordinance 2025-34. Will the clerk please call the roll on that motion? just one moment please. Ornans 2025 oh my sorry let's have it. Rosenberger? Yes. Asari? Yes. Flaherty? Yes. Ruff? Rallo? Yes. Piedmont-Smith? Yes. Stasberg? Yes. Daly? Yes. Zulek? Yes. Thank you. Thank you that motion passes will the clerk please read. Ordinance 2025-34 to establish a fund for the proceeds of the surety bonds secured for work on fiber optics network for the city of Bloomington Monroe County Indiana. The synopsis is as follows. This ordinance establishes a dedicated non-referring fund to hold the 1 million dollars received in the surety bond payment on bond number 1160465 was called due to failure by Meridian infrastructure North America corporation subcontractor AEG to properly install fiber within the city limits. Damages were incurred by the city and certain notice of violations were issued by the city of Bloomington engineering department against AEG who was working on Meridian's behalf for violations of title 12 the Bloomington Municipal Code regarding work performed in the right of way. Appropriations of the funds will be requested by the city of Bloomington controller to the City Council at a later date. Thank you. I move ordinance 2025 - 34 be adopted. Great that looks like we have the controller here to present if you could oh okay maybe we have the city attorney here to present whoever yep okay if you could make sure to introduce yourself for the record we just barely started 2025 - 34. Thank you I'm Margie Rice Corporation Council for the city of Bloomington and I am out of breath but I will tell you I avoided falling down the stairs which is great. I am here to ask for a fund to be created and this is really a kind of small housekeeping matter related to a much larger issue. I'm going to explain the larger issue just briefly to give context for why I'm asking for this fund. So in 2021 the city entered into a letter of intent with Meridian to do kind of a public-private partnership to install fiber in the city of Bloomington and a master development agreement was signed in June of 22. TIFF was created it's called a spider TIFF was created in June of 22 and everything sort of proceeded from there and fiber was starting to be installed throughout the city of Bloomington. Earlier this year around February we started hearing some noise that there were some problems with a subcontractor that Meridian had hired which was AEG or true line that had some different names. So we did some due diligence ended up the legal department in late March filed a notice with the insurance company that held the bond for a AEG true line. So when people do work in the right-of-way they're often required to get a bond an insurance policy essentially to protect the city from any damage done in the right-of-way. And so we filed a written notice with the insurance company it was Sampo International doing business as Lexan insurance company and it was we had a million dollar bond and so long story short we submitted information to them in late March and we received a check for a million dollars on July 8th was given to the controller's office she's held it it could just probably be deposited into the general fund however we would like a separate fund to be created to hold this million dollars so that and then we will be back to the council to ask for appropriations of that million dollars so tonight I'm not asking for appropriation we're just asking to create the fund that million dollars will be deposited in there and when we're ready to come back and ask for appropriations we'll come back it's really too early to tell how that money is going to be spent we have fines related to AEG's work in the right-of-way there are actual repairs being done in the right-of-way but Meridium who we have the agreement with remember the city never had an agreement with AEG we had an agreement with Meridium they've been a great partner so far they have been very responsive they have we've gotten another contractor out there doing work in the right-of-way they are also bonded and repairs are being made I'm sure there are still issues that need to be remedied but it's too early to tell right now where we're gonna need that million dollars so we're not asking for an appropriation this is just a fun creation I can tell you that this has been a true collaborative effort on many city departments so while we are the ones who you know started the legal action to get the bond payment there's been a ton of work done by engineering and public works ITS controller the mayor's office has been involved just a lot of different agencies or departments within the city have had to be responsive to getting the information to the insurance company and getting the information to you to the new contractor to start doing the repairs so tonight it's really just a very simple housekeeping please create the fund so we can put the million dollars in it but we'll have an opportunity to talk more about details as we get farther along and when we're asking for appropriations happy to answer any questions I'm here Jessica's here for the controller for financial questions I think Rick Dietz is Rick Dietz Rick Dietz is online we also have Andrew from engineering so happy to answer any questions thank you are there questions from council members council members sorry thank you so much council rice the within I think section 2 it says that that the the allowable funds the fund can be used for any loss costs damage caused by AG's work blah blah and the ends by saying or any other lawful purpose yeah so explain to us both why that language is necessary and and whether you know does that open up the fund to be you know what what is captured by any other lawful purpose within this fund excellent question and I don't really know what the gamut of uses could be but I sure didn't want to limit us and so I didn't say any other purpose but we said any other lawful purpose yeah I don't think there are again we were when we count when Andrew's office sort of looked at fines there were could if you calculated per day there could be millions of dollars to find there might actually have to be you know repairs in the rights away it may be that we want to use this fund for something else sort of IT related I just wanted to leave it as general as possible and we may have to have conversations at some point you know with for example state Board of Accounts about how could we use this and so I just put that catch-all in there to to save us in case some creative idea comes up and we want to be able to use it that way but the prime the primary goal is the mitigation of current expenses incurred yeah for residents and right-of-way issues right if that no we won't be using this money for payment to private individuals this will be for city use and we do expect the contractor that Meridian has working with now the second contractor to do the repairs in the right-of-way so but will be outside of the funding yeah we're hopeful that we won't have to use a lot of this because they'll they'll make it all good great yeah because that was the question about whether this is right-sized you know if we had actually meeting the king fantastic thank you yeah thank you council member Rallo well actually my colleague just asked the questions that I was asking but I was wondering about the I don't it is I'm gonna say again it's too early to tell whether it's gonna be but you adequate or not I can tell you though that your question made me think of another department I didn't mention that's been affected which is utilities and so and they've also been very helpful but as time goes on and as things you know freeze and thaw and we see damages you know that we don't see right now but we might see in another you know six months to a year we're just we are we're kind of slow rolling it a little bit on this because we do want to see how much the contractor gets done what other damages show up and and you know we're we felt very good that we in fairly quick order got a million dollars back got the whole bond recovered but it was really because of the record-keeping I think of many of the other departments that that helped us recover the million dollar bond which was the full amount thank you are there other questions a council attorney liner do you have a comment Rick Dietz has raised his hand online okay mr. Dietz do you have something to add to one of the questions that was already asked only I suppose to echo Margie's statement but also to amplify that by saying any any new you know discoveries of issues will be forwarded to M Street fiber meridian to fix. Even if there are issues that have occurred in the past, we anticipate that there will be issues that we discover that need to be addressed over time. And so, you know, our understanding and our expectations that they will address those issues, and as such, the, you know, the funds shouldn't have to be used for the purposes to which they are already pledged to to address. Okay, thank you. Are there other first round questions. Okay, I'm going to go ahead and take one Councilmember sorry before we go to you for second round, and it actually has to do with the same section to so thank you. Attorney rice for mentioning that that this fund will not go to residents who might have had personal property damage but if there are residents who did have personal property damage and they have not been able to get any kind of response. Thus far, what should they do. I might look to Andrew for this, this is probably his Bailey wick however I know that his office is keeping a list of all the issues. And so I don't know if you want to address that. Thank you if you could introduce yourself for the record to that'd be great sure Andrew Seabor city engineer with the engineering department. If a resident has experienced issues as a result of this project. They have a number of options that they can do. Ultimately, the best tool I would encourage people to use is the report and to submit something through the report system that will flag things for staff. They can also send an email or call the engineering department with an inquiry we get a lot of calls on this project. Ultimately, what we will do on our end is put them in contact with the owners of this project on street fiber, and we're just more of a facilitator. In this case, and generally the street fiber and their partners have been responsive, especially at least in our interactions with them and making that connection happen. Great. Thank you. Council members are second round. That would be a question for for all of us. I don't know, but thinking in a broader sense about what we've learned through this process are we making any adjustments to our procurement practices, particularly in large sort of infrastructure projects. That is also an Android probably a rich question I could say from a legal perspective, it's very difficult when you're dealing with a main person and then they have a subcontractor and then there are subs underneath there. So, and again, not to get too too much into the weeds but you know there's legal activity going on in Miami Dade Florida related to a EG true line and the, and they have an assignment, and it's, it's, you know it's listed I was looking at one of the pleadings it was in the complex litigation sort of division of, of this court and so it's very hard when you're dealing with a, you know, a company and again Meridians counsel that I deal with is in New York he's been great he's very responsive. But there are moving pieces related to this kind of big project in Delaware companies litigation going on in Florida. It's very hard to know who your partners are doing business with. And when we write these contracts and we allow them the freedom that they need to pick the contractors there are going to be some inherent risks with it. Having said that the bond is always we always do require bond and again, it's been helpful in this regard and we got it back. I don't know whether Rick who has dealt since 20 probably before 21 has dealt with Meridians he might have something to say, I don't know what Andrew thinks about it. Hi there scan Andrew seabor city engineering. I think there's a few things I want to highlight and then I also want to make sure I'm answering your question but this this project I think from from an engineering department perspective has received a lot of. There's a lot of confusion like this is a city wide fiber projects the word cities in there, the city is supportive of this project the city has a master agreement. There's a lot of things, but when it comes to the actual construction and the work happening. Think of it like any other utility. Think of it like a Duke project a veteran project a Smithville project. We are not involved in the selection of the contractors. If Smithville wants to fire higher contract X and then contract excerpt we can't say yes or no to them that is their choice. It is our role to permit their work and make sure that what they're doing follows all the city's conditions so. So just a little clarifying there. But that being said on the permitting side there are some things that we are that we're going to be changing how it has happened in the past. One is where we're expecting higher bonds just to further protect the city. We're also going to be limiting the number of active permit areas at any given time so we want this project to happen we want it to happen quickly but we also want to make sure things get closed up before we start the next one so finding that right balance. We might be mixing missing a couple others but welcome director needs to add to it. Yeah, thanks. Thanks, Andrew. There were a couple of other things that we discussed and I believe we shared some of this already in response to some of the budget questions that came in. But another thing that we had talked about and this is under consideration by Andrew and his team in terms of permitting is having m street fiber. The, you know, a party to the permits that are filed by it's some kind of contractors, and then there's been some discussions about increasing, increasing the size of the, you know, the bond requirement for the work that's to be done so it's, you know, something in excess of the million. Which is has been the standard for these, these types of projects in the past. So there's a number of tools that that Andrew and his team and we all are exploring so that we have greater accountability and if things go wrong or greater ability to recover. Thank you. Are there other questions. Okay, yeah, I have one last one to actually, and it's kind of related to what I asked before in terms of residents and it might sound kind of weird and I'm not sure quite who it's a question for. But it's that idea of like, how do we know if something that we're seeing is actually a problem that a resident should report or we should report and the example that I'll give is that in my particular neighborhood. They had to go through like twice and actually install things so we have like little round circles in our neighborhood and then we have the big boxes, and a whole bunch of the little round circles are gone so then there's just a hole. And I don't really know what's in the hole but you know like water could get in the hole and it's kind of all over the place because they installed these in our ditches and our ditches flood all the time. Like, is that like what rises to the level of a problem and how do we know that because we don't I don't want like you getting called for like all kinds of things but I also don't want there to be serious things that are actually problems. I'm, my answer would be if in doubt have them completed you report, and it'll get to the right department and then they can go out and determine if it's related to this and if it needs to go on the list. I would rather have over reporting at this point, then under reporting, especially since we have a viable contractor out there doing work. Do you have anything to add. I think I would just echo what Margie just reported. Don't hesitate I'd rather have it, it's a little extra work for us, but hopefully it's already on our list and if it's not, we're literally walking every street they're working to make sure things are repaired. So it's a very time intensive effort but any help like that that does does help us. Okay, great. Thank you. Councilmember sorry last one very last question and this sort of follow up to something you were saying, as relates to the sort of information that has existed in the public realm about this project. We've adopted as one of our, you know, outside of constructing joy we've also said that that transparency was something that we care about so how what are we doing, sort of moving forward to inform. Because I've seen for example they're started to go back I've like seen the crews now working on certain places, but people often ask me about like what's the status of this and so is there some place some some centralized place that people can go to get updated information on where we're at on this project where you know where things are sort of expected to go forward what our benchmarks those those type of questions. Yeah, I'll, I'll punt to director he's probably is the best answer. My team's working with us. Thank you. Thanks. So, one place to go is the primary ISP who is gigabit now they have information about the progress of network or progress of the availability of their services. Also in street in street fiber, and then we have information on our website on the slash fiber page that's a little bit out of date that we anticipate updating that soon in the next few weeks when we learn more about the restart of the construction phase, which we're which we're looking forward forward to in the coming coming weeks. To your earlier point, Councilor Morris sorry about activity that's visible now, the activity that is going on now is your restoration of in completed, you know, and I'd say restoration and and fixes of construction work that that needs to get back to 100% from where he left it. There is not currently new construction happening, although it's possible that some amount of that will begin as it goes through the permitting process in the coming weeks, but that will also be a, you know, an open and public process. And I'm fairly certain that the city, you know, will also be making information available when when the, the construction phases is restarted in earnest. So, it should not be a surprise to anybody when that happens. Thank you. Great. Thank you. Let's go ahead and move to public comments now on ordinance 2025 34. So if there are any members of the public who would like to comment about this ordinance 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. It sounds like maybe we have somebody online. We do. Wonderful. When you're unmuted you can go ahead and start you'll have up to three minutes and please make sure to introduce yourself for the record. Yes, Kevin Keough. I'm just reading up on this with open source information and it seems like there was $8 million fine, which you're not going to collect. Obviously, they went bankrupt. My question basically is, is there an estimate about what is the exposure to the city for all these damages and things that this subcontractor failed to do? And then, I just want to make sure we get some type of assurance, but the main contractor will have to pay for all that. So I'm just unclear about who's really liable. Is the main contractor who had the subcontractor, is he ultimately liable for all the damages caused by the subcontractor? And also, would he be open, this main subcontractor, to the fines that were assessed against their subcontractor? So I was confused by that, and it'd be nice to have some clarification, but I'll just, that's it. Thank you so much. Thank you. Do we have any other comments online? No. Okay, thank you. I don't see anybody moving forward in chambers. So we'll move back to Council for further questions or final comments on Ordinance 2025-34. Councilmember Piedmont-Smith. It's a follow up question, if I may. So the million dollars will not be used to actually fix the mistakes, so what will it be used for? Will it compensate for all the staff time? And I may ask Jessica to come up here in a minute. You know, when, as the former, as the public comment was just made, there could have been assessed up to, you know, over $7 million in fine. That money could go into the fund where we just collect fine money and be used sort of generally to reimburse the city. We have spent a lot of staff, I don't think it's going to go to the ITS department and to the legal department to sort of reimburse them for staff time. But, and I do want to say though, in response, I think the problems will be fixed. I mean, I think the problems in the right of way are going to be fixed by the current contractor, subcontractor. So those will be fixed, and this money hopefully will not have to be used for that. What creative uses or ideas come out if we don't have to use it for right of way. I'm going to leave that to the departments I've been saying all along. We've got to get farther along we got to see where we land, I fully expect meridian to make the city whole, we will end up where we need to be at the end of this with the fiber installed and working. But I think that we, again it's too early to say right now how this million dollars going to be used. I think we wait get the project done and see where we stand. I don't know if Jessica do you have anything to add to that. Okay, she's she agrees. Hopefully that answers it. Thank you. I'm really sorry but I don't think that answered the question. So we don't know what the money will be used for is that yeah no it's too early to tell. Yeah, it's it's yeah it's way too early to tell exactly how we're going to use this million dollars. And that's really your question right is how's the money. I don't know at this point we will come back at some later point and ask for appropriations, but I'd be completely making something up if I were to give you something definite now. Okay, thank you. Thank you for not making something up. Thank you, any other comments or last questions from council members? Great, then I think that we're ready to call the roll on ordinance 2025-34. This member is sorry? Yes. Flaherty? Yes. Ruff? Yes. Rallo? Yes. Piedmont-Smith? Yes. Stosberg? Yes. Daly? Yes. Zulek? Yes. Rosenberger? Yes. Thank you. Thank you, and that passes unanimously. On to the next. I move that resolution 2025-16 be introduced and read by the clerk by title and synopsis only. Second. It's been moved and seconded to introduce ordinance or resolution 2025-16. Will the clerk please call the roll on that motion? Council member Flaherty? Yes. Ruff? Yes. Yes. Piedmont-Smith? Yes. Sosberg? Yes. Daly? Yes. Zulek? Yes. Rosenberger? Yes. Osari? Yes. Thank you. Thank you, will the clerk please read? (murmuring) Okay, resolution 2025-16 requesting the food and beverage tax advisory commission to make a recommendation for expenditure of food and beverage tax revenues. The synopsis is as follows. This resolution is a request from the common council for the food and beverage tax advisory commission to recommend expenditures of food and beverage tax revenue toward a 2026 budget for the capital improvement board. Thank you. I move resolution 2025-16 be adopted. Second. Wonderful, looks like somebody's already moved to the podium to present. Are we gonna do a switcheroo again, or, I'm just kidding. Please introduce yourself for the record. Thank you very much, council. I'm Jeff McKim. I'm the treasurer for the capital improvement board. Oh, I have with me John Wyckart, the president of the capital improvement board, and Jeff Underwood, our comptroller. So you will remember that the capital improvement board presented our 2026 budget request to you a few weeks ago during your budget work sessions. Because the CIB budget is funded by the food and beverage tax, statute requires an additional procedure specific to that fund source. Statute requires the common council as legislative body of the city to request the advisory commission's recommendations concerning the expenditure of any food and beverage tax funds. The resolution in front of you would make such a request for a recommendation from the food and beverage tax advisory commission, otherwise known as FABTAC. After FABTAC meets and makes a recommendation, approval of the CIB's 2026 budget will come back to council in the 2026 Civil City Budget Appropriations Ordinance, which is one of the three appropriations ordinances the council will consider during your budget adoption process. So thank you very much, and we are here to answer any questions you might have. Great, thank you. Do council members have any questions? (gavel bangs) Great, seeing none. We'll go ahead and go to public comment. If there are any members of the public who would like to comment on resolution 2025-16. 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. I don't see anybody moving in chambers. Is there anybody who's raised their hand online? Okay then, coming back to council, are there any comments or questions that have come up since I last asked? Seeing none, will the clerk please call the roll on resolution 2025-16? Will you give me just a moment council member Stasberg? Okay. - Thank you. You know what? I'm going to have to do this a little bit on the fly, so forgive me if I get the order incorrect, but I believe we'll start with council member Ruff. Yes. Piedmont-Smith? Yes. Stasberg? - Yes. Daly? - Yes. Zulek? - Yes. Rosenberger? No. Asari? - Yes. Mflaherty? - Yes. Thank you. Rallo? Oh, I'm so sorry council member Rallo. Yes. Thank you. Thank you, that passes eight one. And moving on to the next. I move that resolution 2025-15 be introduced and read by the clerk by title and synopsis only. Second. It's been moved and seconded to introduce resolution 2025-15. And will the clerk please call the roll on that motion. Council member Ruff? Yes. Rallo? Yes. Piedmont-Smith? Yes. Stasberg? Yes. Daly? Yes. Zulek? Yes. Rosenberger? Yes. Asari? Yes. Mflaherty? Yes. And Ruff? Or did I already call you? Yeah. I'm just gonna keep on calling until I can get this working again. Thank you so much. Are you able to read? Is that working? Yeah, we'll figure that part out. Okay, thank you. Resolution 2025-15 to establish expectations and procedures for council member liaison, yeah, liaisons to boards and commissions. The synopsis is as follows. This resolution sponsored by council member Zulek establishes expectations and processes for council members serving as liaisons to city boards and commissions. Thank you. I move that resolution 2025-15 be adopted. Second. Thank you. Council member Zulek. Hello everyone. This is actually just a formalization into code of something that we already passed as a full council in terms of expectations for liaisons to different boards and commissions. In short, the chair of the interview committees will appoint each of their interview committee members to be a liaison to two to three boards and commissions so that we can keep more of an eye on what they're doing and so that their work can be celebrated and spoken about at council meetings. So it's in line with a proposal that we've already passed and I'm happy to answer any questions but nothing has changed since then. Thank you for your consideration. Thank you. Are there questions from council members about this? And just for clarity, we didn't actually pass it before we kind of agreed to the intent and concept, yeah. Council member, sorry, did I see your hand? Okay, so question for all of us, I guess, or for what happens if, so within the committee, so I'm on a committee with council member Stossberg, council member Rosenberger, what happens if I go, nah, I don't wanna be on that committee. No, like what, or vice versa, you know, if, the question is, how do we ensure that people actually get assigned, and how do we, because, I mean, and what's actually our mechanism here for following up on such a thing, right? So imagine, let's put it here, that if council member Stossberg and council member Rosenberger decide that I should be the representative 'cause we do the committee that hires for black males as an example, and I go, I don't wanna do that, what happens? I would imagine it's a pretty similar process for appointments to boards and commissions that we do for the entire council, where the council president works with all of the different council members to identify the areas of interest. It's not a huge commitment, it's primarily just being the point person for the different staff liaisons and attending one meeting per calendar year. How does that three bit, yeah? 'Cause there's three in the-- Right, per board or commission. So it's just one meeting for each liaison assignment. The three times is checking in with them at least three times a year. But then like, I'm just curious if we need some type of mechanism within this to actually make sure that something happens, right? Because, and then similarly we have a report, is that report supposed to be a written report? Is it an oral report during report time? Like, what's our, otherwise, like it's, we all get the intention, right? I mean, we voted for the intention of this, but how do we achieve the outcome that we're looking for is the question. And whether we have that mechanism in the current, or in the current resolution, or whether we need it. I mean, we could just agree ourselves that this is how we wanna do it, but. I think over-regulating is what gets us into trouble here. So I was imagining that each council member would kind of come up with their own strategy of being a liaison to the boards and commissions if they wanna give an oral report. They can, verbal, written. Are there other questions, or perhaps comments, or responses to council member Asari's question? Because in a lot of ways, this whole resolution is about all of us. I'll follow up, 'cause I don't see any hands. That I had kind of a similar question of what happens if a council member doesn't fulfill these responsibilities? What happens if they don't check in at least three times a year? What happens if they don't go to a meeting a year? Like, what is, how much public shaming do we get to do? I'm kidding about the public shaming, but like, and I don't think that the sponsor of this necessarily has to answer all of these questions, 'cause it really is, like, in a lot of ways, our job is all about personal accountability, but. Right, yeah. May I? Sure. - Council member Daly. I think it would just be very similar to our regular committee assignments. You know, we'll know if somebody's not keeping up, and what happens then? I don't know the answer to that, but. But some people do. (laughing) No, but I just see this as a way of us having a better understanding of what's happening, not trying to have control over anything, but just feeling more connected to what's going on in our city, and the boards and commissions that we help appoint people to, and making them feel like they're heard, and their work is being acknowledged. Other questions or comments about that? Council Member Piedmont-Smith. Well, just to back up what Council Member Zulik said, we were envisioning when we were talking about this in the Committee on Council Processes, we were envisioning that people, like all three people on the interview committee would write down what they're most interested in as far as serving as liaison. And then the chair would just try to put that together and make fair assignments, and then the committee would vote on it. So it seems very unlikely that somebody would, unless they're not interested in anything, that it seems unlikely they would have something that they have no interest in, so. I would agree. I also wanna point out that this resolution is supposed to start in January of next year, and each year the president has an opportunity to change interview committees. And so that's the other thing that I wanna point out for whoever is president next year in terms of checking in with people that, prior to now, the interview committees just interviewed people, and so it maybe didn't necessarily matter which interview team you were on, but now since we actually have these, assuming this passes, a larger responsibility for each one, there might be interview committees that might be more or less desirable for different members based on their interests. So that is just an additional thing to take into consideration next year. Are there other questions or comments? Council Member Asari. I wonder if we should consider, maybe this is, it's not something we need to consider now, but just as we think through this moving forward is whether such a mechanism might, replace is too strong a word, but whether we can then streamline some of the appointment procedures, because at the end of the day, all of our appointments get made by the whole council. So whether in essence you remove the three-body person, people who have to do the interviewing and all that, and we actually just, it's like the liaison is the person who brings that to the larger group. So 'cause we are sort of proliferating our meetings here with this, which is fine, I mean, it does give some structure, I think, to something that we've all wanted to do, which is be more involved in some of these committees. But then, and so that's one thought. Then the second thought for me is the overlapping of, we just made those Title 15 changes, sort of being clearer about the reports that we want from the committees themselves, and so thinking a little bit about how do we make sure that council member reports are complimentary or supportive or happening in cadences that make sense so that we're not just sort of duplicating things that we're just gonna hear anyways from the committees themselves. So I do think we should give some thought, again, I get the sort of informal nature of this, but we should give some thought to how are we going to usefully report back to one another so it's not just like I went to said committee, you know, and you know, what is the useful information that we're reporting to each other sort of ahead of things, right? Okay, maybe that's the kind of thing that should go into some kind of like administrative manual sort of thing, which I think Committee on Council Processes is also working on that too. Are you working on that kind of thing? Clerk Bolden, did you have something to add to this? Not quite directly, but I did want to point out that Deputy Clerk Crossley is online if you have any questions for her as well related to council committees and that sort of thing. Okay, thank you. Are there other questions? I actually have another one that relates to section four, number four, which says informing assigned boards or commission chairs and staff liaisons of any relevant legislation being developed or discussed by the council and soliciting feedback from the boards or commissions on said legislation. And I'm kind of concerned that there might be a timing issue of that. First of all, who defines relevant and what might be relevant or what might not be, but especially in terms of say a resolution that might relate to a board or commission. If that packet gets released on a Friday for a discussion the next Wednesday, I mean the chances that there's going to be a meeting of that board and commission within that time that then they would be able to discuss it is like low. So I don't quite know how to actually do that. So that was intended to be a little less formal than full meetings and mostly reaching out to the chair and the staff liaison who might be able to offer some insight on behalf of those commissions. I guess that makes me a little uncomfortable to then rely on essentially one member of the commission and then the staff member to give potentially an opinion on legislation as opposed to the whole commission. Okay. I mean, I don't know if, I just don't know how possible that is all the time to get meaningful feedback from the board or commission. Does anybody else have any thoughts on that at all? Council Member Piedmont-Smith. I mean, to me it's understood that the term, the phrase if feasible is understood in my reading of it, but I know it's not always gonna be feasible. But sometimes we hear about, what we ourselves are working on, or we hear about a colleague working on something way before it comes as legislation, so. Council Member, sorry. And just like logistically too, because again, if we're leaning into the more sort of informal thing, are these assignments something we have to do in a formal open door meeting? Or for example, can I write my two committee members and say, I'd like to be liaison for these three things? Do those assignments have to be done officially in an open meeting, or can we just sort of informally say, I'm going to go to the status of black males commission? Like I said, it would be pretty similar to the original boards and commission appointments for council members. But yeah, but are we appoint, because the legislation, the resolution says we appoint internally to the group, but then we're likening it to the president making the appointment. So do those appointments have to be official, or is it enough that I just sort of say, I'll cover that commission? Would our attorney like to answer that? My suspicion would be that they have to be made in a public meeting. Which means we all, yeah, so I mean, yeah, so. Attorney Lainer, would you like to clarify the ODL in terms of whether those appointments need to be made publicly or not? Are you talking about the appointments within the interview committee to a particular board and commission? Correct. I think that would be done in the committee meeting. Right. I would imagine it would be in the first committee meeting of the year with just ironing out all the details. Are there other questions? All right, let's go ahead and move to public comment on resolution 2025-15, if there's any members of the public who would like to comment on this resolution. I don't see anybody in chambers. Is there anybody online who has raised a hand? Okay, returning back to council then for any final comments or questions. Are there any final comments? Council Member Rosenberger? I just have something to say in general about our commission, our committees, interview committees, that I think is incredibly hard to have three people, so if two people ever talk, it's in violation of open door law, and I would like to potentially, not tonight, but consider, I think this is great, I'm happy to support it, but consider having larger committees so that two of us can talk sometimes, just about coordination of who's gonna be where, or, yeah. Interesting, okay, thank you. Are there other comments? I'll go ahead and go, I am happy to support this, but I am still nervous about that section four, number four, because there's not an if feasible in there, and I appreciate that it's implied, and of course, like, what happens if we don't fulfill these responsibilities, like, there's not really a mechanism of consequence for not doing our jobs, at least not, you know, for our term, pretty much. But I will make every effort to do this. So if there are no other comments, if the clerk could please call the roll on resolution 2025-15. Council Member Piedmont-Smith? Yes. Stasberg? Yes. Daly? Yes. Zulek? Yes. Sombarger? Yes. Asari? Yes. Flaherty? Yes. Ruff? Yes. Rallo? Yes. Thank you. Great, thank you. So that passes unanimously. So now we're going to move back to the ordinance that we changed the order of earlier. I move that ordinance 2025-33 be introduced and read by the clerk by title and synopsis only. Second. It's been moved and seconded to introduce ordinance 2025-33. Will the clerk please call the roll on that motion? Yes. Stossberg? Yes. Naly? Yes. Zulek? Yes. Rosenberger? Yes. Asari? Yes. Flaherty? Yes. Ruff? Yes. Rallo? Yes. Piedmont-Smith? Yes. Great, thank you. Will the clerk please read? Ordinance 2025-33 to establish the Fiber Connectivity Fund for Digital Opportunity Initiatives. The synopsis is as follows. Ordinance 2025-33 establishes the Fiber Connectivity Fund to support broadband access for income qualifying residents, ensuring affordable high-speed internet and promoting digital opportunity while also securing annual infrastructure contributions from the developer. Thank you. I move that Ordinance 2025-33 be adopted. Second. Thank you. It looks like the controller is at the podium. He's gonna stay there today. If you could go ahead and introduce yourself for the record and tell us what this is all about. Good evening, Council. Controller McClellan, ITS Director Rick Dietz and I will be presenting this request to you tonight. This also has to do with the high-speed fiber that is being installed in Bloomington that was based off of a 2022 agreement with Meridium. And we keep saying Meridium now called M Street Fiber. There's a lot of names in this. So I'm just gonna switch to M Street Fiber. That is the company, that is the main overall company that we are working with now. So M Street Fiber and the city agreed to support access to the high-speed internet for low income and affordable housing units in Bloomington back in 2022. There is an agreement that the city will fund, will put a million dollars in a fund to support low income eligible houses just to connect to the high-speed fiber and that the M Street Fiber will match or exceed that amount if the total cost is over $700. So there's some details in this ordinance that create the fund that really lay out why the fund is being created, what the fund can be used for, how the city will use the proceeds to fulfill this promise that we made in the agreement and how the city has to use those funds after that agreement expires. And there is an expiration to the agreement. Rick Dietz can answer more questions about that. So really this is just creating the fund and explaining how it can be used and then we're gonna come back on September 30th and ask for an appropriation of $250,000 into this fund from the general fund. And we decided to fund this fund over four years with $250,000 to kind of spread out that promise of a million dollars so that we don't have a big hit to the general fund and it spreads it out over four years. We don't have to use the general fund. We can use any fund that can be spent on any lawful purpose of the city. We just chose the general fund because it is our largest operating fund. But we can discuss that now or we can discuss the funding later when we come back for the additional appropriation. But Rick Dietz is online and he absolutely knows the most about this project more than anybody else in the entire city. With Andrew Syborg, the engineering director, a close second. So he is online to answer probably all of your other questions. (laughs) Mr. Dietz, do you have anything to add right now? No, I think that was a really good summary and I can't think of anything more that needs to be added at this point. Okay, thank you. Then I think it goes to council members for any questions related to this establishment. Do we have any questions? Council member, sorry. Just a really quick one probably for director Dietz. The eligibility criteria, is that set by the city or set by Gigabit now for the low income? Yeah, that eligibility criteria was defined in our master development agreement and it's a pretty lengthy list of existing low income qualifying programs from the federal government and from the state. So instead of creating an elaborate criteria, we simply say that if a household is receiving supplemental nutrition assistance programs SNAP or HUD housing vouchers, the Indiana Department of Education free and reduced lunches, any of those suffice for eligibility for this. That program is ultimately administered by a Gigabit now, but those were the criteria that we originally defined with Meridian in our original agreement with them. And that was, thank you for saying that 'cause that was the part that I was a little unclear about. How does, so a city administered fund, but then it's administered by Gigabit now, like how does that exactly work? Like that an external party is assessing criteria, but then we're funding it, like how does that mechanism work? Yeah, so there's two separate things here. The eligibility for the program is one thing, and again, that's been defined in our original agreement. The fund that we're looking to establish here, which we're calling the Fiber Connectivity Fund, and the purpose of that is to provide city support for connecting low income households that are eligible for this program for the eligibility criteria to the Meridium M Street Fiber Network. And so we're providing, and this is where Controller mentioned the kind of the split and the allocation, if that cost to connect a unit, the residents is $700 or less, then the city is providing $350 or less, half of that cost out of this fund that we're establishing. If it's higher than that, then the city's obligation only extends to $350, and the remainder of the cost to connect that residence or housing unit to the network is borne by M Street Fiber. Okay, fantastic, you answered my follow-ups as well, so thank you. Are there other questions? Okay, I have kind of a clarification question. So in one of the whereas clauses, it specifies establishing a non-reverting fund, and then in the actual section of establishment, I don't see that it says that it's a non-reverting fund that we're establishing. Is that? It is a non-reverting fund. Okay. Is saying it in the whereas clause enough? Or did I just miss it in one of the sections? Let's see here. You probably didn't, you're probably correct. Let's see, reporting and accountability. Okay. I mean, it is a non-reverting fund, and the agreement states that it will be a non, the 2022 agreement states that it would be a non-reverting fund. And I think that when we refer back to this ordinance that created the fund, I mean, I agree with you. It should have been in a section, but having it in the whereas is at least, I feel like it's not a fatal flaw. At least it is mentioned in the whereas as in any reasonable reader reading this would see that it says it's going to be a non-reverting fund as just in a whereas instead of in a section. That would be my interpretation of this. If I go back into the ordinances and look up a fund to try to figure out what is this fund created for, I look at the whole document for any information I can get from that and use that as the law. So I mean, from a legal perspective, if anybody challenged it, I don't know, but I don't see it as a fatal flaw for our city being able to do business in relying on this document that created the fund. Okay, I'm sorry, I didn't point that out earlier, I asked that earlier. Council Attorney Liener, do you agree that having it in the whereas clause is suitable in terms of mutual understanding, not just now, but in the future? Where is it in the whereas clause? It is in the third whereas clause. i think it's an open question i mean i i think that one could make all the arguments that the controller just stated so do you think that it should be amended to specify i think it would be better if it was stated is that an amendment that y'all could do on the fly right now i'm sorry is that an amendment that you could do right now quickly to add in non-reverting somewhere in section one yes that we'd have to prepare it it has to be in writing the amendment must be riding and is that something that you can do in like 10 or 15 minutes because i have a couple other questions too so yeah yeah we can work on that thank you are there other questions from council members before i to my other ones okay this one might be a question for mr deets um in oh where am i in section two it says that the its department and relevant city departments shall develop policies and procedures to ensure effective implementation of the of the digital opportunities initiatives i was just wondering which departments needed to do that and if those procedures and policies were already like in place or if those like need to be worked on now um you know as far as policies in place to utilize these funds the the they they are for the sole purpose of supporting uh the connection of low income units to the network until until we reach the end of the exclusive period for the isp which is five years with two possible one-year extensions so between five and seven years at that point the at that point the use of the funds is also governed by the agreement and it states that they need to be used for uh you know for digital opportunity initiatives and those would all be you know once we reach that point those would all be budgeted as part of our normal our normal you know process with council approval during during the year also with regard to policy that we have a digital opportunity strategic plan that was developed in 2020 and we're in the process of you know revising that towards the tail end of of this year and perhaps early early next and those will essentially be uh you know governing document documents with regard guards to our activities in that area okay so i'm not sure if that quiet answers your question i'm not sure i think i think the short answer is that um not right now not until the end of the original isp period and then there might be more work but by then it'll just get budgeted in yeah that's that's correct we would need to um and already are planning to appropriate through the council for the use of these uh funds both for the uh you know the current use you know and then you know in the future we would be requesting council authorization to use the fund for those other purposes okay thank you um i have another question does anybody else have any questions great and and this is giving staff plenty of time to uh to do this um in your memo um it talks about the city already having received invoices that need to be paid using this fund and i was just wondering um what those invoices currently total um my my recollection for those um and i'm sorry i don't have the right of hand is around 40 40 000 uh but the that predates the recent uh the recent connections at uh bloomington housing authority complexes uh you know which have have come online and in fact uh walnut woods is is lit now and and probably in the next couple of weeks we'll be able to accept uh uh customers coming on to the network so we anticipate more than that amount by the end of the year great thank you does staff have an amendment written for us yet should we recess for five minutes let's go ahead and recess until um well it's 8 33 right now so let's just do 8 38 and uh that'll give uh staff a little bit more time i'm gonna need to call us back to order here uh so we have been working on an amendment and so we are working on getting that amendment up on the screen that adds um non-reverting to the fiber connectivity fund um i actually have it in front of me right now so i i'm gonna pass the gavel over to councilmember piedmont smith because i'm technically sponsored to this all right um for the benefit of colleagues let's wait to get this on the screen and the public here we go all motion okay councilmember stossberg i would like to move amendment one to resolution 20 25 33 second okay there's a motion and a second for amendment one to ordinance 20 25 33 go ahead councilmember stossberg uh this just adds uh non-reverting into section one so section one now reads there is hereby created a non-reverbing non-reverting fiber connectivity fund um just to make sure that there is clarity mostly in the future for anybody who might see this in five seven or more years when um maybe it's not the same council members up there and up here and maybe not the same staff in city hall uh to make it clear that this the money in this fund stays in this fund to be used only for these purposes all right thank you very much is there any are there any questions about the amendment is there anybody in the public who would like to speak to the amendment if there's anybody online who wants to speak to this amendment no okay all right back to council any comments on the amendment i cannot see council member rollo at this point but if i don't hear anything i don't see a hand raised so let's go ahead and go to a vote on amendment one to ordinance 2025-33 council member dailey yes zulek yes rosenberger yes vasari yes clarity yes ruff yes rollo yes pete bunt smith yes stossberg yes thank you all right that amendment is adopted nine zero i'll pass it back to president stossberg thank you um sorry i didn't think of that earlier so were there any last questions about resolution or sorry ordinance 2025-33 as amended great let's go to public comment on that then is there any public comment related to ordinance 2025-33 as amended i don't see anybody in chambers is there somebody online yes there is a wonderful um if the online commenter when they get unmuted if you could state your name for the record and then you'll have up to three minutes as kevin keel uh looking at the master agreement i'm just reading again it's open source information about the contractor the main contractor has three years to uh substantially complete the uh the build out and i i understand is that is the uh definition of that is 85 percent of the premises need to be ready to go by october of 2025 and seeing that it's september 17th now i just you know for we're going to put a million dollars in this but how is how is the project actually progressing is it does the master agreement need also to be amended or somehow changed to show that they they're am i wrong they're not in compliance with the master agreement uh it's just confusing to me this but there's this this and i didn't expect this that's what i'm just listening in and i started reading up to it because i was so confused just it seems to be some more issues that aren't even being discussed and i find that troubling it's and it seems we've already had a situation earlier where we're trying to figure out where to put a million dollars from a surity bond but i'm saying they went bust in all that exposure there so anyway i just wanted to to uh add that to the the mix just i'm just you know as a member of the public just so confused about what is going on with this project is there been some type of you know assessment of where we stand here how is this you know i don't know the quality of the project how is it you know are the citizens getting good value with this i guess is the bottom quality you know the bottom line question it just seems you know it just i just i don't feel comfortable after reading some of this and hearing what the discussion tonight thank you again for the opportunity to comment thank you are there other members of the public online with a hand raised no okay thank you um let's go ahead and revert to council for any um final comments on um ordinance 20 25 33 as amended council member rollo uh well just to raise the question i guess of compliance and and uh timing to director deets or to miss rice director deets do you uh is director deets still there there he is yes um you know as far as timing uh the the construction is pretty much halfway halfway done no one anticipated the uh uh the dissolution of uh you know of aeg in the in the middle of the project but we anticipate being able to get back up to speed in the coming coming weeks and months uh i'm not sure that that answers your your your question or your your statements well is this so the schedule of compliance to 85 percent or 80 percent completion is that feasible in the near term um it is it's probably not as um originally uh originally discussed but then we've had a year uh you know a year pause in construction because of the sorry there was a comment uh sorry i'm hearing something come through so we're on a new timetable in other words and yeah likely we will yeah we will need to adjust our our timetable because of because of this okay can you say this evening what that timetable is in terms of anticipated completion um i can tell you we anticipate um renewing the construction phase in the next couple of weeks you know at least in part and then at least i would see it you know we're probably um you know at the at the tail end of of next year uh for completion you know given that we're about halfway uh or a little over halfway through through okay thank you okay thank you are there other could i ask one more to follow up if it's sure maybe someone else will but sure mr kiyo talked about satisfaction any any comments on that mr deets as far as yeah customers who have signed up and are using the service uh you know they they seem very happy with it um i i don't have a scientific uh survey of that yet and although we are anticipating doing uh doing a survey as part of our digital equity strategic plan which will ask about um ask about that um what i can tell you anecdotally uh you know from just the like two most recent conversations over the course of the last in probably three weeks people are happy with the service um you know again that's you know i think they're happy just with the service period but they're also happy with the service in comparison to their experience with prior providers thank you thank you are there other comments from council members um i'll just say uh just as a matter of information for the public if you go to bloomington.in.gov/fiber um that is the information about the fiber initiative and that there is a construction progress map on there and so i assume as construction resumes uh that all will be kept up to date um so with that correct great thank you um so with that if the clerk could please call the roll on ordinance 2025-33 as amended council member Zulek yes Rosenberger yes Asari yes Flaherty yes Ruff yes Rallo yes Piedmont-Smith yes Stasberg yes Daley yes thank you thank you that passes unanimously and brings us to the end of our legislation for this evening we do have a period of additional public comment next if any members of the public would like to comment on items not on the agenda uh who did not comment during our first general period of public comment i don't see anybody in chambers is there anybody online with a hand raised we do have someone online i'll unmute them wonderful thank you when you're unmuted you can go ahead and state your name for the record and then you'll have up to three minutes and good evening uh council this is Christopher MG from the greater Bloomington chamber of commerce sorry i'm not there in person tonight uh we always can be in this community a little bit of a clinic senate a jaded tourist but i just wanted to bring up that uh we have some momentum across uh some major projects in the city uh the recent stadium district uh that's going to be before you soon i think it's going to create some real new uh opportunities on the north side with restaurants entertainment in the iconic iu athletic area and by using the the river district tool that the state has provided us it's going to allow some flexibility with liquor permitting i think it's going to be a big advantage tracking new businesses some high traffic corridor that we're already sitting with of course our great iu football team and then the hokwell neighborhood the redevelopment there that's shifting the approach to make it easier for local builders and small developers to participate i think this is exciting uh housing as we know is a major issue as we saw uh last week in a very effective deliberation meeting and the trades district continues to advance as kind of an innovation hub for entrepreneurs i think john fernandez's steady hand has really made this a anchor for high tech and creative industries and with iu as a partner i think uh and the boutique hotel coming in next year i think this is place is going to take off for young professionals and then of course the convention center where uh last week the chamber had its 110th uh oversold annual meeting is set nicely for expansion um thanks to the capital improvement board so this is going to be huge and boosting tourism strengthening downtown so i think together with these four projects um we're showing how building how bloomington is becoming stronger building for the future writing that next chapter of economic development that kind of pushes back against sometimes the narrative of that we've seen in social media other places so i just want to give some shout outs to everybody working hard to make this a more livable city and i thank you for your time no okay thank you very much um coming back to council then for any notes on council's schedule um i don't have that written down today so i'm gonna have to get my calendar up uh next week we have our special session um on the 24th our special budget session um and we will have a committee of the whole to discuss the final budget ordinance our next regular session as i said earlier is on tuesday tuesday is different september 30th also at 6 30 in these chambers does anybody else have any notes on council schedule seeing none we are adjourned thank you (orchestral music) (orchestral music) (orchestral music) (orchestral music) (orchestral music) (orchestral music) (orchestral music) (orchestral music) (orchestral music) (orchestral music) (upbeat music)