Good evening, everyone. I'd like to call to order the most wonderful thing that you can imagine doing
on a Wednesday Which is this March 25th? 2026 regular session of the Bloomington Common Council Will
our honorable clerk, please read the roll or call the roll rather than read it Councilmember Flaherty air
Sasberg here Piedmont Smith Zulek present sorry here daily I'm here Rallo here rough here and Rosenberger here
Thank you. Fantastic. Thank you. The agendas are posted on the wall. And there's also a handful of copies
there if you'd like one in your hand. But tonight's agenda includes approval of minutes from the September
24 committee of the whole meeting, reports from council members, city offices, boards and commissions,
and council committees. We have an appointment recommendation and second reading on ordinance 2026.06.
and then two resolutions. There are no items for first reading this evening. Let us move on then to
the minutes for approval. Is there a motion? Oh, yes. I move to approve the minutes for September 24th,
2025 Committee of the Whole. Second. Thank you. There's a motion and a second. Any amendments to those
minutes? Ah, you disappeared. Oh, they're back. OK.
Seeing none, will the clerk please call the roll. Council member Flaherty? Yes. Stossberg?
Yes. Piedmont-Smith? Yes. Zulek? Yes. Asari? Yes. Daly? Yes. Rallo? Yes. Ruff? Yes. Rosenberger? Yes.
We've lost visual. Now they're there. Now they're there, OK.
Okay. All right. Thank you very much. Those minutes have been approved. Okay. We'll now move on to a
time of reports and we will start with reports from council members. Does anyone have a report? Council
member Stasberg.
I think that this is now the right time to call attention to my draft priorities memo that was in the
packet addendum that got sent out today. If you recall a couple weeks ago in the deliberation session,
I said that I would use our conversation from that night and the follow-up survey results in terms of
everybody getting assigned those hundred points to allocate between those outcomes. And then I drafted a memo.
I will say that I definitely feel like this is quite a draft, and there were a few things after I sent
it in to be included in the packet that I went, hmm, I think that there's a few things that I wanted
to amend, so I want to kind of bring us through that first. I hope everybody's kind of looking at it.
In the second paragraph,
I guess it's just the second full sentence specific interest. So you guys wanted me to specifically
call out existing plans and how important it was to all of us that we like follow through on our existing
plans. And so that is the paragraph about that. And I wasn't sure if there needed to be some expansion
in the final draft around the interest in
Safe Streets for All plan climate action plan transportation plan Wasn't sure if the comprehensive plan
should go in there because the comprehensive plan is kind of a different type of plan But I wanted to
make sure to bring that up to make sure that nobody had Comment on that and Similarly When I Then
Put the list of things I wasn't sure if anybody wanted any specific expansion underneath those categories
Highlighting kind of the different specific things that might have gotten mentioned during that conversation
So if anything if there's anything that anybody wants in there, please let me know and then I specifically
wanted to call out under number one so it did raise the maintenance of city assets was the
was the highest ranking thing in the consolidated ranking, but I changed that to maintenance and enhancement
of city assets because we did have that conversation that we don't just wanna maintain, but we actually
wanna make some things better. And so I wanted to make sure that that reframing was acceptable to the
group. I also wanted to make sure that down on number six, that was, I can't remember what it was, it
was the economy one, it was the vibrant economy one,
and thank you to those of you who had suggestions. There were maybe three folks that had different
suggestions and I tried to kind of combine those to categorize number six as inclusive and strong local
economy, able to stay resilient and adaptable. So wanted to make sure that that worked out. And then
I had also gotten feedback from Council Member Piedmont-Smith who was unable
Because of illness to make that meeting a couple weeks ago about number seven Bloomington residents
have options other than uniformed officers for nonviolent issues whether that wanted to be reframed
and Then the the last thing actually two more things in terms of my own like wow, this was a drafty
draft I put a couple examples in the last paragraph that I have written about budget presentations right
in terms of
I said the maintenance of city assets and intersection redesign as two examples of how things could
fit into priority areas. I wanted to make sure that everybody was okay with the examples that I used
or if there are other examples you would prefer. And then I realized that it really needs a closing
paragraph and I need to put a closer in and I knew I at least wanted to close highlighting the dates
of the meetings that we had had these discussions just so that if anybody wanted to go back to some
of those source discussions that was
all here in the memo. And those are my comments about it. So that was kind of a lot of information.
So feedback for me about how y'all want it to be changed so that then next week we can have a final
draft that we can vote on. Thank you so much, Council Member Stossberg, and thank you for the work both
in leading the committee and putting this together. At this moment, any comments from council members
to Council Member Stossberg? Council Member Pumas-Smith.
I did as council member Stossberg mentioned I did have a concern about item number seven which says
Bloomington residents have options other than uniformed officers for nonviolent issues under public
safety. We since we already do have options other than uniformed officers for nonviolent issues we have
police social workers we have stride. I'm wondering what the council's priority is here. Is it.
to continue the police social worker programs as they are to increase financial support for stride to
create city positions outside of the police department that can serve as community responders. Some
combination of the above. I'd just like to get more clarity and I personally would like to see creation
of city positions outside the police department that can serve as community responders. But I don't
know if others agree with me.
I would agree with that take councilmember Piedmont Smith Anyone else have comments at this point I
had councilor Ralla just to say that I want to thank Councilman sasper for her excellent work at the
synthesis of what council desires in terms of budget and Distilling things down Regarding policing I
I mean, I've always maintained, I think it's important to have non-uniform police personnel, but also
having the required number of sworn officers in order to interact with the public, be able to have the
ability to be on neighborhood beats and be accessible to people, I think was reflected in the consultant report.
Some years ago that that was an important aspect in terms of integrating the police into the in public
safety into the community And it's been proven to work. So I hope that that is That's my reflection
on on on councilmember Piedmont Smith's position on that Thanks so much. I'm other other councilman
stuff. I just want some
some clarity on what councilmember Zulek and Piedmont Smith said in terms of clarity on this. So you
would like this to be clarified to basically have community responders outside of the department?
Councilmember Zulek, is that what you said as well? Yes, and or just an expansion of the programs that
are already available. Programs already available. And to councilmember Rallo's point,
The fully staffing the department was actually an outcome that got voted on early on in this process.
And I can't remember how many points it got off the top of my head, but it didn't rise to the priority
level, which is why it's not reflected in here. But that's certainly one of those pieces of this closing
paragraph that I need to write. Here are all the things that we talked about. Here is the full ranking
of data where individuals might have had different priorities, but this is really supposed to be
The thing where all of us are good with all these things. So I hope that that makes sense as to why
that specific thing is not Consolidated into the letter. Absolutely. I I understand fully and there
there are a lot of You know, there's a diversity of opinion about you know, obviously the city has a
lot of needs and I and the administration has been very diligently committed to
Hiring new officers and you know, I'm satisfied that that is already a priority And so we're well on
our way and so we can think outside the box in terms of other types of Public safety and policing and
so forth as well. So I have I have no quibbles with that. I appreciate you asking so Alternative wording
here. What if we say that
Bloomington residents have additional options other than uniformed police officers for nonviolent issues.
So it's saying additional. So. Doesn't say what form the additional options will take that would be
left open. Just adding the word additional in there. And I added the word police because uniformed officers
just to clarify what that means but it's probably not necessary.
Any other comments? Folks online, any comments? Okay. Thank you. I'll just add one, maybe two small
things. Again, thank you so much for putting this together. I think really emphasizing the fact that
this is a prioritized list. I think we say that at the beginning, but I just think making it a little
bit very clear because
both we forget things and the office of the mayor wasn't at every single one of these deliberations
sessions. And then the second I think was the way that we framed it at the beginning.
while we're talking about city plans, that's where we got all of these outcomes. And so our sort of
guiding principle is let's do the plans that we already have and where there are none, we're interested
in helping to develop those. But each of these outcomes are things that actually come from city plans
and then that we've prioritized. So I just think that being clear at the beginning about sort of the
process that got us there would be helpful.
Only thing with that is I'm I would have to go through I'm not sure that all of these the ones that
rose to the top did come from city plans because the list we started with from Councilman repeat Mott
Smith all came from city plans, but then we added them ourselves and We we made some suggestions for
wording but but the whole bunch Did we really yeah interesting? Yeah goals in December and then through
the surveys interesting and in February and I'm not sure
the top of my head which ones rose to the top and I could look yeah and maybe they they did I don't
think so though could for example making homelessness brief rare and non-repeating is not something
that's in one of those official city plans yeah though it is I mean it's the heading home plan essentially
which we've supported
But it's yeah, but I can certainly Expand that idea that this is a ranked list And and draw that out
to make sure that there's extra clarity there. Excellent. Thank you so much customer Stasberg and everybody
else please send emails to customer Stasberg between now and next week moving on any other councilmember
reports comes from people Smith
Just note we have five more minutes. Yes. I wanted to highlight that the waste reduction district of
Monroe County is accepting grant applications for projects that that have innovative ways to reduce
waste either through reduction of materials reuse or recycling programs especially those that can serve
as models for other communities and institutions in Monroe County.
Proposals may include but are not limited to projects related to newer expanded recycling programs food
waste diversion in this initiatives environmental education programs Waste related public outreach
initiatives and recycled content purchasing initiatives So those grants are available for nonprofits
for civic organizations and businesses Throughout Monroe County and that deadline is May 17th and you can find
More information at waste reduction district dot com. The second thing I just wanted to mention in the
context of our budget priorities it was noted that we don't have a public safety plan as a community
and I've been working on scheduling a
deliberation session that would bring the public into first of all define public safety and then move
on to a second session where we would talk about how the city can what our goals are for public safety
and how the city can work towards those goals. And I know we've had some scheduling problems. I think
that those should be subsequent sessions one after another.
So I just want to throw out there that if we're not able to schedule those subsequent sessions this
spring we could possibly do so in September and October. So stay tuned for more information about a
way to help us in our quest to have a public safety plan. Thank you.
Thank you so much. OK, we now move to reports from city offices and boards and commissions. And today
we have three presentations. We will start with a presentation from our parks and rec director Tim Street.
Sir, take it away.
Good evening, Council, Tim Street, Director of Bloomington Parks and Recreation. Thanks for taking some
time to hear from me this evening. I infrequently get to be in front of you, so it is nice to be here
and just give a general update on our master plan efforts. I know last time I was in front of you,
I believe, was budget hearings, and I referenced a lot about our master plan work that was underway.
Since then, we've done a lot more work on our master plan and just wanted to share some results as we
near completion of our master plan this evening.
So this is an outline of what we have been doing with our master plan So starting really late last spring
and into the summer. We worked a lot on community input through focus groups We had some really wonderful
engagement across the community in our various focus groups a community questionnaire that got more
than I think 1200 responses when we put it out at places like the farmers market and different community
events and
And then just various other one-on-one engagement through events, things like that, driving people to
the master plan website to get engagement and good community feedback. In the fall, actually late in
the fall, in November, December, we conducted our statistically valid community survey through Acuity.
We were able to get to the sample size that we needed. Thankfully, it took a little bit of extra incentives
and efforts to get things out through the US mail, which,
proven to be unreliably slow, but we navigated that. And we had a full financial analysis done through
the consultant as well for our 2024 finances to look at things like pricing and cost recovery goals
and things like that. And just to give us another outside perspective of how we're doing.
In the winter, what we've been working on right now is data and engagement review, reviewing all of
this information that's come in. We received our community survey results about a month ago. We've been
looking at those. Part of why I'm here tonight is I just wanted to share a little snapshot of what we
heard. And we've been working to draft our goals and actions.
And as we move into spring right now, it is the first week of spring officially, we are working on finalizing
our goals, actions, and adoption of a plan. So that plan will go to the Board of Park Commissioners
at their April 16th meeting. We plan to present the plan and our strategic actions to them then. Not
adopt it in the same meeting, that would be a lot to take in, but we hope by the May meeting we're ready
to answer any questions, deal with any feedback, and adopt our master plan for the next five years.
And just as a general reminder, having a master plan is really an absolute must for a Parks and Rec
Department. It makes you one for accreditation, for our ongoing accreditation efforts, it's required,
and it is a required part of getting any kind of grant through the state as well. So we really have
invested a lot in this process to hear from the community, and it means a lot for us in terms of planning
our efforts moving forward.
Entire survey results are like 80 pages of graphs and things like that. I'm not going to go through
all of that tonight. I know you have other things to get to. So I'm going to give you just a high level
overview of some of the key points and takeaways we're looking at. We had 405 residents respond completed
in November and December. The sample was then weighted by Acuity with their expertise in being
statisticians, I suppose, to match US Census targets for Bloomington and key demographics. And overall,
the margin of error was less than 5%, so we're really happy that this is a representative sample of
Bloomington and we can draw conclusions from it to pair with our other qualitative community feedback
that we've been working on. A few key findings, just wanna hit a few high-level things.
We're very gratified that our overall esteem ratings in the community are very favorable. Over 90% of
people are very supportive of what Parks and Rec is doing and what we offer for quality of
life in Bloomington. We wanna keep it that way. That is part of why we master plan. 78% found positive
value in tax support of parks, programs, and facilities. The most used self-reported facilities that
we see are the B-Lines, which are Brian Park,
Griffey Lake Nature Preserve and the rail trail. Not really any big surprises in what we see as most
used. We also have access to place or AI data to sort of look at cell phone usage and draw conclusions
about where people are going and honestly where they're not going to and where some areas might
be underutilized and have opportunity. As general demand and interest that we see from our residents,
number one, this is consistent, we see this a lot, trails.
75% weighted said trails were a priority for them Open space and natural areas was next at 61% park
and trail amenities was next at 60% Coming in as the next highest rated two items were swimming pool
and pickleball at 38% and 28% The pickleball demand is real. It is here to stay Flipping over to more
of the event programmatic side of things
We see that the farmers market is the most in demand program that we offer, followed by outdoor concerts
and natural resources education. What's interesting about these top demanded areas is if you take a
look at the full survey results, we're putting out a press release sometime in the next week or two
that's gonna have a link to a lot more data if you wanna dive into it. All of those high demand things,
the top three in both programs, facilities, trails and in, excuse me, parks, facilities and trails and
in programs.
all have high demand but they all rate as having quality supply as well. So residents really want those
things and they feel like they are being provided those things. So then we're able to look at those
next level things like swimming pool and pickle ball to evaluate those for future investments. 47% of
our residents, half of our residents used park event or program throughout the year.
When we asked folks what they would rate as their top facility for investment to be improved, Bryant
Park Pool was the number one rated of the options, but of course none was also coming in at 24%. So
we're sensitive to the fact that it's an expensive time to be living anywhere in the United States and
we wanna make really good judicious decisions with our investments to serve the greatest good for the
community. Interestingly, you know,
Key facilities rated between 68% support, despite that, which was Mills Pool to 78% at Brian Pool favorably
for investment, but of course we recognize there's no dollar amount tied to that in a survey and it's
sort of just a, do you feel like you would like to support this with an investment? So we know there's
more work to be done there, but this gives us really key insights into, comparatively especially, how
our facilities and programs rank with the community.
I'm totally happy to share these are the four draft goals that we are taking forward to the park board
We've been pretty deliberative about these and talked about these a lot So the the four areas where
you're going to be focusing on for the next five years number one, of course making meaningful community
impacts Parks and Rec is here to provide opportunities for health connection and resilience in the community
Those will continue to be our priorities how we have to do that right now is we have to do that by critically
investing in what we have and
We've enjoyed a great period of of new things and new growth in our focus as I've discussed with the
council before and at budget hearings Is very much on how do we take care of what we have? How do we
keep our old pools our old facilities in good shape for future generations of people who live in Bloomington?
That ties right into number three. We have to be financially sustainable
That includes a long look at our cost recovery goals, our cost recovery strategy, where and how are
we subsidizing programs, are we making sure we're subsidizing the things that do the greatest general
good for the public. And lastly,
what was critical to doing all of those three things is we have to have a strong and connected staff.
So that is our fourth goal. So just wanted to give that brief update and happy to answer any questions
if you'd like. Otherwise, as I mentioned, the full survey results, there's a 20 page version which I
recommend looking at unless you really want to get into it and look at the 80 page version, which I'm
happy to supply, but we'll be releasing that with the press release sometime here in the next week or two.
Thank you so very much, Director Street, both for everything that you do and for the presentation. Are
there questions or comments? Please, Councilor Mbrella. Thank you. Thank you, Director Street. Director
Renison about 15 years ago said that pickleball was the future, and it's proven to be the case. But
besides pickleball and that kind of recreation, which is important, I'm concerned about Griffey.
The ecological integrity of Griffey First of all, we do we continue doing Yearly hunts, is that correct?
And do we continue doing plant census? In other words, do we? Do we deploy I can remember ecologic or
some firm to correct ecologic census and density and plant stature and things like that to make sure
that the understory was responding to the
relieving of Herbivory, is that happening? It is okay terrific. I'd like to see I Hopeful I know that
there's a legacy effect of high deer density But I'm hoping that you know the under stories rebounding
which is important And I wondered about something else. Oh Regarding the ecological integrity of Griffey,
there's a controlled burn that's happening It's a concern of some people
and You know, I'm favorable to these because of course, you know, they they happen in nature and it's
important could you could you describe the purpose and You know the prospects for these things and the
turns that are happening
So briefly, what we saw in the community survey was the number two thing that people ranked as being
in demand, being supported, is protection of existing natural resources. So clearly, it continues to
be a priority for our residents that we invest in and we take care of our existing natural resources,
be that the 1,300 acres of Griffey or the small nature preserves that we have in other places, the small
stands, the habitat, the connectivity of habitat, the native plants, all of the work that we do with that.
In terms of Griffey specifically, yes, we continue to do the deer hunt. I believe we're in year nine
of the deer hunt. We have made a very intentional decision to continue the research that we've been
doing there because we feel like this is important and ongoing to see what the effects are year over
year and rule out any variations of weather and drought that we have year over year to really get a
good trend line to see how effective the Griffey deer hunt is going.
I think it's important work that we're doing. I think we're leading the way on it Honestly with some
different parks and rec departments particularly in the state So it's important that we continue to
do the research to back up why we're doing it Similarly the the controlled burn that the prescribed
fire I should say rather is a similar effort to combat mesification in the forest and targets beach
maple forest stands which are
Overgrowing and overtaking our oak hickory forest, which is more climate resilience, which is also under
threat from the deer over browse So it's all interrelated The deer the controlled burn actually happened
yesterday and was a success. We had a great Prescribed fire out there. It went well, and we want to
continue to research and look at the effects of those on the natural resource And removal of Invasive
non non natives. Mm-hmm. That's going
Okay, and a and a happy Consequence of reducing your density is of course people who use the park are
not going to be subjected to hide your height tick density So then I can I hope so yes ticks Yes,
thank you, thank you great great customer sasberg I just wanted to follow up on the survey
Just because I mean you had four hundred and five residents complete the survey out of more than eighty
thousand residents So can you just talk about how that is? still like statistically significant and
That sort of thing especially because that's that's a number that's out there now, right to making sure
that That everybody I cannot talk about I took statistics in college, but I don't remember a lot. I
We worked with a professional survey firm who looked at Bloomington, who looked at the census information,
who looked at the population, the resident outcomes, everything like that, and came up with a number,
as statisticians do, that they said, we need this many randomized samples to be a statistically valid
survey, and to get the error of margin that they said, which is less than 5%. So while more respondents
would have continued
to decrease the error below that 5%, we still feel pretty confident statistically that this is a really
good valid survey for us to look at. I really wanted the quantitative part of it to look at to pair
with the qualitative feedback that we were getting from community focus groups and things like that.
So I think we're not just making decisions on the survey alone, but pairing it with everything else
that we've heard from the community through focus groups, through talking to people at the farmers market,
the outreach work we've done as part of the master plan process. Okay. Thank you. So those 405 survey
respondents don't include all of the other outreach that you did last year. Great. Thanks. Thank you.
Any other questions online. All right. Seeing none. Thank you. We now have a presentation from the Human
Rights Commission who's here. I see many of you.
Good evening. My name is Emma Williams and I'm the chair of the Bloomington Monroe County Human Rights
Commission I've been on the Commission for about three years Recent nomination to the chair. So and
I'm going to present the annual report from 2025 So the Commission is composed of seven members appointed
by the Monroe County Commissioners the Bloomington City Council and the mayor and our work is primarily guided by
responsibilities, which is the enforcement of the human rights ordinance and educating community members
about their rights and the responsibilities that are applicable to them under human rights laws.
So in 2025, the commission investigated 18 cases alleging discrimination.
Each of these cases reflects an individual or a family seeking fairness under our local ordinance And
our role is to essentially ensure that those claims are reviewed carefully and impartially in addition
to formal Investigations we responded to 83 inquiries and complaints and these often involve individuals
seeking guidance about their rights and whether their situation falls within our jurisdiction and
We work to make sure that they're pointed in the right place and given the correct resources for their
situation at hand if we're not able to help them. Beyond enforcement we also remain active in community
outreach because we want to touch as many people as possible so they understand what
we as a community can do to help them if they are facing discrimination. So we tabled at several different
events, Pride Fest, the ADA anniversary celebration, and La Fiesta del Antonio. And these are just important
ways for us to connect directly with the residents and increase awareness so they know exactly who to
come to if they have an issue.
We also hosted our annual art and essay contest for students in grades kindergarten through sixth grade.
So this year's theme was, how does diversity make our community stronger? And it encouraged students
from a really young age to engage with ideas of inclusion and respect for all community members. Looking
ahead, our strategic goals in 2026 reflect our past work.
We want to really focus on continuity of what we've been doing and the growth of the commission. So
we'll continue to review and respond to all inquiries and investigate all discrimination cases within
our jurisdiction and clubbing those into the correct parties if it falls outside of our jurisdiction.
We also plan to expand our educational efforts by attending
informational events and increasing outreach through publications and presentations. We often have different
members of the community and community organizations come in and educate us about what they do.
So that way, we have a lot of weapons at our resource. If we can't particularly help someone, we can
guide them to local resources as well as state resources that can help. And we also want to identify
new opportunities to support and protect people who are most at risk
discrimination in the community So yeah at its core the Commission it the work is about ensuring access
to information Processes and the protections guaranteed under local laws We're really grateful for the
continued support of the council and advancing our work and we invite everyone to
Attend our meetings which are held on the third Monday of each month 5 p.m. Here in City Hall usually
the hooker room or via zoom and Thank you for your time and commitment to protecting the rights and
dignity of everyone here in Bloomington and the county beyond and I am happy to answer questions and
Michael is really happy to answer questions Thank you so much any questions colleagues Councilman Piedmont Smith
Given the nationwide attacks on trans rights. Have you seen an uptick in the number of? Discrimination
complaints from the LGBTQ plus community From what I engaged Yes a little bit. I wouldn't I mean Michael
could answer more to that. I think Because we we have such a like a
We have such wide variety of cases, and each commissioner works on a individual case. It's hard for
me to gauge exactly what comes in until the end with the annual report. So, Michael, have you seen an
uptick? Yeah, I'm Michael Shermans from the Community Family Resources Department here at the city and
the liaison for the Human Rights Commission.
Yeah, there's definitely been an uptick in the amount of People in the LGBTQ plus community who have
come forward with issues And probably an overall increase not a large because it's not a large percentage
anyway of trans cases as well So there there is some more concern about that area and we continue to
try to address it in the same way that we always do Thank you, thank you, I'm glad people have this
resource councilmember daily
Thank you for that answer kind of in that same vein it can you identify anything maybe proactively that
we as a council can be doing to help you guys or help the You know marginalized members of our community
who are coming forward with more And I'm putting you on the spot trying to think of a solution right
there But but have you guys been able to identify anything that we could be doing to help? I think our
Commission members are made up of a broad variety of community members with various interests
and backgrounds. And so they might all have very specific things that they could give you. I think,
genuinely, the best thing to be doing right now is encouraging the members of the community, specifically
those most marginalized, that you are listening and you will do what you can in your power to, you know,
listen with empathy and assist. I know right now there's a lot of pressure for local governments nationwide
with sort of the administration coming down from both state levels and national levels and the threats
that kind of loom over everyone's head. It's definitely in the back of everyone's mind. So I think just
ensuring different groups
Being open and available to their thoughts and their feelings and ensuring that whatever you can do
within your power You are willing to give it a shot But I'll add that For nine years running we've received
a hundred score of a hundred on the human rights campaign thing But you've all probably been aware of and
And one of the things that we've always not got any extra points on, because you try to get more than
100, is the actual not having an LGBTQ plus center for Bloomington. We have one on that campus, but
the community doesn't have one. And behind the scenes, we've been trying to help
Support that as much as possible with people and that's on its way. So I would say one of the ways you
could probably support it is Get in contact with those people and tell them that you're behind them
because they're they're on their way towards getting that center in place It's called the front door
I'm very excited about that. Actually. Yeah, I think that's fantastic. Thank you for those answers.
Thank you so much Councilmember Stossberg For the sake of the community listening, can you kind of walk?
through if somebody feels like they have need because they have been discriminated against in some way,
what should they do in order to get in contact with you? And if they are concerned about being retaliated
against, how do you deal with that kind of fear?
talk to people all the time, try to make sure that we have a safe space for them to be able to tell
what their issues, let them know that it's confidential that what we're doing, we will keep it to whoever
has to do it if we have an investigating commissioner. We give them opportunity to spell out their timeline
of what happened, who was involved, what it was, try to gather all of the information of what the actual
complaint is, and then give them the option to be able to try to work with the respondent
or bring it as a formal complaint and get an investigating commissioner involved. So we work with them
the best we can to try to ensure that they're going to be safe in this process. When it goes to respondent,
the complaint is made clear that retaliation is not acceptable. And that's sort of the general process.
It's a little bit longer than when we describe it to a complaint, but that's the upshot. Right,
but I mean, do they call you? Do they email?
Yeah, well, it comes in every way. So we see your emails. We have a form that's up on the web, so an
initial intake form that you can be able to do. We get phone calls all of the time. Other people will
pass it along. I get texts. It happens pretty much every way. And we accept anything that anybody wants
to do. Thank you.
Thank you all so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your service to the city and just residents.
Thank you We now have a presentation from the Commission on Hispanic and Latin affairs welcome Okay,
thank you so much I'm a tiny one Okay, thank you for having me here. Um
I'm Claudia. I'm in the commission for two years now and recently named the chair of the commission.
So we are so happy to be here. Um, our mission is to identify, understand and address the issues that
impact Hispanic and Latin residents while actively promoting access, reducing barriers and straightening
civic participation.
It's also important to recognize that Hispanic and Latin residents represent approximately 10% of the
Bloomington population, and we are committed to ensure that their voices are heard and reflected in
the life of our city. In practice, this means we work to deeply understand community experience to elevate
those voices and to help translate them into thoughtful and collaborative solutions.
We aim to strain connections between resident and local government, ensuring that communication is not
only accessible, but also culturally responsive and grounded in trust. And at the heart of our work
is a deep commitment to recognize and celebrate the contribution of Hispanic and Latin residents, which
are essential to the strength and vitality of our community. I also want to acknowledge the work of
the commitment
and commitment of our commissions who contribute to make this work possible. And I would especially
like to recognize our liaison Jimena Martinez, whose leadership and dedication has been instrumental
in helping us reach where we are today, especially in times like this for us. In terms of our 2025 key
achievements,
Our work focus on three key areas, expanding access to resources, training partnerships, and fostering
a strong sense of belonging across the community. In terms of access, we provide resources
through educational initiative, including Spanish languages workshop, focus on mental health, and parenting.
We also support families navigating FAFSA process in collaboration with IU La Casa Latino Cultural Center
and El Centro Comunal Latino helping families overcome language barriers and better access financial
aid for college. In term of partnership, one key initiative was the Mental Health Community Forum where
we brought together 10 local organizations and providers. This allow us to identify barriers such as
language access, stigma, and fear while beginning
to strengthen networking and referral pathways across organizations. We connect with MCSE to better
understand factors affecting student attendance and well-being with the goal of training communication
with families. And in terms of belonging, we focus on creating trusted spaces where families feel comfortable
engaging, asking questions, and accessing information in environments where they feel safe and welcomed.
These include partners
participating in community events, connecting with residents through Spanish language radio, and creating
opportunity for more direct and meaningful engagement. For example, during the La Fiesta del Otoño,
a long-standing community and family research tradition celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month, we hosted
an outreach booth to share information about city resources and connect with residents in welcoming
environment. This is an opportunity to celebrate our community
its culture, its contribution and presence in Bloomington. And we warmly invite you to join us this
year. Looking ahead for 2026, our work will continue to focus on amplifying the voice of Hispanic and
Latin residents and strengthening connections between the community and local institutions.
We will prioritize improving access to information and services, particularly by reducing language barriers
and expanding cultural responsive communications. We also aim to deepen partnership with schools, community
organization, and service providers so we can better understand community needs and response in a more
coordinated way. We will launch the Latino Recognition Award with our new focus on community center's
value, honoring individuals and organizations whose
leadership and service strengths, and uplifted Bloomington Hispanic and Latin community. And most important,
we want to continue to celebrate our community and its valuable contribution to Bloomington rooted in
hard work, strong family values, and deep sense of community. Ultimately, our goal is not only to respond
to immediate needs that we absolutely have, but also to contribute to long-term improvement that expands
opportunities, strength access, and support dignity for all.
More than welcome to have any response. Thank you so much. Muchas gracias. Questions? Comments? Councilmember
Puma-Smith. Yes. Thank you so much for your presentation and all your great work in the community. I
just want to state for the record that I think it's shameful that our federal government has created
a climate of fear for this population rather than recognizing and celebrating the contributions of Hispanic
and Latina communities.
to our culture, society, and economy. And it's also horrible that the Indiana General Assembly has preempted
local government's right to protect our communities by requiring us to collaborate with ICE, an agency
that has acted in blatant violation of civil and legal rights, especially those of Hispanic, Latine,
and other communities of color throughout the US. I support you, and I think I can speak for us all
that we support the communities that you represent and appreciate your hard work
Here in Bloomington Councilmember Daley Thank you for that presentation and also for all the work that
that the whole Commission does I know that this past year you guys had some tricky obstacles and barriers
and trying to continue, you know to operate with some normalcy and I think you guys
did a fantastic job and I'm really impressed with all of the hard work and commitment from the commission.
How can we as a council and also even as a community be supporting the commission better? I appreciate
so much this question. I would encourage the council to intentional consider Hispanic and Latin community
across all the city strategies.
from Parkinson's recreation to housing and public services to include and strengthen the language barriers
that we have, for example, and make more accessible in language, for example, or actually ensuring services
are also culturally responsive. It's also important to continue for us to celebrate our culture. So
be part of that. We invite you and we welcome you.
to our Fiesta del Otoño and to help us to change a narrative that are around our community because
we strongly think that our community and multiculturality help and make this city a better place. So
you're more than welcome to be in all our activities and to join us. So, yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much.
Okay. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you for being here We now move on to a time of public comment
for things that are not on the agenda I'm sorry. We have a council committee report. I'm sorry. So before
that we have two council committee reports I think we start with Councilmember Rosenberger has as a
report. Thank you so much Take it away
Okay, thanks. That ended so abruptly. Let me just get, I need to get it. I'm just going to wing it for
the start. Okay, so this is the new, the old sidewalk committee, the new pedestrian safety committee.
So welcome to the pedestrian safety committee. We met in December and talked through our past
our past recommended and funded projects that we did in 2025 or even 2024 that are still ongoing like
North Jefferson Street. And we talked with staff about how we want this committee to move forward. So
because we have the transportation plan and the safe streets for all plan, what's so funny?
We can't see you, but they can, we just can't. You're over there, not over there. Oh, I'm sorry. I see
myself on the screen. It's not you, it's not you, it's not you. There, you're back. Okay, and so what
we really looked at this year is how the money, the $500,000 that council gets from the alternative
transportation fund, ATF, can be kind of the most efficiently used and
also a little bit like the most nimbly used, I would say. And so this has kind of always been something
that gets discussed at these meetings that like, how much does this committee want to like weigh in
on every specific project that might get done or do we want to give staff the flexibility to kind of
pick and choose projects as the year progresses? So last year we had three,
three projects that were kind of finished up or still ongoing this year. And then another committee
member might want to speak to those. And then we still gave a big chunk as flexible funding to work
in coordination with public works. So mostly when they were doing street repaving, planning staff would
see that opportunity as like increasing or putting in new bump outs.
bike lanes and things of that sort. So we felt like that went really well last year. And so this year
really is a pretty similar funding allocation and recommendation. There is the funding for the North
Jefferson Street sidewalk build out. And I think this is our third year on it and it will be completed.
So that's just East of Eigenman.
where that is. It's like a big student area and there wasn't a sidewalk. So that is, I think,
really lovely. And so we looked at the criteria that we used last year and these are safe streets for
all projects. And then we kind of so almost like extended the reach that it's not just public works
projects, but it can also be in conjunction with utilities or other city departments or other safe streets
for all projects. And then because this was a little more
Widely cast than normal we asked for a check-in mid-year from planning staff. So Probably Hank Duncan
will be giving us a mid-year report when we're back from recess sometime in July That's what I have
Thank you so much any questions for the for the committee Cuz Marella, well, it's more of it I think
there was a question raised by councilmember Rosa
Rosenberg Rosenberg, sorry Excuse me Spaced out about whether council input or plant planners are the
appropriate means by which we discern the needs of the community and I think a combination of them are
important because you know having been on the sidewalk committee for years and
There is the the lived experience needs of residents You know of where you know what the needs are in
their neighborhood that I think is invaluable, you know that may be overlooked by planners as much as
I respect of course the planners sort of 30,000 foot view and You know, so I think that you know, the
combination is is an important way to Prioritize needs and I recognize the needs list is very long
Thank you. Apologies, Council Member Rosemar. For some reason. Other... Go ahead, Council Member. That
wasn't a question, right? It was just a... Reflect on, do you share that view? Or are you thinking,
I mean, you were proposing maybe turning it all over to the planning staff? Is that your perspective?
That is the perspective of the committee for the most part, yes. I'm just one of the votes, one of four.
And yes, the breakdown now that I have my document up is 60,000 to finish that construction of North
Jefferson and then 435 for right of way acquisition, design and construction under the safe streets
priority projects. And then 5,000 for change orders because that sometimes happens where engineering
has to ask for special permission and now they kind of don't. I like that.
I think this is my sixth year on the committee and maybe my fifth year or fourth year as chair. And
every year we do have this council member Rallo question, which I appreciate. And I think it is like
for me, the transportation plan and the safe streets for all plan has taken into account what people
in neighborhoods want and need because of all the public engagement in those plans.
So that's my take on it. I would be happy for other committee members to weigh in on their take on that
as well. Council Member Stasberg. I have a question. In the
I guess it's 2025 update table. It has the fee lane and law lane intersection improvement that looks
like maybe it was $40,000 in like design kind of planning stuff. Do you know where that is or was that
brought up at all in discussion in terms of where that's laying in any kind of priority list? Because
often I guess I've felt like with the
with this committee's allocations, like you mentioned North Jefferson, it's like the third year in terms
of progressing on and continuing to devote some funds as budgeting allows to the same projects. So do
you know if that fee lane, law lane intersection is maybe going to be going to use some of that $435,000
this year? Was that talked about?
It is one of the optional, like the project is on the table and I forget what IU owns, but it's very
IU dependent because they own part of the property around there. I think it was a consideration last
year, but you can see we did not, or yeah, we did not spend any money on it last year. And instead,
I think we looked at that bus stop up the street. That was a problem with Briscoe where
students were crossing without just wildly crossing the street sort of because the bus stopped on the
opposite side and then they had to get across. So I think some money got spent on that. And then so
Hank Duncan did have the fee lane, law lane as an example of a project that will be looked at this year.
So I guess I don't know that it's like that there is a priority list, but I know it's an option if that
is helpful. Yeah, that is helpful. Thanks.
Thank you last chance questions comments There's all right. Thank you so much to the committee for that
rapport. Okay councilman Stossberg We're clerkless I didn't notice so we I think we have to do into
can we operate a meeting clerkless Okay, so We there's there we are
Sorry, I had a notice I had a notice that we had become clickless Well, we have to vote to approve so
I'll make a motion please I'll move to Prove the sidewalk. Sorry the pedestrian safety committee funding
recommendations for 2026 Second, there's a motion in a second. Will the clerk please call the roll? I
Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
Excellent that that that those recommendations carry Thank you so much to the hard work of the committee
and as always and thank you councilman burrows embargo for chairing that committee so diligently year
after year Okay, but now for for sake of time. Hopefully we'll move on to the hiring committee memo
Hopefully all of you had the chance to read the memo So happy as a committee to take any questions about
it And if none we can directly move to the two motions proposed in the memo
Councilman Sasberg, I think the only Okay, so I've actually I have two questions about the job description
One is job grade was highlighted and it was still a 12. Is that actually staying at 12? That will be
determined by the normal processes. Okay, so it hasn't gone through that yet Correct. Okay, great. And
then the second thing that I wanted to Bring up is under the exercised rights. I think that it is a
kind of a change, it's in consultation with the council president and consistent with human resources.
Basically, it sounds like the council president is then sharing supervisory authority over council staff
with this, I can't remember what we've called this role, the council attorney and director of common
council office, and I'm not sure that I'm comfortable with that.
in terms of actually sharing the supervisory authority with a single council member, just because I,
I mean, the attorney is the one who's in the office all the time with those people, and it's one thing
to consult. I mean, the language that was in there before was to just, when it comes to discipline and
firing, it was, where is it, to confer.
with the president, which doesn't give the president any power. That was the intention of that word,
confer, anyway, at the time, was to not give the president any actual power, but just to allow the attorney
to talk to somebody specific about that kind of procedure, but not necessarily anything else related
to staffing. So I don't love that we've then given power to a single council member to supervise staff.
Thank you. So I think as the committee, I mean, our committee respond if you feel otherwise, but the
word consultation is a synonym for confer to us. I don't think we saw this in any different way. So
we're happy to change it to confer. I don't think it makes a big difference. I guess I would want to
look up that definition. Let's just change it to confer. I'll do that for a second. We can just change
it to confer. I don't think any objection, but we'll just change it to confer.
We'll just say in conference or we'll just say conferring. Yeah in conference or yeah Something like
that as long as the intention is that the council attorney gets to make all of these decisions And the
council president is just like there. Yes, correct And that is exactly what we tried to capture. So
yeah that thank you for the thank you for that Yeah, so as long as that's kind of clear in whatever
language that was my only concern. Thanks Any other comments or questions By councilman rel
Well, I just wanted to thank the committee chair and president. I'm sorry for his His work the proposed
draft changes to the job description that the committee reviewed and that is before us tonight It required
a lot of work and I appreciate You know your your your take on it so Any other comments or questions
councilmember Rosenberger Thanks
The job grade 12. So what is the process exactly? Like I'm guessing you all as the committee kind of
wrote it so that it does appear to be more of a director position probably in line with like department
heads and then how do we get it changed if not now? Like does HR review it now? Because I think it would
be so great to hire into a different pay range.
Yeah, so the next process will work with HR to actually get it reviewed before posted. Oh, cool. Okay,
great. There's no guarantee that it would change, but we have a process for that to happen. And we have
written it with that in mind. Any other questions? And thank you so much for that, Council
Member Rosenberger. Just one last one. Yes, sir. When will it be posted? I'm clear. I don't know. As
soon as possible. As soon as possible. With post-haste.
Not that there's a sense of urgency. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. It'll go faster than this meeting
is going. I promise. I cannot I cannot keep that promise. Okay. Council members look I move that the
council approves this job description. Okay. There's a motion and a second to approve the job description
here. We have to will the clerk please call the roll.
Yes. I'm sorry. I didn't capture who the second was. Thank you. Councilmember Piedmont Smith. Yes. Zulick.
Yes. Sorry. Yes. Daily. Yes. Rallo. Yes. Ruff. Yes. Rosenberger. Yes. Clarity. Yes. Stossburg. Yes.
Thank you.
And then there's a second request from the committee in the memo if if anybody would like to move for
that, that'd be great I move to authorize the hiring committee to identify and contract in coordination
with appropriate city processes with external vendors professional service providers or temporary legal
counsel as necessary to ensure Uninterrupted functioning of the council office and to support recruitment
efforts second as much in a second any discussion. I
Councilmember Piedmont Smith and Stossberg I would just ask that it it say and or temporary legal counsel
so that we can engage with external vendors professional service providers and or temporary legal counsel
Is that you take that as a friendly amendment? Councilmember daily I'm sorry. I was trying to send this
over to the clerk and I didn't hear what the I Knew you that we we we say
And or temporary legal counsel as necessary so that we could do both and not just one or the other I
think that's that's how it was written Okay, I'm sorry. I apologize. I misspoke. It should say and or
I just am wondering how
this is gonna work in terms of how, if we contract with an attorney, how their time is gonna be prioritized
in terms of, I mean, for example, yesterday in the CCP meeting, there were like three things that were
like, oh, I guess we're gonna have to consult with this about an, with an external person, and so is
that something that y'all have been able to talk about yet, or?
we've started at least to speak in broad terms about it. I mean, it's gonna be something we're gonna
have to feel out a bit. I mean, it's new territory here, but the goal is how do you get the actual legal
expertise that we need and minimizing the cost to the city. So, I mean, that's the framework that we'll
have to operate under, what that looks like in practice. We've talked, for example, we threw out the
idea that if you had an external council,
Could be something like every council member gets a 30 minute consultation a week or something like
that, you know, to talk about legislation, you know, something like that. And then that they're at our
meeting, you know, it could be something, you know, some some framework like that. So, you know, obviously
thinking about fairness and accessibility and equal accessibility and those type of things. But yeah,
I mean, it's a new territory. So we'll have to see. OK, thanks. OK, any other discussion points, please,
Councilman Rallo.
Well, just to say I want to express gratitude to Clerk Nicole Bolden for and her staff for all the help
given to the council In this interim while we were staff council the council office and apart from that
just generally speaking because it's been profound and really important and has kept us going so Yep
Any other discussion here
Okay, seeing none or online. Are you all okay with this? Okay, clerk, will you please kindly call the
roll? Yes, sorry. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Rosenberger. Yes. Flaherty. Yes. Stossburg. Yes. And
Piedmont Smith. Yes.
Woohoo, fantastic guys, we did it. Okay, if you're a Dune fan, that concludes Dune part one. And so
the crescendo of Dune part one though, the after bit is that we have a time now of public comment. This
is for anything that is not on the agenda. There'll be time of public comment for the things on the
agenda on each agenda item. So if you have a public comment, please come to the mic. Remember to sign
in. If you'd like to say your name or alias, and if you're online,
The same we will alternate between people online and in the room starting with them here in the room.
Take it away. Mr. MG Hey, good evening council. Mr. President. This is Christopher MG senior director
of government and community relations with your Greater Bloomington Chamber of Commerce tonight I just
want to highlight a couple upcoming opportunities
These are all open to the community and free you do not have to be a chamber member And I'd be remiss
if I didn't start with our wonderful partnership with the city who luckily most of them are here tonight
I can thank them personally that will be doing zing train systems for supporting staff at the Bloomington
Convention Center That's Wednesday April 1st from 8 a.m. To 4 p.m. We have 139 already registered we
can have about 20 more. This is a
award-winning workshop designed for business owners, managers, and HR professionals. Participants will
gain practical tools around hiring, training, performance management systems with a focus on building
stronger teams, improving retention, and addressing workplace challenges proactively. And then we have
some great volunteer opportunities. Michael Sherma's
being one of my great volunteers at the Success School's Reality Store, that's the foundation wing,
feel-good wing of the chamber. What is the Success School and what is the Reality Store? Well, we do
career and financial literacy at the Success School, and the Reality Store is a hands-on literacy simulation
where junior high students take the role of a 28-year-old, kids, marriages, divorce, and they navigate
life, budgeting around housing, transportation,
food and more and we will have volunteers play key role in connecting them with that real life experience
at different booths. So we'll be starting that first a week from Friday, April 3rd at Jackson Creek
Middle School. We have two shifts, a morning and an afternoon. And then we'll be finishing up our fourth
round Friday, May 8th at Tri North.
middle school, so we'd love to see you volunteer for that. If you have not, it is really a lot of fun
interacting with junior high students and them realizing how much children cost, how much they are actually
causing budget woes within their own household. And then on Tuesday, April 21st, we're gonna be back
actually with Elect Connect at the Waldron Center. This is our candidate election event. We'll be focusing
on the Democratic
primary from Monroe County Commissioner featuring the county council members Trent Deckard and David
Henry. Should be a wonderful way to network with them ahead of time and then see a moderated debate
with former John Fernandez. That starts at four o'clock and will end before six p.m. I thank you for
your time tonight and I hope everybody brought a lunch. Thank you. Is there anyone online?
Wonderful. Here back in the room. Take it away. Hello, my name is Matt Caldy. I'm here just to kind
of remind the community, anyone watching in Bloomington or in the Bloomington area, that the Environmental
Commission's Eco Heroes Art Contest is open for submissions. So we're looking for any artistic submissions
from ages pre-K all the way up to adult. We've had 2D art, 3D art, performance art, essays,
digital media, all kinds of creative stuff. Our theme this year is Our Nature at Night. So we're hoping
to get a lot of nocturnal themed, all the things that happen after sunset. Let's see. The submissions
are due by April 7th. They can be turned in here at City Hall during business hours. Or if it is a digital
submission, contestants can email environment at bloomington.in.gov.
the The presentation will be a part of the Earth Day event at switch yard park on April 18th So that's
where people will be able to pick up their submissions or get prizes Looking forward to a whole bunch
of submissions. So tell your friends. Thank you Thank you. Anybody else like to give comment?
Hi, my name is Christopher. I've been a citizen of Bloomington my whole life. Happy spring also. I have
a simple idea. How about as a city, we grow our own food? And I know what a lot of you are thinking.
It's infeasible, lands too expensive, et cetera. But I think we could come up with a way, grants,
fundraising, volunteers,
to grow our own food as a city, even if it's just 10% to start. I've personally done gardening my whole
life, and I really enjoy it. I believe gardening's great for health and wellness, and it can be therapeutic.
There's a story, an old story in Genesis. When God kicked out Adam and Eve, he stationed a cherubim
to guard the Garden of Eden.
Now, I don't know what your beliefs are, religious or whatnot, and I don't know where we would fall
on that timeline, but I do know we can grow our own food, and that's my simple suggestion. Thank you
for your time. Thank you so much. Any other comments? All right, is there any, come ahead, anybody online
in the meantime? No, there's not. Okay, fantastic.
Good evening, council. Thank you for your time. My name is Brianna. I'm a social work student at Indiana
University, and I'm here tonight as part of my social welfare policy and practices advocacy assignment.
While I am here for a class, this topic is deeply personal to me. I speak to you today as an adult survivor
of children of hoarding disorder.
My own upbringing in a hoarded home led to a period of homelessness in this town and has had a lasting
impact on my mental health and socioeconomic status. I wasn't brave enough as a child to escape that
environment, so I have chosen to use my education to advocate for those who are still trapped. Hoarding
disorder is a DSM-5 recognized condition that leads to extreme functional impairment, often exceeding
chronic pain or diabetes.
For children, it is associated with high levels of family strain, isolation, and long-term trauma. Currently,
these children are often invisible in our legal and social systems. My long-term goal is to request
a state amendment to Title 31 to specifically recognize hoarding related hazards as child neglect, ensuring
these families receive necessary mental health referrals and treatment.
As I begin this journey, I am asking for your guidance. Could you direct me to appropriate city resources
such as housing and neighborhood development to better understand how Bloomington currently supports
families in these complex environments? Thank you for your time and for hearing my story. Thank you
for sharing it.
Hello, my remarks are based on an essay that was written by the famous writer, Jason Hickel. There's
nothing democratic about capitalism. Yes, we get elected leaders every few years, even if we acknowledge
that this process is often corrupt and inadequate, but when it comes to the economy, the system that
affects our everyday lives and determines the shape and direction of our society, generally not even
a pretense of democracy is allowed to enter.
Under capitalism, production is controlled overwhelmingly by investable assets. Investors determine
what to produce, how to use our collective labor and our planet's resources, and what to do with the
surplus we generate. The primary purpose of production and surplus investment is not to meet human needs,
achieve social progress, or to realize democratically ratified objectives. The purpose is to maximize
and accumulate profit and power
That is the overriding goal. These decisions are made in the narrow interests of the capitalist class.
The workers, the people actually doing the production, rarely get any voice at all. This arrangement
is completely undemocratic. In fact, it is literally plutocracy. And when you govern a system like this
that leads to perverse outcomes, we end up with massive overproduction of things like fossil fuels,
SUVs, and mansions.
We get chronic under production of necessary things like renewable energy public transit and affordable
housing Because these are left less profitable to capital or not profitable at all The result is that
despite having extraordinary productive capacity with extremely high levels of output to the point of
blowing past planetary boundaries We nonetheless fail to ensure that ensure that everyone has access
to basic goods and services and
A critic may retort that capitalism is democratic because every person gets to vote with their dollars.
According to this argument, consumers determine the direction of the economy, which serves everyone's
needs in the most efficient way possible, but this argument does not hold water. The dollars of ordinary
people do not equal votes because we cannot buy the things that are not being produced.
We may want renewable energy, affordable housing, longer lasting products, public transit, and regenerative
agriculture, but these things are usually not produced because capital does not consider it profitable
enough to do so. Demand is a necessary but insufficient condition. It is profitability, not demand,
that determines investment. Capital determines production, and we only get to vote among the things
that capital is willing to produce.
None of this is inevitable. We can and should extend the principles of democracy into our economy And
so I strongly encourage Bloomington to make that a priority Thank you. Thank you. All right, and that
concludes our time of public comment Appointments to boards and commissions. I believe we have one is
there a motion? Please councilman P much Beth. Yes, I move
Appoint carry champion to seat c1 on the Historic Preservation Commission second there's a motion in
the second any discussion councilmember Stasberg, I just have a question because seats c2 and c3 are
also currently vacant and C1 like has a carryover right now. So is that a specific recommendation?
It is. Okay. Thank you. I
Any other questions or comments? Seeing none, will the clerk please call the roll on this appointment?
Council Member Asari? Yes. Daly? Yes. Rallo? Yes. Ruff? Yes. Rosenberger? Yes. Flaherty? Yes. Stosberg? Yes.
Yes. Zulek? Yes. Thank you. Oh, the TV is about to turn off again. Thanks, Michael. OK, we are now moving
on to legislation for second readings. No? What are we missing? Apologies. Oh, you have another one?
Well, we have a removal request. OK, go for it.
Drew Heron also on the Historic Preservation Commission has been not responsive and has missed the last
three meetings and has not responded to either emails from the chair and the staff liaison. So at this
point in time, I move that we remove Drew Heron from the Historic Preservation Commission. Second. Motion
to second. Any discussion? Councilmember Piedmont-Smith.
I think in the past when somebody has when we've taken action to remove somebody from a commission,
we vote to to send that person a final notice that they will be removed unless they respond and attend
a meeting. And then if they don't respond to that, then we remove them. I think noting also the clerk
who is our memory says that that is the case. But thoughts, though, that we just
changed the legislation on how people can be removed from boards and commissions. And one of the things
that's specified there is not showing up now. I think that we could go with our president or we could
do it this way. I don't think it's written anywhere that we have to give the person another chance after
they've already reached out. I did just get a message from Deputy Clerk Crossley that said that that
is correct. And she can do that tomorrow if that's how we'd like to go as well. It's a you made the
motion. So your choice.
I will withdraw my motion and I move that the council sends one final letter to Drew Heron pending or
I guess not pending prior to his removal from the HPC Second there's a motion in the second any other
discussion All right clerk. Will you please call the roll? Yes, can be just a second. I want to capture
that. Thank you. I
Okay. Um council member Daley. Yes. Rallo. Yes. Ruff. Yes. Rosenberger. Yes. Flaherty. Yes. Stasburg.
Yes. Piedmont Smith. Yes. Zulek. Yes. Sorry. Yes. Thank you. That also carries. Are there any other
boards and board and commission appointments?
Okay, thank you so much. Moving on to legislation for second readings. Are there any motions? I move
that ordinance 2026-06 be introduced and read by the clerk by title and synopsis only. Second. There's
a motion in the second. Clerk, will you please call the roll? Yes, ordinance 2020. Oh, geez.
Sorry, I jumped ahead of myself, even though I heard what she said. Council Member Rollo? Yes. Ruff?
Yes. Rosenberger? Yes. Flaherty? Council Member Flaherty? Yes. Thank you. Stasberg? Yes. Piedmont-Smith?
Yes. Zulek?
Sorry. Yes and daily. Yes, that motion carries nine. Oh will the Honorable Kirk, please read Yes Ordinance
2026 stash 06 to amend the city of Bloomington zoning maps by rezoning a 6.3 acre property from residential
urban lot are for
and residential multifamily are in within the transform redevelopment overlay, TRO, to plan unit development,
PUD, and to approve a district ordinance and preliminary plan. The synopsis is as follows. This ordinance
amends the zoning of the property from residential urban lot and residential multifamily within the
transform redevelopment overlay to plan unit development. Thank you very much. Go ahead. I move that
ordinance 2026-06 be adopted.
Second.
Okay, just a brief note before we do, unless there's any dissent on this, I'd like to structure it this
way that we'll hear a initial presentation by the petitioner, namely the Office of the Mayor, have time
for any pending questions. There's already been questions asked and those have been posted in our packet
and online. Then we have a series of reasonable conditions I'd like to go over
each of those individually in the following fashion. The person who's proposed it or the people who
proposed it can just say a few words. I think they're all very straightforward. Any questions that you
might have for them, a response from the petitioner, and then we will vote for individual reasonable
conditions. And after that, we'll have a period of public comment. Question there is whether we want to vote
have public comment first really I think but is any any dissent or Thoughts on on the question of placement
of public comment comes more Stossberg, please Shouldn't we have public comment on all the reasonable
conditions? I It's I mean, it's it's it's up. It's up to the council I think that I think that one way
we could do it is here all the reasonable conditions have Have the discussion about them have public
comment completely so people can comment on them sort of as a whole and then vote and
I think I might be a bit of smoother. I think that when we've done it before, when we did it for summit
last year, I think each reasonable condition got individual public comment. Yeah. If that's what everybody
would like, is that any people online, are you okay with that? Councilmember Flaherty. Okay.
Okay. Councilmember P. Moskvich.
Yes, I think it would be more clear if we went through the entire process for each reasonable condition.
Okay, fine. So if there's no objections to that, that's how we'll proceed, yes? Okay, fantastic. Council
Member Flaherty, please. I did anticipate for the sake of efficiency the possibility of combining several
of mine that are related for kind of
at least joint discussion and possibly joint vote, if that's the mind of the council on it, or if people
want to have different opinions about different ones, even though they're related, we could vote on
them separately. And those would be to pair six and seven, which are about sustainability, and to pair
eight, nine, 10, and 11, which are all about dimensional standards with sidewalks, tree plots, and alleys,
and they are kind of intersectional. So I thought it would make sense
those jointly and so that's Exactly following what councilmember Piedmont Smith just mentioned, but
I think in those particular cases that that may make sense And if it's okay with my colleagues we could
proceed that way and can you just repeat councilmember Flaherty so six and seven and and then eight
through eight through Twelve eleven eight through eleven. Well separate. Yeah, okay Thank you
And then the other thing that I that I'd forgotten to note is I think of the reasonable conditions Four
and five might be in conflict with each other Or do we think that they could both or do they both exist
in the same space? Councilman Zulik. Well, I don't know if they're in direct conflict with each other,
but because they're both under the permanent affordability Reasonable condition topic it might be worth
discussing them simultaneously. I
Okay, any other comments? Okay, seeing none. With that, we have, you know, the main event. Will the
Office of the Mayor take it away, y'all? Should we start by saying, yay, Hopewell? I think so. You know,
we have been in this process, sorry, Carrie Thompson, Mayor.
We've been in this process for a while now, and you're gonna hear some more details tonight about Hopewell,
but I think I will spend my time mostly on the principles behind Hopewell and the changes that are being
suggested at this point. Although we are happy to answer questions about any of the PUD, it should be
said that our
The real representative of the petitioner, Ali Thurman, is not able to come to this meeting tonight.
And we knew that ahead of time when this was scheduled. So some of you have told me that Hopewell is
a once in a lifetime opportunity for this community. And while this is an important project, it should
not be the only time that we get to do housing right.
This is also only the first part of a much larger neighborhood. We have an opportunity today and an
obligation into the future to set a clear path for what housing in Bloomington can be. And
just as importantly, how we lead together to make that happen. So I'm encouraging us to set a standard
for how we show up as community leaders in this work.
instead of as politicians in this instance. I want to take this chance to live into a simple truth.
Party politics doesn't matter. Individual credit for who does what also doesn't matter. What builds
housing and what improves community is the decision to work together in good faith with great planning
for the common good.
While we have President Trump leading our country and once again setting a national political rhetoric
based on who is in and who is out, and thereby creating contentious conversations across the globe,
we are in a moment to do things very differently in Bloomington. We don't need to be politicians standing
against one another. We can be community leaders standing with one another
to get a project started that the community has been asking for, providing input on, and planning since
2017. And I appreciate this council's participation in several important steps along that process. I
know that there are many possibilities of the impact that we can make when we create housing. When we
have a project like Hopewell,
we are prone to see an opportunity to live into a kind of housing utopia. Perfectly adorable units,
dwellings that are walkable to all of our resources, affordable to anyone, no matter your income level,
the best climate ratings, the biggest sidewalks, the widest lanes, but the fact of the matter is that
we can do exceedingly well at one or maybe two of those things.
and the rest of that catalog of desires that we have on any given project, we must choose to prioritize
where we want to have a clear impact, where we want to be best at something. Some other things may be
less than ideal. Otherwise, we will miss the mark on all of them. There is no housing utopia. When we
seek to build homes
for everyone, one home that would serve anyone, we won't be able to be anything for anyone. We will
miss the mark on any impact at all. Hopewell South is simply phase one. It is not Hopewell in its entirety,
and we have picked two specific goals to focus on. Be affordable at market rate,
to as many people as possible at the lowest income possible. And attainable to many more of our residents.
And be a neighborhood that makes the most of walkability. It is an idyllic walking distance to all of
the resources of family or individual needs. The design presented to you tonight does an exceedingly
good job of meeting those two goals. We also meet climate goals and
will commit to exceeding the base level in at least one other area. And while it won't be a panacea
of all of the city's comprehensive goals in one package, it has hit the mark on those two goals exceedingly
well. And we still do very well on the others.
These are attractive homes of modest size on modest lots. They have the ability to be built by local
builders with mortgages offered by local lenders. The question in front of you tonight is whether to
approve or deny the PUD, which was certified unanimously by the Plan Commission. That is the only question.
This is not my project. This is not council's project. This is and has been
our community's project. A project that the community has been co-creating since 2017 and it has received
perhaps more input than any other single housing development in our city's history. More than that,
this is our opportunity to show our community the way politics should work. Where we come together around
a project and make it as good as it can be together.
focusing on impact that we truly want to have. For too long, politicians have been categorized as sausage
makers. And by the time the sausage is made, no one actually got the impact that they were looking for.
We are a single party city, and this should not make it harder. This should make us more capable. It
means we have the ability and the responsibility to deliver.
And it means we have an opportunity to dispel the myth that we can't get things done because we can't
find a pathway to true prioritization. We want everything all the time. I've had conversations with
many of you over the past many months about this particular project. And in January, we had a full council
input session prior to taking the project to plan commission. We've taken your input and incorporated
it into what you see tonight.
And while there are some other ideas now on the table, I want to be clear that when any developer gets
to this stage in a development, requirements or conditions that demand a change in the map or the design
are costly to implement, not only due to the likely loss of lots, but due to the professional costs
associated with making the changes and the natural domino effect that they cause. It's important that
we as leaders understand that those costs
are not absorbed by the developer. They are passed on to the homeowner. In this way, we ourselves have
an opportunity to keep housing more affordable by offering our input and potential requirements before
plans are drawn in their final form and by making decisions in a timely way to avoid any unnecessary
inflationary costs.
The housing utopia mindset says make them affordable, walkable, widest sidewalks, large tree plots,
perfect stormwater, highest energy certifications, and no cost escalation over time. No single project
can hit all of these simultaneously. There are trade-offs, and we need a vision that we can actually
deliver on. And I believe that you have that in front of you today.
At the end of the day, we will be judged not on whether this project was perfect, but on whether we
move this community forward in a meaningful way. And as leaders, we will be judged on our ability to
work together to meet the needs of our community in this moment. That is the standard I am asking us
to meet tonight. I have asked Margie Rice to cover in one package the
reasonable conditions and the legal view on all of them so that you all have that legal background before
you move into discussion on the actual conditions. Margie? A little shorter than Carrie. Margie Rice,
Corporation Counsel.
As Carrie said, I'm going to try to be brief because you have a memo already from me in your packet.
We really do appreciate the point. We're here tonight.
being in front of you, seeking approval of this PUD, which was adopted unanimously. Approving a zoning
map is a legislative act, and you're the legislative body. So that is clear in Indiana law. It is governed
consistently across our state by specific provisions of the Indiana code, and there's a little case
law that is helpful. Indiana law has made it clear that a legislative body in Indiana must either reject
or adopt in its entirety as certified
A pud ordinance that it has been adopted by a plan commission Amendments to a pud which have that has
been adopted and certified are not an option at this stage of the legal process that's true for any
legislative body in Indiana and These are not my words. I'm going to be quoting from the Court of Appeals
The General Assembly intended that the local legislative body have no power to unilaterally amend a
recommended proposal
to change a zone map. Now while it's true that reasonable conditions may be imposed by a legislative
body it's important to remember tonight that reasonable conditions are not amendments to a PD and reasonable
commitments are provisions that are rationally related to a legitimate governmental interest but they
can't alter or amend the PD that was adopted and certified. So things that would
Change the text or exhibits That the plan commission already approved or off-limits. So one point I
want to emphasize because I've heard it about summit is that People are saying well, how did we meant?
Okay, sorry Yeah is I've heard people say well, how did how did summit get changed? And I don't think
someone got changed. I think what happened was that the owner of
the petitioner agreed to certain amendment or certain conditions which is allowable. So it's it's allowable
for the owner to to agree to certain conditions which in that case is what they did. But remember that
council initiated amendments are not the same thing. So with that in mind I have reviewed the 13 proposals
offered by the council and there are several of those that are
consistent with the PUD and are actually just clarifications. And let me get to that. So there are there
are a handful though that are attempts to go back in time and go back to the pre planned commission
stage and amend the beauty. So
So that the council is clear on what the city's position is the legal analysis up front before we get
into the details I want to make sure that you guys have this in mind. So the four proposals marked as
conditions 1 2 5 and 6 clarify and are consistent with the PUD as certified. They are not amendments
to the PUD.
They I think the record tonight the public record should reflect that those proposals are already
incorporated into the PUD and the petitioner has no objection to those proposals which are one two five
and six. They are again just clarifications and I won't go over those in detail since you know what
they are and they're going to talk about them soon. The next the nine proposals though that are marked
as conditions three four
and 7 through 13 actually contradict the current PD language or exhibits or make amendments to what
the plan commission approved. And so those would be considered under state law and case law as impermissible
attempts to amend the PD that the plan commission already certified. The last one 13 is a little different.
It's not an impermissible.
Attempt to amend the PUD necessarily But it is It's a problem with state law. So state law has said
and we Mentioned earlier today that you know, the General Assembly likes to say what local units of
government can't do And there are often some of the ideas that we like Locally, but they have said that
an owner occupied short-term rental property is
That if it's not owner occupied Then the local unit of government is prohibited from interpreting and
enforcing its zoning regulations in a manner that is intended or has the effect of prohibiting
Or unreasonably restricting short-term rentals of property. So again, there's a there's a clause that
says that you essentially can't
ban owner occupied short term rentals and for the non owner occupied short term rentals it says that
you cannot interpret or enforce your zoning regulations in a manner that is intended or has the effect
of prohibiting or unreasonably restricting them. So I think that's off limits because of state law.
So we'll get into these details as you go through one one one by one happy to answer any questions that
go forward. Looking forward to this opportunity to work with you to get this PUD approved and to move forward.
So, thank you. Thank you so much, Council Rice. Questions for either the mayor or for Attorney Rice.
Starting with Council Member Stossberg. Thank you. And then Flaherty. Just to kind of clarify what you
just shared.
You think that one two five and six are consistent as is so it doesn't really matter on those whether
the petitioner agrees with counsel or not They're okay. And so they have to be done but three four and
seven through thirteen if Council wanted those done but the but the petitioner didn't agree then we
would not be able to do them So so furthermore, I mean
Have you discussed with the petitioner? Are they unwilling to do three four and seven through thirteen?
Yes, I think that those are already the plan Commission has already adopted plans that are different
than what is proposed tonight and the petitioner
Intends to move forward with what was presented to the Plan Commission. So the RDC has already voted
to To move that proposal forward and And that's what the RDC has approved and what the petitioner has
brought forward so so yeah, okay Councilman Flaherty Thank you
So first, just a question of clarification. Nobody's proposing to formally amend the ordinance, but
you're suggesting that reasonable conditions that, in your opinion, are tantamount to some type of amendment
are disallowed by Indiana law. Is that correct? It is most clearly a case that is
sort of most clearly on point is this case Misty Woods out of Crown Point. And there's not frankly a
lot of case law on this issue because it doesn't frankly come up or it's not litigated. I did run my
questions past a couple of other attorneys just because I always wanna make sure I'm not missing something.
Dave Schilling is a local county attorney
does Monroe County Planning Commission stuff. He was the Brown County Planning Commission attorney.
He argued the story in case in front of the Supreme Court. And that's a case that has a lot of conversation
about conditions and commitments. And I also ran this past Bob Clutter, who I was, when I was president
of the Municipal Lawyers Association, he was on the board with me. He's a land use attorney. And we've, we've,
contract with him to get legal advice when we need a second opinion and and they both agree that if
a reasonable condition is is something that Sort of for example in the story in case it was it was limiting
noise beyond a certain point things that like
public nuisances, things that governments are interested in. If it's a rationally related condition,
you can put it on there. But if it's an attempt to go backwards and say, I don't like what the plan
commission did, I want it to be different than what the petitioner submitted and the plan commission
approved, that's an actual amendment. And council can't initiate those sorts of amendments at this stage.
When it comes to a zone map,
Approval it is again what the Court of Appeals said local units were prohibited by the General Assembly
from doing anything other than rejecting or adopting as certified this ordinance Thank you for clarifying
and I guess so over the past decade the council has
past reasonable conditions and past ordinances for planned unity developments, including ordinances
16-20, 16-24, 17-08, 19-23, 20-01, 24-07, all of which have reasonable conditions that do the things
that say we're not allowed to do. Those were all passed under the legal guidance of a variety of council
attorneys, including Dan Sherman, Stephen Lucas, Ash Kulak.
And I guess it feels like the current legal position you're taking is counter to the legal guidance
that the council has been acting under for a decade. And so I'm not confident that it's correct. And
so that's just my question is, how are you reconciling that and
Do you have anything else to say, I guess, in light of that? Sure. I haven't gone back and looked at
every one of those petitions, so I don't know whether those were cases where the property owner agreed
to those things. I also don't know whether Dan Sherman and the other attorneys, certainly Dan Sherman,
I don't know if the 2007 case that was the Misty Woods case was
He was still here in 2007. So I don't know what they read. I don't know whether they looked at the same
cases I looked at. I don't know what homework they did. But I can tell you I'm confident in my legal
opinion. And again, without looking back, my guess is the property owners might have agreed in order
to get it through the process. But I can tell you that,
It's very clear from, you know, the statutes and the case law that the General Assembly took away the
authority from the local legislative body to do anything other than approve or reject at this stage
of the process. Okay. I have one more question. Is that okay, Council President? Please, please continue.
So you you mentioned the city of Crown Point versus Misty with properties case, which I read in full
the opinion of the Court of Appeals Thank you for referencing that in your memo In that case I read
the sentence that you quoted and In the subsequent discussion and analysis from the Court of Appeals
what they're talking about is and was an amendment to Remove r2 zoning
from a PUD. The council in that case did not like that the R2 zoning included duplexes. They wanted
it to be R1 zoning and what was happening at the time was that Misty Woods properties did not want to
face rejection of the proposal and so the council initiated a change to remove R2 zoning and
Misty woods did not object and then the the ordinance as amended was passed The court says misty woods
failure to object cannot be considered mere silence acquiescence or inactivity Because it engaged the
council on the subject of amending the proposal was something more agreeable to the council And so in
other words by not withdrawing the petition when it was changed by the council the court is saying that
is functional agreement and
And so although the council did not have the statutory authority to amend the proposed ordinance to
change zoning maps on its own Misty woods certainly had the power to amend or withdraw its own request
and Let's see misty woods effectively amended his petition by telling the council that our wand was
acceptable and not withdrawing the petition both by its statements and its actions and
The court then says the council as legislative body with ultimate authority to enact or reject a proposed
ordinance has the authority to act on this amended ordinance without sending it back to the Planning
Commission which has a merely advisory role in the rezoning process. We conclude therefore there can
be no factual dispute as to whether the council had a rational basis for passing the ordinance as amended
and therefore the trial court erred in granting summary of judgment to Mr. DeWoods denying summary of
judgment to the city. So my reading of that case is actually standing for the
principle that is counter to the argument you're making. Or maybe it's consistent with it. And I'd like
to clarify that. And the way it would be consistent with it is you've said a few times now, if the petitioner
agrees to the change, then it's OK. And it feels to me like you're sort of suggesting that that would
be an agreement that the mayor and the petitioner here would come and say, yes, we want to do these
reasonable conditions.
is saying, no, that's not exactly right. If we pass a reasonable condition, even if it's not something
you prefer, because it's not something you brought, nevertheless, if we move forward and you find that
acceptable, the alternative being to withdraw the petition, that that is functional agreement and is
acceptable under Indiana law. I think we're on the same page. I think you and I are on the same page.
I think in Misty Woods, they agreed. And I think they didn't object.
into the record and said these are the ones we agree with these are the ones we don't agree with so
essentially Those that I've put on said the record should reflect. We think these are actual impermissible
amendments to the PUD Because they are they are to the ordinance because they are Go ahead Well, they're
only impermissible if you disagree which the council passes a reasonable condition, let's say seven
and you disagree, I suppose you could withdraw the petition, but if you agree to move forward after
the council passes reasonable condition number seven, then you've agreed. That's what happened with
the Misty Woods case. Misty Woods didn't voluntarily want to give up the R2 zoning. That was the proposal
they developed. They wanted to have the R2 zoning, but when the council said, no, that's not good for
us, you know, we're going to change it to R1 only,
Misty woods assented so that was the agreement then after the council decided I think the record was
different if you I've read the brief that was filed There's also you can get the brief that was filed
by Misty woods attorney Which the the Court of Appeals pretty much adopted their record, you know their
findings in fact I think it was a very different factual record than what is here. I think that that
property owner was silent and
Um, we're not, you know, we didn't have this kind of presentation and this kind of conversation we're
having. And so, you know, it might be, it might be helpful to read the, you know, and I can send you
the link, but the brief that was written, um, again, it's we're operating under six Oh eight section.
And so I just, it is, it is the choices, the options, and this was emphasized in that brief. The options
are reject or adopt.
The General Assembly took away the option for council initiated amendments Now again, this isn't unique
to Bloomington this across the state of Indiana and so and it's a it's a function of what the General
Assembly decided to do so your beef may be with the General Assembly not me but but you know, I do think
that in this case we've reached agreement with
As as mayor Thompson said we made many amendments prior to getting to this point At the plan commission
there was Councilmember Stossberg had asked for some changes those were made We've we have Modified
this and what is before you now was approved by the Redevelopment Commission that is
A body that voted on this so I don't have the authority to change that that RDC voted to forward this
and so Well, the RDC voted to forward it to the plan Commission and then the plan Commission adopted
and certified it but the redevelopment what you're seeing is what the redevelopment Commission ultimately
said go forward with and so I I think
I think councilmember Flaherty, I think you and I are on the same page. I think that what may be missing
is the level of detail that was had at the meeting. Um, and that's not reflected in the court of appeals
case, but there are some details in the brief that are helped. We're, we're insightful. Thank you. Can
I ask if we passed reasonable condition seven, for instance, and the mayor did not withdraw the RDC
did not withdraw the petition. And we then passed the ordinance.
Do you agree that reasonable condition seven would then apply? So I'm looking at your question. So do
your hypothetical is you pass seven and we don't withdraw the petition. I don't think so because I'm
on record tonight as saying we think that's an impermissible amendment. And I don't think that council
has the ability to amend
Under state law I think you would be violating home rule because you're doing something that the council
doesn't have the authority to do. So I think factually we're different. I'm on record as saying these
are the ones we think are consistent with the PUD and the other ones we think are actually amendments.
They're not reasonable conditions. There are amendments which the council is not allowed to do. Thanks
for sharing that perspective.
Dana Kerr, I am assistant city attorney. And I just wanted to add that when the court said that when
the county indicated that it would approve a zone change from A1 to R1 only, but not necessarily zone
change from R1 and R2, Misty Woods effectively amended his petition by telling the council that R1 was
acceptable
both by its statements at the February meeting and its actions in not attending the March meeting. So
there was a positive affirmation by Misty Woods that they would accept that amendment. Here, there is
no positive affirmation that the RDC would accept any amendment. So therefore, there's not an ability
during this meeting to make an amendment to the PUD in my legal opinion as well. Thank you. Yes. Who
is the actual petitioner here? Isn't it the RDC? Because that's the owner of this property.
Is that correct? So for the people online, they're saying yes. Yes. There is a nod from our corporation council.
So how can you. Sorry without due respect Corporation Council Rice how can you speak for the RDC if
they are not here to say yes we would agree to this condition or no we would not agree to it. Right.
So under state law Corporation Council the second class city represents the city.
and all of the boards and commissions within the city. So I'm the legal representative for the redevelopment
commission and I provide the legal advice for the redevelopment commission. And this is they have submitted
and asked for this ordinance that the plan or that the plan commission unanimously adopted and certified
to be here before you. So I don't understand your concern. I mean I am the
Corporation Council, head of the law department, represent the RDC. Yes, but they have not spoken about
the reasonable conditions. They have not had an opportunity to say, yes, we would actually accept this
reasonable condition. Legal has had conversations. So we believe that we're representing them and giving
you advice that is consistent with what they want to move forward.
So you have spoken with them since did since Friday when these reasons we have talked with individual
members of the redevelopment Commission Thank You Councilor Stossberg My name was invoked as part of
that So I would just like to clarify that there were no changes made by councilmember Stossberg between
the plan Commission meeting and it coming to council
a reasonable condition from the Plan Commission number 11 said that petitioner needed to work with me
to clarify language and the number of incorrect citations Etc, etc that were in the original document
from the Plan Commission But there were no actual changes made especially as there was just a whole
legal debate over which one of these reasonable conditions actually constitute changes and I was a very
specific and deliberate with the petitioner and the
Consultant who is unable to be here this evening to make sure that when we were looking at things there
were no actual changes made from what the Impression was that the plan Commission got so I first want
to say that but secondly, I guess I'm just wondering Related to the conversation that we're on right
now. So Corporation counselor council Rice just said that you know, she's spoken with individual members
of the RDC but if we do say
As a body appear tonight pass a reasonable condition that is one of those ones that she said would actually
be an amendment Is it possible to bring that back to the RDC to ask them? officially as a body if they
would accept that as part of getting this past Apologize I will let Corporation Council Pat come back
to that. I just wanted to To make sure that it was understood that are you answering my question right now?
Was answering the difference between the reasonable condition which this council can impose without?
The RDC approving that's not what I'm asking about right now, though Turn it back to the corporation
So I I want to be clear about the process so
The reasonable conditions that have been proposed are not consistent with what we discussed with the
Redevelopment Commission. So did I go over all 13 of these with the Redevelopment Commission members?
No. Have we talked to the Redevelopment Commission members about this PUD and the petition that is before
you? Yes. They voted on this before it went to the plan commission.
Though a lawyer can look at the reasonable conditions and make a legal determination whether it's consistent
with the ordinance as it was certified or it's not consistent. So what I'm giving you is my legal opinion
based on state law and case law. So if something that you consider to be an amendment is passed by this body
It needs to then could it I'm saying could it in the possibility go back to the Redevelopment Commission
specifically and have them approve the IP ID or whichever with that condition on it. I like a process
question. I think this is similar to my answer to Councilmember Flaherty's question. I think the council
would be amending a PUD
They, in many cases, and we can get into these when we get into, if you want to go over them individually,
or I can tell you now, my analysis about each one, but it, you would be, you are allowed to operate
within the confines of state law under Home Rule. You can do things, anything that you need to do in
your area, in your local area, as long as it doesn't,
Contradict or conflict with state law when you do when you contradict or conflicts with state law You're
outside the boundaries of home rule and I think if you amended the PUD tonight Which I think those nine
are amendments. I think you'd be operating outside the bounds of law And I think that would be impermissible.
I so I so my my answer is I I don't think
Procedurally that's not on the table today procedurally amending and I don't think those are reasonable
conditions. I think there are amendments which is not permissible. It's not within the authority of
the local legislative body tonight to do that.
I would really like to actually get the question answered, though, because earlier it was like, well,
if the petitioner agrees to something that could be considered an amendment, it's OK. So what I'm saying
is, can we bring something specific to the RDC and say, will you agree with this amendment? And so what
you're telling me is no. It seems just a really long way to say no. The RDC, because I said the RDC
wanted what has been
Proposed and adopted by the Plan Commission to be here before you they already made the decision that
what they want is Is in front of you it was and at that Plan Commission stage when it was adopted and
approved That's what the redevelopment Commission wanted to to be here And if there's a question between
it passing or failing depending on a reasonable condition Would the RDC rather have it fail or would
they rather consider an amendment?
And I'm telling you tonight that I think your option is to adopt or reject it. That is what I'm telling
you. Tonight, procedurally, where we're at is to reject it or adopt it now. Or postpone it. I don't
know if anybody else on the same team. Can't we postpone it to get an answer from the RDC about whether
they would accept any certain amendment? I think they've given the answer. OK. I think the answer is
clear that what they want to be approved
is is in front of you and we the the four Reasonable conditions I've put into the record I want the
record to reflect that we think those are consistent with what the plan Commission approved and the
author the other Proposals, I'm going to call them because I don't think the reasonable conditions the
other proposals go outside of
They're going back to the pre-plan Commission and amending what the redevelopment Commission wanted
approved Councilmember rather rather. Oh, yeah Corporation council race I had a question regarding just
to unpack you said that you Spoke to RDC members individually just to be clear not individually about
these 13 but we have talked about
This PUD as it was going through the phase in a formal meeting they approve this in a formal meeting
they approved the Proposal going forward in a way you talk to him about these reasonable conditions
not individually. No But you talked to him at all about the read these reasonable conditions No, because
they're so so the reasonable conditions and I'm giving you my legal let me just finish So how do you
know that they would accept?
You said one two five and six but not three four seven through thirteen because it's I'm giving you
my legal analysis of what is a reasonable condition and what is an amendment and so what they they gave
you a proposal that's what they wanted and and my legal analysis is that there are four that are consistent
with what the Redevelopment Commission voted on and there are
Nine that are inconsistent and would amount to an amendment. So I see but they haven't consented this
is your interpretation of what their interpretation or what their interpretation of these are That's
what you're maintaining. I'm giving they're not lawyers. They're they're they're petitioners and they
submitted the petition and so
So I'm giving you a legal analysis. They wouldn't have a legal opinion on this. So I'm giving you my
legal analysis about what is a reasonable condition and what is an amendment. Okay, but we're invoking
the RDC and the members and what they would accept or not. And you are interpreting what they would
accept or not. I'm telling you. No, I don't think that's correct. No, I don't think it's correct. I
just want to be clear. What I think is going on is that
The boards and commissions speak through their minutes of public meetings. That's how they act. So even
if I had talked to individual members about these 13 conditions, it wouldn't matter unless they were
in a public meeting as a body voting on it. Because boards, just like you, you have to be in a public
meeting voting on something. One of you can't say what the redevelopment commission would or would not
do. And so what the redevelopment commission already spoke, what they wanted
Go to the plan commission and what they want you to approve is before you tonight. I'm here as a lawyer
after reading the law and reading the case law and saying this Procedurally, what are you allowed to
do at this stage? Procedurally you are allowed to adopt or reject just case law on it Misty Woods the
best case on that Okay, so but we can't say for certain whether they would accept one two five or six.
That's your interpretation
Because they haven't been consulted. But you said they were consulted. I said that they were consulted.
That's why I said when I came right back up here, it said, I want to be very clear about what I said,
because I can see it's about Piedmont Smith saying. Specifically, what did you consult them about?
The PUD. No, but none of these reasonable conditions. That's what I said that. I said I didn't, because
they spoke through their minutes of their meeting when they approved the PUD.
Okay, so they've already said on its face what they want you to prove because you have an ordinance
in front of you that has that in there now. It's it's in front of you for adoption or rejection. Right.
This is what you maintain, yes. That's correct. I want to hear, I see Council Member Rosenberger has
... Can I ask one clarifying question? Yeah. What is the or else here? What is the what? What's the
result? Let's say if council were to pass number seven,
Your is your what what happens thereafter? Are you saying that you will withdraw the petition and and
then we start from the beginning or Do you sue us like what what what what happens? Well in a typical
world what would happen is and and I of course at that stage would have to have a meeting with
the Redevelopment Commission who is the petitioner and they would have to have either an executive session
or public hearing
But I can tell you that if this were a private developer and you took action that was outside the bounds
of law, they would file what's called a declaratory judgment with the circuit court and ask for your
decision, which they would deem arbitrary and capricious to be held impermissible under state law because
it was outside the bounds of home rule.
Thank you. And then one follow-up, just building on many of the questions that were asked, do you maintain
that though things may not be reasonable conditions, that they can be accepted by agreement? If the
Redevelopment Commission, but again, I don't know that procedurally, that would be, you have two options,
approve as certified.
or reject yes so as certified is as you know look at the language and the exhibits that are in the ordinance
and and improve that or reject that as certified before you thank you so seven just so and
And we can talk about it. I just wanted to make sure I understood the boundaries. We had Councilmember
Rosenberger had her hand up. Then we'll go back to Councilmember Flaherty, then Councilmember Piedmont-Smith,
then back to you, Councilmember Arallo. Hi, thanks. My notes are like standard, a little scribbled.
OK, I mean, I want to back up a little bit because when we don't really, when we think maybe we don't
know how to do something, the first thing we do is consult the law, right?
Okay, so Indiana law 36, 7, 4, 15, 12, the power of a legislative body to adopt or amend an ordinance.
When adopting or amending a PUD district ordinance, the legislative body of a unit may do the following.
There are three things. We can do any of the three of them. And the first one is impose reasonable conditions
on a proposed planned unit development. So when we're sitting here tonight saying the only thing we
can do is approve or deny.
That is not what state code says. So that we can talk about reasonable conditions, council can pass
reasonable conditions and the petitioner can agree on those reasonable conditions. Then if things are
still a little murky, we're gonna look at case law, okay? So like the case law to me says a reasonable
condition was put out there to change zoning from a two to a one and the petitioner agreed
in the PUD was passed, okay? That's another way to do it. The third way, if you're still kind of murky,
is to look at past practices. So as Councilmember Flaherty said, there were at least six different PUDs
in the last decade where reasonable conditions were imposed, petitioner agreed to them, and the PUD
was passed. Another thing to do is to consult outside council
I spoke for an hour with a former class 2 city council attorney who said that a city council may impose
reasonable conditions as they see fit that anything can happen with a reasonable condition. I mean we
could say every lot needs to have chickens like that's what a reasonable condition is. So I think what
sounds confusing to me right now is that
It sounds like if the petitioner is in favor of one of our reasonable conditions, they're calling it
a reasonable condition. But if they are not in favor, they're calling it an amendment, which I think
we all agree we cannot make amendments. But the thing is, a reasonable condition according to history,
according to 36.7.4.15.12 of Indiana code is open-ended. I think tonight,
We do have other options. We could send it back to the RC. We can postpone until April 1st. I think
it would be really great if City Council also got some formal attorney eyes on this because I don't
think this is how it's done. I don't think this is what the law or case law or former practices are
saying. Thanks.
If council members I'm gonna say I think I think there's a little bit of now and I really appreciate
all of argument I think they're very very clear, but I think that we're Building off of the same argument
So and many of these are will be covered in their specificity when we go over each of the reasonable
conditions So unless unless there's dissent I would I would prefer that we could we move on to talking
about each of the each of the reasonable conditions I think I think is councilmember Flaherty, please I
Yeah, I had more questions for Council Rice. I don't need to ask those necessarily. But what it seems
like is that we actually have, at least my opinion is we have a dispute over the legality of the reasonable
conditions. I would say that Corporation Council's remarks over the last 20 minutes are directly counter to
every experience I've had with the PUD and working with four different counsel attorneys. It's also
directly counter past practice over the last decade, at least, and directly counter to corporation counsel
legal opinion in many prior PUD instances. So how we deal with that, because we have a corporation counsel
representing the RDC, although the RDC hasn't actually taken a formal position on any of these reasonable
conditions.
So we have Corporation Council representing the RDC in that way, saying these aren't allowed. I disagree
with that. How do we actually move productively forward on these tonight since we have a legal dispute?
Please. I just want to make a clarification that from my understanding in the past PUDs,
there have been requested reasonable conditions that while they may not have met the mark for a reasonable
condition, the petitioner agreed to them. So even if they were amendments, the petitioner agreed to
them. That is how these significant things get amended. They can be drafted as reasonable conditions,
but if they don't meet the mark of the law,
as a reasonable condition, the only way to get them in legally is to get the petitioner to agree to
them. I wanna back up to a 20,000 foot view as well. The combination of these reasonable conditions
will create a financial situation where we will not be able to, they will contradict each other.
So especially the affordability pieces will no longer be in play and so if we were to agree to all of
these We would then be missing the mark on affordability. And so we then are in a catch-22 So even if
we were to say we will agree to a hundred percent of these We could not then build this out so
We're in a, we now, and that's the problem with amending it after it goes to plan commission, especially
the sidewalk and lane changes, things like that. That's gonna change the lot layout and the number of
lots that we have and thereby the affordability and it will cost us design money, also impacting
affordability. Thank you, Mark Thompson.
Okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna have us, unless there's a substantive question that's different than the
questions that have been asked. Councilman Morello? Well, I mean, what I wanna say is that this is a
dispute of what constitutes a reasonable condition, correct? I wanna set the context here for going
forward on this. And I want to just say to the council that we have a 90-day period from the certification
day, which is February 13th,
So we have time in order to settle a dispute of interpreting our legal authority. I find that the, I
disagree that most of these, it looks like all of them really are within, which should be interpreted
as reasonable. Why? Because they happen to follow our UDO. And so if we can't expect the UDO to be followed by
The city that owns the property that's developing this project It is precedent-setting because it won't
be reflected in I think a private developer coming forward and trying to follow our EDO so I would just
say that I think it's important. I think it's important enough that we Consider postponing and consults
a neutral arbiter Contract someone who can make a decision about our legal authority and
settle this matter so that we can go forward because we seem to be at a point of Can we even interpret
should we even go forward on these if they're if we're being told that? It's gonna sink the project,
right? So I would like to keep have everyone keep that in mind. Thanks. I
All right, with that, let's move on to actually talking about these individually, because it will give
an opportunity both for public comment and for a response directly on maybe what the effects of passing
them are. So the first one that we have here is by Councilmember Stosberg around use tables. Go ahead.
I move reasonable condition number one. Second. All right, and it's been moved and seconded.
So reasonable condition number one, by the way the synopsis I combined my reasonable conditions one
and two and when they got separated the synopsis on one Didn't quite get amended correctly. So just
FYI reasonable condition number one Requires an updated allowed use table to reflect the stated project goals I
Questioned that I asked about that at the first reading and I'm trying to find my tab that says where
the use table is And I am failing to find my thing but specifically it is being This whole PD is being
targeted as a residential area and the the use table
allows a bunch of things that are not residential to be put in. Art galleries, community centers, crops
and pasturage, amenity centers, recreation, various commercial uses, and so just kind of looking at
that a little bit closely, and that is something that we mentioned earlier, that that condition that
came from the Planning Commission had me
clarifying this a little bit and one of the things that got clarified was the actual use table that
went in and once the use table went in it was like oh my gosh like why are all of these uses allowed
here in this two block area and in the conversation with the petitioner it was like yeah but we can't
change that right now.
To go to the point that I made earlier. We can't actually change the use table at this point and so
that's why I wanted that in as reasonable condition number one and furthermore I think that there is
a line in my reasonable condition that says as permitted under state law because I think there's some
group home stuff that because some group homes include protected classes that have to be allowed in
any residential area, so that's why there's that line in the
The reasonable condition if anybody has any questions, let me know. Thanks any questions for councilmember
Stossberg Seeing none petitioner has already responded I think to this but anything else you'd like
to add to number one Thank you very much We're clerkless so give us a moment and we can continue I
Councilmember Stasberg has introduced reasonable condition one. I think we've already heard the response
from the responder so Public comment. Thank you. I forgot Went on long. Okay. Anybody would like to
comment on reasonable condition one which is a proposed condition to update the allowed use table to
reflect the stated project goals and a rational phasing plan So anybody who'd like to make comment on that?
Not the phasing plan. I'm sorry Anybody online no, there's not okay, we'll come back to council Will
the clerk please call the roll on voting for Or I mean, I don't do we need to do we need to do we need
to now motion to adopt it? How does that work? We vote fantastic. You already moved good. Okay, so will
a clerk please call the roll on reasonable condition one and
Yes, Councilmember Ruff. Yes. Wrong space. Rosenberger? Yes. Flaherty? Yes. Stossberg? Yes. Piedmont-Smith?
Yes. Zulek? Yes. Asari? Yes. Daly? Yes. Rallo? Yes. Thank you. All right. Next motion, Councilmember
Stossberg.
Thank you, I'm gonna move reasonable condition number two go ahead
So reasonable condition number two asks for a rational phasing plan. A rational phasing plan is one
of those things that's required as part of a PUD process if there are phases. And the petitioner on
page 84 of our packet today has a phasing plan that is literally just an image and doesn't really tell
us anything. And so I'm requesting a rational phasing plan to be submitted to the final plan to include
a short description of each phase and
Requiring that phase one includes the construction of the interior road shared green space pedestrian
improvements and utility infrastructure including stormwater management facilities There is also a sort
of similar reasonable condition That came from the Plan Commission. I'm hoping that I can find that
exactly right That Also asks for a phasing plan
But that one asked for a very specific phasing plan about the stormwater utilities and all of those
kinds of details So my reasonable condition I think is a little bit different in terms of it Just being
more of a general like how are you going to develop this because the image that's included is just not
It doesn't really tell us anything. Thank you so much questions for council member Stossberg Okay, seeing
none petition response
Yes, we agreed to provide a phasing plan. The reason that there was no phasing plan included with this
is because typically,
a neighborhood where you would require a phasing plan, you would have several segments of roads and
then houses being built, et cetera, et cetera. All the roads are going in at the same time, which is
usually the concern of Plan Commission is when's the public infrastructure going to be built out and
turned over. So that's all in a single phase. We're happy to write that down and approve it as a phasing plan.
Thank you so much. Um, is there any public comment on the phasing plan? condition I Just want to note
that that's all written down in the Q&A that we provided for council as well. Thank you Public comment
none anyone on the line. What's your comment? All right, will the clerk please call the roll on reasonable
condition to Councilmember Rosenberger Yes clarity
Yes, Stasberg. Yes, Piedmont Smith. Yes, Zulek. Yes. Sorry. Yes, Daly. Oh, sorry. Rallo. Yes. Ruff.
Yes. Thank you very much. Mr. President. Yep. May I suggest that we consider the reasonable conditions
five and six?
because those we seem to be in agreement with the administration and I'm considering offering a motion
to postpone for clarification of the The other reasonable conditions in terms of their of our legal
authority So is the motion to combine five and six Or you hear them separately but in that order five
six, yeah, I
Anybody you motion to introduce it? I'm happy to hear it Please I think reasonable condition number
three which was submitted by me Can be dispensed with very quickly without introducing it, but I would
like to at least have the opportunity The mayor made a very concerted effort to reach out to me and
explain why this was unnecessary and redundant and I I agree with
Her persuasive points that she made to me and I would like Just for the sake of having on the record
to him the public Understand why I'm not moving forward with this if I would ask that someone from the
administration just say Just like will explain to me. This isn't really needed Is that okay So that
reasonable condition speaks to the ad use
being located on the same lot as an owner occupied home. And because all of the ADUs in this neighborhood
are on owner occupied lots already, it's just sort of a redundant, it's already in there. So I just
wanted to clarify with Council Member Ruff in a phone call that
That was our intention. And that's how this is being created. Thank you. All right, any motions? Council
member or president, sorry. Oh, please, thank you. I didn't see your hand. Go ahead, council member.
Maybe a point of information. I think, first, procedurally, I'm sympathetic to the idea of postponing
on other regional conditions. I don't know how we can
move forward on those in good faith when we don't have, when we have contradictory legal advice from
what we've received as legal advice consistently over time. Um, and, and so there's that, but with regard
to hearing five and six tonight, uh, or not, I thought number five and number four, um, are both involved
in permanent affordability and maybe have some conflict with another or another. So I don't know if
it makes sense to hear five tonight, even though the administration agrees with that one, if we aren't
also going to hear number four tonight.
Can I clarify, is that, am I understanding it correctly that four and five actually are mutually exclusive,
so to speak? That's how I understood them myself. So, I mean, I think that's a fair point. Okay. And
number six, I'm the sponsor of, while we could hear it quickly now, I'm agnostic if we feel like we
need to postpone on the others.
Here to hear motions, Council Member Stossberg.
Could be really instrumental to have a discussion about the affordability question right now Even if
we're I don't know if we have to move a reasonable condition for that and whether councilmember Flaherty
might want to do six first and we consider the affordability angle because At least from my perspective
that is a really big deal and I also want to point out that there is kind of an updated reasonable condition
number four that was in the packet addendum that went out today and so I want to make sure that the
public and council members realize that there is a
and updated reasonable condition number four. Absolutely, happy to hear any motions, everyone. Whatever
you'd like. I'll have a reasonable condition number six, then. Second. All right, motion and a second,
the reasonable condition six. Council Member Flaherty. Yep, okay. So reasonable condition number six
says all buildings must use either electricity or on-site renewable energy services for all significant
energy needs.
including for space heating, water heating, and cooking. The rationale is that this is consistent with
what our climate action plan calls for. Specifically, action EB4-A-2 suggests that we should be using
planned unit developments as an optional development choice that a landowner can make to ensure opt-in
building electrification, which is
the only viable scalable path for building decarbonization consistent with our net zero greenhouse gas
emissions goal for community-wide emissions. So I'm happy to answer questions about that. Questions
for Councilmember Flaherty. Seeing none, petition or response, any additional comment? Seeing none,
public comment on condition number six.
Anyone online. No nobody online. Please we have someone in council chambers. Thank you. I would just
like to make a note. Is it this one.
Sarah Wolford, I'm the housing solutions director at habitat for humanity and Renewable energy is also
something that we certainly consider on some of the smaller units There's not currently a mechanical
closet which I think can be Taken care of with a tankless water heater, but there are a lot of issues
with electric
Entirely electric on-demand water heaters. So perhaps if we move forward with all electric there could
just be a note Or make a provision on the plans for a mechanical closet Any other public comment anyone
online No comment online. Okay. Excellent. So will the clerk please call the roll on the reasonable
condition six
It's councilmember Flaherty. Yes. Stasberg. Yes. Piedmont Smith. Yes. Zulek. Yes. Sorry. Yes. Daily.
Yes. Rallo. Yes. Rough. Yes. Rosenberger. Yes. Thank you. Oh sorry that passes a reasonable condition
six. I move reasonable condition five. Go ahead.
Is there a second Second all right motion in a second, please go ahead Thank you. So this is actually
in line with a resolution that I will be bringing forward later that directs the Housing and Neighborhood
Development Department to develop a framework for long-term housing affordability specifically in regard
to home ownership and it includes an expectation of
guidelines set forth by the administration which should include tools such as set silent second mortgages
and or write a first refusal and The administration will report the full and final affordability structure
to the council prior to the first home sale Happy to answer any questions Any questions for councilman
Zulek a council member Stasberg I guess one of the things that that's uh, I want to bring up here with regard to
the affordability question at this stage. First of all, your reasonable condition specifically says
the units designed as permanently affordable, which means only the 15% of units that is originally stated
in the PUD language, like just to be clear that the UDO itself, under qualifying standards, requires
15% of total dwelling units to be permanently income limited in the original qualification So those
are the 15% that you're talking about, right? Yes, and that and that that 15% are the only units that
are going to be affordable permanently affordable that is correct and the Strategies outlined in the
synopsis would be how we keep it permanently affordable Okay I also would like to point out that
That section it says that they must be permanently income limited through a deed restriction Unless
the city otherwise adjusts or releases this requirement. So you're suggesting that we should adjust
and release that requirement Sorry, can you this isn't this is in section 20 0 2 0 4 0 be Three of the
UDO and just to make a note on this as well as
that If if the planning department had responded in a timely way to my original request regarding AMI
adjustments that there would be a PUD requirement Insisting that 15% be not below 120 percent AMI but
below 90 percent AMI and That's not what's in here because they got it under the old restrictions because
there was a delay on the administrative side before we could actually put new new
AMI restrictions in the place but but I mean By by saying they're gonna do it with the silent second
mortgage and those other things we are then adjusting and releasing part of that requirement Any other
questions for customer Zulik response from from the office of the mayor I'm sorry didn't see I
Didn't understand what councilmember Stossberg's point which I understood her point. That's a good point
But how did that relate to this reasonable condition? Could she clarify that? Thank you because the
reasonable condition says the units designated as permanently affordable So I'm clarifying which units
are being designated as permanently affordable So it's this fifteen percent of units that are permanently
affordable under a hundred and twenty percent of AMI which is the
Previous requirement because of a delay on administration's behalf to Respond to a resolution from council
in a timely way so in my mind that's kind of reinforcing a few other things is that So I was just clarifying
that that's the 15% of units that or that's the those are the units that we're talking about in the
reasonable condition Thank you
Council member Flaherty. Thank you. So I mentioned a moment ago, I guess my read of reasonable conditions
four and five is that they are mutually exclusive or inconsistent with one another. So both could not
pass. Is that your understanding as well, council members elected if we pass reasonable condition five,
we cannot pass reasonable condition four because it would be in direct conflict with it. I think that
would be up to an attorney.
Council member Rosenberger. I could clarify on why I think they're contradictory if that's helpful,
but I can also do that via comment. So that doesn't need to be now, I suppose. But yeah, thank you.
Thank you. Council member Rosenberger. If I, I mean, I can weigh in on that question since RC4, I helped
draft it. Is that okay or tell me to wait? Go ahead.
I think the way they read they are different. RC5 talks about 15% being permanently affordable at 120%
AMI with different types of tools, silent second mortgage, right of first refusal. RC4 talks about 50%
permanently affordable with 15% being at 90% AMI, which is the updated UDO
PUD rule. And it talks about ground leases and deed restrictions or other shared equity models. So I
do think they're different in terms of percentages of AMI and percentage of a permanent affordability
and mechanisms to get that done. Thank you, Councilmember Rosenberger. Response. Thank you.
Thank you Margie Rice Corporation Council. I agree with council member Flaherty that four and five are
they conflict with each other. And just for the record I want to be sure that it's clear that that we
believe reasonable condition five offered by council members Zulek.
makes no change to the exhibits or modifies the PUD. It clarifies what is already existing in the PUD,
which is that the administration will develop affordability guidelines and will report the full and
final affordability structure to the council prior to the home sale. So I do agree with Council Member
Flaherty and the petitioner
Supports or agrees with thinking it's a reasonable condition number five Thank you councilmember Zulik,
thank you. Oh My gosh what I was about to say just completely left my head. So All right with
that councilmember Okay response then councilman Stosberg
I'm sorry. I know that Corporation Council already provided a response, but I just wanted to clarify
that That my read of this reasonable condition in order to to qualify as reasonable condition. It is
just a clarification however, that is the minimum of affordability that we would be providing is that
15% and this particular reasonable condition
provides some tools that are alternative to what is, what has conventionally been the deed restriction.
Those deed restrictions in an ownership model prevent it from being marketable on a traditional mortgage.
And so would really, they would prevent them from being sold. Thank you.
All right. I'm councillor Sasberg. Then we'll go to public comment. I have another question because
like part of my Like close reading of this in the last couple weeks has been this understanding that
we're actually making an exception to what our PUD requirements say in the UDO
with using these tools for affordability. So my question is perhaps for Council Member Zulik, because
I have this question on the resolution that is later as well, or perhaps for the petitioner, is what
kind of data or research have you done that shows that these methods actually work in real life in municipalities?
appreciate that, you know the and I and I have like I I respect our Department head for hand but there
is nothing in this packet that Tells me or shows me. Oh, this was done in this municipality And this
is how it worked out this this works like this and this is how it works out it just feels like word
of mouth at this point and so I
would really appreciate having some actual data. So Council Member Zulek, have you read anything? Is
there a specific municipality that you can point to that uses these tools effectively? I will let Director
Killian-Hanson answer that in general, but the majority of the work that I've done has been speaking
with community members around Bloomington in different fields that
tangentially relate to Hopewell and and what building a house looks like and so I have not done that
research, but I've Spoken to a lot of different community members and that's how we've come up with
some of these opportunities Thank you so much Anna Killian Hansen director of housing and neighborhood
development I
First of all, I would like to say that what we're considering right now is land use. It is not affordability.
And the reason is because we cannot develop the affordability framework completely without knowing what's
getting approved. Everybody's adding different conditions that increase costs. So how do you commit
to affordability not knowing what the overall cost is? The RDC has not voted on the affordability mechanism yet.
One thing I want to draw attention to, thanks to our friends at the South Central Indiana Mortgage Brokers
Association, they facilitated a meeting with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which I had last week, and
they actually have a staff member that is dedicated to helping municipalities facilitate some of these
alternative methods of affordability. And they have offered to vet
And work with us to make sure that any structure that we put in place is pre certified and complies
with Fannie and Freddie secondary mortgage market approvals. So that is something that's going to continue
to be ongoing. Is it ready tonight? No, we don't know what the final cost is.
I am curious if anybody took a look at my memo in the packet, which addresses many of these things.
If we're talking about 50% of the units being affordable, in fact, if you look at what we're providing,
we have more than 50% that are below 120% AMI. So we are agreeing to comply with what the UDO says,
which it was 15%.
At a hundred and twenty percent AMI it is not some sneaky way to manipulate or get around What you guys
have put in place subsequent to that but we are agreeing to comply with what the UDO said Thank you
director, okay Please that counts my prima Smith I think the the sticking point is the permanent affordability
In that per the UDO proposed PUD zoning district that is relying on affordable housing as meeting the
requirements has to income restrict at least 10 percent more of the dwelling units at or below the income
levels required to earn a tier one or tier two incentive. So that would be.
15% plus 10%, that'd be 25% permanently affordable, or the income restricting the same number of dwelling
units, so 15%, but limiting incomes to at least 10% lower AMI. So that would be 15% of units at 110%
AMI. These are for the permanently affordable units. I think that's the sticking point.
The ordinance actually says 15% at 100% AMI. Thank you. Right. With that, we'll move to public comment.
Any public comment on, I've lost my place, any public comment on condition five?
This is on permanent affordability, please Good evening, I'm Ryan Langley I am the branch manager for
Rudolph mortgage here in Bloomington As well as a former County Council elected official Having some
flashbacks of some late-night budget discussions with mr. McKinn back here So
Here to speak specifically About the impact that deed restrictions can have on financing options for
local homebuyers Something that we know a great deal about To be clear I understand appreciate the goal
behind the affordability measures We all want more families in this community to have access to homeownership
But some of the deed restriction structures being discussed or implemented can create unintended consequences
in our mortgage market and
Most single single-family mortgage loans today are ultimately sold to Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac as already
mentioned Those agencies do not prohibit affordable housing programs outright The issue is when deed
restrictions go so far that they limit the resale the cap appreciation or permanently restrict the future
buyer pool based on their income At that point the property becomes a less marketable as collateral
Lending standpoint the question becomes very simple if a borrower defaults can that home be sold on
the open market at market value If the answer is no many lenders will not make that loan in the first
place Because the risk is too high and the loan may not meet the secondary market conditions That means
for fewer financing options for buyers less competition among lenders and in many cases higher borrowing
cost or denied loan access altogether and
And the people most affected are often the very people these policies are intended to help Single-family
and multifamily housing also do not function the same way in the financing world treating them the same
way May work in policy language But not in the secondary market permanent AMI based restrictions on
single-family homes are especially difficult Because they strength the future buyer pool and reduce
marketability There's also a larger issue
Homeownership remains one of the main ways families build equity and long-term wealth how it's called
homeownership a pillar of wealth building and Census data continues to show that major wealth gap between
those that own and those that rent When we permanently limit resale value of appreciation We work against
one of the most important benefits of owning the home So my request would be that we would work with
local lenders like us and
gather more of our input before finalizing that policy. If a buyer cannot finance the home, the home
is not truly affordable. It is simply unavailable. Thank you.
My name is Ryan still I work with Summit Hill Community Development Corporation. We have a land trust
in town and we Utilize a few of these different restrictions you guys are talking about My only encouragement
here would be to not limit the restriction to a specific one different styles work better with the different
groups of people and with different markets, right and
Go with a blanket deed restriction might limit the amount of lenders you have But if you leave it open
then you can discuss with local lenders what they might specifically want or might work for the area
Thank you Hello, my name is Sarah Wolford I'm with how Habitat for Humanity. I'm the housing solutions
director and
I just wanted to make a note that Habitat for Humanity of Monroe County used to use deed restrictions
until we realized that this placed a
burden on the families that we served. So in my time at Habitat for Humanity, we switched to primarily
using silent second mortgages and first right of refusals. And so when Stossberg asked about communities
where these things have been utilized, I just wanted to draw attention that they are being utilized
effectively in our community.
Right now and the last 40 houses That I've worked on with Habitat for Humanity have all utilized these
other kind of alternative rather than deed restrictions so The other thing I wanted to highlight is
first right of refusal makes it sound as if these things can only be utilized once for the first occupant,
but if the city
Chooses to purchase that home back it then is a restriction that again goes on to that home So as long
as the city continues to choose to purchase the home back that is something that will not just work
for the first Occupant of the home, but something that is continuously utilized Thank you Next commenter
I Paul Russo again I
Gosh in response to a written question by councilmember Flaherty about affordable housing the Planning
Department responded as follows in your packet the language and the incentive sections section of the
UDO states that housing units must be income restricted permanently Unless the requirement is otherwise
adjusted or forfeited by the city With this PUD we are building an adjustment to the length of time
for the affordability period and
for single family residents. The language in the UDO allows for an adjustment to the length of time
for that affordability, end quote. It seems to me that what this is saying is that the new housing will
not be permanently affordable. And I'm just wondering if people are so interested in this because they
see it as a plum investment opportunity. Because they're gonna be buying below market and then
It's going to appreciate and then they're going to be able to sell it at market rate. I would say it
doesn't have to be this way. The city owns the land. How often does that happen? We have a golden opportunity
it seems to me to maintain public ownership and thereby shield at least some of our housing from the
speculative ravages of the capitalist marketplace.
So I strongly suspect that there are skilled employees with hand and Bloomington Housing Authority who
would be able to manage such an undertaking. I'm also recalling that if you get your mortgage calculator
out and if you have a 30-year mortgage at 5% interest, over the life of the loan, you're gonna be paying
53% of your payments are going to interest.
If you have a 1% mortgage, it's non-profit, it'll be 14%. So think about where our wealth is going in
this community. We own the land here. It's a golden opportunity. Thank you. Thank you. Next commenter
in the room. Thank you again, Mr. President. This is Chris Jeremie from the Greater Bloomington Chamber
of Commerce. I just want to point out that I appreciate
first three speakers tonight working within mortgages, working within affordability that provided me
some input, some information on knowledge that I don't know. Sometimes we forget that we should know
what we don't know. I think Ms. Walford's comments from Habitat seem to support Council Member Zulek's
amendment. So it's important that we're listening to these comments on people who know what they're
talking about. We're dealing with clients and mortgages every day. Thank you for your time, appreciate it.
Thank you next comment or Hi, I'm Blake music president Rob mortgage work Brian I Came here to kind
of maybe echo what he was trying to say, but I've learned some things this afternoon that I think are
more easily addressed that could solve the overarching issues here in the you know city
surrounding County that I think we're trying to Solve a problem by fixing or sorry trying to solve a
problem. It doesn't exist That's caused by something that's a much larger scale of a problem I learned
about this this afternoon at a dinner that the city of Bloomington has a moratorium on subdivision and
Really what it comes down to at a macro level is that there's just a supply issue, which then causes
affordability problems. With our company, we're all over the state, we're all over Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky,
and where we find the greatest affordability issues are where there's the largest amount of restrictive
policy put in place by local government,
and then it turns into how do we manufacture a solution for a problem that's created by other policy?
And so I feel like we all end up kind of chasing our tail by ignoring the initial, you know, snowball
starting to roll down the hill that ends up where we are today. So I think that is something obviously
outside the scope of this discussion, but I think that it is something, you know, very worth considering where
Rather than putting these really complex restrictive things in place. We could look at the root cause
of the issue Like I learned also today that you know Beezer homes who? Builds generally affordable homes
has left town just because they were tired and abandoned the final phase of a development they were
doing because they were just tired of the red tape and the and the fights that got into with with the
city, so I don't have a solution suggest per se for those things, but I think that
looking at the root cause of the problem that we're trying to solve is probably a more effective and
long-term solution than inventing problems to a, or sorry, inventing solutions to something that are
largely not related to the problem, the cause of the problem, sorry. Thanks. Thank you. Next commenter.
Is there anybody online while the comment is coming? There's no comments online, okay? If you do wanna
comment online, just raise the hand function.
Good evening. My name is Aaron comfort II and I am a longtime resident of the McDowell Gardens neighborhood
I want to thank the council and the administration for all the work they've put into the PUD that we
have today and I'd also like to thank the council and the administration for engaging so much with the
community on this project more generally I
I've been meeting with a group of residents in McDowell Gardens about the Hopewell South development
and I wanted to relay what we've been talking about because it may be of interest to the council and
to the administration. I met with a group of about 10 residents, long-term residents mostly, of McDowell
Gardens last week and we reviewed the most recent plans published about the Hopewell South development.
We also reviewed the catalog of pre-approved designs supplied by what was Flintlock Lab and is now called
something else. And one thing that we were excited about in McDowell Gardens was the low-rise apartment
building pre-approved design called the Faulkner. It is a 12 unit. Each one of them is a one bedroom.
And it is a 12 unit low-rise apartment building and when we were looking at the plan it appeared that
There were two lots or that there were there was an allocation that there would be two of these now
I'm not sure to what degree that is final. They're on 1st Street and we the residents the ten of us
all were kind of talking this over and we thought that more of that would be a good thing and
Now how does this relate to permanent affordability? part of it has to do with density and I encourage
the council and the administration to consider what it would mean to add a Just another apartment or
two like that that would Help a lot of people move into that area who otherwise may not be able to and
then as it relates to permanent affordability
That was the other center of the conversation I had with residents where our primary concern was not
with regulation but with no regulation, was with speculation. And right now there is not a lot of regulation
on the real estate market. And so what we were in favor of, what we as residents are in favor of was
regulating actually more
That there would be more opportunity for permanent affordability. So I was glad to see that introduced.
Thank you very much Any other comments anyone online No comments online. Okay. Thank you very much coming
back to council Any other comments? All right. We'll put this to a council member Stossberg I just want
to say that I'm not supportive of this reasonable condition. I mean partly because I mean I'm co-sponsoring
Updated reasonable condition number four and these two are not really aligned with each other but also
I I Really appreciate the folks who commented and said like yeah, we do have experience with this but
that's the kind of like neutral sort of Documentation that should be in our packet
honestly, like we shouldn't have to rely on hopefully somebody from the public comes who's actually
used this and We should be able to see that data and we haven't actually seen that data and I appreciate
that the the director of Hand put in a memo that it's true, but there was also no, you know, no
Reference to where she got heard information that I saw so I I want a little bit more information about
that before putting that in but secondly, I think that only having 15 percent of permanently affordable
units is not enough and It actually does say in our UDO in section, let's see 2006 oh seven oh four e
PUDs also have to meet additional requirements and the claim here is that they're meeting the additional
requirement of income restricting at least 10% more of the dwelling units at or below income levels
or Restricting the same number of dwelling units required to earn the tier one or tier two but limiting the
Incomes further down so either more units or lower incomes and I appreciate that they're saying, you
know in this that like 50% of units are kind of going to be naturally affordable, right because they're
small and so they they're going like well we meet that right, but These should be permanently affordable
units that extra 10% should be permanently affordable and this reasonable condition
says no, that's okay, just the 15% being permanently affordable and we can just kind of like wave and
adjust that requirement for these other units. They don't need to be permanently affordable and that
is something that reasonable condition four does ensure that it's not just the first 15 but it's also
the extra which once again are required as part of like
additional sort of PUD hoop to jump through and that's where you know comes into play this whole are
we talking about land use or are we talking about affordability but when we are up here deciding whether
or not to approve a PUD a very special request for land use our UDO tells us to consider affordability
therefore it is our job to consider affordability not just land use
And so that is what I contend, and that is why I'm gonna support reasonable condition number four and
not reasonable condition number five. And I also want to note that in the updated reasonable condition
number four, there is an addendum added about it doesn't just have to be deed restrictions, it doesn't
just have to be the land leases, but that there can be other things that you just have to bring back
to council basically and say, here's the proof of how it works, this is how we're actually gonna do it.
and I don't feel good about approving the concept of a plan right now. Thank you. Thank you so much.
Councilmember Flaherty. Thank you. First of all, just thank you to Councilmember Zulek for bringing
this reasonable condition. I think aspects of it, I, well, yeah, let me speak to, I guess, first, just
affirming that I agree with Councilmember Stosberg that affordability is absolutely part of the PUD process.
in the UDO as part of the process. And in particular, we actually are being asked to deviate from what
the UDO says. So just without question, factually, this is part of our decision-making and wanted to
clarify any ambiguity on that. We're not only considering land use, but substantively, I appreciate
what Council Member Zulek's reasonable condition is getting at. I think I am open to
flexibility on permanent affordability and exactly how we achieve that. I think I take very seriously
the concerns we've heard and the experiences we've heard from folks. I also know there's lots of cities
across the country that have longer running experience with permanent affordability and ownership models
than we do and that there's a variety of mechanisms to accomplish it and that we could probably learn
from them as well because this can be done successfully. I don't doubt that because lots of places are doing it.
The question is, what's the best mechanism? I am uncomfortable with the fact that we don't know what
the mechanism is going to be. I think, I know we're not discussing reasonable condition four right now,
but I think that reasonable condition does preserve flexibility as well. But unlike this reasonable
condition, which is just sort of leave it to the administration to report to us later, I think reasonable
condition four, by contrast, would actually, it names two mechanisms and if a third
flexible option is proposed, it would just require approval by the council, which I think is reasonable,
since we don't know what the mechanism is yet. I also do want to talk briefly about the fact that what's
proposed as permanently affordable deviates from what the UDO requires, because the UDO requires matching
the incentives level, 15%, and then doing more, either 10% more permanently affordable or reducing the
AMI level.
Mr. Rousseau mentioned this in his comments. It's on page 122 and 123 of the packet. For anybody who
wants to look, I asked a question to clarify, and the administration said, well, look, we can adjust
those PUD requirements from the UDO if forfeited by the city. In this case, specifically the city council,
because we're the approval entity. And they said, within this PUD, we're building in an adjustment to
the length of time for the affordability period for single-family residences, specifically to one-time
affordability.
And quote, the language in the UDO allows for an adjustment to the length of time for that affordability.
And I think the argument being made is that if we approve the PUD, we have agreed. We have agreed to
that adjustment that brings it to below the levels required by the UDO normally. And I just realized
how great of an irony that is, that we may not like doing less permanently affordable, but if we pass
the ordinance, we've agreed to it.
that there's echoes of that in reasonable conditions. And that if a petitioner doesn't withdraw the
petition and a council passes reasonable conditions, then they have agreed to them when we pass the
ordinance. Again, that's the legal interpretation and guidance we've had and used for the better part
of a decade without incident. So just recognizing that. And I think because the conflict between reasonable
condition five
or I'm not able to support five. But again, I do appreciate the sentiment and what's trying
to be accomplished. And I think reasonable condition four does also preserve flexibility in a way that
is broadly consistent with the aims, at least in my opinion, with the aims that reasonable condition
five has. So thank you. Thank you so much. All right. With that then, will the clerk please call the
roll on reasonable condition five?
Yes, councilmember Stasberg. No Piedmont Smith. No Zulik. Yes. I'm sorry. Yes Daley. Yes Rallo. No Ruff.
No Rosenberger. No clarity That motion fails
6-3 Through six. Sorry. Mr. President. Yes, I would like to move That we postponed consideration of
ordinance twenty twenty six oh six until our April 1st meeting Okay for the reason that Well, just to explain
Because it seems to me that proceeding on three reasonable conditions three four seven through thirteen
is And of the opinion of corporate council tantamount to rejection of the petition And so we we have
conflicting legal judgment from the sponsors of the reasonable conditions And I think that we need resolution
of that before we can proceed to
consideration because I want to listen to them and make a decision based upon the merits and not on
Whether it disqualifies the an entire petition going forward. So That's my reason. Thank you. Councilmember
Rallo other discussion councilmember Zulek
Thank you. Earlier today, I heard someone say that we've been discussing Hopewell since 2017. So on
January 1st of 2017, I was 14 years old. Since then, I turned 16. I graduated high school.
I turned 18. I graduated college. I turned 21. I ran for office and won. Almost 10 years later,
I'm 23. I'm this council's vice president. And our city still has a housing crisis.
Out of the nine of us up here, I am the only one who does not own property. All of my eight colleagues
do, and my generation has no hope of following in their footsteps if we continue to let perfect prevent
good. So the people of this city deserve results, and that is why I will be voting against postponement.
Thank you, Council Member Zulek. Council Member Stasberg. I'm in favor of postponing right now, and
I just want to say something about the
Philosophical approach to this and I appreciate what council members just said and I appreciate that
we're in a housing crisis and I appreciate that We've been talking about this too long. What I disagree
with is that I don't think that it's better to do something than I mean It's not better if it's if it's
not good it is not better if it's not good and
And I am not convinced that it's good enough yet. I'm very concerned about this affordability issue.
And one of the philosophical, and I really don't appreciate the little comments that are coming from
the corner right now either. I think it shows a lack of respect. But I think that it also shows a real
difference in philosophy around affordability that I have with this petition.
During the presentation last week during it like within this packet. There's this real emphasis on building
equity About not wanting to limit the amount of equity that individual homebuyers can earn When they
purchase one of these properties so that 50% that they're saying is like affordable
the first time but might not be affordable the second time, well that is okay seemingly based on the
petition and based on the presentations that I've heard because those people that purchase those properties
are going to have built equity and built wealth and now they're going to be at an upper echelon of economy
and they deserve that. And I'm not saying that they deserve that, but I am saying that it should not
City government's use of resources to make sure that a few people get to gain lots of equity In a home
that they bought cheaply I think that it should be our responsibility to ensure that there is a much
as much affordability as possible for as many people as possible and we should not be in the business
as a city and
Trying to make sure that somebody goes, you know five paces up this up the economic scale Instead we
should really be trying to make sure everybody can at least get one or two up right or as many people
as possible Can get their needs met and that's why I think that we need greater permanent affordability
right now and hopeful and that's what this delay is about right now it is about whether or not this
property that the city owns is
is going to have houses on it that are going to be permanently affordable into the future for generations
of Bloomington residents, not just a few who happen to buy right now. And so that is why I am supportive
of this delay so that we can straighten this out and figure out how we can get the most permanent
affordability, the most affordability for the greatest number
Bloomington residents. Thank you. Thank you councilmember Stossberg. I guess clerk Bolden just to clarify
councilmember Rallo did you can you repeat your motion for me really quickly? Sure, I move to postpone
consideration of ordinance 2026 06 until April 1st regular session Any further comment
Was it just a repetition or was there? I just wanted to clarify, I misheard his motion, so I thought
he was saying till April 6th and that threw me a bit. Okay, thank you. Council Member Flaherty.
Thank you. I support the motion to postpone because we can't move forward in a productive way on the
remaining reasonable conditions when we have new legal guidance from the Corporation Council that contradicts
the legal guidance we've been following for a decade.
And I guess I'd just like to clarify now if we'll have a decision to make if we have contradictory legal
guidance and how we want to handle that. But I just want to be clear, I can't support this PUD as it
stands right now because it has substandard transportation infrastructure, in particular for pedestrians
in a way that I'm very confident we would not accept from another petitioner. It doesn't meet
the sustainability incentives section of the UDO, which I believe is needed and actually saves money
long-term, yes, incremental,
upfront cost increases, saving substantially on utility bills over time for generations. And it does
not meet EVO requirements on permanent affordability. And to be clear, yes, since 2017, it's now 2026,
the council taking some of its 90-day window to make sure we get this right within the purview or authority
is not the cause of delay.
and we shouldn't let anyone think that it is. I know the mayor's press release a few weeks ago tried
to pin a two week delay on the council as a source of housing affordability problems. I think that was
in poor form because it's just not accurate. So, I just wanted to clarify that we really do need to
resolve this reasonable conditions issue and that without the ability to consider them in the same way
we always have, I will not be supporting the PUD.
Thank You counselor Flaherty councilmember daily I'm not loan for making long speeches up here and I'm
not gonna break that Expectation tonight. I'm not in favor of postponing tonight for many of the reasons
that councilmember Zulik said but also just The longer we delay the the more issues we find the more
we nitpick and try to get to perfect and
I agree. This is a really big opportunity and we want to get it right But I also agree that the longer
we delay the more problematic It's probably going to be for all of us in the long run and the more expensive
the project is going to be which is going to create Even more debate and greater hardship on
the affordability issue. So those are my thoughts and why I do not think we should delay Daily
I'm councilmember Allah
Yeah, just to say that I want to focus on points of agreement. I think that there are some very wonderful
things about this petition. I'm disappointed that, and I agree with my colleagues, that these reasonable
conditions have been something that we have done in the past, and I think that this is somewhat
precedent-setting if we surrender that. Unfortunately, it comes at a time when we don't have
Council attorney to refer to so we have to get outside council. I'm hoping But I agree with the mayor
that I want affordability For as many residents as possible, but that means temporarily right if we
can maintain permanent affordability Then we're going to maximize the number of people that can live
in an affordable dwelling and other communities have done it but we've waited for this for over two years and
And so these arguments that council is the one that's holding it up and that we need to move on this
I'm baffled by it The council is not responsible for that. The council has only had this for a couple
of weeks. So I you know, maybe this is meant to as a means of some kind of coercion to Move quickly,
but I think that we have waited for this and therefore it's important and therefore we should be careful
because this is something
And by the way, if we can't live up to the spirit of the UDO, then how can we possibly expect private
developers to do it if we don't set the example? We own that property. We should be able to offer it,
it seems to me. And so I'm interested in the arguments of these reasonable conditions, and I'm looking
forward to hearing them, hopefully. Bye. Thank you. Thank you so much. Councilmember Piedmont-Smith.
Yes, first of all, I want to go back to the common ground that I think all of us share. We want to use
this city land to benefit the community to the greatest extent possible. This is a very unusual situation.
The city owns the land. We don't have any bonds to pay back. We own it outright.
Given that we just have some different opinions on what is the best community use that we can get here.
I think we can get more permanently affordable units here. And I know that the mayor I've spoken with
her said that the 15 percent is a minimum and that they would really like to get more 30 percent or
so permanently affordable. And that's wonderful. And I hope that
That succeeds but if it's not in the PewDie then there's no legal commitment Now this idea that this
has been talked to death since 2017 is a bit Exaggerated the city didn't even own the property until
2018 The hospital was still there until the end of 2021 Demolition took a whole year. I mean, let's
not exaggerate here
And yes, I agree, we were involved early in the process since last fall, since Flintlock was hired and
did a study and all this. But at that time, we had no reason to believe that our transportation plan
would not be followed, that our permanent affordability requirements in the UDO for PUDs would not be
met, and that our decades-long practice of adding reasonable conditions to PUD approvals
would be considered illegal. So don't put this on us. With all due respect, we are asserting our prerogative
and our legal right to try to make this project even better. So I'm opposed to voting on this tonight.
I don't feel comfortable doing that because of the legal questions that have been raised.
I would eventually like to vote on this, but I think we need more time. I mean, vote for this, but I
think we need more time. Thank you. Council Member Rosenberger. Thank you. I want to touch on a couple
of points that other council members have not yet, and I think it is mostly about reasonable condition
four. I mean, I support postponing this right now.
I would like to say a lot of council members tonight in their closing remarks have talked about needing
more permanent affordability in this PUD and that the UDO does require either 15% plus an extra
10 permanently affordable or lowering the AMI 10% on that 15%. Many folks I think said they don't wanna
deviate from that part of the UDO. I really appreciate the administration saying that
they plan to make more affordable, permanently affordable in this PUD. But I would agree with council
member Piedmont Smith that then we needed to be part of this PUD. And I think that this postponement
for me is to figure out the legality of reasonable conditions. So I think in this week, we need to hire
an attorney that works in local government and regulatory law to
take a look at this for us. I also, though, think this gives us an opportunity to, I don't know, potentially
work with the administration on reasonable condition number four. I think, you know, I was the scribe
for that, but there were six council members who weighed in on it and edited and made changes
and suggestions. So I think it's very real that we want a written
commitment to more permanent affordability, and I think that would just go a long way. I emailed this
reasonable condition individually to everyone in an email, and whoever responded to me, I responded
back, and that is, just so you know, that's how it got done, individual conversations with my colleagues.
Thank you. Thank you. Any other comments? I'll just make one brief one here that
Thank you all for for your work in patience and and you all know sort of the the place from which You
know my sort of starting point in all of this is that I am fully convinced that That we are all trying
to do what's best for the city in our at least as we are persuaded I'm a little concerned that that we're not
I think that some of our conversations today have not been tied to the appropriate antithesis. Namely,
I think that if the question on the table was whether we pass certain reasonable conditions, whether
the petitioner would withdraw, I don't know if that changes, for example, how we would judge each of
these petitions. So what I'm saying is we're having a conversation
right now about whether or not we can pass reasonable conditions. But had the conversation been simply
that, hey, if you do reasonable condition four, we're stopping it, would we have all said,
Well, stop it then or would we have had a different, you know more productive conversation? And so I'm
just a little concerned that and the reason why I don't want to postpone is because I don't think yet
in this in this motion to postpone that we've heard from the petitioner about You know what the implications
of postponement may be I don't I don't think that
that we've discussed things in the way that would allow us to weigh things equally, so I think that
at the moment we're basically just having somewhat of a theoretical conversation about things that we
value, and I think that that's really important. I do think that all of those values matter a lot, but
I also think that
you know, we're talking about a block within a larger unit as a sort of model for us to do other things.
And so I don't know if we came up, I think, outside of Councilmember Flaherty's comment with a clear,
you know, without this, I cannot support type of statement. And so I just,
Wonder if we could not postpone so that we could have a little bit of that conversation also note that
we haven't had public comment after making people sit until 10, which is also not our precedent the
last thing that I'll say is you know, I do think that this this question of Of whether or not we can
do reasonable conditions shows very clearly why we need our why we need our own lawyer but but also
You know a again sort of like what we're attaching on to You know, there is this conversation about
well There are certain things that whether or not they be reasonable whether or not be the appropriate
conditions that they could be agreements But again, we didn't give space to have that conversation
necessarily and I think that that's also a little bit a little bit concerning so I mean
My first point, please. Let's not postpone but My my I guess my second give some evidence for maybe
why we should but you know alas that that is My best best hopes at trying to convince us otherwise Okay
with no more time for comments will the clerk please call the roll on the motion to postpone until April
1st Councilmember Piedmont Smith
Yes. Zulek. No. Asari. No. Daly. No. Rallo. Yes. Yes. Rosenberger. Yes. Flaherty. Yes. Stasberg. Yes.
All right. That motion carries six three. That'll be postponed until April 1st.
Which is our next meeting next Wednesday All right moving on. Are there any motions? I Move that resolution
2026-05 be introduced and read by the clerk by title and synopsis only second There's a motion in a
second Yeah, please call the roll Councilmember Zulek, yes, I'm sorry
No. Daily? Yes. Rollo? Yes. Ruff? Yes. Rosenbacher? Oh, okay. Clarity? Yes. Stossberg? Yes. Piedmont-Smith?
Yes. Thank you.
Sorry, sorry that that motion carries. It was my I was supposed to know it's fine. I move that Yeah,
sorry. I move that resolution 2026. Oh five be Moved adopted second Sorry, there's a motion and a second
it's Yeah, go ahead councilmember because we're very sorry not to be adopted to be
Sorry, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. This was my my fault. I was I was distracted but there was a motion in
the second it passed 7-1 clerk Will you please read by title and synopsis? Okay Resolution 2026-05 a
resolution to initiate a proposal to amend title 20 the unified development order ordinance of
of the Bloomington Municipal Code in order to improve sustainability and housing affordability. The
synopsis is as follows. This resolution, sponsored by Council Member Flaherty, directs the Planning
Commission to prepare amendments to the Unified Development Ordinance regarding, one, a reduction of
minimum lot widths, lot areas, and building setback requirements to better align with Bloomington's
historic form and character, and, two, sustainability incentives and plan unit development requirements
for building electrification, and
Three, the elimination of minimum parking requirements to facilitate housing development and reduce
housing costs. That is all. Thank you. Now I move that resolution 2026-05 be adopted. Second. All right,
Council Member Flaherty had taken away. Thank you. I recognize it is 10-10. I wanted to, so we've introduced
the resolution, which is great.
And I guess I would be interested in what my colleagues think. Maybe their votes to introduce were a
signal that they want to move forward. But I guess if folks felt otherwise and actually wanted to postpone
on this to a future meeting, I'm supportive of that. So I didn't want to rush into it headlong. So actually,
if it's not out of order by President Saree, does it make sense to actually ask folks that question?
Or do you want me to just present? I can do that too.
That's a perfect question. So colleagues, are you OK? If you wanted to make a motion, I suppose, then
it could be a question. Does anybody want to make a motion so that we can discuss this question? I move
to postpone, I don't remember the number, the ordinance, the resolution being discussed. 2026.05.
2026 05 I think we need to postpone to a date. Yes, and I Would move to postpone to April 1st resolution
2026 05 second Okay, there's a motion to second any discussion Please councilmember Stossberg. Why exactly
would we postpone? I'm confused late We voted to move it forward to introduce. I'm well, I'm okay with
just going forward of the presentation I don't feel like I need to postpone it on this right now. Thanks
I'm also okay with postponement. I Don't think that we need to introduce resolution 20 2606 either I
think that both of these were coming were intended to come after we vote on Hopewell So that would be
my reasoning for postponing both of them but open to either pretty neutral I'm agnostic
Council member Flaherty. I'd also be happy to present and you know, at any point we could choose to
postpone to a second reading if we basically just like, feel like people need, like I've had at least
one colleague tell me that their time was primarily taken up by preparation for the Hopewell PUD, the
previous ordinance and would perhaps like more time on the resolution. I do think it stands alone while
it made sense to come
at the same time as and in conjunction with the Hopewell South PUD, in my opinion, for reasons I can
share. It does stand alone and we could at least have the presentation, but that may be postponed. I
think I'm anticipating we will ultimately need to postpone because I don't know if everybody will be
ready for final action. Thank you so much, Councilmember Flaherty. We're just trying to fix the screens
again, I'm sorry.
Oh, I have my hand up. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Because we couldn't, I actually could not see you. So
thank you for saying that. Yeah, that's what I thought. I would say, I think I agree with council member
Zulik. I think they, I anticipated them all getting discussed together. I also think is it possible
to do a presentation and then postpone? Yes.
Yeah, I mean, you'd have to withdraw the motion. Yeah, we'd have to withdraw the motion and then we
can, yeah. Now we can see you. I would like to withdraw my motion. Okay, the motion's been withdrawn.
Okay, unless there's other motions, Councilmember Flaherty, take it away. Okay, sounds good. Thank you.
So there is a presentation for this, which maybe staff that are supporting the Zoom portion can share.
It's also in the packet with
Yeah, I'll get into that momentarily. So while I corrected the ordinance number on the title slide of
the presentation, I did not correct it on subsequent slides, so forgive the typo. I guess high level,
I just want, beyond the synopsis that the clerk read, I wanted to share the high level context before
getting to the presentation itself. So first, just a logistical note, this is,
98% consistent with the resolution 2025-05 that I had developed previously. That was developed actually
starting way back in 2023 with Director Robinson at the time, and then in conjunction with Director
Hittle throughout 2024 in a series of meetings about all of the substantive things in this resolution.
As you'll note, they are also mirrored, all of them, I believe, more or less, except for the sustainability
piece, in the Hopewell PUD. And so that's why I thought it was a good time to talk about it, because
maybe we were in a new place with respect to recognizing that these are important solutions to advance
housing attainability, affordability, and availability in Bloomington. I think,
There was a quote actually from Director Killian Hanson in the HOPE OPD materials that said, this model
creates affordability through design, not only regulation, the goal is not to ration affordability,
it's to produce it. And I think that's actually, it's really well put. I think with respect to this
resolution, that's the goal. These are systems level changes that are relatively minor and incremental,
and they are aimed at providing systems level solutions because they would apply throughout residential
Bloomington. So with that,
Just a summary at the high level. Next slide. Just to remind on process here, this resolution would
initiate a 90-day process for the planning commission with planning and transportation staff support,
no doubt, and maybe other staff support to recommend amendments to the UDO. So this resolution does
not itself create policy change. It directs a process to propose policy changes that this council would
ultimately consider and vote on based on the recommendation of the planning commission.
So again, as was covered in the synopsis, this involves basically some shifts to minimum lot areas and
lot widths, as well as potential changes to things that would be logical to change in conjunction with
that. It would add building electrification requirements to the sustainable development incentives,
as well as make clear that PUD proposals need to follow those and eliminate minimum parking requirements.
Next slide. So as far as process, again,
forget the 2025 references that really should say 2026. This is the statutory tool that we have by state
code to direct policy changes. So when we think there should be a change to the UDO, this is the process
we follow. Of course, there's also a process in which staff can initiate UDO changes. They also do that.
We've done both regularly for a long time, including during this term of council. So that was just a
few examples. As far as exactly what would happen,
This resolution gives a general policy direction, but it's not the policy itself that does need to be
developed. I would intend or hope to work with the administration, specifically planning and transportation
staff, to ensure alignment as that is developed. And then again, it would go through the planning commission
to the city council, but the planning commission and city council meetings or process would entail public
engagement and comment.
But we can certainly add additional public input on particular topics if we wanted to along the way.
So getting into the meat of it, we can go to the next slide. So the first section is about minimum lot
areas and lot widths and proposes to reduce them in R1, R2, R3, and R4 zoning districts broadly to match
the historical development patterns we have.
Uh, and so I'll get into a few actual examples of that looking at maps, but we have lots of, um, uh,
non-compliant lots right now. And, uh, actually allowing us to develop consistent with this historical
development patterns would open up a lot of development opportunities for small scale modest homes that
are going to be better at achieving market rate affordability, uh, just like, uh, the models, uh, for
the Hopewell South PUD are showing. So, um,
Again, the rationale is to add some gentle density with all the benefits that come with it, greater
affordability from modest home sizes, modest lot sizes, useless energy. When you have a smaller home,
when we're looking at infill, people are closer to amenities, reducing transportation needs and possibly
costs if they need fewer vehicles. So these are all good things, things that our goals support.
And so again, we have lots of nonconforming lots, especially in R3 and R4, maybe a little less so in
R2 and R1,
there's only a handful of lots total. So good form-based zoning would not generally set these kinds
of things. They might set maximum lot widths, but not have these like minimum lot sizes like we have.
And while we don't have a form-based code, we have some form-based elements. And I think we could still
add some of those to our current UDO and make meaningful progress. Again, section two, I'm kind of handling
both here at the same time, section one and two.
also invite consideration of potential changes that need to follow from minimum lot size and lot width.
So if you're allowing now, say, a 2,500 square foot lot, the setbacks that we have for, say, R4 may
not make sense anymore. And so those may be worth taking a look at. Same thing with the impervious surface
coverage maximums, the lot frontage requirements. We may want to consider things like
If you front on an improved alley, for instance, that is good enough because you could build an ADU
there. Why not a small scale home? And also the subdivision standards themselves, which would relate
to this. There are likely, again, lots of, definitely hundreds, probably thousands of legal preexisting
nonconforming lots. And that doesn't make a ton of sense either. Why don't we have zoning code that
actually reflects what we have?
So next slide, please. This is just a look at the R3 zoning district dimensional standards by way of
to illustrate by example. So 5,000 square foot minimum lot area and a 50 foot minimum lot width. Most
of our older gridded neighborhoods are R3 zone. And you see the setbacks there as well, the build two
lines and the various setbacks, including 25 feet rear setback, for instance, which
would probably be a problem if we had smaller lots. So next slide, please. This is a screenshot of a
small section of Prospect Hill, which is a neighborhood I've lived in. Actually, 509 there on Howe Street
I lived in in 2013 and 14. And I still live nearby. So I'm very familiar with these streets. And if
you look in particular, I'd like to direct your attention to between Howe and Smith,
House Street and Smith Avenue, those couple of blocks. And so the next slide we zoom in, so that was
kind of for context. Now we see just what we've got side by side. So you've got in the red lot sizes
that range from six to 8,000 square feet. So those comply with the, you know, they're conforming with
the 5,000 square foot minimum lot area and the 50 foot minimum lot width. Then if you look to the right
across that alley, you've got four homes on House Street and Smith Avenue.
that are nonconforming lots. They're in the range of 2,000 to 4,000 square feet. They're all single-family
homes, and they're smaller, obviously, because of the smaller lot. And this is a little bit of a unique
property because we've got one street backing up to another. That doesn't always happen.
But it does happen some, and again, if we look at frontage options like Alley's, I think that that'll
also expand options. So that's an example of some non-conforming lots. And then the third example there
in the yellow is actually a home with an ADU. And so if we made a change that allowed, say, either there's
no lot minimum or if there's a lot minimum that's more like 1,500 square feet or 2,000 square feet,
what could happen is any of those owners at 600, 606, 612 in their big red circle,
They could choose, if they wanted to, to subdivide their lot, sell it to somebody, develop it themselves,
whatever they wanna do, have another small home on another small lot. And that's three new modestly
priced market rate, relatively affordable homes in Bloomington that aren't allowed today. We see that
from the blue circle, what's possible historically. And then the yellow example too, I think in that
case, the ADU might've been added in a familial context,
it illustrates again that we can build something there now that's an ADU, but we can't do it as a separate
unit. And I think we've had, you know, some success with the ADUs, but it's been very slow and very
incremental. And the reasons for that are many, you know, we have a restriction that might affect land
alienability with ownership, but I think more to the point, it's probably financing. Like if that's
going to cost you $150, $200,000 to build, you're going to really want that ADU. And if instead,
you don't have to finance it because you're subdividing your lot and simply selling it to somebody.
It's just a wildly different prospect. And so next slide, please. I have one other example, drawing
on the South Dunn Street and unit development and looking at a few things here. And so again,
this is a PUD. So it didn't follow the district dimensional standards in the UDO, but it's got its own.
but it is surrounded by R3 zoning in South End of Bryant Park. And the lot areas kind of range from
about 3,000 to 5,000 square feet, depending. And the lot widths are about 30 to 50 feet. Again, all
of those are not allowed in the R3 zoning or the R4 zoning, I don't believe. And they have smaller setbacks.
It works very well. If folks have not been down that street, I encourage you to check it out.
It's maybe worked so well, it's a victim of its own success and it's not very affordable. Also the homes
aren't necessarily the most modestly sized with the exception of some of the ones that are pre-existing.
So the ones actually that front on Driscoll and Grimes in those circles on the right, you see 524, 505,
506, those are pre-existing homes that I believe that are on those corners.
But that also has the upshot of making some of those lots even smaller. So 1201 and 1205 in the green
circle are quite a bit smaller, for instance, and 1301 in the blue circle. And those ones, relative
to their neighbors, are a little bit more affordable. So I still wouldn't call the South Sudan Street
development very affordable anymore. But again, it illustrates just adding housing supply through
gentle increases in density, infill that matches the historical development patterns of our neighborhoods.
And that's really all I have to kind of about the rationale piece on lot width and minimums, sorry,
lot widths and lot size minimums. Next section takes us to a, sorry, the next slide takes us to a different
substantive section, which would be around building electrification. So I mentioned this when we talked
about reasonable condition
Sorry, next slide, please. When we talked about reasonable condition six in the previous ordinance,
I talked about our climate action plan, actually EB4A2, and just how our community goals of decarbonization
require widespread building electrification. That's the path we're on. It's the only consistent path
with our climate goals.
Blue states have recognized this and have plans to do so. We don't have the ability to mandate these
kind of things, but we can use incentives just like we do with affordability and sustainability incentives
currently to encourage it. It's price competitive on the development side, so we're not driving up costs
on the front end. And we've seen large PUDs, like the Trinitas PUD, developed off of Arlington and the
Summit PUD doing either entirely electric or close to it.
And when you're using efficient equipment and pairing with building efficiency, which is part of the
current sustainable development incentives, you also are ensuring that the operating costs, the utility
bills are going to be affordable. So this would add a requirement that for options one or two in the
sustainable development incentives, we would include building electrification as a requirement.
And some benefits, I guess, in terms of indoor air quality and health outcomes. There's been a lot of
increased attention in recent years about the health hazard of fossil fuel appliances inside the home
as a major driver of childhood asthma, for instance, and other chemicals and pollutants in the home
that can cause respiratory problems and other issues. And so again, I referenced those voluntary recent
examples that demonstrate its viability.
And the next slide is kind of related, which is about planned unit development district standards.
Then again, the climate action plan specifically calls out that PUDs should require, that we should
seek to require electrification through PUDs. And the proposed change is that we would update the PUD
district standards to require alignment with the, sorry, there's a typo here. We could scratch affordable
housing section on that, at the top of that slide in a prior draft of this,
resolution there was a section on affordable housing incentives, but this is only sustainable development
incentives and it would just make sure that PUD districts, PUDs have to comply with them. The current
PUD qualifying standards on sustainability are quite vague and really not consistent with our climate
action plan. So looking to improve that. And I think that's it on that slide.
The next slide is the last kind of third bucket of substantive change here. And that would be to eliminate
minimum parking requirements citywide. And so minimum parking mandates often prevent housing from being
built. And so if you can't fit it on the lot, because you're looking at a small scale lot development,
you might not be able to build it at all. They tend to exacerbate sprawl and can increase housing costs.
Not a clarification. This does not propose changing maximum parking allowed. So this is more of a market
structure than the people building the homes can decide what their target market is, whether they need
parking or not, and whether or not there's available parking, for instance, on street. Or if they're
like, we're eating next to a transit stop or in a walkable area that doesn't need it.
And so we wouldn't affect what somebody is allowed to build. Everybody would be allowed to build what
they're allowed to build now. We would just stop requiring people to build parking when they don't want
to or when they can't in order to make the project work. So let's see. I just have a quote here from
Incremental Development Alliance.
which there was a training I saw in which the expert that was presenting and course instructor was just
instructing folks, small scale developers, like we're trying to encourage here in Bloomington how to
develop noting that parking requirements will kill your project faster than anything else. So just citing
those folks as experts on this issue. It undermines choice. We have over 4,000 households in Bloomington
do not have vehicles requiring that
all, virtually all housing has a place for vehicles, adds cost for a lot of folks who don't need it.
Also, 44% of Bloomington households are single-person households. A good local example of all this is
the bicycle apartments. I don't know if they're actually called that anymore, but there are a couple
of multifamily buildings on the southwest corner of 4th and Rodgers, right next to the IFL, across from
the Centerpoint building. There's no parking on site.
They've long been some of the more affordable market rental options in a walkable location in downtown
Bloomington. They've been quite successful. And so it's a really good example of this. So again, this
is broadly supported by urban planning, parking and economics, and urban sustainability policy experts.
I do have some examples of lots of cities around the country that have been doing this.
by no means be the first. And so here are a handful of them, including South Bend, I think is the only
other Indiana city so far. Lots of college towns you can see in there, Charlottesville, Corvallis,
Gainesville, Cambridge, you know, Burlington, I suppose, Ashland, Oregon and Bend are a little bit that
way. So lots of peer cities. And
you know, so this is not something new. And I guess I really wanted to be clear that this is not only
widely accepted as good policy, but it's actually been adopted by a lot of places too. And give me closing
thoughts in the next slide. Actually, one more thing on parking, which is the resolution
includes also a call for if there are other text changes that need to happen or changes to programs,
we should consider those. So I talked to a few colleagues about this, you know, previously, for instance,
we have neighborhood parking zones in some sections of the city. Most of those neighborhood zones are
actually like very underparked, like there's tons of vacant space and we wouldn't anticipate any impacts
there. There are a couple of zones that are more fully parked and we might have to consider
you know, the possibility of changes in those zones. Things we could look at are whether, you know,
a modest increase in price makes sense, whether or not we should stop doing annual visitor passes and
going towards more of a system of like, you can get 30 visitor day passes, you know, if you live in
the district, as opposed to just giving out optionally two passes for very low cost. And so, you know,
there's some things that we need to follow. And again, that's, as I emphasized at the beginning of my
presentation, that's really what the,
policy development stages about. This is just saying, look, directionally, this is something we want
to look at. We'd like to consider a proposal and the details of the policy really has to be developed.
So closing thoughts are really just that, you know, the broad goals here are to increase housing development
at a modest, more affordable scale, reduce climate pollution, enhance resilience and improve the overall
social, economic and environmental sustainability of our built environment.
all consistent with the existing character of Bloomington. So this is consistent with the affordability
changes proposed by the administration in its Hopewell South PUD, I guess proposed by the RDC actually
in its Hopewell South PUD. And I'm sure you all recognize that. This was informed by direct extensive
collaboration with city staff and multiple departments and across two administrations and also informed
by our comprehensive and climate action plans.
and input from the public policy advocates and policy experts. I've talked to lots of constituents about
this and also really appreciated the several sessions we had last year, further discussing tools and
options for affordability with members of the community. And so just finally reiterating, this resolution
is a step. It's the statutorily required action to initiate policy proposals consistent with those plans.
And it mirrors the process we've used recently for other UDO change proposals that the council was interested
in moving forward.
opportunities and requirements for additional outreach, engagement and collaboration remain. And we
will make the final decision later. And I'll just say if you have a discomfort with some aspect of this,
I will hold no grudges if you vote yes on the resolution and vote no on some aspect of a proposal that
comes in the future. That's what it's for. And so that I think is my full presentation. I am happy to
answer any questions or if we want to wrap up and
Discussion for a future meeting. That's great, too. Thank you Thank you so much councilman Flaherty
and particularly for putting so much effort and and time into that and the presentation Thank you so
much questions motions Please councilman Rallo, yes, I found that very informative. Thank you. I'd like
to move that resolution 20 2605 be postponed
for consideration to until April 1st Okay, there's a motion in a second any discussion Yes, it comes
with people I guess I don't see any reason why we can't Vote on it tonight. I don't think it would take
very long. Thank you Councilmember Stasberg, I'm prepared to support this tonight. Thanks. I
I've the reason I'm offering the motion is that I I honestly I support some aspects of this But I can't
fully support all of it and my attention has been primarily on Hopewell So I'm afraid I won't support
it, but I I find a lot of the aspects of it very positive. So That's Yeah, I could potentially
Be supportive of it. I like a lot about it, but I like if like councilman Barallo said just haven't
I really had a lot of time to To think about some aspects of it. So I I'd rather wait rather than have
to vote. No just because I'm not Haven't had time to really get totally squared with it yet The councilor
Flaherty Thank you, I would support postponing I appreciate that there's a lot we've been working on
and dealing with and resolutions we we often consider
You have less time because, well, we changed our rules around first reading for ordinances, but I recognize
this went out five days ago in its current form. And I have no problem postponing and would like to
give my, I would recommend we give the colleagues who would like more time that more that additional time.
Thank you so much. I'll just make a point, especially if it seems that we're gonna postpone. There were
a couple of questions raised by a resident, particularly noting that there's a change in Indiana code
around timelines, so that passed in July, changing the timelines for, and so this has the old language
of 90 days, so I think maybe considering amendment there, but then,
This the city resident also said brought brought up the question and I'd love again. This is another
example of why we need a lawyer Just any lawyer in the room, but would oh, I guess we have lawyers in
the room, but virtually but the person also raised the question of whether when we make these type of
Resolutions whether we should actually direct the exact amendments that we want to see or whether the
sort of broad Direction, you know is the appropriate?
So things for us to discuss should we postpone. And I've had a little bit of a conversation with Margie
Rice about that. And she seems to share both of those opinions. But she, again, didn't have time to
be here or present it in that way.
So yeah, so so just just something if we do postpone something that we probably should engage in so
well as I said that Margie walked in but hey Anyway, so if we don't if we postponed we might want to
think about that. All right any other comments All right. So there's a motion in a second to postpone.
Will the clerk please call the roll? Councilmember sorry Motion to postpone. Yes Daily yes
Rollo. Yes. Yes. Rosenberger. Yes. Clarity. Yes. Stasberg as requested by the sponsor. Yes.
Piedmont Smith. Yes. Zulek. Yes. That motion carries 9 0. That's postponed until April 1st. Any motions.
Well I'd like to vote at 10 30.
It's root because we need a roll call vote to introduce anyway Yeah to know that that just requires
a two-thirds majority to introduce anything after 1030. Thank you Okay any motions All right, we'll
now move to a time of additional public comment if there are no motions
This is a time to comment on things that were not on the agenda. However, if anybody would move, I would
very much appreciate it if you allowed folks to comment on things that they might have sat here all
night to comment on and have not got a chance to do so. We do have a Zoom person with his hand raised.
Tremendous. We'll get to them in a second. Are there any motions in the room? Councilmember Zulek. I
move to suspend the rules and allow this time for general public comment to include anything that was
on the agenda given that
Public comment was not allowed second. There's a motion in a second Clerk, can you please call the roll
on the on the motion to suspend the rules? Clarification first, can we say Can we have a friendly amendment
on your motion? To include if it was not already offered for public comment because there was some reasonable
conditions for example. Yeah, sure I will amend my
Motion to exclude anything that was already offered public comment for a reasonable condition. Yes.
Thank you. All right. And we'll look for please call. Call the roll a moment capturing the motion. Council
member. That didn't work.
Councilmember daily. Yes. Yes. This is a precedent setting. Yes. It's true. Rosenberger Councilmember
Rosenberger we can't hear you.
Okay, she knows I'm gonna move ahead and we'll come back to you if we can count. I mean, yes,
I got it. Okay. Sorry Okay. Yes, I'm sorry. I'm very sorry Councilmember Flaherty Yes Stasberg Yes,
and I think that we've had this motion recently. So I don't think that's not Smith Oh, yes Zulek Yes,
I'm sorry. Yes
Okay, that carries nine. Oh So it's now time of public comment. You can comment on anything Other than
reasonable conditions. Is there anybody who would like to make public comment? The person on zoom That
person has taken his hand down. That's unfortunate Are there any other public commenters? All right
Seeing none
Last chance online. All right, we'll move to matters of council schedule. We'll be meeting on April
1st, everyone. So there was a chance that we wouldn't, but we will be. Any other things, though? Meetings
coming up? Yes? Fiscal committee meeting Friday morning at 830. Oof. Hiring committee is meeting on
Thursday. Then we default to the Thursday meeting because we were going to meet on Wednesday, but alas.
Next Thursday.
Yes correct. Any other comments for council schedule. All right. With that count this meeting adjourned.