As we have a quorum, I'll go ahead and call to order this regular session of the Bloomington Common
Council on Tuesday, September 30th Will the clerk please call the roll? Councilmember Rallo here Piedmont
Smith here Stasburg here daily here. So like here Rosenberger here. Sorry here. I
Great thank you. Before I do our agenda summation for this evening I'm going to start off the meeting
with a point of interest which is something I often do or I nearly always do for our regular sessions.
And tonight I thought it appropriate to remind everyone why we're here oddly on a Tuesday night because
usually our regular sessions occur on Wednesday evenings. But tomorrow is the first day of the bird sorry is.
the Jewish holiday Yom Kippur. And Yom Kippur is celebrated starting just before sunset on the 10th
day of, and I hope I'm saying, I'm pronouncing this right, Tishrei, until just after the following nightfall.
And this year it corresponds roughly to October 1st to 2nd.
And for those of you who, like me, don't know anything about the Hebrew calendar, I went down a little
rabbit hole looking at that today. It doesn't follow the solar-based Gregorian calendar. And so that's
why Jewish holidays are not always on the same day of the year. They kind of float in the way that there
are several holidays in other cultures that kind of float throughout the year. And Tishrei is actually
the first month of the Hebrew calendar. So there's several holidays during this time for that faith
tradition.
Yom Kippur is considered one of the holiest days of the year and is translated to mean day of atonement.
And Yom Kippur is traditionally celebrated by fasting and otherwise abstaining from other physical comforts
and going to synagogue and praying for forgiveness and repentance and participating in special religious
services during that day.
So for any of our community members here in Bloomington who may be celebrating Yom Kippur, may you have
a meaningful fast. Then moving on to our agenda summation for the evening. We don't have any minutes
for approval.
So we will jump right into reports tonight. First, we will have reports from council members. Then we
will have the mayor and city offices and there are no reports from the mayor and city offices this evening.
Council committees where we will have a report from the special fiscal committee and a short conversation
about that. And then we will have our first period of reports from the public. So that's the first time
that a member of the public who wishes to speak tonight can speak to an item not on our
agenda and they'll have three minutes during that period to do so. After reports we will have appointments
to boards and commissions and we do have some appointments to boards and commissions this evening and
then we will have four pieces of legislation for first reading. We will start with ordinance 2025 32
Amending title 20, which is the unified development ordinance regarding a use table amendment urban
agriculture commercial Then we'll have ordinance 2025 38 fixing the salaries of officers and employees
of police and fire departments for the year 2026 Then we'll do first reading for ordinance 2025 39 fixing
the salaries of appointed deputies and employees for the Bloomington City Clerk and
For the year 2026 and then we will wrap up with ordinance 2025 40 to fix the salaries of appointed officers
non-union non-union and AFSCME employees for the year 2026 After those first readings, which we don't
discuss things on first reading. So we'll just read those into the record We'll have our legislation
for second readings and resolutions. These are items that will be discussed and potentially voted on
this evening We'll start with resolution
2517 Re initiating a proposal to amend title 20 which is the UDO regarding Affordability incentives
and planned unit developments then we'll have resolution 2025 18 Approving the naming of the stadium
district in the area around Miller Showers Park
And then we will have appropriation ordinance 2025 08 transferring funds from the general fund to the
fiber connectivity fund and then appropriation ordinance 2025 09 to appropriate general fund expenditures
that were not appropriated last year. That's kind of a cleanup appropriation.
because sometimes adjustments have to be made mid-year. Then we will have Ordinance 2025-35 amending
Title IX, which is the Bloomington Municipal Code entitled Water, and that is a rate adjustment. And
then we will have Ordinance 2025-36 authorizing acquisition, construction, and installation for certain
extensions and improvements to the Water Works utility of Bloomington and issuing
bonds after those pieces of
Legislation we will have an additional period of public comment for items not on the agenda So if you
have something else that you would like to share with us that is not on the agenda That will be another
time to do so and you may speak at one of those two periods of general public comment And of course
each piece of the legislation that is discussed tonight under second readings and resolutions also has
a period of public comment attached to that we will have any notes about the council schedule and then
we will adjourn and
So after all of that no minutes for approval, so we have reports from council members. So let's start
down at the far end with Council members, sorry to ever report this evening. Thank you. Thank
you councilmember Rosenberger Yes, thank you
Tonight I just wanted to take a minute to I guess talk about a few sad things and offer some condolences
on Friday night. Sean Sullivan was shot in the downtown Bloomington area and actually ended up happening
on my property. I live in multifamily housing and it happened right there next to the beeline and the
convention center and I know it's hit a lot of people really hard and I didn't really prepare
Sentences like I should I guess I just want to say like this was Such a sad event. It was like two minutes
of people arguing and then one gunshot that went off and Like the Bloomingtonian has reported that these
people did not know each other And it's just like so sad for someone to get murdered in the heat of
the moment or any time and I so I just want to offer condolences to the Sullivan family and to let anyone
know if they
would like to contribute to funeral expenses, there's a GoFundMe that you can find on the Bloomingtonians
website. Another sad thing that happened, someone downtown, Bobby, was assaulted by two other men on
Friday night. And there's also a GoFundMe for Bobby on the Bloomingtonians website for dental work.
He is missing a lot of teeth and could need some help.
And then the third thing is, it was just recently the third anniversary of the murder of Nate Stratton,
who was riding a scooter on North Walnut Street when Madeleine Howard left Kilroy's Conkirkwood driving
drunk and ran him over. I wanted to say thank you so much to Jonathan Frey, who just did a very long
article on the life of Nate in the IDS. So if you all get a chance to read that,
It is very touching. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Zulek. Yes, I do have a report. And also, I
second everything that you said. So thank you. Recently, the Food and Beverage Tax Advisory Committee,
also known as FABTAC, which is a lot easier to say, met for the first time this year on Friday.
Am happy to announce that I was elected chair of that committee and now have to produce the annual report
within a month So that's exciting And that's the only report I have thank you. Thank you and congratulations
Courtney sorry councilmember Daley No report. Thank you. Just congratulations councilmember Zulek. Thank
you for taking that on Thank you down at the other end councilmember Rallo. I
Yes, thanks to councilmember Rosenberger for Describing those terrible incidents. I won't I won't expound
on those but I will say that Something unexpected happened today. I was driving on hillside and I saw
the aftermath of a deer vehicle collision and It was five o'clock in the afternoon
And which is rather surprising. I think most of them happen in the evening and it just brought to mind
that Over a hundred on average deer vehicle collisions occur every year on in Monroe County many of
them in Bloomington many of them on thoroughfares like hillside I Think that this again reminds me and
maybe others that deer management would be something advisable for a community to consider and
Not just because of the damage caused by the deer or the terrible situation of a deer that is I killed
in that manner or maimed and wanders off to die maybe weeks later of sepsis or something a horrible
I think we've all seen deer with broken legs hobbling through neighborhoods And we profess to be a community
it cares about animals so I
We really should pay mind to this. But besides the humane aspect, there is also urban agriculture, which
we're going to be considering in the near future. People try to grow food in their yards. I think it's
unfair to people, especially low-income people, who can't afford to build fences to try to exclude deer.
And there's also tick-borne diseases that have become more and more prevalent
And there's a number of them in our community that people are subject to. So it's something that I think
that we need to attend to. I know that it's sort of dropped off the radar in certain respects. And I
was on a dear task force for nearly two years. We made recommendations. Those are dated now. I think
that we could revisit it. There are probably advances, probably in brief control that we could revisit that
could be applied, we might be able to get grants for it, et cetera. But in any case, I'll just conclude
by saying the peak deer collisions happen this time of year in October through January. That's the rut,
and so they're more active. The bucks are chasing does, and they run out into traffic, and so with the
cooler temperatures. So we should really pay mind to driving defensively, going to speed limits, and
trying to avoid
Collisions just for your own sake That's all I have. Thank you Thank You councilmember Piedmont Smith
Yes, I Also wanted to comment on the violence against unhoused people this weekend As councilmember
Rosenberger said there was one who was one
community member who was shot and killed on Friday evening on Madison. And then there were at least
two other unhoused members of our community who were beaten up in downtown Bloomington on Kirkwood.
Of course, this is unacceptable. It highlights the vulnerability of this portion of our population in
Bloomington and nationwide.
I just wanted to read a little bit from Dr. Margot Kushel, who wrote an article for the Benioff Homelessness
and Housing Initiative a few years ago. She writes, without a door to lock, people without housing are
vulnerable. Dramatic cases drive headlines, but violence directed at homeless people is constant, mundane,
and devastating. On top of that, due to longstanding effects of structural racism, homophobia, and transphobia,
Black and Native Americans as well as lesbian, gay, and transgender Americans are overrepresented in
the homeless population. Furthering their vulnerability, the homeless population is aging in this country.
As a physician and researcher who studies homelessness, I hear from patients who share how frightened
they are, not just when there's a potential serial murderer, a law about, but every day in their lives.
Despite such violence, instead of focusing on safety for our unhoused neighbors, the misperception that
people without homes are perpetrators rather than victims of violence contributes to both criminalizing
homelessness and dehumanizing people who don't have housing. Exaggerated attention on rare violent incidents
that individuals experiencing homelessness commit and emphasizing their housing status leads to policies
supporting criminalization of survival behaviors
like sleeping, sitting, and living in vehicles, while doing nothing to improve safety. Criminalization
of diverse resources worsens impoverishment, increases incarceration, and poses barriers to exiting
homelessness. It also makes it harder for individuals without homes to report threats or protect themselves.
Fear of people who are homeless rather than compassion on their behalf contributes to dehumanization,
seeing them as less than,
and not deserving of our protection, care, or equitable policies. These fears in turn contribute to
violence against people without homes, rates that appear to be increasing, and lessened political will
toward lasting solutions. Finally, the false perception of people who are homeless as perpetrators
contributes to challenges inciting shelters and housing to meet their needs.
I appreciate Councilmember Rosenbarger calling out the names of those who were attacked this weekend
or two of the names. But this is a national problem and something we need to pay close attention to
locally from not just when these terrible public violence incidents occur but as we move on in government and
policymaking. I also on a separate topic I wanted to mention the passing of Barry Leso who was a longtime
director of the United Way of Monroe County. I did meet Barry a few times in the last 20 years.
But I didn't know him that well, so I wanted to just read a comment that the Community Kitchen posted
on Facebook. Barry Leso was a passionate, tireless leader of our community. Even before his years as
executive director of United Way, Barry was making an impact on local service or social service organizations
by helping us understand the importance and process of strategic planning, how board members should
carry out the roles of governance,
and oversight and how to build consensus around topics. Community Kitchen specifically benefited from
his direction and support for strategic planning. As United Way Director, Barry listened and worked
with agencies to find solutions to community or funding issues. He listened to local agencies and pushed
back against eliminating United Way member agencies when the pressure came from outside our community
to do so. When state-level funding programs were threatened, Barry brought us together to collectively
make our voices heard.
Our community has been fortunate to benefit from many compassionate leaders and champions of our county
over the years, and Barry sits among them. Barry was often larger than life with a really bad joke to
open an event, but humble and ready to listen, learn, and support when needed. We will miss him.
Rest well, friend. You earned it. That's all I have. Thank you.
I also have a report tonight kind of shifting a little bit into the national sector of public health
and vaccination. And it's something that I've, you know, this was in the news a couple of weeks ago
and our news cycles seem to filter in and out so quickly. But I just was not able to talk about this
in terms of our meeting schedule and reports. But if you weren't aware of that,
Robert Kennedy is advocating to really do a lot of changes in terms of recommended vaccinations for
children, especially, and changed various requirements related to, for example, the COVID vaccination.
But I want to focus tonight a little bit on childhood vaccinations because those are under assault.
Actually, the state of Florida has a proposal put forth to eliminate all requirements for any childhood vaccines.
I wanted to share a little bit about my personal story with this. So my daughter was born in 2008, and
vaccines were still this like controversial thing at that point as well. And it was actually before
some of those studies related to autism and vaccines were totally debunked, which they are now. But
at the time, you know, it's my first kid and I'm pregnant, right? And I'm doing all of the possible
research because if you know me at all, you know that I do all of the possible research on all of the
things, right?
One of the things that I feel like I don't hear about people doing enough research on is the risk associated
with the actual disease itself. Because when you do that research, I mean, there's risk, right? Sure,
there's risk of vaccines. There's risk of every single thing that you could ever possibly think of doing.
And you have to make this risk assessment for your entire life.
And when you're pregnant and you're about to have a kid, or even when you do have a kid, you're making
all of these risk assessments every day. Oh, and I have teenagers now, right? Oh, you want to go out
with your friend in their car? You're making a risk assessment of whether or not you let them do that.
So when they're little and they're in utero, you're making this risk assessment and going, OK, when
they come out, what am I going to do about this vaccine thing that seems like maybe is controversial?
risk assessments that I made was what are these diseases that my kid is actually getting inoculated
against? What would they do? How likely is it that my kid might catch one of them? And then what would
happen if they did? And then you have to weigh that against, well, what might happen if they get the
vaccine? And you have to make that assessment.
Or I guess you don't have to. You can just not think about it and just do it. But I made that assessment.
And one of the things, I guess, that I want to highlight here are some of the assessments that I made
in my situation that
didn't necessarily follow what the medical establishment would necessarily recommend. Because in my
situation, I was a stay-at-home parent. My kid was very not exposed to things. And if they were exposed,
I could be like, oh, if they get chickenpox, well, we're going to be home for a few days, and it might
be miserable. But I'll just wait and see on that one. Oh, if we get the flu, we're going to be home
for a few days, and we might be miserable. But I'm not going to worry about that one.
But there are other ones that like, oh, you get the measles, you could have like these lifelong problems
with the measles. And at some point with something like chickenpox, it could become, you know, it's
much more serious to get chickenpox the older you get.
I don't know if people realize that. I was teaching high school once, and one of my high school students
got chickenpox. She was out of school for two solid weeks, maybe even three, and then on half days for
another two weeks. It was really, really serious and really bad because she was so old when she got
it. So you've got to make those risk assessments. And so I guess my conclusion here is you've got to
do your due diligence, and it's not just about
The vaccine might give your kid a fever or these small chances of vaccine side effects. It's also about
the much larger chances of side effects from the actual diseases itself if your kid lives through that
with something like measles or something like polio, which seems to be eradicated but is also on the
question mark list of people whether or not they seem to want to get the polio vaccine. These are serious things.
and very minimal side effects from vaccines, potentially larger side effects from actually getting those
diseases themselves. There really are some potential public health catastrophes waiting to happen if
we reduce our herd immunity with some of these things. That is my report for this evening. Moving on to
Council committee reports, since we don't have any reports from the Marin City offices, Council Member
Piedmont-Smith, I will hand it to you for special fiscal committee reports and conversation. Well, the
special fiscal committee met recently and talked about setting the salaries for elected officials for
2026. We kind of reviewed briefly
the conclusions of the ad hoc salary committee that met last fall and came up with recommendations for
salary increases and also talked about the amendments that was then passed by the council to bring down
the to reduce the increases but still provide an increase for council members and the mayor and the clerk.
So we felt it was important to check back in with the full council on this issue because there were
some strong viewpoints last year and we didn't really know what direction to go this year. So that's
why we're here tonight just trying to get some more feedback from folks who aren't on that committee
or even if you are on it and you have some new ideas to share.
I just wanted to open it up to to you all. I provided lots of background information in the packet so
hopefully you had a chance to refresh your memory on this topic. Do council members have thoughts or
questions around salary for elected officials for next year. Council member Rosenberger.
I am sorry. I did not prepare to have the discussion at tonight I guess that part was in your memo,
but I just read through it and looked at everything before Is there a way to do it is everyone ready
tonight? I don't know. That's my question. Are we throwing out answers or what exactly do you Like I
would love to discuss it Well, we are timeline is that we need to pass the
Ordinance before the end of the year If there are going to be substantial fiscal impacts then the sooner
the better since we have our vote on the budget coming up soon But yeah, we could we could hold a discussion
another evening I suppose if we do it relatively soon As a point of reference our next regular session
is not until the 22nd, I believe so
Next week is budget Hearings is the vote on the budget and then the week after that is the deliberation
session and then the week after that is our next regular session Councilor daily I Mean I'm prepared
to make you know to share my feelings right now if that's what we're cool with I think considering all of the
SB 1 and the federal funding and all the cuts that are happening to budgets everywhere and everybody
tightening their belts. I'm highly uncomfortable with the idea of Increases for elected officials right
now Even cola increases I'd be open to discussing those but anything beyond that I I feel strongly would
be inappropriate for us Okay, thank you are there other comments
Councilmember Rosenberger do you want to try to say something off the cuff. No I do not. I mean I was
on the fiscal committee last year where we put in a lot of time research hired a consultant you know
and that was just kind of dismissed. Thank you to this current committee for for reading that again
because I do think it was just really dismissed at council.
which is just disheartening, but that's not really a professional feeling. It's just disappointing when
work goes into something and other people don't tend to read it. I would, I don't know, I'd rather have
a different kind of discussion. I guess two of our council members aren't here tonight. And I think
in this case, it's important that all of council is because I don't know, seven out of nine doesn't
feel great for talking about our salaries. And I think they are two that tend to have pretty big opinions.
Yeah or perspectives on things. So I don't know. I don't I don't think I'm the only one that missed
the discussion point of this so I would just like to do it a different time whether in regular session
or something more casual to a committee of the whole or the part of the deliberation. Other comments.
Councilmember Piedmont Smith.
First, I do want to mention that even if we have budgetary impacts, there is a possibility of additional
appropriation ordinance as long as we have the support of the mayor's administration. But I think,
I mean, what's important to me is at some point getting to a rational, logical basis for setting these salaries.
That was presented last year. The results were a little shocking as far as the price tag. But then it
was kind of, the logical structure was kind of, an asterisk was added to that, and then we'd reduce
the amounts, and the asterisk said, let's look at what people in other cities are making in these positions,
which I also think is valid.
I do think it's important to have a valid basis and not just this is what they've been paid in the past
and you know this is what they're being paid in fishers or whatever. So I do want to attain that before
the end of this council term. I think that some of the hesitation about significant increases
was because we are voting on our own salaries. And it never feels quite right to say, well, I deserve
to make X amount of money. And as some colleagues have pointed out, we did run for these positions knowing
what the salary was. But part of the problem, as was pointed out, is that
Since it's not a salary that anybody can live off of, it does limit who can run and hold these offices.
So even if we don't reach a logical way of thinking about and analyzing and recommending salary levels,
this year I do want to get that accomplished before the next council term.
Councilmember as murder. I guess one logistical point in all this last year the mayor Sort of told us,
you know, this is your job go and do it Helped us hire a consultant or you know, we used what
the administration used For their HR studies and then in the final hour called a couple council members
and said I'm not supporting that right? So unless there's no
Increase for council or just the cola or just a minimum for everyone. So I guess I would ask the committee
And you can't know but like if you know if the mayor is not going to be on board I think she needs to
say that ahead of time before you all put a lot of work into it again because um Yeah, it was just sort
of a lot of work for nothing and and again, I guess it's almost impossible to ask since last year she
She said it was up to us and then would not support it. So I guess I don't even know what to do there,
but potentially it's worth considering or maybe getting something in writing. Other comments?
If there are no other comments on this then we can move on to the next agenda item which I'm hesitating
on because I'm writing down notes on something so. So then we're moving on to reports from the public
if there are no other comments on salaries. Councilmember Piedmont Smith I just wanted to inquire.
since the president of council sets the agenda if you would be willing to put this back on the agenda
sometime in October. Yeah I mean I think that that would have to be October 22nd. I mean I do want to
want to point out that in the memo that was included with this it does state actually in a couple of
places to that
We wanted to bring the issue of elected salaries back to the full council for discussion, intending
to do that as part of the report during September 30th, and then again at the end, please review these
materials and come prepared to discuss how you would like to proceed. So it feels a little frustrating
to me right now that it was written there, and then if people weren't prepared to discuss it, it kind
of feels like we do, you know, as somebody who's on the fiscal committee, like we're supposed to have
a meeting next week, I believe, where we were gonna discuss this, and we do need to,
You know in terms of timing get this ordinance in there. So I guess it's a little frustrating to have
to put it on the agenda tonight because people weren't prepared in the way that The chair of the committee
that I'm on Asked us to be prepared but sure it can go on the agenda again for further discussion on
the 22nd if that's what needs to happen Does that address your
Concern and would you like it on the agenda again? Councilmember sorry Just a proposal because I'm in
response to a councilmember Rosenberger said that I guess there is the option of making one of the fiscal
committee meetings So we have one this coming week, but we would have one two weeks later just making
that a committee of the whole meeting so so those who want to come and comment can do that and
That might give a sort of you know compromised way of being able to talk about it in a more relaxed
fashion I'm not sure that I would want to make it a committee of the whole meeting because committee
of the whole is Such a challenge in some ways, but we could call it a work session for us
for council if there was going to be a quorum of full council members there we could absolutely throw
that in as like a special meeting essentially so because then there's also not this sort of artificial
time well not really artificial we have like so many things on the agenda but you know the sort of time
constraint and it's up to the committee itself but the next one's the next one's this this coming Wednesday
yeah our next the next fiscal committee meeting is actually we have enough time to notice it
So right is is Wednesday October 8th from 1 30 to 3 So is that a time that any other council members
that are because there's four of us on the committee So we would need one more council member to be
that would be a quorum of council. So I'm seeing one Councilmember Rosenberger is that a time that yeah,
wait 130 130 to 3 on the 8th so you were able to
To make that okay, so we will work on re noticing that meeting in whatever way it is that we have to
re notice that meeting Yeah, I Think so or a work session, but I think that work sessions and it's still
it's like fuzzy thing to you So I think it's just a special session. It's still a special session. Yeah,
okay Does that work for you councilmember? Piedmont Smith in terms of that like is the fiscal committee
meeting and I'm not sure what else we were supposed to discuss that night My only concern would be is
that we have
Two council members who are not here tonight who may also not be able to participate on Wednesday the
8th. So So I guess I still would prefer to tag it on to either the discussion session on October 15th
or the regular session on October 22nd How about we inquire with those two council members?
I guess I know I would like to discuss this but I don't know if other people want to discuss it so if
nobody does then we don't have to meet I Mean no one else's really weighed in right about whether or
not they want to discuss it With her thoughts on it that seemed pretty firm so I Mean because I can
have a conversation with Isabelle and
You know if that's all that needs to happen is what I'm saying or I'm sorry councilmember Piedmont Smith
Because if nobody else has anything to say then I don't need to try to make everyone meet, you know
Councilmember Piedmont Smith First of all, if we if we have a special session we need to check with
the clerk's office and the council staff for their availability But
Perhaps we can not make a decision now and check in with colleagues who are unable to be here today.
Of course, any colleague is welcome to contact any member of the fiscal committee and give their input
that way. So I think we're ending this by saying we're taking all of that under advisement. And we'll
figure it out.
I think that that's the and and technically that fiscal committee meeting is already there's usually
a member of the clerk's office there So I would assume that that could What was that What would you
like to say Clerk Bolden just to clarify. Are you responding to my request to speak now by saying what
would you like to say? Yes, I did not see that you had a request to speak somebody said that that
You did but when I looked over to you didn't seem like you were ready. So I understand I was just waiting
for you to finish or acknowledge the request. So anyway Councilmember P Montsmith actually addressed
the concern about clerk staff. It was already noticed. And yes there is usually a staff member there
to keep a memo although it would probably shift who's responsible and who will be in the room if you
change it to a special session.
I do think it would be a nice idea to do it on the deliberative session night as opposed to during the
fiscal committee meeting. And it would be nice if you actually invited the other elected officials who
are impacted by your salary ordinance officially as opposed to letting us hear about it secondhand or
after the fact and having to insert ourselves into your discussion as I just did. Thank you. OK. So
we'll figure that out. I think that's the conclusion.
Does anybody else have any any other comments about this? All right, let's move on to our first session
of reports from the public so if you were a member of the public who Would like to speak to an item
not on the agenda and
This is a time to do that. If you're in chambers, you can go ahead and make your way to the podium.
You would have up to three minutes. If you're online, you can use the reactions tab to raise your hand
or you can send a chat message to the host. I don't see anybody moving in chambers. Is there anybody
online who would like to speak? Yes, and I'll unmute them now. Wonderful. Thank you. Please state your
name for the record when you're unmuted and then you will have three minutes. Yes, this is Kevin Keel.
As a citizen of Indiana, if anybody from any city in Indiana asked me what I would suggest on how to
compensate elected officials, I would think a good pinpoint, a baseline to use would be the median household
income. Like for the median household income for Bloomington is $50,156 per the Bloomington Economic
Development Corporation. I'd say, hey, that's a good figure.
Take 50% of that, you got the city council, four times that, the mayor maybe. I mean, it gives you a
good idea of where you really sit in comparison to the median. We're not talking the real taxpayer,
the individual citizen out there. I think that would be a great benchmark to use. So I suggest I would
suggest that for any elected official. So anyway, I just throw that out. Good luck.
much are there are there any other folks either in chambers or online who would like to make public
comment all right then we will move on to appointments to boards and commissions which I do believe
we have some does anybody have a motion related to
Councilmember Zulek On behalf of interview team committee see on The Historic Preservation Commission.
We recommend that Drew Heron be appointed to seat c4 and for the Arts Commission We recommend that Lynn
Hooker be appointed to seat c3. I
Thank you. We have an emotion and a second related to interview committee team see recommendations Are
there any councilmember questions or comments related to these recommendations? Attorney later, can
we do a voice vote for these approvals or do we need to do roll call for appointments to boards and
commissions? All those in favor of those two appointments, please say aye aye
Any opposed? Thank you. That motion passes unanimously. Thank you to Drew Heron and Lynn Hooker for
your service. Councilmember Daly. Thank you. Interview committee team B would like to recommend for
the Transportation Commission the appointment of a bond binder to seat C one. Second motion and a second
related to committee team B recommendations. Are there any questions or comments?
regarding this appointment Seeing none all those in favor, please say aye aye any opposed Thank you.
That motion passes 7-0 and thank you to a bond binder for their service and Councilmember, sorry Team
a would like to recommend Joshua Brewer to seat c3 of the Board of Housing quality appeals Second
Thank you. We have a motion and a second related to interview committee team A recommendations. Are
there any questions or comments from the council?
I do think that this particular seat, I think, illustrates how important it is for us to be thinking
about making, figuring out a way to make our appointments a bit more quickly to boards and commissions.
It was reported, I think, widely that, you know, the Board of Housing Appeals wasn't able to meet on
an occasion because they weren't able to meet CORA. And so I think that we've talked about this when
we've talked about liaisons, but I really, really think that this illustrates the sense
that what we want to do is have the liaison make the recommendation to the body of council rather than
have these committees and meet because it's just really hard to get everybody in a room together than
to do the interviews and all of these type of things when sometimes it's sort of a matter of being able
to do important city business, so Just as a reminder Okay, are there any other comments or questions
related to this appointment All right, all of those in favor, please say aye opposed
Thank you. That motion passes 7 0 as well. And thank you to Joshua Brewer for his service. Moving on
to legislation for first readings. I move that appropriation ordinance 2025 dash 30 first readings ordinance 2025 32.
It's just ordinance not appropriation. Yes, it's just ordinance Forgive me rewind do over I move that
ordinance 2025-32 be introduced and read by the clerk by title and synopsis only second Thank you. It's
been moved and seconded to introduce ordinance 2025-32. All those in favor, please say aye. I Opposed.
Thank you. Will the clerk please read? I
ordinance twenty twenty five dash thirty two to amend title 20 of the Bloomington municipal code regarding
use table amendment urban agriculture commercial. The synopsis is as follows. This amendment introduces
a new land use urban agriculture commercial. This new land use would allow some expanded services and
offerings within the city for urban agriculture uses beyond the current similar land use of urban agriculture
non-commercial.
The new proposed land use would allow for an outdoor education component, on-site employees, and year-round
retail sales for produce grown on the property. This use is proposed to be a conditional accessory use
in the R1, R4, RM, and RH districts, and a permitted use in all other districts. There are use-specific
standards, a new definition, and related adjustments to the numbering of preceding sections of the UDO.
This ordinance is in accordance with Indiana code thirty six seven four six hundred We will hear that
ordinance on October 22nd at our next regular session Twenty five dash thirty eight be introduced and
read by the clerk by title and synopsis only It's been moved and seconded to introduce ordinance 2025
38 all those in favor, please say aye aye opposed
Thank you. Will the clerk please read yet. Just one second please ordinance 20 25 38 an ordinance fixing
the salaries of officers and employees of the police.
and fire departments for the city of Bloomington Indiana for the year twenty twenty six. The synopsis
is as follows. This ordinance sets the minimum and maximum salary rates for all sworn fire and police
personnel for the year twenty twenty six in accordance with council approved collective bargaining
agreements. Thank you. It's twenty twenty five dash thirty nine be introduced and read by the clerk
by title and synopsis only.
Second, it's been moved and seconded to introduce ordinance 2025 39. All those in favor, please say
aye. Aye Opposed. Thank you. Will the clerk please read Ordinance 2025-39 to fix the salaries of appointed
deputies and employees of the Bloomington City Clerk for the city of Bloomington Monroe County, Indiana
for the year 2026 the synopsis is as follows this salary ordinance establishes the 2026 maximum salaries
for Bloomington City Clerk employees and
I Move that ordinance 2025-40 be introduced and read by the clerk by title and synopsis only Thank you,
it's been moved and seconded to introduce ordinance 2025-40 all those in favor, please say aye aye opposed
Thank you. Will the clerk please read?
Ordinance 2025-40, an ordinance to fix the salaries of appointed officers, non-union and AFSCME employees
for all the departments of the City of Bloomington, Monroe County, Indiana for the year 2026. The synopsis
is as follows. Ordinance 2025-40 sets the maximum 2026 salary for all appointed officers, non-union
and AFSCME employees for all the departments of the City of Bloomington, Indiana.
Thank you so much as I already mentioned our next regular session is October 22nd. So those four ordinances
will be heard for second reading on that date. Now we're moving on to legislation for second readings
and resolutions and I'm passing the gavel to Vice President Councilman Pete Mott Smith for this.
All right. Resolution 2025 dash 17 be introduced and read by the clerk by title and synopsis only.
It's been moved and seconded. All in favor please say aye. Aye. Any opposed. Well the clerk please read
resolution 20 25 17 to initiate a proposal to amend title 20 of the Bloomington Municipal Code by restating
resolution 20 25 10 regarding preparation of a proposal to amend chapter 20 point 0 4.1 1 0 and 20 point
0 2 0 4 0.
The synopsis is as follows this resolution sponsored by Councilmember Stasberg initiates the prior proposal
in resolution 2025-10 adopted on July 16th 2025 which directs the Planning Commission to prepare amendments
to the Bloomington Municipal Code title 20 to make changes to the affordable housing incentive qualifying
standards That resolution 2025-17 be adopted Second
All right. And council member Stossberg would you like to present this resolution please. Yeah this
is actually the third time that I've presented this resolution. So I hope we can make this nice and
quick for those in the public who maybe aren't aware of last November. This is a resolution to request
the plan commission to modify affordability incentive eligibility requirements and the affordability
standards for the
planned unit developments or PUDs Last November I initiated this originally and there are certain state
guidelines around how long the Plan Commission has both to hear it initially and then to vote
on a recommendation to forward to council after that and The for the first resolution from last November
the Plan Commission heard
the initial proposal but then did not vote on it with the required time. So I re initiated it with a
couple of modifications on July 16th and Plan Commission has failed in 60 days to hold a hearing with
regard to this. So I am re initiating it again. It is an identical resolution except there's a little
language in there about re initiating that.
Our staff was so kind as to help me with so if anybody has any questions about this, let me know Thank
you, are there questions for councilmember Stasberg and I see planning and transportation director Hiddle
is here as well if there are questions Yes councilmember. Sorry
This is the second time, right, that thoughts on, I mean, you're on the planning commission. What's
the delay here, and what can we do? Because it sort of seems a bit strange that we're having to reengage
on a thing that's written in code. Well, the first delay was partly because there were two pieces of
the original resolution, and one of them just took a little bit longer in terms of engagement.
Second time. I don't think that there's a good reason except Overlooking it. I'm not sure if director
Hiddle wants to speak to that or not and it looks like he's standing Planning and transportation there's
not a good reason we mishandled this twice and so we've put some safeguards in place so that doesn't
happen again we put checks and balances in the form of
The mayor's legislative affairs specialist and clarified our positional roles as to who is responsible
for making sure that this happens. So we don't have a good reason as to why we've been back twice. Can
I ask a follow up question. Yes.
Is there anything that we can do? I mean, because there's a sort of cosmic, or cosmic maybe elevates
this a little bit too much. But there is a functional matter here of that council has a role to play.
And if we initiate that role, that if there's a breakdown, that's a failure of our system of government.
And so is there something that we can do as a council to better support? I'm grateful that you acknowledge
that it is on your side.
What can we do to build that capacity or clarity or whatever needs to happen? So that so that things
that we want to see done aren't delayed. No, there's I don't think there's anything I think it's on
our end and I think it's anomalous. It's a rare mistake that happened to have happened twice And I don't
think it'll happen again. Awesome. Thank you. No, I appreciate Asking the question, but I don't know
if there's anything different council could do. Thank you, sir Councilmember Stossburg
I do want to highlight that after the first time this happened our council staff created a calendar
and I don't know for sure how widely they shared it I know that that they shared it with with me in
terms of my role as president I think just to put these types of resolutions on the calendar with the
deadlines and then in our
legislative calendar as well in terms of like that's the internal document that staff and I use to track
legislation there's also that comment like when is this due by In in that document so that then on our
end we can track dates better and that is something that I Recall mentioning that to planning staff,
but if planning staff was uncertain about whose exact responsibility it was to
Get it on because I mean as the representative to the Planning Commission, I believe this response is
already written essentially in terms of the UDO changes that staff was going to propose to Planning
Commission because we've already heard it at Planning Commission. We've already had a presentation from
Anna Killian Hansen from hand around affordability because several Planning Commission members wanted
to understand that better and the whole thing better and so the proposals there it just didn't get
Finishing push of getting on the agenda this time and I'm glad that that's been internally addressed
Let me just see if anybody else has a question any other councilmembers have questions Okay, go ahead
councilmember. Sorry quick follow-up and then I'll leave maybe a question to our attorneys Is that what
type of recourse do we have as counsel when?
Because again, I mean we're talking about a question of law and then a thing just not being done and
we're going to do it again So so what? I'm somewhat concerned not in this just this single instance
but just in the in the larger sense that if you know if council can pass a thing according to Indiana
code and that that can just whether for by mistake in this case a mistake, but you know
I could imagine another instance somebody just ignores it. Not not Director Hittle not the planning
department just in the broader sense. What recourse do we have as a council. Often the Indiana code
will state what that recourse is in the 600 series with respect to this type of text amendment to zoning
ordinances. There isn't a stated recourse.
The statute indicates that when the proposal was initiated by council, then certain things have to be
performed by the plan commission, such as notice, hearing, and then a recommendation being made back
to council for its action as a legislative body.
Generally there there potentially could be some type of legal action taken in court It's unclear what
exactly that might be though Questions from council members Okay, we'll go to the public is there any
member of the public who would like to comment on resolution 2025-17
See anybody getting up here in the chambers. Is there anybody on zoom who is raising their
hand electronically. No there isn't. OK. All right. We'll come back to council. Are there any final
comments. Council member Stossberg thank you for what I hope is yes vote on this for a third time.
Okay I will just say that it's disappointing that we have to do this a third time. I want to thank our
council staff who kind of stepped in to try to help the situation by creating an online tool or calendar
with all of the deadlines per Indiana code related to planning issues. And I look forward to actually
seeing the UDO revision
That will make hopefully Will work with other Tools that we have to make more affordable housing or
accessible housing Available to residents because we sure need it any other final comments All right,
clerk Bolden, could you please call the roll on resolution 2025-17? Yes
Councilmember Piedmont Smith. Yes, Stasburg. Yes. That's member Daley. Yes. Councilmember Zulek. Yes.
That's member Rosenberger. Yes. Councilmember sorry. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. And that passes by a
vote of seven zero and we'll now move on to the next resolution.
I move that resolution 2025 dash 18 be introduced and read by the clerk by title and synopsis only second
all in favor of reading resolution 2025 dash 18. Please say aye. Any opposed. Will the clerk please read.
Resolution 2025 dash 18 to approve the naming of the stadium district in the area surrounding Miller
Showers Park. The synopsis is as follows. This resolution co-sponsored by Councilmember Stossberg names
the area around Miller Showers Park as the stadium district. This naming will foster community pride
promote economic growth and enhance tourism in the area. I move resolution 2025 dash 18 be adopted. Second.
Seconded and we'll go back to council president Stossberg for to start off the presentation Thank you
so much. So I just wanted to give a little bit of Background with my involvement with regard to the
stadium district So last year I was approached actually by Christopher mg of the Chamber of Commerce
and I believe that a few other council members were also approached at the time about this concept of trying to
give some life and vitality into this north side area in terms of
Geographic nodes and identity and the business owners in that area wanting some support and
some identification around that And so that conversation happened in July of 2024 It was on the telephone
and during that time because there's been so much Conversation in the community over the last couple
days about the named stadium district. I wanted to call out I was the one that actually floated that
name in the first place not as a salute to IU but as the economic reality that if we're looking at this
as supporting business
Businesses trying to drive the economy in that area have some identification in that area that it is
just a reality of that space that there are these large
sporting facilities right there that attract thousands of people each year to that space. And so between
August and January, maybe February, I had several conversations with our ESD department director, Cooper
Smith, about the concept, about some preliminary maps, about how that would help that area, benefits
of creating a named district, and how that can support businesses in the area simply by having
some kind of identification. And it was somewhere around the January, February time when I took over
as president, honestly, and I was very busy. And there was also this riverfront district piece, which
is not out yet, that has to do with a much smaller area of land in that same space in terms of economic
driver that is a more technical part that I was like,
That is not the technical expertise that I have, but I'm very supportive of giving this space
some encouragement in life and vitality and ways to really create some pride over there, create some
identity so that it can attract
folks into that area. And so at that time though, because these two things were very intertwined, I
passed it over to the ESD department and Director Cooper-Smith to kind of bring it through the rest
of the way. And so at this point in the story, I'm gonna pass that over to Director Cooper-Smith to
talk about the different things that she did to pursue this concept.
I'm Jane Cooper Smith the director of economic and sustainable development for the city of Bloomington
and I am really pleased to talk with you about Resolution 2518 this evening this legislation. Oh, there
it is seeks to advance quality of place in the north side area that serves as a gateway to Bloomington
This legislation does three things it establishes a name it establishes a geographic area and
And it empowers the Department of Economic and Sustainable Development to promote that area. So we're
then able to include that in our economic development efforts. It does not do other things. It does
not establish an economic development incentive. It does not have a planning component or requirement.
It does not require participation from anyone. It does not commit funding to the stadium district.
And it does not have a cost to participate for anyone who does choose to participate I do apologize.
This map was hard to fit on the slide. So I'll describe the boundaries here for you The boundaries of
the stadium district are our 13th Street on the south side to Clubhouse Drive on the north so Clubhouse
is the drive that connects
Old State Road 37 and Cascades to the Cascades golf course. So it goes all the way up there and then
it cuts over to North Walnut Street there scooping the area that contains visit Bloomington I Have to
find my place again. It's approximately Dunn Street on the east and Kinzer Pike Roger Street on the
west that's
It's actually further west than that in certain areas. So when we had GIS create the map, the desired
boundary was Kinzer. And so it's all the parcels that touch that. And so the physical boundary, geographic
boundary ends up going farther west. But that's how those parcels became included.
Yeah. And this effort is focused on commercial activity. There is an economic development program whose
this is an economic development program whose purpose is to drive activity to the commercial parts of
the district. The map includes a mix of residential and commercial areas specifically the area between
Walnut Street and Dunn Street which is part of the Garden Hill neighborhood is zoned for mixed use student
housing. So this is the area
You can see the blue-green squiggle going north south. This is the area to the east of that.
This area is mixed-use student housing. It's a zoning district that is intended, this is a direct quote
from the UDO, intended to accommodate a variety of housing opportunities for students in areas adjacent
to or within easy walking distance of IU's campus. The district is located primarily along commercial
corridors with easy access to campus serving public transit and is most concentrated in the areas directly
west, southwest, and northwest of Memorial Stadium. So even our UDO calls this area out to,
have Be an attraction for student housing to drive student population into this corridor and it calls
out the stadium specifically The initial footprint of the map was smaller but was expanded after discussions
with businesses And recommendations from businesses and as part of the city's consideration of the riverfront
district permit program which councilmember Stossberg mentioned that potential program will be brought
to you for consideration in October and
And the why naming a thing is a powerful action. This action in particular will strengthen Bloomington's
identity as a college town. It's not the only part of our identity but it's a key piece of what makes
Bloomington who we are and why we have the resources that we do.
It also highlights activity that is already happening in and around this area. With 2019 changes to
the UDO, the student population has indeed been driven to the district. Any time of day, you can see
people walking, dog walking, biking around an area that previously functioned as a pass-through.
And again, that's the area surrounding Miller Showers Park. And while student housing development has
driven the student population to this area, businesses continue to welcome a range of patrons
To the neighborhood whether for personal services professional services food or drink. So I think it's
a really Lovely balance in a diversified area for this reason. We have a mix of residents in the area.
We have students and we have Businesses attracting and serving students and long-term longtime residents
of Bloomington permanent full-time year-round residents there are also a number of underdeveloped properties
in the area that I believe will be positively influenced by the creation of this district and
I think I skipped one of my slides. Okay, so now I'm gonna tell you about the slide that we've been
sitting on Okay, the the district naming this district supports multiple goals in the city's economic
development framework Establish and activate nodes of distinct identity for Bloomington's key commercial
neighborhoods. This is just to say in the past I think we've done a really beautiful job of
Promoting downtown Bloomington and Kirkwood and we've kind of expanded that along the beeline trail
to include the switchyard Park and areas north including the trades district But Bloomington has really
wonderful diverse commercial neighborhoods To offer visitors and so we and ESD are really trying to
figure out what are the ways that we can bring businesses together in these different hubs and the way
that that these
Business neighborhoods can kind of function in similar ways to Kirkwood. What else can we offer visitors
and residents by really thinking about our identity in these areas? The second goal is to support destination tourism.
This gateway area plays a critical role in one of the prime drivers of visitors to Bloomington each
year, athletics, specifically IU athletics. Naming this area helps differentiate this district from
other parts of Bloomington, helping visitors determine where they should stay. And secondly, the hotels
in this area, I believe, will play a critical role in the early days of the convention center. So we
know that it's not realistic that the convention center host hotel will be online.
As the new convention center opens in 2027 and so we will have to direct visitors In and around our
community and help them navigate. I think this offers a counterpoint to that area Why are visitors so
important for? Bloomington visitors that stay with us serve the same functional economic role as a company
that sells its goods to buyers outside of the community That is they bring outside revenue
into Bloomington supporting our businesses and paying into the food and beverage tax which will play
an increasingly important role for Bloomington as the impacts of Senate enrolled act one are realized
The next item is it supports a small business development Naming the district offers a shared marketing
tool to the businesses located in the stadium district and it has already fostered a sense of community
and connection among participants
Then finally we have a goal to increase and communicate about quality of place amenities So again naming
this district makes it a thing that can be promoted and therefore communicated about I Also want to
name a couple of other inputs The office of the mayor is engaged in citywide branding efforts and the
initial report from the brand audit includes findings that recommend bridging the town and gown divide
so I think that covers everything on that list
And this slide is just a summary of engagement. So we we held business stakeholder meetings in May and
August We have had some email communications with businesses We've done direct outreach with a number
of our economic development stakeholders. We have a presentation plan for the Monroe CIB in October
and We'll continue doing outreach on this topic to communicate with our
Business neighbors and our residential neighbors. So with that I'd be happy to take any questions.
Oh Sorry, I had one more slide. This is just a summary of the slides timeline. It's simpler than it
looks It's basically you may vote tonight We're presenting it tonight We will add to relevant mapping
resources and then effectively
Businesses when if this is approved and when it is approved Businesses could start using this name.
Anyone could start using this name again. No one is obligated to in 2026 in the 2026 budget we have
proposed funding for wayfinding audit and then that will happen in partnership with visit Bloomington
and that will roll out also in tandem with the next phase of the citywide branding So that all kind
of works really well together Okay
And with that, I'd be happy to take questions. I think council member Stossberg wanted to round out
the presentation. I just wanted to add one thing, partly because of some community concern about this.
And I received an email about this, too, like naming this district the stadium district does not negate
other names associated with this area. So I had a constituent reach out to me saying, please don't rename
Miller Showers Park. We're not renaming Miller Showers Park. It will stay Miller Showers Park.
It does not like the name stadium district does not negate any of the neighborhoods that might overlap
this like the neighborhood name is still there and is of course going to end up the more prominent name
especially for residential spaces that this name is predominantly for commercial
Uses as opposed to any residential uses So I just wanted to take a minute to make sure that that was
clear for council members and the public with regard to the name Thank you. All right councilmember
daily you had a question. Yeah. Thank you both very much for that presentation and actually kind of
hopping off what you were Just alluding to what what kind of impact might this have on the residents
in these neighborhoods? Well, I
That's a great question, thank you. And I realized sometimes I bury the lead in my presentations and
I apologize for that. Why did we include the residential areas at all? I think is a good question and
in line with what you're asking. Our assumption, my assumption was that nothing would be required if
residents didn't wanna do anything with this label, but if there were small apartment buildings,
Rental units in these neighborhoods that were being marketed those property owners could also use the
stadium district name in addition to their neighborhood name so that was kind of why it It it expanded
to include the residential areas on both the east and the west sides of the neighborhood So for neighborhood
impact, I think it depends on what the neighbors want to do with it if they don't want to do anything
with it They don't have to
Individuals might include it in in something again if they're renting their house I don't know what
they might be doing or if there's you know, there's a small apartment building in Maple Heights, for
example Perhaps Olympus properties who I think I think owns that could use the label On their listing,
but I don't imagine it changing Maple Heights or Garden Hill
Especially in terms of your neighborhood signage and in your identity your core residential neighborhood
identity remains that of your neighborhood So are there any like possible negative side effects that
a neighborhood might see like a residential neighborhood might experience maybe more traffic or anything
of those sorts that we might think about with the association I think that that would
Only happen if there were signage related to that and the citywide Wayfinding audit and branding will
make really thoughtful Wayfinding signs for our visitors so we won't be slapping them In places that
we don't want them to go the purpose of the label so when I think about how a property owner or rental
owner might use it and
The purpose of the label is just to indicate that it's close to this stadium part of town, that you
are in walking or a short ride to the athletics facilities. I think that's the primary purpose. So I
don't really see a negative there. I don't really see it harming anyone, especially if they choose not
to use it. A neighborhood association might meet and say, we don't want anything to do with that, and
that would be fine.
Did you want to reply as well I just wanted to address the signage thing a little bit I mean there are
restrictions in the UDO about people putting up signs So, you know if there is say a small apartment
that's next to you in a residential district Which there might be in some of these zoning districts
in terms of what is allowed over there they can't just slap up a huge sign that says now you're in the
stadium district and
Because there are sign ordinances that talk about how big your signage can be and how much it can be.
And you have to get approval for a certain signage. So it's in terms of effects on neighbors. It's not
like suddenly there's going to be some huge sign next door to you. No matter what is next door to you
right now, they would have to go through the same process of any kind of signage. I envision it honestly.
I think one of the things that I could imagine it being used for is Airbnbs, honestly. So when those residents
areas there might be some Airbnb is that might then advertise themselves on Airbnb as part of this this
district and Then one of the other benefits of course once you do I mean I've I've gotten things through
Airbnb to write as you go like oh It's part of this district and here is this restaurant guide and if
you know the businesses all the restaurants there want to want to get together and make some kind of
online restaurant guide like this is all the things that are here and that's something that they can do and so
That's the piece of advantage that I really see in terms of the commercial pieces that are there. But
I think that residentially there would be little to no, especially like immediate impact of all of a
sudden there's this big sign next to you. I hope that answers your question.
Councilmember Rosenberger. Thank you so much. I have an 8 p.m. and that I am about to leave too so I'm
glad I get to talk right now and I'm sorry that I have to leave early tonight everyone.
Thank you director Cooper says so much for being here. I want to say because I'm leaving I will have
a question that Generally, I think this is awesome and I support it I have had a lot of emails from
folks and constituents in district 2 because Mabel Heights is a chunk of this and I would like it if
Mabel Heights can be
Consulted in all of this. So mostly I do need to leave early, but I would be voting no on this tonight
just because I think like Process is very process is very important to me again economic development
impacts streets houses humans, you know and so I think that if we I kind of relate it to if we have
duplexes as a conditional use that you know, there are multiple meetings and neighborhood approvals for
Two unit home. I think that we should just have approvals for like where this district might be and
how it impacts Neighborhoods, I know that the naming is it's a name and I totally understand everything
just like you can use it or you cannot use it to advertise Sort of with the geography of the name of
it. I know it's in relation to this In the process for the river district, but like in my mind if something
is called a stadium district the stadium is in the middle so just like
It is a ways from the stadium. So people have asked like what other names, you know Like if you don't
like that name what other name and some folks said like City Market Which there's not really a market
there, but there is I guess one market a grocery store But also like no dough right like north of downtown
I was just trying to put out some ideas because people were like have an idea if there's nothing like
I understand that so could you discuss a little bit your perspective on a
Resident engagement when you are doing economic development such as this. Yes Just frankly as the residents
probably who are here this evening No, we didn't reach out to the neighborhood associations because
we were seeing this primarily as a commercial district that's it's the initiative is for the commercial
district and we added we included the residential areas because in our view which people may or may
not agree with it was
not harmful to include them because it was Up to them whether they would use it in future or not And
it's so primarily focused on the commercial so we didn't do direct outreach to the neighborhood associations
Thank you Councilmember Arlo Well following up on that So I'm concerned about unintended consequences
this you know, it sounds benign but
Suppose So something that concerns me Prennely is the conversion of single-family owner-occupied homes
To rentals and Airbnb's and so forth me as well. Yeah, so we've got about a thousand in town and counting
and they're going up and so could this expedite that can that conversion and
owner occupied to rentals and Airbnb simply because that district is going to be known now as the stadium
district It's nearby the stadium. You market it in that way, right? so now the You know, it's it's very
attractive then for you know Investors to buy a home and say we're in the stadium district and that
so it's nearby and you can walk so it
It seems to me that it's not necessarily benign that there isn't that there might be a harm involved
in here Do you what? What do you think about that was that discussed? We didn't discuss the Airbnb's
but I think about Airbnb's and how much they harm our economy constantly This is very heavily on my
mind and I'm familiar with the statistics and I'm familiar with our great housing need and what we need
to have by 2027 for example, so I don't
You know, Airbnb's are so popular, I guess, for lack of a better word, in Bloomington. I don't know
that this name is going to worsen the current state. I don't know that it's possible to worsen the current
state. Sorry, I hear you laughing, but it's true. Well, no, no, I'm not laughing at that. I'm just,
you know. Yeah, we're all familiar. Yeah. It can't help it, I guess. Just to follow up, how difficult
would it be to exclude neighborhoods and just have
You know businesses or well, I think we need I Think that we need to have a contiguous district, right?
So I think that if we were to remove pieces From the map we would just want to make sure that it's not
parcel by parcel, but it's a section and I Don't personally think that's super difficult. It's just
more time and more edits and coming back So I I think that it's really important to
District to go all the way down to 13th Street And which is just north of that rail Indiana railroad
line, I think that There are commercial property properties on either side of college and walnut. There
are commercial properties along 17th Street that connect into Maple Heights their commercial properties
along Dunn Street the area east of
Sorry east of the college and walnut corridor Makes a lot of sense to me to be included in the stadium
district, even though it has a lot of residential in it again It's got commercial lining Dunn Street
and it has dense student rental for which the UDO Offers a definition that includes mention of the stadium
So I don't know that was a meandering answer, but I don't know if it gets what you wanted Yeah, that
gives me perspective
Thank you Yeah, I just wanted to mention the other thing that like Especially what we looked at in the
beginning stages of like the mapping process and what what area should there be? I was consulting our
zoning map a bunch and director Coopersmith referenced that a little bit, but if you look at the zoning
map You know, we have that mixed-use student district that goes all the way from the bypass down to
13th Street in this
rectangle essentially from done to walnut and then like a long college walnut and down 17th and then
up to there's a bunch of Multi-use districts and so or mixed sorry mixed use I think they're mostly
medium scale and then some of them are neighborhood scale and those are areas that are kind of you know,
specifically designed to have commercial in them and
Dr. Cooper-Smith mentioned the nodes earlier in terms of commercial nodes. And there's a few other commercial
nodes in different places, like Hillside and Henderson, for example, where we have a bunch of commercial
stuff right here in kind of this node. Now, this isn't quite a node. It's a little bit bigger than a
node because the space is a little bit bigger. And there are several businesses already along both 17th
and College Walnut.
And then while not going north to you and a lot of those places are already really catering. So in terms
of the Maple Heights area which has been brought up like in the original map if you look at the zoning
map the original proposal for this district more like mirrored that mixed use medium scale that kind
of winds through.
the kind of corner of that neighborhood as it goes that transition from college to 17th Street and I'm
using my hands a lot because it's this shape that will only make sense if you're looking at the zoning
map. And so I think that that the map could potentially be be shifted to exclude some of those areas
that are zoned more specifically residential but you know that
That area goes from the mixed use medium scale to the residential urban with a little bit of I think
it's residential maybe multifamily and maybe high density. I'm having to scroll up and figure out what
color is what. And so that speaks some to.
to the possibility of apartments and other builds going in there. So that was just something that that
was looked at originally in terms of that map in terms of what made sense. Yes. Council member sorry.
Could you tell us a little bit director Cooper Smith or perhaps council member Stasberg about the outcomes
of some of the outreach.
Yeah. Do you mean with businesses or yeah. So I mean if you go back to your slides you had a list of
here the groups that we that we reached out to. I mean it was really informational and honestly there
there wasn't I don't I would like to go back to that slide if we can. We'll just go through it if that's
OK. Thanks.
Sorry, it's well anyway, so I gave a detailed presentation to DVI last Monday The chamber has been involved
from the beginning. We haven't given a formal presentation to Like the chamber policy council, but we've
they've been connected Since the beginning visit Bloomington has been engaged since the beginning again,
that's leadership and not that full board BDC staff level
communication IU we communicated with the previous VP Morris and the previous VP for capital planning
and I apologize I forget the full title and then we've shared information with VP D'Angelo and haven't
had a back-and-forth exchange, but I use been Very supportive. There was a clear understanding that
from the beginning they were supportive they didn't think it was super appropriate to be included and
then we also felt like
This program was actually better. You mean when it's focused on the city property and so that was really
great and then the CIB again, I spoke briefly with President white cart and will be presenting to them
in October. Okay Yeah, cuz I think that there's um, well, I'm this is question time so I won't make
a comment I have a follow-up question, but I like can I ask
Is there can I ask a follow-up question right now or Councilmember Stossberg wanted to reply to you
as well. Yeah, I also just wanted to mention that that IU connection just just a tad bit because in
the earliest conversations there was this idea like do we include the IU property and councilmember
Rosenberger alerted to wealth the stadium district Don't you expect the stadium to be in the middle?
but if we were thinking about it in terms of economic development and businesses and in terms of like
the property that it
Surrounds are the stadiums is all IU owned property. So businesses can't really develop there So you're
not going to have businesses that are, you know bordering the stadium They're all going to be off to
one side because of just how the map looks and how the ownership of property looks and So that made
a whole lot more sense and IU seemed kind of agnostic either way. It didn't really matter and so this
is the result of that and
Councilmember sorry, did you have an additional question? I'm so just then as a follow-up because you
know this question about anchoring to a stadium So so I'm confirming with the two of you that when presented
to IU as a start I you said oh, yeah, that sounds great We've really really resonates with us to have
a stadium district north of the stadium So this is West of the stadium. Yeah west of the stadiums. Yes, I
Yes, and then, and so- They were not trying to drive the program, but they were saying like, you know,
it's like your friend saying, yes, I really love this for you. Yeah, okay. And then just that question,
I think, and I think you answered this to a member of the press who asked about the consideration of
other names. Could you talk a little bit about how we arrived at Stadium and, you know, because again,
this is a branding exercise. And so my follow up to that question is going to be, are we at any danger
that because we're going through this
Branding exercise and wayfinding that at some point the professionals that are doing the consulting
for the city come and go You know what this should actually be called No, the professionals that the
city's been consulting with are aware of this and have looked at our economic development framework
and think the nodal commercial strategy is great and Frankly with most of our outreach the name Stadium
District resonates with
Very well with the people it's practical. It's direct. It's clear. It's exactly what you want out of
a branding You know, it's a branding outcome that you want did we go through a full Branding exercise
for this specific slice of neighborhood No, but we did consult our experts visit Bloomington is maybe
one of the chief branding experts in Bloomington they go through brand audits and updates on
a two or three year cycle, they look at data, they look continually at the data, both of the makeup
of our visitors and the people who live here. So being able to have them be engaged in this is having
marketing professionals at our side. And it was a no-brainer for them. To go back again to where I started,
When I had this conversation with Mr. MG in July of 2024, it was brought to me as the business owners
in this area are interested in something. It was brought to me as something related to the fact that
there's lots of people who come here, tourists who come here to spend tourist dollars associated with
going to sporting events. And so it was posited to me as the sports district.
And I turned around and said stadium district instead of sports district because I think that we have
lots of other places in Bloomington that could be considered sport districts including.
city-owned property like Twin Lakes Recreation Center and Winslow Sports Park and So that was kind of
a piece of that and I didn't know at the time if that was going to stick through Going back
to the stakeholders in terms of the business owners in that area in terms of going to economic
and sustainable development as the experts in this But it did and so that that was a piece of it and
it it was named that way to recognize that in terms of economic driver in that space it
It's the stadium. It's the sports facilities up there that bring thousands of people into the city for
those sporting events. And so it's those people that are really going to frequent those businesses and
get those outside dollars and to like to like help the rest of.
you know, our small businesses over there. And I think also in terms of some of that housing and especially
that student housing, it's not just that, you know, for some of those folks that's adjacent to IU as
the university, like the place where they go to school, but I suspect that a whole bunch of those students
actually really want to live there because it's right by the football stadium.
or the basketball, or all of that thing. For a certain subset of the population, that's super desirable.
Now, for me personally, I try to avoid that area on game nights because it is just very, very congested.
But if I was 20, I might really be making different decisions.
Okay seeing none let's go to the public there's any member of the public who would like to comment on
resolution 2025 dash 18 naming of the stadium district. You can approach the podium and you'll have
up to three minutes. There should be a timer that you can see and please do sign in. I see the first
person is already doing all those things so that's great. And after.
A few people are in the chambers. We will check in online to see if there's anybody raising a hand there.
And when you're ready please say your name for the record and you'll have like I said three minutes.
Good evening. My name is Sarah Alexander and I am a resident of the Maple Heights neighborhood the northeast
half of which seems to have been included in the area of the proposed stadium district. While I appreciate
the efforts to activate the area surrounding Miller Showers Park, I am afraid that whoever made that
map doesn't seem to have any understanding of my neighborhood, or perhaps Bloomington at all. The defined
borders include 13th Street, which doesn't exist at all in the proposed area because of the railroad
tracks, and North Kinzer Pike isn't on the western boundary,
runs sort of three quarters of the way over. Jackson is actually on the west. So perhaps I should not
be surprised that the proponents of this resolution don't understand that while some businesses line
the edges of the neighborhood facing out, most of it is zoned residential, including my own home, which
is included in the proposed area. I object to the connection of this residential area to the stadium
in any way.
The only result of such a connection would be the further encouragement of short-term rentals. Such
properties sit empty most of the year, creating hollowed out neighborhoods where it is impossible to
foster relationships with the people with whom we should be able to build actual physical communities,
which is to say nothing of how short-term rentals inflate the cost of housing. Perhaps if those who
were in charge of
outreach on this project, had consulted with someone whose eyes weren't exclusively focused on how to
magic a drainage feature into a river so that they could more cheaply get more drunk drivers onto a
strode, we could have avoided all of this. Needless to say, I request that the council vote no on this
resolution.
Anybody else here in council chambers care to comment? Hello, my name is Greg Alexander I'm always amazed
by the power of prayer We have something inside of our heads just an idea and it leaps out of our heads
and it changes the world the way we think and talk about things matters
Generally, past planning documents have described this area as a gateway, and there's a downside because
it elevates the people that come through here over the people that live here. It's not the same thing
as a neighborhood. A gateway can be a highway. There are advantages to thinking of it as a gateway,
though, because it symbolizes a transition for that visitor. Now you're in a city, you need to be patient,
you need to pay attention. The gateway should tell people, you are entering my neighborhood.
By comparison, stadium district doesn't say a thing. The stadium only really exists less than a dozen
days a year. I'm not alone in saying I hate it. I don't like what those few days do for my community.
I don't want our planners and our business leaders to meditate on the stadium when they think about
my neighborhood. I live in this district and the stadium is a problem for me, not an asset.
The economic and cultural strength of this district is it's thousands upon thousands of residents and
it's extraordinarily insulting to say otherwise. Look at the material thing they're trying to lead up
to, more liquor licenses. They're trying to make a bar district on a highway. That's villainy,
that's evil. We already have an epidemic of drunk driving here. It's immoral to put a bar where people
only drive. I do want to see it develop. I do want to see more bars by my house. Our problem
is the College of Walnut Corridor. There are already businesses within this district that I want to
go to, that are not safe to walk to from my house, that I go less often because of that. We don't have
a problem with names. We don't have a problem with insufficient liquor licenses. We have a problem with
the highway that runs through our neighborhoods and restricts our commerce. We have a planning department.
You guys spend millions of our dollars
paying for this department, we have experts, use their expertise, no one from the planning department
is here, this is a planning issue, you're designating a district and you don't have planners here, like
what the heck? You know, we deserve the benefit of their expertise. Ask them, they'll tell you, we need
to do something about that highway, I'm comfortable saying that because our planning staff has already
recommended a college and walnut corridor study, a road diet, in as many words. This body voted for
that six years ago, seven years ago now, right?
That plan would actually help my neighborhood. That plan would actually help these businesses. Don't
just vote this down. Drag planning staff in here. Ask them what we should be doing to make this district
come to life and ask them why the hell are we passing plans that are sitting on the back burner for
seven years? Thank you. All right. Next person in chambers and then we'll go to zoom. Thank you. Council
member Piedmont Smith. This is Christian from the greater
Bloomington Chamber of Commerce. I was referenced by Madam President there. It was wonderful to work
with her and Miss Coopersmith on the stadium district. And a couple things I want to sort of bring up
on this. I was on Channel 13 News sort of promoting this. They had called on a late Friday. I had two
people from the community just randomly come up excited about it. One of the things they're excited
about is investment in that area. And what this is supposed to do, this marketing, is spur that investment.
I get more questions on what about that Colorado steakhouse? What's gonna happen there? This is a no-cost
proposal. This is about harnessing IU Athletics into helping the businesses along that corridor, which
is what spurred this idea to begin with. I don't know anything and cannot talk about the map itself
onto that. I didn't have anything to do with that. I do have something to do with the businesses along
that corridor that need
this sort of marketing tool to harness IEU athletics, which is a big deal. This is also a chance for
those student housing based on zoning to market their housing. If we want students away from the central
corridor, this seems like it would be a good idea on that. I just, I think sometimes we can't see the
forest from the trees in this community, and I think tourism is something we have to look at. SB1 is
making tax revenue very difficult. It's gonna put a strain on
The fiscal committee hopefully will go about that business and look at some very hard issues and not
just salary issues that we need to Bring that revenue up. How are you going to do that out of towners
and visitors? There's a way to do that. We want that part of The north side to be redeveloped. This
is a first step in sort of doing a no-cost
It is not a seven-year plan. This is simply trying to harness that IU athletics into something some
something a little bit bigger something of labeling that people can understand that don't live in Bloomington
and The businesses need that there they need this this we want to spur private investment in there This
is just a means to do that whether the boundaries move or not I you know I don't have an opinion on
that but we need to start thinking about economic development and
Spurring that in a time that is very difficult on Bloomington it is this is a tough time to where if
we can get Out of towners in here to spend their money and the multiplier effect of that It's not just
transferring money If I go to the movies or if I go to the bowling alley does not do anything economically
when out of towners come in There's a multiplier effect on it. We got to start thinking about that.
I feel for the residents I don't want to ruin any neighborhoods with this Residents are what make it
but this is not what this is about right now
This is about businesses and business investments. So let's just sort of think about that as we move
forward. Thanks. All right. Is there anybody who has a hand raised on Zoom who would like to comment.
Yes we have three people. OK go ahead with the first one. If you're you should be unmuted when you get
unmuted please state your name for the record and you'll have up to three minutes. Hello.
My name is Aubrey Williams and I am one of the co-founders of Heartwork Brewing on the north side in
the proposed stadium district. I'm a proud townie and graduate of Bloomington North who came back with
my family. And while I leave the map discussion up to the council and I do agree that we need better
visibility of crosswalks and crossing safety in our area.
and we have bike racks that we'd like to see used a bit more, I wanna bring up the perspective as a
small business along the corridor. One challenge any new business has is visibility and awareness, and
we see an opportunity to unite the area and highlight the entry to the area to help us further enhance
that north side. We and our neighbors recently cleaned up over 100 needles on just our two properties
and have been trying to make some of the area less of an eyesore after many properties were vacant for
a long time.
I know that additional liquor licenses can be a scary thing to consider, but when the census was done,
Bloomington actually didn't receive an increased quota due to the absence of the students to really
match our population growth. And what we've seen in other cities is that similar districting has driven
the opening of more family-friendly establishments. And the city would be able to manage who has access
to any of these permits, preventing them from being student-centric bars and focused more on local businesses.
businesses. For us, it would simply mean that we can sell local cider instead of just the beer that
we make. We could have somebody who's 20 years old could come in and have a pizza and, you know, sit
there for trivia night. It's hard to get any new businesses, especially restaurants, to open without
access to licenses that should be $1,000 but in Bloomington trade for a quarter of a million. And so
family-friendly restaurants, small businesses, we don't have the access that others do.
to be able to afford licenses that would truly allow us to serve more of our community. I've got two
little kids in this community and I think that it's important to me that we're a place that
serves Townie Beer and serves our community through events and other gathering spaces the way that we
like to talk about third spaces. So would love to be able to explain to people where we're located,
other than just saying, oh, we're north of downtown south of the bypass. So just one small business's
perspective in a very challenging economic environment where you've got those post-pandemic consumer
trends. Thank you for your consideration.
All right, who is the next speaker on Zoom? Once you are unmuted, please state your name for the record
and you'll have up to three minutes for your comments. Hello, my name is Gabriel Holbrough. Am I heard
right now? Yes. I am an employee of the city. I'm also a resident of Maple Heights, but I'm not speaking
on behalf of the city or really even speaking on behalf of the Neighborhood Association. Either I'm
speaking on my own behalf,
I hear the perspective that the stadium district branding won't affect the identity of the existing
neighborhoods, including Maple Heights. I respectfully disagree. I think the proposed stadium district
boundaries, they cut through the established area of the Maple Heights neighborhood, and they even cut
through the mapped Maple Heights historic district. I see the map in this proposal specifically is splitting
up Maple Heights,
and undermining the branding effort that my neighbors, unfortunately, I can't take any credit, but my
neighbors have put so much effort into. Recently, some of our neighbors worked on refurbishing our sign
that's on Madison just after you crossed the bridge from Rogers Street. There's a lot of work put into
the historic district, creating it, creating district guidelines for it. That's all part of the identity
of the district, the branding of the district. To identify, to address council member
Daley's question about impacts on the neighborhoods. The thing is we are already experiencing the traffic
and the short-term rentals. We'll be experiencing those impacts whether or not there's a stadium district
or whether or not a stadium district branding is adopted at all. But those impacts are okay. It's just
part of the pluses and minuses of our neighborhood. I mean, we also get to go to the great restaurants
like Heartwork Brewing. So those are some of the pluses.
But what I don't want it to have happen is the branding efforts to weaken my neighbor's efforts to create
a neighborhood identity. So specifically, my request to you council members is to amend the map to remove
the established Maple Heights neighborhood area from the map. That's what I would like to say.
Thank you. All right. We appreciate everybody's comments.
third person on zoom Okay, when you're unmuted, please state your name for the record and you'll have
up to three minutes to give your comments Good evening council. This is Mike McAfee from visit Bloomington
and thanks for considering this tonight. I I'm not going to repeat what ESD director Cooper Smith and
council member Stossberg said and the excellent comments from Aubrey Williams as well But I do want
to say we certainly hope that you will
approve this and move it forward. We look forward to supporting the efforts of our tourism and hospitality
partners in the area with this simple common sense marketing tool. I do think one thing that has failed
to be mentioned is that this is going to be a great marketing tool for them to use during the slower times.
We're not worried about two weekends ago when the market was at 95% capacity during the Illinois game
at a $600 a night rates. We're worried about
June when things are really slow and November and December and January. And this is going to be a great
marketing tool for them to work together and market. And all of us who support those efforts and also
promote that can wrap our arms around that and help create some business for them during the slow time.
So I do hope you'll approve this and move it forward. And thanks for considering it.
Right. Let's go back to in person. Are there is there anybody else who would like to comment in person
here in the council chambers. Please come to the podium. And please state your name for the record and
also sign in. And then when you start you'll have up to three minutes.
My name is Casey Green. I am in Maple Heights. And I've been there for five years now. I've been in
Bloomington for 20 years. I used to live down on Grant Street right across from the Cajun restaurant.
So I am well-versed in being right in the thick of it. It's not new to me. I love it. So being near
the stadium isn't intrinsically a drawback. Development is not a drawback. But there are two things
I want to say.
Two points I want to make about this which is the first one is identity We seem to have a lot of double
speak tonight which is both that naming is this powerful tool that is quintessential to development
and bringing money in and also it's not going to change anything and not going to impact anything and
And I think that's naive. Whether the district goes through Maple Heights or butts right up to the edge
of my house, which has been included in Maple Heights, we are gonna be impacted. We have seen for two
years things escalating and more and more negative impacts in our neighborhood. The thing that I loved
about the marketing surrounding this is that it described that the strength
of Bloomington and its partnership with IU is the unique character that we add to IU. And I think the
best way to get economic benefit is to have it fully integrated, not partitioned off. And right now,
I'm seeing a lot more movement towards trying to realign the character of Bloomington to overlap and
be overwritten by IU, more IU colors, ripping out native landscapes that are more reminiscent of our
Midwestern culture, naming it the stadium district. And we're losing our uniqueness. We're losing what
makes us interesting. The stadium is going to be there. People are going to live near the stadium no
matter what. We don't need to call it that and make that our only point of personality.
Especially given the news these days where I don't believe we want to be aligning as a neighborhood
with I use headlines. We don't want to be associated with that. A lot of us don't. Second issue I want
to bring up is the communication and the characterization around the neighborhoods being referred to
as a doormat.
or a gateway is absolutely insulting. We aren't here as a pastor. We're not the city's financial foyer.
If the funds aren't staying here and it's clear that the businesses are funneling that out, then we're
not actually benefiting. We're just providing services and losing.
Anybody else here in council chambers would like to give a comment Is there anybody else on zoom Okay,
we'll come back to the council then any council members want to follow up with a question or make a
comment councilmember Rallo Yes, I so I'm There's a dimension here that I wasn't considering and that is in
Director Cooper Smith, could you maybe answer a question? So with this As the speaker said this is just
a name but it has implications That might be profound One of which would be to allow more liquor licenses
in a special designated business district Is that is that likely in a likely outcome?
legislation that proposes River the creation of a riverfront district which would allow the issuance
of Low lower cost licenses to locally headquartered Restaurants within a narrow footprint. So I think
this would not be a high volume of permits, but I think it will foster new starts for locally owned
restaurants, which we desperately need in this community and
That is not being proposed tonight and it is not related to this map So it would require that legislation
That let yes that legislation will would be an ordinance. It would have two hearings and again public
outreach will Happen I that is technically slated for October 22nd at this time and that will get a
full full fleshing out Which I would welcome, okay Council president's husband
I was referring to earlier that like when when that started getting like paired conceptually with naming
a district I was like, oh, okay, like that is over my head and I'm like I I don't want to say I don't
support it right now because I've like seen it and I think that the safeguards that are in place around
Making sure that somebody mentioned bars earlier bars would not qualify for
for this so you know we don't want this area to turn into another bar zone or drunken you know spaces.
So it is very different. But that was a point where I was like, OK, that is kind of above my pay grade
in terms of those details. Those details are there. They're not quite ready. They're, as I said, a little
bit more complex in terms of making sure that they get vetted all the way. And so right now, it's tentatively
scheduled for a first reading on the 22nd and then a second reading on the 5th. But I also think that
that's still in flux because the attorneys are still looking at the details of that and wanting to make
sure that that program
Is set up in a way that is going to work? and do what we want it to do and not do what some of the commenters
tonight have alluded to being Uncomfortable with or nervous of and would be really not desirable outcomes
Councilmember Osari
Thank you. First, I'd like to note that we have a little bit of a structural problem with the proceeding
today, namely, one is that the council member who represents what now would be this district is no longer
here. They said that they were going to vote no, and I'm the only at-large member right now. I do think
that we have some
It's really important to make that distinction that Council Member Rallo made, which namely is that
there's two different things that we're discussing. Some of the comments were actually about the legislation
that is going to be put forth. And it's important not to sort of conflate the two, because the one is
the sort of tool that we have. This other one is about branding and marketing. So with that in mind,
I'm really quite interested. And I guess I can also comment, because my time's on. I mean, I'm quite
supportive of the latter thing,
I have a little bit of an issue with the current thing on our agenda, namely because of the seeming
disconnect between sort of the engagement efforts and outcomes of those engagements, right? And particularly
who we're engaging with and who's doing that engaging I think also to an extent matters a little bit
here because right now what I've heard from a lot of residents is that they're not quite happy
with the way that the map looks. They're confused about what this name means, all those type of things.
And then we're calling this a branding exercise, sort of gets off on the wrong foot. And so I'm kind
of interested in to what extent we'd be amenable to changing the map and what that process would look
like. You know, this should be, in my mind,
Should be a big win for the community that feels mostly good And so the fact that there's a neighborhood
that I used to live in by the way and loved very much and then spent 13 years in the neighborhood adjacent
to You know that they feel marginalized and not supported by this is Not great and in editing the map
conversely editing the map is something that's really manageable to do and I think this conversation helps
You know it helps me see that in our language we're centering the commercial activities and so even
though I understand why we expanded the footprint to include these residential areas the map should
also probably be narrowed.
to focus more deliberately on the commercial areas. That's what this is about. So thank you for answering
that. And so by way of my comment, I think what I would, unless we feel that it's something we can amend
today with all of that in mind, I really think that we should postpone it only so that, one, so we can
tie it more carefully to the tool legislation that's coming forward, which I think is super important
and something that we need to be discussing. And that was sort of the gist of this conversation. Secondly,
so that we can ensure
proper representation of this district. That's why we have districts. So it just feels, you know, if
the people of the district are particularly, you know, concerned about it, I think that it's important
that their representative or, you know, at least more of their at-large representatives be here. But
I think that we should have some discussions just around sort of the, you know, where this district
is so that we get a lot of support for it. So if we were voting today, I'd have to vote no, but I would
like to move this forward because I do see it as an important
piece of the legislation that's coming again later. So I would just my sort of recommendation to the
council is that we postpone this to sort of fix this a little bit more carefully with the separate
legislation so we can talk about those in unison. Thank you. Council member Stossberg did you want to
respond to that question. Yeah I also I guess we're going to. Yeah we kind of are. I think they're.
Yeah I also.
Earlier tonight, I think that I alluded a couple times to the zoning map. And earlier today, actually,
in one of the email communications in response to a constituent, I was like, I'm not actually sure.
Actually, it wasn't in response to a constituent, but it was about another constituent comment. I'm
not actually sure how the map got expanded into more of that residential area in Maple Heights, as opposed
to kind of staying on that border that was the multi-use area. And so I think that Director Coopersmith
addressed her reasoning
in that tonight and I support the concept of that reasoning but I also think that the residents who
live there that it makes them really uneasy and I think that that they have a point and it's kind of
like well is it really necessary to include that that residential space and I don't think it is so to
that like and I also support changing the map and so I would move that we postpone consideration of
this until our next regular session on October 22nd.
Okay. Does does this motion is their discussion allowed with a motion to postpone. Yes. Well I would
like to take an opportunity to to make a few comments. I'm in favor of the motion to postpone. I in
addition to what my colleagues have said as far as you know listening to the neighbors in Maple Heights.
I want to call up also what what I think one or maybe two residents stated in particular which was the
lack of safety along the Walnut and College Avenue corridor and the fact that we have for many years
put in our plans that we're going to do something about it and it's been studied and then it was put
on hold and now I don't know what's you know we keep putting it off it seems like that something that
I thought during
This meeting tonight is that maybe we should wait with this whole thing until After we actually see
some movement in making that corridor more safe So obviously that won't happen before October 22nd,
but but that's something I'm thinking of So I'm in favor of the motion other other council comments
Yes council member. Sorry on the motion I would I would motion that we amend it rather than
I guess it's a question to us to deliberate, but I wonder if it makes more sense to have it on the day
when we would do the second reading of the legislation around the riverfront district so that they're
clearly paired. When I made this suggestion originally, my first thought was, OK, give us time to amend
it. I think this accomplishes that. But I just wonder if there would be some value in pairing those
clearly, especially because we've had some comments today where they're conflating
both of those so we can have a clear you know this is what we're talking about and this is what we're
talking about and sort of how they overlap I think also helps with the branding of this part for that
matter. Can I make a statement or can you. I just want to be really clear I think I appreciate what
you're saying that you want to have the second reading of the potential stadium riverfront district
legislation follow this would be
Potentially voted on and considered first and then that I want to make it very clear I have heard a
couple times that these are related and they are and they are not the marketing efforts From the naming
are super important and are not dependent on the outcomes of the liquor Licensed Riverfront District
program and I think for that reason we we ended up deciding to separate them in this way because we
really wanted you to consider just the name
So I I'm sorry, I'll be quiet after this Council members toss. Sorry. Did you want to respond to that?
Yeah, I just want to second that that we were really specific and deliberate about separating those
things And I think it actually sometimes makes it Makes it worse in terms of conflation of things when
they're sitting right next to each other as opposed to when they're like
they're two separate things. And these are really two separate things. And as I said earlier, like,
I mean, I've no qualms about this. I mean, I put my name on it because I have no qualms about naming
a place. But I do, you know, like the requirements, et cetera, you know, I mean, it's really important
on the other one, there's more details. It's, you know, and I'm not even,
after talking with the attorneys this week, I'm not even sure that that's gonna have a first reading
on the 22nd right now in terms of some specific due diligence that needs to happen with that. And so,
postponing this, I think, after the 20, I don't even know if we could do that in terms of, because I
think we have to postpone to the next regular session. Okay, okay. Yeah, and I would just say as a thought
to that, that I mean, I totally appreciate that view, and I think it's a fair one.
I personally hold the view that I like them being connected. I like people viewing that there are two
different tools in a toolkit trying to achieve a broader overarching goal that is related. And so I
don't view the sort of marketing of this with creating and operating. And again, I don't want to get
into the details of this thing that's not currently in front of us. But I just think this does go to
the broader conversations that we're having around.
I think sometimes for the general public, we as a council, because what happens behind the scene is
opaque until it's in front of people. So sometimes it seems like we do things in this sort of like,
we did this, then we did this, then we did this. Again, just speaking as a person who does a lot of
listening sessions. But I think that it would be really, really wise of us to sort of
think about this in a way where you actually can manage the way that it's communicated in a way so it's
just not scatter shot, at least from the perspective of our residents. Because there is a lot of thought
that's gone into this and a lot of work that's gone into this. And I just think that we do ourselves
a disservice when the way that we debate it sometimes doesn't reflect that. But I am not opposed if
we continue with the motion as is. I will stop talking and I will vote yes on it.
on the motion Councilmember Rallo I'm in favor of postponement. I think my concerns about encouraging
rentals and Airbnb's was Substantiated by the expressed by residents so if a revised map could be available
if it could be amended in some way and you know, maybe I'm meeting offer to the residents so that they can
Express their views on that other than that. I think you know As a wayfinder or something. I suppose
that this has some utility and could be helpful And I'm happy that the Discussion about liquor license
is a separate matter because I have a lot of concerns about about that especially related to what my
colleague Councilmember Piedmont Smith said about the safety of that area and
and so forth, so Thank you Any other councilmember comments before we vote on the motion to postpone
All right Clerk Balding, will you please call the roll on the motion to postpone to October 22nd? Yes
Stasberg yes daily. Yes, Zulik. Yes. I
Rosen. No sorry. Yes. Rollo. Yes. Thank you. That motion passes 6 0. I'll hand the gavel back to President
Stossberg for the next item. Thank you. Next. Next item.
I move that appropriation ordinance 2025-08 be introduced and read by the clerk by title and synopsis
only Thank you, it's been moved and seconded to introduce appropriation ordinance 2025-08 all those
in favor, please say aye. Aye opposed Thank you. Will the clerk please read To transfer funds from the
general fund to the fiber connectivity fund and specially appropriate funds not otherwise budgeted
The synopsis is as follows appropriation ordinance twenty twenty five dash oh eight transfers funding
from the general fund to the fiber connectivity fund and appropriates that funding for the ITS department
for the city's master developer agreement with Meridian Hoosier Networks and Street fiber.
I move appropriation ordinance twenty twenty five dash oh eight be adopted. Thank you.
Looks like we have control McClellan here to present. Please introduce yourself for the record and go ahead.
Good evening council controller McClellan to ask for your consideration of this appropriation ordinance
it transfers $250,000 from the general fund from the cash balance of the general fund to our new fund
the fiber connectivity fund and then it creates a budget of 250,000 for the ITS department to use to
pay the to pay that those portion of the drop costs that we that we agreed to pay in the 2022 meridian agreement
This is to fund connection to the high-speed fiber network to low-income housing. Thank you. Do council
members have any questions about this appropriation? I see none.
So let's go ahead and move to public comment regarding appropriation ordinance 2025 08 If you remember
the public who would like to make a comment on this appropriation ordinance and you're in chambers Please
go ahead and make your way to the podium and you'll have up to three minutes If you're online, please
go ahead and raise your hand using the reactions tab or send a chat message to the host. I Don't see
anybody moving in chambers. Is there anybody who's raised her hand online? Okay
Brings us back to council again for any councilmember comments or questions if anybody has thought of
any Councilmember sorry quick comment for the general public might be watching and maybe didn't watch
our last meeting but this is You know, we're just making a transfer to a fund that we established and
debated at length At the last meeting that clearly specified how this money can be spent. So this is just a
Necessary action so that we can enact our plans from before If you hadn't made that comment that I was
gonna make that comment, so thanks for doing that So I didn't have to any other councilmember comments
regarding appropriation ordinance 20 2508 All right seeing none will the clerk please call the roll
on the appropriation ordinance Councilmember Stasberg, yes daily
Yes. Yes. Sorry. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Thank you. And that passes unanimously six zero. I move that ordinance
twenty twenty five dash thirty five be introduced and read by the clerk. No we're on D appropriation
ordinance twenty twenty five. I just accidentally crossed it off. Thank you. You did oh eight before.
Yeah. Okay.
It's been a long night folks I apologize. I move that appropriation ordinance twenty twenty five dash
oh nine be introduced and read by the clerk by title and synopsis only second it's been moved and seconded
for appropriation ordinance twenty twenty five oh nine. All those in favor please say aye. Aye. Opposed.
Thank you. 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. And
the appropriation ordinance 2025-09 be adopted.
And we have controller McClellan again. Good evening council. Long time no see. I'm back to ask for
your consideration of three three adjustments to the budget that we group together in one ordinance.
The first one is for the clerk's office. It is just simply a transfer with zero effect on the general
fund cash balance from believe it's from other services and charges to supplies.
The second one is an additional appropriation for the ITS department where the 2025 budget that we developed
last year just wasn't realistic now. It's missing some things that were absolutely necessary for applications
such as adding users and for some infrastructure that was needed in some offices that got remodeled
and some offices that opened up over in Showers West temporarily.
And then the fourth or the third item for engineering is kind of interesting. That really has and that's
part of an agreement with IU where you paid us the city the seventeen thousand six hundred and eighty
five dollars for part of a project. So we received that as revenue but this is just housekeeping in
order to kind of expense that project against that revenue. We need to add it to their budget. So that
is truly also just housekeeping and
Rick Dietz the IT ITS director is also here. Sorry to put you on the hot spot Rick But if you want any
more detailed questions about the ITS budget, I'm sure he'd be happy to answer those two Around this
appropriation councilmember Piedmont Smith Yes
This is about the ITS request. So in the memo it says that Some of the additional funds requested are
due to Federal funds not being available federal funds that we expected not being available because
did you put a dollar figure to that? Yeah, that that item is referring to
a service that we take advantage of that provides us with timely notifications about cyber security
vulnerabilities that was provided By an organization CISA, which is the cyber security and information
security agency which stopped funding that service which it provided to Local governments across the
across the United States We
then decided to take advantage of subscribing to that service which was provided jointly by the government
through a private entity. And so now we're continuing that service but there's around a five thousand
dollar cost for that subscription on an annual basis and actually by signing up early for that it's
sub it's reduced compared to what it would otherwise be.
And then there was also a grant that was offered and then rescinded. Is that right? Yes, that's a entirely
separate issue. But we were announced to receive a large digital opportunity grant at the beginning
of the year. And then that was rescinded. How much was the federal administration? That was almost 12
million dollars.
Thank you. Thank you. Are there other council member questions. OK. I have one that says in the memo
that it's the infrastructure costs including hardware supporting our storage and computing presence
at the data center. Can you tell us more about our computing presence at the data center. Yeah.
We have a node in our virtual private network at the IU data center. It is the most secure and robust
data center that is available to us, you know, within, you know, at least until you get to Indianapolis.
So we've taken advantage and partnered with IU to host some of our infrastructure there. Great. Thank you.
Other questions, council member, sorry. Thank you so much, Director Dietz. Super quick one, and maybe
for both of you. Some of the costs were recurring costs, operating costs. And so any reflections on
the 2026 budget? Because I mean, I get the grant and all those things, but were some of these
just misaccounted for? Like, did we not budget enough?
Some of the some of those are increases that we needed to make for instance. I'm just gonna you know
pick Pick one DocuSign licenses for signing contracts You know, we increased that earlier in the year
in discussion with The legal department and kind of mapping out what we needed on an enterprise basis
We went ahead and moved forward with that for operational reasons
That number is incorporated in our current budget proposal for 2026. So there's not Not an adjustment.
Okay. Okay. So so so so no there We don't see any sort of like structural issue moving forward that
might create, you know similar out No, no. Yeah, we that is baked into our 20, you know for items like
that is baked into our 2026 proposal. Thank you Councilmember Piedmont Smith
Yes, again for Mr. Dietz. In the memo, it also talks about a need for funds to repair conduit slash
fiber for a segment supporting the 4th Street garage that was damaged during Convention Center construction
site preparation. So are we getting any money back from food and beverage tax money to cover that?
Not in this instance, it was infrastructure that was damaged that did not have line locate wire through
it so technically is not the fault of the of the vendor and so, you know, we needed to repair that to
support our facilities and working staff at the 4th Street garage the garage and the
the parking enforcement group that is there So It was somehow that line was not properly marked and
so it's not the fault of the construction or demolition. That's correct Okay, do we? Was a lesson learned
here our other lines in that area going to be marked so that you know by ends by and large our Infrastructure
is is properly marked My understanding of this is we actually had two conduits and
Not immediately beside each other but a number of feet apart one of those Headline locate wire the other
did not it was the one that did not unfortunately that had That had our fiber in it. Okay. All right. Thank you
Let's go ahead and go to the public regarding appropriation organs 2025 09 if you're a member of the
public who would like to comment on this piece of Legislation if you're in chambers You can go ahead
and make your way to the podium and you'll have up to three minutes If you're online, you can go ahead
and raise your hand using the reactions tab or send a chat message to the host I don't see anybody moving
in chambers. Is there anybody online who's raised their hand? I
Okay, still seeing no one. Um, let's go back to council for any council member comments related
to Appropriation Ordinance 2025 09 All right seeing no comments, um, I will go ahead and make a comment,
um two things first of all, uh, I appreciate council member piedmont smith for highlighting through
questions that uh,
money that is no longer being being used to support cybersecurity for local governments and I'm really
pleased that here in Bloomington we can manage to appropriate additional funds so that we can still
have a robust
cybersecurity, but I just want to highlight that as kind of a continued problem. Last year, Monroe County
government had a cybersecurity incident over the summer, IU did, and cybersecurity threats are very
real and they're impactful, and it's really, really frustrating to me that our federal government has
decided to not support municipal governments in cybersecurity efforts. That's very frustrating. The
second thing I want to highlight with my comments, we did not talk about
the very small appropriation to the office of the city clerk because I already knew what that was about,
but I do want to highlight that our council office moved over to West Showers in order for all of our
staff to be co-located in the same place. As a result of that, our staff has spent personal money.
Outfit that office as opposed to asking for an additional appropriation and maybe that goes back to
something else councilmember Piedmont Smith said earlier that we're just loathe to support ourselves
But I think that it is ridiculous that our council staff was not supported through additional furnishings
and related to that move
And I think that that is just a failing that over the summer when that all was happening, it was like,
oh, there's just no money for that. Oh, there's just no money for that. And maybe we should have spent
the money then and asked for it later, which is what happened with the Office of the Clerk instead of
asking for it first and then spending it. And that's really frustrating to me. I don't think that we
should spend money first and ask later as a matter of course. But I also think that it's just really,
really frustrating that
ourselves and our staff end up going without or spending their own money and I think that that is a
systematic problem, so That is my comment. Are there other councilmember comments? Thank you. Will the
clerk please call the roll on appropriation ordinance 20 2509. I
I have to go on recess right now because we no longer have a member of the clerk's office monitoring
this meetings will recess for We'll start with five minutes and come back at 903. Thank you All right
I'm gonna call us back to session here if we could stop our side conversations, I know this is a long
meeting and
At nine oh three, we are back to session. We were about to call the roll on appropriation ordinance.
Twenty twenty five oh nine. Will the clerk please do that? Okay. Council member daily. Yes. Zulek. Yes.
Sorry. Yes. Rollo. Yes.
Tiedemann Smith. Yes, and Hopi Stasberg. Yes All right, and that passes unanimously on to the next I
move that ordinance 2025 35 be introduced and read by the clerk by title and synopsis only second Motioned
and seconded to introduce ordinance 2025 35 all those in favor, please say aye. I Opposed. Thank you.
Will the clerk please read?
Ordinance 2025 dash 35 to amend Title 9 of the Bloomington Municipal Code entitled water. The synopsis
is as follows. This ordinance amends the rates and charges in Title 9 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. Thank you. I move ordinance 2025
dash 35 be adopted.
It's the race to second Thank you very much it looks like our director of utilities is here you've had
a you've had a long meeting to wait and prepare Go ahead and introduce yourself for the record and I
look forward to this Good evening council Catherine Zager utilities director
I'm pleased to discuss ordinance 2025 35 to amend title 9 of the Bloomington Municipal Code entitled
water we will be presenting a Presentation on our proposed rate increases for our water utility This
will be in three parts. First. We will have our revenue requirements by Jennifer Wilson from Crowe and
We will then have a presentation from our consultants at Stan Tech Danica and Andy and they will be
presenting our cost of service study which we based our rates upon. And then last I will present some
additional information I think the council would like to have including our capital improvement plan.
So with that Jennifer Wilson from Crow very good. Thanks Kat.
If you could advance the slide. Oh sorry I can advance the slide. Is there somewhere I'm supposed to
press. Going the wrong way. OK there we go. All right. Very good. I'm Jennifer Wilson with Crow and
we prepared as I said the revenue requirement report.
I'll just go through this and tell you when we prepare the report we take a look at the past three years
the twenty twenty two through twenty twenty four and then we use twenty twenty four as the test year
and make fixed and measurable adjustments to it which then we come up with that your revenue requirements
which include your operation and maintenance or debt and lease payments and your extensions and replacements.
The key considerations of this rate increase is that you have an $84 million capital improvement plan,
and we're trying to fund $54 million of it with bond issuances. Those bond issuance will include the
water treatment plant projects, the water distribution system, and an annual water main replacement
projects, and the water portion of the new service center. You'll also be funding some capital improvement
projects with your revenues on an annual basis.
And those include the other ones less listed there. But it's going to be approximately seven point one
million dollars per year that's going to be funded from the revenues as they come in each year. What
we show here is your income statement over the past three years to show you on the blue line being your
operating revenues and the yellow line being your expenses in 2022.
You had 20 million dollars of revenues and 18.1 million dollars of expenses. Then you can see in 2023
you had 20.2 million dollars of revenues and then in 2023 you also paid for quite a bit of your pilot
and shared services from the utilities to the city and they had accrued after a three year time period.
So that's why the expenses in 2023 is higher than both 2022 and 2024.
And then in 2024 it's not showing the shared services in the pilot. So again the revenues are greater
than the expenses. That is all to say that in 2022 you had about one point nine million dollars to expend
on capital projects and went negative by one point nine million in 2023 and then in 2024 there's three
point seven million. So much lower than the expected or the amount that we would want on an ongoing
basis of seven point one million dollars.
We took that 2024 test year and we made adjustments to it of approximately $3.2 million to increase
the operating expenses to your typical average year. And that includes the shared services and the pilot
expenses. We also increase the salaries and wages for the wage increases that happen here in 2025. And
we also made some other adjustments to normalize the test year.
I always like showing a pie graph of your operating expenses. So you can see that your employee costs
are approximately 42% of your operating expenses. And then the other ones are purchase power and other
miscellaneous and materials and supplies that round out large bulk of those pie pieces. There's an $84
million capital improvement plan. As I said, you're trying to fund 54 million of it through two bond
issuances.
One and being in 2026 and the other one being in 2028 and then the seven point one million dollars annually
to come up with the 28.4 million dollars that will be funded of the projects from revenues as you Get
them over the next four or five years Your current debt service is seven point one million dollars and
you can see there then in 2029 it goes down to 1.7 so we've been strategic in the way that we're trying
to fund your capital improvements by
We're going to issue debt in 2026 and 2028. And during that time period, we're going to fund the interest
during that time period with proceeds from the bonds. And then in 2029, we are going back up to debt
service of 7.1 million. So overall, after these debts are issued, we'll continue that $7.1 million of
annual debt service that you currently are experiencing and we'll continue it and fill it so that you
can do so much. You can do $54 million worth of projects.
That brings me to the overall, sorry, yes. Yeah, I should have made a better bar graph, because I looked
at that afterwards. I didn't like how it declined. It's really that yellow should have gone all the
way over straight to 2029, and then go down to 1.7. So it wasn't declining during that year.
So it's $7.1 million, and yes.
That's 2029. Yes. Yep. So it should have been 7.1 million till 2028 and then down to 1.7. So yeah, I
noticed that myself. Yeah. All right. Total revenue requirements is 29.1 million dollars and you're
currently bringing in 22.6. So that's a deficit of 6.5 million dollars. That means you would need an
overall revenue increase of 30.5%
30.5 percent, but that doesn't necessarily mean each each customer will see that increase of 30.5 percent
because the person speaking next is Stan tech and they've done a cost of service study in which They'll
explain how this overall revenue increase of 30.5 percent will affect each customer class Do you have
any questions for me or I'll hand it over to stand tech and they continue the presentation I
Usually, we do questions at the end about all of it. So if we could finish the presentation first, that
would be great. Great. Thank you. Good evening, everyone. Danica Katz from SanTech. We also have Andy
Burnham here as well from SanTech.
Cat, are you going to be sharing the slides from the chambers or shall I present those on my end? I
have them in the chambers. I can advance the slides for you. Perfect. Thank you so much.
all pulled up and ready to go. Yes, we're all set. Okay. Sorry, I can't see them on my end.
There we go. Awesome. Thank you so much. So thank you for the opportunity to present today. StanTech
is going to be speaking to the cost allocation and rate design portion of this analysis and I'll kind
of step through each of those components.
Before we get into the cost allocation and rate design itself, I want to start by highlighting the test
year and some of the analysis that was done on this front. So in order to review the test year, we looked
at historical rainfall trends to ensure that 2024, as Jennifer spoke to for the test year,
was a representative year when it comes to rainfall patterns.
You'll see on the next slide, we also confirmed that build consumption, so build monthly water usage
by each year for each of the months was a representative test year for the system. And so we went through
this analysis on many different fronts on a monthly basis as well as here on a customer class basis.
Ultimately, just to confirm, like I mentioned, that that is truly a representative year for the system.
Additionally, one of the other elements that has come into this study is the AMI data, which provides
a very data-driven component to the study. So it allowed us to look at the daily AMI data by every single
class, which you could see here on this graphic, which represents some of those peaks and just how the
system operates on a customer class basis.
which on the next slide, you'll see we also have that on an hourly basis as well. So not only did we
have that daily data, but we also had, you can see there at the bottom, 233 million data points. So
very accurate representation of how each of these customers act on a daily and an hourly basis. And
so with all of that data, what we had
done is pulled together a summary of the peaking factor comparison for a max day basis as well as a
peak hour basis for each of those individual customer classes. So you could see in the columns it highlights
the prior rate case, peaking factors, the current revenue classes, and then you'll see there
is a recommendation for consolidated revenue class there.
which ultimately just combines the commercial and industrial class together and I can go into a little
bit more detail on that but just from a high level those customer classes behave very similar and there's
a very small amount of customers in that industrial class. And so moving on to the cost allocation and that
Analysis itself just from a high level the objective of a cost of service analysis is we essentially
take the annual revenue requirements that Jennifer just spoke to and we utilize those as our total cost
of service and we go through a process where we Allocate each of the specific revenue requirement line
items per the AWWA manual
And through industry guidance ultimately to determine that cost to serve for each of the customer classes
Compared to the current revenue that they are collecting and so the goal is to you know Make them consistent
with the cost of providing service for each of those classes And so how we do that is through a four-step approach
And so step one is ultimately to take those revenue requirements that Jennifer spoke to and we functionalize
those into various functions that are specific to your system. You can see the listing there of those
various functions.
In step three, we then take all of those functions and we allocate them to specific demand characteristics.
So that would include your average day, your max day, max hour, and then the customer component. And
ultimately in step four, we then distribute all of those costs to the respective customer classes that
you could see listed there. So that's the high level process that we go through.
I'll just touch on this quickly because Jennifer just went through this a little bit, but this is the
revenue requirement. So it just shows kind of the components that make up that $29.1 million overall
revenue requirement.
And so in step two, as I mentioned, we take all those revenue requirements and we functionalize those
based on how they operate within your system or within the city of Bloomington system. A majority of
these functions or departments within the system line items are allocated on a direct basis.
When I say direct it means you know source of supply is directly allocated 100 percent to source of
supply function. But there are a handful that are allocated on some different basis whether that be
the capital improvement plan you know fixed asset listing and things of that nature.
And then step two, this is just a summary here of all of that $29.1 million of revenue requirements
allocated to those different buckets or different functions. So just as a couple examples, you could
see treatment and pumping is about 10.1 million or about 35%. Distribution means about 11% and so forth
for some of the other customer and other functions.
In the third step here, we then allocate all of those functionalized costs to the specific demand parameters.
And so you can see there are certain functions that get allocated specifically to average day, max day,
max hour, some directly to fire protection, and then a handful there on the right to customer and meter
size cost.
And so this just shows essentially what you saw in that prior slide, but the actual percentages that
are allocated. So you can see how each of those specific functions are allocated on a percentage basis
across all of those demand characteristics. These are all derived from production data that's provided
by CBU and ultimately to get to those percentages that you see there on the screen.
This is essentially a summary of those two prior slides that you saw, so taking the percentage and the
buckets of the costs. And this is just a summary of that 29.1 million of revenue requirements by those
different functions and by the different demand parameters across those columns.
As part of the analysis we also looked at fire protection and fire flow So we were provided a specific
city fire department calls of service Demands things of that nature so that we could ultimately get
to the capacity analysis for fire flow specifically here We also looked at the shared or
The cost split between public and private fire. So we are provided the number of hydrants both private
as well as public ultimately to get to that percent split there over there on the right.
And then moving along to step four, just wanted to highlight here the units of service or ultimately
how those unit costs get spread across the customer classes. And so you can see all of those units specific
for each of those customer classes. I will highlight that general service now includes that commercial
industrial that you saw on one of the beginning slides there.
And then ultimately in step four here the goal is to get to the cost of service summary. And so that
bar in orange is the existing revenue that's collected by each of those various customer classes. And
in blue is the cost to serve each of those or the cost of service findings with that 30.5 percent overall
increase that Jennifer highlighted in her presentation.
along with the percentage increases that you see there down below in the gray highlighted area. I will
note that these are unadjusted and do not include any caps or limitations on specific customer classes
which we will speak to here in some of the upcoming slides. That summarizes the cost of service and
then we also
did a portion of analysis on the rate design or rate calculation. And so I just wanted to highlight
here the current monthly water fix and usage charges for Bloomington. So there is a fixed charge that
increases by meter size from $6.50 up to that 395, as well as a usage charge or a volumetric rate.
Per thousand gallons for each of those different customer classes there on the right Also wanted to
highlight the Current monthly fire protection rates so you have both a public fire protection as well
as a private fire protection for private fire lines those also increase
meter size or are charged by meter size for both inside and outside city customers as well as based
on connection size for the private meter there on the right. I'll speak quickly just here at the fixed
charge component or that scaled meter size component. There are
Four pieces that make that up. So there is a customer service related to the cost of service accounts
meters so anything that's related to the maintenance of meters specifically Services so anything related
to service drops and then as a component for billing and collection costs So those are all what make
up the fixed charge and on the next slide here. We're going to talk about
the costs for each of those. So in developing the fixed charge, we take all of those costs that come
out of the cost of service that I just touched on, and some of those are scaled, and some of them are
flat. So billing and customer services are flat across all meter sizes, whereas meters and services
are scaled based on capacity or meter size.
And down below in that table is essentially the unit cost to derive the flat and scaled portion. And
so what you can see here is that in order to calculate the updated fixed charge for water, you can see
that flat component is the same across all meter sizes. And then the scaled component essentially scales
based on a factor as the meter size increases.
and those ultimately get added together to become the total fixed charge there you see in bold. Then
we've also compared that on the right to the current fixed charge. Moving on to the public fire protection,
so very similar to what we just talked about on the regular retail side.
We take the public and private fire protection costs that came out of the cost service. And we ultimately
at that bottom down there calculate a unit cost for both inside and outside. And then we scale those
just as we did on the other rates that I just talked about by meter size and compare those to the current
charge. So you can see that those are all decreasing
From varying percentages on the inside and outside city based on the cost of service findings Okay,
and then again very similar here on the private fire protection rate development So we also take the
cost of service for private billing associated with private fire and calculate a unit cost there and
then similarly we
We scale that monthly component and keep that milling component flat and compare that to the current
there on the right or a increase of anywhere from 11% to 43%, depending on the meter connection size.
I know there's a lot going on here but just I'll kind of point out the big takeaways here. So this just
shows the calculated revenue for the fixed and volumetric side ultimately making up that total cost
of service revenue across all of those customer classes as well as their billable unit. But one of the
things we did want to highlight there could see it in the bottom and orange is the capped at four times. So we are
proposing or recommending a cap at no more than four times the identified overall rate increase of 30.5
that Jennifer discussed. And so that would be that 122% that you see there on the volumetric rate side.
And then this is the same graphic that I showed before, but just with that cap
that four times cap on irrigation. So you could see that 110 percent drop down a little bit from that
prior slide that I showed, but still collecting that 30.5 percent overall increase. So with all of that,
we've got some summary tables here that just highlight again,
These were on some prior slides, but just wanted to summarize it in a clean way here to show the current
rates versus the proposed. So you can see those for the fixed charge on the left and then for the usage
charge on the right. And then same for public as well as private.
And then we also wanted to highlight just a couple of quick bill impacts to show some of the summarization
for what those impacts might mean for different customer classes. So we have a couple different here
for some various customer classes. So the first one would be a residential at that smallest 5-8 meter
at a handful of different usages there varying anywhere from zero to 5,000 and then
in 5,000 increments, all the way up to 50,000 gallons. And this is the total current bill and proposed
bill, which includes both the fixed and the usage component. So you can see on those smaller usages,
if we just look at that 5,000, it would be a $6.06 change on a monthly basis for around a 19.8% increase, and then
You know goes up there a little bit as we get higher into the higher usages But a majority of the residential
customers at that five eighths are typically on the lower side of the usage here And these also do include
fire protection. Sorry public fire protection. I just want to mention that Okay, we showed one here
for the general service or what was prior
commercial and industrial. So we showed two different meter sizes here, a smaller three-quarter inch
and then a one-inch meter. So for the three-quarter inch, we show a small user, medium user, and a large
user. So you can see that total and current bill there or a change of $3.38 on a monthly basis.
up to $22.44 for a larger user on that three quarter inch meter. And then on the one inch down below,
anywhere from $32.85 for that smaller meter up to $54 on that larger meter.
touch on the wholesale here so we just pulled a four inch meter larger meter at some higher usages for
the wholesale customers and showed some of those current and total bills for some increases anywhere
from 38 percent up until you know around 48 for some of those higher users.
Just to highlight quickly here again, the IU master meter for a large six inch meter. So someone using
400,000 would see about a $655.39 increase for about 47% there.
We included irrigation as well at a small three-quarter inch. So 5,000 gallons would see about a 97.3%.
And these reflect, as I mentioned before, that four-time cap all the way up to 120%. And that concludes
the presentation on the cost of service and rate design.
Thank you so much for your time. All right. Thank you. And I think we'll hold questions till the end,
like we were saying. And so now I'm going to talk a little bit about what this may look like on your
typical residential bill. I think we just looked at a lot of numbers and looked at a lot of graphs.
And I think your average resident would like to see what's my bill going to look like. So here's my bill.
and we projected those changes on my bill I have a three quarter inch meter I In this billing cycle
used three units or three thousand gallons. I have a small cart for sanitation and My bill would go
from being it was 7101 that month it would have been 75 35 for that month with the proposed changes and
now I'm also going to Present some water and water and sewer rate survey that was recently completed
by crow What this is it's a survey of the combined water and sewer rate for cities and towns in Indiana
with populations over 25,000 So as you can see here our combined water and sewer rate is currently 24th
of the 39 cities and towns with populations over 25 K and
Proposed rate increase would not change that standing and in fact There are many rate increases pending
in these other cities and towns as indicated by the little two in parentheses To your far right there
in the chart So that would drop Bloomington even further down on this list even with our pending rate
increase Here is that same survey but this is just for the water portion and
water rates so currently our water rate is in the lower third of this survey and Our proposed rate increase
would put us temporarily at 25th again considering that many towns and cities Have those pending rate
increases that would pull them further up This is just I know we've been asked a lot where where we
compare to other cities and towns and I think it's helpful to see this and
So with that, I am going to do a fairly brief overview of our capital improvement plan, because I'd
like to talk about what we're spending the money on. So this is in three parts. The first part is water
treatment plant projects, so projects that are specific to our plant. And then we'll talk about projects
that are specific to the distribution system. And then third, we'll talk about the Winston Thomas Service Center.
The first portion water treatment plant park projects is for a total of thirty point seven million dollars
These projects include electrical upgrades including phases one and two along with a skater
and instrumentation upgrades What this is is projects that will update obsolete systems increase resiliency
and provide enhanced cyber security at our plants and
We have sedimentation basin rehabilitations, which will restore critical water clarification equipment,
improving the efficiency of early treatment processes. This project will enhance CBU's ability to remove
organic and inorganic materials from the raw water drawn from Lake Monroe, helping to address seasonal
taste and odor issues. Our next big project is chemical building improvements and feed line replacement.
These projects address treatment reliability and staff safety along with restoring a safe and sustainable
fluoride delivery system. Next we have our high service pump rebuilds and variable frequency drives.
Our high service pump rebuilds will provide redundancy and increase resiliency in our treatment process.
The addition of these variable frequency drives will help prevent service interruptions by preventing
the wear on our pipes at the plant and throughout our system. We also have maintenance projects, which
includes the completion of an asset management system that will allow for improved, oh, I clicked it
on the wrong one.
That will allow for improved maintenance assessment and replacement practices Improving the longevity
and integrity of our critical equipment at the plant We have treatment plant water handling and delivery
updates that have the addition of air quality monitoring to improve worker safety Maintenance to address
leaks in our pipe gallery and the replacement of a back watch backwash header valve actuator this will
also provide funds for item required tank inspections and maintenance and
We also have a bypass pumping improvements project this resiliency project will establish a contingency
for lake withdrawals Should the main intake tower suffer a mechanical failure ensuring our ability to
continue water production This also includes a residual project Which will have a backwash pump replacement
that will improve the cleaning efficiency and consistency of our filter cleaning at the Monroe plant and
helping to maintain our water quality and reliable treatment capacity. Next we have our distribution
system maintenance totaling $34.4 million. This is in essentially two parts. One is our booster station
and storage tank rehabilitations and upgrades. Upgrades to our booster stations and tanks are gonna
help ensure consistent water pressure and flow throughout our system.
This will also include the addition of emergency generators, which will improve our preparedness and
reliability during natural disasters, electrical grid issues, or other emergencies. The second component
of our distribution system maintenance projects are water main projects, maintenance, testing,
and replacement. This will replace aging water mains and servicing valves. It means that we'll have
fewer service interruptions and boil water advisories for our rate payers.
This will include hydrant maintenance and testing ensuring our water is available when it's needed most
by our emergency personnel. And then finally a total of eighteen point seven million will will go towards
our water funding will be the portion of water funding the new service center. So CBU has outgrown our
current facility in regards to personnel equipment and adequate inventory storage.
We want to build a purpose-built service center to improve logistics for field crews allowing for faster
deployment and better emergency response This will also allow for a stronger protection of our capital
assets such as our specialized service vehicles Which are currently being stored in the elements?
Building the service center that's going to meet our needs moving forward is an investment that will
save resources over time and by investing now and Setting we hope to be setting ourselves up for operational
excellence fiscal responsibility responsibility and community resilience We are happy to take any questions
now about anything
There councilmember questions right now councilmember Rallo Yeah, my first one is about So it seems
to me that we're maintaining the same debt service over time. Is that correct and Instead of retiring
debt, which we would have we're gonna extend it into the future could you describe what the length of
the bonds are and what the
You know what the interest would be over that period Right. Yeah, and just to clarify the the bonds
that are currently outstanding will retire What we're planning on is issuing new debt to fill in that
debt service And we're proposing debt that would be issued at a 20-year term-length
Length and right now we're estimating the coupon at 5% We won't be selling bonds till 26 or 2028 So
it's very hard to tell in the future what that might be few 5% is the normal coupon rate that bonds
are sold at and it might be sold at a premium or a discount and That will all be determined at the time
of the bond sale not the best time to Have a bond sale necessarily because of interest rates, but I
guess my question was then what is the total amount over that?
20 years over. Let me do some quick words. What will we be paying ultimately. So it's basically over
two bond issuances the proposed twenty twenty six and the proposed twenty twenty eight. And so that
looks like it would be about one hundred and three million dollars in total payments.
but we're financing approximately $54 million worth of projects with that. So, 103 million of total
debt service and 54 million of principal repayment. Sorry, that will be a little bit higher. I was just
saying the projects amount, there's actually capitalized interest and other things that are involved
with that. So just go with my $103 million total payback
But you'll be funding fifty four million dollars worth of projects. But there's capitalized interest
cost of issuance other items that would be included in that bond issuance. Yeah. OK. I have other questions
but I can wait.
I don't know who the question is for, but thank you so much for I think a super informative presentation
and also the many presentations leading up to this point and the work that you're doing in ensuring
that our water facilities are strong. I have quite a few questions, but I'll sort of
group them, my first sort of set of questions is around rate shock. And you specifically talked about,
there's a term used, gradualism, and setting certain rates. And so we proposed this overall 30.5 increase,
but there's sort of varying impacts, if I understood correctly. And that was the time when I was like,
I don't know what that sentence meant. But there was this sort of varying impacts by class. And I'm
kind of interested in why
We seem to have selectively applied the sort of gradualism concept and particularly to like things like
irrigation But not to like IU or wholesale Customers who are gonna experience large jumps. Yeah, sure.
I will take a crack at it and Danica if you have anything to add feel free but so essentially
We put a cap on just irrigation because that so the cap is representative of our total revenue requirement
of thirty point five percent. So four times that revenue requirement was the cap we put on irrigation
at the hundred and twenty two percent. That's for the volume metric which is I think the non
fixed percentage. Right. So there was that big
the slide with all the numbers on it. And so that cap was applied to irrigation because irrigation was
the only one that was that high. So we were avoiding rate shock by putting that cap on it. In the past,
we've capped irrigation when we've done these rate adjustments. We've capped irrigation to, I believe,
two times in the past and it hasn't
We haven't quite met the cost of service and so we are increasing it to a four times cap to hope to
Gradually meet their cost of service for irrigation And I should explain that irrigation is their specific
irrigation customer class with specific irrigation meters If we're not talking about people watering
their gardens, I just want to make that clear
Like when we're talking, like what exactly, like explain to us like we're five, what a cap is here.
Sure, yeah. So when we looked at the cost of service, if we just took it for what the data said, irrigation
would take up 188%, whereas... 180% of what? Yeah, yeah, okay. Good point, okay.
eighty one hundred eighty eight percent of what they're what they were previously paying. And so when
you disperse it among it among the different customer classes where we're dispersing that total revenue
requirement among the different customer classes. Right. And so the percents that you're seeing are
the percent change from what they're currently paying compared to what their what their cost of service
would be based on our revenue requirement.
And so without a cap, irrigation, irrigation's increase based on its cost of service would be 188%.
But we, not only did we decide, but it's also kind of industry practice to avoid rate shock. But where's
the, and I'll stop asking this line of questioning here, but like where's the,
Where's that line at which rate shock? Considerations kick in because you know 50% and later a lesson
question about elasticity But like the like the you know, if we if we get to a like, what is the marker
where you go? Oh, we're in rate shock territory That's a great question my understanding is that that's
around two times your revenue requirement and that is what we've previously capped irrigation at but
We're continuing to not allow it meet its Yes, you want to explain this you might explain it better
Specifically on that point where we have to go in front of the Indiana utility regulatory commission
And it's just been historical practice that anything that's two times the nor the revenue requirement
is considered rate shock got it and so
All the other summaries that Danica had shown They were all kind of almost in line with what the rate
increase was. Yep But except for irrigation as cat was it's got it. Understood. Thank you so much Yeah,
and I'm looking at the The capital improvement plan so that adds up to about 84 million dollars and
But the the basis for the Crow study on the slides was 54.5 million with bonds and then 28.4 million
with extensions and replacements. So that's only 82.9 million. So it's a little bit off of the 84 million
capital improvement plan. So is that on purpose or is that.
What happens to the last million dollars that was needed for the plan. So we're doing 54 million dollars
in bonding of that 84 and then approximately
Twenty eight point four million is being funded with revenues on an annual basis and then sorry there
is a one point two million dollars that we included in the capital improvement plan but they are truly
operational and matters and it's already being taken care of in the operating budget. So if you're talking
about that one point two million that that's what that differential is. All right. Thank you. I have
lots of other questions but I can wait.
I Have some questions, but let's go ahead with councilmember Rallo I think there may be people waiting
here Some of the left or online who might have comments on this that we might go to at some point soon
And then come back to council for more questions motion
Yeah, it's not a motion. I guess I'm hearing the preference from a couple council members to have public
comment now and then have more questions after the public comment. So I think that I want to ask one
question before we do that. And so that'll be like a first round of council member questions and then
we'll go to public comment.
It kind of follows what council member Rallo was asking about the bond stuff, which is also kind of
separate, but I guess I'm kind of wondering like how much of this increase is due to bond related projects
as opposed to like standard cost of service. Cause I guess like, I feel like the way it's been, the
way the economy is right now, like, I mean, things like cost more than they used to. We increase salaries,
all of those things, but then there's also these,
Outstanding projects that also need to be done that will require bonding and then require repayment
So I'm just wondering if part of this increase is because of those large projects that need to be done
to maintain our infrastructure and then how much of the increase is because of that kind of Long-term
maintenance and upkeep versus the standard costs of things increasing and
Yeah, so that's a hard thing to dissect and to give you a good answer. But what we're trying to say
is that you need about $6.5 million additional revenues. And we're saying we're going to be issuing
the differential between 7.1 and 1.7 million in additional debt to fund the capital projects. So by
funding your capital projects, we're maintaining debt service at $7.1 million. If we don't have a rate increase,
you would not be able to issue that much debt and you wouldn't be able to continually invest in your
utility with ongoing capital projects. So I don't have that specific number for you for that differential
but we are basically trying to increase revenues by 6.5 million total and that includes a component
of debt and some components of operation and maintenance increasing.
I don't think I answered your question. I'm not sure that you could have but I think you took a good
stab at it. Thank you.
So with that, let's let's go ahead and go to public comment and then we'll have more rounds of councilmember
questions after so if there are members of the public who would wish to make a comment regarding ordinance
2025 35 if you're in chambers Go ahead and come to the podium and then you'll Introduce yourself sign
in and have up to three minutes If you're online go ahead and raise your hand using the reactions tab
or send a chat message to the host Let's go ahead and start here in chambers since there's somebody
at the podium. Go ahead and
Good evening again, Madam President. This is Christopher M. G. from the Greater Bloomington Chamber
of Commerce. Before I start, sometimes people get confused and text me later. The Chamber's position
is neutral, so we are not taking a stand. I just want to say it was a wonderful presentation today.
I learned quite a bit, kind of goes into some of the statements I have, and I have a little bit clearer
view of that. And one thing, having toured the water treatment plant here and touring other treatment plants,
The need for capital investment is clear, and I think it may make a great case for that and why we need
to invest in that. And those improvements cost rate payers. Our concerns a little bit is how it's structured
and the impact on the business community. From a business perspective, commercial industrial customers
are gonna face a 50% increase.
That's like more than double than the residential increase that's around 20%. And for many businesses,
this is a little bit dramatic in it. It doesn't, I think, obviously go to the 2% shock rate as defined
here tonight. And sorry, I sort of mentioned this in the gradualism, but if we were having our way,
this would be much more gradual in that and a more predictive approach. I don't know if rate cases align
with that as much as we'd
like, but avoiding sudden spikes in financial disruptions. The economy is very sensitive. There's tariffs.
Everything's costing more. So keeping Bloomington's business climate competitive and welcoming is one
thing that we want to do. I also just noticed the Indiana University disparity on what local businesses
and smaller utilities would see. Meanwhile, I think we have always had to remember that students do live on
on campus and they are residents here and they align with the rest of the community as well. But I just
want to appreciate all the investment and time that went into this. The benefits definitely have an
essential service for our community. It's just a surprise cost a little bit on the business community
on what this is going to look like. I appreciate your time tonight deliberating in this long meeting.
Thank you. I don't see anybody else here in chambers. Is there anybody with a hand raised on zoom. OK.
And nobody else in chambers. All right. Thank you. That was our public comment then for ordinance 20
25 35. So we'll return to council then for a round two of questions. Council member sorry.
Ah, thank you, thank you. My next sort of set of questions are around the dependency. So there's a sort
of timing and dependency thing for the IURC, which is a confusing acronym for people in Bloomington,
the Indiana Universal Rate Commission or something.
And there's been a lot of movement at the state level. I know that Governor Braun has made some statements
around wanting to make these reforms to the URC, et cetera, et cetera. What happens here if we pass this?
But everything's dependent on IURC, right? So I guess in many ways I'm trying to inquire around, because
what I haven't heard both in the public sessions and the meetings here, it's like,
Whatever the antithesis argument is here, I get there's a one side of like, we don't do it. So if we
don't do it, we get the sort of terror of too much ammonia in our centers during football games or something
and cyber security threats. I get it. We have a lot of serious issues, and I'm not trying to minimize
those. But what are the alternatives that we've explored in terms of, are there alternative rate structures?
Mr. M just mentioned maybe like a more phased approach like are there other things that we've thought
about here that that we sort of arrived at no This is really the only way that we can go about I think
what we all agree are very needed Investments into our water infrastructure that are going to become
more expensive and more needed. So could you maybe speak a little bit to You know what what else might
have been on the table that that was rejected as a not as good of an option if anything
I don't know if during my time as director there were other options that were put on the table besides
potentially phasing. It was decided that phasing would not be in the best interest of the utility right
now. As you can see from our capital improvement projects list a lot of those projects are pretty dire.
Our water cash situation I presented the budget here recently is also in a pretty dire state.
So we didn't think that phasing the rate adjustments would benefit the utility.
Thank you so much and just as a follow-up there like what happens if I use iurc is either Delayed or
or you know, we get some type of adverse Ruling do we have some contingency plans? And and similarly
like the question with the bonding like so how does this interact with our abilities to bond? If if
for example, it's delayed past August so I will address contingency if
As far as delay goes and I think we can talk about bonding and maybe Jennifer can talk more in detail
about our bonding options which I believe are slim. So currently what we're doing is.
very closely managing our water cash balances. It's very a one in one out situation right now. We are
managing any expense that is not a recurring operations and maintenance expense that needs to happen
either at our distribution system or at the plant.
We have to take into account everything that we're doing that's outside of normal operating expenses
and that includes sudden repairs or Replacements and so that is what we've been doing to get this far
but further delays our contingency right now is To continue to manage that water cash balance and if
necessary take a loan from sewer until we're able to get some rate
rate adjustment and talk about the bonds So on the bonding side what we're trying to do in order to
keep the rate increase lower We are using capitalized interest, which means any of the interest that's
owed between the time of bonding in 2026 and when we start paying for the interest out of rates in 2029
will be funded from the bond issuance. So really
The time of the bonding doesn't really affect it just affects when they can actually start on the projects
Final follow-up on this line of question So so the so the what I was interested in then because we get
all of this sort of increased
Degrees of freedom once some of those kick in Do we envision being able in post-2029? Being able to
lower rates or like, you know, is this sort of you know necessary to meet the times and you know, it's
Increasing from there It would need to be evaluated at that point in time. I would just say in my 30
years of experience I've done
Hundreds of rate increases and probably for rate decreases Thank you Thank you other second round questions
councilmember Rallo Well, this is kind of it might if I would presume might get to it's a variation
of councilmember council president Stossberg's question so a certain amount of this Rate increase is
going to be used for maintenance
Cost of materials increase, et cetera. Some of it's gonna be used for expansion of facilities, right?
So there's a $19 million share of the new facility that utilities is going to be assuming. Are there
other expansion of facilities besides that? In other words, are we bonding for other types of projects
that would expand facilities as opposed to
maintenance Cost of materials or replacement things like that All of the projects that are at the plant
as far as if you're wondering about expanding plant capacity No, all of these projects simply maintain
and replace the equipment at the plant to maintain our current capacity Okay But a share of this bounding
is going to go for the new facility and
Yes, no, so that'll be a separate. Yes a share of this bonding will go to the service center, which
is our Which will be a larger facility for our operations Sorry, you're asking about growth so I'm Just
trying to be clear that it's not to expand the water plant. Yes. I'm sorry. I meant to say the new service
center Okay, and
What's the longevity of that new service center? so the service center is currently at 50% design and
part of that process was to Try to predict the needs of the utility for the next 20 to 30 years Okay,
so a couple of decades out. Yes, okay All right, that's all I have for now
Yeah, I just want to understand the total debt of the water utility. Uh, I think in the ordinance or
yeah, I think in the whereas clause, there's a listing of other bonds that are outstanding and I added
them up and I get like 34,000,490,700. Is that an accurate total for the current bonds for the water utility?
I my quick adding shows that there was 36 million outstanding At the beginning of this year Okay Yeah,
sorry, I actually have that number here well including the long-term Long-term lease at the end of 2024.
You had 39 million dollars worth of debt outstanding What's the long-term lease? That's the ESG and
the solar leases
Okay. Um, but just counting the bonds, it's about 34 and a half, 2 million. Actually, I come up with
a third. It was 39 million and it's almost 2 million worth of long term lease. So that'd be 37 million.
So it feels like I'm missing something. Then I was just adding up. Um, I know in our, in our council
memo, the staff was pulled out the amounts for the
The bonds that are still outstanding and I added that up So and sorry. Yeah, I was giving you the numbers
as as of January 1st and there's been a principal payment on July 1st since then so looking through
this we did have We did have at least three million dollars worth of principal payments during that
time period so that might account for much that difference Okay
And currently you're about 25 percent of revenues go towards debt service. Is that right. I think I
saw that in the pie chart from. Yeah. Let me look here. And that's yes on the revenue requirement seven.
Yeah about 25 percent. Yeah. OK. We'll be going towards 25 percent of the debt service is sorry. Debt
service is 25 percent of the total revenue requirement.
That's the best way to say it. I have another question but it's not related so should I wait. Yeah yeah
yeah wait wait till I think I have a feeling there's going to be around three other questions on round
two. OK. I have one if I can find it again because I just.
I just scrolled to our council member Piedmont Smith was talking about my thing is gone on the on the
slide show that you gave us and so that's what I'm trying to find again. You have the the income statement
highlights with
2022 with revenue being more than expenses and 2023 it flipped because of that shared services and so
and then in 2024 again there was more revenue than expenses. And so it kind of feels weird seeing that
chart and going oh now we have to raise rates a whole bunch even though two out of the last three years
there's been higher revenue than expenses. So if you could just talk maybe a little bit about
2025 projections right now in terms of that and also help me understand what those shared services expenses
that kind of came up in 2023 like what those are and like how often that appears I think that that would
be helpful in my Understanding like this particular slide. Yes, so going back I also had a slide there
where I showed test year of 2024 and we made adjustments
Of 3.2 million dollars to bring it up to what we think it's going to be in 2025 Of those that 3.2 million
dollars with adjustments 1 1 million to 1 1 million 250 thousand dollars of that has to do with salaries
and wages increases and then 836 thousand has to do with the shared services agreement between the utility
and the city and then 477 thousand of it
Has to do with the payment in lieu of taxes that the utility pays to the city for its property It's
its payment in lieu of tacit taxes. It's because it's a municipal utility It doesn't actually pay property
taxes It just is estimating what they would have paid had they had been a property taxpayer And so they
provide funds to the city in lieu of taxes so the combination of those two items make up the bulk of
the adjustments and
that we are making. Now I need to go back and make sure I'm answering your question. I would I would
actually have to ask one of these to talk to what the shared services actually is and how that affects.
Are you saying that on the next slide that adjusted rate is the expected expenses this year. Okay. And
but where where's the expected revenue this year.
and that comparison because the slide that I referenced I mean it has that comparison between revenue
and expenses. So like our expenses aren't really meaningful without our revenue attached to them. That's
correct. So that's that's part of our problem that we're bleeding money right now and that's why we're
going through the rate increase in 2025. You're not going to have that implementation of a new rate
and it won't happen until 300 days after we make filing which is basically 10 months. So whenever we
make a filing after passage
We won't see the implications of that rate increase. There's just a time lag that happens. So 2025 they
as Kat was saying they're trying to monitor how much money they're actually spending trying to keep
costs as low as possible. But these costs are increasing and that's what the case that we're proving
here is that we need a rate increase.
They might not be doing as many capital projects. They're just really monitoring their cash flow this
year in 2025. OK. So the short answer 2025 our revenue is going to be significantly lower than our expenses
if you would fully expand your expenses. Now they're going to make cutbacks because there isn't that
revenue there or they're going to have to borrow money in order to make those actual operating expenses
that they need to do. OK.
Help answer this. So you asked about the differences between 2023 and 2024 and how we went from in the
negative then back up to in the positive and what that projection was for 2025. I think we discussed
kind of that projection for 2025 but I think it's important to think about. So we made those payments
right. The pilot that we were talking about and the interdepartmental we did not make those in 2024.
Which is why it is not as so our expenses aren't as high because we were not making those payments.
So those are those shared expenses that were referenced in 2023 that then we didn't make in 2024 but
then we're making again in 2025.
Right. So is that an every other year kind of thing or is that something that should be every year but
we don't always have the money for it like it should be Every year not having the money for it has not
necessarily been the reason it's not been paid. It has been The timing of it it has to be approved by
the USB and there were multiple meetings where they asked for additional clarification and
So we are working with the controller now to make sure that that interdepartmental is as transparent
as possible. And we'll be bringing that back to them soon. OK. So is it the kind of thing then where
like if you don't pay it one year then essentially you pay double the next year to make up for it. Yes.
OK. Thank you. That that helps my clarity around the meaningfulness of that chart.
Yeah, sorry. I thought that would help. Yeah Okay, is there another round of councilmember questions
councilmember? Sorry Thank you very much elasticity So we're asking we're making these assumptions that
rates will sort of that rates will not change people's habits What happens if they do? So if you increase
the rates and people stop consuming like and and as a
Yeah. What do we what do we what do we how do we do this. Yeah. If Danica is still online if she can
speak to that because in the rate design there are certain assumptions that are made on what's fixed
costs what's variable costs and anyhow Danica you there. Yes I am. Thanks Jennifer. So I guess speaking
to the elasticity we did not
account for any of that directly in reviewing some of the billing and consumption records. Demands were
generally pretty stable over the years with some of the historical rate increases and things of that
nature, as well as customer usage. And so anything, any significant changes, I guess, in demand would
ultimately be factored into some of those future studies.
portion of it? We do. Yep. Absolutely. And so how did like how have we thought about balancing that
out to account for for elasticity? You know, particularly in a time when people are super sensitive
to rate increases and it's becoming hyper politicized. The reason why I'm asking all these questions
actually is exactly that. I think that this I mean, it's very clear that
what we're doing today, actually, I mean, it's gonna take 300 days for any change to happen to people's
rates, but I think that the way that it'll probably be reported is that, you know, Bloomington votes
to raise your rates by 50% or something like that. And so I do think that that sort of engagement very
clearly with the general public around, hey, like, this is a very careful consideration. There's a point
I was making earlier. So anyways, I was just trying to get this sense of, you know, that balance and
that complex equation that you put up there between, you know, the fixed
The variable rates and and why we think that we've reached like the right balance there. I think is
is quite relevant Look at myself rather than you. I'm sorry. I can't see Yeah, absolutely and as we
go through kind of that rate development and I had some of those sides up that kind of talked about
you know the scaled pieces and the costs that are included in that fixed first the usage component there
to your point to be able to kind of
to balance those as well as kind of what we talked about on the irrigation side as well. Fantastic.
So I'll make one so that I don't waste time in coming back to it. My very last question is just around
the considerations of affordability measures. So I think that
With the the current packet doesn't mention anything around like lifeline rates customer assistant programs
something like that So maybe something would you consider once, you know in 300 days coming back to
us and Having a discussion about how we might create some, you know something to protect our residents
particularly who might be Most affected by rate increases. Yeah, I actually can speak to that now. So
we're currently making improvements on our
financial assistance program As I've discussed in previous presentations about our budget we've reduced
the number of barriers that exist for example Previously customers could not seek assistance if they
had been shut off where we are working on removing that barrier now We're updating our working on updating
our contracts to be able to do that In addition we increased
our quality the Income sorry the income qualification for our assistance program from 200 to 300 percent
of the federal poverty guidelines We are hoping to we we are budgeting a hundred thousand dollars next
year in our financial assistance program and I if
We're able if these changes help the way that I'm hoping that they will we'll be able to spend every
penny of it amazing Thank you so much. I will stop asking you questions now Other Councilmember Rallo
Question so I want to just make a proposition and see if we're in have points of agreement on this and
that is so
Capital improvement plan for five years is 85 million dollars 54 of it is being financed by debt by
bonding 19 of that about 35% is for the new facility so That new facility According your capital improvement
plan is needed because you've outgrown the old Facility, right? We've reached some capacity and it's
now being exceeded and now you need a new facility and
Your fault. We've been on that trajectory, right? but my my point is is that This debt service and and
by the way that new facility is forty four million dollars, but it's gonna be shared by other right
by public works and No, not public works who's gonna be no no forty four million dollar facility no, no the
This fist the funding for this utility is shared by the other utility funds So the financing for this
would be so the water portion with that 18.4 is the water portion Versus this the sewer and storm portions
of funding. This is just a facility for The utility so there's not going to be anything else at Winston
Thomas. Just your facility That we are financing. No, no, no that the city is financing
The city is planning to what the city's financing What's that? I don't I can't speak to what the city's
financing at Winston Well, I guess okay. All right. Well, let's just sorry the point is is that We are
projecting debt into the future to pay for past Growth so we have grown as a city and now we've exceeded
the growth and now we have to continue paying debt and that's everybody in Bloomington to
Greater or lesser degrees and I appreciate the fact that residents are paying less relative to other
users But the point is is that we're subsidizing growth Is that is are we an appointment point of agreement
with that? I'm not sure can you further explain subsidization of growth? Well, you've exceeded your
capacity we are now building a larger facility and
That's being paid for by debt So and that's reflected in people's utility rates. Therefore people are
paying for the expansion of a facility for for growth Because we've reached that point of needing a
new facility So is that a good assumption? So ratepayers are paying for the growth of our utility I
Can agree to that
Yeah, um, so I guess I'm glad we're in agreement because this is something I want to keep bringing up
is that whether it's water or sewer or stormwater or police or Sanitation or whatever people are paying
for the expansion of our city and They ought to be aware of that We ought to be aware of that and we
ought to be trying to internalize that in other words
You know, it's not fair. I don't think for current residents to be paying for future growth I mean maybe
they prefer a bigger city, but That's fine, but I think that that cost should be borne by those who
are actually profiting from that growth and so It's kind of a qualm it's I I'm sorry about that, but that's
That's where I'm going with this. And so I wanted to just this is a bit very expensive You know, this
is a big rate increase. We had one a couple of years ago I think it was incremental to it was 17% I
think to 17 a half or something over four years, but the point is is that This expansion comes at a
cost and It's reflected in things like taxes and it's reflected in fees. So
Other questions, I don't even remember what round we're on right now. Maybe for Councilmember P Smith
Yes, you talked about the What was it customer assistance program, yeah, what about businesses or customers
that are using the irrigation Water for irrigation is there any
Assistance program for them because I mean it's not just residential that's going to be affected It's
also our business community and our farming community so the current assistance program is specifically
for residential customers Who meet the income requirements? we partner with scap, so
Gap improves those applications. So no, there's not a financial assistance program for commercial general
service or irrigation, et cetera. When you ask about irrigation, because irrigation is seeing the steepest
rate increase, so irrigation is a customer class that is
easier to conserve than perhaps a residential home or Potentially a hospital and I think Stan tech I'm
not sure if Danica or Andy are here on the line to talk a little bit more about that But you know there
was there that was kind of behind the reasoning to increase to the four times rate increase cap for
irrigation because that type of
Increase can help influence usage and that is a customer class where we feel like you will have you
can see better results in a rate signal to maybe conserve usage Educate me a little more as to who makes
up that customer class of irrigation and
Yeah, so the customer class of irrigation is primarily, so there's some in residential, some in general
service, and quite a few IU accounts as well. And the golf course. And what is general service?
General services commercial and industrial. It's the combined customer class. So it's not irrigation.
When I think of irrigation I think of agriculture. Is that not. I mean within city limits we don't have
much of that I guess primarily it's landscaping or you know golf courses landscaping.
Specifically your like like I said, these meters are specific to irrigation. They're typically your
landscaping and golf course type things. Yeah Okay, um, I have a another unrelated question should I
hold it Are there other questions from council members Go for it councilmember Piedmont Okay, I'm looking
at the Stan tech slides and I
The proposed rate summary has for example for residential nineteen point eight percent increase. But
then when I look at the cost of services summary the residential is an eighteen point nine percent increase.
So the percentages mean that's not a big difference. If we look at general service the proposed rate
summary is 42 percent increase. Cost of service summary is thirty three
percent increase so There's no there's not a direct correlation there. So could you explain that please?
Absolutely So when we put it here again, so when we put a cap on irrigation, it has to go somewhere
and so whatever we're not charging irrigation to meet their cost of service we're spreading among the
other customer classes and the way that it is spread and correct me if I'm wrong Danica, but
The way that it was spread among the customer classes is the amount of irrigation customers in each
of those customer classes. It's based on the amount of so you can have a residential customer class
with an irrigation meter. Yeah. I'm going to jump in quick. It was based on the amount of usage for
each of those specific customer classes. So just the building.
Consumption amount for each of those was how it was reallocated So I'm sorry, I'm still trying to just
understand how this works. So if you have let's say you have a business That you know has a nice property
and you want to irrigate the lawn So so the the business is in general services but part of their bill like for
for the water in their bathrooms or whatever is is built in one way as one customer class and the part
for their lawn is built a different way. Is that right. I did not know that. Yes yes yes it is built
a different way. It's based on the specific irrigation type meter. OK thank you. Any other council member
questions.
Since we already did have public comment on this in the midst of our councilmember Questions, I think
that that means we're down to a period of councilmember comment. So any council members want to make
a comment around this legislation? Councilmember Rallo I Already took my comment, but I'll just say
a little bit more and that is I
Now at the federal level, you know, we're facing a debt showdown and I assume that they'll work it out.
That is no one wants the default at the federal level But on the trajectory that we're going that the
federal debt is exponential growing at a trillion dollars every hundred days It's hard to ignore, right?
I mean we this is related. I mean our exposure to debt is local, too And I would have liked to have
seen that debt paid down over time because I don't know what the future looks like We're being told
that right now we're in a fiscal squeeze And so but we're gonna continue borrowing in order to expand
because we need to okay It's hard to say no because it's not
Because apparently we're at that point where we need larger facilities, etc but You know my job is also
looking at the exposure of this city in terms of What may happen in the future and we're going to be
locked in with the amount of debt that we have looks like So it's a difficult position to be in and
That's why I bring up the fact that if we continue expanding and we've been told in some quarters that
Either dead or growth is inevitable or it's it's it's benign or it's great Well, it comes at a cost
and you're seeing it tonight that the cost we've just been we've been told what the cost is I do appreciate
the fact that because of the You know the differential classes
The residential customers are going to be spared most of it that is a good thing and I appreciate that
so I will likely support this because I don't have a a sound fiscal argument right now, I mean detailed
in terms of how to transfer those costs to those who assume more growth and
But at this point I simply want to say that it comes at a cost and we're gonna have to think
about internalizing it instead Just paint passing it off the current residents So I will support this
I appreciate the presentation was very informative Very carefully done and and and and thorough. So, thank you
Councilmember Asari I'll just say you know that when I think that sort of headline figure of rate increases
is always difficult and so I think that from you know on for individuals when we hear about 30% increases
like it's natural so it's a worry and I've seen a lot of reports out there on you know proposals increase
IU by 55 and your rates by 30 and
But I think what's been really useful about this very long but thorough conversation is that we've,
I think, made very clear, and I think you've made a very clear argument, that this ordinance isn't just
about, it's not just like a wanton ordinance to raise rates, but it's very specifically about making
sure that Bloomington continues to have safe, reliable water for decades to come. And so we're really
making sure that our water system, I think,
Right now like our water system with the point that I heard throughout this evening Is that it's you
know, every dollar that comes in is going directly out and that's Not allowing us to make needed investments
You know, we really don't have a cushion to do that and that this is sort of an unsustainable Situation
to be in we need this adjustment I think to pay for repairs replacements upgrades that will keep water
clean and flowing to our homes schools businesses, etc I think we have a lot of tough questions
Tonight is our responsibility as a council to make sure that these rate changes are fair and that they
don't fall too heavily on one group and that, you know, we sort of thought about the consequences of
sort of these changes to our residents, to our businesses, et cetera, and also thinking about the agency
that we have as a city government also to help those who might fall outside of some of these considerations.
And so I think having gone through all of that
I'm very happy to strong to support this this ordinance and and certainly not easy I certainly don't
like anything that raises cost to a residence But I think that the argument here is very clear. It sort
of passes that necessity Test and so water is not optional It's the foundation about everything else
that we do and so just wanted to appreciate you all for the thorough work that you're doing and any
support that we can offer
And making that and making that communication clear to the people that we represent very happy to support
in that So thank you again, and thank you for enduring our questions Thank you other councilmember comments
All right, I have one I'll I
not repeat what council member sorry just said about water being an essential service, but it is an
essential service and nobody wants a rate change. But it's also really important that we manage to keep
this infrastructure solid and consistent and serve residents adequately in terms of access to clean
water. And I think that it's really a valuable thing to kind of understand that
Like, what we pay for our water bill is not subsidized in any way. But it's also true that, I mean,
they're not making a profit either. And so one of the things in that list that you put about where we
land in the middle. So I used to live in Richmond, Indiana. And the water that's there is actually a
private utility instead of a public utility. Interestingly, they have a public electric utility. So
in the transitioning to Bloomington, I pay less for water and a lot more for electricity than I did there.
You know, that's just something to remember to consider that we're actually paying for what it is that
we use. I also wanted to talk for a minute about what Councilmember Rallo said about growth because
in a lot of ways like what he says makes sense, but he described rate payers as paying for growth and
that expanding our city comes at a cost. But I want to clarify that most of our growth recently is related
to IU students.
And we don't control how many students IU admits and how many students accept their admission and attend
the university and come here. And I used to consider that the population of Bloomington was about half
IU students and half permanent residents or long term residents. But I think that that number is
continuing to creep up in terms of percentage. I think that there are more than half of our population
is now IU students year after year after year. I hear that they have record numbers of entering students
in their classes and there's an imbalance there in terms of our population with far more
in terms of percentage, IU students, then there are permanent residents. And I want to make very clear,
I don't have a problem with IU students, but that imbalances our population in detrimental ways. It
imbalances taxation, it imbalances income tax and also property tax because of the amount of property
owned by a state university that doesn't pay
property taxes, and I don't think has some kind of a nice pilot program in paying something in lieu
of property taxes. It would be nice if they did. Additionally, it affects other entities like schools.
If you've been paying attention to school stuff, the schools are losing population, and part of that
is because of this imbalance. There's a lot more IU students, and you know what? IU students don't have
school-age kids.
They don't they just don't and so that really has this detrimental effect in terms of the percentage
of our population that ends up being being short-term temporary residents in a very specific age bracket
and To balance that we do then need to figure out as a city ways to drive growth and
In areas that would attract population groups to help balance out counterbalance all of those You know
18 to 22 or 23 year olds in terms of population groups. We need to be able to attract young professionals.
We need to be able to attract Families we need to be able to diversify our population groups and that
does mean increasing population and that ultimately then would be of service to the whole population
when you think about larger amenities and
institutions and organizations that are going to be of benefit to our whole population. So growth is
not as simple as when you grow you have to pay more. It ends up being a lot more complicated because
maybe you would have to pay more financially in terms of this utility project that we're talking about
right now, but we would also pay in other ways that it's harder to document in terms of actual like
physical cost because it's some of those like softer things of quality of place.
It's harder to calculate. So that is my comment. I'll also be supporting this tonight I don't I don't
love it. I never will love a rate increase, but I think that it's the Only option in terms of keeping
our utility viable If there are no other councilmember comments if the clerk could please call the roll
on Ordinance
Now I have to find the number twenty twenty five thirty five. Sorry. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
Yes. Thank you. And that passes six zero. I want to acknowledge right now that it is
After 1030 so according to our rules to introduce any new pieces of legislation if I'm remembering correctly
We need to have a two-thirds majority for that So we will need to do a roll call vote for the introduction
of ordinance 2025 36 Parliamentarian I Motion for a roll call vote to introduce new legislation
No, just no, just no We just need your usual Just your usual motion, but we just need to do a roll call
instead of a voice vote tonight right now to make sure that We have a two-thirds majority Look, it's
past my bedtime and I've had a long clearly. I've not been on the ball at all tonight. I Move that ordinance
2025 dash 36 be introduced and read by the clerk by title and synopsis only Second
Thank you. We have a motion and a second to introduce ordinance twenty twenty five thirty six if the
clerk could please call the roll on that that would be great. Councilmember Rallo. Yes. Oh my God. Piedmont
Smith. No Stasberg. Yes. Daily. Yes. Zulek. No. Sorry. Yes.
So that vote is four to and I think that four out of six is two-thirds, which means that it passes So
will the clerk please know I do that math, right? Yeah, the Bloomington municipal code says no legislation
may be introduced After 1030 without a two-thirds vote of the members of council. So I think it requires
six Then Well, is that
Right now. I'm not sure that that's allowed right now. So if if our code says that we need a 230 a two-thirds
vote of total members as opposed to those present Yeah, that the code doesn't delineate by staying two-thirds
of the members present during the meeting It says two-thirds of the members of the council Okay, I think
that that means that that motion fails Councilmember sorry
I just just to our colleagues and I promise I will ask no questions or something but the reason I think
in respect to our colleagues from water we can we can reconsider a motion is totally in code but the
I would ask us to reconsider the motion because they have waited here
all night long while we debated what we want to name a sausage sized district in next to a lake. Like
I kind of feel like we should at least give them the respect of being able to do this. We can limit
our questions. But I mean at this point I mean we can't make them go through this all over again. I
just don't think that's that's fair respectful.
Anybody who voted no willing to reconsider if we need two-thirds majority of council, then that means
all six of us have to be unanimous I'm happy to change my vote. But like is it gonna take two more hours
or Okay Great, I'm happy to change my vote councilmember Piedmont Smith I think that
Either one of the no votes can call for a revote. I think that's how it works. Ms. Liner. OK. May I
read from the Bloomington municipal code. Yes please. When any question has been decided in the affirmative
or negative any member voting with the majority may move a reconsideration of that we reconsider the
motion to introduce ordinance twenty twenty five thirty six.
Thank you. All right. So I think that that would be the clerk calling the roll again on ordinance on
the motion to introduce ordinance 20 25 36. Councilmember Piedmont Smith. Yes.
I think that was my name. Yes. Okay. Daily. Yes. Yes. I'm sorry. Yes. And Rallo. Yes. Thank you all.
I know this is a really long meeting. Well the clerk please read. Oh yes.
Um 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 water main and a new service center and maintenance buildings and pay costs
of issuance of the bonds Thank you Be adopted All right, you're up again
Utilities director and this is an accompanying ordinance for to our rate adjustment ordinance I will
allow for the utility to bond for our capital improvement projects that were just presented Today we
have Bradley Bingham from Barnes and Thornburg LLP to help explain the bond ordinance and help answer
any questions Thank you, are there any councilmember questions? Councilmember Piedmont Smith Yeah, just
a very broad process question so the rate
Increase has to go to the IURC to be approved So why are we already talking about the bond when we don't
know if the rates can be approved? Who wants to answer that mr. Bingham
Bingham you should be able to meet yourself and speak. OK. Thank you. Thank you. Sorry I was trying
to unmute there. Again Brad Bingham with Barnes and Thornburg. Great question. The reason is that just
like the rates and charges you've been discussing have to be approved by the I.U.R.C. the I.U.R.C. also
has to prove the issuance of any bonds and be payable from the waterworks utility. So this is really
a companion piece of legislation that kind of goes along with the prior measure that was just debated.
OK. So those
the two things go to the IURC together. That's exactly right. Yeah. Just a few quick remarks on the
ordinance itself. I know it's been a long meeting, but really the bond ordinance is the contract between
the city and the bondholders. As you've heard earlier in the various comments, this particular ordinance
will authorize the issuance of up to $71 million of Waterworks revenue bonds. It's anticipated they
would be done in two separate series, each of which would have a term no greater than 20 years.
and the proceeds be used to finance part of the projects identified the capital improvement plan, which
are described in greater detail in exhibit A of the bond ordinance. With that, I'm happy to take any
questions you may have on the orders itself. Thank you. Are there other questions by council members?
I have one before we go to a second round. In the actual, and this is like
technical thing maybe in the actual ordinance in the third whereas clause. It says that the city has
obtained estimates prepared and delivered by the engineers of said improvements. And in the actual documents
associated with this ordinance, I only saw the project list and not the costs associated with each of
them. So in your presentation on the slides, I think I got that answer of those project costs, but I just,
want to make that clear right now that the ordinance specifies that those costs are in the materials
that were provided, but those materials weren't actually in that package. And your memo at the end did not
list out those charges separately. And I'm not sure if that was an oversight or if that was, or if that
slideshow was really intended for both of those ordinances that we just considered. I just want to make
sure that that project list is right. Right. So the project list was, that's shown as exhibit A.
We in our rate report have actually listed out the entire capital improvement plan as what cat described
that comes to 84 million and those each of those projects are then Designated to how we're gonna fund
them through the 2026 bonds or the 2028 bonds. I Guess I'm just trying to figure out where that is in
our materials in the materials Like It's actually in the revenue requirement report that I that's
The Crow report and it's on pages the capital improvement plan is listed on pages 21 22 and 23.
Thank you. But it doesn't have any costs with it. And that is a day. Yes. Sorry to interrupt. Exhibit
A will list out the projects but it won't be specific in the actual cost because eventually they will
bid out these projects.
and have actual costs but it is built from this capital improvement plan. It won't actually specify
the actual dollar amount per project and that is just very typical of how bond ordinances are written.
But the whereas clause actually seems to say that it will have those costs per project like that's mean
I'd have to get back to it now. I mean that the city has obtained estimates.
prepared and delivered by engineers employed by the city for the construction of said improvements additions
and extensions Yes, so they made the estimates that went into the capital improvement plan And then
we've sized this bond ordinance so that when we actually do get bids we'll have the funding for those
projects Sorry, I'm turning later do you understand what I'm trying to get out here I
So you're looking at the second whereas clause third whereas clause third. I don't see where it refers
to those cost estimates being in exhibit a. That that's the issue that comes to my mind. OK. I guess.
Yeah. Councilmember Smith. Sorry. I had the same question. That's why I'm jumping in here. So on in
section one at the end of section one of the actual ordinance it says a description of the proposed
improvements additions and extensions is set forth on exhibit a attached here to and the project shall
be constructed in accordance with the plans here to for mentioned which plans are hereby approved. We
just have a list. We don't have plans. So that's why it's
I also am a little bit confused why we don't have more details in exhibit a I guess that's where like
between that whereas cloud clause in between the section I kind of felt like okay exhibit a should also
have those Estimations or approximations that were on the slides, right? And so that's where like like
should Exhibit A have those numbers in it that were on the slides? Because then when I got to the slides,
I was like, oh, the numbers are somewhere. I mean, clearly the numbers have to be somewhere, because
otherwise, why do you know exactly how much you need to ask for in bonds? I'd ask Brad, do you have
any comments on that? Yeah. Jennifer, as you mentioned earlier, it is very common that the actual bond
orders itself just has a very
broad description of the types of projects to be financed. There's certainly nothing wrong if you want
to put in all of the detail that, as Jennifer mentioned on pages 21 and 22 of her report. What the ordinance
is trying to say is that there have been estimates prepared, and that was the basis of the
capital improvement plan. We just didn't attach and include all this detail that the crow has shown
here in the bond ordinance. And part of it, the reason is because, as she mentioned,
They have to be bid out. So the actual cost may be different than what's actually shown here These are
these are best estimates based upon the Crow report Okay, thank you, I guess I'm satisfied with the
concept of The stuff on the slideshow as long as our attorneys feel like the language in there and how
attachment a is listed is acceptable like legally so if
Y'all are good with that then. Yeah, I don't have any concern because I don't read this ordinance as
indicating that the costs are identified in exhibit a. Okay. So thank you. Okay. Are there other questions.
Councilmember sorry.
Just being sure that sea1 Impacts the because I know it has bonding things for the city The utilities
is used at a separate entity under sea1 correct. So so so okay, so no no Implications for bonding in
other places of the city. Thank you very much To clarify for anybody might not have seen that we were
seen nodding yes, they're totally separate entities and sea1 did not affect the
Utility bonding capacity or abilities. Yep. All right any other questions from council members?
All right, let's go ahead and go to public comment then on ordinance 2025 36 if there's a member of
the public who would like to comment on ordinance 2025 36 if you're in chambers you can go ahead and
Approach the podium if you're online, you can raise your hand using the reactions tab or send a chat
message to the host
I do not see anybody moving in chambers. Is there anybody who has raised a hand on Zoom? Thank you.
If you could please state your name for the record and then you'll have up to three minutes.
They there the comment is actually for the general session session instead of this one. Sorry. Okay.
Thank you Is for the additional public comment, is that what you mean? Okay. Yes. All right. Great So
seeing no public comments on ordinance 2025 36 going once going twice
All right, let's return to council for any council member comments. Do council members have any comments
related to ordinance twenty twenty five thirty six Seeing none will the clerk please call the roll on
ordinance twenty twenty five thirty six Stasberg. Yes. Daily. Yes. Zulek. Yes. I'm sorry. Yes. Rallo
yes Piedmont Smith. Yes.
Thank you, that passes with a vote of six zero. We are done with our legislation for this evening, moving
into the period of additional public comment here at the end. So if there's a member of the public who
would like to comment on an item not on the agenda, you can go ahead and make your way to the podium.
If you're online, you can go ahead and raise your hand and as a reminder,
If you spoke during the first general period of public comment, then you are not allowed, according
to our public comment rules, to speak during this additional period of public comment. So I don't see
anybody in chambers moving to the podium. Is there anybody online who would like to make an additional
public comment? OK, thank you. If you could, when you're unmuted, introduce yourself, and then you'll
have up to three minutes.
We I think that we can hear you can you state your name for the record and then go ahead with your comment
Okay, is that the best way Wonderful if you could go ahead and read that comment for mr. Dove that would
be excellent
There will be a block party at Butler Park at 1230 p.m. on Saturday, October 25th at Reverend Ernest
D. Butler Park, 812 West 9th Street. Immediately follows the west side tree planting. The party will
have food trucks and live music by busmen's holiday to elevate the greener near west side neighborhood.
We'll also have the chance to win a gift basket at each event as thanks for their efforts event details
and look and Registration links are located on the city's zero in Bloomington webpage That's the that
concludes the message. Thank you so much for that event announcement Are there any other I don't see
anybody in chambers moving Are there any other hands raised on zoom or any other comments in the chat?
Okay, thank you very much. We are almost at the end. Note on council schedule. Next week, we will have,
well, back to Wednesday, October 8th, and we will have our special session for our budget adoption meeting.
And then on October 15th, we'll have a deliberation meeting, joint meeting with the Historic Preservation
Commission. And our next regular session meeting is on
October 22nd, and as we mentioned way back in the beginning of the meeting, we will figure out elected
salary stuff. So there might be a potential special meeting in there. Maybe we'll discuss that again
on the 22nd. And there's a fiscal committee meeting next week on the 8th at 1.30 to 3. At least that's
the way it's scheduled right now. Are there any other notes on council schedule? Council member
Piedmont-Smith. The committee on council processes will meet on Monday, October 6th at 12.15 in the
Allison conference room.
for hanging in through this meeting, we are adjourned.