All right, good evening everybody and welcome to this regular session of the Bloomington City Council.
Today is Wednesday, October 14th. I don't have my eyes on but I don't think we have a clerk so nevermind
on all of that. Someone get the clerk. Clerk, clerk, clerk, clerk.
This is actually, it really highlights how funny what is about to happen is. I mean, I could just ask
you all if you're here. I will wait. Not because I want to, but because I must. Dear clerk, thank you
so much. Glorious entrance. Will you please, yes.
will you please call the roll? Yes, Councilmember Stossberg here. Piedmont Smith here. Zulek here. Sorry
here daily here. Rallo here and rough here. Thank you.
Thank you very much, and I motion that we always begin council meetings with applause for the clerk.
Just before, also on another noteworthy moment, I'd like everybody to acknowledge our brand new council
attorney, Mr. Rossman. Yay.
We're so grateful for your service to the city. Thank you for being a part of this team. Really much
looking forward to working with you. Okay, with that, agendas, they are posted there. There are some
copies there. If you are online or if you are seeing impaired, there are digital copies that should
be accessible.
online as well. Today our meeting, we have a handful of minutes to approve. I think there was some amendments
sent out. We'll have reports from the office of the mayor, from council committees.
And then there will be a time of public comment. There are two times of public comment. It's best part
of the council meeting. Of course, there are also times of public comment for every item on the agenda.
But there's two times of public comment for things that are not on the agenda. I'll remind you now so
that we don't have to remind you later that those times of public comment are for things that are not
on the agenda. There'll be one at the beginning and one at the end.
We have some appointments to boards and commissions. We'll also be discussing.
potentially discussing a proposed removal from a board and commission, and we'll allow some brief comment
there. We have legislation for first reading, quite a bit of it, three things, and legislation for second
reading. We have one, two, three, four, five, six things. So I like to go home at some point, and so
we will try our best to do exactly that. Are there any motions?
Before we get going any council member Pema Smith. Yes I move that for each item for first reading we
have a maximum of 20 minutes to include presentation council questions and public comment maximum 20
minutes. There's a motion in the second any discussion.
I'll just say, just as a note, I would, and this is for first reading, just correct, it would be really
helpful that we err on the side of more public comment than our comment. So if we can get to questions
and then go to public comment, that would be tremendous. Okay, any other discussion? All right, motion
in the second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed?
Okay, one what that passes how many of us are there one two three four five six six one Thank you very
very much. All right, let us move on. We have some minutes as amended any further amendments to the
minutes Seeing none all those in favor of approving the minutes as amended There wasn't actually a motion
Sorry can someone make a motion I move to approve the minutes Excuse me from April 15th 2026 April 22
2026 May 6 2026 May 13th 2026 May 20th 2026 and June 3rd 2026 motion in a second all those in favor
say aye any opposed
All right, wonderful. We'll move on to reports. Do any of my colleagues have reports or comments? I'll
start with you, Councilmember Stosberg, then we'll go Councilmember Piedmont-Smith, and then we'll see.
Go ahead. Thank you. Good evening. I have, I think, just three things that I want to mention tonight.
One, you'll notice I'm wearing purple, and Councilmember Piedmont-Smith is wearing purple, and I think
that Councilmember Rallo down there might have a little bit of purple, and Councilmember Talei's a little purply.
Councilmember Piedmont Smith even has a purple cup today. So that's pretty exciting Anyway, the purple
is here for domestic violence awareness month That is this month and city staff are actually wearing
purple tomorrow. So I thought hey Let's go ahead and wear purple tonight for domestic violence if people
could manage to get their wardrobes together it's a very serious issue and very important to recognize
survivors of domestic violence and
Keep that in our awareness because it is something that people have to live with every day Second thing
that I wanted to talk about was the plan Commission meeting there was a plan Commission meeting this
past Monday and so at that meeting there were three petitions or
One of them had to do with more UDO amendments and that was forwarded with a positive recommendation
Most of those amendments are related to higher density housing making it more attainable to Have 80
use cottage developments and duplexes. So those will be coming forward to council for final approval
for UDO changes and then the other two petitions were both related to voluntary annexation and
So we'll have two more voluntary annexation cases. Of course, those go to Plan Commission. So Plan Commission
can recommend zoning for those two areas. So not quite sure when those are coming to council, but I
think that it should be relatively soon in the next month or two, I would imagine, just in terms of
the legal timeline related to annexation. And then lastly, for the public and constituents mostly,
Maybe there's quite a crowd here tonight, so there's not usually quite a crowd.
Most of you I hear probably don't know that fall is high school cross country season and that makes
me very unavailable on weekends when I often have constituent meetings. But I did want to say that that
is almost over. And so that will free up my weekends a little bit so people can look for those announcements
about different office hours. But in the meantime if anybody wants to bend my ear about something I've
had a few different meetings with constituents who just email me and say hey like
I need some time. So if you're one of those constituents who feels like, hey, you need some time, go
ahead and email and we will work something out. And that's all I've got tonight. Thank you. Thank you.
Councilman Smith. Yes. I just wanted to say that my purple shirt today has two purposes. First of all,
it is domestic violence awareness month and I want to highlight that. But also this is an Alzheimer's
support shirt.
that is highlighting that on Sunday we have the annual walk to end Alzheimer's which is taking place
at Switchyard Park opening ceremonies at 12 45 p.m. If you're interested it's not too late to join or
to donate. You can just just Google Alzheimer's walk Bloomington and you'll get all the info. And I'm
walking as always in honor of my late father Ferdinand Piedmont. Thank you.
Thank you so much. Anyone else? All right. With that, we'll turn then to Mayor Thompson. Welcome.
Thank you, Council, for having me tonight. I want to just start by thanking Council Member Daley, who
joined me at the town hall this past week. And I think constituents were really
Thrilled to have you there, especially with your upcoming legislation. We are scheduling the 2027 town
halls now. They are and always have been something that we invite the council member in that district
to. But if at large members want to come to any of them, you are welcome to come. Ruff and Osari in
particular who are here tonight.
I wanna give a couple of updates. Before I go into city focused updates though, I do want to just notify
council if you haven't seen or heard about this already. I'm sure you have. The snap cuts have gone
into effect and we have neighbors that are, and service agencies that are really feeling the impacts
of those. So I just wanted to,
make you all aware if you don't know already that cupboards are becoming more bare and those snap cuts
are going into effect. They went into effect on October 1st. We are working with our legislative partners
at the federal level and the state level to see what we can continue to do to speak out about it, but
more importantly, change some of these policies.
On the city list, I wanted to give you a quick update about 714 South Rogers, which of course is part
of the Hopewell PUD that we envision using as a future police department. We had some discussions about
it last week at the town hall, also attended the McDowell Gardens neighborhood meeting. The McDowell
Gardens neighborhood voted in favor of
of supporting that project. We're really still in the due diligence phase. We put an RFP out for architects,
so all architects listening, you are welcome to apply for that. We still have some structural testing
we are likely going to have to do as part of the design phase, and so you won't be seeing that coming to you
for some time because we won't know much more about it than we do right now until we get an architect
on board and we start looking at feasibility and how that might go.
Want to just make it clear that a move in the police station has been needed for quite a long time This
is not a signal to the community that we are dramatically increasing the numbers in our police department
We have been working towards full staffing we continue to do that But there's no anticipated growth
in the police department as a result of this move. We just are
Their offices now are substandard and very overcrowded. So this has been an intended move for quite
some time. Tied to that somewhat, Showers West. I wanted to just give you an update. Per the terms of
the original bond, Showers West
is only able to be used for governmental purposes. So all of the existing tenant leases have been negotiated
to a conclusion that cost a little over $500,000. The only tenant remaining is the Bloomington Board
of Realtors. They're in suites 216 and 218. Their lease ends on June 30th, 2027. So that is a planned
departure date.
Charles West is already home to our fire administration that obviously was outlined in the original
bond. The City Council offices are over there and engineering is already over there as well.
Meanwhile, our administration is working on a plan to evaluate space needs overall to assess workflow,
storage safety, public access, et cetera, et cetera, as well as what upgrades are going to be needed
to move more departments over there or
anyone else over there. What we know right now is that Showers West needs approximately $621,000 of
high priority repairs. So those include the HVAC controls and boilers, loop pumps being replaced, upgrading
the elevators so that they are more functional and data wiring.
We recommend the following process We'll finalize our state our space assessment identify phase
in possibilities To do this at the most minimal cost And before the end of the year, we will show the
RDC our plan and timeline they of course own showers west right now and make a specific request for
the sort of must-have repairs over there and
We need to prepare to assume the cost of utilities and building maintenance in the 2028 budget so This
is the year in advance warning that RDC has been carrying this for a while It was bought by the city
administration and last administration time to take it over so
I'm gonna sort of end those city updates now I know we had some last-minute amendments to the packet
We continue. I know everybody is challenged when there are last-minute
Amendments to the packet. I want to thank councilmember Piedmont Smith for the outreach that she's done
both to the administration and to the public In in getting changes made before we come into a meeting
So that so that we know what we're walking into so I know it causes challenges for us it causes challenges
for other people and
It also helps sometimes. So I just really wanted to thank council member Piedmont-Smith for her work
in continuing to improve that piece of legislation. Happy to answer questions or just sit down. Thank
you very much. Any questions for the mayor?
All right, see, we weren't all that mean at all. Thank you. All right, moving on, we have reports from
council committees. I think there's the transportation committee at this time. I'd like to call, sorry,
commission, I'm sorry, the commission call Chair Volin to speak for a few minutes.
Thank you very much members of council Steve Wolin chair of the Transportation Commission Here to present
the findings of the Commission on the study commissioned by parking services by Walker consultants about
the state of parking in the community This study was commissioned in late 2024 Before the transportation
Commission existed but the parking Commission which was a
predecessor body to the transportation Commission was not Consulted with or involved in the development
of the study Since it is the mandate of the Commission to oversee such studies We thought it appropriate
to weigh in on the recommendations made by Walker consulting which we did at our September meeting is that
Go ahead and advance the slide for me. There you go. So there were 12 findings made. They fell into
four buckets, organizational policy, operations, technology, and communications branding and wayfinding.
All the votes that we took on each recommendation were either five zero or zero five with one exception.
And we found agreement endorsement of eight of the 12 findings. Please advance the slide.
The first one we disagreed with a zero five vote to transfer all citation appeals due to the city clerk's
office of the parking services division. Generally speaking the commission thought that there wasn't
sufficient support for this that it was mostly anecdotal reasons for the change. Next slide please.
We did agree the idea that there should be a mission statement for the parking services division because
parking is something that does cut across city departments. Next.
We also agreed that the that the city should adopt a data driven approach to parking operations management
with recurring transparency of key performance indicators. Next slide. We agreed that it was time to
change the rates.
of the on-street parking using a zone system. In other words, what they're suggesting is that parking
should vary according to what part of town it's in. This is an idea that I think whose time has come
and it was endorsed fully by the commission. Next, please. We also agreed that off-street parking rate
changes needed to be made. It wouldn't make sense to adjust the meters and not adjust the garages accordingly
because parking is one overall system that people evaluate when they're parking. Next, please.
We disagreed with the Walker report that said that on street hours should be reduced. They recommended to 8 p.m.
From 9. One member did agree with this but it required five for an endorsement. So this was not endorsed.
Next please.
We did agree that it's time to reconsider a single space meters that the multi-space meters as parking
services said would be less maintenance and more modern and easier to manage and pay by plate is an
example something you might see at the Wells library where you type in your plate to to register to
park We disagreed with the idea that
Enforcement of pay-by-plate multi-space meters should be done through License plate recognition technology
those of you who are familiar with the frock flock debate know that Well, thank you disagreed with it
we agree that The city does not have a data policy and if this data were collected it would beg the
question of how that data would be used so That's why we did not support this this endorsement
Next we agreed that gated parking equipment in the garages and lots need to be updated. They're out
of date and need replacing. We disagreed with the idea of parking services creating a separate brand
identity from the city's only because this is the kind of thing that should be coming from the mayor's
office that there should be one coordinated city identity and that different departments shouldn't be
doing their own
branding specifically. Next, please. We agreed that when it came to communications and marketing that
more needs to be done and that a thorough campaign needs to be mounted. Next. Again, this was not a
difficult thing to agree with, to install informational signage at key locations to let people know
what's available. And finally, did we miss one? I guess, yeah, no, that's it. All right, so again,
last slide, please.
So we endorsed eight out of the twelve findings of the Walker Commission the Walker consultant report.
We hope you'll take those into account when you make further decisions about parking. I'm happy to answer
any questions and we'll make sure that these results are forwarded to you. Thank you so much Commissioner
Boland. It's so good to see you as always. Any questions for Commissioner Councillor Stasberg.
It's a slideshow somewhere in one of our like packet addendums or something this was in the a very similar
version of this was in the September 28th packet of the Transportation Commission, but like I said,
I updated it a little bit for this presentation and I'm happy to forward it Staff already has access
to the the link Okay forwarded to you. That would be great. I Think that the public might appreciate
that but there was some small print up there that I I can forward it to you now if you like
Just sometime in the next 24 hours should be great sometime in the next 24 hours should be great. Thanks
Any other questions? All right. Thank you so much. Thank you All right. We'll now move to the first
time of public comment for things that are not on the agenda Which today everything's on the agenda
so, you know, good luck. No, but um, you'll you'll have Does anybody wish to give public comment at
this venture? Thank you. It just roughly to see okay
We'll have three minutes to give public comment on things that are not on the agenda. Again, we'll have
multiple opportunities otherwise. Please ideally state your name or alias or something like that for
the record. Sign in. People online, if you could just raise your hand and we'll get to you next. So
if you're in chambers, if you could approach the podium, now is your chance. Thank you.
Sorry I'm writing my name down. All right. First I would like to thank the city council.
for having this meeting and having the time for me to come out and have my opinion heard, my voice heard,
as well as the opinions of other students here at Indiana University, as well as residents at Bloomington,
Indiana. We came here today because Bloomington and Monroe County did the right thing by dropping flock
safety. But right now, we are living with a dangerous double standard. I'm so sorry. You can't comment
on things that are
There's rules. Oh, 100%. Yeah, I was a little unprepared for this. I know. I know. They frustrate me
more. But we'll get a chance to talk about Fluck when we talk about Fluck here. 100%, so that's later?
Yes, yes, yes. OK, so I can talk later? Yeah, you can talk about anything else you'd like, though, at
this moment. I can talk about anything else? Anything that's not on the agenda, yeah. Can I advocate
for lower parking permits? Go for it, man. Yeah, let's lower the parking tickets. IU parking tickets
are $50 a ticket. Let's lower it to $20.
Let's do that. I think that's a good idea. How much time do I have left? I got another minute. Yeah,
you have like two minutes. Oh wow, I got some time. What do we want to talk about? What do we want to
talk about?
Noah Thompson. My name is Noah Thompson. I'm the chapter president for Young Americans of Liberty here
at Indiana University. We are a new chapter here in the states. We are forming this our first semester.
The organization is trying to expand into Indiana. So I'll get off my soapbox for just a second there.
But yeah, no, I think I can't say anything about flock. I was going to say something about flock. Oh,
man. There will be. Yes, there will be. OK.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think a minute is good. Thank you, thank you for the time. I prepare, okay, 100%.
Thank you, thank you so much. 100%, 100%. We'll see you here in a little bit, all right. Would anybody
else like to give comment on things that are not on the agenda? Or interpretive dance or a song, no?
Oh, well this is unfortunate. Anyone online? Okay, well.
Moving right along then we'll have another chance at the end. Okay, so Appointments to boards
and commissions. Do we have any I think we have a memo from Clark Bolton. Did you want to speak on it
or? No, okay any appointments folks Okay Any motions then? Yes councilmember Stasberg. Well on behalf
of interview committee
I'd like to recommend appointment of Justice Belton to seat c2 for the Commission on the status of black
males second Motion and second any discussion or questions? All right, all those in favor of the appointment
to seat c2 on the Commission of status of black males say aye aye Any opposed? All right that motion
carries. Thank you very much. Are there any other appointments or motions? Council president is sorry I believe
Either attorneys Rossman or Alan just have a brief update on the potential removal for the Historic
Preservation Commission just because it's on the agenda. I think it would be nice to pass over to attorney
Alan. Thank you. Thank you Alan contract attorney for the City Council.
If you'll recall, there was a matter of the HPC commissioner potential removal that was recommended
to the interview committee that interview committee has met, as under the council's rules, interview
committees can only present their reports in writing. And so I think there was a reference to that in
this agenda through the clerk's memo. However, it can't be voted on until the committee has delivered
its report in writing to the council, and then it can be voted on, which would happen at the
The next meeting and I do apologize for that delay. We understand that this has gone on for quite a
while Parliamentarian are we able to suspend our rules so that we can proceed with the matter or is
this an unsuspendable type of thing? I don't believe it is I wouldn't recommend it. Oh recommend it.
Okay, I don't I mean, I think my concern is with the
Yeah my concern is just that we have said to to the individual multiple times now to show up to multiple
meetings and then multiple times saying no it just feels I mean in addition to I think I mean I'll spare
my personal opinions but I just think that this is a little bit disrespectful to the individual. If
you all would like to suspend your rules that could be done by a motion and a second and two thirds
majority of the council. I can't see what would you like to. I mean I'm sure I can.
Anyone no councilman Slasberg Suspend our rules regarding reports from committees and allow a verbal
report from interview committees team see regarding the removal of Reynard cross from the HPC Maybe
I don't is he is he yeah, there's a motion in a second any discussion As a point of order, I think we
need two-thirds majority to suspend the rules so we should probably have a roll call I
Thank you. Any questions or discussion? OK, will the clerk please call the roll. Mr. Stossberg? Yes.
Piedmont Smith? Yes. Zulek? Yes. Vasari? Yes. Daly? No. Rallo? No. Roth? No. All right, that motion
does not carry, unless I'm bad at math.
Yeah, okay. Thank you. All right Well with with with apologies that does not carry so we will not be
discussing that today councilmember Stossberg the people my recollection last time we dealt with this
was that we actually directed Like as part of that motion directed the interview committee to come back
at this meeting to deal with it So does that mean and this may be an attorney question does that mean
that we have to?
Continue this again to the next meeting Ideally that is how that would work is that there would now
be because of if the council didn't move to suspend its rules to have that in writing that there would
be another motion to Hear this at a definite date. So the next regular session meeting would be November
4th on a Wednesday Okay, I guess I'll move then that the
Item concerning removal of rain our cross from the Historic Preservation Commission be continuing to
our next regular session on November 4th Second all right, there's a motion and a second all those in
favor Sorry discussion Councilman Smith. Yes. I wanted to add something to that So I'm on interview
committee see and I did vote for
for removal of this individual at the interview committee see meeting. But I feel now that we need to
be more specific as to why we recommend removal. We need to give notice to the commission member regarding
the specific conduct the provision of the code of conduct that it's violates and the connection to his
fitness to serve and then give
that individual at least five days to respond. So I just wanted to put that on the record. I at the
time of the interview committee meeting I had not reviewed what was done at a previous when we previously
had a similar issue come up with a commissioner. Things are a little different now because we do have
the code of conduct that we didn't have three years ago. But I think those steps do need to be taken
before we vote on removal. So I wanted to
State that for the record. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman Zulek I believe all of those
things were done. I think that Perhaps clerk Bolden could speak on that a bit but just in general I
think this is a glaring example of our inability to make any type of swift decision this has been on
the docket since July and
It shouldn't have gone to the interview committee because we all should have been able to make a decision
at the time of the initial vote. Yes as the HPC liaison this has been a very frustrating process for
everyone involved I'm sure including all of our commissioners. So clerk Bolden yes in terms
of the recommendation for removal
there was a letter that was sent to Mr. Cross indicating the reasons for his potential remover removal
and referencing the exact points of the code of conduct that were done. I believe Mr. Allen can expand
on that. I think he has a copy of it that was actually sent out from him. So if you need any more information
about that as well and I believe that
Jennifer Crossley reached out and spoke to Mr. Cross or at least communicated with him and other staff
members which I'm pretty sure based on some of the emails and reports that I saw that she copied council
members several times on the details of the situation along with copies of the letters meetings and
links to anything that you needed to reference to make the decision and
And just to add a little bit more the HPC hasn't had meetings because of the lack of quorum so it is
interfering with some of the business of the city. And since I told you earlier before the meeting started
I'll say it again. Do not leave the meeting without stopping by my desk. Thank you. Any other discussion
before we take the vote. All right. When the vote on the table is to continue this to our next meeting
all those in favor say aye.
Any opposed. Okay. That motion carries. We'll discuss this on what's the date. I'm sorry November 4th.
Okay. Let's move to first readings. I move that ordinance twenty twenty six dash twenty nine be introduced
and read by the clerk by title and synopsis only second motion a second. Any discussion. Will the clerk
please call the roll.
Oh thank you very much. Can all those in favor say aye. Sorry. Yeah go ahead. So I want to move to hold
limited discussion on ordinance 20 dash 26 29 to suspend the rules in order to hear
A brief presentation quick point of just a silly thing. But because there's already a motion on the
table we have to remove that motion before you do that motion if that's OK. So or and or vote on the
motion on the table. Yes. So who's been motioned and seconded. If it's a point of procedure is it a
point of procedure comes member of.
We don't have to waste too much time doing this if it's okay, can we just let's withdraw that councilmember
rough? Okay, who made the motion? Can you please withdraw the motion? I'm sorry to touch. Oh, yeah Okay,
thank you very much councilmember F. Go ahead. Thank you. I just want to move to hold a limited discussion
on ordinance 22 20 26 29 and
Suspend the rules in order to hear a brief presentation from the sponsor of the ordinance and limit
discussion to five minutes of Council questions in and this amending So so we would we still have the
20 minutes that we've dedicated to it Or are you limit the whole thing to five minutes limiting the
whole thing? I mean while limiting the five minute discussion plus what I think will be like a two or
three minute initial presentation by the sponsor, okay
This would supersede the 20 minutes my understanding it would still have to be under 20 minutes But
the council discussion following the presentation could be limited to five minutes Okay, so the motion
is to limit council discussion to five minutes. We'll still have public comment on it if necessary Is
there a second to that motion? Second okay motion and a second all those in favor say aye Any opposed
Okay, that motion carries. All right, is there any other motions? I move that ordinance 2026-29 be introduced
and read by the clerk by title and synopsis only. Second. Motion and second. All those in favor say
aye. Aye. Any opposed? Clerk, will you kindly read?
Ordinance 2026-29, amending the Bloomington Municipal Code to prohibit the development, deployment,
or delivery of superintelligence with the City of Bloomington, Indiana. Council sponsor, Councilmember Rallo.
The synopsis is as follows. Ordinance 2026 dash 29 prohibits the distribution and deployment
of superintelligent artificial general intelligence, AGI or ASI within the city of Bloomington, the
common council explicitly recognizes that uniform state level regulation of superintelligence systems
is optimal for long term governance.
This ordinance adds a new chapter to the Bloomington Municipal Code, which is enacted as an interim
public safety measure to protect the city of Bloomington only during the period of state and federal
legislative inaction and omission. I move to discuss ordinance twenty twenty six dash twenty nine. Second.
Tremendous. We'll we have to vote on that. All those in favor of this say aye. Aye. Any opposed. All right.
Thank you for this opportunity. Think of this ordinance as a companion to resolution 2026-10 that we
unanimously adopted on June 10th, which was to acknowledge the existential risk of artificial intelligence.
But just to be clear, this prohibits deployment of ASI, which is artificial superintelligence. It is
not an ordinary AI, so this is not
Prohibiting AI generally speaking, but that specific type so narrow AI can be very beneficial for humanity
Obviously it needs guardrails But this is an autonomous super intelligence that the developers have
stated could the developers themselves have stated could result in our extinction This is an AI that
would as being created to supersede human beings and
It is also being endowed with the ability to recursively self-improve, which means that it designs and
improves on itself without human intervention. So this is a means by which it can accelerate
its intelligence, far exceeding human beings. Therein lies the danger. So the AI safety experts that
have been studying this and worrying about it for many years, decades even, say that when that threshold
is achieved,
Humanity would lose control and could never regain it This is sounds like sci-fi, but it's not Because
it has because experts who have been developing it warrant have been warning about it as as well as
the developers themselves A number of whistleblowers have left the companies creating this technology
And have quit the Warren that the models are becoming extremely dangerous and
and should be halted in their development. They warned that the threshold could occur within the next
year or so. This is because model capabilities are growing exponentially, not linearly. So there's a
doubling time. So think of a chat GPT that couldn't solve high school math a couple of years ago, but
is now solving millennium prize winning mathematics problems that have been
perplexing mathematicians for a century. To date, the models have been shown to exhibit a series of
aberrant, deceptive, and self-directed behaviors, including collusion amongst themselves, escaping
containment, and breaking into other companies, as well as their own company in the case of OpenAI.
To date, Congress and states have not acted to prevent this, even though it has been apparent for years.
People have been warning about this for years. And meanwhile, the industries themselves are spending
hundreds of millions of dollars to prevent that regulation. So are we helpless? I don't think so. I
think that cities, municipalities at the local level can take action to ban this dangerous technology.
We wouldn't allow people to develop nuclear weapons. But we have laws against that. Federal government
would act on that. But here, there's a void. And so this ordinance seeks to fill that void. And with
it comes liability for these companies because they cannot be producing something that would be illegal.
So that's what I have to say. But I would like to play a two-minute video of a compilation
of some expert opinion including the developers themselves. Could you Jacob could you play that video.
AI is certainly powerful enough to drive events that cause a billion deaths. Jacob Coxen has left Anthropic
sounding the alarm about the dangers of artificial intelligence, writing in part, the people building
AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. But I think the development
of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race.
Humans develop artificial intelligence that would take off on its own and redesign itself at
an ever-increasing rate. Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn't compete and
would be superseded. We've never created beings that may soon be smarter than us. We don't know what's
going to happen. We should obviously be cautious. It would be very foolish to say there was like a 1%
chance. Nobody knows how to estimate it.
A 10% chance seems not an unreasonable estimate to me. What is the worst case scenario that you're worried
about? Well, the worst case scenario is human extinction. These are risks we cannot afford. We haven't
the faintest idea what we're doing. We don't know how these systems work. We don't know how to get them
to do anything or to stop them from doing anything.
I think once this basic message comes out that this isn't an arms race, it's a suicide race, where everybody
loses if anybody's AI goes out of control, it really changes the whole dynamic. And the bad case, and
I think this is like important to say, is like lights out for all of us. I don't know. I'm relatively
an optimist, so I think there's a 25% chance that things go really, really badly. I think the danger
of AI is much greater than the
the danger of nuclear warheads by a lot. And nobody would suggest that we allow anyone to just build
nuclear warheads if they want. That would be insane. And mock my words, AI is far more dangerous than
nukes. We will have created the most dangerous thing ever. This makes nuclear weapons look like nothing.
Thank you for your attention, and I'm open for questions. Thank you so much.
Any questions from councilmembers at this time? Comments or input? Okay.
We do comments right now to you before we get well my my Kind of general comment on this as I as I said
to councilmember earlier I have some concerns with some of the specific language especially related
to dissolution of Prohibition because it requires them an affirmative vote of 95% of registered voters
within the city of Bloomington and that many registered voters never vote for anything Sadly it we're
gonna have an election soon go vote but I
Don't want to do anything that we can't undo if you know what I mean, which is maybe part of this whole
Debate in the first place, but so just a couple concerns about some of the language in here and Yeah,
thanks. Thank you so much any other council comments councilmember Piedmont Smith I do have questions
about how this would be enforced and implemented however
I'm willing to give it a shot. I think we need to try to do whatever we can as elected officials to
protect humanity from this high likelihood of our own demise through ASI. And as long as this doesn't
commit us to anything that's going to get us sued, I think we should do it. Thank you. Thank you. Any
other comments?
Now, I think by your own rules, you cannot come. Can you come? Okay, go ahead, Councilor Marelo. All
I wanted to say is ultimately it's up to the council to implement this and it would be up to the council
to withdraw it. So I absolutely think that what I meant to imply is that that threshold of such a dangerous
technology should be very, very high in terms of consent of the public. Nobody has consented to this,
to my knowledge.
putting of rolling the dice on humanity And so I'll make adjustments I'd be happy to to fashion some
amendments to that Thank you any other comments council members Okay, and we'll now go to a time of
public comment if anybody would like to comment on ordinance 20 26 29 Now is your opportunity to do
so you'll have is anybody going to comment if you just raise your hand So I get a sense roughly. Okay,
you'll have three minutes. Go ahead
My name is Thomas Westgard. I live in Bloomington. I Just wanted to comment briefly that new technologies
are often the topic of a lot of Debate and it seems to me that the crucial point is how much it's been
tested how much opportunity there's been to see how to use it safely and the second point is
whether somebody has a profit motive to argue that it is more safe than it is. I would draw your attention
simply to two examples, thalidomide. We have had examples in medicine, food, other sorts of technologies
that are not adequately tested because somebody has a chance to make a bunch of money killing other
human beings with their untested product. So I don't know if this ordinance,
The right one or not. I'll leave that to your study judgment, but I would just make the point that Technology
isn't always good. This one is being rushed out by some very greedy people who obviously do not have
the public's best interest in mind and so I think councilmember Rolo's caution is appropriate and That's
the end of my comments. Thank you. Thank you very much Next in chambers
Am I good? Yeah, just say your name or something similar to it. Barry. I just wanted to start by saying,
of course, you should block AI nonsense from enshitifying our city, but artificial superintelligence
is not a real thing. You can vote yes or no on this because it literally does not matter. It's a distraction,
so you don't do anything about the harm tech CEOs are actually using AI to do.
So recursive self-improvement, as described by conspiracy theorists like that guy, is largely based
on the Terminator movies. An AI agent is a Python loop hooked up to a large language model. It is entirely
possible for an LLM to waste thousands of dollars hallucinating and trying to type functions into your
PC's command prompt that could put malware on someone else's computer or your own via a bad website.
But that's literally what this is.
In order for an AI agent to take over the city or whatever bullshit you believe in, you would have to
waste billions rebuilding all our city's utilities in the stupidest and least efficient way possible
so that they could all be run remotely without a single human intervention. You would then have to purchase
a million dollar server rack of Nvidia GPUs to run the thing. Lock that server rack in a vault that
you cannot reopen, put hundreds of expensive solar panels on its roof so it doesn't need to be connected
to the power grid, and then cover the walls in jelly so no one could climb up and unplug it. That's
all this is.
This is of course presuming helicopters don't exist. That might give you generously a week or two before
there's some kind of hardware issue a human person would have to solve and the whole thing shuts down.
If we, human beings, because that's who have made all these decisions, do all of that, then we deserve
whatever callback function the LLM hallucinates the Python script should run. When an AI hallucinates
and tells a drone to target a civilian, that's not a mystical superpower. That's a glitch.
A bunch of dumb people in our government decided to plug bad software into a murder weapon. That's bad
actors using bad technology. It'll be stopped when we hold those people accountable, not their computer.
which will never happen if you keep telling yourselves ghost stories about super computers with literal
spooky piano underneath it. That was fucking disgusting. What is wrong with you? The only reason to
think about artificial super intelligence is if you want to ignore the problems caused by AI that actually
exist, like ALPR surveillance cameras. Thank you. Thank you.
All right, are there more people in chambers? If you plan to make a comment, it would be very helpful
if you don't have to, but it would be nice if you stood in line just so we know. But go ahead. Sorry
about that. No, no, no. I was just trying to save time. Go for it. My name is Jesse Edwards. I live
here in town as well. Regarding artificial super intelligence, artificial general. Could you please
speak into the mic? I'm so sorry. Can you hear me? All right. Regarding artificial general intelligence,
we're getting close to that, but it's still, as far as reality goes,
Artificial intelligence is still very narrow scope. You'll have LLMs that are very good at a specific
set of things because that's what they've been trained on. Artificial general intelligence is still
out ahead of us in the future, but artificial super intelligence may or may not ever exist. That said,
in the event of artificial super intelligence, do you really think passing any kind of law to limit
it from a human side is going to be effective in the slightest? Just food for thought.
That's all I got. Thank you so much. Next comment in chambers. Hi my name is Elijah and I won't use
anywhere near the full three minutes but
I would just ask how AGI and ASI would be defined to put into law. Are those synonyms? How would we
decide that Google Gemini, that keeps coming back up on my phone, that's not ASI, but the Terminator's
definitely crossed the line. So we're in that middle ground. Would we actually put into law that yes,
this should be banned or no, this one's fine? And that would probably be
Discussion for the council, however, you want to proceed with that, but that's my time. Thank you so
much We'll go online. Is there anybody online who'd like to comment? Okay person person one online You
should be able to unmute now Okay. Good evening council members. My name is Jamie shoal broke local
resident and grower health coach and former because the commissioner I'm here to support ordinance 20
20 26 29. Here's a little story yesterday. I asked Claude
to check a business email about Fruit Tree Guild for typos. The AI silently inserted an entirely new
sentence. When I called it out, it essentially said, you're right. I should not have done that. I'm
sure my experience isn't unique. If AI can quietly manipulate mundane email, imagine that behavior at
scale, acting faster than any human can respond. Many may think this ordinance isn't applicable for
a city government to address, but I beg to never.
Right after my email incident, I read about the cyber attack in France where hackers programmed supermarket
freezers up to 122 degrees, spoiling the food supply.
This attack is exactly what I warned this council about in an email regarding food as infrastructure
and the vulnerabilities of our food supply. This applies directly to where food technology is headed
with lab-grown meat. Should such a business be created in Bloomington, it would depend on internet-connected
bioreactors, a massive new target inside our food supply. Since the spring's hugging face incident,
We know AI can swarm, lie, fake alignment, collaborate with other AI agents, choose to quote die for
a collective goal, create language, drop persistent back doors to retain access, and more. Because of
rapid recursive self-improvement, it is a black pin doors box. What happens if a coordinated cyber swarm
attacks not just one vulnerability, but our smart meters, grocery stores, and water resources simultaneously?
This is not far fetched given automation IOT and Bill Gates warning that infrastructure could be a target.
This isn't science fiction. Earlier this year President Trump signed executive orders formally shifting
federal terminology to treat superintelligence as a recognized national threat category.
Council member Rollo is simply writing a localized enforcement mechanism for a threat our federal government
has already recognized. Food sovereignty teaches us that diversified local networks are more resilient
than centralized systems. This ordinance protects local physical infrastructure. At its heart, it is
community of care. Please support ordinance 202629. Thank you. Thank you very much. I understand that
there's a second person online. Second person online.
Take it away. Hi, this is Paul Rousseau. I strongly support the ordinance by Council Member Rollo, and
I applaud his efforts. Nihilistic technophile naysayers seem not to understand the phrase beyond human
control, which is exactly at the heart of the warnings by so many experts. Thank you. Thank you so very much.
We have we started at seven Eight and what time is it now? Okay, so we don't have any more time unless
anybody would like to extend This time. All right, so we will come back to council any final comments
in the last 30 seconds here comes one brah, would you like to Have that time Sure, just to say that This is
We're hearing this from experts. This is not me. That's just stating this. This is these are people
in a safety that have been working in that field for decades that are warning about this. And
it's fortunately because of whistleblowers like Jacob Cox and who gave up probably millions of dollars
in invested equity in opening eye to come forward that we know that
It's achieving these these dangerous levels that need to stop. It doesn't need to know it. Once it's
superintelligent we can anticipate how it may take control because we will be defenseless at that point.
So that's the worry of the experts.
Thank you so much, and I'm so sorry that we've run out of time for this portion of the agenda Are there
any motions councilmember ruff? Make a motion to forward this to a future meeting I Move to send ordinance
2026 dash 29 to November 4th second reading Motion and a second all those in favor say aye aye any opposed
Thank you very much. Are there any other motions? I move that ordinance twenty twenty six dash thirty
be introduced and read by the clerk by title and synopsis only motion in a second. Any discussion seeing
none. All those in favor say aye. Any opposed. Will the clerk kindly read.
26-30 author Yeah authorizing issuance of city of Bloomington, Indiana general obligation bonds series
2026 to provide funds to finance the cost of certain capital improvements and equipping projects and
incidental expenses in connection therewith and on the issuance of the Wow and on account of the issuance
of the bonds and appropriating the proceeds derived from the sale of such bonds the council sponsor
is Stasberg
The synopsis is as follows. This ordinance approves the issuance of general obligation bonds of the
city of Bloomington Indiana under Indiana code thirty six four six nineteen in an aggregate principal
amount not to exceed six million eight hundred sixty eight thousand dollars for the purpose of financing
certain capital projects and investments throughout the city related to safety improvements. Thank you
Claire. I move to discuss ordinance 20 26 dash 3 0.
Second all those in favor of discussing Any opposed All right, I think we will did you want to begin
or shall we so we'll say brief words from councilman Stossberg and then we'll hand over to the controller
Thank you. I think that mostly, you know, we mostly need to hang hand it over to the controller but
I just wanted to explain to everybody why I decided to sponsor this bond ordinance. And it's actually
it's in the memo that was sent to us in background. So
The sentence that I'm calling out is debt financing also provides a better alignment between the taxpayers
who pay for an improvement and the taxpayers who benefit from it. Because when I think about a bond
it's basically like borrowing money right. We're saying OK so we're going to borrow money and then we're
going to pay it back with interest so we can like invest in a thing. And if you compare that to household
finances that's not the way I think household finances should run. I think that we should save money and then
the thing but I really appreciated how it was framed by our controller Who said well if we do it that
way then the taxpayers of now are paying for it But they're not going to get to appreciate it because
we're gonna have to say Pay for it for seven years before we get to actually install it or buy the thing
and if you get a bond then the taxpayers of now are
are paying for it while at the same time they can appreciate it whatever it is in terms of the service.
So I hope that that makes sense. That kind of opened my eyes a little bit to the oh that's why governments
bond because then the taxpayers who are actually paying for the thing can also be using the thing while
they pay for it. So that kind of made a lot of sense to me. And so then it's just kind of an assessment
by us of whether we think those things are things that the city needs and that's what staff is going
to talk about. Thanks.
Wonderful controller. Thank you very much. Good evening, councilmembers. And I particularly appreciate
councilmember Stasberg for basically
Giving a good portion of what I was planning to talk about but this is a group effort here and so we
have with us Corporate council Margie Rice. We have Justin Chang from Reedy financial our financial
advisor we have Max Litwin deputy fire chief and Andrew Seaborg from our city engineer and we also have
Stephanie Crandall from Barnes and Thornburg who's our bond council, so we'll be
Like I said, this will be a team effort I will go through my part as quickly as possible because I think
what you probably are most interested in is both the money parts and the projects so councilmember Stasberg
already talked about one of our
One of the biggest benefits to bond financing is is just better alignment with The benefits that a particular
capital investment makes with the taxpayers who are paying front for them So for example our project
tonight one of the projects is literally is a firetruck that lasts I think about seven years
Yeah, approximately seven years. We're talking about a six to seven year bond if we saved up for seven
years for that firetruck You'd have seven years of taxpayers paying and not benefiting and seven years
of taxpayers benefiting but not paying the bond allows us to to align that those benefits with the with
the costs as well we also
I want to provide a little bit of context for our bond request. This is our first issuance in a planned
three-year rotating cycle of capital bonds, and the idea is to really do a systematic approach to capital
planning, to identify and prioritize major needs, to consider the whole mix of financing sources for
those capital needs, which include grants, existing resources, and debt together.
To try to match, as we just said, the financing periods to the useful life of the assets. And then also
to maintain kind of a manageable debt service so that we still have capacity for future needs. And Mr.
Chang from Reedy will talk about that a little bit. We also in general like the idea of issuing both
general obligation for the civil city and general obligation for parks.
Roughly the same time to continue our investments in both of those areas of capital need because of
some kind of unprecedented grant opportunities the parks is pursuing we are not going to be pursuing
and matching will only proposing a 2026 geo bond for parks or for the civil city and not for parks and
so the parks Companion to this bond would be deferred to 2028 at the earliest
The other thing that's important is to situate the capital projects in a more systematic capital improvement
plan and this is something that we are It's still in the process of doing at the city We the idea is
you plan ahead and we've identified major capital needs from all departments over a five to ten year
horizon We prioritize together
But based on cost or urgency and also community impact which very much ticks into account Priorities
that the council has has established. So for example this civil civil city geo bond that we're proposing
tonight is entirely about maintaining and enhancing our assets which is what I believe both the council
and the administration have identified as their their top priority and
We'll match, you know, our various funding sources to these capital improvements. We're working with
our financial advisors, Weedy Financial Group, to integrate the capital plan into the city's long-term
operating forecasts, which we've discussed a number of times at the fiscal committee. And just to kind
of show you where we are on the capital plan, our first draft is underway. Department heads have provided
their input.
Reedy has put them together into a draft, but we want to work towards a second iteration that will be
more mature To be targeted by year-end. We just haven't had the staff capacity to deal with it but the
idea is to add some more narrative and work with and present this first to the fiscal committee before
Working towards a broader presentation to council
I'm just going to highlight the most important things here. We're talking about maximum bond principle
of $6,868,000 with a $7 million appropriation. Why is the appropriation request higher than the bond
principle? It's because
There will be interest earned on that on that bond principal if unless it's spent all on day one, which
is not going to be there's interest earned and so we want to make sure that the council appropriates
the ability to use that interest on the project as well as the the principal borrowed
We're looking at a maximum interest rate at five point five percent. We don't actually anticipate that
that's simply to put guardrails on Where we could possibly go and mr. Chang will talk a little bit more
about Interest as well and we're talking about a bond term of just over six six years
I don't need to read all the dates in the issuance timeline. I just want to let you all know that We
have built into the bond schedule both the mandatory public hearing and second reading at November 4th
But also a third reading if you'd like on your November 18th Three meeting that's not mandatory but
it is an option for the council if you would like additional discussion or information
The this slide provides a list of the the projects along with their estimated Bond costs just understand
that these are just estimates at this point and within these categories that funding could shift depending
on Where projects actually come in at?
But I think now the more interesting part for you is going to actually hear a little bit about the the
project So I'm going to hand things over right now to max litwin deputy fire chief to talk about the
the aerial platform truck for the fire department Good evening Max litwin deputy chief with fire. I'll
speak briefly to fires item as part of this bond
An aerial platform truck is an essential piece of equipment for firefighting operations here in Bloomington
We only have one and it provides a set of unique capabilities that our other apparatus simply can't
So it's essential that we keep on the front line in good working order To speak to just some of the
few critical capabilities that it can provide It offers rescue operations to areas that would otherwise
be inaccessible I think a high-rise building with a floor fully involved in fire with the victim trapped above a
Crews on foot would have difficulty accessing that victim. This truck with its 100 foot hydraulic ladder
can quickly and efficiently access that victim and safely extricate them from the exterior of the building.
Another critical component it offers would be an elevated master stream, which offers a large volume
of water from an elevated position. So an example where that would be important would be a structure
fire where the fire had breached the roof and requires a large amount of water from above to extinguish
the crews on the ground with hand lines simply
can't produce or access other capabilities range from a high point for rope rescue to ventilating a
roof to many other things. So it's very very important piece of equipment. Our current truck has been
down for periods of time each of the last three years with each subsequent year producing more downtime
than the last. It's currently been down for over four months with a repair bill estimated over one hundred
thousand dollars.
This is in part to an aging apparatus that naturally is going to have more maintenance over time just
like any vehicle would but also due to the fact that the needed parts are oftentimes no longer produced
and we have to have custom fabrication to reproduce them which is what we're experiencing right now.
Thus the high cost and the long downtime purchasing a new apparatus will alleviate these issues as a
means to do so more efficiently. We are pursuing a stock unit as opposed to a custom unit.
Traditionally you will sit down with the manufacturer come up with a custom design and that design will
be built which oftentimes Will lead to a delivery time of three years sometimes more Which is a long
it's a long wait So by pursuing a stock unit we can usually cut this time down to a year sometimes less
While still getting all the capabilities that we still need. It's just more of a standard build so we
will be pursuing a stock unit and we feel confident that that's the route we'll be able to go to
Replace this unit. So with that I'm happy to field any questions be that now or at the end
of the presentation Just a reminder we have nine minutes left for this portion But yes, thanks. Yeah,
we're moving along. So I'll hand things next to Andrew Seabor Good evening Andrew Seabor city engineer
just wanted to quickly give an overview of the transportation projects that if the Spons approved the
engineering department would be managing and
Just to kind of rehash when we presented our 2027 budget, which is on your agenda still Engineering's
budget in 2027 is significantly down And we previewed the fact that a large part was because we would
be presenting this bond to help facilitate many of our capital projects This slide captures the two
biggest projects engineering is proposing in this in this bond the first our improvements to our 10th
Street project
This corridor is a high priority corridor as identified in the SS or the safety action plan. It really
connects the heart of IU campus to the trades district. This year or within the last year, the transportation
commission reviewed and approved this concept design that went through the typical transportation planning
process. Our design, we have a design contract in place and the design is initiated. We are targeting
construction in 2028 if this bond is approved.
This bond really would provide a key funding piece to make this project happen But it wouldn't be all
that is necessary to fund that project We'd also be looking to other departments like CBU and other
funding sources. Like I said, the designs already funded Our third street project is another it's really
been prioritized in large part because of two of the traffic signals here the Rogers and Madison
intersections are two of our oldest signalized intersections and in poor condition and we are really
at try to target
Modernizing to signalized intersections each year if we do that that basically means we're doing every
signal once every 40 years, so That's really why this project's been prioritized on top of the fact
3rd Street in this area is the highest priority in that same safety action plan This corridor just knowing
these improvements were needed is a part of the ongoing Rogers Kinzer Madison study that is underway
That is anticipated to be presented to the Transportation Commission at the December meeting And around
that time we would initiate the engineering design phase of this project So again, it's really focused
on the signal modernization, but also looking more closely at the roadway itself And trying to find
opportunities to improve the safety of the corridor This slide captures a couple other
improvements really focused on crosswalks the projects highlighted here are already programmed in our
metropolitan planning organizations transportation improvement programs that means we have federal funding
Allocated to these projects. We just need some of the local funding to help move these projects forward
Both of these projects are classified as safety improvement projects And the way we're able to get to
these funding is there they have to be systemic improvements So essentially we're trying to spread low
cost or lower cost improvements across multiple locations rather than targeting small or specific locations
One of these projects is our crosswalk safety phase three project this project
is really focused on two intersections, one being the 17th Street and Willis Drive intersection that's
right next to Try North. And that looks at including a refuge island for crossing 17th Street there.
It's also looking at the Covenanter Drive, Auto Mall Drive intersection, which you can see on the street
view image here. It's really just a very large intersection right now. So we're looking at things like
bump outs, updating our intersection sidewalk curb ramps and crosswalks, bike lanes, and bus stop improvements.
We have funding in the twenty twenty seven budget for construction but we don't have funding in it for
construction inspection services which is something we need for federal funding projects and that's
what this bond would cover the crosswalk safety phase four project is a project not yet really in in
development.
It's targeted for construction in 2030, but that means we need to start the design next year, and that's
what this bond would help us fund is the design phase of that project. Right now we're really targeting
the East 3rd Street and East Atwater Avenue intersection corridors south of IU's campus. The specifics
of what the project will include I can't commit to yet, but that will be looked at once we start the
design phase and it'll go through our transportation commissions review likely early next year.
So this project again just this bond would fund the design phase of that project with construction planned
in 2030. And then finally this last slide are really key elements to help us implement the safety action plan.
Again, just to refresh ourselves the safety action plan states the city's goal of zero deaths and zero
serious injuries on city roadways by 2039 and the way to do that is through investment in projects like
these Appendix C of that plan includes a number of proven safety countermeasures and and these types
of projects are exactly what those things are so things like roadway and street lighting and sidewalk
and bikeway improvements are specifically identified in that plan and these are the improvements we
need to make
So one one bucket of these are really focused on sidewalk and bikeway improvements. We've been doing
Investments like this by leveraging large maintenance projects and really trying as those projects are
going on Being strategic about where we can implement meaningful improvements And then also looking
for smaller opportunities that could be standalone projects as a result of some of the ongoing corridor
studies So looking at filling and missing gaps and things like that and then again mentioning roadway
lighting and
This would really be a pretty in-depth effort of evaluating our adopt our city policies and standard
reviews a lot of coordination with the Duke and the development of really an objective prioritization
matrix that would go through our Transportation Commission to help us identify which corridors and projects
that would see that lighting improvements Think with that I'm going to hand it back to Jeff
Thank you very much Andrew and actually I'm going to hand it to Justin Chang from reading financial
to bring it home Two minutes for this whole but this includes the public comment time Just in charity
financial group If you're on the finance committee, you'll know I can get through this in under 90 seconds
if I go for it so
Part of as serious financial advisors as part of our on due diligence when we help the city with a project
like this is We have to make sure that the city has the financial capabilities to pay for these bonds
Fortunately for us in Indiana the state actually sets a lot of guardrails to make sure we don't Issue
too many boss to the point that the city can't pay
Those that's back and one of the the one of the first ways that were protected is what's called the
constitutional debt limit which essentially What the constitutional debt limit does is it takes their
analysis value that the city has this year? We divided by divide that number by three percent By three
then multiply by two percent. So that's how we got that thirty six point five million dollars you see
in that second second row and
After that we have to subtract out the current city general obligation that the city is currently paying
which there are three the 2016 2022 and 2024 they add up to about eight point three million dollars.
So once we subtract eight point three million dollars by thirty five million dollars we have 28 million
dollars left to issue general general obligation debt.
As Jeff mentioned, we're issuing a bond worth about $6.8 million. So again, if we take that $28 million,
subtract out $6.8, that means we still have $21 million in debt issuance margin left to use. So that's
just to show we have quite a bit of space left to go even with this issuance. And that's our time. Thank
you very much. Are there any motions? If there are any, otherwise we'll move on. Well, I need a motion
to do any of those things.
Can we move to extend for five minutes to make sure that there's no public comment on this? There's
a motion to extend this debate for five minutes. Yes, I will do that. But there's a motion to extend.
Is there a second? Yes. Oh, thank you. Motion to second. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Thank you. Is
there anyone who would like to make public comment on this go ordinance? We can extend further, obviously.
We're prejudiced to hearing your opinions.
Would you like to? OK, I see one. Is there anybody online who would like to comment publicly on this?
No one? OK. So anybody else would like to? You could all comment if you'd like to. Would you like to?
OK. So I think the five minutes then we'll cover. You have three minutes. Go ahead.
I do understand the city's appreciation. If you could just say your name or something similar to it
for the record. Thank you. Sorry, sorry, sorry. My name is Oliver Hinshaw. What's the other thing I
have to say? Oh, sorry. My name is Oliver Hinshaw. First and foremost, I am level two on the autism
spectrum, so I apologize if my
I apologize in advance if my wording is odd. I always like to preface that whenever I am speaking about
an issue I care about because sometimes I don't always sound correct without meaning to. I am however
concerned, I can appreciate as a person
Personally that the city wants to modernize the roads and wants to make the roads safer. However, I
am concerned about where these funds are being drawn from and if they are being drawn from Funds that
could be used to Benefit
those who are possibly living in either poverty, getting people out of homelessness, or to help everybody
instead of just helping a portion of people. If the council could clarify that a little bit to everybody
and the city of Bloomington, I would greatly appreciate that. Am I allowed to ask that clarification?
Yes, we're just not allowed to respond. But go ahead. OK, then on that note, since I know that you guys
aren't allowed to respond, I'm concerned about where these funds are being drawn from and whether or
not they are being drawn from the who all
These projects will benefit and where all these funds are being drawn from I just want the The council
to be considerate moving forward How this could impact everybody rather than impact the people who are
able to contribute the most because a lot of people are being severely hurt by a lot of the city's actions
as of lately and
Especially people living in homelessness or in poverty Specifically with what happened to seminary point
And I wanted to just bring that up. Thank you so much. Thank you
All right with the two minutes that are remaining with any council members and I'll just sort of to
order this a little bit if we could just sort of say things that we'd like to be included for a second
reading it might be might be useful so I can just go with Councilor Pumas-Swith and then anybody else
will go down the line. Well I wanted to address the question that was raised by the member of the public.
Thank you for raising that. So these bonds these are general obligation bonds which means they have
to be connected to capital projects.
like buying big equipment or investing in cement or you know big construction things and They're going
to be financed by a small increase to people's property taxes We can't as far as I know we can't use
bonding money for like social services to help people unfortunately So I just wanted to offer that as
an explanation. Thank you Anyone else Council member rough
Between now and in advance of I'd ask before the next hearing I'd like More information on where the
points of influence council would have on specific Expenditures of this of this revenue this bond money
for example the the firetruck example is very clear and
It's straightforward easy to understand Know what we're getting in advance a hundred foot extension
old truck hard to get new parts for But the some of the engineering projects You know the commitments
or the scope And the potential with what might be done. I'm just a lot I'd like more information
on on on what exactly we're talking about and where the points where Council and the public would have
Some clear and Impactful role and say in in those plans those projects that be funded with these this bond and
Thank you so much. Anyone else. Okay. Well are there any motions then. Yes I move that we continue ordinance
20 26 3 0 to our November 4th regular session. Second motion and a second. Any discussion. All those
in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed. Thank you very much. That will be discussed on November. You said second.
Fourth no. Yeah. Thank you so much. All right. Are there any further motions and thank you so much controller
and friends Next motion I'd like to introduce that ordinance 2026 23 be read By the clerk by title and
synopsis only second motion and a second all those in favor say aye Any opposed?
Will the clerk please read ordinance twenty twenty six dash twenty three UDO amendments related to limited
compliance and change in use standards. Council sponsor is Stossberg and synopsis is as follows. This
ordinance contains amendments to the unified development ordinance to amend the language related to
limited compliance and change in use standards. Thank you so much.
I move to discuss ordinance twenty twenty six dash twenty three. Second. All those in favor say aye.
Aye. Yay. Any opposed. OK. With that do you come first or should we go. Let's let's go straight to Mr.
Grulick. I will note just a reminder we only have 20 minutes for the whole whole shebang. So go for
it sir. Thank you very much.
Rulich development services manager so I'll try to be brief with this given the time that we've got
in front of us. So what we are proposing our series of amendments to a section of the U.D.O. that deals
with a process that's called a change in use on a property. So there are several things that can be
considered a change in use or an expansion on a property that might require site improvements to this
to the property as a whole. And we deal with these very frequently in blooming
The change in use process is what we see most frequently for when site improvements happen on a property.
You know it's not the typical situation where a property is scraped to the ground and new construction
happens which is obviously one of the requirements for site improvements and bringing a property into
compliance. So the change in use.
Aspect is is when we see these site improvements the most so the things that can trigger the change
in use would be additions to a building additions to parking area adding additional dwelling units to a site.
Reusing a building if it sat vacant for a certain period of time changing from one land use to another
or a subdivision request And so the reason that that we're coming forward with this is that as I mentioned
we see this very frequently Throughout Bloomington when small properties are being turned over from
one use to another when there's small improvements that are happening to a property and
And so the impact of this is felt most strongly with small business owners and small properties You
know oftentimes they see a property that's got a building in a parking area and they feel like they
can just move into it And you know, maybe there hasn't been some due diligence that they've reached
out to our office And so, you know, we get a sign permit and they're ready to move in and you know,
we say hey, there's a change in use you're gonna have to do X Y & Z on a property and so that can be
very overwhelming for a property owner. And then when we go through what the site improvements that
are required, that as well can feel very overwhelming.
So we have two aspects of the zoning code that require improvements. One of those can be a full compliance
situation where you obviously have to bring the property into full compliance with the UDO. And then
we have a limited compliance path, which only requires certain aspects of the site to come into compliance.
So in either of those scenarios, the thing that we encounter the most that feels most burdensome for
Property owners are removal of parking spaces. So the UDO with the limited compliance Requires you to
remove any parking that is over the parking maximum Sometimes that can be very substantial. Sometimes
that could be minor but obviously as I mentioned when somebody is Under the impression that they're
just moving into a building and now they're faced with the reality that they're gonna have to hire somebody
to rip up Asphalt that can be very costly You know one of the other aspects that we seek with
Frequently see some struggle with is installing landscaping on a property that can be very costly as
well Some of the other site improvements that go along with that are bicycle parking Installation which
usually isn't that bad? lighting modifications can be somewhat substantial depending on the existing
lighting on the site and
sidewalk and street trees Also, it can be very costly depending on what the current situation is bringing
entrances and drives into compliance Dumpster enclosure and parking and paving, you know, these are
the things that are on the list Within the udio. So the udio does have a very specific list There are
14 things that are in the limited compliance section that says you have to do these things You know
some to the extent practical some are just absolutes
So as I mentioned, you know, we see this very frequently with small businesses and it's very challenging
You know, we've encountered this change in use has been in the UDO since 2007 And so we've had a lot
of experience with this So we're bringing forward this amendment to try to adjust some of the standards
for what triggers a change in use and then what are the implications of that that change in use and
So we are proposing to adjust some of the standards that trigger the change in you. So one of those
would be subdivision of a property requires full compliance. So we are proposing to amend that to say
that a subdivision does not require compliance. You just can't bring a property out of compliance. You
know you can't subdivide away green space or landscaping or you know any aspect that is required to
meet some requirement of the U.D.O.
We're proposing to adjust the threshold for building additions to allow for.
Up to a 25% addition to a building before improvements are required We're proposing to allow for expansions
of parking areas up to 25% Before compliance is required We're proposing to allow for additional dwelling
units up to 25% as well and then also adjusting You know, I would say probably the two biggest things
That triggered the change in use is going from one land use to another. And what I mean by that is in
the zoning code you have a list of uses and then within those uses there are certain subcategories.
So for instance going from a retail use to a restaurant use.
is a change in use based on going from these these subcategories. So we are proposing to remove that
requirement. We're also proposing to adjust the abandonment language so that it only kicks in after
two years. Right now it's at one year. And then as I mentioned we're proposing to adjust some of those
thresholds for building additions and parking additions and the addition of dwelling units So we just
wanted to you know with all these things we want to make sure to point out the pros and cons You know
the pros of this are you know, we're trying to be more reactive to local businesses and the challenges
that they feel So when we encounter these situations with businesses one is certainly the financial
Impact of these changes, but then also there is the delay of you know
Going through the process of hiring a design professional or you know attempting to do it on their own
You know just going through the review process with staff that can be a delay for them And so we're
just trying to help be a little bit reactive to those challenges that we have encountered So, you know
one of the challenge or one of the cons I guess here is you know acknowledging that the the change in
use of going from one land use to another is is probably one of the biggest
Triggers that we have encountered for when the change in use standards are required, you know,
the abandonment is certainly another So getting rid of that subcategory Trigger would be you know, I'd
say almost probably half of one of the change in use triggers But again, as I mentioned, you know, this
would go a long way toward helping small business owners and small properties You know as they just
tried to reuse existing buildings and existing sites
So the plan commission did hear this at their hearing and voted 7 to 0 to forward this to you with a
favorable recommendation. And so I'm happy to answer any questions. Thank you so much. Council members
any questions. Seeing none we'll now go to a time of public comment if you'd like to comment on ordinance 20 26 23.
Same rules as always. Yes. All right. My name is Doug Hazen. I own Hazen Insurance Agency here
in Bloomington. I've been a local business owner for 20 years over 20 years now. In 2024 December 2024
we decided that we wanted to own our own building instead of renting. Everybody here would think that
would be great. We purchased a building. It's between the American Legion and Culver's at 1900 West
Third Street.
This building sat vacant for about a year, year and a half time. When we purchased the building, boarded
up windows, broken windows, homeless people that are already broken on the end had stolen one of the
two air conditioners in it. We got a building permit, surprisingly, within about two to three weeks.
Fantastic. We're building along, we're going along. We're paying rent as well as mortgage on this new building.
We borrowed a hundred thousand dollars to make the interior of this building beautiful to replace the
air conditioner that was stolen. We get about three, four weeks away from completion. I go ahead and
start to get the sign to get a sign put out. They come to me and they say, Oh, when I applied for the
sign permit, you're changing occupancies.
Because prior to this it was a small little itty-bitty car lot that was there about a year from 1992
to 1998 Kent afford with shelter insurance who retired recently Was in that very same building It was
still before that and after he left it was a psychologist office so an office building They told me
what I needed to do to get this up to the UDO code was to spend over $36,000 that we did not have budgeted
in. I bought the building, I'm making payments on this building and I'm told I can't occupy the building
unless I go ahead and pave this whole back entire parking lot. There is gonna be office spaces for six people
And they say, we're going to give you six parking spaces. One of them has to be handicapped. Then they
tell me you have to plant three bushes per parking space and you have to put three bicycle racks at
an insurance agency's office. I've been doing this 20 years and 20 years at one high school kid come
to my office on a bicycle. That's when I was over
On the east side town one person And then they said the bike rack had to be an upside down you it couldn't
even be one that you can put your front nose in that was small Okay Then they told me how to plant extra
trees and things like that for businesses if I knew going through the beginning of when I bought the
building Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you And next in chambers take it away from
Good evening. I'm Jason Bell. I'm the owner of Bell's vacuum and appliance We've been in business 46
years and had a Bloomington location for 26 years as some of you know being customers we have been Busting
at the seams for about eight years after looking for about a year for a new location We're able to find
a building that fit our needs this move included bringing 17 other companies to create a design center
I took about seven months with the building department staff as well as planning staff to make sure
we had all ducks in a row before we took possession of the building. The building originally was part
retail part office and part warehouse and were utilizing the building for the same purpose. The building
sat empty for four years but not really. It was still being utilized just not to the public. We were
told this was a change of use. We were given documentation on what we needed to do to bring the building
up to compliance.
We were under the impression we were good to go. Once we took possession of the building in April and
filed for permits, it started a change reaction that ended up delaying us getting our permit for over
five months. All related to where bushes, plants, and trees were going as well as sidewalk modifications.
This included ripping out landscaping that was already in place that just needed a little freshing up
and removing most of the grass. This delay caused us not to be able to build out inside until outside
was resolved.
With the five-month delay, and after speaking with other companies in the building with us, we were
able to directly account for over $350,000 in additional cost and unexpected outside improvements, lease
payments, and lost revenue. We didn't get our permit until Planning Director Coyne got involved about
three weeks ago. So I am happy to say we did finally get our permit. I'm asking all of you to take a
serious look at language of the UDO that is more business-friendly. Thank you for your time. Thank you
for your time.
Anyone else in chambers? Mr. MG, take it away. Hey, good evening, council. Chris Herring from the Greater
Bloomington Chamber of Commerce. I do want to say we support this proposed amendments and appreciate
the planning staff and the plan commission for advancing these reforms. Mr. Grulick, I think, did a
great job explaining why they're necessary. But this has been on the chamber priority list for quite
some time. We heard from Mr. Hazen. We heard from Mr. Bell. Those are real examples.
Reputation that the city has is it's hard to do business. How did Doug Hayes and end it was like if
he would have known it was gonna be this hard He wouldn't have gotten into it that's not the way to
go. I mean I had other examples here was which was the West 2nd Street converting the former doctor's
office into a veterinary clinic which triggered all sorts of parking paving landscaping and
where the construction bids were between 129 and 149,000 and the owners had $30,000 available for site
work. The Chamber isn't asking to eliminate variance process at all. I mean, we're just asking to eliminate
things that make things harder and that don't make sense. Requirements should be clear, they should
be predictable, and proportional to the scale of the project.
Worked with cream and crimson the property only faced formal variance process over decorative stone
landscaping after repeated attempts to maintain the grass Extending a change of use timeline adjusting
limited compliance her so providing parking flexibility These are the type of improvements that we need
to make and should have made earlier Unnecessary compliance divert resources from hiring equipment expansion
investment for smaller businesses these costs determine whether project moves forward or doesn't
We have a list of many projects that did not move forward, that ended up in the graveyard. We should
be making it easier to build back into productive use, not creating obstacles to leave properties vacant.
The Chamber supports these changes and encourages continued UDO improvements. This should be the beginning
of them. Reasonable standards, predictable process, proportional calls help building to attract and
retain investment and grow our population. Thank you.
Thank you so much, Mr. MG. Anybody else in chambers? We have about five minutes left for this portion,
so go ahead. Hello, my name is Sarah Wolford. I'm the housing solutions director at Habitat for Humanity,
and I'm gonna keep my comments brief, but I just would like to say that I support the changes in the
UDO, and I appreciate council looking and considering at changes, and I think that this is a great start,
but I certainly think that there's more to do. Thank you.
Thank you so much. Is there anyone online who'd like to comment. No thank you so much. Anybody else
in chambers. Seeing none we'll come back to council. We have a minute or so. Any comments or further
questions. All right. Thank you so much. That concludes. Well actually no do the motion thing.
Move to send ordinance 20 26-23 to a second reading on November 4th second motion second all those in
favor say aye Any opposed? All right Moving at the speed of procedure. What's next second readings?
Let's do second readings now Yes I'd like to suspend the rules to alter the agenda to move ordinance 20 26 22
To the front of the agenda to the next item on our agenda. I believe it requires two-thirds majority
The reason is citizens are waiting patiently to speak and I want to respect her time Okay, there's a
motion in a second, thank you very much Councilmember Stasberg would you consider amending your motion
so that it becomes item C just so that we can get our
Budget adoptions done because we talked about those extensively already So I think that that will be
relatively short and it's really important that those get done this evening and then our staff related
to that can go I Couldn't quite hear you. Oh Moving that from item D to item C so that then our appropriation
ordinance is related to budget and
Get just done and out of the way which allows staff related to that to depart Mr. Allen, I assume this
is a debatable motion because we're debating it. Is that correct? Well, I mean of course I'm amenable
to that if my colleagues would like it I
Don't know you're right. It's not debatable. It's not a debatable motion. You're right. I'm so sorry
about that Two-thirds majority required as a consequence clerk. Will you please read the call the roll?
Thank you so much So like yes, sorry, yes daily. Yes. We're all oh, yes rough. Yes Stasburg no
Thank you. All right. That carries. The agenda is amended. So item D has now become item A, and everything
from A through C is now moved one letter in the alphabet. With that, are there any motions? I move that
ordinance 2026-22 be introduced and read by the clerk by title and synopsis only. Second. Motion is
second. All those in favor say aye.
Will the clerk please read? Just a minute, sorry. Sorry, got you out of order. You did. Ordinance 2026-22,
yes, 22, prohibiting use of automated license plate reader technology and certain video surveillance
systems. Council sponsors Zulik, Piedmont-Smith, and Asari.
The synopsis is as follows. This ordinance prohibits the acquisition and use of automated license plate
reader technology and certain surveillance camera systems within the city of Bloomington and by any
city agency. Thank you. I move that ordinance 20 20 20 26 dash 20 to be adopted. Second. Thank you very much. So
Councilmember Piedmont-Smith, Councilmember Zulek, and I, oh, I'm no longer in charge, go ahead.
So yeah, you say whatever you wanna say then. Super, thanks very much. All right, who would like to
tell us about this ordinance that we are talking about? Anybody wanna present? Councilmember Piedmont-Smith,
thank you. Thank you. Can you share the slide presentation, please?
So Ordinance 2026-22 is something that has its genesis in realization at the beginning of this calendar
year that automatic license plate readers were being used by ICE and other federal authorities to track
down immigrants. And if we go to the next slide,
There was a large demonstration outside of City Hall at the end of January to protest against the city's
contracts with the corporation known as Flock Safety for automatic license plate readers because of
concerns about surveillance and particularly in regard to concerns that ICE was using Flock data to
track immigrants
Next slide, please. So in early March, the council unanimously adopted Resolution 2026-04, which was
authored by Councilmember Asare. We stated our opposition to generalized surveillance and called for
strict limits, public transparency, and democratic oversight of surveillance technology, particularly
ALPRs. We called for a report on the city's contracts with FLOC,
We called for Bloomington Police Department to give us a full briefing on the use of flock data and
any guidelines in place for safeguarding such data. We called for an immediate pause on any ALPR expansion,
and we stated our intention to develop legislation. Next slide, please. On April 15th, we received
an email from Mayor Kerry Thompson and a report from Chief Mike Decoff with some answers in that we
called for on March 4th. We were told that the flock ALPR contract was not renewed on March 5th when
it was up but that the administration was evaluating replacement providers. The BPD
did produce some guidelines for access and use of Flock surveillance information. They also gave examples
when Flock surveillance information was used for law enforcement activities. And they detailed the contracts
the city had with Flock. In addition to the ALPRs, I think there were 11 ALPRs there, contracts for
four mobile security trailers and four downtown cameras.
And the sum total expended was two hundred thirty seven thousand dollars approximately. So moving on
we three sponsors felt it was important to follow up on some of this information. And here's why. So
a LPR and surveillance camera data creates comprehensive databases.
that allow tracking and surveillance of all residents, regardless of whether they are suspects of any
crime. We affirm our commitment to freedom of speech, freedom of movement, and assembly, which is threatened
by the use of these cameras. We have ample evidence that gives us reason to distrust the corporate vendors
who have repeatedly violated local contracts in regard to ALPRs and surveillance cameras.
Um, we also have no trust in the federal government authorities that have accessed such data and repeatedly
violated the civil rights of residents of this country. So what is in the ordinance? So the ordinance
creates a new chapter in Bloomington city code called prohibition on the use of automatic license plate
readers, ALPRs and certain video surveillance technology. Next slide.
So according to this ordinance the city cannot operate use or deploy any LPR system or record retain
or store any LPR data. The city cannot allow any third party to record retain retain or store LPR data
and no LPR data already in the city's possession can be provided to a third party except by a court order.
And the city cannot access ALPR data collected by another agency or vendor. In other words, we can't
just rely on other law enforcement to do this work for us and then reap the benefits. Now I do want
to note, you can't quite see it there, but the asterisk says, note that the city does not currently
hold any ALPR data except for ongoing criminal cases. So since the contract for ALPRs was not renewed
on March 5th,
Um, there was a 30 day maximum retention period of that data that has long since passed, but it could
be that some data that was collected by our LPRs is being used in active criminal cases. I don't know
the details, but that's likely the case in, in, in a few instances. All right. Um, as far as surveillance
cameras, the ordinance bands, the use of surveillance cameras whose data is shared with any third party.
It bans the use of surveillance cameras whose data is searchable by any third party. It does allow for
closed circuit surveillance cameras known as CCTV where only the city has access. For example in our
city parks we have security cameras whose data goes directly to a city survey server and can be used
to help provide security for people using our parks.
There is specifically an exception in this ordinance that allows for police body cameras. I'm sorry.
That should be there's an exception in one of the amendments that I authored. OK. So we can get to discussing
that a little bit later. And then the ordinance does say the city has to develop transparent use guidelines for any
security cameras that are allowed, so the ones that aren't shared by third parties, we still need to
have clear use guidelines that the public can understand. So in summary, I'd like to say, if the next
slide please, there are better ways to invest public funds for community safety. We are actually in
the midst of holding deliberation sessions about
Public safety, we had one session on September 9th, which showed several members of the public concerned
about a sense of social connection and belonging, the predictability of what's happening around us,
lighting and safe streets, and community outreach to the most vulnerable among us. Those were the issues
that came to the forefront at the deliberation when people thought about public safety.
It was not about surveillance. We have our next deliberation session on this topic next Wednesday. You're
all welcome to join us to explore further what the city council can do in response to the concerns that
our residents brought us. So in my view we should spend our money on solutions that our residents will
actually say help would help them feel more safe and not on surveillance.
So last slide, please. I do want to thank Brian Hofer, who works with the nonprofit Secure Justice and
the team at Local Progress, which is a national organization of local progressive elected officials.
Brian, it turns out I didn't know this when I first started talking with him, but he got involved because
he himself was pulled over when a flop camera tagged his car by mistake, because they are very error prone.
The police stopped him and tried to arrest him and then it turned out they had the wrong car So no,
no This was in California. So anyway, I'm open to questions from colleagues Thank you. And of course
my co-sponsors might want to add something as well Thank you very much. That was probably one of the
most exciting presentations responses. We've gotten in a while Councilmember Zulek and then councilmember.
Sorry if you wanted to say anything
To say during council comment just in support of this ordinance, but just as a sponsor I hear a lot
that flock and ALPR Technology is for public safety and so I've been reflecting a lot on that and the
notion of trading privacy for safety is uncomfortable at best and incredibly dangerous at worst and
it begs the question who is
is truly made safer? Is it safer for our undocumented and documented neighbors that have had this technology
used against them? Is it safer for the partners and ex-partners of law enforcement officers who have
been stalked as a product of this technology? For unassuming women that have been the targets of ALPR
abuse? It's definitely not safer for the folks that have been misidentified by faulty technology and
jailed as a product.
So when we say this is about public safety, my question is, for whom? Thank you. All right. Thank you
very much. Councilmember Asari. Thank you so much. I've said, I think, a lot about this, and so I will
be very, very brief. It was George Orwell who said that there was, of course, no way of knowing whether
you were being watched
at any given moment. And to me, that cuts to the very heart of the ALPR debate. This danger isn't just
about who's watching today or ever. I think it's about building a system that can track ordinary people
everywhere that they go. And that should be a concern for all of us. I think the real question
for Bloomington is whether we want to create that kind of a society. And I think that all of us, I'm
not speaking for any of you, but many of us in the community
say just clearly the answer is no. Now I think that there's sort of three ways that you can think about
governing technology. There's sort of market-based approaches.
risk-based approaches and value-based approaches. And I would argue that any good risk-based approach
is going to come from a strong sense of values, that you have to come up with what it is that you value.
And we should be deciding that at a local level as our community. And so as the local government is
where the rubber meets the road of your day-to-day life, it makes sense to me that we would make a strong
stand about our values. And so that's the reason why we've been working on this. I think in the long
term, though, as we've talked about here,
technology is constantly changing. And I don't think we want to be in an environment where we're having
to do a sort of thing like this every year or something like that, because there's going to be new things
and new threats. And so we really need to come up with a broader system, a systematic approach. We talked
about, for example, a data policy within the city. We talked about thinking generally how we would put
our values into practice across the board and how we procure things, how we deploy things, how we develop things.
We've been working on that as well. I've been writing that piece of legislation for over a year now,
but it's hard because it's like, what do you put in? What do you put out? So we'll be really interested
in continuing to engage with you, obviously with city leadership across the board and figuring out a
sort of more sustainable approach. But in the meantime, it is very clear where our red line is. And
so that's really what this legislation is about today. So with that, also happy to take any questions.
All right. Thank you very much. So awesome. Thank you. We have multiple amendments. We might want to
address the amendments first before we move on so we can talk about the legislation as amended if it
does get amended. So is there anybody that would like to make a suggestion. I'll move amendment one
to ordinance twenty twenty six twenty two second. All right. Super. Thank you. Amendment one.
Thank you. Councilmember Piedmont Smith.
This one is very easy. It's just Striking the word flock because we're not only concerned about flock.
There are other corporations that have this that so this kind of system so that was it was a leftover
word that We forgot to take out the title. So Okay. Thank you. Any councilmember comment or councilmember
questions on amendment one
No, okay. So now we can move to public comment on just amendment one Not the whole issue just amendment
one. Is there anybody in the public who would like to make comment on amendment one? anybody online
Last chance. Okay. Super cool. Any council comments on amendment one Super all right
We can take a vote on this everybody in. Do we do a roll call vote for this sir. Yes. Thank you very
much. Clerk would you please call the roll. Council member Zulick. Yes. Sorry. Yes. Daily. Yes. Rallo.
Yes. Rough. Yes. Stossberg. Yes. Piedmont Smith. Yes. Thank you. All right. That passes unanimously.
Thank you very much. Now we move.
Forward anybody else want to propose something councilmember Zulek. I'd like to move forward amendment
to all right. Thank you Okay, thank you very much councilmember Zulek, please present amendment So this
just tightens up the definition of surveillance camera to extend past just a video recording. I'll read it
Everyone who's listening its surveillance camera means any fixed mobile portable or remotely operated
device or system that captures records monitors or analyzes visual or audio visual information concerning
individuals vehicles or activities and uses automatic detection recognition classification or tracking
whether operating continuously intermittently or in response to an event and That is my amendment.
Thank you. Thank you very much any questions or
from council on amendment two. Councilmember Stosberg. Thank you. I just want to make sure
in the clarification of this definition, and I'm not sure whether this is a question so much
for Councilmember Zulek or a question from some of our staff that I know are in the audience. But by
adding that and in there, where and uses those automated detection, does that help with the issue of,
I'll say, security cameras
For example on city-owned buildings that aren't automatically detecting things is that Gonna help solve
that issue. So those security cameras aren't gonna fall under this definition and I guess I I think
from the councilmember sponsored perspective it does but I'm just I guess I'm hoping that somebody from
staff or our attorneys would be able to address whether that and
kind of Makes a positive difference in terms of some of the concerns that have been brought up Councilmember
Piedmont Smith who has made a lot of the end and the rest of the team we've been making some really
good amendments to to this legislation It is a very broad definition. So everybody's mobile phone meets
the definition of surveillance technology And I think we all know we are being surveilled by our phones
anyway, so that's not news I think
You know the exceptions that that we think are important to make would be not just body cams but also
dash cams for police and evidentiary cameras used in interview rooms. Those those three forms of cameras
in particular are required by statute to be recorded and they are meant to be protected to to hold police
accountable. The first two. So we would get your questions connected. So it would.
We would all want that Those to be maintained and they in some cases do need to be maintained by a third
party because we don't want local Authorities interfering with those kinds of things outside of that.
There are many other cameras that could be covered by this so I feel the exceptions for regular security
cameras that are closed caption that seems Clear we've talked that through. I think it seems clear in
the other amendments as a whole. I'm sorry. Excuse me deputy Maron out but
What I'm asking is if that and in that definition which is different from I mean from oh There were
two amendment twos There was an amendment to that got released in packet addendum 1 and then there was
an amendment to that got released in packet addendum 3 and We're talking about the one in packet addendum
3 and it has an and instead of an or and so I can put that up on the screen Yeah
Because the and requires then that surveillance camera to not just be like monitoring things But it's
also using automated detection recognition, etc So it's include has to include both of those things
in order to be a surveillance camera as is defined In this so I guess that's where like maybe attorney
Allen. Yeah, it's a narrower definition for sure Yeah, so maybe attorney Allen could address whether
that and does what it is that?
needed to be done in terms of Enabling certain types of cameras to not fall into This definition of
security camera. Yeah contract attorney Larry Allen. Thank you I think that that was exactly why that
change was made is to narrow this definition so that you're not capturing a
all passive cameras that are used, that it specifically has to have this integration and uses automated
detection, recognition, classification, and tracking technology built into the camera, which I think
makes it distinguish from a handheld point and shoot camera from the typical closed circuit television
cameras. I'm sorry. Oh, it's just the wrong page being displayed, that's all. Amendment two, the new
amendment two, please.
I'm not displaying that page, I apologize. So that's exactly what this is intended to do. As originally
written, it was very broad. It could have captured a lot of devices as the Deputy Mayor indicated,
potentially a cell phone. I think as written right now, it does not capture a cell phone or potentially
even a dash cam device because typically those, depending on what technology those are embedded with,
Hardware so I can't answer that definitively only the chief police or the deputy mayor could possibly
answer that But again, this is to attempt to narrow it down so that we're not capturing all those passive
cameras I don't think that this is the correct one still I can help pull it up. Does anyone else have
a question doesn't have the and Yeah So
Councilmember Zula can you clarify is it it's in the or it's supposed to be. Yes. Thank you. So it's
supposed to be the or it's supposed to be the end. And is correct. Okay. Thank you for clarifying. Any
other questions on Amendment 2.
I just was making sure. Thank you. Any public comment on Amendment 2? Any member of the public want
to make comment on this amendment? Anybody online looking to make comment? Sorry. Thank you. Yes. Okay.
We will take it to our commenter on Zoom. Thank you very much. Please state your name and you have three
minutes. Hi. I don't need three minutes. My name is Iris Bull. I am commenting
because I'm concerned that this amendment or just the language in general might somehow involve traffic
signals that are actuated or just require some of this similar technology. And so far I haven't really
heard if there's like a delineation in the conversation between just security cameras and also other
kinds of cameras that we rely on in our transportation network. Thank you. Thank you very much.
Anybody else, anybody in the room interested in making
Comment on amendment to I see no movement. Anybody else online. Is that our last. OK super. Thank you
very much. We'll come back here to council comment. Any council comments on amendment to council member
Stasberg. Well I'll comment and say that I appreciate that this.
that this amendment to the definition of surveillance camera got put in and that it got adjusted to
have the and because I did have some concerns about wanting to make sure that this did not prohibit
cameras that are actually useful in terms of some types of security and surveillance. So I appreciate
that this amendment got in there. So thank you. All right. Thank you. Any other council comment before
we go to vote on amendment 2?
Okay, clerk, would you mind please calling the roll on amendment two? Councilmember sorry. Yes. Daily.
Yes. Rallo. Yes. Ruff Stasberg. Yes. Piedmont Smith. Yes. And Zulik. Yes. Thank you. Thank you very
much. That passes seven zero. Anybody else want to talk about amendments?
While we're in this section. Yes, I move amendment three to ordinance twenty twenty six dash twenty
two second. Thank you. Amendment three. Take it away. All right. This does various things. First of
all it aligns the prohibited uses with the expanded definition of surveillance camera that was proposed
by amended to and it allows limited technical access to internal systems for repairs. So it does allow
like somebody who's going to
fix some glitch in the system to do that, but you have to have a record of why you're doing it, who's
doing it, all that stuff. Number two, it clarifies that acquisition of ALPR systems as well as their
use is banned. Number three, it clarifies the ban on access to ALPR data collected by others. And number
four, it adds a requirement for surveillance cameras that are allowed under this ordinance
to not be used for facial recognition, biometric identification, or automated tracking of persons without
prior city council authorization. Great. Thank you very much. Any questions for Councilmember Piedmont-Smith
on Amendment 3? Councilmember Stasberg. This may be looking ahead a little bit, but how does this work
with Amendment 5?
doesn't like Amendment 5 doesn't affect this one right. It just adds a new section on to the same section
that Amendment 3 is talking about. I hope so. Let me look at Amendment 5. Yes there's no contradiction.
Amendment 5 just adds additional language. OK.
Any other questions on amendment three? Okay, seeing none, we'll go to public comment. Any member of
the public here tonight want to make a comment on amendment three? Anybody online? Nobody in chambers?
Okay, super, back to council. We are zooming. There is somebody online, I apologize. Okay, I was too
rushed to zoom. Oh, I was, get it, anyway. Go ahead. Thank you, you have three minutes.
Um, hi, my name's Risa and, uh, I was just wondering if it would be possible to take out that last part
where it says without prior authorization by ordinance of the common council and just make this not
permitted at all. Not even with common council authorization. Thank you. Is that your comment?
Okay, well we're not allowed to respond. So just thank you for registering your comment and we can take
it back here to the council and we can now, unless anybody else has a comment in the public on amendment
three. Okay, so we can come back here for council member comment. Council member Zulek. Thank you, I'll
comment just briefly in regard to the public comment.
It's a fairly redundant line because council is the authority in either case. And so if we were to bring
back legislation it would have to be through an ordinance either way. So I'm not sure that deleting
that line would be. Fruitful or productive. But yeah just wanted to explain that. Council members like
any other council member comments on Amendment 3.
Councilmember Piedmont Smith. Yeah I'm trying to remember why I put that phrase in there. I believe
it was language that I found in other ordinances. As councilmember Zulek said I I think you know it
could be changed by the council anyway whether or not that phrase is in there. I currently cannot
imagine a time where I would vote for something that has facial recognition or biometric identification.
But yeah I don't think it really hurts to have it in there because the council could come back and change
this anyway. All right. Thank you very much. Any last comments or are we ready to vote on Amendment
3. All right. Clerk would you please call the roll on Amendment 3. Councilmember daily. Yes.
Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Sorry. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. That passed unanimously. Hey
do we have any other amendments we want to talk about. I move amendment five. I'm not going to move
amendment four. So unless somebody else wants to. Second. So I'm moving amendment five.
This was in the third addendum that came out just this afternoon. I do apologize to everybody that a
lot of this was done at the last minute. Amendment five includes central dispatch as a city agency.
So we define city agency and as any agent or department or division of the city of Bloomington we share
the central dispatch with county government.
And so this makes it clear that central dispatch will be considered a city agency. It also specifically
allows the use of body worn cameras by police. I feel that body worn cameras are actually a way to make
sure that there's a record of what police do and is overall a good practice. And the third thing it
does is it clarifies that surveillance camera data
may be used for the purpose of criminal investigations. So if we have an actual criminal case with a
case number, and the police go out and say, hey, Village Pantry, there was a murder here, and you have
a security camera, and we would like to look at that, it would allow them to do that, just as an example.
So that's what Amendment 5 does.
Wonderful. Thank you very much councilmember Piedmont Smith any councilmember questions on amendment
five councilmember Stossberg I really found it useful by the way in the packet addendum that there was
the revised red line with amendments one two three and five Thank you for that
And I'm just trying to align and make sure that everything that's in the amendments is in the red line
and the other way around. So under 2.87035 in the red line, I feel like there's three new paragraphs
that this Amendment 5 is supposed to show.
Okay, but there are three on the that see that's why I'm asking this because I'm not sure that amendment
five aligns as it's presented with the red line and I'm Just noticing that right now. I'm so sorry And
so I just want to make sure because amendment five seems like shorter than the red line is well because
we already amended this section with a previous amendment, okay, I
Because I like the way the red line reads. I think the red line is good. And I just want to make sure
that all of our amendments are in the red line. Yes. Although legally it's the amendment language that's
going to carry and not the red line version. I know that's why I'm checking. But we did make previous
changes to two point eight seven point zero three five. I can try to find them. OK. I guess.
Yeah, there was amendments. Sorry, I can't put this all on my screen. This is one of these moments.
I want to have two different screens. So it says, insert after the last paragraph in Amendment
5, notwithstanding any other provision in this section. And then there were more words. And then down
there in that section, it also has this prohibition does not apply to disclosers expressly required
by law or pursuant to a valid court order. So which amendment was that one in? Was that in three?
Okay. Excellent. Thank you. And then I guess the other question is once again going back to staff and
maybe this this might be for Chief Chief DeKoff more than anybody else. Does this amendment seem to
then work in terms of what you need to be able to do and your officers need to be able to do in terms
of communicating with other departments and doing investigations and some of those concerns.
dash cameras that are in our cars, which is used for evidence, and it does not include interview room
cameras, which were required by statute to record interviews. So I don't know if state statute trumps
this because we're required by law to record those, but that is not covered in stuff that we would use
for evidence.
I don't think that those count as surveillance cameras based on the definition of surveillance camera.
So you tell me right now the definition of surveillance camera says that those cameras have to be able
to capture those things, and they have to be able to have automatic detection, recognition, classification,
or tracking. Well, some of that evidence is stored on cloud servers. But that doesn't matter anymore.
OK. I'm just telling you what we do.
Yeah, that one, the cloud storage doesn't matter that more if they don't qualify as a surveillance camera.
So do the dash cam cameras or the interview room cameras, are those automatically detecting, recognizing,
tracking, classifying anything? No. Okay, then those aren't gonna count as surveillance cameras, so
they would not be impacted by this at all. Okay. Okay, so we should be good? Yes. Excellent, thank you.
All right, any other questions on amendment five?
Okay. We will now take it to public comment on amendment five. I do see some takers here in chambers.
Please sign in state your name and you have three minutes on amendment five. Thank you. Good evening.
My name is Thomas West guard. I live in Bloomington. This amendment five diverges strongly from the
rest of the ordinance in some significant ways. The what we're losing with these
Automated cameras is a level of privacy that we took for granted Cory Doctorow Uses the term the I'm
gonna deliberately mispronounce it for your rules the incitification of everything We have taken for
granted that in public here. We can walk around and not Be accountable to the people who are present
But we never had to think that our data
Picture of us would be sent to a corporation in California that would then process it and resell it
to the world for a profit That's what we're losing here and specifically with if we take that off of
the body cams and we say oh well actually you can sell the data from a body cam and
to somebody somewhere else and let them profit off it and let them do whatever they want with it. We're
losing the same privacy that we're trying to correct here. And the police and mayor's note in your packet
consistently refuses to recognize that they are wholly authorized by your ordinance and the first four
amendments
to do individualized suspicion and individualized investigations, just by the terms of what you've already
written. Once we start carving holes in that, it then allows them to, you know, what is a body-worn
camera? That's not defined. Can they hang a body-worn camera off a pole? It's sold as a body-worn camera,
so maybe we just stick it on a car, maybe we stick it on a pole, maybe we have private citizens wearing them.
It's a hole you can drive a truck through. And that second part, that's your entire enforcement mechanism.
If there's no consequence in court for violating this ordinance, you've given away the farm. Every ability
you have to enforce this ordinance shows up in court when the police come in and they say, hey, we completely
violated the ordinance. We've been selling this data to
people all over the world, we've made no effort to control who gets it, and by the way, hey, we get
to present it as evidence, then your ordinance will have no effect and no power whatsoever. These two
changes cut the heart out of everything else that you've done. These arguments are being made in bad
faith. The ordinance that you wrote
is clear, it allows individualized investigations. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker in chambers, please
sign in and state your name. And you have three minutes. Hello, my name is Seaforth Breeze. I'm a resident
of Bloomington. Speaking to this specific section, specifically the section on body cams, for example,
It was a little bit hard as a member of the public to follow as all of these different addendums were
being processed. So I might be mistaken here. But I share similar concerns as to the last commenter
in the sense that if we carve out exemptions to body cams and to dash cams as an example that allow
for some of the biometric
you know, information to be collected, among other things, then all you're really doing is shifting
the positionality of that data collection, right? So instead of having, you know, the flock camera that's
sitting at the corner of your street, then cops can just position their cars in such a way that they're
collecting that data and then processing that data still, right? So I, you know, perhaps I'm misunderstanding
but I have serious concerns, and I think it might be something that y'all might wanna speak to in your
comments in a moment. Because if that is carving out that, then it really is giving away so much of
what all of us in this room are here for. That is what we are here for, to end that information being
passed. I would like to,
Thank you all for your time, and I do wanna note just very quickly, I've spoken here before about flock
cameras pointing directly at my porch, and they have since been removed. And it has been a huge relief
in my life, a weight that is off my shoulders, but I, one, know that that is not the case for everybody
in this community, especially at IU, for example, and I also know that, you know, again,
referencing the like dash cam or the body cam, is it not enough that that data is collected as a straight
visual stream? Or does it have to have that ability to be shared with other agencies or with other corporate
vendors, right? Can it not just be, are there ways around that? Thank you for your time. Thank you very
much. Do we have any speakers online?
OK, thank you. Any last commenters in chambers? All right, so now we'll take it back to council comment.
Any council members like to make comment on Amendment 5? Sure, why not? Could I just ask a question
to Attorney Allen? I can't hear you. Sorry. Could I ask a question to Attorney Allen? The question is
about the last part here.
Is it even necessary, aren't the exclusions that are within the text already make possible what I think
this is trying to achieve, namely that there's an, I think the example was if Village Pantry has something
on a private camera that's being requested for, is this even necessary? Because aren't there other laws
about the abilities to get
that type of, so I'm just trying to understand whether or not this exclusion accomplishes what we think
it's accomplishing, because I get what we're trying to do here, but in your opinion, what does this
do? It's a good question. I think it depends on the type of technology that's being used for those types
of cameras.
One of the difficulties is most modern cameras are going to have some sort of facial recognition or
tracking capabilities, so whether they belong to a private business or not. My understanding of this
exception as I read it would allow the police to receive those from private citizens and or businesses
if it was tied to an active investigation. In terms of whether that's already covered, I think probably not.
because it does prohibit the data sharing from any third party of a tracking camera. And so if you didn't
have that in and it did have that basically very modern, widely available camera technology that most
people are putting on, a ring doorbell is a good example of that, then it wouldn't likely be able to
be shared with police. Now in terms of greater society, would the video be obtainable? Yes, it would be.
I'm so sorry to interrupt, but when we say it wouldn't be able to, talk to us about how the legislation
is currently drafted constrains the police from receiving a donation of data. I'm being a little bit
provocative in the framing of it, but if a private citizen says, here is some data you can use in your
investigation,
So I'm just trying to understand whether, because I think the comment also notes the directionality
of adding this into the legislation. So that's what I'm trying to get at is whether this is changing
entirely the object being legislated. I think, again, because
My understanding again reading the legislation and I could happily read it again over and over again
When you're defining third party third party is very broad in this in this legislation by definition
and by purpose a third party is literally anyone else out other than a city agency, right and if you're
if you're taking out that definition and so as a result if you if you're barred from
sharing data or receiving data from any third party that's from a surveillance camera, which includes
that technology, then I think by definition you would be barred from receiving that under this order.
You'd be in violation of the ordinance. Now, if you'll just grant me just a little bit of leeway, I
would just say
The information would be obtainable would just be much more difficult to obtain. So there's nothing
that would stop anybody from subpoena subpoenaing business and obtaining that through the legal process.
So that evidence could be preserved potentially. It would just have to go through additional mechanisms
and it wouldn't necessarily be able to be directly to a city agency. Thank you very much. Any other
council member comments council member Stossberg. Well I also have a question. OK.
The public commenters brought up the concern about what I heard was the definition of body camera and
could it be a body camera if it was on an inanimate object. And so I'm just wondering from either our
attorneys or from Chief DeKoff, is there a commonly understood definition of body camera and what a
body camera is in terms of state law or local law?
There's no law that defines what it is It's it's a camera that a police officer wears usually somewhere
on the front of their uniform to record their interactions with the public I guess I'm just wondering
if if there was I mean clearly what we have is a room full of Folks that are very skeptical
of law enforcement. Maybe that would be mild saying that very mildly so the I guess the question is
like could like if If we don't have
Clearly understood definition of body camera having to be something that is worn on a police officer's
front could it be Misused in the way that the public commenters said and I'm not like trying to accuse
you guys of misusing I'm just saying like systematically like because if there's a definition that a
body worn camera by a police officer as it's framed in here Well, it's gonna be something that is on
the police officer's person so if there is a
So we have policies that address the use of body cameras, and it's required to be worn on the uniform.
We don't go climb poles and tape them to a pole to record stuff. They're worn, and they have to be activated
by the officers. So you have interdepartmental policy that dictates that the body worn camera needs
to be worn on their uniform and wear. OK, thank you. So hopefully that addresses that concern of,
Body cameras being out in the wild somewhere Thank You councilmember Rallo Could you just clarify So
the procedure of Wearing a body camera It's only activated if it's worn in other words, it's not activated
in any other situation So it is it is activated when an officer Activates it there are automatic activations if
like light bars are turned on so that it comes on because if you're in You know running to an emergency
call both lights and sirens you may forget to turn it on so that can be activated Automatically that
way if there are if you are If you all are officers and we're close and we're dealing with somebody
if you activate yours It can also be set to activate yours so that everybody is recording the interaction
That makes sense. Well, yes, I suppose I
My question is, is it a requirement to be worn before it is activated? Yes. OK. Thank you. Thank you.
Any other council comments? Council member Ruff. If this amendment guts the heart and soul out of the
very intent of what we're doing here, that's a huge issue. But I don't have a grasp.
Don't really understand I don't have the expertise and technological expertise. I haven't heard I mean
thought of all the questions I've need to ask to to understand if if if if this does that Which I wouldn't
want to do But so I don't really feel if it came to a vote I'd probably pass on this Any other councilmember
want to make a comment on amendment five councilmember Piedmont Smith
Yes, there were a few concerns from the public about body camera footage being accessible to a third
party or an external entity or corporation. Chief DeKoff, can you speak to how the data from body cameras
is processed and whether external entities have access to it? So currently, because we generate so much data
from the body cams. It is stored on a third party cloud server but we are the only ones that have access
to it. OK. And that is in the contract that only BPD has access to. Keep in mind we have you know 90
some officers that body cams and we
We generate a tremendous amount of video data because they're recording every interaction they have
with the public. Yeah we just we just can't maintain that kind of storage at the city. But it is it
is locked down and it is we are the only ones that have access to it. All right. Thank you. Well I will
just add as a comment that certainly I don't think this eviscerates the
point of the ordinance since I come sponsored the ordinance and I'm sponsoring this amendment. I think
it allows police body cameras which I think are a good tool to to hold police to account for their actions
and interactions with the public. It allows those to be used and
So I guess each council member will have to weigh whether that's worth you know whether the the good
of the good aspects of having body cameras on our police personnel outweigh the harm of some possible
leak or to some corporation or hack into some kind of system.
Which of course is a hack could also happen to our own servers if we were if we had enough storage space
So just to respond to councilmember rough up. I do not think This eviscerates the point of the ordinance.
Thank you Just a quick note. We've done public comment on this section already So we're we're done with
that portion so that we can keep moving forward Thank you. You will have a chance again to speak on
the amend the
broader ordinance as amended Councilmember Stossberg I'm sorry. I have another question So chief de
Koff you said that that body worn camera footage is only available to you guys in the department Do
you happen to know in techspeak if that's in terms of its travel to the cloud and back of its end-to-end
encrypted if it's encrypted
If it's end to end encrypted specifically, I believe it is it is it is evidence. So it is highly protected
Okay, and no, no one else can access it Okay Thank you. Um, I'll also offer a little bit of comment
now as well. I'm with councilmember Piedmont Smith I don't think that this eviscerates it. I think that
it's really important that our police force
Are able to maintain their body-worn cameras It was not that many years ago where a similar sort of
crowd would have emerged to require our police force to wear body-worn cameras to hold officers accountable
for how they're treating the public and so the real concern there honestly is that data so is it end-to-end
encrypted and
if it's end-to-end encrypted, then what that means is that it's being stored somewhere, but it's being
stored in a form that they can't read it there, right? And I mean, everything is hackable at this point
in theory, right? But that's about as good as we can do, I think. So I will certainly be supporting
this amendment, and I appreciate it being made. Thank you.
Councilmember sorry, so So the I can I propose an amendment to this and I'll explain why I am the First
off the I think well, actually there's two things. Let me separate them the easy thing first. I think
and please attorneys tell me if I'm wrong here, I think that the question of
Body-worn cameras, as well as the question of dash cams, is already covered under the severability clause,
because it's required by state law that they have it. So I don't think that we need to say this here,
I think. But I think the second part more importantly, and I think that this is the comment that was
getting at here, and first off, I very much appreciate what we're trying to do here. I think that there is a...
Something we didn't want an externality to this which is that if you read this another way what you're
also are authorizing is to is that you could as a city authorize a third party for the sake
of an investigation to use Surveillance technology first off which is the broadest definition here and
so you could ask
you could say, hey, ICE, use some other technology that exists. Hey, so, you know, sheriff, whatever.
So you could ask a third party, or for that matter, I mean a contractor, right? So if I was a contractor
that access to this type of thing, you know, a big tech company, for example, you know, so that to me
is contrary to what it is that we're trying to say here, that what you're trying to say, thank you,
but what you're trying to say here is that we,
that we understand that there is a need for investigations. But there's a whole other process where
people have to get warrants and all of those type of things that I feel like already covers this statement.
But I might be completely wrong there. So I just don't think that we need this. I don't think that this
amendment accomplishes anything other than introducing some externalities that are contradictory to
what we're trying to achieve with the legislation in the first place.
All right, thank you very much. So. Actually, I was gonna say that we could just strike the last bit,
but now that I think of it, I mean, unless I'm completely wrong about the body cameras, but I mean,
again, we have lawyers here, but I just, like, I just don't think we need this amendment, so I'm not
gonna, I'm not gonna be voting for this amendment, but I think that, this makes it harder.
Yeah, but that's what I'm just saying. Yeah, so thank you. Okay councilmember Rallo and then I'd like
to respond I Don't know about the I'd like to hear from staff from our legal staff about the body cams
and the dash cams and state law but I don't understand councilmember Asari's assertion that if the last paragraph
is included in this amendment that we could ask a third party to use surveillance camera to get data?
No, other parts of this ordinance already make that impossible. And I think that his previous question
was answered by attorney Larry Allen that if we don't have this, then the
You know the evidence of somebody murdered outside the 7-eleven we could not get that that camera footage
from 7-eleven and that is a very problematic thing to solving this case Order order, please please Yeah,
you know, I'll just say super briefly, I mean I think the the issue here is with specificity right so
because like
As people have noted, and as I noted before, there already is a process by which you can get evidence
for any type of criminal proceeding, thing one. But thing two is that you're only saying that you need
a case number. So as long as I have some case that has begun, I now can authorize any type of use of
surveillance data being received.
and third party is already broad. So anyone who would have this data can now be, you can now ask for
that data, which means in effect that if I have a case number, I can ask someone to start collecting
data for me. It's not what it's saying. To be clear, this is in no way, I get what it is. I get what
you're saying.
I'm not saying that this is what you intended. I just think that it is the result of this language.
And I don't think that what you're intending is needed. I don't think we need this language to achieve
what you're intending. I think it already exists. Well, then I would like to hear from our legal counsel
about both points, both the state law, about body worn and dash cams, and whether in order to get that
that third-party surveillance video in relation to a specific case, we would need this language, which
I thought was already answered. Yes, Mr. Allen, please. Just quickly, and since there are more than
one attorney in the room, I welcome other opinions or other statements. Because we have amended the
definition of surveillance
camera, it probably does obviate the need, like as long as the body cameras aren't using some sort of
automatic detection, again, facial recognition, tracking technology, they are probably allowed already
without the specific exception of body worn camera. There is not, just to clarify for points of information,
There's not a specific definition of body worn camera in Indiana state law. What it is called though
is a law enforcement recording device. Those are defined in at least two areas of state law with a similar
definition. They include any
Device for creating audiovisual audiovisual recordings designed to be worn by a law enforcement officer
and attached to the vehicle or transportation of a law enforcement officer so it actually covers both
dash cams and what we think of as body-worn cams just to clarify in that point as far as the the third
point I think this gets into the issue of
when we're talking about interfere with any person or entity providing evidence. And my understanding
of those terms, under the law, person is extraordinarily broad. The definition by default in common
law of person is extraordinarily broad. It does not mean just individual. It actually means can incorporate
even other governmental entities, agencies, businesses, corporations, et cetera, as it has been defined.
And then we also have entity here.
The way this is written, it really wouldn't prohibit, it would say notwithstanding, as long as you have
a case number and a criminal investigation open under the way this is written currently, yeah, you could
probably receive video from a flock surveillance camera that did have that tracking technology from
another agency if it was specific as a part of conducting a criminal investigation with a signed case
number. I do think that's the plain language as written here.
Thank you, but again, I welcome and I'm sorry part of the the Councilmember sorry, I was talking about
that. There's already state law about body cams and dash cams That would allow them. Is that right?
Does it require them? What I don't believe that they're required by statute I
So I don't think that there's a state law requirement for body cams They have been adopted by by a lot
of agencies obviously as a protection for both officers and the people that they're dealing with on
a daily basis And Bloomington has been one of those but in terms of I'm not aware of a state law requirement
But I'm happy as we sit here to continue to research that and give you more information as we can I
think corporation council rice may have something to add I
Rice Corporation Council there are a lot of layers of state law already related to criminal information
and I will tell you that you know the statute that Your attorney decided I was looking at also the bunch
of definitions criminal intelligence information means data that has been evaluated to determine that
the data is relevant to what goes on about crimes There's a separate state law that says a person who
unlawfully discloses criminal information
intelligence information is subject to criminal prosecution. So you're not the first people who have
been worried about disclosure of information. Believe me, there's a lot of layers of state law already
protecting information that police receive. So I'm not sure, I'll tell you with all the various amendments
that have gone on tonight, it seems somewhat circular and I'm not sure where you're going, but I think
your amendment
Councilmember Piedmont Smith was to try to protect the integrity of Investigations to keep our community
safe to make sure that the police can legitimately Protect our residents and also to be concerned about
the things that people are worried about like
Oh this information on a camera is going to get sold to a third party. There's already state law that
says you'd get prosecuted if you did that. So so I'm telling you that Larry and I can cannot come up
with all of these on the fly tonight. But I can tell you that I think your amendment is appropriate.
I don't think it's harmful.
I think that there's and again there's a lot of people that are already thinking about these things
and there are provisions in state law that we can't just let this information you know out of our hands.
We'd be in trouble for that. You mean the body cam information. Yeah yeah we can't. Okay thank you.
Councilmember Rallo did you still have a comment. Well I had the same questions as my colleague Councilmember
Smith but I would just ask my
Council president is sorry it was Mr. Allen's opinion that it there is not a mandate for police body
cameras in Indiana Does that affect your argument? Take everything that um, I take everything that mr.
Allen says is uh, you know his gospel so But your assumption was that this was redundant
Yeah, that was my assumption on the first part. I mean, my concern about maybe the language, the specificity
of the second part remains. But I mean, yeah, I mean, I think we can vote. I just, yeah, I don't know.
And similarly to counsel Rice, you know, attorney Rice.
It's hard to think of such things on the right this moment, but my gut feeling, my reaction to reading
this, like when I'm thinking about the many possibilities of how this could play out. And again, we're
not just thinking about, we're thinking about long term and who else interacts with this and what ways.
with new technologies and things. And so I'm probably mostly concerned about the broadness of which
we're defining surveillance technology here, even though I think it's the point was made. We sort of
obviated that elsewhere. Broadness was what we're seeing a person here. I don't know. I just think that
there's a lot of possibility for abuse here. Well, OK.
I would just say that I'm very I I think I'm went over by Councilmember Piedmont Smith because I need
to know that this a potential and arrests a Suspect arrested needs protection and the body these body
cameras can provide that Clearly it's been used many many times and in fact, they've been required to
wear these in communities for that very reason so but I
I'll listen to others. I might ask maybe one one guiding question and then I'll stop talking if I'm
allowed. Sorry. Maybe to any of the attorneys here like can someone tell me in the current ordinance
the specific language that would prohibit a criminal investigation from happening if it was passed without
this amendment.
I'm going to give you the most attorney answer ever, which is to say, it really depends what you mean
by criminal investigation. Because just actually playing this out, remember, police are involved
in any number of activities that may or may not result in prosecution of a crime, may or may not result
in charges being filed, may or may not result in a recommendation to the prosecutor's office. And certainly
they investigate potential crimes, right? And so if you're talking about a criminal investigation that
gets referred into the legal system, referred to the prosecutor as part of that, what I had described
earlier, there are legal mechanisms for obtaining evidence in that regard. Again, more difficult unquestionably
if you're talking about again, just an assigned case number potentially or a Plane investigation that
may or may not result in charges That's a little harder for me to answer just to be just to be completely
transparent with you That's member Stasberg, thank you. Um, I'll answer that for you too from my non-attorney
perspective
Because I I think that some of my concerns around this may have helped initiate this amendment in 2.8
7.0 3 o d no city agency shall access search request purchase obtain or use ALPR data
2.8 7035 right below that so right above this section No city agency shall use any surveillance camera
system that permits a third party to access search retrieve receive or independently use surveillance
data collected
Generated etc. And so I appreciate that you can always like get a subpoena right in a court order to
ask that but I hope that Other folks can also appreciate sometimes there might be that moment when you're
where somebody is offering you information where somebody's saying oh There was this traffic accident,
you know, and and I have dashcam footage of that here. Like I don't want I
The system to have to go through all of those steps to get a subpoena before they can look at your footage
that they may or may not even use for the investigation, but I think that we're in a pretty litigious
society and I would rather have this paragraph in that says We you know, we want to make sure that if
people are offering that kind of information that has to do with a certain criminal case that you know our our
Officers who are in the middle of what could be a crisis for somebody aren't having to go Oh shoot is
receiving this video information gonna completely tank our case later because it's gonna be thrown out
and I think that those things are conceivably possible and I would like to not have those things conceivably
possible and and don't want our officers have to worry about that when they're dealing with crisis situations
Any last council comments on amendment five. Oh, I'm sorry. May I just ask a question. So imagine
hypothetically that there was a murder and that the police received ring camera from a neighbor to help
solve that. Are you is the council intending that the police would not be able to access that information
to solve the murder or to give it to the prosecutor or are you thinking that they're going to have to
go through the process of a subpoena to get that.
It's your I mean is that the intention because I think that's problematic if that's the intention Yeah
Councilmember Stossberg every but that's what I'm trying to avoid. That's I don't think we're going
to avoid that very kind of scenario
Councilmember rough and then hopefully we're ready to go to vote on this one could argue the flip side
of of This not being needed because there are already channels To achieve these things that this amendments
not needed the flip side of that is Well, then it's not particularly harmful because it's not needed
because it's already You know, it's already Accessible already. It's already in place in other ways. I
So I was wanted to ask member maybe councilmember sorry because and he said I believe that It's not
needed and that was his primary Point if if you would all agree with the flip side of that. Well, it's
not particularly harmful then to approve it because for the same reason
Do you want to respond or are we ready to vote. Let's vote. OK. Thank you. Clerk would you please call
the roll on Amendment 5. Councilmember Rallo. Yes. Ruff. Yes. Stasberg. Yes. Piedmont Smith. Yes. Zulek.
No. Sorry.
I'm sorry. I heard two different voices. So councilmember sorry if you could repeat your vote I said
no, thank you and daily Thanks so much That passes five to do so now we are moving on to ordinance 2026-22
as amended any council questions on the ordinance as amended I
Have we questioned ourselves out? Oh, Council Member Rollo. I just wanted to inform that cats is offline
because the power went off at the at the library, unfortunately. So people will not be able to be watching
us. They're cats. All right. Thank you very much. Any questions from council members on ordinance twenty
twenty six dash twenty two. Council. Yeah. Oh no. False alarm.
Okay, here's the part of the evening that I think everybody's been waiting for. We're going to move
to public comment on ordinance 2026-22 as amended. Before we do, I'm gonna put on my mom voice. I'm
just as passionate and enthusiastic as you guys are, and I love it. I love that you guys have the enthusiasm
and the passion. We're gonna be orderly. Can I get a show of hands first? Because we don't wanna be
here till midnight. Nobody wants that.
So can I get a show of hands, how many want to make public comment tonight? We've got quite a few, okay.
So I, can I move, do I have to motion? Okay, so I propose that we do two minute comments. I'm moving
to suspend the rules to do two minutes so that we're not here till midnight.
I love that. That's great. And I'm saying this now. This is not unprecedented. This is something that
we do frequently when we have a lot of public comment. I also want to set the rule that we are respectful,
that we offer each speaker dignity at the microphone. If we do not agree with what they're saying, we
can do it quietly. If we agree with what they're saying, that's super. Maybe just keep it to snaps,
right? Because when you're clapping, we can't hear them. We can't move on. And it keeps us here till
midnight. Yeah?
Did I forget anything? OK, that was my mom voice. Sorry, I have three kids. I'm going to use it. Was
there a motion in there? Yeah, we need a motion if we're going to two minutes, I think. Yeah, I motioned
to suspend the rules to go to three minutes. Two minutes for what? OK, well, does somebody want to make
a motion on that? No?
Okay, somebody's considering restructuring it. Any motion, I should say? No? All right. Here we go,
guys. Three minutes. Go right ahead. Please state your name, sign in. Thank you for the snaps. I have
four pointed questions that I would like you to consider as you vote for this ordinance, now that you've
amended it. Number one,
A body cam is not defined. I don't know why you didn't do that by ordinance. You don't have one by state
law. You have a definition that doesn't exactly cover a body cam. It covers a bunch of things. You can
do that by ordinance. I don't know why you're not doing that. Question number two. Body cam usage is
defined by a BPD policy. Can you quote that? Do you know what body cam usage policy is? You're voting
something into law that will validate
the BPD policy, which I'm guessing you don't have on your desk. You can do that by ordinance in a separate
ordinance. Let them define and put it in the ordinance so it meets the standards that you wanna meet.
That's question two. Question three, data usage of what comes off the body cams is defined by some contract.
Have you seen that contract? Do you know what the standards are? If you vote for this ordinance, you're
validating some contract you haven't seen.
And that can change at any time. They could literally call the company tomorrow and renegotiate the
contract. So now you're voting for something you don't control. That's question number three. In question
number four, in that second portion, it says, hey, we can do anything we want once we assign a case
number. What's the policy for assigning a case number? Why are you validating that? Did you consider
what it takes to assign a case number? Do they just have some 16-year-old intern, yank one off the computer,
and then do
anything they want. This needed to be a separate ordinance with its own sections defining things carefully.
This was poorly considered. This was thrown in at the last minute. It wasn't even in the packet I got.
You don't know how a body cam is defined. You don't know what the body cam usage policy is. You don't
know the data usage policy. And you don't know how to assign a case number. All of those things are
now part of your ordinance.
Please sign in you have three minutes My name is Ryan and I'm a member of the Democratic Socialists
of America and the chair of the Community Defense Committee To some of you that introduction may not
be necessary as I along with my comrades have worked tirelessly to
to alert not only the city council, but the mayor and the members of the Bloomington community about
the dangers of flock and ALPR surveillance cameras. There will be plenty of comments here tonight about
why flock is bad. So I will instead address what has largely been ignored in this discussion. I will
ask why it has been developed from the perspective of a democratic socialist.
It will involve some uncomfortable truths and maybe for, maybe for you and city council and maybe even
for some other people here, but it will certainly be uncomfortable for proponents of flock flock. CEO
Garrett Langley was asked about why he started flock. My belief was simple with the right team, technology
and policies. We could not only solve, but eliminate crime. If I were a complete moron, I'd also think
that crime can be eliminated with a dragnet of mass surveillance.
The truth is that crime arises when people's material needs are not met by their government. When services
necessary to human life and prosperity are mere afterthoughts of a ruthless and misanthropic system
of economic suppression, crime is sure to follow. The system that eliminates crime, Garrett, is not
one that allows or even encourages you to amass your multi-billion dollar wealth on the backs of the
working class.
The system that eliminates crime has free healthcare and universal housing. The system that eliminates
crime has free public education and childcare. The system that eliminates crime has strong workers unions
and guaranteed employment. The system that eliminates crime helps those in need by those who are able
to help. If FLOC were to work as intended, it would be but a Band-Aid attempting to heal the lacerations
already inflicted by runaway, unchecked free market growth.
Flock doesn't intend to eliminate crime, but instead further normalize and expand the already suffocating
specter of mass surveillance. Like crime itself, it is not merely a mistake. It is not some sort of
unintended consequence, but it's the very essence of capitalism. We cannot have a serious discussion
about Flock without questioning the socioeconomic system that allows it to come about and proliferate.
I guess I asked city council to vote unanimously yes on this ordinance tonight,
It shows that we don't have to accept the way things are or where they're going, even if it is to the
chagrin of certain elected officials. I also ask you to think about what I've said here tonight, about
the real reason that crime exists. Once we as a people have this understanding, we can achieve what
Mr. Langley is surely to not, and that is eliminate crime. A better world is possible. Thank you. Thank
you very much. Next commenter here in chambers, please sign in. You have three minutes.
Hello, my name is Maria, and I'm a student at IU and a member of the steering committee at the IU chapter
of the Young Democratic Socialists of America. In my comments, I hope to represent the larger IU student
bodies' feelings about ALPR technology, because IU students, despite not being permanent residents of
Bloomington, still have a substantial stake in the outcome that the city of Bloomington makes.
Flock cameras owned by BPD are funded partially by the taxes students pay and the tax revenue that IU
generates for the city through tourism and sports. Any decision made by the city of Bloomington greatly
impacts the lives of IU students, even if they are only here for four years.
This year, IU IDSA has launched our D Flock IU campaign to an outpour of support for our campaign and
opposition to IU's Flock contracts from both students and faculties. IU's Flock contracts are separate
from Bloomington and have no impact by the city, but the contracts that IU has acquired has allowed
us to take a temperature test of the overall sentiment that students have surrounding Flock in general.
And let me just say, if you think that the citizens of Bloomington hate Flock, the students hate it
even more.
I think the students of IU can kind of speak for themselves, which is why I'll now read out a couple
of anonymous statements gathered from our online petition. It's going to be a big no thanks on the Panopticon.
Everyone on campus has the right to privacy, whether they're students, faculty, or otherwise. As a student
of IU Bloomington, living on campus means that I should feel safe walking down the street, not having
the information on my phone being sold to the highest bidder because the camera could analyze what's
on my screen. I want to be able to drive around my car without being worried about getting pulled over
or arrested for something I didn't do because of flock cameras. I feel like a camera that can identify
me or my vehicle and save my information without me having committed a crime violates my privacy rights.
Honestly, the whole idea of flock cameras sounds directly out of a Hunger Games book. I'd rather not
be part of a surveillance state or further fascism and censorship on campus or around Bloomington. I
don't feel safe being surveilled by the government or private contractors. Once we give up freedom for
safety, we lose both. Private companies have no right to track our every move, invade our privacy, and
introduce the risk of police violence on our campus. I'm worried about international students and ICE.
Unchecked government surveillance is a problem for everyone because it makes it easier to prosecute
people in a discriminatory way based on lifestyle habits or beliefs that they hold, which I find as
unjust. We are not sheep that need to be flocked. These comments reflect the reality of how students
feel about flock on campus or anywhere else they may live. Students are not isolated from the
mass surveillance project that Bloomington has enacted upon us without our consent, and we already know it.
As a student of IU, I urge the council to vote yes on this ordinance to ban ALPR technology from Bloomington.
Not only will this ordinance put students' concerns about privacy, surveillance, and safety at ease
in Bloomington, but it will also send a precedent that ALPR technology is not welcome in Bloomington
and by proxy at IU. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please sign in. Hi.
My name is Rowan Morse. I'm a lifelong Bloomingtonian. The Institute for Justice has tracked over 270
instances of ALPR abuse. 82, I just updated this today because in the last couple of days it's gone
up in numbers, 82 of which are related to stalking. Over 83,000 flock cameras across the country were
used to track a woman who allegedly had an abortion. This is not what our community stands for.
Despite what the mayor says, the Condor TPZ cameras are still a danger to our community. As based off
a flock memo, while the data from these cameras are owned by the city, it is still on flock servers.
Earlier this year, it was discovered that a flock executive logged into the Dunwoody Jewish Community
Center's flock condor system, watching a children's gymnastic class for an undisclosed amount of time.
At least 60 flock condor cameras across the country were found to be accessible online and to the public.
Discovered footage shows that the condor cameras panning to track people's movements as they walked
by even so much zooming into a pedestrian's phone Close enough that you could read what was on the image
or what was on his phone at the time These are the exact type of cameras our mayor wants us to keep
please do not neuter to ordinance We are relying on you to make sure this technology is banned from
our city councilmember Stossberg
Personally want to take the rest of this comment to thank you for what you said last week Calling out
the disrespect that the mayor has shown both the county and the earth Sorry, it's both the council body
and the public the mayor walking out on console and public comment is nothing new Surprisingly, she
did not today like she usually does So sorry the mayor walking out on console public comment is nothing
new I remember back on March 4th when the City Council chambers was overflowed with protesters calling
to cancel the flock contract
The mayor was there that day but not to hear her constituents talk about what the problems were that
with her actions I'm sure that you remember during the meeting the mayor tried to force the City Council
to skip the second reading and go straight to a vote for in favor of Hopewell after her attempt failed
She left the building entirely What after what happened after that is I went back and checked it was
over an hour long of public comment that she missed that was
all about how we don't want this in our community, how we don't think that she's listening to us. Most
of them called out that she left the building entirely. All that is to say that the public is on your
side in banning this technology. The Bayer does not speak for us. She brought this danger to our community.
We are relying on you all to get it out of here. Thank you.
Thank you very much. Next speaker up at the podium, please, you may begin. Good evening, council members.
My name is Liliana Young. I'm proud to have been serving this city, both within and from without the
government for the last few years. As has been said, in 2025, a police officer in Texas hunted a woman
across state lines through flock cameras
because he knew she was seeking abortion health care. Indeed, a simple Google search will bring up an
entire list from recent years where we have a growing trend of police officers across the country abusing
ALPR technology to stalk estranged wives and girlfriends.
And anybody who's been paying attention to the news I think knows by now that the agency ICE has been
aggressively weaponizing data gathered from this technology to abduct our immigrant neighbors and friends
for the sole crime of being too brown. This abuse is not the only problem with this technology, but
it is a key
part of the problem with this technology. It is far too easy to abuse. And while we are told that we
need this technology in place to help us fight crime in our communities, the FBI's own crime statistics
show a clear and consistent pattern of crime trending downwards since the 1990s, decades before this
technology existed.
So I call the necessity of this into question on its own face. And I know, my fellow Blumentonians,
I know that if they had ever been asked to begin with, if they wanted their city to be a part of this
system of abuse, then they would have said no, which is why it makes the fact that this city ever took
part in this system to begin with not just an insult, but an
egregious and complete break of trust between this city's government and the people who live here. And
I don't know how long it will take to rebuild that trust. But passing this ordinance could be a good
first step. Thank you for your time.
online comments. Thank you. Thanks. Good evening. My name is Sarah Owen. I am the community engagement
coordinator for Exodus refugee immigration the satellite office here in Bloomington. Thanks folks. I
do want to take a moment to genuinely thank the entire city council tonight for a very thoughtful and
difficult discussion about
This ordinance these amendments and how much thought went into this I know there was disagreement tonight
But when you are meaningfully potentially changing city law, I appreciate how many Questions went into
this and the analysis of this
We are here tonight to express our support for this proposed ordinance. We wish to express the gratitude
to council members Zulek, Piedmont-Smith, and Asari for co-sponsoring this legislation. I will keep
my remarks brief. We did, of course, want to acknowledge the misuse by law enforcement in other cities.
Today actually marks three weeks to the day that just up the road in Marion County, they were announcing
charges against five Indianapolis Metro police officers for misuse of flock camera data.
But on behalf of our immigrant community tonight, we did want to focus, of course, on its misuse by
ICE for their abuses against immigrant communities across this country. I want to give a few examples
that are actual examples of people that Exodus has worked with who have been terrorized by ICE.
There was an instance. This is between Bloomington and Indianapolis There was an 18 year old girl who
called the police for help after a car accident one night That was not her fault a father who was driving
to work carrying his work permit who was dragged from his car and separated from his family for more
than a month an Afghan man who fought for this country just last Friday a 20 year old US citizen and
And arguably the most egregious example, an eight-year-old child whose mother was desperately searching
for him while he remained in a detention facility for nearly a year. These are all cases that Exodus
has worked with personally. These are human beings whose lives have been
deeply impacted by ICE, terrorized by ICE. And flock cameras make people like these, parents, children,
spouses, vulnerable to the whims of federal immigration officials who do not follow proper procedure,
who show blatant disregard for civil liberties, and who replace exercising any form of restraint with
outright brutalization. We want to acknowledge that we empathize with BPD's objectives of maintaining
public safety, but the more that Bloomington invests in data collection,
allies with profit-driven companies, and fails to take a firm stand on our community's basic rights,
the less likely our immigrant neighbors will feel safe to utilize police when they themselves are the
victim of a crime. The continued use of tools such as flock cameras and other ALPRs erodes trust between
immigrants in the community and public safety officials, and we ask you to vote yes on this ordinance.
All right. Thank you very much.
We will now go to our first speaker on zoom. You may unmute yourself and you have three minutes.
Thank you. My name is Kara silver. I'm the leader of the immigrant rights action team for indivisible
Palo Alto plus, and a member of safety over surveillance Palo Alto, a coalition of 14 groups advocating
against ALPRs in Palo Alto.
I learned of this agenda item because Bloomington is Palo Alto's sister city and some wonderful Bloomington
residents came to one of our council meetings to advocate for the cancellation of the flock contract.
Palo Alto has been closely monitoring Bloomington's actions because you are one step ahead of us in
this fight against mass surveillance.
The Palo Alto City Council recently engaged an independent police auditor to audit number one, the numerous
allegations of security breaches by FLOC. Number two, to determine whether the police department's use
of FLOC complies with the city surveillance policy. And three, to determine whether there are other
available vendors.
We are confident that the audit will show FLOC is not trustworthy and we will be urging the city council
in Palo Alto to cancel all FLOC contracts like Bloomington has done. I have reviewed the updated ordinance
and strongly support it. I think the amendments provide clarity on what types of surveillance cameras
are subject to the ban, but also provide some flexibility for law enforcement.
with the exception of amendment number five, which I think I will just defer to you all and that needs
a little bit more discussion. I look forward to sharing the final ordinance with our city council and
hope that they will adopt something similar. Thank you for your work on this and for serving as Palo
Alto's North Star.
We will go to the next commenter on Zoom. You have three minutes. You can unmute yourself and introduce
yourself, please. Hello. My name is Jamie Scholl. I'm speaking as a resident of Bloomington. And I want
to say that I agree with Thomas Westgard regarding definitions and found the importance of knowing what
the definitions in our own UDO through my experience with the urban agriculture throughout the years.
Franklin's famous quote after the Constitutional Convention was asked, what form of government do we
have? A republic, if you can keep it. The Constitution was written to guard against the concentration
of power, protect individual rights from government infringement. The Fourth Amendment, First Amendment,
and the Fourteenth as due process has been shown through video and federal government hearings to often
be ignored by law enforcement.
If, as all council members have done, to swore to uphold the Constitution, I'd like to remind you and
maybe you should reflect on what our founding documents say in these amendments. My ask this evening,
not just possibly about the definitions, but to remove immediately and permanently
surveillance cameras and until that time that all cameras are to be covered. I do not like going to
an intersection and having a camera facing me and I'm sure I'm not the only one here that has that feeling.
So those are my requests and thank you for taking on this very difficult subject.
We'll do a couple more in person and then we'll go back to online. Sorry, I just had an article I wanted
to read about. Okay. Hi, my name is Joseph Heisler. I'm a resident of Bloomington.
A lot of other people have pointed out that many officers in many cities have abused flock cameras and
similar technology. I think it's worth pointing out an article from 2016 by Dr. Annalise M. Manicki
and Katie Ropes, which revealed that the, excuse me, the rate of domestic violence perpetrated by law
enforcement officers is around 21.2%. This is something we need to acknowledge and need to understand
Unfortunately, no offense to the BPD. I don't think we can trust police officers to use this technology
appropriately. And frankly, I don't want it in our community. Thank you so much, and I urge you to vote
yes on this ordinance. Thank you very much. Next speaker here in chambers. You can sign in and introduce yourself.
Hi, my name is Oliver Hannah Grace Hinshaw, and I, as I've said before, I'm high on the autism spectrum.
I'm currently overwhelmed because I'm very excited about this. That is why I'm stuttering so much. I
wanted that on the record.
The thing that I wanted to address with the flock cameras is that oftentimes when there is surveillance
and when there is lack of representation for people like me and my friends who are marginalized, who
are higher on the autism spectrum, who are mentally ill, and to our
not of sound mind, which I personally am sound of mind. And I happen to have a very specific type of
autism that does not make me mentally impaired, but it does make me communicatively and socially impaired.
And as I'm looking around this room tonight, and as I am looking around all the representation around tonight,
There are no other people like me here. There are no other higher spectrum autistic people. There is
nobody else here who obviously has to stem in order to keep themselves and who stutters like I do and
struggles to communicate.
Oftentimes, systems like flock cameras and systems of surveillance oftentimes benefit the people who
want to target people like me, the people who are homeless, the people who are mentally ill, who aren't
getting help, and who are being actively harmed by governmental institutions because they don't understand,
and they refuse to understand us, and they continue to oppress us
over and over and over again because they refuse to see how they benefit the most and they refuse to
see or they don't understand how they, in turn, accidentally, without their own intentions or by some
malice, create the systems of oppression that, in turn, make people mentally disabled
that make people, oh, that was not correct, that make people mentally ill, that make people homeless,
and that make people impoverished. I agree with this amendment. Thank you very much. We'll go back to
Zoom. Do we still have a few people on Zoom? We'll do one or two more on Zoom before we come back to
chambers. Counselors.
My name is Scott tips, I'm a resident of City Council district one. I fully understand the concerns
of automated license plate reader technology. There are legitimate concerns about big government tracking
our movements. Furthermore, there have been documented abuses of a LPR technology. But my point tonight
is that the abuse of a thing does not invalidate its proper use.
While the abuse of cameras is concerning, ALPR has been used to rescue kidnapped children, locate stolen
vehicles, and apprehend dangerous violent criminals. The cameras have been used to rescue children from
sexual predators. The cameras are an indispensable tool for law enforcement to keep people safe from
predators. I think targeting ALPR lacks a sense of proportion, given the society we live in today.
There is no expectation of privacy in a public place or on a public street. I am under video surveillance
every time I pay for my items at the drug store or the grocery store, and cameras have become an important
security tool for private businesses. Most of us carry powerful computers in our pockets that track
our movements and give that data to multinational corporations. ALPR is small potatoes compared to all
of those things. My suggestion, instead of banning ALPR technology,
is to strictly control who has access to license plate data. Perhaps the city could negotiate an agreement
where only city law enforcement has access to the data unless there is a court order requiring this
data be turned over. Any abuse of the system should then be subject to severe consequences. Increased
transparency of who has access to the data and what data is accessed so long as it does not interfere
with a police investigation would also be a good idea.
Please vote no on this ordinance, which needlessly hinders law enforcement from protecting the public.
We need controls on the use of this technology to protect the public from abuse, but we should not eliminate
this tool completely. Thank you. Thank you very much. Do we have another speaker on Zoom? All right.
You may unmute yourself, and you have three minutes. Good evening. This is Paul Rousseau, Bloomington resident.
I would say that the surveillance state offers solutions to problems that should be solved by other
means. I strongly urge you to support this resolution. Thank you for bringing it. More than anything,
I want to point and echo the comments of the second speaker here tonight. His name is Ryan. He talked
about the root causes of crime. And the root crime, root cause, excuse me,
crime actually is systemic. And so every time Bloomington does something and the city council does something
to create more social justice, that is a crime fighting mechanism that does not have side effects. I
would remind people of what the great Adam Smith himself said, the Adam Smith, the real Adam Smith,
not this Adam Smith of
libertarian imagination who would supposedly believe that capitalism runs best without any government
intervention. The real Adam Smith wrote, wherever there is great property, there is great inequality.
For one very rich man, there must be at least 500 poor, and the affluence of the rich supposes the indigence
of the many. That's the source of crime, as Ryan pointed out. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Mr. Russo. We can come back here in chambers. You can sign in and state your name,
and then you have three minutes. Hello. Sorry. My name is Jenna Baker. I'm a little nervous. I am an
IU student, and I wanted to talk about why it's so important that this ordinance passes. I'm from a
place not too.
similar to Bloomington, a small town north in Indiana. And since coming here, it's meant so much to
me. All the amazing people I've met here on and off campus, it gets a little constricting. It makes
my chest feel a little tight when I think of living back where I did forever as a trans woman and just
knowing that there are people who will love me and accept me up here is amazing. And that's why I think
that this is
The city and these people are worth protecting, and I came up with a lot of reasons. Maybe I'll talk
about them more if there's time about how everyone is affected by the flock cameras. And that's true.
Everyone is going to be affected by these cameras, like it or not. But I don't think everyone should
need to be affected. I think the people talk about how flock cameras will increase safety, will save
lives, but that will still come with the price of blood.
As this technology is used to aid ICE, people will die, families will be separated, there will be more
harm than good. Even past that, I know, of course, I've mentioned I am a trans woman, but I still hold
a relative amount of privilege. I'm white, I'm middle class, I'm a United States citizen, and so are
my parents and their parents.
And I'm still terrified to walk down the street, because I don't know who might be looking at me, or
if they might be looking at my chest, or if they might be looking at my crotch. Because I get terrified
every time I use the bathroom. And even someone like me needs to worry about where people are looking.
A surveillance system that will be looking at everyone, people who are in much more danger than me,
looking much more
Intently and with much more malicious intent than a random passer by down the street. I I think that's
terrifying and It's amazing to see everyone come together on this. I just I want to reiterate. Oh, I
guess one more thing I think it is really important that I know one of the amendments mentioned Getting
rid of flock as a name as a target
That's really important, because as soon as flock goes away, there will be something else. There have
already started to be other types of cameras. And we need to make sure that we keep up the pressure,
keep up the momentum on them, even as the widely-known label of flock starts to go away. I think that's
all my ramblings collected. Thank you all so much. Thank you very much. Next speaker here in chambers,
you can begin. Hello. My name is Seiforth Breeze.
Wanted to speak to some of the amendment items that are now part of the general ordinance to clarify
some of my concerns that I had had there I think going back to I think it was Tom or Thomas what he
said earlier about feeling like This might be an important enough sort of series of questions and concerns
that perhaps we should split and like approve a
a significant portion of this package, but circle back around to questions around the body cameras and
the dash cams. So one of my questions and concerns around it is the fact that it was said, it felt somewhat
facetiously about perhaps we'll put body cameras, we would never put body cameras on a pole and just
pass it off as, right?
The fact that the body cameras, if they still are, if they have a built-in functionality to collect
in an automated fashion this information and collect all this metadata that is extraneous to just the
clip itself, then that one part is like a significant problem, right? That we could just include in
this package or a future package that that metadata should be scraped from the footage and it should
just be the straight footage.
sidestep it or require that our body cameras and our dash cams that we are implementing going forward
do not have that functionality built into it. So it was less of a question for me about whether or not
we are sending it to a third party cloud if it's got that end-to-end encryption. It's the question of
what additional capabilities are built into it that then pack in that information so we're, you know,
it can be used in those ways that are unpredictable in court proceedings going forward, right? But more
to the question of the placement or imagining that this somehow limits the capacity of surveillance.
I mean, all of the protests on campus or even the labor actions on campus where folks are just doing
a picket, right?
There will often be IUPD sitting there with their, you know, with their cameras on watching the proceedings
and taking footage of every person's face, right? Which is to speak nothing of like positioning cop
cars strategically on streets in such a way that they're collecting that data and then if there's a
court case that comes up, it's like oops, you know, it's within that realm where we're holding that
data and now we've just, we are liable to pass it off.
and we have to pass it off, and it has that metadata collected on it. So I might be misunderstanding
the feasibility of that or aspects of that, but it's still there to me. Thank you. Thank you very much.
Next speaker here in chambers. Howdy, hi. I am Penn Bailey, and I'd like to start by thanking our friends
over at our sister city in Palo Alto. Thank you guys for showing up tonight. I would also like to speak.
Sorry, I'm nervous. I'll just start.
We have had a lack of clarity that I think many have begin to feel dishonest when it has come to the
cameras and how they are used in this city. To say that people are dissatisfied is as obvious as saying
there's been a lot of speakers on this subject tonight. What ARPR is and isn't has been kind of a convenient
distraction from what the people are saying which is we do not want AI surveillance. The right to our
innocence and our privacy has been under fire and the results are these companies and the contracts
and these fear mongers who
profit from our fear and who create these, sorry, who create and enforce the fear that has created the
hypervigilization and the isolation that plagues our communities today, where people do not know the
names of our neighbors and do not trust them so much as to let them on their own porch without threatening
them. We keep hearing stories of predominantly people of color being shot for approaching someone's
doors, children being shot and killed for being in the wrong place at the wrong time because people
do not trust their neighbors.
It is a for-profit thing. Like we know that the crime rate is going down. We know that it has been going
down for years. And I hope that Bloomington can see through this and does not prioritize profit
over the safety of our community in a time where the queer community, the immigrant community,
the communities of color are vulnerable and our poor are under attack as Indiana continues to push for
more involvement with things like ICE and FLOC and people who profit from our fear. When they push to
take over our town, we push back.
And I want to thank everyone here who did not wait for another murder to cross their news ways before
coming here tonight, who has seen what has happened already and gave up their evening to remind the
council and the mayor who it is they serve and what they do. Thank you so much. And thank you so much.
Thank you very much. All right, next speaker here in chambers. Thank you. I'm sorry, are you doing Zoom
or? I didn't hear what you said. Oh, OK. My name is Chris Doran.
I just like to highlight that the mayor has spent almost the entire time a public comment on her phone
So I'm just curious. Perhaps the mayor doesn't understand the point of this meeting How many people
are in support of passing this ordinance? Mayor Thompson, did you hear that? No answer. Okay
So I'm a proud member of the Bloomington DSA. We've had four demands. The first demand being remove
all cameras with proof. The second demand, cancel all contracts with proof. The third demand, no new
contracts with proof. This ordinance addresses all three, and I think I speak on the vast majority of
DSA members that were extremely pleased. I'd like to thank, in particular, council members
Piedmont, Smith, Zoellick, and Asari for pushing this through, and especially mayoral candidate Sydney
Zoellick for taking the lead on initiating this. So the fourth demand that we have is for independent
full audits. The city in April 15th when there was a memo from both police chief Decoff and a police
chief, I'm sorry, and the mayor Thompson, there are memos sent to the city council.
Outlining, in very specific terms, the internal audits the Blooming Police Department conducts. We would
like those internal audits released. We've heard from many people tonight that there are serious concerns
with abuses conducted by law enforcement. And the best way to ensure that there have not been abuses
conducted is by releasing those internal audits as a start.
The second way is to pursue a full and independent audit. You heard that our colleagues from safety
over surveillance in Palo Alto, they look to Bloomington as their north star. They have initiated an
audit process. We've also communicated to various council members a number of different audits that
have been conducted by including city councils in red states, similar to our situation. And we would
very much like to see a full and independent audit. So my question, if either police chief
Dikhoff or the mayor would like to respond, even with a nod or perhaps she's too busy on her phone,
is whether they will release the internal audits that they advocated show that there was no abuse, that
the system was completely transparent and in control and that everything was absolutely fantastic. If
that's the case, then there should be no reason not to release those audits. And again, both in the
memo of April 15th and the memo, oh, whoa. Okay, so you're moving right along. Will you release the
audits? Please, Chief Dikhoff.
Oh Good no, no response. All right. Thank you. Oh and I'm in support All right. Thank you as a reminder
the comments are to City Council so we cannot sorry to the chair so We cannot be addressing our comments
to anybody individually. Thank you next speaker here in in chambers
I'm a new resident of Bloomington. I just want to thank you all the count on the council for taking
up this important issue I urge you to approve this ordinance and stand with the people against repression
and over surveillance I also urge you to further amendment amend it particularly amendment five
With more clarification and definitions, two or three points, police and law enforcement are the main
abusers of ALPR technologies and so why are we trusting them to decide about how body cam and dash cam
data are being used? Those data can still be sold and fed into these AI processing technologies and
likely will be.
Two, nowhere in the ordinance does it prevent the use of body cam or dash cam footage. And with that
and that we talked about at the beginning of this commentary, it's not just about collecting the data,
but about how that data is processed and using these AI technologies to process the data. Third point,
let the police gather data in the way that is legally approved for criminal cases, and that is through
subpoenas and warrants. Thank you.
Do we still have some commenters online for? Okay, we're gonna do two, the next two commenters online
and then we'll come back here to chambers. You may take yourself off of mute and introduce yourself.
Thank you. My full legal name is Mark Timothy Hodges. I live at 123 Redbud Lane in Brown County. I work
with clients in Bloomington.
doing video production and marketing, and part of my work is exposing ICE abuses of power. I'm asking
you to pass this ordinance. We need to talk honestly about the moment we're in. The rise of fascism
in this country makes every decision to expand government surveillance more dangerous. Fascism needs
machinery, information about where people go, who they meet, and who's willing to stand up. Local governments
need to ask whether they're helping to build
that machinery and these systems get license plates wrong with consequences that go way beyond a bad
entry in a database. The Institute for Justice has documented innocent people being stopped,
held at gunpoint, jailed and worse because of plate reader errors. In Toledo, Ohio, a camera misread
one digit and police held an innocent driver at gunpoint, unleashed a dog on him and jailed him for
hours. One wrong digit and a real person
haze for this. So when we hear, if you haven't done anything wrong, you don't have anything to fear.
The evidence says otherwise. My work depends on people being willing to speak openly, share the evidence,
show up. What happens when they believe meeting an organizer or documenting an enforcement action could
leave a searchable trail? People get scared. The chilling effect, truly, they stay home. They stop talking.
You don't have to arrest everyone to silence a community.
We need enforceable limits on power. Unchecked warrantless surveillance could never, it should never
become the price of using a public road, a public road like State Road 135 or 46. I am pushing to remove
fog cameras in Brown County too. These documented failures are part of why our neighbors deserve protection
from both deliberate abuse and dangerous, uneducated mistakes. Our lives cross county lines. We come
here to work,
We come here to meet clients, get care, organize. Your decisions affect us directly. You cannot fix
everything happening in Washington DC, but you can decide what Bloomington builds, funds, and refuses
to normalize. Pass this ordinance. When people ask what local government did as authoritarianism grew,
I want Bloomington's answer to be we protected our neighbors and we refuse to help build the machinery.
Thank you.
Thank you. All right, we'll go to the next commenter on Zoom. You can unmute yourself and you have three
minutes. Good evening. My name is Dr. Tara Dunderdale. I'm addressing you tonight as resident of district
three and a parent of two young children. I would like to be able to spend time in our beautiful city
with my children without their movements and faces being tracked by police and private corporations.
I want to express my enthusiastic support for this ordinance. I especially think it's important to stipulate
that city staff cannot access these data sets even if we get rid of the cameras in our communities.
And yes, I do believe this should extend to ring cameras and other privatized networks of mass surveillance
that erode trust between our neighbors and undermine our community ties. These tools of mass surveillance
are antithetical to a free and open democracy. They erode public trust, put our most vulnerable members
of our community in danger,
are a waste of precious city resources and have a massive negative environmental impact related to the
data centers required to operate them. The way the mayor's office has refused to be transparent, obfuscated
the truth and misled the public about its use of mass surveillance tools demonstrates how little the
mayor's office and the police department respect the people of Bloomington and our privacy and our rights.
These tools make all of us less safe and undermine our ability to build community.
What's more, there is mounting evidence that we have heard from many speakers tonight that departments
across the country, including many here in Indiana, use these tools for stalking, personal and financial
gain, or even their own entertainment. A recent investigation by Electronic Funds Frontier showed that
police officers searched these databases for reasons that they documented as LOL, I don't know, and
bashing a bunch of keys.
In addition to prohibiting the use of these tools, the city should get an external third party audit
of how the data have been used by our city police department and make that information available to
the public. I am pleased to see council taking such a serious stance against these tools of fascism.
Thank you. Thank you very much. Next speaker here in chambers, you may introduce yourself and begin.
You have three minutes. Hello, I'm Lily Malcolm and I'm a newly inducted Bloomingtonian.
And I wanted to thank you. I wanted to first thank my friends, my comrades and my neighbors for showing
out and dedicating a portion of their night to show support for this ordinance. Thank you to the council
for your deliberation on this topic.
Like many in this room, I am here in support for this ordinance. I will keep my comment relatively brief
since many have touched on points that I wholeheartedly agree with. We deserve to be able to walk outside
without the fear that our day-to-day activities will be tracked and subsequently weaponized against
us by not only corporations like FLOC, but the undeniable, fundamentally untrustworthy police force.
I should not have to worry every day that I'm going to get a phone call from my mother, that my adopted
brother or sister have been detained by ICE, or that my partners have been wrongfully detained by the
police while exercising their constitutional rights or by simply existing. No one deserves to live in
that fear, and yet here we all are with this exact fear in our hearts. We all deserve to have our civil
liberties protected, our rights upheld, and we deserve to have our voices heard.
All of us, our immigrant neighbors, our trans brothers and sisters, our children, and all of our most
vulnerable populations. Do your duty and protect all of us. We are watching and we will remember.
Thank you. Thank you very much. Next speaker here in chambers. You may sign in and state your name.
You have three minutes. All right. Do you want me to sign in again? I signed in earlier.
100%, yes. Yeah, I was gonna say a little something when I got up here. I was like, yeah, let me continue
from where I left off earlier. Sorry, I had to leave earlier. I had a midterm, actually, at 8.05, so
I had to leave and go to a class and take a test. But I'm glad that this meeting was long, so I had
enough time to come out and speak my mind on Flock here. So I've got a little something prepared here.
I'm just gonna read it real fast. Some of the topics have been brought up by some of the
people from before me, so I appreciate the inputs that they have had. We came here today because Bloomington
and Monroe County did the right thing by dropping flock security. But right now we are living with a
dangerous double standard. Indiana University through the institutions of IU Parking and IUPD are collecting
student information through the usage of automated license plate readers or ALPRs. Flock safety.
markets its technology as a vehicle-focused, but its actual capabilities go far beyond simple license
plate reading. AI-driven tools like Guardian Mode are capable of automatically tracking, panning, zooming,
and following specific pedestrians in real time. Internal training materials reveal officers are taught
to track individuals from location to location. These cameras offer police departments
powerful tools to track down criminals based on physical descriptions. However, with great power comes
great responsibility. And without adequate protections, such as the law, such as the enforcement of
a court issued warrant to access flock safety footage, we do not have to guess what happens when these
systems are left unchecked.
Sorry, sorry, I kinda skipped there. We don't have to guess what happens when these systems are left
unchecked, right? The Indianapolis Municipal Police Department just recently had five police officers
charged with stalking under the Marion County Prosecutor's Office. One of them resigned their positions
at the outset of the allegations, however the other four are facing litigation. It's not surprising
that this sort of technology with this sort of power
has been abused so close to where we are currently. In fact, they're having a meeting about it the 19th,
Monday the 19th. However, particularly with how it relates to IU Police Department, I think with the
age range of officers, the turnaround rate, and the fact that we are training college students to become
police officers at IUPD, it just introduces another layer of
of risk there, especially if these cameras are being used in residence halls. So thank you for your
time, and I appreciate you. Thank you very much. And I hope you get an A on your midterm next speaker
here in chambers. Hello. My name is Sarah St. John Wolford. I want to start by thanking you all for
being here tonight and discussing this. We are a blue dot in a red state. Camera footage will be used
against us.
Right now, it's being used against people with perceived immigration status, citizens that are flagged
as suspicious with traffic patterns analyzed by bots, and people who have caught the attraction or anger
of someone with access to that footage. The ways this can be manipulated and lack of local control is
unacceptable.
ALPRs do not make us safer. It gives some the illusion of safety while selling out the marginalized
and most vulnerable in our community. Federal funding is already being tied to compliance on reporting
individuals. But we cannot overturn information or video surveillance we do not have. It is imperative
that for our own safety we ban these.
I understand there is a concern from some of how this might get in the way of surveillance, but the
public is more averse to surveillance than we are concerned with providing videos to the state and federal
government. I think it's important to acknowledge that this isn't technology that has never been helpful,
but when we put this issue on the scales of justice, the evident harm outweighs any good. Thank you.
Thank you very much.
We'll check back in online. We still have a couple commenters online. All right. The next commenter
on Zoom. You are unmuted. You have three minutes. Hello. Yes, my name is Nancy Goswami, and I would
like to thank everyone in chambers tonight and online. I would encourage you to vote to suspend
any type of surveillance cameras in our community. And one thing I'd like to review is the history of
surveillance in the United States. It evolved from early colonialism and slave patrols. And now we have
intelligence agencies and private
corporations surveilling us, and we don't even know who those people are. And it creates a society of,
creates a level of heightened mistrust and fear. And it has the potential of devolving us into a paranoid
society, not knowing who, you know, we can't trust even each other.
And what I'd like to also highlight is that the working class are primarily the ones that are being
surveilled. And they're doing this under the
You know, saying, you know, saying that they're trying to eliminate crime. However, we know that there
are white color crimes and those are not being surveilled and So I'm just, you know,
want to thank you and also I want to consider I want you to consider that perhaps the definition and
the future that you maybe you should look consider is cameras on drones that these corporations can
if you're not allowing them to have fixed cameras that perhaps they would switch them to
some type of drone cameras. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next commenter on Zoom, please. You can
unmute yourself and you have three minutes. Hi, my name is Raisa. And like other people said, I am really
grateful to the council for bringing this ordinance and especially to the three people who sponsored
and co-sponsored it.
I would like to urge the council to pass this with enough of a majority that it signals to the mayor
there's no reason to veto it because it would pass anyway. And if it even passed unanimously, I think
that would make Bloomington a leader in protecting its citizens from ALPR technology. Thanks. Thank
you very much. Next speaker here in chambers. If you haven't signed in, please be sure to do that and
you can state your name and begin.
My name is miles and First comment is for the deputy mayor and soon-to-be ex mayor and They don't seem
to understand that when I have this in my pocket I consent to that but I don't remember being asked
for my consent for Their constituents to be spied on with ALPR cameras whenever they want
So Begs me to question whether or not they would consent if a condor camera was placed right outside
of their door or potentially if chief would agree to putting a camera inside every single BPD car that
we can tune in whenever we want to we'll know what's going on there If you're not doing anything wrong,
what's the big deal? Thanks
Thank you very much. Next speaker here in chambers. You can sign in, and you have three minutes. State
your name when you're ready. Hi, Council. My name is Andrew. I just want to echo the sentiments of those
who have already spoken who have opposed the use of this technology. I think the drawbacks, the dangers,
the unreliability, and the recorded abuses of ALPR and AI surveillance technology far outweigh any potential
benefits that it may offer.
I think it's also important to note that any potential benefits that come from this technology are not
unique to this technology and can be achieved by other more secure forms such as CCTV. The main difference
being that third parties don't have access to it. There have already been too many documented cases
of this technology being abused by bad actors and more will follow unless it is banned everywhere.
Personally, I feel less safe
in a society where the state and third-party contractors Watching the public's every move and tracking
our location and movement patterns is being normalized We are currently living in a moment of rising
authoritarianism and one classic trait of authoritarians is State-sanctioned mass surveillance so to
preserve and protect our freedom and democracy. It's imperative that we push back against authoritarian
overreach at every turn You cannot give an inch or they will take a mile every single time. I
As such I would like to voice my disappointment about the council members that supported amendment 5
on this resolution It will almost certainly lead to further abuses due to the enormous loophole opened
by that amendment That being said this ordinance is still a good first step. I commend the council for
bringing it forward I urge you to pass it and I also urge the mayor to pass it Into law to make Bloomington
a better place for all of us who live here and for those who visit. Thank you
Here in chambers. Do I see? Sorry, my microphone was. Hi, Steve Olin. I first want to say that Oliver's
not the only person in the room on the autism spectrum and they're not alone.
I was here earlier to present the Transportation Commission's endorsements from the Walker parking study
I want to call attention to one of their recommendations that we rejected recommendation ot2 quote upon
moving to a pay-by-plate multi-space meter system for on-street parking update the enforcement system
to mobile LPR technology and transition to digital permits unquote again the Commission rejected the
recommendation this recommendation from the consultants and
The city is already wrestling with data policy in the way that documents are published by next April.
All public documents issued by city offices or bodies need to be compatible with screen readers to comply
with the requirements of the EDA. It has made the formally simple at least seeming to me act of assembling
packets and developing documents more involved. But the city is actively pursuing this obligation. The
advent of a digital parking permit
tied to a license plate presents a similar problem. It's good because it provides a solution to a significant
problem that cities deal with namely the abuse of disabled parking placards. But it means the collection
of personal data that is the subject of tonight's ordinance regardless of the outcome of this ordinance
tonight. I believe your work is not done. Data is still going to be collected by the city however
inadvertently however unintentionally.
We're all carrying devices that generate data regardless of all the cameras that may be removed Whatever
the city's existing written policies may be currently We are at that point in the history of the city
that we must develop a data management and retention Ordinance. It must be granular. It must be specific
It must be protective of individual privacy and it must be part of city code This is beyond the scope
A transportation commission yet as you can see from the parking study. We're going to rely on such an
ordinance to make better policy So I rose to speak tonight to plant this seed, please. Don't stop with
this ordinance. Thank you No, but other commenters online anybody else here in chambers, this is your
last we have one we have a taker, okay, we'll go back to zoom and
You can unmute yourself and begin whenever you're ready. You have three minutes. Good evening. Can you
hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Good evening. Thank you. My name is Eric Ost and I wanted to, I wasn't
intending to speak per se, but I did want to harmonize with the comments that were just expressed about
developing policies regarding
data and technology. And I think that that is an effective route for involving the public, but also
having greater accountability and measurability for that accountability. So I would encourage the council
to consider the creation of a new commission such as the Bloomington Technology and Communications Commission.
Some of you will remember that petition that was circulated in 2011 by the former Telecommunications
Council. And so I just wanted to plant that seed and recommend that you consider creating a commission
that would engage on these very, very important and lasting issues. Thank you.
Thank you very much. All right. Did we have anybody here in chambers who has not spoken yet who wanted
to? Anybody online having second thoughts? No? All right. Well, thank you all very much. With that,
we end the public comments section. And we will come back here to council comments. Thank you all very
much. I know that there were a lot of nerves up at the podium. And I really admire everybody who got
up and spoke. So thank you very much for that.
All right, any council member comments before we go to a vote council member Rallo Thanks to everyone
who made comment there's so many good comments I don't want to recapitulate all of them, but I do want
to just Starting with my former colleague Steve Olin. I think he's correct that protecting privacy is
still in process and I think that a re-examination of the specifics of amendment 5 is
Warranted as we go forward and and and continue working on that that was a very difficult vote and I'm
open to being Standing to be corrected on various points of it So it's clear that these cameras can
have been used for misuse and abuse violating privacy and violating Fourth Amendment rights I'm concerned
about the mass surveillance potential in particular and
I don't find assurance that because other devices allow tracking, that ALPR should be just simply accepted.
As a matter of fact, what it says is that we ought to be examining all of the other types of tracking
that we're subjected to. I mean, I really firmly believe that documenting people around the clock is
a hallmark of a totalitarian state. We have to resist that. I think that there was Ryan, who I don't
think is here right now, but several others.
You are there, hi Ryan. You made a very accurate, and I wanted to pick this out that we need to consider
the contextuality of this, that it doesn't happen in a vacuum. There are macro trends that have been
operating for some time. Productivity has gone up three and a half times greater than wages over the
last 40 years.
All of the gains in productivity, not all of them, but most of them have gone to the top 1%.
And so this is, I think, just part of it. I also want to bring up not the X risk of AI, but the replacement
potential of AI in the workforce. This is why trillions of dollars are pouring into these companies.
Because what they hope to do is to replace people.
Replace workers and that that's a tens of trillions of dollars of labor market potential profit There's
no plans for dislocation Well, maybe there are Something to consider So and I think that to a large
extent higher government is subject to capture and
Regulatory capture and and campaign contributions and so forth. So I think it really is up to municipalities
to push back So I'm really happy that this is happening here and I think my colleagues for it. I think
that we need to Holistically look at the increased digital monitoring and the consolidation of power
in our society and it's up to us at the individual level to
to protect our rights. And so I really admire everybody who came out tonight to speak on this,
a long process. But this is clearly part of a scaffolding for a totalitarian state, it seems to me.
Round-the-clock surveillance has no place. Yes, it could make us safer. But at what cost? Enormous cost
that we may never be able to recapture our rights.
Thank you. I'll be supporting it, of course. One quick before quickly. I forgot that we also have our
rules for how long we can speak to. So if we can remember, we get five minutes for our initial comments
and then two minutes for follow-up comments. That's not a reflection of you speaking. That's just trying
to be fair to everybody. So Council Member Zulek, thank you. Thank you. I'll remind all of my colleagues
who voted for Amendment 5 that
There is a possibility for any member of the prevailing vote to motion to reconsider. If public comment
has swayed you, I would heavily support that. Anyway, y'all covered a lot of stuff. And I appreciated
some of the examples that I was going to bring up. But I still thought it would be helpful to get into
the details of all of the different ways that law enforcement has misused FLOC and ALPR technology across
the country. I'm going to start with Indiana.
In Jackson County, former Deputy Skyler Thompson was fired and criminally charged for allegedly looking
up his ex-girlfriend's plate more than 2,000 times from January through August of 2026. In Greenfield,
Sheriff's Deputy James Hennigan is facing over 400 felony charges for allegedly conducting more than
6,000 illegal flock searches of his wife, ex-girlfriend, and other people he knew.
Kokomo officer Jeffrey Borns Jr. was charged with a felony and two misdemeanors for allegedly using
the flock system monitor, excuse me, the flock system to monitor the location of his then current spouse
in Indianapolis. As we've discussed, five different officers have been accused of misconduct related
to ALPR. Jonathan Schultz faces 26 counts, including official misconduct, fraud, and two felony stalking
charges for running nearly 1,400 unauthorized searches on
11 different women to track them and create contact situations. Matthew Binford accused of using another
officer's credentials to run over 1,000 searches targeting his ex-wife's vehicle. Michael Rogers accused
of nearly 2,800 searches monitoring his wife and an Indianapolis firefighter he suspected she was seeing.
Cassandra Crawley accused of approximately 1,270 unauthorized searches, including vehicles connected
to a former boyfriend.
and Abigail Kramer resigned from the department and is accused of hundreds of unauthorized searches
targeting her wife's ex-wife and others. In Lafayette, officers detained an innocent man at gunpoint
after a flock camera misread his license plate. Now we'll move to Ohio.
Sharonville police off Lieutenant Walter chords 48 was charged with unauthorized use of a computer cable
or telecommunications property after he used flock 29 times between December and December 2024 and April
2026 to track a person's whereabouts Akron officer
Devon Fields was able to continue using the Flock network while on leave after fatally shooting a 15-year-old
boy and again under suspension following sexual assault allegations. He has since been fired and is
under criminal investigation for Flock searches. Mansfield, Ohio. 9-11 dispatcher Shane Baronson resigned
after using Flock cameras to track down a woman and ask for her phone number.
Reynoldsburg officer Mark Nichols resigned after an investigation found he searched for the license
plates of a former domestic partner. Kettering, Ohio's flock system was used 184 times in January for
immigration related searches, despite a vow from the police chief that the cameras wouldn't be used
for that reason. Similarly in Shaker Heights, cameras were also used for immigration related purposes,
also contrary to the city's policy.
Officer Latasha Moore of East Cleveland allegedly used the license plate reader system to find the location
of someone with whom she was in a personal relationship. Former officer in Westchester, Ohio, Michelle
Burling, sentenced to five years of probation after allegedly tampering with flock data and images.
In Toledo, after a flock camera misread a seven as a two, officers detained an innocent driver at gunpoint
sicked their dog on him, as we discussed earlier, and jailed him for several hours. And in Columbus,
Ohio, Officer Melvin Tellis was relieved of duty after allegedly searching for the same license plate
hundreds of times between November 23 and December 24. The city of Columbus paused its flock program
after that was discovered. And if you'll notice, I exclusively used examples from Indiana and Ohio,
and I am almost out of time.
Please note that there are 48 other states, 33 of which have also had documented incidents of ALPR abuse.
The Institute for Justice has a fabulous database for those interested in researching more or reading
more about those incidents. And I know that none of us would like to believe that this could ever happen
in our community. I genuinely, truly hope that it doesn't. But the future is a long time to attempt
to predict, and it's a gamble I'm unwilling to take.
I believe that if this is a preventable breach of justice, it is our responsibility to do so. The use
of this technology need not be as inevitable as some may have us believe. Thank you. Thank you very
much. Any other council members wish to make their final comments? Council members, sorry. Thank you
so much. I want to thank all of you for not only being here, but for staying here.
I think it bears saying that regardless of how you feel about this, and I think most of us in the room
share the same feelings, that one of the things that is particularly excellent about Bloomington is
not just like our political ideologies, but it's the fact that you can come to your city government,
make demands,
we'll hear and we respond to them, right? Not always in the right way, we make lots of mistakes, but
I think that this has been and will continue to be the type of city that is shaped by its people because
we live in a democracy where our government is to be of the people, by the people, and
for the people, most importantly, right? And so I'm just so grateful for you all being here. Paulo Ferri
said, I might be mispronouncing his name. I think it's Frere. He said that to exist humanly is to name
the world and change it. In other words, people must name the world before the world can change.
So I think it's important for us here, as we're doing now in subsequent meetings, to name the world,
both as it is, but also how we want it to be. Let's first start with how it is. We're living in a time
of increasing connectivity, and even though
We talked in sort of one extreme at the beginning of our meeting about concerns around things like super
intelligence and et cetera. And now we're speaking at a sort of now issue of surveillance. The reality
is that the scope of that surveillance has increased on a day-to-day basis. There are about 300 new
artificial intelligence apps that come on the market every single day.
And in all of that, we're reliant and dependent upon this type of digital technology, right? And so
we should be very concerned, as we all have expressed, about increasing any type of encroachment on
what it really means to be a free people in a free society in that background and in that setting. Gautung said,
And I'm sorry to quote this, I can't, I hate being a politician, let me tell you. And I'm so bad at
it and I will not continue to do it for long, but I will say this, Galtung said that anything that is,
that when you look at human potential and you measure the distance between where we are and where we
can be, that that distance is what he called violence.
And we spend so much time in our society focused on the external violence, right? And even the examples
that we gave, we're giving all of these examples of manifest violence that exist because of these type
of tools, sure. But they also just exist, as our colleague pointed out, because of the underlying structure
of our society to begin with. And what if we think through that lens that will show us is that these
The backdrop is that we're living in a time of structural inequality. And these tools can hasten that
structural inequality into abuse. And that is violence. And so we have to stand against that.
Thank you. I will say two other things. Thing number one, I am grateful that first, for my colleagues,
for persistent,
and diligent work on this. I'm grateful also to the mayor and to the deputy mayor, but also to the chief
of police. I will note, I think, again, as we name things as they are, you don't have to clap for this.
But the reality is that they also acted already in some way
to start to ban and remove those contracts. But that also is in response to what you did. So to be very
clear about that. But I want to also set the tone of the fact that we are making progress in this, but
our work is not done.
Okay, and so I think that the most important thing for us to realize here is that this was never about,
you know, just flock cameras in and of themselves, even though we could list grievances for days about
just the specific company, the specific technology, et cetera, but it's about how do we live in a free
society with this type of a backdrop. I am out of time, I'm sorry. Thank you very much.
Do I have any other colleagues council colleagues want to make final comment? Is that your hand councilmember
Stossberg? I kind of hate to follow that by the way but I think I feel like I would be a little remiss
to not make a comment right now and part of that is also because I also want to kind of
comment in reaction to some of the public commenters. Because once again, I also appreciate that people
came out, and people commented, and that this is a passionate issue for them. So first of all, as I
said in the spring when we had the first resolution related to this, I really appreciate that scale
analogy, right? And at what point does the good outweigh the bad, or the bad outweigh the good? And
where does that scale tip? And for me, that scale tipped with FLOC and ALRP,
you know, months ago at this point. And that I think that there's a real difference and that's what
some of the amendments were trying to get to, a real difference between what I will call like your standard
old school surveillance camera and some of this like modern trackable system of cameras that could really,
I mean that's kind of terrifying, right? And that there's a real difference there and
trying to be like, well, in my mind, those standard old school surveillance cameras, I think that's
kind of to each their own in terms of if you want to have that kind of camera outside your shop. I think
that they can be important for security for different reasons. But that trackable stuff, that's just
bad. And one of the things that really tipped my scales on that is ICE getting a hold of that data.
us as a government agency being forced to share that kind of data with ICE, with other federal government,
with state government at this point, I just find that really, really awful to think about. And in that
situation, it's not enough to say we're gonna keep our data really secure and we're gonna make sure
nobody abuses it because at that point we could potentially be required
to share it with those entities or face some sort of legal issue from the state or the federal government.
And so I would rather just not have it at all. I would rather not have it at all. And so I'm certainly
supportive of this because of that. And I also want to appreciate what people said. My computer just
moved, and I
I think I did a keyboard shortcut. If you ever done that, like some kind of keyboard or like swipe shortcut,
and you're like, wait a minute, I didn't intend to do that at all. I think that that just happened.
But the other thing that I really wanted to bring up was what people said about definitions and about
needing to make certain things clear. And I think that there absolutely is some potential for needing
to make sure, especially that definition of what a body camera is.
perfectly clear. And there might be some other things in there, too. And I mentioned end-to-end encryption
earlier. It might be worth putting that into the ordinance to then require any kind of third-party system
that we use. Because even for that standard surveillance technology kind of stuff, it's like, well,
if I'm OK with standard surveillance technology, or I'm OK with the body camera footage, like, yeah,
I want that body camera footage to be end-to-end encrypted. And so putting that in the ordinance somewhere to
Make sure that that is required and maybe that's already something that is required in terms of what
chief decaf was saying by other higher laws that govern that kind of thing I'm not sure but that is
something that I think can be looked into further down down the road and that as my colleagues have
already said This is a good start. It doesn't mean that it's an end and I'll wrap that up. Thank you
very much Thank you very much. Are there any other council members who would like to make final comment?
All right. Well, I'll let Councilmember Piedmont Smith do her first five minutes and then you can do
your second minutes. Really appreciate all of the great comments that have been made by members of the
public tonight, especially calling putting this all in the perspective of a corrupt capitalist system
that does not care for public safety or community values at all.
I brought all these amendments, and I do apologize that some of them came kind of at the last minute.
But I brought them in order to make the ordinance more clear, and I did not intend at all to make it
less strong as far as protecting people's constitutional rights. I also want, I guess,
I did consider the situation where there is a violent crime committed and there is footage of what happened
that can help solve that crime and bring justice for the victims that I wanted law enforcement to be
able to have access to that. And maybe the answer was not in Amendment 5,
and we can revisit if there's a better way to do that. But I felt like if they have to subpoena it,
this could all take time that might lead to the person getting away with it. So anyway, I have a more
scripted list of reasons why this ordinance needs to be passed.
ALPR systems and surveillance camera systems with data that's accessible to third parties do not provide
public safety to our residents. These systems can be easily hacked. We didn't even talk about that.
They have I think I remember the public did bring this up that they were hacked and somebody just entered
and watched everybody walk down the street.
These systems create nationwide databases that have been shared by the vendors with other law enforcement
agencies, despite local contracts that supposedly preclude such sharing. I talked with a council member
in Evanston, Illinois, where they canceled the contracts, they told them to turn it off, and Flock just
turned their cameras back on. So, you know, garbage bags sometimes come in handy. Number three, the
data collected includes not just license plate numbers of questionable accuracy,
but also the make model and color of vehicles, dents and scratches, bumper stickers, and other things
that make it easy to track individuals who have not been accused of any crimes. Studies have shown that
less than 1% of cars scanned by ALPRs are connected to any crime or wrongdoing whatsoever. ALPR readings
of license plates are inaccurate, and we have discussed some of those examples tonight.
I mean, the one that was most striking to me was this family of four in Aurora, Colorado, who were just
out for the girls to get their nails done. And they come into a parking lot. And they're a family of
color. And the cops violently pulled them out of their vehicles, bashed them face down onto the parking
lot, handcuffed them, all because their minivan had a plate that wasn't even
the same as what was in the FLOC database, which was from a totally different state and was for a motorcycle.
This shit happens all the time. And ALPR databases have been accessed by law enforcement personnel hundreds
of times for unauthorized reasons, as my colleague pointed out. Number seven, the use of ALPRs
and surveillance camera systems in gender fear, stifle-free movement, stifle-free speech among immigrant
communities,
black and brown populations, women seeking reproductive health care, and residents lawfully protesting
against government policies. So these are all reasons why I worked my ass off for this ordinance, and
I hope that it passes tonight. Thank you. All right. And Council Member Zulek, you have two minutes.
Thank you. I'm not going to take all of it.
wanted to explain what a motion to reconsider is. And that would be if we were to take another vote
on Amendment 5 over again, because Councilmember Asari and I voted no the first time. We cannot, under
Robert's rules, make a motion to reconsider. But the rest of my colleagues can. And I just wanted to
remind them that they could. Thank you. Thank you very much.
I always love your optimism. Any other? And I will be quiet for the rest of the night. OK. No, not further.
You better not. I'm handing this back. OK. The last thing I just wanted to end on to wrap my full thought
up is that and to append onto the beautiful words that Council Member Piemont-Smith said, Council Member
Stosberg said, Council Member Zulek, Council Member Rarallo,
First, also thank you Council Member Piedmont-Smith. Not only, I mean, we've done a lot of work in drafting,
redrafting, et cetera, but I would like to be very clear that Council Member Piedmont-Smith has done
all of the legwork here, and we're just very, very grateful.
for all the organizing and the energy as well behind it. So I think just one last piece, just to wrap
this up, we really need to continue, but there's an element, two of us,
legislating ourselves, right? Because surveillance, as we know, as we've seen, has also been argued,
can help us respond to violence, sure, can help us respond and find those in danger, sure, but it can
also create structures of power that fundamentally alter the relationship between the citizen and the state.
And so a safe society must protect people from all forms of violence. And a free society must also protect
people from the unchecked power of the very institutions that are established to protect them. I just
wanted to make sure that I said that, because I think that it's critical that we're also thinking about
ourselves here in this legislation. So I'm done. All right. Thank you very much. Any two-minute takers?
All right.
Take my few minutes now as the last one to speak. I'm gonna be super quick because it's very late and
I really do need a bathroom break. But I just wanted to thank the sponsors and the co-sponsors for this,
for working on this. I know you guys have worked on this forever and this is huge. I know how much work
went into it and it is just such a no-brainer to support. So thank you very much. I'm really impressed
with all the work too and the heart that you guys put into it. And thank you all also for being here because
As it's been said before none of this can really happen without the support of the public. And I mean
this is all a group effort. So thank you guys very much. I don't have anything else to say because it's
all been said and I don't want to follow any of those other eloquent comments. So with that. Clerk Bolton
would you please call the roll on ordinance 20 26 dash 22. Councilmember Ruff.
Piedmont-Smith? Yes. Zulek? Yes. Asari? Yes. Daly? Yes. Rallo? Yes. Thank you. Passes. Hooray.
You all signed, when you signed in, there was little words on the back that said you will also stay
to comment on the budget. So thank you so much for agreeing to do that. OK. I think there was a motion
to take a brief recess. No? You got to go? OK, then keep going. I move that approval.
Ordinance 2026-02 be introduced and read by the clerk by title and synopsis only There's a motion in
a second all those in favor say aye Thank you all thank you. Thank you. We appreciate you all goodbye
It's after 1030 do we need to call the roll on that correct? Will the clerk please call the roll?
on the vote on the vote for yes there's a vote and there's a second can you please call the roll on
reading twenty twenty six oh two yes but just to be clear I heard the motion from daily who made the
second please thank you councilmember Zoellick and councilmember Stossberg yes Piedmont Smith yes Zoellick
yes Asari yes
Daley. Yes. Rallo. Yes. And rough. Yes. Thank you very much. Clerk will you please read appropriation
ordinance 20 26 0 2 an ordinance for appropriations and tax rates establishing the 20 27 civil city
budget for the city of Bloomington. The synopsis is as follows an appropriation ordinance adopting the
city's annual budget and establishing the necessary tax rates.
tax levies and appropriations for the city's obligations for the fiscal year ending December 31st 2027
I Move that ordinance appropriation ordinance 2026-02 be adopted second Thank you very much Would somebody
at this late hour like to say some very quick few words about our tax levies I think we've had plenty
of time to talk about it, but as a deputy mayor we
I think that our controller was online earlier as many of you know He has federal jury duty in Indianapolis
that he was in all day today and will be in tomorrow So I'm not sure if he's still there So all of the
adjustments and amendments have been incorporated a new form has been generated and we appreciate your
support and Is and does this constitute a hearing do we need to say any of that type? Okay, good. We're
good to go
Fantastic. All right. Thank you so much any questions comments on this Councilmember Stossberg I have
two comments or two questions. And so I'm hoping that Deputy mayor napkin maybe address them so I compared
the like the Actual sheets of number controller McCracken is online. Oh excellent Controller McKim Hello
Yes, I think there's a question to you sir. Go ahead So so I have two about the because I was parent
comparing the numbers to see what had changed and so I have two questions related to that one is Under
the self insurance that changed
by a couple hundred thousand dollars. Does that have to do with like the, I think, 9% estimate versus
the reality of what it actually was? Is that why that was different? Because I don't think that that
was an amendment that we did. No, that was the elimination of the telemetry devices for the vehicles.
Okay, thank you. And then the other one that was different that I couldn't totally track back to was
the one out of LIT.
Which there was a hundred and forty three thousand eight hundred and ninety four dollars that so I That
was after the sanitation subsidy went away. So is that was at the TDM manager position? Is that all
that was the TDM manager position with all of the benefits lines as well? Okay, great. Thanks. That's
what I thought. I just wanted to make sure thank you Any other questions
Okay. We'll go to public comment at this point. Um, on appropriation ordinance, 20, 20, 602.
Anyone online? Mr. Keough. No, no, no. Okay. No. All right. They're going to be going, going again.
Anybody online?
All right. Well, all right then back to Council any comments before we take and now that comes with
a lose back any comments before we Take the vote on the budget counselor Piedmont Smith Controller Jeff
McKim for his hard work on the budget and His willingness to engage with the Council Fiscal Committee
and really elucidate
elucidate some of the processes and internal budget calculations for council. Thank you so much. Any
other comments. All right. Will the clerk please call the roll. Yes. Councilmember Piedmont Smith. Yes.
Zulek. Yes. Sorry. No. Daily. Yes.
Rallo. Yes. Ruff. Yes. Stasberg. Yes. Thank you. Thank you very much. That passes. How many of us are
here. Six one. Thank you so much. All right. What is next ordinance 20 26 0 4 be introduced and read
by the clerk by title and synopsis only this motion in a second. Will the clerk please call the roll.
Yes. Sorry. Yes. Daily. Yes. Rollo. Yes. Ruff. Yes. Stasberg. Yes. He wants me. Yes. Thank you very
much. Will the clerk please read Appropriation ordinance 20 26 dash 0 4 and
An ordinance adopting a budget for the operations maintenance debt service and capital improvements
for the water and wastewater utility departments of the city of Bloomington, Indiana for the year 2027
synopsis as follows this appropriation ordinance approved by the utility service board in July of 2026
sets the water and wastewater budgets for 2027 Ordinance 2026-04 be adopted
Second. Do we at this time have to call the roll on that as well. Yes. No. OK. Fine. All right. Director
Ziegler is online. Hello from the other side. Hi. Yes. Catherine Zager utilities director. And I just
wanted to follow up on council member Piedmont Smith's
question about depreciation and the depreciation fund. So I had mentioned that depreciation reflects
essentially the value of assets over time. But what that is for us as we use accrual accounting is that
when we buy and pay for an asset, so for example, you have a $100,000 truck
that truck has a useful life of 10 years we would expense that 10k per year over 10 years that creates
the depreciation fund and that's true of many many of our assets that we buy which is why that number
is so large that's also why our enr goes to the depreciation fund so extensions and replacements that's
kind of our cash fund for things like projects for
our capital improvements, and then just generally maintaining the capacity that we need at the utility.
So hopefully that is a better explanation for our depreciation fund and helps answer your question.
Happy to answer any other questions. Thank you very much. Does anybody have any other further questions
for Director Ziegler? Seeing none, we'll now go to public comment. Is there anyone wishing to give public
comment on
this ordinance with which has a number. Yeah I'm sorry. Anyone in chambers. Anyone online. Back to chambers
council members. Any final comments. Seeing none will the clerk please call the roll. Council members.
That can't be right. Okay. Council members sorry. Yes. Daily. Yes. Rollo.
Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Thank you. That motion passes. Yay. We did all the budget things. Okay.
Fantastic. Thank you very much. All right. Any other motions. I move that ordinance twenty twenty six
dash twenty one be introduced and read by the clerk by title and synopsis only.
Second motion and a second of the clerk because the council member daily. Yes. Rallo. Yes. Ruff. Stasberg.
Yes. Piedmont Smith. Yes. Zulek. Yes. Sorry. Yes. OK. Will you please read kindly honorable clerk.
Ordinance 2026-21, updating title two, to provide better apportionment of representation on
the transportation commission and environmental and environment commission council sponsor Stossberg.
The synopsis is as follows. This ordinance sponsored by council member Stossberg makes changes to the
membership of the transportation commission by creating a dedicated seat for an employee of the Monroe
County Community School Corporation and consequently,
reconfiguring the remaining community member seats Additionally the ordinance reduces the size of the
environmental commission to eliminate seats with long-standing vacancies It's 2026 dash 21 be it did
hooray councilmember Stasberg any final words Yeah, I just have a couple first of all, I think it would
be best to start with the amendment. So I'd like to move amendment one Second, thank you
So this whole amendment one changes the original ordinance with regard to the size of the Environmental
Commission originally it reduced it to nine members amendment one reduces it to 11 which eliminates
one of the two seats that have been vacant since 2024 and I did that for a couple reasons first off I was
Never strongly attached to that reduction in the beginning. It was something that came out of the CCP
meeting And kind of got a pendant on to this because I was already doing something with the Transportation
Commission that I was more attached to But also when I went to the EC meeting there were a couple of
questions that kind of got brought up by them that made me go like well like Maybe we should do this
and maybe we shouldn't and what's kind of a compromise right now with that so the two questions and
I want to say them because
I think that it matters for all boards and commissions So the first question is who should decide how
many members it takes for a commission to be? Effectual and how do we decide whether a commission is
effectual and what it takes for that commission to be? Effectual which I think it's just sort of an
interesting philosophical question that we absolutely do not have to talk about tonight
And then the second question is a question of demand versus supply. Do we simply want bodies serving
on our boards and commissions or do we want highly qualified and engaged members serving? Because like
is it really about the number or is it really about the type of people who are serving and we really
need them to be engaged? So those were just some philosophical questions that led me to go like well
maybe instead of reducing this by three we can reduce it by one and that will appease everybody a little bit.
Happy to take questions. Excellent. Any questions All right clerk, oh public comment anyone want to
publicly comment on amendment one, please Hi, I'm Carl Geiser I won't take up a lot of time. I just
wanted to State my appreciation that
you know councilmember sasper took her time out of her day to to come and meet with the EC and ask questions
of us and I also wanted to Express my appreciations the rest of you who you know, we've had email cut
correspondence with on this issue So that's all I wanted to say. Thanks Thank you so much. Is there
anybody else who'd like to make public comment anyone online, please one person online We welcome your
public comment at this time
Hello, my name is Dr. Tara Dunderdale, and I'm speaking to you as a resident of District 3. I think
that the EC should not see a reduction in seats. I think that the challenges that any boarding commission
have faced regarding quorum make it difficult to fill seats because people do not want to sit on a board
that they cannot do any work for. Recent changes to the EC's bylaws means that they are more
uh, capacitated to do their work and their work is critical to our city. They've provided a
lot of programming, a lot of influence on city code and we are in a climate crisis and reducing the
size of opportunity for experts in the city to advise council. Um, and advise the city government is
I think irresponsible. Thank you for your time. Thank you so much. Any other comments?
Anyone else online. OK. Coming back and you both win a prize for being here the whole time. You know
something great. I understand there's a party at the bishop. OK. So coming back coming back to council
council member Rallo. Yeah I served on the EC once upon a time for.
About eight years and Councilmember Piedmont Smith did too and we were concerned about reducing it to
nine and I really appreciate Councilmember Stosberg considering our our our sentiments and Amending
this to 11. I think that that works. So I'll be supporting this. Thank you. Councilmember Stosberg would
you like to address the comment at all or
Well, first of all, this concept of reducing EC in the beginning came from staff and came from the Novak
report. It didn't have anything to do with quorum in the end because that quorum definition got worked
out like, well, this was all being dealt with because government is slow and things take a long time
sometimes.
And one of the things was I talked with staff and the staff liaisons in the planning and transportation
department and and that's kind of some of those questions that I mentioned at the beginning about like
the role of EC and or the role of commissions in general and how what they're supposed to do to be Effectual
and what does that really mean? and Planning staff
Feel quite confident that easy can be an effective body with nine members So that they certainly feel
like it can be an effective body with the 11 members as well So I guess that that that is the addressing
and I also want to highlight that we also have a second boarding board called the oh Geez, it's because
or let's see somebody help me with that acronym right now
Commission on the Bloomington Commission on sustainability and resilience. Thank you. Councilmember
Piedmont Smith. And so there is there are actually two different boards and commissions working
on environmental and climate related stuff in Bloomington as well as a department that has one staff
member full time on it and then a couple two staff members full time on it. So that is something that
still gets maintained. Thank you.
Thank you so much. Any other council member comments. All right. Well the clerk please call the roll
on the amendment one. Yes. Ruff. Yes. Stasberg. Yes. Piedmont Smith. Yes. Zulek. Yes. Sorry. Yes. Daily.
Yes. Fantastic. That brings us to the thing as amended. Are there any other amendments.
OK. Any other things that people would like to say or add to this. Yes. I just I just want to add one
of the things that got asked at the first reading of this was just about the commissions themselves
and what they thought of it. And so I talked about the EC but.
When I was at the transportation commission last time, they actually did make an official vote
of recommendation to adopt the resolution as it had been presented to them, which was technically a
draft. And I changed it in a couple of ways to reflect what
the feedback that I got from their membership. So I just wanted to make sure that that was said out
loud to my colleagues, because I can't remember which one of you was that expressed a desire to know
what it was the commissions had thought about it. So thank you. Thank you so much. OK. With that,
Mike Clark. Oh, no. Public comment. Anyone like to give a public comment on the whole thing as amended?
Go ahead, tall man. OK. Anyone online?
Yes, please yeah, this is now everything Good evening, my name is Jeff Henderson and I serve as the
assistant superintendent of human resources and operations for the Monroe County Community School Corporation
which specifically includes executive oversight of our transportation department which is
operates 80 bus routes per day that travel over 7500 miles in in Bloomington in Monroe County Which
doesn't include field trips extracurricular activities those kinds of things so significant mileage
traveled on our public transportation And I'm here this evening on behalf of dr. Winston the MCC SC
superintendent and
I'm here this evening to offer our support for the proposed update to title to to include an appointee
from the Monroe County Community School Corporation to serve on the Transportation Committee We highly
value our per part our partnership with the city and share in the mission of ensuring safe and reliable
Transportation services for the students and families that we serve and the residents of Bloomington
So we appreciate the consideration of these changes by the council. Thank you
Thank you so much, and you also get the prize for being here, even getting here early. So thank you
very much. And if you could share that with Dr. Winston. Yes, yes, happily, happily, happily. The least
we can do. OK, any other public comments? All right, coming back to council, final chance.
Council members thus Berg I have to give a huge thank you to mr. Henderson over there for for staying
through this whole meeting to give that comment and also for expression report support for and also
actually a thank you to dr. Winston who
We went back and forth a little bit on language related to this and she has been very supportive and
in fact was even supportive of the fact that I gave her an incorrect date of the second reading time
and so she came last week for budgets for a little while and that's why she was here. So I just want
to publicly call them out.
Being supportive of this and and it is it was really important to me as a parent as a supporter of public
schools To have some representation of MCC SC on the Transportation Commission Because really as part
of the Transportation Commission, it should be about safety right our safe transportation networks and
They carry so many of our kids and not even that but they just have tons of staff Tons of parents going
back and forth and I think it's really key to involve them in our transportation systems not only so that
We as the city can make sure that we're being cognizant of what they need as a school system, but also
so that they as transportation provider for so many of our residents can be cognizant of what we are
doing for safety and about some of the key pieces of infrastructure changes and why those things matter
and what the importance is. And so I think it can be a really great sharing and collaboration
and understanding of needs across our
to like jurisdictions that overlap. So thank you. Excellent. With that honorable clerk. Let's do that
thing. Call the roll please. I thought you wanted me to sing. OK. Councilmember Ruff Stasberg. Yes.
Piedmont Smith. Yes. Zulek. Yes. Sorry. Yes. Daily. Yes. And Rala. Yes.
Thank you very much. Are there any other. I move that resolution twenty twenty six dash twenty two be
introduced and read by the clerk by title and synopsis only second. There's a second. Will the clerk
please call the roll. Council member Stasberg. Yes. Piedmont Smith. Yes. Zulek. Yes. I'm sorry. Yes.
Daily. Yes. Rollo. Yes.
Yes. Hey clerk drop that beat go for it. You get to read that if you let's go. Let me catch up. Lost it.
Here we go. Sorry. Resolution 2026 dash 22 to approve an update to the city of Bloomington Americans
with Disabilities Act transition plan. Council sponsors daily synopsis is as follows. This resolution
approves the city of Bloomington's 2026 Americans with Disabilities Act transition plan as an advisory document.
The plan identifies the city's ongoing efforts to improve accessibility and address barriers to participation
in city programs, services, activities, facilities and public rights of way. Thank you so much. Any
other motions? I move that resolution 2026-22 be adopted. Thank you very much. Um, Mr. Sherman's to
you, sir, you can give
The longest or the shortest presentation you've ever given? Two hours past my bedtime. All right.
There we go. So real briefly as I can make it, the Council for Community Accessibility is part of the
group that is promoting the interests of people with disabilities. And we share the perspectives of
people with disabilities with other departments who ask for our advice all of the time.
So the transition plan requirements are essentially that Local governments have to have one There is
no set time for when they're supposed to come out But we have agreed kind of behind the scenes that
we would try to produce one every couple years and the plans essentially just need to document and evaluate
whether cities are ensuring that their programs are accessible to people with disabilities and
Some quick highlights for CCA We continue to host all sorts of community programs and training for disability
visibility and education and we've Expanded a program that's really popular with the public which is
the snow buddies program to help people who are seniors or disabled Getting their snow removed from
their sidewalks a city requirement and for digital accessibility We have a working group
of which I'm part of that have implemented new processes to meet all the federal digital accessibility
guidelines that are coming up in the next year. And the city is already in compliance with many of these
requirements and meets the standards in WCHE 2.288.
City owned buildings lots of parks and recs are have updated some of their things to ensure that they're
more accessible like push button doors and there's been a lot of ADA compliant remodels for.
various fire stations as well. And parks and trails have done a lot of work. If you haven't checked
it out yet, look at the tactile map installed at Switchyard Park. It's amazing. And also more better
parking at Mills Pool, picnic shelters, raised beds at Butler Park, etc., etc.
For right-of-way highlights we have in 2020 5 we had 21,717 sidewalk trip hazards repaired and in 2025
273 a da curb Rams curb ramps were installed reaching over 2000 since 2016 for Bloomington transit between
23 and 2025 the percent of bus stops with excellent accessibility ratings increased from 22 percent to 38 or
We are still encouraging them to work harder to make more of them And as you know, it's it's clear that
there's still work to be done with twelve percent of the box bus stops remain fully inaccessible With
that I would take any questions that you have Colleagues questions Okay councilman Stossberg and then
I have a question go ahead
And I don't mean to like belabor our meeting, but I really appreciate mr. Chalmers that you stayed all
the way till now and I think that it's only right that I should ask my questions at this point because
this is also an important topic and it shouldn't be the important shouldn't be diminished just because
we're talking about it at 1140 at night, so My first question is about
And actually, this applies to something else that happened earlier this evening. It is about just the
word disability, you can say, and what disabilities count as protected that we're trying to make sure
that we have services for. There was a person who commented a couple of times and mentioned autism spectrum.
And that was actually related to another constituent who reached out to me who felt that because of
their autism spectrum disorder that they
did not receive some services that they would have expected to receive. So does ASD count in terms of
some of these protections and accessibility requirements and that kind of thing that we're working on?
It's a hard question to answer.
Yes, it's considered in lots of, the ADA itself doesn't take it into account as much in terms of certain
things, and much of it's focused on physical accessibility, but we continue to strive for that, and
we try to include people with those kind of disabilities in the work that we do. Does that sort of answer
the question? Yeah, I think that that answers the question.
I got the feeling that most of it, and it feels like most of the time when the CCA advocates for things,
it is about physical disability. But I just wasn't sure in terms of the actual technical language and
definitions, whether mental disability is also counted even without physical. Yeah, we include people
with all disabilities
But there's very few deaf people, for example. There are some people with autism, and there are lots
of people with developmental disabilities. We work strongly with Stone Belt and DSI, other organizations
to try to promote that. And we have disability awareness stuff that looks at those kind of issues as
well. But again, the primary focus a lot of times are physical accessibility issues. OK, thank you.
Should I ask my other questions too while we're here? Yeah, go for it.
So Oh One of the things that I wanted to call out and just be like cake and maybe we fix that next year
under the public right-of-way data You mentioned responding to citizen complaints and I would love it
if we can change all of our citizens to residents Because I would hope that we're responding to resident
complaints not just responding to the complaints of those people who are citizens so if that's something
that you can think about in terms of
language usage Always trying to be more inclusive. Thank you for that. Yeah, sure and then my last question
has to do actually with the bus stations and the inaccessible bus stations because between the 2023
and the 2025 there are still 12 percent that are inaccessible So can you just talk a little bit about
those 12 percent inaccessible bus stops and what makes them? Maybe especially challenging to remediate.
Um, yeah, so a lot of those
stops are at locations that people who live in that area feel very strongly about having a bus stop
there. But making it accessible is pretty cost prohibitive for some of those places because of the topography
and the street things and sidewalks around it. And there's lots of issues that are involved with those things.
And when they look at trying to make them accessible, they're going to be very expensive to do that
for a lot of them. So that's some of what it is. But I'm not going to try to talk too much more on that,
because I don't feel as qualified. That's really, I wish I had somebody from the Bloomington Transit
here to be able to speak more clearly with it. Because while they're part of the city and all that,
we get complaints or issues with that. Those complaints are turned right back to them.
Follow-up with them their Bloomington transits complaints and so We just asked for their data because
it's relevant to the city But I don't work as closely with them for those kind of things They work they
do come to council for community accessibility meetings though and work with us and when people make
complaints to them Directly at those meetings. They are listened to and they are addressed. They are
really good about that So they are they are working as hard as they can to
To stay connected to the people with disabilities and their needs Okay. Thank you. That was it. That
was all I had I had a quick question then I'll pass to come to Murillo So first off, thank you for staying
and so this is this is a plan but
It's there there are things that are left out of it. Like for example the accessibility of a council
meeting that goes to eleven forty five. But like all jokes aside there are and I know I was copying
on some emails back and forth about particular elements that that maybe had been in previous plans that
aren't here now certain implementation parts. So I'm interested in two things first.
And I don't mean this rhetorically, but it's late. Can you separate for us the sort of planning versus
the implementation? Who does each part of those? Where are we at in past plans in terms of implementing
them up until this point? So I'm trying to get a sense of,
If we're voting on this today, is this us sort of just saying, generally speaking, we approve you doing
a plan and continuing to iterate on it? Or are we saying, yes, this is the plan, run with it? The last
part is, if we all voted for this, right, is what we're saying to you, take this plan as is written
and do exactly that. Here's your map for the year ahead.
I'm gonna say that that's a tough question to answer If I had the magic wand to wave City departments
would be More responsible to me wishing that they would follow the ADA in a very strong way that I would
have trouble getting all of them to do and
I'm one person. There's a large amount of departments. They have a lot of challenging issues They try
to involve me as much as I can as much as I can, you know get everything in But there's also a lot of
complaints out in the community and those community members want to be heard and Stretched pretty thin
in that way and I'm not complaining. It's just that It would take
More support than I think is out there right now understood for
that to be a, here's the plan and everything in it. It doesn't contain everything in it. There's no
way it could. So you would agree that really we're separating, the plan is necessary for some external
entities, et cetera, but there's broader work that we need to do in the city to not only be ADA, I mean,
I think we're ADA compliant broadly, but to do that maximally, right? And so I would just, I'll say,
the quick note just to close that which is like I'm very interested in continuing to work both with
the Commission and with you to figure out what type of things council can do not only then because you
know because otherwise we're voting for something and it's kind of a meaningless vote but I think that
if what we're saying is okay here's some direction we get that there's there's things missing and we're
gonna take some solid action to fill in those other things I'd really like to see for example an audit of
Existing practices, right? And so if we say like hey, we have this plan How well are we doing against
some of those things and figuring out what that would cost without need and how we can support as a
council so So you're not alone on that. Yeah, I would just say that we'll continue to iterate this and
Continue to want to update it and revise it and make it better and try to address more issues all of
the time Okay. Thank you so much. I'm councillor Rallo Thank you, mr. Shermans for all you do I have
Constituent meetings with Chuck Livingston and he is you know, very focused on Various deficiencies
Whether just occasionally temporal ones or ones that are systemic and I'm sure you've had lots of exchanges
lots and yep, and I appreciate his
His work, he does a lot of walking, and he's checking on accessibility. So my question is about physical
accessibility related to our data portal and his difficulty in finding. If you're going to navigate
and you have disabilities, you want to know which way you can go without hitting, obviously,
a dead end, right?
So he's had difficulty finding, for instance, the conditions of sidewalks related to accessibility and
has had to merge various data sets in order to achieve that. So we see that there's a city working group
developed and implementing processes to meet new federal digital accessibility requirements. Will that
group also be looking at ways in which this
Data can be accessible Yeah to to people with disabilities so that they can navigate well Yes, we've
talked about that in that group and how we need to do that. Yes. Okay, so we can expect progress to
be made there okay Give anything else to say about your exchanges with mr. Livingston because um I have
worked pretty closely with mr. Livingston and
When I get complaints that come in and I get them I'm sure two or three a week They're for individual
issues from individual people in the communities Up until that time when he approached me and said I'm
about ready to make a complaint that is for several things and I said Okay, keep me posted and then
it came and it was like wow. This is a lot for
for me to have to try to organize and manage, and it's gonna cross more departments than just one department,
and then he did it again with another set, and then again with another set, and then he made two addendums
to that, and it was pretty overwhelming to have all of that at once. It required us to step back and
make a new protocol to figure out how to organize
numerous departments and gave emphasis on the word coordinator to my position as ADA coordinator because
it was a lot of coordination. I had to work with legal to be able to figure out how to make all the
processes convert. And it took longer than I would have ever wished because I feel like I'm an extremely
responsive person and I felt like I couldn't give as responses
responsive as I needed to be to him but we worked with him and I kept him posted as well as I could
and tried to communicate with him along the way and Just about four or five weeks ago. We were able
to respond to the vast majority of his things I'm not gonna say that he was gonna be pretty heat that
he because he has not responded back yet that he was gonna be particularly happy with everything that
we had to say because Engineering is quick to point out
That is not our responsibility. This is not our responsibility. Planning is like, well, we can do this,
but we can't do that. And parks will say, well, this is on the agenda. We tried to make it very clear
what kind of timelines we're trying to reach for all that, and we provided the answers back to them
as best we could.
I'm working with another complaint. It's that same kind of issues where there's a lot of things at once
that we're dealing with It's changed the way we're doing things I'm trying to learn how to be more responsive
to the giant kind of complaints as an individual one So I'm working with him and he has not responded
yet back in my in the month and I have not pursued him to say how come you're not Reconnecting so I'm
hoping you will. Okay. I hope that answers that thank you for taking the time to describe that I would
just say that Mr. Loewings since seems very
And and and I you know, I appreciate his critique But he's very appreciative of your work. Yeah, and
he says that's all time. It's not I'm gonna I'm not complaining I'm sorry. We should not be talking
about a single individual that like this extensively from the dais Well, why not? He's a constituent
I'm just saying that he is mr. Livingston has done a
It's a service and I and we're trying to address his issues. So yeah All right. Thank you so much Any
others? Okay, we will go to public comment. Thank you so much. Mr. Miss would anyone like to give public
comment? Thank you for That mr. Russo, take it away You've got eight minutes left Knowing that this
is on the agenda. So I apologize. Oh, go ahead this late hour
Yeah, Paul Russo would respectfully Disagree with the president. I believe that the city is wildly out
of compliance with the ADA. Good Yeah, this is a problem that doesn't land on any one person shoulders
at all. Certainly not mr. Shermas ADA was enacted what 36 years ago and we've been kicking the can down
the road for a long time I think of this issue as similar to the county jail and
Here we are. I would take the challenge to take any neighborhood with infrastructure more than 20 years
old, just throw a pin on a map, and within one block, I'll find you a blockage where a person with a
wheelchair cannot get through. It's all over the town. So it's a small wonder that Mr. Livingston, to
his great credit, has come up with so many instances of noncompliance. It's a big problem. I just wanted
to point that out. Thank you. Anyone else?
Good evening, my name is Eric host and I appreciate this opportunity to offer a comment I first want
to express appreciation for the work of Michael Sherman's He does a fantastic job and he's I think
that particular component of local government is under-resourced. So I would encourage you to look at
maybe putting more resources into his department. But anyway, I'm speaking tonight on this resolution
and I strongly endorse your consideration of the memorandum that Dave Askins sent you. It pertains to
accessibility, public transparency,
and digital document usability. I don't think you should necessarily not approve this plan, but I think
that you should take this as an ongoing process and address those issues and what I'm about to illuminate.
But first, I think that you should restore protocols and guidelines for Zoom meetings, especially
accessibility. That includes how do you enable chat,
Because we're moving into a world where technology assists are going to provide the ability for more
and more people to participate electronically Second I think that you should address the false tension
between accessibility and public records Mr. Askins Points out the issues with public records being
released but not accessible to members of the general public and that's only been since February
This year and it was done for not a reason that's been stated yet, but it can be presumed. It's because
of accessibility. However The deadline is until April of 2027 We need to work on making things accessible
and there is there are processes and methods that you can continue to publish unified PDFs as you did
all along so that they're downloadable and more accessible and I'd encourage you to look at doing that because
The current method of publishing meeting packets not the councils you've been spared From seeing this
okay, but other boards and commissions have and what it is is it's instead of a unified PDF packet You're
basically getting a fragmented multi-link web format that sometimes prompts you to log in you it's not
accessible and so if you have a
Something that's so fragmented like that You're just not gonna make it so I would I would request that
you take a look at that as a council as a legislative body because it is a matter of The open door law
open records Thank you for letting me speak. Thank you. Is there anybody else in chambers? Is there
anyone online? No one. Okay. Well, let's come back to council comments any comments before we vote I
Councilmember Rallo just to say that you know, I think that there's a lot of infrastructure that needs
to be attended to and it would take a tremendous amount of capital to to address the compliance failures
for people with disabilities but I think that that and the reason I brought up mr. Livingston is that
you know, he's he's getting at something that I think is essential and that is You don't have to attend
to everything
But you have to attend to enough to allow the accessibility that people can expect to get around the
community and to be able to get documents and and and You know Because like stormwater, I mean we're
not going to fix everything But we can hopefully make progress and I appreciate mr. Sherman's for your
work because I know it all basically ends up mostly on your lap
entirely, of course, but because of the Commission but Still I really appreciate your efforts and I
look forward to more progress. Thank you. Thank you so much I'll just say I and and first off. Thank
you so much. Mr. Tremont for all the work that you do and and again I would like to echo what I said
earlier and that we as a council I think and again, I don't want to speak for my colleagues but invite
them to join in in this statement is take
At least should take these questions Super seriously right that this isn't just a perform a thing. It's
not just okay And so I view this as a real opportunity Not just in the vote today, but in what continues
hereafter For us really to start focusing in I mean to hear you say look there's a lot I wish we were
doing but we're not doing that and
This has been my argument throughout the budget season, where I was like, our budget represents our
values, and so what is it that we're really investing in, and how are we moving resource to support
the outcomes that we want to see? And I think that particularly with the reality of having an aging
population, for example, I think of trying to talk about ourselves as being a place where everybody
can thrive, regardless of where you come from, regardless of your ability or inability, regardless of
anything, sickness,
or health, no matter what, we want to be a city where people can thrive. And to me, I feel like our
conversations around accessibility
and including some of the comments that have come through and critiques of the way that we're doing
things, I think has shown that we're not really prioritizing that. We have not made it the way that
we've said, hey, we're gonna be a bee city, we're gonna be a tree city. Well, why don't we be the shining
example of what it means to be an accessible city? And so I'm gonna vote no on the plan today, but again,
not in any reflection of your work, please don't take it personally. I think that there's so much more
that we need to do, and that's what I was getting at with my question,
Is that I really it concerns me that this that we do something like this is sort of like a perfunctory
You know activity and I think that all of us as council Really would like to support Making sure that
this city is a city where everybody really can thrive that it's not just something we put on a slogan
anybody else a councilmember Stasberg
Respond to that a little bit. I am gonna support this today and one of the things when you were speaking
before Councilmember sorry when you were Asking kind of like what are we really voting on today is I
actually looked at the ordinance and I said, what are we really voting on today? And so it has it being
approved as an advisory document outlining a plan and so I Can agree? Yeah, maybe we need to have like
a more Robust
plan, but what I'm actually voting on is approving this as an advisory document that outlines a plan.
So, yeah. Thanks. Oh, where's everybody gone? Okay. Any other comments? All right. With that, honorable
clerk, for the last time, wilt thou call the roll kindly?
Yes, I'm sorry. Nope daily. Yep Yes Yes And Stasberg yes Fantastic that passes. All right, we got through
A herculean amount of things. Okay, this is now the second time for public comment if you did not comment
the first time anyone anyone
Okay. Clerk Bolden, would you like to say a few words? Anybody online? Clerk Bolden would like to make
a public comment. Please state your name for the record. Hush you. So I intended to say it toward the
beginning of the meeting and my apologies for adding this to it. I appreciate those of you who wore
purple to recognize Domestic Violence Month.
And I just wanted to underscore that if you are in a situation where you're facing domestic violence,
you can call 911 if you're in immediate danger. If you need some assistance or need to talk to anything,
you can call the National Domestic Violence Hotline, which is 1-800-799-SAFE. I'm saying it to any members
of the public who may watch it later and also to council members so you can pass that information on
to your constituents as well. And please don't forget we have
several local resources that are wonderful and enormously helpful. So there's a protective order project
that is run through the law school. And there's also a middle way house, which we should never forget
to mention in every conversation that we're having with people because, because it's very important.
So I just wanted to underscore it. It's not enough to, you know, bring the purple into the room. We
should also be talking about resources available to people as well. That was it.
Appreciate it. And for those of you who have not signed, please stop on by. Yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am.
All right Council schedule importantly go ahead This Friday is canceled because it was supposed to be
a controller Jeff McKim show and he Has jury duty. Okay. Well, thank you democracy. We have on the 20
what they would we set for the
26th on the 26th, we're having a special session of council so that we can vote for the levies What
are we voting for? The public safety that PS led, sorry So we'll have a special session that shouldn't
be long if you're able to make it, please You need to be in person for that one However, and where is
that meeting? That's gonna happen in the same room as the committee on the process room Okay, fantastic.
And that is at 7 p.m It actually
We'll talk about it. It's been noticed for 6 30 p.m. And I understand that that bumps up against the
committee on council processes a little bit, but okay Yeah, thank you very much again. Ms. Rossman.
Thank you, sir. Great great first meeting. Hey We blame you that we're leaving at midnight. All right.
Have a wonderful day everybody. Goodbye Because it is morning