WEBVTT 00:00:00.130 --> 00:00:07.193 - Well, good evening everyone. Um, welcome to the city council meeting. This is a deliberation session. 00:00:07.193 --> 00:00:14.326 - So a little bit different than our normal meetings. Um, we'll go over that in a few seconds here, but, 00:00:14.326 --> 00:00:21.736 - um, if the clerk would be so kind as to call the roll and then we can get started. Council member Flaherty 00:00:21.736 --> 00:00:25.406 - here. Stossburg here. Here. Here. Sorry. Here. Here. 00:00:27.586 --> 00:00:39.614 - Our agenda today is fairly simple where it's this is just a time for council to have some open conversations 00:00:39.614 --> 00:00:46.014 - Because as we say a lot, it's we are not able to meet the 00:00:46.114 --> 00:00:52.361 - but this way. And so here we are meeting this way to have just open discussions. And we have two things 00:00:52.361 --> 00:00:58.367 - on our agenda. We're going to be reviewing the results of the last two conversations. I expect that 00:00:58.367 --> 00:01:04.494 - that'll take a good portion of our time. And then thereafter, we'll talk a little bit hopefully about 00:01:04.494 --> 00:01:08.158 - the Affordable Housing Fund and how we want to move forward. 00:01:08.226 --> 00:01:13.695 - With requests to the to the administration around that we'll surely have more conversations around this 00:01:13.695 --> 00:01:19.111 - and there will be time for public comment It's a little bit more informal So if at some point you have 00:01:19.111 --> 00:01:24.475 - a you know, you're just like I really want to give a public comment now Just you know wave your hands 00:01:24.475 --> 00:01:29.786 - or something and we can Surely accommodate so so with that I know because what people Smith has done 00:01:29.786 --> 00:01:34.782 - a wonderful job putting together multiple things for the packet and those were sent around and 00:01:35.074 --> 00:01:43.194 - Are there any thoughts on exactly how to structure the conversation, or otherwise we can maybe just 00:01:43.194 --> 00:01:51.314 - open up with reflections on the last two conversations and what was in the packet? Yeah, I can do a 00:01:51.314 --> 00:01:59.758 - little intro maybe. So first of all, I want to thank CJAM and Wyatt Lawson, who was our partner in this 00:01:59.758 --> 00:02:04.062 - series of two deliberation sessions with the public. 00:02:04.354 --> 00:02:15.330 - and who wrote the report that's in your packet. There is both a final written report on the deliberation 00:02:15.330 --> 00:02:26.306 - sessions and the surveys. And then in a packet addendum this morning, there is a more visual and shorter 00:02:26.306 --> 00:02:33.310 - summary of the outcomes of those two sessions and what we learned. 00:02:33.442 --> 00:02:42.964 - So I think those are good starting points. Of course, the report itself is a good structure. We could 00:02:42.964 --> 00:02:52.766 - perhaps follow the session two priority areas. We could maybe talk about those tonight. Or I had noticed 00:02:52.766 --> 00:03:02.942 - some another way to frame things, which is they're kind of four areas that stood out to me in regard to city 00:03:03.106 --> 00:03:11.864 - um, policies or city areas of city action. Um, one is infrastructure in that a lot of, um, people mentioned 00:03:11.864 --> 00:03:20.297 - infrastructure as it relates to public safety, lighting, you know, good pedestrian walkways, et cetera. 00:03:20.297 --> 00:03:28.407 - Um, the second is public engagement, um, engaging with a broad, uh, cross section of the community, 00:03:28.407 --> 00:03:31.326 - um, including Spanish language, um, 00:03:31.586 --> 00:03:40.254 - educating the public about public safety options, what things already exist, things like that. The third 00:03:40.254 --> 00:03:48.674 - was prevention of emergencies. So how can we avoid having to call 911? So a lot of that, and this was 00:03:48.674 --> 00:03:57.012 - a big focus in the group I was in for the second session, is about having housing for people, having 00:03:57.012 --> 00:04:01.470 - social services for folks who are having a hard time. 00:04:01.634 --> 00:04:11.115 - Um, also collaboration between, uh, government, uh, county, city, IU, social service agencies, et cetera. 00:04:11.115 --> 00:04:20.506 - Um, and then the fourth is the emergency response. What we think of as basic public safety, like police, 00:04:20.506 --> 00:04:28.734 - um, and other first responders. So I don't know how you prefer to go through this. The, um, 00:04:29.346 --> 00:04:37.247 - The memo that I submitted with the packet has some questions. We could go through those if you like, 00:04:37.247 --> 00:04:45.618 - but I'm also open to just kind of go down the row and see what people's initial reactions are. Any initial 00:04:45.618 --> 00:04:53.910 - reactions? And I love the idea of going through the questions that you raised. Thank you. I have a little 00:04:53.910 --> 00:04:59.230 - bit to add on the side of public engagement, which is that at least 00:04:59.426 --> 00:05:08.106 - throughout both of my groups in October and September, I noticed that there was a theme of people feeling 00:05:08.106 --> 00:05:16.294 - safe when things feel familiar and or predictable. And one of my observations in the several crises 00:05:16.294 --> 00:05:24.974 - that we've had in Bloomington over the past couple of months, including a county wide boil water advisory 00:05:24.974 --> 00:05:29.150 - and several shootings that have taken place is the 00:05:30.082 --> 00:05:38.282 - accuracy and speed with which crises are communicated with the community and the information that is 00:05:38.282 --> 00:05:46.481 - available. And I would just add that to our conversation on public engagement. I think that the less 00:05:46.481 --> 00:05:55.005 - people are aware and the less that people can trust efficient communication, the more there is a feeling 00:05:55.005 --> 00:05:58.334 - of fear across the community. Thank you. 00:06:04.546 --> 00:06:12.595 - Any other, just initial reflections? Okay, so, um, Isabel posed, um, I'm sorry, Councilmember Piemont-Smith 00:06:12.595 --> 00:06:20.197 - posed a handful of, um, I think really great questions, um, which might be a nice starting place. Um, 00:06:20.197 --> 00:06:27.799 - and the first one is as we look at the suggestions and potential approaches section under each of the 00:06:27.799 --> 00:06:29.662 - session two topic areas. 00:06:29.762 --> 00:06:38.078 - Which would the City Council implement directly through policy or indirectly through approvals? I'm 00:06:38.078 --> 00:06:46.561 - happy to maybe give all the questions and the second question is which are which of these are already 00:06:46.561 --> 00:06:54.046 - implemented and is it our role to better educate the public as to what already exists and 00:06:54.594 --> 00:07:03.181 - which are already covered by different community plans, like the transportation plan? And which city 00:07:03.181 --> 00:07:11.767 - department should we talk to about refining ideas and implementing programs? So that's sort of under 00:07:11.767 --> 00:07:20.354 - the banner of question one. So what are your thoughts on that? Would you all like some time to read? 00:07:20.354 --> 00:07:21.374 - I'm joking. 00:07:27.778 --> 00:07:37.912 - A couple of things that were mentioned in the report Are things that we already have to some extent 00:07:37.912 --> 00:07:48.451 - like a central place to report various problems We have the you report system It's not for emergencies, 00:07:48.451 --> 00:07:56.254 - but it is for like Other things like this sidewalk is impassable or you know 00:07:56.418 --> 00:08:06.771 - There needs to be a bike lane here because I almost almost took my car. You know, other things can be 00:08:06.771 --> 00:08:17.734 - submitted through your report. The other thing that came up was a central place for people to get resources 00:08:17.734 --> 00:08:25.854 - if they have social service needs, housing, food, shelter, clothing, et cetera. 00:08:26.274 --> 00:08:35.199 - There's a website called helping Bloomington Monroe dot find help dot com and that has that is a depository 00:08:35.199 --> 00:08:43.710 - of Repository of all that kind of information. So I guess there are some things that people just don't 00:08:43.710 --> 00:08:52.222 - seem to know about I Think this goes to Council members who looks point to about like, you know, maybe 00:08:52.450 --> 00:08:58.092 - And it is something that I think came up in every conversation I was in as well and thinking about, 00:08:58.092 --> 00:09:03.959 - I think this came up in budget season this year as well, like how do we really supercharge the way that 00:09:03.959 --> 00:09:09.827 - people get information about what's happening and what's available to them in the city? Because I think 00:09:09.827 --> 00:09:15.525 - there's a real, it's kind of strange if like our response, you know, people go, well, we needed this 00:09:15.525 --> 00:09:21.054 - and our response is, we already have that, you know, and so yeah, like what can we do about that? 00:09:21.922 --> 00:09:29.309 - Oh, sorry. I'm so sorry. So yeah, I was just saying, I was just saying it's, you know, I think a recurring 00:09:29.309 --> 00:09:36.213 - conversation is how do we, how do we supercharge getting people information in the city? Like what, 00:09:36.213 --> 00:09:43.462 - what investments do we need to make to get better, you know, flows of communication, you know, and then, 00:09:43.462 --> 00:09:50.366 - and then Courtney and just, just talk. I don't, you don't need me to tell you. Well, as a resident, 00:09:50.498 --> 00:09:58.294 - I have received several things in the mail from the city including from the parks department. I believe 00:09:58.294 --> 00:10:05.865 - I've received several things from hand. So it seems to me that we do have the capability to mail out 00:10:05.865 --> 00:10:13.586 - widely shared resources. I'm curious if that could be one of the ways in which we let people know that 00:10:13.586 --> 00:10:16.734 - some of these resources already do exist. 00:10:20.354 --> 00:10:28.279 - Yeah, I'm noticing a theme. I like that suggestion a lot. I'm noticing a theme in a lot of the community 00:10:28.279 --> 00:10:36.129 - suggestions all kind of revolve around a lack of communication or not knowing where to find information 00:10:36.129 --> 00:10:44.054 - or knowing that the information is there. I think we need to rely on multiple avenues for communication, 00:10:44.054 --> 00:10:49.790 - not just Facebook or not just emergency text messages. Figure out there are 00:10:50.434 --> 00:10:59.425 - people prefer communicating in many different ways. And I think we need to probably experiment for a 00:10:59.425 --> 00:11:08.417 - little while with various forms of communication and see which people respond to most, and then keep 00:11:08.417 --> 00:11:15.806 - a handful of those for issues. Yeah. Well, this is kind of changing topics lately. 00:11:16.386 --> 00:11:23.121 - I feel like in terms of addressing question number one, it would be maybe systematic in a way that would 00:11:23.121 --> 00:11:29.920 - make my brain happy is if we literally like went through the list for each of those four and maybe picked 00:11:29.920 --> 00:11:36.334 - out anything specific. So like that's like when you first started, I was kind of like, okay, I need 00:11:36.334 --> 00:11:43.582 - to scroll to the place that has all of these. Cause I don't remember all of them off the top of my head. And so, 00:11:43.906 --> 00:11:50.839 - FYI it the first one is on page 10 of the packet And the the first one has to do with improving maintenance 00:11:50.839 --> 00:11:57.580 - of existing infrastructure and the thing that I like picked out of that was the removing snow and debris 00:11:57.580 --> 00:12:04.257 - because that's something that we've talked about updating code from the dais in terms of like something 00:12:04.257 --> 00:12:10.934 - legislatively that Council could maybe do I know councilmember Flaherty and I've talked about that some 00:12:10.934 --> 00:12:13.630 - and I'm not quite sure where either of us 00:12:13.858 --> 00:12:21.647 - on it But that is that is something legislatively that could be done in terms of that as opposed to 00:12:21.647 --> 00:12:29.513 - budget Related stuff in terms of other Maintenance of existing infrastructure, which I think that we 00:12:29.513 --> 00:12:36.990 - kind of are trying to do as a body and I think the administration is also trying to do that and 00:12:41.026 --> 00:12:48.248 - I wasn't necessarily assuming that I would lead us all through all the things. I just thought that it 00:12:48.248 --> 00:12:55.824 - would be helpful to have this conversation in a more focused way instead of in a very general way. Because 00:12:55.824 --> 00:13:03.117 - then when you guys were talking about the community information, I was like, OK, where's the community 00:13:03.117 --> 00:13:08.286 - information one? And yeah. OK, so other thoughts then on this first one. 00:13:10.178 --> 00:13:17.632 - I got a scroll to it. Yeah, it's page 10 improving maintenance of existing infrastructure Councilmember 00:13:17.632 --> 00:13:25.086 - Flaherty has there been any further movement on the removing snow from sidewalks question I've put some 00:13:25.086 --> 00:13:32.325 - research and thought into code updates. I owe Councilmember Stossberg an email. She's sent me a note 00:13:32.325 --> 00:13:37.342 - asking kind of where where my thinking was on it. I Think it's a good 00:13:38.146 --> 00:13:45.631 - What I can share about it is also a good frame for some of these priorities, which is, rarely is legislation 00:13:45.631 --> 00:13:52.773 - alone gonna be the thing. There's usually budget implications, and there's alignment and prioritization 00:13:52.773 --> 00:13:59.777 - in implementation. And so that's one of the tricky things with scenario removal specifically. I think 00:13:59.777 --> 00:14:07.262 - we can and should change some things in code, but how enforcement is conducted or not matters more, frankly. 00:14:07.906 --> 00:14:14.735 - with snow removal, in particular, as a, yes, time-limited, but very distinct and significant public 00:14:14.735 --> 00:14:21.837 - safety threat to people who can't pass and are forced to walk with cars in dangerous street conditions. 00:14:21.837 --> 00:14:28.734 - Like that, we need alignment on the goals, and we're not there. And so, that's more broadly what one 00:14:28.734 --> 00:14:35.358 - of my reflections, no surprise, probably, goals and outcomes coming out of this session is like, 00:14:35.522 --> 00:14:42.780 - We're gonna be hard-pressed to make real progress in any of these areas If we can't get by in alignment 00:14:42.780 --> 00:14:50.177 - on a shared set of of goals and outcomes And then you know again, it's going to be a range of Operational 00:14:50.177 --> 00:14:57.296 - and implementation stuff budgeting and legislation and so so That's that's where I am on snow removal 00:14:57.296 --> 00:15:04.414 - and what's needed I was hoping to see some I mean I've requested and asked for as the council did and 00:15:05.122 --> 00:15:10.142 - Changes in the budget that would make meaningful impacts. We didn't see those I think legislation could 00:15:10.142 --> 00:15:15.113 - do something on that front as well I just think it's gonna be limited unless we really try to get very 00:15:15.113 --> 00:15:20.084 - specific about enforcement limiting discretion and enforcement You know, so I have some specific ideas 00:15:20.084 --> 00:15:25.056 - and best practices from other places about how we can improve legislation Yes, but I just want to note 00:15:25.056 --> 00:15:29.979 - that in this in that area and in many others like that alone is not going to you know move the needle 00:15:29.979 --> 00:15:30.558 - necessarily 00:15:36.098 --> 00:15:46.418 - and improving maintenance of existing infrastructure That's a member Raleigh Thank you, I just wanted 00:15:46.418 --> 00:15:56.838 - to ask on this topic because it's come up before councilman Flaherty I'm I agree with you Lack of snow 00:15:56.838 --> 00:16:05.438 - removal is an obstacle for people to pedestrians to say commute to their job etc and 00:16:05.698 --> 00:16:16.314 - We we have a policy that involves Finds Other other ideas, I mean clearly there are people who are might 00:16:16.314 --> 00:16:26.526 - be incapable And I know there are volunteer organizations and things like that that might assist but 00:16:26.526 --> 00:16:33.502 - there are other ideas that you have in terms of policy that we could 00:16:34.306 --> 00:16:49.687 - fill those gaps in terms of Making sure that it's equitable for people who say don't have the means 00:16:49.687 --> 00:17:03.838 - to pay for snow removal or the physical You know Who are or physically unable to do so Okay 00:17:05.538 --> 00:17:14.820 - Yeah, I just want to, for the sake of tonight's conversation, really focus us on what we learned from 00:17:14.820 --> 00:17:24.010 - the public engagement sessions and which of those things we can do and which of those things we want 00:17:24.010 --> 00:17:33.383 - to do. Perhaps there can be some, you know, unofficial kind of consensus that certain things are worth 00:17:33.383 --> 00:17:35.294 - pursuing, maybe some 00:17:35.394 --> 00:17:46.184 - people could volunteer, et cetera, and which are already covered by plans which we need to talk to actual 00:17:46.184 --> 00:17:56.770 - departments within the executive branch about. So I guess in each section, each topic area from session 00:17:56.770 --> 00:18:02.878 - two, there are several suggestions and potential approaches 00:18:03.298 --> 00:18:11.064 - And so I don't want to get hung up on just one. I know I'm the one who asked about the snow removal, 00:18:11.064 --> 00:18:18.984 - but that was because we did have a session just on that topic. But just to encourage us to let's maybe 00:18:18.984 --> 00:18:26.673 - look at all of the ones in the first area of safe, accessible, and welcoming public spaces and just 00:18:26.673 --> 00:18:32.670 - call out which ones we think we want to pursue something in, which ones could 00:18:34.114 --> 00:18:41.912 - benefit from action from this council and if not then Where where action could could results or could 00:18:41.912 --> 00:18:49.709 - be pursued? Also just kind of say in terms of responding to councilmember Rallo like that's I So feel 00:18:49.709 --> 00:18:57.431 - a line with councilmember Flaherty hopefully I'm looking at that at ways to improve the code on that 00:18:57.431 --> 00:19:02.782 - and that's certainly something that I'll keep in mind is that idea of 00:19:03.554 --> 00:19:12.228 - Not wanting, like the goal is not to penalize people who have particular specific hardship related to 00:19:12.228 --> 00:19:20.733 - ability of clearing snow. And that would not be my intention. And so making sure that anything that 00:19:20.733 --> 00:19:29.237 - changes wouldn't additionally negatively impact that segment of the population. So I will keep that 00:19:29.237 --> 00:19:32.894 - in mind. Thank you. Thanks so much, y'all. 00:19:33.634 --> 00:19:42.163 - Other thoughts on on on this or do you want to move on to the next one? One of the items in under this 00:19:42.163 --> 00:19:50.444 - heading is improve access to community information and we we already touched upon that somewhat and 00:19:50.444 --> 00:19:59.304 - councilmember daily said, you know diverse approaches to Getting the word out about programs and resources 00:19:59.304 --> 00:20:02.782 - is good and I agree with that But is that 00:20:03.170 --> 00:20:10.920 - council's job? Or how do we get that done? I was going to talk about this one because I think there's 00:20:10.920 --> 00:20:18.593 - a couple of interesting things. One that we we started to surface during during the budget time. One 00:20:18.593 --> 00:20:26.495 - is how comes functions are organized and distributed across the city is something that we can help with 00:20:26.495 --> 00:20:30.142 - via budget. I think that's one thing to though. 00:20:31.106 --> 00:20:36.920 - which maybe is more pointed, but following on from that point, but more pointed to public safety 00:20:36.920 --> 00:20:42.975 - specifically. As I'm thinking about a lot of the things that already exist, part of the question is, 00:20:42.975 --> 00:20:49.269 - whose responsibility would it be to send out that particular information, right? And so like, so Council 00:20:49.269 --> 00:20:55.503 - Member Zulik brought up the good point. It's like, oh yeah, we do get stuff from parks and we get stuff 00:20:55.503 --> 00:21:00.478 - from, you know, utilities, you get stuff. And you're like, who that currently does 00:21:00.706 --> 00:21:06.949 - outreach outside of press releases, which seems to be the main way that we send information out in the 00:21:06.949 --> 00:21:13.193 - city about things happening or things that are available to people, like who is sending anything where 00:21:13.193 --> 00:21:19.376 - it would be relevant to say, oh, did you know, you reports or something like that, right? And so I do 00:21:19.376 --> 00:21:21.982 - think it would be an interesting budgetary 00:21:22.466 --> 00:21:28.985 - a request in this next cycle or maybe an additional appropriation, you know, to think about maybe you 00:21:28.985 --> 00:21:35.887 - should do a series of posts that we want to send out to the city on you reporting or on, you know, lighting 00:21:35.887 --> 00:21:42.725 - projects or something like that. Could be interesting. So, you know, maybe that's something to the mayor's 00:21:42.725 --> 00:21:47.390 - office. Maybe that's something, you know, to public works. I don't know. 00:21:55.650 --> 00:22:07.274 - I mean, I have a much more radical idea. But OK, my way more radical idea is that I think that 00:22:07.274 --> 00:22:19.877 - the centralized comms function of the city should sit in the clerk's office. And I'm not saying in the 00:22:19.877 --> 00:22:24.894 - clerk's office as currently constructed. 00:22:25.218 --> 00:22:32.123 - You know, I do think that that might be a way of thinking just about telling people what's available, 00:22:32.123 --> 00:22:38.622 - what happens, and then similarly creating a, let's call it a 21st, 22nd century clerk's office, 00:22:38.622 --> 00:22:45.460 - you know, like where that's the place where people come for information and not just, you know, it's 00:22:45.460 --> 00:22:52.365 - also where everything's sort of, it's the information office just saying. So it's sort of the natural 00:22:52.365 --> 00:22:53.854 - place to do it. Yeah. 00:22:54.786 --> 00:23:01.840 - Why not, and I know all of you would love my idea, I just said. Go ahead, Councilor Stout's work. I 00:23:01.840 --> 00:23:09.106 - was just gonna say again, which I think I said last time when there was a conversation sort of related 00:23:09.106 --> 00:23:16.583 - to changing some piece of the clerk's office, is that the clerk has state statutory requirements attached 00:23:16.583 --> 00:23:23.637 - to their position, and to do anything additional to that I think is, I think it's slippery, I think 00:23:23.637 --> 00:23:24.766 - it's difficult. 00:23:24.866 --> 00:23:33.854 - And I mean that mug dropping kind of made me really wonder And again like maybe use this as a provocation 00:23:33.854 --> 00:23:42.843 - not as a like I'm not advocating for this per se but but But but I do think that that it's an interesting 00:23:42.843 --> 00:23:47.422 - thought experiment about where's the natural place of 00:23:47.554 --> 00:23:54.171 - for information to exist in the first place. Because I think that that's like the pain point, right? 00:23:54.171 --> 00:24:01.049 - Is that if you have a super dispersed set of information and information actors, and they all have their 00:24:01.049 --> 00:24:08.190 - own information plans, and you know, if what we're seeing in every forum when we talk to people, and I think 00:24:08.354 --> 00:24:14.309 - I also, just as a resident council member, can say the same thing. As somebody who you might expect 00:24:14.309 --> 00:24:20.323 - to have a lot of information, my experience, even on council, is often like, oh, I don't know. Don't 00:24:20.323 --> 00:24:26.397 - know where that event is. Don't know what's happening. I don't know what's happening. And so how much 00:24:26.397 --> 00:24:32.768 - more do our residents feel like, oh, we didn't know that was a thing? And I think a lot of the constituent 00:24:32.768 --> 00:24:36.222 - services that we all engage in essentially are just like, 00:24:36.354 --> 00:24:46.385 - information sharing activities. Who do I talk to about? What's actually going on with recycling? Who 00:24:46.385 --> 00:24:54.430 - do I call for? And so I do think that it is a big, big problem, both in terms of 00:24:54.722 --> 00:25:01.313 - Public safety on a day to day basis as we saw in the evidence here. But I also think in the perception 00:25:01.313 --> 00:25:07.840 - of a lot of public safety things because people aren't getting good information about what's actually 00:25:07.840 --> 00:25:14.303 - happening. And I think homelessness is a really good example of that. I think that the perception of 00:25:14.303 --> 00:25:21.214 - the size of the problem and what the city is or isn't doing about it are fundamentally information problems 00:25:21.214 --> 00:25:22.046 - more so than 00:25:22.786 --> 00:25:30.337 - mismatched with the reality of the problem, so Throwing it out there. Mm-hmm councilman. Well would 00:25:30.337 --> 00:25:37.964 - the clerk like to Sure comment about what's been discussed I Think it's a really interesting idea to 00:25:37.964 --> 00:25:45.817 - take a step back and look at the way things are done in the city overall I don't think there's anything 00:25:45.817 --> 00:25:48.158 - inherently wrong with it. I am 00:25:50.786 --> 00:25:56.552 - As you know, we've had conversations about different things for the clerk's office, and I've always 00:25:56.552 --> 00:26:02.317 - said, if that's what needs to happen, we can work around it. There have been different roles in the 00:26:02.317 --> 00:26:08.429 - clerk's office that have come and gone over the years, just in the almost 20 years that I've been working 00:26:08.429 --> 00:26:14.252 - with the city. So it's not unheard of to have things that go beyond what is listed in state code for 00:26:14.252 --> 00:26:19.614 - the clerk's office. Some of it is just, I tend more toward being cautious about what happens 00:26:20.194 --> 00:26:26.419 - five clerks from now, or even the next clerk, and that could be as soon as a year and a half. So I am 00:26:26.419 --> 00:26:32.705 - generally a little cautious about adding onto it. I'm most concerned when you codify those things, not 00:26:32.705 --> 00:26:38.869 - when you actually do it by agreement. So that's, from the clerk perspective, when you try and codify 00:26:38.869 --> 00:26:45.399 - those duties, that's where I'm more concerned. But if you do it structurally through budgetary mechanisms, 00:26:45.399 --> 00:26:49.854 - I don't think it's as problematic as you might have expressed a concern. 00:26:49.954 --> 00:26:57.946 - by the way, that is not me advocating for having the public information office through the clerk's office 00:26:57.946 --> 00:27:06.089 - or administering for the council through the clerk's office or anything else. But I do think it's important 00:27:06.089 --> 00:27:13.780 - to have some, um, look at the structure of communications for public safety sake. I kind of, um, like 00:27:13.780 --> 00:27:18.078 - that idea from the perspective that, um, a lot of times, 00:27:18.402 --> 00:27:27.100 - You know, my constituents will say, why did the city do this? What is the city doing? And it's not the 00:27:27.100 --> 00:27:35.713 - city. It's the mayor's administration that has decided to do something. And so I like the idea of the 00:27:35.713 --> 00:27:45.086 - clerk's office. Um, kind of, I mean, it would be, it would be tricky, but being the communications hub so that 00:27:46.594 --> 00:27:54.795 - It could communicate that that office or that officer could could communicate on behalf of the city 00:27:54.795 --> 00:28:03.242 - on things that the mayor's administration and the council both want to put out there. I don't know how 00:28:03.242 --> 00:28:11.771 - that that power those powers would be balanced. But I mean I think the council has could really benefit 00:28:11.771 --> 00:28:16.446 - from having a communications person and we don't. And so 00:28:16.674 --> 00:28:26.133 - You know, if we want a press release or something, we have to write it ourselves. We don't have a Facebook 00:28:26.133 --> 00:28:33.470 - or an Instagram or anything. So, it's an interesting idea. Let me put it that way. 00:28:33.698 --> 00:28:39.727 - thing to try and you later on because I'm just trying as a if you use it as a methodological tool right 00:28:39.727 --> 00:28:45.756 - which is to say like if you if you extracted at that 30,000 foot does it help us identify what the real 00:28:45.756 --> 00:28:51.553 - pain point is and I think when I view it through that lens one of the things I notice to your point 00:28:51.553 --> 00:28:54.046 - comes over Puma Smith is that a lot of the 00:28:54.210 --> 00:29:00.811 - The comms of the city are essentially like political comms or comms about things that are hard to read 00:29:00.811 --> 00:29:07.284 - through because they're not actually focused on getting people the information that they need. We're 00:29:07.284 --> 00:29:13.885 - focused on getting the information that we want to send out. I don't know. I think that's always going 00:29:13.885 --> 00:29:14.974 - to be a tension. 00:29:15.266 --> 00:29:24.329 - There is another way of approaching the information problem, which is to what extent and what might 00:29:24.329 --> 00:29:33.392 - be a mechanism do we as a city want to invest in journalistic enterprise or in the fourth estate or 00:29:33.392 --> 00:29:38.014 - something like that? And so there have been cities 00:29:38.114 --> 00:29:44.301 - few but who've thought about creating trust funds for journalism, for example. I know Bryce Green has 00:29:44.301 --> 00:29:50.367 - this idea about doing a voucher program so citizens can vote with money about who they want to hear 00:29:50.367 --> 00:29:56.615 - news from or something like that. But I think figuring out a way where we could put some money towards 00:29:56.615 --> 00:30:02.742 - ensuring that there's local news is also another thought. But doing it in a way that doesn't inhibit 00:30:02.742 --> 00:30:08.080 - first and amendments and where we're not actually influencing what news is being taught 00:30:08.080 --> 00:30:16.782 - just like building out the capacities for it. But I don't know. I have another thought on this topic. 00:30:16.782 --> 00:30:25.483 - The topic one was safe, accessible, and welcoming public spaces. And one of the suggestions was bring 00:30:25.483 --> 00:30:34.270 - community engagement into neighborhoods. Hold public meetings and events in familiar community spaces. 00:30:35.010 --> 00:30:46.911 - And we have talked about this of having a council meeting somewhere else You know at Bloomington High 00:30:46.911 --> 00:30:59.045 - School South or north or at a Neighborhood, I don't know community center or something Banneker Center. 00:30:59.045 --> 00:31:02.078 - Yeah, Allison jukebox and 00:31:03.522 --> 00:31:10.715 - I know that that presents some logistical challenges, but especially with these deliberation sessions, 00:31:10.715 --> 00:31:17.979 - I mean, we saw the turnout was not great. And if we go to where people are, I think we'll have a better 00:31:17.979 --> 00:31:25.033 - turnout and broader input into our decision making, which is, I think, what we want. Imagine if when 00:31:25.033 --> 00:31:28.734 - we had hearing, like let's say we were talking about 00:31:28.866 --> 00:31:36.318 - I'm sorry I'm not trying to be controversial but it's where my mind goes imagine we were talking about 00:31:36.318 --> 00:31:43.697 - a hundred and eighty day orders on stop signs right. But imagine that city that our city code imagine 00:31:43.697 --> 00:31:46.302 - like if we had to do a stop sign on 00:31:46.370 --> 00:31:54.335 - on Rogers, our meeting is going to be on Rogers. I mean, I'm being extreme, but if we're going to do 00:31:54.335 --> 00:32:02.300 - something that affects your neighborhood, let's have our meeting in your neighborhood. That would be 00:32:02.300 --> 00:32:10.186 - so cool. What a cool way to do city government. Isabelle said this multiple times. I think it would 00:32:10.186 --> 00:32:14.366 - be very cool to think about how we actually do that. 00:32:14.818 --> 00:32:21.470 - Well, I've gotten some good feedback on just the idea of community leaders going where people are already 00:32:21.470 --> 00:32:27.746 - meeting. And so I wonder if it would be productive to talk to some of the neighborhood associations 00:32:27.746 --> 00:32:34.272 - about co-hosting meetings so that some level of attendance is kind of built in rather than we're trying 00:32:34.272 --> 00:32:39.230 - to recruit a bunch of people to go to a meeting that nobody really wants to go 00:32:44.706 --> 00:32:54.782 - We think alike. That was my idea, too. No, it's great. The other thing is, way back when we had a dear 00:32:54.782 --> 00:33:04.564 - task force, we had meetings around the town, and we went to various schools, invited people in, and 00:33:04.564 --> 00:33:13.662 - it was the dear task force, because we wanted to get as much community response as possible. 00:33:13.890 --> 00:33:20.942 - It was very it was very successful a lot of people turned out Had a lot of good ideas a lot of questions 00:33:20.942 --> 00:33:27.659 - were answered a lot of good intake So I think it's a great idea and I think that we could structure 00:33:27.659 --> 00:33:34.644 - As you said councilmember Rosari Structured the agenda so that it reflected concerns in that particular 00:33:34.644 --> 00:33:40.958 - part of town Whether it's infrastructure, you know, whatever their concerns are So great idea 00:33:45.058 --> 00:33:51.300 - a couple like things maybe to add about that one one of the other things that was mentioned that Council 00:33:51.300 --> 00:33:57.422 - members that pointed out was predictability that people like the predictability so I would be a little 00:33:57.422 --> 00:34:03.366 - bit hesitant to move say a regular session meeting to something like that like to another place but 00:34:03.366 --> 00:34:06.398 - potentially deliberation sessions or simply like a 00:34:06.850 --> 00:34:13.077 - Extra like special, you know that that is just maybe a community input meeting In a certain place or 00:34:13.077 --> 00:34:19.428 - something like that or joining with another group in terms of a co-host with You know a specific topic 00:34:19.428 --> 00:34:26.334 - of conversation or something like that. That would be kind of an extra or a bonus Meeting. That's not a regular 00:34:26.498 --> 00:34:31.579 - Session council meeting just in terms of that predictability and it yeah, there's some logistical like 00:34:31.579 --> 00:34:36.511 - challenges with that But I think that the logistical challenges are bigger if we're actually trying 00:34:36.511 --> 00:34:41.444 - to have like a regular meeting and the thing with the dear task force like Like it'd be pretty darn 00:34:41.444 --> 00:34:46.623 - cool to have committee meetings other places But because because everything has to be aired and recorded 00:34:46.623 --> 00:34:51.802 - and it's like we're in a whole different age I think that that all makes it hard but the mayor is having 00:34:51.802 --> 00:34:54.910 - these like town hall basically sessions which are all recorded 00:34:55.074 --> 00:35:01.257 - on cats and I think what makes them different from say like a committee meeting or something is just 00:35:01.257 --> 00:35:07.501 - the expectation of the number of people who are talking perhaps at a given time. And so it's like the 00:35:07.501 --> 00:35:13.622 - passing the mic thing as opposed to each of us having our own. And so it's a different kind of like 00:35:13.622 --> 00:35:20.050 - format. So I think that it would need to be different topic, different everything than say like a normal 00:35:20.050 --> 00:35:21.886 - regular session. And so yeah. 00:35:22.018 --> 00:35:31.803 - So idea sure, but we just maybe not a regular session Math or one one other point out which is you know, 00:35:31.803 --> 00:35:41.308 - maybe a thread that that I think that's my piece brought up It's figuring out how we as counsel might 00:35:41.308 --> 00:35:46.526 - do might like like what part of of of comms can counsel 00:35:46.882 --> 00:35:54.484 - take on. It has been interesting, because it's a sort of fairly, I don't know, maybe it's a historically, 00:35:54.484 --> 00:36:01.942 - maybe it's a practice, but in our recent history, we've just very recently started doing press releases 00:36:01.942 --> 00:36:09.114 - ourselves and things of that nature. And how, if so, might we... And if it's desirable for us to do 00:36:09.114 --> 00:36:10.046 - more sort of 00:36:10.402 --> 00:36:18.407 - We've talked about, should council have a social media page? But if so, who does it? And so on and so 00:36:18.407 --> 00:36:26.254 - forth. But I do think that's also an interesting caveat of how to balance out. But I don't know. My 00:36:26.254 --> 00:36:34.494 - gut feeling says that the main problem is that there's so much dispersion of comms that they become very 00:36:34.594 --> 00:36:40.746 - in essence, even in the small piece sense of just people vying for sort of the same audience or something 00:36:40.746 --> 00:36:46.550 - like that when I think we could do a better job of collecting information and getting it out there. 00:36:46.550 --> 00:36:52.528 - And the last thing I'll say is, you know, as we talk about budget for next year, thinking about things 00:36:52.528 --> 00:36:56.126 - like investments in our website and, you know, should we have 00:36:56.322 --> 00:37:02.327 - Should we have like an AI assistant that helps people you know, like our like a city liaison or you 00:37:02.327 --> 00:37:08.332 - know, like we've talked about all those type of things as well that You know, I think would be good 00:37:08.332 --> 00:37:14.457 - to keep in the cycle, you know Any other thoughts on this or should we move on to the next one? comes 00:37:14.457 --> 00:37:20.942 - over the only other thought on on this one that I have is the strength in public transportation connections 00:37:20.942 --> 00:37:26.046 - piece and I'm not quite sure. I mean, I don't have like a well defined thought on it 00:37:26.146 --> 00:37:32.997 - just kind of I know that BT is facing some challenges and one of the challenges of course they're facing 00:37:32.997 --> 00:37:35.998 - is related to funding and you know we've been 00:37:36.098 --> 00:37:42.146 - Giving them a certain amount of budget money every year and I think that 2027 is the last year for that 00:37:42.146 --> 00:37:48.135 - And so it's kind of looking ahead and trying to figure out what BT might need and what kind of support 00:37:48.135 --> 00:37:53.950 - they might need I've been going down a rabbit hole as the CCP folks know and my interview committee 00:37:53.950 --> 00:37:59.824 - people know and that's maybe most of council That about the BT board and whether it would be good to 00:37:59.824 --> 00:38:05.406 - go from five members to seven members and as part of looking into that I kind of looked back at 00:38:05.570 --> 00:38:11.953 - when the board was created. And there were some really interesting council discussions around the idea 00:38:11.953 --> 00:38:18.398 - of public transportation and how important it is for a city to have public transportation. At the time, 00:38:18.398 --> 00:38:19.390 - it was like 19. 00:38:19.586 --> 00:38:25.165 - 80, I think, somewhere in there. And so it was, you know, Bloomington was kind of beginning to grow. 00:38:25.165 --> 00:38:30.909 - And that idea of like a growing, vibrant city needs to have a good quality public transportation option 00:38:30.909 --> 00:38:36.488 - for people. And so we might be kind of in that moment again where we're going like, okay, how can we 00:38:36.488 --> 00:38:42.121 - make sure to sustain this piece of what is really, really vital and important for every city to have? 00:38:42.121 --> 00:38:45.822 - So that's just something to think about, I guess, for budget time. 00:38:46.018 --> 00:38:54.631 - Next year and just in general is kind of keep an eye on how they're doing and the needs that that they 00:38:54.631 --> 00:39:02.994 - might have Excellent Okay, let's move on to and of course if something pops in your head, feel free 00:39:02.994 --> 00:39:11.774 - to jump back on any other thoughts on bicycle infrastructure lighting and visibility Recreational spaces 00:39:17.122 --> 00:39:25.116 - Just to put this out there seems to be you know mixed opinions on lighting for the community One is 00:39:25.116 --> 00:39:33.111 - that more lighting is better and there are good arguments for that and why people would like to see 00:39:33.111 --> 00:39:41.665 - that there are others For instance the Environmental Commission and the Sustainability Commission together 00:39:41.665 --> 00:39:46.142 - resolved that we should turn down the lights because of 00:39:46.626 --> 00:39:55.611 - Health reasons, they were talking about the specific spectrum of light, of course, but overall, there's 00:39:55.611 --> 00:40:04.424 - no possibility of dark skies in Bloomington. So that discussion, I haven't resolved how to proceed on 00:40:04.424 --> 00:40:10.558 - that, and I'd love to have a further discussion on this at some point. 00:40:14.818 --> 00:40:21.609 - I will add to that topic that because lighting was in that safety bond or that that bond that the go 00:40:21.609 --> 00:40:27.997 - bond from last week that is something that I mentioned to director seabor that Resolution from 00:40:27.997 --> 00:40:34.788 - the Environmental Commission and because about lighting and to make sure that he should consult that 00:40:34.788 --> 00:40:39.966 - just in terms of like what it says about like type of lighting and style and 00:40:40.194 --> 00:40:49.526 - Spectrum and all of those pieces so that is the intention I think Departments have been working with 00:40:49.526 --> 00:40:58.766 - those groups to make sure that added lighting kind of aligns with that overall Priority I Just want 00:40:58.766 --> 00:41:01.630 - to make sure say that just for 00:41:01.922 --> 00:41:08.314 - You and Councilmember Rallo and also for the community who is concerned about that that I did bring 00:41:08.314 --> 00:41:15.026 - that up when I was talking to them about the bond and he was very pleased to know that that had happened 00:41:15.026 --> 00:41:21.610 - and did intend to use that as a resource when choosing making specific choices. You know this actually 00:41:21.610 --> 00:41:28.193 - sparks a thought for me which is which I think feeding back into conversation we had during the budget 00:41:28.193 --> 00:41:30.878 - and multiple comments throughout the last 00:41:31.202 --> 00:41:39.552 - seven years that Councilman Flaherty has made about our ability as a council to request information, 00:41:39.552 --> 00:41:47.901 - one. And then I think a lot of the times we have the response that we get back when we say something 00:41:47.901 --> 00:41:56.664 - like, I don't know, let's do more sidewalk cleaning, is something vague like, oh, it costs so much money. 00:41:56.664 --> 00:42:00.798 - And we never actually get a solid answer of like, 00:42:00.898 --> 00:42:06.450 - literally how much money would it cost because there's a huge difference between you know oh that's 00:42:06.450 --> 00:42:12.114 - going to cost seven billion dollars or that's going to cost seven hundred thousand over five years or 00:42:12.114 --> 00:42:17.666 - something like that and I think it might be interesting for us as a council you know to think about 00:42:17.666 --> 00:42:23.774 - a handful of things that we'd like to see estimates for you know that we'd like to see information on so that 00:42:23.842 --> 00:42:29.955 - so that the conversation can become a little bit more tangible, right? Where we're saying, I mean, and 00:42:29.955 --> 00:42:36.186 - I think there's a whole realm of things that probably exist here, but we tried to have that conversation 00:42:36.186 --> 00:42:39.806 - with Kirkwood. There was like, oh, it's too expensive to do. 00:42:40.066 --> 00:42:45.605 - some imaginary thing, we're like, right, so how much would it cost to do some real thing? And so it 00:42:45.605 --> 00:42:51.145 - would be really interesting, I think, to figure out a mechanism. Maybe we pass one resolution where 00:42:51.145 --> 00:42:56.684 - we say, here are a handful of projects that we're really interested in seeing and we'd like to know 00:42:56.684 --> 00:43:02.279 - what the impact would be. Maybe using that mechanism of what the cost of the city is that's required 00:43:02.279 --> 00:43:07.486 - in ordinances and resolutions or something. I don't know, but that's something that I've long 00:43:07.682 --> 00:43:16.666 - wonder because I feel like a lot of our conversations on investments that we're interested in in the 00:43:16.666 --> 00:43:25.738 - body sort of just fall off a cliff because it's very easy to wave them off by just going like, ah, we 00:43:25.738 --> 00:43:34.366 - can't afford it. So yeah, I don't know how we influence that better. Any other thoughts here on? 00:43:39.394 --> 00:43:47.279 - Thank you, council president, sorry for that comment. It made me think about how many things that we 00:43:47.279 --> 00:43:54.383 - vote on in the budget that are presented as givens when in reality they are very expensive 00:43:54.383 --> 00:44:02.579 - capital improvement projects. And that's okay, but it does seem to be that we have several multi-million 00:44:02.579 --> 00:44:07.966 - dollar projects ahead of us that we're going to be asked to vote on. 00:44:08.546 --> 00:44:16.558 - Every single time we're asked to do that, we are making a policy choice that we don't want to fund something 00:44:16.558 --> 00:44:24.129 - else. And so when we talk about budget and when we talk about distributing funds, what are we choosing 00:44:24.129 --> 00:44:31.553 - not to fund? So I just wanted to put that out there. Thank you. Well, and on that note, like I think 00:44:31.553 --> 00:44:33.758 - that one of like and as a new 00:44:33.954 --> 00:44:39.541 - Relatively new person right like actually all three of us came out at the same time I think one of the 00:44:39.541 --> 00:44:45.128 - things that's really challenging about some of those big capital projects is they take so long So like 00:44:45.128 --> 00:44:50.553 - when we came on three years ago, there were so many things that you know was in process that we did 00:44:50.553 --> 00:44:52.126 - just kind of have to be like 00:44:52.258 --> 00:44:58.472 - Okay, yeah, we got to keep that going because we're already in the middle and it would be kind of strange 00:44:58.472 --> 00:45:04.451 - to just stop that and do a whole different priority. And like philosophically, I kind of feel like as 00:45:04.451 --> 00:45:10.078 - a government, I mean, I think that having too much start and stop just disrupts the population. 00:45:10.178 --> 00:45:16.791 - in ways that are really negative. And being on the MPO has really taught me this because they're planning 00:45:16.791 --> 00:45:23.091 - out six years in advance. There's that whole bridge thing down in Cascades Park that has been closed 00:45:23.091 --> 00:45:29.455 - for a while because there was a miscommunication. And they've settled that, but it needs to be worked 00:45:29.455 --> 00:45:35.755 - into a budget that isn't going to be able to be worked in for several years at this point because of 00:45:35.755 --> 00:45:37.502 - how much those things cost. 00:45:37.666 --> 00:45:46.244 - it's almost like having the future vision. And so it's not as easy as the next year's budget. It's going 00:45:46.244 --> 00:45:54.986 - like, OK, how do I want to steer this boat for the next four or five years? I find that really challenging 00:45:54.986 --> 00:46:02.421 - as a new person on this body to navigate that and figure out how to name those priorities, 00:46:02.421 --> 00:46:07.486 - first of all. What are those long-term things? But then also, 00:46:08.130 --> 00:46:15.774 - How do I work toward them in a way that will will see them happen in four or five six years. And I imagine 00:46:15.774 --> 00:46:22.917 - that there's some folks that are no longer on council that started working on things multiple years 00:46:22.917 --> 00:46:29.918 - ago and then are now seeing fruits of that labor even though they're not on this body anymore. So 00:46:30.754 --> 00:46:37.464 - I guess I say that as like, I mean, I'm kind of talking to Council Member Zulik, but that's also like 00:46:37.464 --> 00:46:44.175 - to the community, like that's one of the challenges I think of government service at all is how do we 00:46:44.175 --> 00:46:51.149 - provide the continuity at the same time as we provide the new direction or new vision and new priorities. 00:46:51.149 --> 00:46:57.859 - It's kind of a fun challenge. But I think that I totally very much appreciate that and thank you also 00:46:57.859 --> 00:47:00.030 - for bringing up the MPO example. 00:47:00.130 --> 00:47:06.256 - Which I think also feeds into broader conversations that we're having about oversight and broader 00:47:06.256 --> 00:47:12.507 - conversation that we're having about, you know, beyond just approving things that keeping us in the 00:47:12.507 --> 00:47:18.883 - loop of things, etc. But I was thinking a little bit more about the type of conversation like we just 00:47:18.883 --> 00:47:20.446 - had about lighting where 00:47:22.466 --> 00:47:31.549 - Never is the wrong word, but it's hard for us to get to a point where we're concretely talking about 00:47:31.549 --> 00:47:41.171 - what would it mean to, for example, improve, and what improve means, but actually light up all of downtown 00:47:41.171 --> 00:47:49.534 - while, for example, having adjustable lights in neighborhoods, while, okay, what would that, 00:47:49.698 --> 00:47:57.628 - look like, what would that cost? And we do that when we have plans, but again, then that takes a long 00:47:57.628 --> 00:48:05.791 - time. We fund the plan, then we sort of get a cost estimate, and we often do that with like really large 00:48:05.791 --> 00:48:13.798 - things. And so I'm wondering if there's an intermediate way that doesn't take two, three years to find 00:48:13.798 --> 00:48:15.742 - answers to of us getting 00:48:16.098 --> 00:48:22.638 - sort of taking the next step on some of the things that we were saying. For example, when we put together 00:48:22.638 --> 00:48:28.807 - our letter of priorities for the budget, we were saying, here are like 10 projects that we'd really 00:48:28.807 --> 00:48:34.607 - like to see what they might look like so that we can meaningfully make decisions about those. 00:48:34.607 --> 00:48:36.766 - I don't know, something like that. 00:48:36.834 --> 00:48:42.614 - But again, like that was part of my thinking all along. I think all of our thinking in like some of 00:48:42.614 --> 00:48:48.511 - the benefits of sort of an outcome-based budget, right, is that you start to build that into the very 00:48:48.511 --> 00:48:54.580 - budget making. But yeah, I'm just really interested in like full loops of information, again, internally 00:48:54.580 --> 00:49:00.534 - as we make decisions. I wonder, so let's just see if anybody wants public comment at this junction and 00:49:00.534 --> 00:49:04.638 - we can move on to, we have a lot of other items here, so happy to jump 00:49:04.738 --> 00:49:11.177 - but does anybody like to give public comment on this so far, conversation so far? Anyone? Would you 00:49:11.177 --> 00:49:17.744 - like to, Mr. Amsler? Dr. Amsler. Hello everyone, Terry Amsler, my wife and I live here in Bloomington 00:49:17.744 --> 00:49:24.505 - and East Wimbledon Lane. Really quickly, I think the first thing about staying with a theme, the subject 00:49:24.505 --> 00:49:30.686 - you've just been on, I think first of all, gratitude should be expressed whenever a public body 00:49:30.786 --> 00:49:37.372 - does a piece of work encouraging public voice, and then actually talks about it. So let me say gratitude 00:49:37.372 --> 00:49:43.832 - is good, and this is a good opportunity. So also though, communication you're speaking of, communicate 00:49:43.832 --> 00:49:50.229 - that to the public. We forget about these kind of, you talk about the big stuff and the policies, but 00:49:50.229 --> 00:49:52.926 - you've just done some democracy work here. 00:49:53.506 --> 00:49:58.909 - You can talk about that, really, it's okay. So I'm just saying, think about your communication in a 00:49:58.909 --> 00:50:04.312 - range of ways, perhaps, that you're thinking about, I mean you, narrowly, I just mean public sector 00:50:04.312 --> 00:50:09.931 - stuff. Last thing about participation. You've talked a little bit about that, you've talked even about, 00:50:09.931 --> 00:50:15.334 - well, maybe we could do it somewhere else. Nothing wrong with thinking that way. But may I say with 00:50:15.334 --> 00:50:18.846 - some experience on this one thing, think about your partnerships 00:50:19.266 --> 00:50:26.176 - for communication about these activities as much as you think about where do we have them. The where 00:50:26.176 --> 00:50:33.018 - do we have them can be a dead end. It gets you in sometimes more questions and it gets you answers. 00:50:33.018 --> 00:50:39.449 - And I'm just saying, I'm not saying it's bad, but think about your communication strategy for 00:50:39.449 --> 00:50:45.470 - such deliberative sessions work. And be as democratic about that in a way or as broadly 00:50:46.082 --> 00:50:53.819 - perceived and constructed about that as you're trying to build into the idea of these sessions. I'm 00:50:53.819 --> 00:51:02.174 - sure my time is up. Thank you folks. Would anybody else like to give public comment? Clerk, anyone? Please. 00:51:09.858 --> 00:51:15.771 - Council, my name is autumn Marshall. I'm a fellow at the Bloomington Chamber of Commerce first I just 00:51:15.771 --> 00:51:21.684 - want to say I really appreciate this conversation tonight It really gets me excited to like, you know 00:51:21.684 --> 00:51:27.771 - talk about solutions for the city Something that we had looked at before at the chamber I wrote a little 00:51:27.771 --> 00:51:33.743 - brief on it are these things called business improvement districts if you guys have heard of them, but 00:51:33.743 --> 00:51:39.134 - we you all talked about like concerns for money and things like that how much can you really 00:51:39.234 --> 00:51:46.648 - invest into something like, you know, ongoing maintenance, safety, things like that. Business improvement 00:51:46.648 --> 00:51:53.852 - districts kind of make it so that the businesses within that district, those district lines, you know, 00:51:53.852 --> 00:52:01.056 - pay a levy, pay taxes, some kind of a fee for ongoing maintenance, public safety, you know, have maybe 00:52:01.056 --> 00:52:08.190 - some kind of community officer roaming around to ensure like, you know, preventative services per se. 00:52:09.346 --> 00:52:16.106 - Sanitation things like that that are a really big concern for I would say like the business community 00:52:16.106 --> 00:52:22.998 - But also I'd say for the public. I mean a lot of concerns were about Cleanliness, you know other things 00:52:22.998 --> 00:52:29.890 - like that just like unfamiliarity You know, you want more foot traffic in Bloomington. You want to feel 00:52:29.890 --> 00:52:36.650 - safe things like that so considering something like a business improvement district might be you know 00:52:36.650 --> 00:52:38.174 - worth looking over and 00:52:38.370 --> 00:52:45.386 - So that's my thoughts on that. I also wanted to say I love the idea of meeting people where they are, 00:52:45.386 --> 00:52:52.608 - whether that's in neighborhoods or doing some kind of co-host event with Neighborhood Association. Yeah, 00:52:52.608 --> 00:52:59.555 - I loved it. People are gonna remember those events. So yeah, it's very impressionable. All right, so 00:52:59.555 --> 00:53:06.846 - thank you all. Thank you, thank you for being here. Is there anybody online? Yeah, please, person online. 00:53:10.594 --> 00:53:17.352 - Hi, it's Paul Russo. Can you hear me? Oh, yes, we can hear you. Go for it, sir. I don't have much to 00:53:17.352 --> 00:53:24.176 - say. I wanted to prepare for listening to and participating in this meeting yesterday, but the entire 00:53:24.176 --> 00:53:30.867 - agenda was unavailable. It wouldn't load. So that was that problem. And that was when I had time in 00:53:30.867 --> 00:53:37.758 - my work schedule to look at things. So I'm looking at the agenda for the first time about half an hour 00:53:37.758 --> 00:53:39.966 - ago, and I'm frustrated by that. 00:53:40.482 --> 00:53:47.958 - And on September 9th and September 21st, I was unable to attend those deliberations sessions, I think, 00:53:47.958 --> 00:53:55.506 - where you invited public comment on transportation issues, things like that. I would have loved to have 00:53:55.506 --> 00:54:02.836 - participated, but I couldn't. Predictability can be good for public meetings, but if it's always the 00:54:02.836 --> 00:54:08.062 - same day of the week, then they become predictably bad. And in my case, 00:54:08.450 --> 00:54:15.292 - This year, this semester, my schedule is pretty busy on Wednesdays. And so I find it difficult to make 00:54:15.292 --> 00:54:22.002 - a Wednesday evening meeting. So thank you. Thank you so much. And I'm so sorry that you weren't able 00:54:22.002 --> 00:54:28.778 - to access the materials. But also, thank you for, I think, bringing, highlighting that really crucial 00:54:28.778 --> 00:54:35.487 - point as well about sort of when things are offered as well. I mean, that's critical. OK, so are you 00:54:35.487 --> 00:54:38.078 - OK if we move on to priority area two? 00:54:39.490 --> 00:54:51.769 - Okay, so priority two, community care crisis response and supportive services. The first one was expanding 00:54:51.769 --> 00:55:03.244 - language access. Any thoughts there? House member Pia Smith. Well, this was the group that I was in 00:55:03.244 --> 00:55:08.638 - at the October 21st session and I learned that 00:55:09.154 --> 00:55:17.446 - There's only one fluent Spanish speaker who is available to help Spanish language speakers. If they 00:55:17.446 --> 00:55:26.152 - have issues related to the city of Bloomington, there's only one person to go to. So that's problematic, 00:55:26.152 --> 00:55:34.693 - I think. And when we talk about communications, we need to think about the fact that not everybody can 00:55:34.693 --> 00:55:38.590 - understand communications that are in English. 00:55:42.146 --> 00:55:50.902 - I'll just expand on that a little bit. English and Spanish aren't the only languages spoken in Bloomington, 00:55:50.902 --> 00:55:59.415 - and so I wonder how we might be able to partner with organizations like Exodus Refugee to better support 00:55:59.415 --> 00:56:07.522 - other languages or like IU. Thank you. I think we have a lot of different opportunities, especially 00:56:07.522 --> 00:56:12.062 - so close to the university, to communicate clearly with 00:56:12.354 --> 00:56:21.282 - everyone regardless of what language they speak. I think the other thing that we need to kind of keep 00:56:21.282 --> 00:56:30.122 - in mind is that there are I mean there's a lot of translation apps on phones and I have successfully 00:56:30.122 --> 00:56:39.838 - communicated frequently with folks who's you know we don't have a common language using phones and I wonder if 00:56:40.482 --> 00:56:48.675 - it would be maybe a good investment, generally speaking, to, instead of thinking about specific languages 00:56:48.675 --> 00:56:56.635 - or services, to have a more broad-based training about communication without having a common language, 00:56:56.635 --> 00:57:04.441 - whether that's, you know, just general communication techniques, patience, those sorts of tools, but 00:57:04.441 --> 00:57:10.238 - also translation tools and apps and, you know, I mean Google Translate is, 00:57:10.370 --> 00:57:17.816 - quite good that I have found, and there are probably some other ones out there, too, that would also 00:57:17.816 --> 00:57:25.261 - be good. They're often free, and they can respond to both voice or typing inputs. And so it can be a 00:57:25.261 --> 00:57:31.454 - relatively seamless process to do that if you know how to do it. And so having some 00:57:31.650 --> 00:57:38.964 - some citywide trainings in the same I think that there were some diversity trainings at some point maybe 00:57:38.964 --> 00:57:46.070 - before was that last term maybe and maybe that could be something that we could look into again which 00:57:46.070 --> 00:57:53.036 - could potentially be funding but also just maybe putting the right bug in the ear of I would assume 00:57:53.036 --> 00:57:57.982 - maybe CFRD to look into what that would mean and how we could do that. 00:58:01.410 --> 00:58:10.470 - Any other thoughts on this one? I just want to remind everybody we're trying to stay in the context 00:58:10.470 --> 00:58:19.620 - of public safety. There's so much overlap with other areas of government. And I'm talking as much to 00:58:19.620 --> 00:58:28.318 - myself as to my colleagues. I also tend to stray from that. And a lot of our conversations did. 00:58:28.738 --> 00:58:40.040 - But certainly language I mean if you can't understand the emergency alert then that's a problem. Right. 00:58:40.040 --> 00:58:43.518 - Right. OK. Access to emergency. 00:58:45.794 --> 00:58:50.922 - It might be something to look at translating some of your official communications and actually hiring 00:58:50.922 --> 00:58:56.101 - somebody to do that for websites and all that other basic information. And yeah the city does have one 00:58:56.101 --> 00:59:01.229 - person who is specifically paid to translate but there are actually other people in the city who step 00:59:01.229 --> 00:59:06.458 - up and assist with translation when that person is not in the office because we have a couple of people 00:59:06.458 --> 00:59:09.022 - in our office who do a lot of translating as well. 00:59:15.266 --> 00:59:28.539 - Emergency shelter access thoughts there and also particularly on council action Maybe harder for finding 00:59:28.539 --> 00:59:41.812 - council action there. Yeah What about improving coordination among service providers or increasing local 00:59:41.812 --> 00:59:43.582 - collaboration 00:59:44.642 --> 00:59:54.368 - That very defined goal there, discreet goal. In just my research about how to best combat the housing 00:59:54.368 --> 01:00:04.094 - crisis itself, one of the things that I've come across is the idea of doing a housing finance agency, 01:00:04.194 --> 01:00:10.743 - but not just for the city of Bloomington across municipalities and perhaps not only just getting the 01:00:10.743 --> 01:00:17.293 - county involved but also getting the school board involved and better understanding the needs of all 01:00:17.293 --> 01:00:23.777 - of the different demographics of our community. I think that that could be a really cool source for 01:00:23.777 --> 01:00:25.982 - collaboration. The other thing is 01:00:26.242 --> 01:00:33.342 - The county does not have a housing and neighborhood development department in the same way that the 01:00:33.342 --> 01:00:40.585 - city does. And so I wonder how we might be able to offer our support for developing that same program 01:00:40.585 --> 01:00:47.685 - in the county. I know a lot of people who have benefited from the rental inspections that hand does 01:00:47.685 --> 01:00:55.070 - and some of the other regulations. And when people have issues, especially when they're renting hand is 01:00:55.170 --> 01:01:03.704 - that they can call, county residents don't have that same luxury. And so I would love to see us better 01:01:03.704 --> 01:01:12.651 - work with the county to develop some of those programs across Monroe and not just Bloomington. Any thoughts 01:01:12.651 --> 01:01:21.102 - on any of these things? I think sort of all under the questions of collaboration, particularly? Well, 01:01:21.102 --> 01:01:23.422 - the Coordinate Homelessness 01:01:23.554 --> 01:01:31.701 - Response efforts. I think that's what heading home is doing or should be doing We also for the last 01:01:31.701 --> 01:01:40.092 - Two years almost we've had a Homelessness response coordinator with the city in the mayor's office who 01:01:40.092 --> 01:01:48.483 - supposed to be coordinating within the city. I don't know how much That person coordinates with Monroe 01:01:48.483 --> 01:01:52.638 - County or with IU, but I think there can be better 01:01:52.802 --> 01:02:01.136 - collaboration between local governments and with IU on public safety as well as everything else. And 01:02:01.136 --> 01:02:09.801 - then this broader question about expanding community-based supports. I'll say it before Councilman Rallo 01:02:09.801 --> 01:02:18.300 - does is that we could really continue to come back to these questions about Jack Hopkins funding, CFRD 01:02:18.300 --> 01:02:20.446 - funding, I think a better 01:02:21.218 --> 01:02:28.781 - maybe both increasing those pots, but also I think more coordination between them I think would really 01:02:28.781 --> 01:02:36.270 - help both lower the barrier for people seeking this type of funds and figure out a better way that we 01:02:36.270 --> 01:02:43.759 - can get them into the community faster. Any other thoughts? Seeing that I stole yours, would you like 01:02:43.759 --> 01:02:51.102 - to say? Okay. Happy to go to public comment on this one. If there's no other thoughts, I think this 01:02:51.458 --> 01:02:59.269 - Am I feeling that that that there we feel like there's maybe not a lot that we can do here I feel like 01:02:59.269 --> 01:03:06.852 - it's kind of a disservice to us to say that there's not a lot that we can do But I think that we've 01:03:06.852 --> 01:03:14.966 - just had a lot of conversations around very like specific deliberation session conversations about Housing 01:03:14.966 --> 01:03:20.350 - and homelessness. Yeah, that's that's much category of thing and it is 01:03:20.450 --> 01:03:27.469 - To some degree it's like out of legislative sort of purview and there already is Various funding and 01:03:27.469 --> 01:03:34.419 - investment going into it in different ways from the city And so it's not like I feel like it's more 01:03:34.419 --> 01:03:41.439 - like what more can we do right now? and part of it is allowing some of the things that we've already 01:03:41.439 --> 01:03:45.470 - invested in to play out and maybe work while there's some 01:03:45.954 --> 01:03:55.724 - you know larger project kind of stuff maybe that is going on and Yeah, yeah I'll just do one little 01:03:55.724 --> 01:04:05.494 - plug in terms of expanding community-based Supports, I think that all of the things that are listed 01:04:05.494 --> 01:04:09.598 - here are great I also think that we could 01:04:09.794 --> 01:04:17.693 - Expand that even broader. I know that council members Piedmont Smith and Rallo have talked a lot about 01:04:17.693 --> 01:04:25.822 - local food production and expanding our food resiliency I think it was a public commenter actually during 01:04:25.822 --> 01:04:33.491 - our debate on flock and ALPR cameras that made the point that petty crimes go down when people have 01:04:33.491 --> 01:04:39.166 - all of their needs met and food is one of the highest needs that everyone 01:04:39.746 --> 01:04:46.559 - is looking for, especially when we have rising fuel costs that are contributing to rising food costs, 01:04:46.559 --> 01:04:53.505 - one of the best ways, in my opinion, that we can stay resilient as a community is to increase our local 01:04:53.505 --> 01:05:00.185 - food production. And I know that that might not seem like it directly has to do with safety, but it 01:05:00.185 --> 01:05:07.331 - does when we think about the effect that people's immediate needs being met does actually have a reduction 01:05:07.331 --> 01:05:08.734 - on crime statistics. 01:05:10.594 --> 01:05:19.703 - Thank you, thank you, thank you. All right, would anybody like to make comments on priority area two? 01:05:19.703 --> 01:05:29.079 - Someone online? Please, the person online. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Yes, Kevin Keough. I apologize, 01:05:29.079 --> 01:05:38.366 - but I want to go back to the capital planning, capital budget kind of stuff. I just want to promote the 01:05:38.466 --> 01:05:45.955 - Government Financial Officers Association, and they have best practices specifically to capital budget 01:05:45.955 --> 01:05:53.444 - presentations. And there's a six-step framework they have. The first one is capital planning policies. 01:05:53.444 --> 01:06:01.296 - Start with a policy and then have this concept of master plans and capital improvement planning, multi-year 01:06:01.296 --> 01:06:05.150 - capital planning, enforced capital asset management, 01:06:05.506 --> 01:06:11.926 - Five is communicating capital improvement strategies, and six is capital projects monitoring and reporting. 01:06:11.926 --> 01:06:18.466 - I guess it's part of the system, the whole framework, and it's really a responsibility of the administration. 01:06:18.466 --> 01:06:24.767 - And again, trying to move the needle. I know I've been a real stickler about trying to move up the annual 01:06:24.767 --> 01:06:30.771 - comprehensive financial report, which has happened, which is great. And I would hope that would even 01:06:30.771 --> 01:06:35.230 - move up to 630. This is kind of part of it, trying to get this information 01:06:35.458 --> 01:06:42.740 - a higher quality plus to give best practices framework because you discuss quite a bit about especially 01:06:42.740 --> 01:06:50.302 - the continuity. I think it was the one that really kind of spoke to me that especially it's not short-term. 01:06:50.594 --> 01:06:56.906 - within elections, it's a long term and it's always focused on what's best for the community. So I would, 01:06:56.906 --> 01:07:02.918 - you know, trying to adopt that type of framework, which is a best practice, I think would be in the 01:07:02.918 --> 01:07:09.109 - best interest of the city. So again, thanks. I didn't know you guys are taking public comment tonight, 01:07:09.109 --> 01:07:15.361 - but thanks so much. Thank you so much, Mr. Keough. Mr. Oest. Good evening. Thank you, everyone. My name 01:07:15.361 --> 01:07:19.870 - is Eric Oest and I just wanted to mention something in regards to food. So 01:07:22.050 --> 01:07:30.139 - Food is very important. Housing's very important too. But one of the opportunities that we have in this 01:07:30.139 --> 01:07:38.462 - community currently is there was a donation of almost 400 acres to the south of Moores Pike to the county. 01:07:38.462 --> 01:07:46.706 - And there's about 190 or so arable acres in that. And one of the opportunities is to work with the county 01:07:46.706 --> 01:07:49.662 - to establish a community food system. 01:07:49.762 --> 01:07:57.280 - of some kind, it would be an opportunity for, um, labor for paid people to work, work the land, to learn 01:07:57.280 --> 01:08:04.942 - how to do that. And there's training opportunities. And I pose, there's a question that I posed to myself, 01:08:04.942 --> 01:08:12.675 - uh, many years ago, and I think it's something to ponder is how many acres of arable land would be required 01:08:12.675 --> 01:08:19.262 - to grow enough food to provide every citizen or excuse me, every resident of Monroe County, 01:08:19.682 --> 01:08:27.154 - with two balanced meals a day for the year. I'm not talking about growing grapes or other things. I'm 01:08:27.154 --> 01:08:34.847 - talking about food that in the future, this may be a very, you know, in the past, people went to grocery 01:08:34.847 --> 01:08:42.173 - stores to buy things like cloth and salt and things that they couldn't grow. And, you know, we live 01:08:42.173 --> 01:08:45.982 - in a world where we can go to the grocery store and 01:08:46.594 --> 01:08:53.065 - by a myriad number of things. We don't know where they come from necessarily unless we invest time in 01:08:53.065 --> 01:08:59.854 - finding out. But we can actually grow food in Monroe County. We're still fortunate. So it's just something 01:08:59.854 --> 01:09:06.515 - to ponder. So I just offer that up as maybe you could collaborate with the county to establish something 01:09:06.515 --> 01:09:12.923 - like that. Thank you so much. Anybody else with comments? All right. Well, let's move to priority or 01:09:12.923 --> 01:09:16.222 - three. And if it's okay with you all, can we target 01:09:16.834 --> 01:09:24.474 - We have we still want to talk about the housing. So maybe no later than eight to transition to housing. 01:09:24.474 --> 01:09:32.040 - Yeah, and we'll be done at 830 Okay, so that priority error three is public safety response prevention 01:09:32.040 --> 01:09:39.606 - and accountability Anyone jump out here Please comes with us for Well, I'll start because this was the 01:09:39.606 --> 01:09:43.646 - group that I was in and one of the things that I was I 01:09:43.874 --> 01:09:50.460 - Thinking about after that group one of the things that we talked about a lot was just kind of uncertainty 01:09:50.460 --> 01:09:56.673 - that residents may feel like when they call nine one one and what's going to happen and who's going 01:09:56.673 --> 01:09:58.910 - to respond to different things and. 01:09:59.202 --> 01:10:06.721 - So we kind of discussed and also what resources 911 has to respond. For example, there are social workers 01:10:06.721 --> 01:10:13.815 - right now that are within dispatch so that they can support dispatch in various situations. And the 01:10:13.815 --> 01:10:21.263 - specific training our officers have around response to mental health and the connections that they might 01:10:21.263 --> 01:10:28.286 - have with Stride or other organizations in terms of partnership that we just don't know as kind of 01:10:28.546 --> 01:10:36.618 - General resident who hasn't necessarily utilized those services before so that this is kind of like 01:10:36.618 --> 01:10:45.013 - communication but the very specific sort of Some kind of publication maybe that like like when you call 01:10:45.013 --> 01:10:53.328 - 9-1-1 what happens who might you get? dispatched to aid you depending on what the situation is and one 01:10:53.328 --> 01:10:54.942 - of the things I was 01:10:55.042 --> 01:11:01.445 - talking about with Councilmember Piedmont-Smith when we were reflecting on this was perhaps utilizing 01:11:01.445 --> 01:11:07.785 - the CAPS Commission as a group that could potentially publish this kind of thing, create and publish 01:11:07.785 --> 01:11:14.690 - this kind of thing in the same way that like the Commission on Aging publishes a little pamphlet specifically 01:11:14.690 --> 01:11:19.838 - about different services for our aging residents. So that is something that might 01:11:19.970 --> 01:11:27.231 - require legislation in terms of looking at the mission of caps and cap the caps Commission is kind of 01:11:27.231 --> 01:11:34.492 - under council's umbrella And so that is something that could potentially be like a council action And 01:11:34.492 --> 01:11:41.825 - then the caps Commission could could work on that with the departments involved because they of course 01:11:41.825 --> 01:11:49.086 - would have to you know, contact all of our departments to Understand all of those pieces as well Yeah 01:11:49.218 --> 01:11:58.608 - So yeah, that was one of the kind of takeaways that I took from the discussion that I had. That's a 01:11:58.608 --> 01:12:08.187 - great point. Council Member Pujospe? Yeah, I just wanted to remind everybody that the Law Enforcement 01:12:08.187 --> 01:12:16.638 - Action Partnership, LEAP, is conducting a study of our 911 response system and what calls 01:12:16.738 --> 01:12:24.811 - might be best handled by non-sworn police officers and what kind of response might be most appropriate. 01:12:24.811 --> 01:12:32.729 - Unfortunately, they were delayed getting started this year. Well, we put money in the budget for 2025 01:12:32.729 --> 01:12:40.646 - for this study, a very modest amount, $10,000. It wasn't until December of 2025 that the contract was 01:12:40.646 --> 01:12:44.062 - signed then. They didn't start until April. 01:12:44.706 --> 01:12:52.809 - And then they were delayed because leap had some staff changes. So now we're looking at March of twenty 01:12:52.809 --> 01:13:00.991 - twenty seven to actually get this report. So I just wanted to let you all know that that is still coming 01:13:00.991 --> 01:13:09.406 - and that should inform our future investments in emergency response of different kinds. And if that's here. 01:13:12.034 --> 01:13:22.835 - Let's go to public comment. Anyone want to comment on the questions of public safety, response, prevention, 01:13:22.835 --> 01:13:32.937 - and accountability? Anyone on that? All right. OK, priority area. I'm sorry. Can I add something for 01:13:32.937 --> 01:13:41.438 - the third topic area? The last bullet point is improve public emergency information. 01:13:42.050 --> 01:13:52.876 - And I know I've heard from a couple of residents who were like why did it take eight hours or something 01:13:52.876 --> 01:14:03.390 - for six hours for the notification about our water quality to go out to residents a couple of months 01:14:03.390 --> 01:14:12.030 - ago. So I think there is some oversight that the council could and should do here. 01:14:12.194 --> 01:14:22.601 - to better understand when information goes out and why and to make sure that people know how to get 01:14:22.601 --> 01:14:33.737 - that information. I think it would be really productive for us and for the administration to work together 01:14:33.737 --> 01:14:41.438 - to develop some very clear guidelines or standard operating procedures on 01:14:41.762 --> 01:14:48.599 - how and when and by whom information is going to be communicated in times of crises. And that can be 01:14:48.599 --> 01:14:55.503 - in times of when the entire county is under a boil water advisory, but it could also be when there is 01:14:55.503 --> 01:15:02.273 - a shooting on Kirkwood in the middle of the night and everyone has questions. I know we all wake up 01:15:02.273 --> 01:15:08.094 - to many texts and emails on our phones and that part of that might be circumvented by 01:15:08.450 --> 01:15:19.268 - everyone knowing exactly where to go to find information and knowing exactly what they're going to find 01:15:19.268 --> 01:15:30.294 - when they get there. Yeah, excellent, excellent. Okay, let's do priority four, communication transparency 01:15:30.294 --> 01:15:32.478 - and community trust. 01:15:39.298 --> 01:15:46.692 - So this one had a handful of suggestions like improving systems for reporting concerns, increasing 01:15:46.692 --> 01:15:54.384 - transparency around public funding, which I think Mr. Keogh just commented on, improving communication 01:15:54.384 --> 01:16:02.525 - and coordination within city government, more opportunities for the council, mayor, and relevant departments 01:16:02.525 --> 01:16:08.574 - to communicate about shared priorities, expanding neighborhood-based engagement, 01:16:09.314 --> 01:16:19.286 - including community partners earlier in planning and supporting public education about safety concerns. 01:16:19.286 --> 01:16:29.450 - Oh, sorry. Sorry. Not sorry. I'm just down here being quiet. It's fine. Regarding the transparency around 01:16:29.450 --> 01:16:39.038 - public funding and just kind of budgeting in general, because it's not just transparency, it's also 01:16:39.266 --> 01:16:47.376 - I'll say ease of access and ease of understanding because like our budget is large and can be very confusing 01:16:47.376 --> 01:16:54.966 - and that is something that I think that fiscal committee has talked about this year in different ways 01:16:54.966 --> 01:17:02.481 - that we've talked about in terms of budget presentations that I've you know explored with controller 01:17:02.481 --> 01:17:04.862 - McKim around how to make budget 01:17:05.058 --> 01:17:12.225 - presentations more palatable for the average person and I think that that is Something that that fiscal 01:17:12.225 --> 01:17:19.254 - committee should should figure out a way to do And the one of the challenges with that I would say is 01:17:19.254 --> 01:17:26.145 - that there are lots of things that fiscal committee could do and so it's hard to maybe it's hard to 01:17:26.145 --> 01:17:31.038 - fit it all in into a calendar and figure out how to do it, but I'm I'm 01:17:31.490 --> 01:17:36.137 - I think it's really important and I'm really interested in that I've been thinking about that a lot 01:17:36.137 --> 01:17:40.877 - this year and so as a piece of that one thing to Remember is that fiscal committee right now is still 01:17:40.877 --> 01:17:45.663 - a special committee as opposed to a standing committee And so we talked about it a couple meetings ago 01:17:45.663 --> 01:17:50.356 - And so I am as chair kind of working on that legislation to make it a standing committee. I'm so for 01:17:50.356 --> 01:17:51.518 - them so that then we can 01:17:52.066 --> 01:17:58.165 - Put some of those things into writing and give people that predictability that you know You want something 01:17:58.165 --> 01:18:03.980 - about you want to know something about fiscal stuff like a there is this committee So you could go to 01:18:03.980 --> 01:18:09.965 - those meetings but also be anybody on this committee should be somebody who you can contact about fiscal 01:18:09.965 --> 01:18:11.390 - things specifically that 01:18:11.682 --> 01:18:19.528 - Theory that committee should have I mean in theory all of us should be able to have that information 01:18:19.528 --> 01:18:27.684 - But the fiscal committee members may have it closer to the tips of their fingers than than other council 01:18:27.684 --> 01:18:35.452 - members do just in terms of Working with it more frequently. So yeah. Yeah agreed Councilor Aralo I 01:18:35.452 --> 01:18:40.190 - Really think that's a really important point is particularly 01:18:40.802 --> 01:18:49.660 - Guess the palatability I guess is with the word used which I think is a good one. But yeah how to communicate 01:18:49.660 --> 01:18:57.714 - You know very dense numerical data so that it's understandable to the public just tuning in I Think 01:18:57.714 --> 01:19:05.847 - it's great idea. I think I think this is no slight to our controller. I think does an excellent job, 01:19:05.847 --> 01:19:09.310 - but if there is a way to convey it so that 01:19:09.602 --> 01:19:22.329 - People can engage it Then I think that we're better off for it Yeah, I think Transparency of grants 01:19:22.329 --> 01:19:35.693 - funding and the outcomes From the the grants that the city gives is also an important thing to highlight 01:19:35.693 --> 01:19:38.238 - and that came up in 01:19:38.338 --> 01:19:45.462 - during the deliberation sessions. And I think we've mentioned it in other contexts also that how do 01:19:45.462 --> 01:19:52.870 - we know that the five hundred thousand dollars from Jack Hopkins is really making a difference. I think 01:19:52.870 --> 01:20:00.065 - that there are reports from the granting agencies that come back they have to report on the progress 01:20:00.065 --> 01:20:02.558 - but that doesn't really it doesn't 01:20:02.690 --> 01:20:10.105 - get to people who aren't on Jack Hopkins like myself on that committee and I don't think it gets to 01:20:10.105 --> 01:20:17.594 - the public. So I think both Jack Hopkins Housing Development Fund CDBG any grants the city makes. We 01:20:17.594 --> 01:20:25.454 - should have a report on that or a dashboard or at least those of us sitting up here should have a report. 01:20:25.454 --> 01:20:29.310 - So again it's about oversight of that public money. 01:20:32.866 --> 01:20:40.940 - others To that point and thank you to councilmember Piedmont Smith for bringing it up because it jogged 01:20:40.940 --> 01:20:49.324 - something in my memory I Think we also need to be very clear as a city on when grants are being distributed 01:20:49.324 --> 01:20:57.087 - As far as I'm aware beacon has still not received their 2025 and 2026 CDBG funds which are actually 01:20:57.087 --> 01:21:02.366 - supposed to go directly towards their friends play shelter which is 01:21:02.626 --> 01:21:10.953 - As far as I'm aware, the only gender affirming shelter in Bloomington city limits. And it also, as far 01:21:10.953 --> 01:21:19.119 - as I'm aware, is one of the only places that single women can go to find shelter beds. And so that's 01:21:19.119 --> 01:21:22.110 - about $37,500 between 2025 and 2026. 01:21:22.978 --> 01:21:31.114 - That might not seem like a lot of money when it comes to the city's budget overall, but it is a lot 01:21:31.114 --> 01:21:39.494 - of money when you think about how that is quite a lot of people's entire annual salary in Bloomington. 01:21:39.494 --> 01:21:47.712 - And so just some more transparency on when those grant funds are actually being distributed. I just, 01:21:47.712 --> 01:21:49.502 - since I served on the 01:21:49.634 --> 01:21:57.343 - on the CDBG funding committee for physical improvements this past month. I just wanted to say those 01:21:57.343 --> 01:22:05.052 - are federal funds and there are so many strings attached you wouldn't believe it. So I just caution 01:22:05.052 --> 01:22:13.301 - people against making assumptions that the city is somehow willfully not releasing funds. There's probably 01:22:13.301 --> 01:22:17.310 - some I's that need dotted and T's that need crossed 01:22:17.826 --> 01:22:38.782 - are preventing the money from going out the door. I think everybody wants to support Beacon's new facility. 01:22:47.426 --> 01:23:01.529 - Hopefully I did not lose my entire comment Okay, so good evening, my name is Eric ghost again and We 01:23:01.529 --> 01:23:16.190 - were talking about the budget and access to financial cities financial data and I would request that the 01:23:16.546 --> 01:23:24.074 - expenditure data be published in a way that doesn't use I believe it's called split transactions or 01:23:24.074 --> 01:23:31.678 - you want split transactions which means currently let's say that there's an expenditure for an item. 01:23:32.482 --> 01:23:38.698 - And the money is from different funds are used to buy that item. What you'll see in the expenditure 01:23:38.698 --> 01:23:45.164 - date is you'll see fund a has a thousand dollars fund B has a thousand dollars and et cetera. You can't 01:23:45.164 --> 01:23:52.126 - determine how what proportion was removed or spent by each fund. And so there's no way for the public to track. 01:23:52.290 --> 01:23:58.356 - and for you to track the balances of funds within the measure of update of the expenditure data. So 01:23:58.356 --> 01:24:04.665 - that's one thing. And I've mentioned that before. I do believe that, because I looked into the software 01:24:04.665 --> 01:24:10.913 - you folks use, which is Tyler, out of Tyler Technologies, and it is capable of doing that. So it might 01:24:10.913 --> 01:24:17.222 - require some work, but you can do that. The other thing I wanted to mention is that public records that 01:24:17.222 --> 01:24:20.862 - are released should be published in all but rare instances. 01:24:23.266 --> 01:24:31.540 - So that is the definition of a public record. That it literally be public. And that does not mean available 01:24:31.540 --> 01:24:39.277 - to, but also published for, published to. And I also want to mention again accident reports. And I'm 01:24:39.277 --> 01:24:47.474 - talking about accident reports as they're defined by Indiana Code. Are public record and not confidential. 01:24:47.474 --> 01:24:52.990 - And currently what is, they used to be published as public record data, 01:24:53.506 --> 01:24:59.974 - there was a decision made or some contract entered into that has now prohibited that, but that is a 01:24:59.974 --> 01:25:06.702 - violation of Indiana code, so municipalities can't enter into a contract that prohibits the publication 01:25:06.702 --> 01:25:13.235 - of public record data. So I would ask the council to engage that and have accident reports published 01:25:13.235 --> 01:25:19.703 - for access by the public, and that would be detailed. I think if you mention this, then you'll hear 01:25:19.703 --> 01:25:23.390 - that you already have a crash dashboard, but that is not 01:25:23.874 --> 01:25:32.934 - The same also the crash dashboard only retains five years of data So when five years elapses that data 01:25:32.934 --> 01:25:41.730 - goes away, which doesn't make any sense either. So anyway, thanks for all your work. Thank you Yes, 01:25:41.730 --> 01:25:51.582 - so going through each topic area was just part of what I was hoping to accomplish this evening I know that it's 01:25:51.970 --> 01:26:00.285 - We have another item on our agenda whole another topic but also just things that I was hoping to get 01:26:00.285 --> 01:26:08.518 - to include the lack of broad input. So as we look at the survey responses following session one and 01:26:08.518 --> 01:26:17.327 - recall who was in the room for both sessions whose input was lacking. Well I think people of color younger 01:26:17.327 --> 01:26:19.550 - people people maybe on the 01:26:19.650 --> 01:26:28.773 - lower socioeconomic end of the spectrum, we missed those voices. And how can we get broader input is 01:26:28.773 --> 01:26:38.077 - the question here as we move ahead with public safety. And then, really, what is our end goal? Because 01:26:38.077 --> 01:26:47.110 - we had talked about this all came up, I think, December of 2025 when we were starting to talk about 01:26:47.110 --> 01:26:49.278 - 2027 budget priorities. 01:26:49.666 --> 01:26:56.300 - And we realized we have a lot of city plans that, well, we should prioritize enacting those plans and 01:26:56.300 --> 01:27:02.805 - fulfilling the objectives listed in those plans, but we don't have one for public safety. So is our 01:27:02.805 --> 01:27:09.374 - goal a public safety plan? And if so, what would be the next steps? So I'm hoping that we can take a 01:27:09.374 --> 01:27:16.204 - few more minutes to talk about those things. Yeah, I think, and I'm very happy to even punt to the other 01:27:16.204 --> 01:27:19.326 - topic that people would rather talk about this. 01:27:19.874 --> 01:27:29.367 - Do as you will friends. I would be happy to punt the other topic especially since we don't 01:27:29.367 --> 01:27:39.904 - have administration here to answer any questions about any of the information that was in the packet 01:27:39.904 --> 01:27:49.502 - addendum about that. I think that our end goal should be some kind of a public safety plan. 01:27:49.730 --> 01:27:58.262 - Similar to other plans that we have Maybe not quite someone out anyway something like that and in terms 01:27:58.262 --> 01:28:06.713 - of broader input I mean, I really think the thing is that we have to go to people where they're at and 01:28:06.713 --> 01:28:14.917 - one of the ways that Councilmember Piedmont Smith got a bunch of survey inputs in Spanish was to go 01:28:14.917 --> 01:28:17.214 - to Spanish Was it an event? 01:28:18.050 --> 01:28:27.759 - Like you sent it to me. I know you used you shared it with somebody who was Martinez from CFRD took 01:28:27.759 --> 01:28:34.750 - it to the event when the consulate of Mexico came to Bloomington. Yeah. 01:28:38.146 --> 01:28:43.754 - I wasn't there either way, but I mean we talked about that already the idea of meeting people where 01:28:43.754 --> 01:28:49.699 - they're at and we've talked about that a lot and so I think that you know if we're serious about figuring 01:28:49.699 --> 01:28:55.420 - out some kind of a public safety plan and I think that what we have right now is a good start to that 01:28:55.420 --> 01:29:01.140 - and that we do need more of that feedback from you know, we need feedback on what is already there in 01:29:01.140 --> 01:29:02.206 - terms of you know, 01:29:02.594 --> 01:29:08.397 - What do you think of this what's missing from this and we need feedback from from people who who weren't 01:29:08.397 --> 01:29:13.978 - in the room and that we just need to go and get that feedback if we're serious about actually having 01:29:13.978 --> 01:29:19.615 - a plan and the question like more the question is how to do that and what kind of timeline over which 01:29:19.615 --> 01:29:23.870 - to do that especially because I think that most of our other city plans have 01:29:24.834 --> 01:29:33.229 - been assisted by Contractors in different ways and I mean that's certainly not budgeted for next year 01:29:33.229 --> 01:29:41.459 - and Given budget stuff like, you know, I don't know how that's gonna go, but I think that there are 01:29:41.459 --> 01:29:49.936 - steps that we could take And we just have to figure out how that looks So I was thinking that it would 01:29:49.936 --> 01:29:53.310 - be sorry my thinking was that instead of 01:29:53.794 --> 01:30:00.475 - Instead of thinking about this as a plan, the way we think about transportation plan, comprehensive 01:30:00.475 --> 01:30:07.356 - plan, et cetera, because I think a lot of this overlaps with things that are already in a lot of those 01:30:07.356 --> 01:30:14.237 - plans, that we should think about this more the way that we think about capital improvement and almost 01:30:14.237 --> 01:30:17.310 - have like a five-year investment plan, right? 01:30:18.210 --> 01:30:23.191 - safety improvement framework, something like that. I think that may be a very good place where, 01:30:23.191 --> 01:30:28.432 - dare I say, we might be able as a council to come up with some outcomes that are desirable, where we 01:30:28.432 --> 01:30:33.724 - set baselines and we say these are things that we want to see moving in these directions and here are 01:30:33.724 --> 01:30:38.238 - the investments that we think need to be made over the next several years to do those. 01:30:39.298 --> 01:30:45.241 - And I think that we already, through our survey, so just thinking about it sort of empirically 01:30:45.241 --> 01:30:51.623 - or analytically here, I think that we already have, I think what's really useful about these surveys, 01:30:51.623 --> 01:30:58.004 - even though, and I'll come to the point about who participated, who didn't, but I actually think that 01:30:58.004 --> 01:31:04.573 - we managed to group things in a very nice way, and I think that CGM has done a very good sort of initial 01:31:04.573 --> 01:31:08.702 - job at looking at this and putting them in sort of nice, I think, 01:31:09.058 --> 01:31:22.240 - fairly well-defined buckets. I think that might be a really good starting place for us to come up with 01:31:22.240 --> 01:31:35.167 - some improvement framework. I guess I would ask my colleagues, do we want the administration to come 01:31:35.167 --> 01:31:39.006 - up with a public safety plan? 01:31:39.266 --> 01:31:46.227 - led by the executive branch, the transportation plan, the climate action plan, the comprehensive plan, 01:31:46.227 --> 01:31:53.323 - those were all led by the administration and as Council Member Stossberg said through consultants, those 01:31:53.323 --> 01:32:00.284 - were developed. Or I think what I heard from Council Member Osari was different. It was make a capital 01:32:00.284 --> 01:32:05.150 - improvement plan, tie it directly to the budget and say this is council 01:32:05.442 --> 01:32:12.874 - Public priorities for public safety and in the next five years we expect to see these investments these 01:32:12.874 --> 01:32:20.020 - outcomes Which will result from these investments? I think even in that Scenario we would need some 01:32:20.020 --> 01:32:27.309 - input from of course. Yeah stration to see how much things cost but but I think that's that's kind of 01:32:27.309 --> 01:32:29.310 - two different directions or 01:32:29.730 --> 01:32:38.934 - Could they both happen? I don't know. Well, I'll just say, and I think the councilman will pass back 01:32:38.934 --> 01:32:48.048 - to you, that I think one of my discomforts or hesitations around plans is I've come to realize that 01:32:48.048 --> 01:32:57.981 - plans are great if you're going to do them. But the issue is that I think we, and I'm not casting aspersions 01:32:57.981 --> 01:32:59.166 - or whatever. 01:33:00.738 --> 01:33:06.027 - I think that we often use plans as a way of delaying any decisions around things. First off, because 01:33:06.027 --> 01:33:11.264 - we're like, well, we're going to do a plan about that. When are we going to do the plan? Next year, 01:33:11.264 --> 01:33:16.763 - we're going to start the process of starting a plan. Okay, so now we're a year out. Then we do the plan. 01:33:16.763 --> 01:33:20.062 - We're two years out. Then we get the results back of the plan. 01:33:20.162 --> 01:33:26.966 - let's discuss whether we want to do the plan. We're three years out. Fourth year, now let's do the plan. 01:33:26.966 --> 01:33:33.512 - Oh, no, it's too late. We have to start all over again. And I think that though that feels like it's 01:33:33.512 --> 01:33:40.316 - a little bit of maybe a flattening of a lot of other intervening variables, the reality is that, I mean, 01:33:40.316 --> 01:33:46.926 - I think that archetype fits a lot of the type of plans that we have. And so that's where I'm starting 01:33:46.926 --> 01:33:48.222 - to think about what 01:33:48.386 --> 01:33:55.520 - our alternatives, what are our alternatives, so that we get to action. I think coming up with some things 01:33:55.520 --> 01:34:00.702 - that we really think we want to see and committing to doing those things and 01:34:00.994 --> 01:34:07.100 - just coming up ourselves with some ideas of what we think, how we'll hold ourselves accountable. And 01:34:07.100 --> 01:34:13.326 - then the last thing I'll say about planning generally is that we are a university town with the number 01:34:13.326 --> 01:34:19.734 - one MPA program in the country, with the top 10 business school. I just feel like there's a lot of places 01:34:19.734 --> 01:34:25.658 - where you could go very clearly to get expertise quite quickly, if that's what we needed as well. 01:34:25.658 --> 01:34:27.774 - To you, Councilor Sarsburg, sorry. 01:34:29.826 --> 01:34:35.501 - I think probably I largely agree with what you just said. And I think it's partly like in terms of your 01:34:35.501 --> 01:34:41.120 - response to what I said before, like yes, I think we need a public safety plan. I mean, it's all about 01:34:41.120 --> 01:34:46.577 - vernacular, right? It's about like, well, what does plan mean? Like there's lots of different kinds 01:34:46.577 --> 01:34:52.251 - of plans. And like I would agree that, you know, like the transportation plan, the climate action plan, 01:34:52.251 --> 01:34:57.762 - that, you know, like all of them do kind of have a certain mold. And I think that one of the reasons 01:34:57.762 --> 01:34:58.526 - why sometimes 01:34:58.818 --> 01:35:06.621 - City plans like that have a certain mold is because we need a plan to Apply for money for such and such 01:35:06.621 --> 01:35:14.650 - a thing. And so the plan does have to kind of follow a set Framework you could say to fulfill requirements 01:35:14.650 --> 01:35:22.078 - for whatever reason it is that we're making a plan for I mean Yeah, and so that wasn't necessarily 01:35:22.274 --> 01:35:27.904 - my vision of what a public safety plan would be at this point. I don't necessarily have a vision of 01:35:27.904 --> 01:35:33.534 - what a public safety plan would be, except that I think that we should have something that gives us 01:35:33.534 --> 01:35:39.614 - those goals, partly because it got raised last year in budget season, like yes, public safety is important. 01:35:40.738 --> 01:35:46.379 - you know, public safety is important. And all we could do was find something that said improve public 01:35:46.379 --> 01:35:52.076 - safety. Well, what on earth does that mean? And so I want there to be something that defines more what 01:35:52.076 --> 01:35:58.270 - that means. What is public safety? And so that's what I think these deliberation sessions kind of started with. 01:35:58.338 --> 01:36:04.366 - is that idea of the community helping us define, you know, what is public safety? What does it mean 01:36:04.366 --> 01:36:10.575 - to be safe? What do we need to be safe? When do we feel unsafe? And that kind of thing. And then it's, 01:36:10.575 --> 01:36:16.843 - well, how do we make more of our spaces, more of our community feel safe? And so that's then what leads 01:36:16.843 --> 01:36:22.932 - into the plan is going, okay, so, you know, we need this kind of stuff to feel safer. Now, how do we 01:36:22.932 --> 01:36:24.318 - do that kind of stuff? 01:36:24.418 --> 01:36:30.102 - you know, whether we get a consultant for that or not. And I think that it's of course much quicker 01:36:30.102 --> 01:36:36.070 - and easier and faster to not get a consultant and to figure out what can be done without the consultant. 01:36:36.070 --> 01:36:41.868 - And that's, you know, like that's the question is what can be done without the consultant and how can 01:36:41.868 --> 01:36:47.552 - it be done? Because if you have a consultant, then you can offload most of the work to them. And if 01:36:47.552 --> 01:36:50.110 - you don't have a consultant, then you can't. 01:36:50.242 --> 01:36:55.142 - And so it's this idea of going, okay, so if we need to get, and you didn't, by the way, ever tell us 01:36:55.142 --> 01:37:00.043 - the part of how to get more input that we were lacking. You mentioned that you were gonna talk about 01:37:00.043 --> 01:37:04.992 - that, and then you never talked about it yet. You know, so it's like, if we do say, okay, we wanna go 01:37:04.992 --> 01:37:07.806 - out to these other spaces where people are and get their, 01:37:07.874 --> 01:37:13.986 - Perspective on it. So how are we going to do that? Are we going to go out and have like deliberation 01:37:13.986 --> 01:37:20.098 - sessions kind of like we had in other places with other people? Is it going to be community surveys? 01:37:20.098 --> 01:37:26.271 - Who's gonna do the survey? Who's gonna you know, like how is that all going to actually work? Because 01:37:26.271 --> 01:37:32.564 - if we had a consultant the consultant would be dealing with it and we would not be and so that's That's 01:37:32.564 --> 01:37:34.622 - the real kind of logistical piece 01:37:37.314 --> 01:37:46.721 - Council Member Zulik. Thank you. This body has experienced a lot of frustrations with the administration's 01:37:46.721 --> 01:37:55.512 - either inability or unwillingness to institute outcomes-based budgeting. And so I think that one of 01:37:55.512 --> 01:38:04.304 - the best ways that we can push towards that without voting a budget down, which nobody wants to do, 01:38:04.304 --> 01:38:06.238 - is well. We're happy. 01:38:08.226 --> 01:38:17.401 - which, you got me off track. No, it's okay. I think that every way that we can tie specific strategies 01:38:17.401 --> 01:38:26.575 - to outcomes with approximate costs is our best way at moving forward and saying, you know, it actually 01:38:26.575 --> 01:38:35.483 - is possible to institute outcomes based budgeting. There may be an unwillingness to do so, but that 01:38:35.483 --> 01:38:37.086 - doesn't mean that 01:38:37.474 --> 01:38:46.454 - this is not something that the city is capable of doing and by modeling that we have a very good shot 01:38:46.454 --> 01:38:55.258 - at being more productive we'll call it during our next budgeting cycle and I am not sure that doing 01:38:55.258 --> 01:39:04.766 - a public safety plan in the same way that we do a transportation plan or this the safe streets for all plan 01:39:05.698 --> 01:39:14.134 - would be as efficient as coming up with Council Member Piedmont Smith's option two, where it's kind 01:39:14.134 --> 01:39:22.823 - of more of a five-year plan. These are the strategies that we'd like to see implemented. This is about 01:39:22.823 --> 01:39:31.344 - how much we think they would cost. And this is the specific outcome that we're looking to get out of 01:39:31.344 --> 01:39:34.718 - it. Thank you. Council Member Flaherty. 01:39:35.202 --> 01:39:42.586 - Thank you. This is a really interesting conversation. I appreciate the perspectives of my colleagues. 01:39:42.586 --> 01:39:50.188 - I think, I see it probably as a little bit of a both and. I recognize and agree with what Council Member 01:39:50.188 --> 01:39:57.717 - Rosario was saying about just the amount of time it takes to put something more comprehensive together. 01:39:57.717 --> 01:40:02.206 - I do think this council and our level of staffing, we're not, 01:40:02.434 --> 01:40:08.910 - well suited to independently lead production of a holistic public safety plan that will a have buy-in 01:40:08.910 --> 01:40:15.576 - from the administration or the community and be you know be The best product that the city could produce 01:40:15.576 --> 01:40:22.241 - I do think some expertise is relevant here and the community input that we've had through these sessions 01:40:22.241 --> 01:40:26.622 - is valuable and really important and I'm glad we've had the sessions 01:40:27.074 --> 01:40:32.673 - We might think of it as a jumping off point to inform next steps. I think we could try to identify from 01:40:32.673 --> 01:40:38.380 - this exercise what are some priorities we want to see in the next three year timeline and do that through 01:40:38.380 --> 01:40:43.710 - a council process while also saying, look, we want a holistic and comprehensive plan that centers, 01:40:43.710 --> 01:40:49.094 - you know, creates a vision statement, centers some particular values. You know, we talked about the 01:40:49.094 --> 01:40:53.886 - different experiences of different people in the results and there were some notes about 01:40:54.082 --> 01:40:59.490 - Reflections from folks in in marginalized communities in the sessions saying that actually police presence 01:40:59.490 --> 01:41:04.695 - doesn't make them feel more safe whereas other people say police presence does make me feel more safe, 01:41:04.695 --> 01:41:09.749 - right and so things like that like if we're not layering values around equity or You know who's not 01:41:09.749 --> 01:41:15.005 - being served by current systems things like that into the process I think we're just not really limited 01:41:15.005 --> 01:41:18.846 - in what we can accomplish and like to do that. Well, I really do think that 01:41:19.170 --> 01:41:24.080 - uh, requires bringing in some expertise and, yes, likely contracted support or maybe pro bono or, 01:41:24.080 --> 01:41:29.291 - you know, like, uh, lower cost support through, through, um, university resources or otherwise. I don't 01:41:29.291 --> 01:41:34.551 - know if my colleagues have looked up, tried to, I don't know, I try to look to other cities for examples 01:41:34.551 --> 01:41:39.612 - a lot. Uh, maybe you all have looked around for what, you know, uh, community safety plans look like 01:41:39.612 --> 01:41:44.622 - in other places. Uh, I'm just reviewing right now, I think I've looked them up before also, like in 01:41:44.622 --> 01:41:47.678 - our neighborhoods, our safety plan, uh, for Washington, D.C. 01:41:47.778 --> 01:41:53.336 - that was developed, I think, in conjunction with the Center in Georgetown. There's one in Greensboro 01:41:53.336 --> 01:41:58.618 - that's really quite solid. And establishes, yeah, objectives, timelines around, say, developing 01:41:58.618 --> 01:42:04.672 - an alternative response community-based program for safety calls, right? And then setting KPIs and strategies 01:42:04.672 --> 01:42:10.560 - for how to accomplish that. And there's some pretty good examples out there. And so, they're not identical 01:42:10.560 --> 01:42:16.227 - to something like a plan or a transportation plan, but they have some similarities, and I think that's 01:42:16.227 --> 01:42:17.438 - probably a good thing 01:42:17.538 --> 01:42:23.115 - and mostly what I've advocated for in the outcome-based budgeting space is that we do need some degree 01:42:23.115 --> 01:42:28.909 - of common framework for how we're thinking about measuring success and so that's I'm perfectly comfortable 01:42:28.909 --> 01:42:34.377 - with and again support us collectively trying to set some priorities in the in the near term that we 01:42:34.377 --> 01:42:40.117 - can actually make some progress on some on some things that are emerging from this process but ultimately 01:42:40.117 --> 01:42:44.286 - to have some degree of buy-in and a quality I think it would take probably a 01:42:44.514 --> 01:42:50.038 - a longer process. I think the administration has to be involved with that, otherwise I think we'll always 01:42:50.038 --> 01:42:55.667 - struggle to implement anything. We struggle enough with that even when the administration has been involved 01:42:55.667 --> 01:43:01.087 - in producing plans. So, you know, practically I think that's needed as well. So, those are my thoughts. 01:43:01.087 --> 01:43:02.494 - Thank you. Other comments? 01:43:13.762 --> 01:43:27.826 - Councilmember Piedmont Smith Yeah, I I guess we don't have to decide on our next steps tonight but the 01:43:27.826 --> 01:43:40.798 - Addendum that went out this morning had a shorter overview report that it was our intention to 01:43:41.218 --> 01:43:48.364 - Issue that to the public and try to get that out there and you'll notice On the last page of that report 01:43:48.364 --> 01:43:55.305 - it says the conversation doesn't end here. We want to hear from you Whether you participate in one of 01:43:55.305 --> 01:44:02.178 - the sessions or are learning about this work for the first time We invite you to review the findings 01:44:02.178 --> 01:44:06.942 - and share your thoughts So I guess I want to check with my colleagues 01:44:08.802 --> 01:44:19.210 - If we gather more input and there are a few questions that Wyatt Lawson from C Jam suggested, and we 01:44:19.210 --> 01:44:30.339 - can put them in a survey and put the QR code here on this last page, I guess I'd like to hear your thoughts 01:44:30.339 --> 01:44:38.686 - on that. And also how we can get it out to people, because that is the struggle. 01:44:48.130 --> 01:44:54.999 - I feel like I already had this conversation with the Councilman repeat Mott Smith a little bit but I'll 01:44:54.999 --> 01:45:01.671 - start and say I think that it's a good idea and you know, like we talked about Going to people where 01:45:01.671 --> 01:45:08.606 - they are and we talked about the idea of having other special sessions in other places and maybe this is 01:45:08.834 --> 01:45:16.480 - kind of an ideal space for that is to do that survey, let it run over a few months maybe in terms of 01:45:16.480 --> 01:45:24.353 - trying to have it hit as many people as possible and then come back and do another deliberation session 01:45:24.353 --> 01:45:32.453 - conversation about it sometime next year during one of the deliberation session meetings and just schedule 01:45:32.453 --> 01:45:37.374 - that somewhere else that is not council chambers, not city hall, 01:45:38.690 --> 01:45:46.608 - Yeah, I mean I think that that could maybe be a conversation between now and the end of the I'm just 01:45:46.608 --> 01:45:54.605 - gonna say end of the year but really I mean like now and when we do our 2027 meeting schedule so then 01:45:54.605 --> 01:46:02.445 - if we can put them on our 2027 meeting schedule and because maybe maybe it would make sense to have 01:46:02.445 --> 01:46:07.070 - more than one of those and I'm not sure I'm not sure if it 01:46:07.682 --> 01:46:12.178 - I'm not sure how it makes sense to do that, right? But I guess it's the sort of thing I don't necessarily 01:46:12.178 --> 01:46:13.790 - want to just do one and pick like one 01:46:13.922 --> 01:46:19.189 - corner of town or one side of town that it would make more sense maybe to have four or five different 01:46:19.189 --> 01:46:24.352 - ones so that then You know, but but then it's hard for all nine of us say to be at all of those and 01:46:24.352 --> 01:46:29.516 - and make those extra bonus commitments But if two or three of us could be at each of those But then 01:46:29.516 --> 01:46:34.938 - I mean and that's not a quorum of council members anyway so doesn't need to be a council meeting because 01:46:34.938 --> 01:46:40.153 - if we don't have a quorum then it can't be a meeting and and So yeah, so tricky things like that get 01:46:40.153 --> 01:46:42.270 - in but I think that that that could be a 01:46:42.690 --> 01:46:49.949 - where to go from here in my opinion is yes to do this yes to have the survey let it run for a few months 01:46:49.949 --> 01:46:56.861 - and Pick this up again. I don't know March April maybe before that actually maybe February February 01:46:56.861 --> 01:47:03.843 - March Because at some point we like start bleeding into budget stuff for 2028 Sorry to bring that up 01:47:03.843 --> 01:47:11.102 - so soon Perhaps that's something that we could plan around when we receive the information from leap and 01:47:12.770 --> 01:47:20.297 - Since councilmember Piedmont Smith said that it would should be coming out around March of 2027 the 01:47:20.297 --> 01:47:28.426 - other thing that I wanted to add to that is I think All of us go to fairly different and distinct community 01:47:28.426 --> 01:47:35.953 - events It certainly doesn't have to be that all nine councilmembers are at a specific place I would 01:47:35.953 --> 01:47:41.598 - encourage all of us to do our best to do that type of research anecdotally 01:47:41.730 --> 01:47:48.569 - out in our community at various events and actually give a report out back to our colleagues and take 01:47:48.569 --> 01:47:55.409 - advantage of our reporting time during our regularly scheduled sessions just so that we're all on the 01:47:55.409 --> 01:48:02.449 - same page as we continue to move forward and it doesn't all come out during these deliberation sessions. 01:48:02.449 --> 01:48:09.356 - I think that would make this a much more continuous structure rather than we just have a couple a year 01:48:09.356 --> 01:48:11.166 - and if you can't make them 01:48:11.650 --> 01:48:21.256 - Sorry. Okay, other comments. Council member Stossberg. I guess I just get like the anecdotal data from 01:48:21.256 --> 01:48:30.583 - different pieces. It's like good at the same time that I like to use caution with it. So as a piece 01:48:30.583 --> 01:48:35.806 - of these conversations, I would encourage each of us to 01:48:36.066 --> 01:48:42.382 - Share the study and share the link with the survey so that then there are survey results that all of 01:48:42.382 --> 01:48:48.635 - us can see and then we're like kind of hearing it straight from like that we're all hearing it from 01:48:48.635 --> 01:48:54.951 - the horse's mouth so to speak in terms of that being Documented somewhere Because I think the survey 01:48:54.951 --> 01:49:01.330 - is it's gonna be anonymous. Isn't that right? Can't remember Pete Monsmith. So then like people don't 01:49:01.330 --> 01:49:04.894 - have to be afraid of saying what they actually think and 01:49:05.154 --> 01:49:15.368 - and that that could maybe meet that difference. And I would assume those different, if we did have separate 01:49:15.368 --> 01:49:25.108 - meetings just on this focus, that they would all be recorded. Yeah. Great. Thank you. Anyone else? OK. 01:49:25.108 --> 01:49:35.038 - Perhaps we have naturally come to, oh, that is a great point. Would anybody like to give public comment? 01:49:36.578 --> 01:49:47.235 - please approach the podium, state your name, and tell us what you got. Hi, my name is Autumn. Okay, 01:49:47.235 --> 01:49:58.105 - so you guys were mentioning possible public engagements with public safety. I'm curious as to how did 01:49:58.105 --> 01:50:04.286 - you guys engage with the public for Safe Streets for All? 01:50:10.594 --> 01:50:16.700 - Thank you for that question. Most of us weren't on council when that was first developed. Are there 01:50:16.700 --> 01:50:22.989 - council members who did participate in that process who would like to respond to that? I know we don't 01:50:22.989 --> 01:50:29.217 - typically respond to people during public comment, but it's a deliberation session, and I'm chairing. 01:50:29.217 --> 01:50:35.567 - I think actually Safe Streets for All was developed while we were on council. We passed the Vision Zero 01:50:35.567 --> 01:50:39.230 - goal that set it up. The transportation plan was developed. 01:50:39.522 --> 01:50:46.512 - Safe Street scrolls been incorporated as part of the transportation plan. I think the Executive branch 01:50:46.512 --> 01:50:53.366 - through the planning transportation department and engineering departments led that plan development 01:50:53.366 --> 01:51:00.287 - So the council was involved as a stakeholder participant But not very directly in an outreach related 01:51:00.287 --> 01:51:07.684 - to public outreach related to it with the exception of the meetings we held here, you know for consideration 01:51:07.684 --> 01:51:08.702 - and option And 01:51:09.058 --> 01:51:14.546 - Expand on that there was also one of the big parts I think of the safe streets for all input gathering 01:51:14.546 --> 01:51:20.408 - was that map that like you could it was basically like this online survey I'm not sure if autumn participated 01:51:20.408 --> 01:51:25.843 - in that but you could go in and you could like put down Comments on specific streets or intersections 01:51:25.843 --> 01:51:31.278 - or sidewalks or whatever about anything and then they analyzed all of that data to basically You know 01:51:31.278 --> 01:51:36.926 - because there there were things reported on there that wouldn't necessarily have made it a crash or crash 01:51:37.122 --> 01:51:43.818 - made it to a crash report like close calls and discomfort and that kind of thing. And that was open 01:51:43.818 --> 01:51:50.649 - for a while. And I know that that was announced in various council meetings. I know I added things to 01:51:50.649 --> 01:51:57.479 - that. I know I shared that with my networks. And so that is one very specific way. And I do actually, 01:51:57.479 --> 01:52:03.774 - and that was also with a consultant that I kind of wonder if we could do a similar thing with 01:52:04.546 --> 01:52:11.682 - public safety in some ways in terms of, you know, those places where you feel more safe or less safe 01:52:11.682 --> 01:52:19.243 - because there were several things, you know, that got cited like, oh, the lighting is bad here or sidewalk 01:52:19.243 --> 01:52:26.379 - repair is bad here or whatever. And I kind of wonder what kind of tech would be needed as a piece of 01:52:26.379 --> 01:52:33.374 - that or whether it's necessary to have something like that on because we also have your report and 01:52:33.538 --> 01:52:42.095 - Like there are just other platforms that might overlap with that. So yeah, that technology piece would 01:52:42.095 --> 01:52:50.070 - be an interesting discussion. Thank you. That was a rabbit hole, sorry. No problem. And Autumn, 01:52:50.070 --> 01:52:58.544 - I'm so sorry. I don't know how that escaped my mind. I do remember that. Yeah, so I think approaching 01:52:58.544 --> 01:53:01.950 - the public safety issue in a similar way 01:53:02.082 --> 01:53:08.266 - you approach Safe Streets for All would be excellent. So for instance, when I was in Muncie, I was doing 01:53:08.266 --> 01:53:14.273 - Safe Streets for All engagement. We had this big old map, right? We would talk to people and be like, 01:53:14.273 --> 01:53:20.340 - hey, do you have any traffic frustrations here? And guess what? They love to talk about it. They said, 01:53:20.340 --> 01:53:26.288 - I hate this pothole. I hate this curb. Why is it here? This doesn't make sense. I could see a lot of 01:53:26.288 --> 01:53:29.822 - engagement coming from just talking to people, and I'd say, 01:53:30.114 --> 01:53:36.827 - Population dense areas, you know, obviously be strategic about where you would set up a stand like that 01:53:36.827 --> 01:53:43.282 - But people will talk to you They will engage with you and once they give you their frustrations you 01:53:43.282 --> 01:53:49.737 - say hey Can you fill out this survey for us? And I think this would be a good like multi-month long 01:53:49.737 --> 01:53:55.934 - Survey for sure if you guys need volunteers. I'm free this summer. So, you know, yeah All right 01:53:57.442 --> 01:54:05.001 - All right, and seriously, think about those business improvement districts. I just hope you all look 01:54:05.001 --> 01:54:12.486 - into it after this. A lot of the work that they do, they clean up your streets, right? They provide 01:54:12.486 --> 01:54:20.120 - some kind of preventative security, right? Maybe they see a light that's out, and they report it, and 01:54:20.120 --> 01:54:27.006 - then they go fix it the next day. So I just ask that you all look into that, and hopefully, 01:54:27.938 --> 01:54:34.381 - Yeah. Okay. Thank you, guys. Thank you very much. And I think there is somebody on Zoom. Take it away. 01:54:34.381 --> 01:54:40.698 - Please state your name. Yeah, Kevin Keogh again. First of all, on the water, the power outage, yeah, 01:54:40.698 --> 01:54:47.266 - that's something you should look at. That was a 10-hour incident, and it really, the power is only four. 01:54:47.266 --> 01:54:52.958 - There's much more there to look at, and I would encourage you. Back to the budget, though. 01:54:53.090 --> 01:54:59.300 - I'm sounding like a broken record, but the Government Finance Offers Association has a Distinguished 01:54:59.300 --> 01:55:05.633 - Budget Presentation Award. They have a framework that you can use, and I would very much encourage you 01:55:05.633 --> 01:55:12.088 - to take a look at that. I would encourage you to look at the City of Fishers. It's a little bit up north 01:55:12.088 --> 01:55:18.237 - near Indianapolis. They get the Distinguished Budget Presentation Award. It is an entire framework. 01:55:18.237 --> 01:55:22.110 - I know you've been challenged by the outcomes-based budgeting. 01:55:22.658 --> 01:55:30.329 - but this is a real framework from a, it's a best practice for budget presentations. So I really encourage 01:55:30.329 --> 01:55:37.783 - you to just take a look at that, because I know you're having difficulty with the outcomes based. This 01:55:37.783 --> 01:55:45.309 - is a recognized best practice. So anyway, throwing that out to you is something to consider. Thank you. 01:55:45.309 --> 01:55:50.302 - One more person on Zoom. Okay, take it away. Please state your name. 01:55:52.354 --> 01:55:59.892 - Hi, Paul Rousseau again. Thank you for taking comments tonight. I really appreciate it. I thought that 01:55:59.892 --> 01:56:07.577 - the comment by President Asari was really good about studies and the delays involved. On the other hand, 01:56:07.577 --> 01:56:15.262 - I appreciate the rebuttal from Council Member Flaherty about the expertise of consultants. But one thing 01:56:15.262 --> 01:56:22.142 - I do know for sure is that every time I bicycle through the intersection of 7th and Woodlawn, 01:56:23.554 --> 01:56:31.240 - the thought occurs to me, what the hell were they thinking of? On one hand, it appears that the university 01:56:31.240 --> 01:56:38.711 - had veto power over the project going all the way through. So then why was it built? Like maybe we just 01:56:38.711 --> 01:56:46.110 - shouldn't have built it because right now that intersection is just insane. And that brings up another 01:56:46.110 --> 01:56:49.630 - issue that I didn't hear tonight, which was that 01:56:50.210 --> 01:56:57.522 - and all the things that the city does, it seems like the university often has veto power. And in a way 01:56:57.522 --> 01:57:05.331 - that's sort of natural because the university's budget is what 20 or 30 times that of the city of Bloomington 01:57:05.331 --> 01:57:12.786 - and money is power. So just something to consider. Thanks again for the opportunity to comment. Is there 01:57:12.786 --> 01:57:18.110 - anybody else who would like to speak in chambers or over Zoom? Okey-dokey. 01:57:18.882 --> 01:57:24.781 - Any council members? Council member Stasberg. Thank you. I just wanted to bring up, because when Autumn 01:57:24.781 --> 01:57:30.510 - was speaking, one of the things that what she said made me think about was not just how safe a place 01:57:30.510 --> 01:57:36.296 - is, but about the perceptions of safety that people have. Because there are absolutely perceptions of 01:57:36.296 --> 01:57:41.968 - neighborhood safety in different places. You know, some people are like, oh, that neighborhood's so 01:57:41.968 --> 01:57:45.598 - unsafe. But well, they've hardly ever even actually been there. 01:57:45.698 --> 01:57:52.423 - And so that's all about perception and I think that that is another thing that as city officials we 01:57:52.423 --> 01:57:59.283 - should work on because you know, it feels I have lived in a neighborhood before that was perceived as 01:57:59.283 --> 01:58:01.502 - being unsafe by other people and 01:58:01.762 --> 01:58:09.009 - I did not feel unsafe in that neighborhood at all. And it can be really demoralizing to feel like you're 01:58:09.009 --> 01:58:16.119 - living somewhere that somebody else is perceiving as unsafe or somebody is perceiving in some way that 01:58:16.119 --> 01:58:23.435 - you don't feel is accurate. So I think using this as an opportunity to help air some of those perceptions 01:58:23.435 --> 01:58:30.407 - at the same time and perhaps either counteract them or go, okay, that's super legitimate. How can we 01:58:30.407 --> 01:58:31.166 - make that? 01:58:31.490 --> 01:58:39.146 - Space safer. How can it be perceived as safer by the rest of the community based on like we're doing 01:58:39.146 --> 01:58:46.727 - these steps We're making these improvements. We're serving, you know this area in this way and then 01:58:46.727 --> 01:58:54.308 - the rest of the city knows That the improvements are being made. So I think that that perception is 01:58:54.308 --> 01:58:59.614 - important, too And I wanted to make sure to say that Okay Anyone else 01:59:02.082 --> 01:59:12.126 - We do have one last item of business. Councilmember Piedmont-Smith. 01:59:12.226 --> 01:59:22.280 - where, as you all know and may the record show for perpetuity, that at the beginning of this year, the 01:59:22.280 --> 01:59:32.138 - council did not have staff. And we're in dire, dire straits when out of the abyss emerged a hero who 01:59:32.138 --> 01:59:42.192 - dusted off his cape and decided that he would return to once more serve the city. And he is certainly, 01:59:42.192 --> 01:59:51.924 - the hero that kept us afloat. But we're just beyond grateful to our incredible attorney, our former 01:59:51.924 --> 02:00:01.657 - deputy mayor, former city attorney, Larry Allen, for all of your incredible service to the city and 02:00:01.657 --> 02:00:04.382 - the residents of this city. 02:00:04.578 --> 02:00:13.604 - Um, what many of the residents may not know, um, and I don't know, please don't, please don't disfriend 02:00:13.604 --> 02:00:20.894 - me for saying this out loud, but, um, Larry or attorney Allen, um, has many of the, 02:00:21.026 --> 02:00:27.142 - What we are paying Larry is far less than what we should be paying Larry because Larry has waived a 02:00:27.142 --> 02:00:33.318 - bunch of his fees for things just because he said, well, this is just the sort of thing I want to do 02:00:33.318 --> 02:00:39.617 - out of service. And Larry took on a bunch of responsibilities that were not in the initial negotiation 02:00:39.617 --> 02:00:45.366 - when we brought him on. And we could go on and on and on about it, but he doesn't want us to, 02:00:45.366 --> 02:00:50.992 - so we will not. But we could go on and on and on about the many things that Larry has done. 02:00:50.992 --> 02:00:59.375 - And in the process also then made it throughout his tenure here in the city and then with us has made 02:00:59.375 --> 02:01:07.593 - us better. And I'm just beyond grateful for that. And I know Isabel has procured an incredible gift 02:01:07.593 --> 02:01:15.812 - for you. And so I don't know if anybody else would like to add to those words, but applause for the 02:01:15.812 --> 02:01:16.798 - incredible. 02:01:22.338 --> 02:01:25.470 - Thank you, Larry. So with that we are adjourned.