Well, good evening everyone. Um, welcome to the city council meeting. This is a deliberation session.
So a little bit different than our normal meetings. Um, we'll go over that in a few seconds here, but,
um, if the clerk would be so kind as to call the roll and then we can get started. Council member Flaherty
here. Stossburg here. Here. Here. Sorry. Here. Here.
Our agenda today is fairly simple where it's this is just a time for council to have some open conversations
Because as we say a lot, it's we are not able to meet the
but this way. And so here we are meeting this way to have just open discussions. And we have two things
on our agenda. We're going to be reviewing the results of the last two conversations. I expect that
that'll take a good portion of our time. And then thereafter, we'll talk a little bit hopefully about
the Affordable Housing Fund and how we want to move forward.
With requests to the to the administration around that we'll surely have more conversations around this
and there will be time for public comment It's a little bit more informal So if at some point you have
a you know, you're just like I really want to give a public comment now Just you know wave your hands
or something and we can Surely accommodate so so with that I know because what people Smith has done
a wonderful job putting together multiple things for the packet and those were sent around and
Are there any thoughts on exactly how to structure the conversation, or otherwise we can maybe just
open up with reflections on the last two conversations and what was in the packet? Yeah, I can do a
little intro maybe. So first of all, I want to thank CJAM and Wyatt Lawson, who was our partner in this
series of two deliberation sessions with the public.
and who wrote the report that's in your packet. There is both a final written report on the deliberation
sessions and the surveys. And then in a packet addendum this morning, there is a more visual and shorter
summary of the outcomes of those two sessions and what we learned.
So I think those are good starting points. Of course, the report itself is a good structure. We could
perhaps follow the session two priority areas. We could maybe talk about those tonight. Or I had noticed
some another way to frame things, which is they're kind of four areas that stood out to me in regard to city
um, policies or city areas of city action. Um, one is infrastructure in that a lot of, um, people mentioned
infrastructure as it relates to public safety, lighting, you know, good pedestrian walkways, et cetera.
Um, the second is public engagement, um, engaging with a broad, uh, cross section of the community,
um, including Spanish language, um,
educating the public about public safety options, what things already exist, things like that. The third
was prevention of emergencies. So how can we avoid having to call 911? So a lot of that, and this was
a big focus in the group I was in for the second session, is about having housing for people, having
social services for folks who are having a hard time.
Um, also collaboration between, uh, government, uh, county, city, IU, social service agencies, et cetera.
Um, and then the fourth is the emergency response. What we think of as basic public safety, like police,
um, and other first responders. So I don't know how you prefer to go through this. The, um,
The memo that I submitted with the packet has some questions. We could go through those if you like,
but I'm also open to just kind of go down the row and see what people's initial reactions are. Any initial
reactions? And I love the idea of going through the questions that you raised. Thank you. I have a little
bit to add on the side of public engagement, which is that at least
throughout both of my groups in October and September, I noticed that there was a theme of people feeling
safe when things feel familiar and or predictable. And one of my observations in the several crises
that we've had in Bloomington over the past couple of months, including a county wide boil water advisory
and several shootings that have taken place is the
accuracy and speed with which crises are communicated with the community and the information that is
available. And I would just add that to our conversation on public engagement. I think that the less
people are aware and the less that people can trust efficient communication, the more there is a feeling
of fear across the community. Thank you.
Any other, just initial reflections? Okay, so, um, Isabel posed, um, I'm sorry, Councilmember Piemont-Smith
posed a handful of, um, I think really great questions, um, which might be a nice starting place. Um,
and the first one is as we look at the suggestions and potential approaches section under each of the
session two topic areas.
Which would the City Council implement directly through policy or indirectly through approvals? I'm
happy to maybe give all the questions and the second question is which are which of these are already
implemented and is it our role to better educate the public as to what already exists and
which are already covered by different community plans, like the transportation plan? And which city
department should we talk to about refining ideas and implementing programs? So that's sort of under
the banner of question one. So what are your thoughts on that? Would you all like some time to read?
I'm joking.
A couple of things that were mentioned in the report Are things that we already have to some extent
like a central place to report various problems We have the you report system It's not for emergencies,
but it is for like Other things like this sidewalk is impassable or you know
There needs to be a bike lane here because I almost almost took my car. You know, other things can be
submitted through your report. The other thing that came up was a central place for people to get resources
if they have social service needs, housing, food, shelter, clothing, et cetera.
There's a website called helping Bloomington Monroe dot find help dot com and that has that is a depository
of Repository of all that kind of information. So I guess there are some things that people just don't
seem to know about I Think this goes to Council members who looks point to about like, you know, maybe
And it is something that I think came up in every conversation I was in as well and thinking about,
I think this came up in budget season this year as well, like how do we really supercharge the way that
people get information about what's happening and what's available to them in the city? Because I think
there's a real, it's kind of strange if like our response, you know, people go, well, we needed this
and our response is, we already have that, you know, and so yeah, like what can we do about that?
Oh, sorry. I'm so sorry. So yeah, I was just saying, I was just saying it's, you know, I think a recurring
conversation is how do we, how do we supercharge getting people information in the city? Like what,
what investments do we need to make to get better, you know, flows of communication, you know, and then,
and then Courtney and just, just talk. I don't, you don't need me to tell you. Well, as a resident,
I have received several things in the mail from the city including from the parks department. I believe
I've received several things from hand. So it seems to me that we do have the capability to mail out
widely shared resources. I'm curious if that could be one of the ways in which we let people know that
some of these resources already do exist.
Yeah, I'm noticing a theme. I like that suggestion a lot. I'm noticing a theme in a lot of the community
suggestions all kind of revolve around a lack of communication or not knowing where to find information
or knowing that the information is there. I think we need to rely on multiple avenues for communication,
not just Facebook or not just emergency text messages. Figure out there are
people prefer communicating in many different ways. And I think we need to probably experiment for a
little while with various forms of communication and see which people respond to most, and then keep
a handful of those for issues. Yeah. Well, this is kind of changing topics lately.
I feel like in terms of addressing question number one, it would be maybe systematic in a way that would
make my brain happy is if we literally like went through the list for each of those four and maybe picked
out anything specific. So like that's like when you first started, I was kind of like, okay, I need
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,
FYI it the first one is on page 10 of the packet And the the first one has to do with improving maintenance
of existing infrastructure and the thing that I like picked out of that was the removing snow and debris
because that's something that we've talked about updating code from the dais in terms of like something
legislatively that Council could maybe do I know councilmember Flaherty and I've talked about that some
and I'm not quite sure where either of us
on it But that is that is something legislatively that could be done in terms of that as opposed to
budget Related stuff in terms of other Maintenance of existing infrastructure, which I think that we
kind of are trying to do as a body and I think the administration is also trying to do that and
I wasn't necessarily assuming that I would lead us all through all the things. I just thought that it
would be helpful to have this conversation in a more focused way instead of in a very general way. Because
then when you guys were talking about the community information, I was like, OK, where's the community
information one? And yeah. OK, so other thoughts then on this first one.
I got a scroll to it. Yeah, it's page 10 improving maintenance of existing infrastructure Councilmember
Flaherty has there been any further movement on the removing snow from sidewalks question I've put some
research and thought into code updates. I owe Councilmember Stossberg an email. She's sent me a note
asking kind of where where my thinking was on it. I Think it's a good
What I can share about it is also a good frame for some of these priorities, which is, rarely is legislation
alone gonna be the thing. There's usually budget implications, and there's alignment and prioritization
in implementation. And so that's one of the tricky things with scenario removal specifically. I think
we can and should change some things in code, but how enforcement is conducted or not matters more, frankly.
with snow removal, in particular, as a, yes, time-limited, but very distinct and significant public
safety threat to people who can't pass and are forced to walk with cars in dangerous street conditions.
Like that, we need alignment on the goals, and we're not there. And so, that's more broadly what one
of my reflections, no surprise, probably, goals and outcomes coming out of this session is like,
We're gonna be hard-pressed to make real progress in any of these areas If we can't get by in alignment
on a shared set of of goals and outcomes And then you know again, it's going to be a range of Operational
and implementation stuff budgeting and legislation and so so That's that's where I am on snow removal
and what's needed I was hoping to see some I mean I've requested and asked for as the council did and
Changes in the budget that would make meaningful impacts. We didn't see those I think legislation could
do something on that front as well I just think it's gonna be limited unless we really try to get very
specific about enforcement limiting discretion and enforcement You know, so I have some specific ideas
and best practices from other places about how we can improve legislation Yes, but I just want to note
that in this in that area and in many others like that alone is not going to you know move the needle
necessarily
and improving maintenance of existing infrastructure That's a member Raleigh Thank you, I just wanted
to ask on this topic because it's come up before councilman Flaherty I'm I agree with you Lack of snow
removal is an obstacle for people to pedestrians to say commute to their job etc and
We we have a policy that involves Finds Other other ideas, I mean clearly there are people who are might
be incapable And I know there are volunteer organizations and things like that that might assist but
there are other ideas that you have in terms of policy that we could
fill those gaps in terms of Making sure that it's equitable for people who say don't have the means
to pay for snow removal or the physical You know Who are or physically unable to do so Okay
Yeah, I just want to, for the sake of tonight's conversation, really focus us on what we learned from
the public engagement sessions and which of those things we can do and which of those things we want
to do. Perhaps there can be some, you know, unofficial kind of consensus that certain things are worth
pursuing, maybe some
people could volunteer, et cetera, and which are already covered by plans which we need to talk to actual
departments within the executive branch about. So I guess in each section, each topic area from session
two, there are several suggestions and potential approaches
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,
but that was because we did have a session just on that topic. But just to encourage us to let's maybe
look at all of the ones in the first area of safe, accessible, and welcoming public spaces and just
call out which ones we think we want to pursue something in, which ones could
benefit from action from this council and if not then Where where action could could results or could
be pursued? Also just kind of say in terms of responding to councilmember Rallo like that's I So feel
a line with councilmember Flaherty hopefully I'm looking at that at ways to improve the code on that
and that's certainly something that I'll keep in mind is that idea of
Not wanting, like the goal is not to penalize people who have particular specific hardship related to
ability of clearing snow. And that would not be my intention. And so making sure that anything that
changes wouldn't additionally negatively impact that segment of the population. So I will keep that
in mind. Thank you. Thanks so much, y'all.
Other thoughts on on on this or do you want to move on to the next one? One of the items in under this
heading is improve access to community information and we we already touched upon that somewhat and
councilmember daily said, you know diverse approaches to Getting the word out about programs and resources
is good and I agree with that But is that
council's job? Or how do we get that done? I was going to talk about this one because I think there's
a couple of interesting things. One that we we started to surface during during the budget time. One
is how comes functions are organized and distributed across the city is something that we can help with
via budget. I think that's one thing to though.
which maybe is more pointed, but following on from that point, but more pointed to public safety
specifically. As I'm thinking about a lot of the things that already exist, part of the question is,
whose responsibility would it be to send out that particular information, right? And so like, so Council
Member Zulik brought up the good point. It's like, oh yeah, we do get stuff from parks and we get stuff
from, you know, utilities, you get stuff. And you're like, who that currently does
outreach outside of press releases, which seems to be the main way that we send information out in the
city about things happening or things that are available to people, like who is sending anything where
it would be relevant to say, oh, did you know, you reports or something like that, right? And so I do
think it would be an interesting budgetary
a request in this next cycle or maybe an additional appropriation, you know, to think about maybe you
should do a series of posts that we want to send out to the city on you reporting or on, you know, lighting
projects or something like that. Could be interesting. So, you know, maybe that's something to the mayor's
office. Maybe that's something, you know, to public works. I don't know.
I mean, I have a much more radical idea. But OK, my way more radical idea is that I think that
the centralized comms function of the city should sit in the clerk's office. And I'm not saying in the
clerk's office as currently constructed.
You know, I do think that that might be a way of thinking just about telling people what's available,
what happens, and then similarly creating a, let's call it a 21st, 22nd century clerk's office,
you know, like where that's the place where people come for information and not just, you know, it's
also where everything's sort of, it's the information office just saying. So it's sort of the natural
place to do it. Yeah.
Why not, and I know all of you would love my idea, I just said. Go ahead, Councilor Stout's work. I
was just gonna say again, which I think I said last time when there was a conversation sort of related
to changing some piece of the clerk's office, is that the clerk has state statutory requirements attached
to their position, and to do anything additional to that I think is, I think it's slippery, I think
it's difficult.
And I mean that mug dropping kind of made me really wonder And again like maybe use this as a provocation
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
thought experiment about where's the natural place of
for information to exist in the first place. Because I think that that's like the pain point, right?
Is that if you have a super dispersed set of information and information actors, and they all have their
own information plans, and you know, if what we're seeing in every forum when we talk to people, and I think
I also, just as a resident council member, can say the same thing. As somebody who you might expect
to have a lot of information, my experience, even on council, is often like, oh, I don't know. Don't
know where that event is. Don't know what's happening. I don't know what's happening. And so how much
more do our residents feel like, oh, we didn't know that was a thing? And I think a lot of the constituent
services that we all engage in essentially are just like,
information sharing activities. Who do I talk to about? What's actually going on with recycling? Who
do I call for? And so I do think that it is a big, big problem, both in terms of
Public safety on a day to day basis as we saw in the evidence here. But I also think in the perception
of a lot of public safety things because people aren't getting good information about what's actually
happening. And I think homelessness is a really good example of that. I think that the perception of
the size of the problem and what the city is or isn't doing about it are fundamentally information problems
more so than
mismatched with the reality of the problem, so Throwing it out there. Mm-hmm councilman. Well would
the clerk like to Sure comment about what's been discussed I Think it's a really interesting idea to
take a step back and look at the way things are done in the city overall I don't think there's anything
inherently wrong with it. I am
As you know, we've had conversations about different things for the clerk's office, and I've always
said, if that's what needs to happen, we can work around it. There have been different roles in the
clerk's office that have come and gone over the years, just in the almost 20 years that I've been working
with the city. So it's not unheard of to have things that go beyond what is listed in state code for
the clerk's office. Some of it is just, I tend more toward being cautious about what happens
five clerks from now, or even the next clerk, and that could be as soon as a year and a half. So I am
generally a little cautious about adding onto it. I'm most concerned when you codify those things, not
when you actually do it by agreement. So that's, from the clerk perspective, when you try and codify
those duties, that's where I'm more concerned. But if you do it structurally through budgetary mechanisms,
I don't think it's as problematic as you might have expressed a concern.
by the way, that is not me advocating for having the public information office through the clerk's office
or administering for the council through the clerk's office or anything else. But I do think it's important
to have some, um, look at the structure of communications for public safety sake. I kind of, um, like
that idea from the perspective that, um, a lot of times,
You know, my constituents will say, why did the city do this? What is the city doing? And it's not the
city. It's the mayor's administration that has decided to do something. And so I like the idea of the
clerk's office. Um, kind of, I mean, it would be, it would be tricky, but being the communications hub so that
It could communicate that that office or that officer could could communicate on behalf of the city
on things that the mayor's administration and the council both want to put out there. I don't know how
that that power those powers would be balanced. But I mean I think the council has could really benefit
from having a communications person and we don't. And so
You know, if we want a press release or something, we have to write it ourselves. We don't have a Facebook
or an Instagram or anything. So, it's an interesting idea. Let me put it that way.
thing to try and you later on because I'm just trying as a if you use it as a methodological tool right
which is to say like if you if you extracted at that 30,000 foot does it help us identify what the real
pain point is and I think when I view it through that lens one of the things I notice to your point
comes over Puma Smith is that a lot of the
The comms of the city are essentially like political comms or comms about things that are hard to read
through because they're not actually focused on getting people the information that they need. We're
focused on getting the information that we want to send out. I don't know. I think that's always going
to be a tension.
There is another way of approaching the information problem, which is to what extent and what might
be a mechanism do we as a city want to invest in journalistic enterprise or in the fourth estate or
something like that? And so there have been cities
few but who've thought about creating trust funds for journalism, for example. I know Bryce Green has
this idea about doing a voucher program so citizens can vote with money about who they want to hear
news from or something like that. But I think figuring out a way where we could put some money towards
ensuring that there's local news is also another thought. But doing it in a way that doesn't inhibit
first and amendments and where we're not actually influencing what news is being taught
just like building out the capacities for it. But I don't know. I have another thought on this topic.
The topic one was safe, accessible, and welcoming public spaces. And one of the suggestions was bring
community engagement into neighborhoods. Hold public meetings and events in familiar community spaces.
And we have talked about this of having a council meeting somewhere else You know at Bloomington High
School South or north or at a Neighborhood, I don't know community center or something Banneker Center.
Yeah, Allison jukebox and
I know that that presents some logistical challenges, but especially with these deliberation sessions,
I mean, we saw the turnout was not great. And if we go to where people are, I think we'll have a better
turnout and broader input into our decision making, which is, I think, what we want. Imagine if when
we had hearing, like let's say we were talking about
I'm sorry I'm not trying to be controversial but it's where my mind goes imagine we were talking about
a hundred and eighty day orders on stop signs right. But imagine that city that our city code imagine
like if we had to do a stop sign on
on Rogers, our meeting is going to be on Rogers. I mean, I'm being extreme, but if we're going to do
something that affects your neighborhood, let's have our meeting in your neighborhood. That would be
so cool. What a cool way to do city government. Isabelle said this multiple times. I think it would
be very cool to think about how we actually do that.
Well, I've gotten some good feedback on just the idea of community leaders going where people are already
meeting. And so I wonder if it would be productive to talk to some of the neighborhood associations
about co-hosting meetings so that some level of attendance is kind of built in rather than we're trying
to recruit a bunch of people to go to a meeting that nobody really wants to go
We think alike. That was my idea, too. No, it's great. The other thing is, way back when we had a dear
task force, we had meetings around the town, and we went to various schools, invited people in, and
it was the dear task force, because we wanted to get as much community response as possible.
It was very it was very successful a lot of people turned out Had a lot of good ideas a lot of questions
were answered a lot of good intake So I think it's a great idea and I think that we could structure
As you said councilmember Rosari Structured the agenda so that it reflected concerns in that particular
part of town Whether it's infrastructure, you know, whatever their concerns are So great idea
a couple like things maybe to add about that one one of the other things that was mentioned that Council
members that pointed out was predictability that people like the predictability so I would be a little
bit hesitant to move say a regular session meeting to something like that like to another place but
potentially deliberation sessions or simply like a
Extra like special, you know that that is just maybe a community input meeting In a certain place or
something like that or joining with another group in terms of a co-host with You know a specific topic
of conversation or something like that. That would be kind of an extra or a bonus Meeting. That's not a regular
Session council meeting just in terms of that predictability and it yeah, there's some logistical like
challenges with that But I think that the logistical challenges are bigger if we're actually trying
to have like a regular meeting and the thing with the dear task force like Like it'd be pretty darn
cool to have committee meetings other places But because because everything has to be aired and recorded
and it's like we're in a whole different age I think that that all makes it hard but the mayor is having
these like town hall basically sessions which are all recorded
on cats and I think what makes them different from say like a committee meeting or something is just
the expectation of the number of people who are talking perhaps at a given time. And so it's like the
passing the mic thing as opposed to each of us having our own. And so it's a different kind of like
format. So I think that it would need to be different topic, different everything than say like a normal
regular session. And so yeah.
So idea sure, but we just maybe not a regular session Math or one one other point out which is you know,
maybe a thread that that I think that's my piece brought up It's figuring out how we as counsel might
do might like like what part of of of comms can counsel
take on. It has been interesting, because it's a sort of fairly, I don't know, maybe it's a historically,
maybe it's a practice, but in our recent history, we've just very recently started doing press releases
ourselves and things of that nature. And how, if so, might we... And if it's desirable for us to do
more sort of
We've talked about, should council have a social media page? But if so, who does it? And so on and so
forth. But I do think that's also an interesting caveat of how to balance out. But I don't know. My
gut feeling says that the main problem is that there's so much dispersion of comms that they become very
in essence, even in the small piece sense of just people vying for sort of the same audience or something
like that when I think we could do a better job of collecting information and getting it out there.
And the last thing I'll say is, you know, as we talk about budget for next year, thinking about things
like investments in our website and, you know, should we have
Should we have like an AI assistant that helps people you know, like our like a city liaison or you
know, like we've talked about all those type of things as well that You know, I think would be good
to keep in the cycle, you know Any other thoughts on this or should we move on to the next one? comes
over the only other thought on on this one that I have is the strength in public transportation connections
piece and I'm not quite sure. I mean, I don't have like a well defined thought on it
just kind of I know that BT is facing some challenges and one of the challenges of course they're facing
is related to funding and you know we've been
Giving them a certain amount of budget money every year and I think that 2027 is the last year for that
And so it's kind of looking ahead and trying to figure out what BT might need and what kind of support
they might need I've been going down a rabbit hole as the CCP folks know and my interview committee
people know and that's maybe most of council That about the BT board and whether it would be good to
go from five members to seven members and as part of looking into that I kind of looked back at
when the board was created. And there were some really interesting council discussions around the idea
of public transportation and how important it is for a city to have public transportation. At the time,
it was like 19.
80, I think, somewhere in there. And so it was, you know, Bloomington was kind of beginning to grow.
And that idea of like a growing, vibrant city needs to have a good quality public transportation option
for people. And so we might be kind of in that moment again where we're going like, okay, how can we
make sure to sustain this piece of what is really, really vital and important for every city to have?
So that's just something to think about, I guess, for budget time.
Next year and just in general is kind of keep an eye on how they're doing and the needs that that they
might have Excellent Okay, let's move on to and of course if something pops in your head, feel free
to jump back on any other thoughts on bicycle infrastructure lighting and visibility Recreational spaces
Just to put this out there seems to be you know mixed opinions on lighting for the community One is
that more lighting is better and there are good arguments for that and why people would like to see
that there are others For instance the Environmental Commission and the Sustainability Commission together
resolved that we should turn down the lights because of
Health reasons, they were talking about the specific spectrum of light, of course, but overall, there's
no possibility of dark skies in Bloomington. So that discussion, I haven't resolved how to proceed on
that, and I'd love to have a further discussion on this at some point.
I will add to that topic that because lighting was in that safety bond or that that bond that the go
bond from last week that is something that I mentioned to director seabor that Resolution from
the Environmental Commission and because about lighting and to make sure that he should consult that
just in terms of like what it says about like type of lighting and style and
Spectrum and all of those pieces so that is the intention I think Departments have been working with
those groups to make sure that added lighting kind of aligns with that overall Priority I Just want
to make sure say that just for
You and Councilmember Rallo and also for the community who is concerned about that that I did bring
that up when I was talking to them about the bond and he was very pleased to know that that had happened
and did intend to use that as a resource when choosing making specific choices. You know this actually
sparks a thought for me which is which I think feeding back into conversation we had during the budget
and multiple comments throughout the last
seven years that Councilman Flaherty has made about our ability as a council to request information,
one. And then I think a lot of the times we have the response that we get back when we say something
like, I don't know, let's do more sidewalk cleaning, is something vague like, oh, it costs so much money.
And we never actually get a solid answer of like,
literally how much money would it cost because there's a huge difference between you know oh that's
going to cost seven billion dollars or that's going to cost seven hundred thousand over five years or
something like that and I think it might be interesting for us as a council you know to think about
a handful of things that we'd like to see estimates for you know that we'd like to see information on so that
so that the conversation can become a little bit more tangible, right? Where we're saying, I mean, and
I think there's a whole realm of things that probably exist here, but we tried to have that conversation
with Kirkwood. There was like, oh, it's too expensive to do.
some imaginary thing, we're like, right, so how much would it cost to do some real thing? And so it
would be really interesting, I think, to figure out a mechanism. Maybe we pass one resolution where
we say, here are a handful of projects that we're really interested in seeing and we'd like to know
what the impact would be. Maybe using that mechanism of what the cost of the city is that's required
in ordinances and resolutions or something. I don't know, but that's something that I've long
wonder because I feel like a lot of our conversations on investments that we're interested in in the
body sort of just fall off a cliff because it's very easy to wave them off by just going like, ah, we
can't afford it. So yeah, I don't know how we influence that better. Any other thoughts here on?
Thank you, council president, sorry for that comment. It made me think about how many things that we
vote on in the budget that are presented as givens when in reality they are very expensive
capital improvement projects. And that's okay, but it does seem to be that we have several multi-million
dollar projects ahead of us that we're going to be asked to vote on.
Every single time we're asked to do that, we are making a policy choice that we don't want to fund something
else. And so when we talk about budget and when we talk about distributing funds, what are we choosing
not to fund? So I just wanted to put that out there. Thank you. Well, and on that note, like I think
that one of like and as a new
Relatively new person right like actually all three of us came out at the same time I think one of the
things that's really challenging about some of those big capital projects is they take so long So like
when we came on three years ago, there were so many things that you know was in process that we did
just kind of have to be like
Okay, yeah, we got to keep that going because we're already in the middle and it would be kind of strange
to just stop that and do a whole different priority. And like philosophically, I kind of feel like as
a government, I mean, I think that having too much start and stop just disrupts the population.
in ways that are really negative. And being on the MPO has really taught me this because they're planning
out six years in advance. There's that whole bridge thing down in Cascades Park that has been closed
for a while because there was a miscommunication. And they've settled that, but it needs to be worked
into a budget that isn't going to be able to be worked in for several years at this point because of
how much those things cost.
it's almost like having the future vision. And so it's not as easy as the next year's budget. It's going
like, OK, how do I want to steer this boat for the next four or five years? I find that really challenging
as a new person on this body to navigate that and figure out how to name those priorities,
first of all. What are those long-term things? But then also,
How do I work toward them in a way that will will see them happen in four or five six years. And I imagine
that there's some folks that are no longer on council that started working on things multiple years
ago and then are now seeing fruits of that labor even though they're not on this body anymore. So
I guess I say that as like, I mean, I'm kind of talking to Council Member Zulik, but that's also like
to the community, like that's one of the challenges I think of government service at all is how do we
provide the continuity at the same time as we provide the new direction or new vision and new priorities.
It's kind of a fun challenge. But I think that I totally very much appreciate that and thank you also
for bringing up the MPO example.
Which I think also feeds into broader conversations that we're having about oversight and broader
conversation that we're having about, you know, beyond just approving things that keeping us in the
loop of things, etc. But I was thinking a little bit more about the type of conversation like we just
had about lighting where
Never is the wrong word, but it's hard for us to get to a point where we're concretely talking about
what would it mean to, for example, improve, and what improve means, but actually light up all of downtown
while, for example, having adjustable lights in neighborhoods, while, okay, what would that,
look like, what would that cost? And we do that when we have plans, but again, then that takes a long
time. We fund the plan, then we sort of get a cost estimate, and we often do that with like really large
things. And so I'm wondering if there's an intermediate way that doesn't take two, three years to find
answers to of us getting
sort of taking the next step on some of the things that we were saying. For example, when we put together
our letter of priorities for the budget, we were saying, here are like 10 projects that we'd really
like to see what they might look like so that we can meaningfully make decisions about those.
I don't know, something like that.
But again, like that was part of my thinking all along. I think all of our thinking in like some of
the benefits of sort of an outcome-based budget, right, is that you start to build that into the very
budget making. But yeah, I'm just really interested in like full loops of information, again, internally
as we make decisions. I wonder, so let's just see if anybody wants public comment at this junction and
we can move on to, we have a lot of other items here, so happy to jump
but does anybody like to give public comment on this so far, conversation so far? Anyone? Would you
like to, Mr. Amsler? Dr. Amsler. Hello everyone, Terry Amsler, my wife and I live here in Bloomington
and East Wimbledon Lane. Really quickly, I think the first thing about staying with a theme, the subject
you've just been on, I think first of all, gratitude should be expressed whenever a public body
does a piece of work encouraging public voice, and then actually talks about it. So let me say gratitude
is good, and this is a good opportunity. So also though, communication you're speaking of, communicate
that to the public. We forget about these kind of, you talk about the big stuff and the policies, but
you've just done some democracy work here.
You can talk about that, really, it's okay. So I'm just saying, think about your communication in a
range of ways, perhaps, that you're thinking about, I mean you, narrowly, I just mean public sector
stuff. Last thing about participation. You've talked a little bit about that, you've talked even about,
well, maybe we could do it somewhere else. Nothing wrong with thinking that way. But may I say with
some experience on this one thing, think about your partnerships
for communication about these activities as much as you think about where do we have them. The where
do we have them can be a dead end. It gets you in sometimes more questions and it gets you answers.
And I'm just saying, I'm not saying it's bad, but think about your communication strategy for
such deliberative sessions work. And be as democratic about that in a way or as broadly
perceived and constructed about that as you're trying to build into the idea of these sessions. I'm
sure my time is up. Thank you folks. Would anybody else like to give public comment? Clerk, anyone? Please.
Council, my name is autumn Marshall. I'm a fellow at the Bloomington Chamber of Commerce first I just
want to say I really appreciate this conversation tonight It really gets me excited to like, you know
talk about solutions for the city Something that we had looked at before at the chamber I wrote a little
brief on it are these things called business improvement districts if you guys have heard of them, but
we you all talked about like concerns for money and things like that how much can you really
invest into something like, you know, ongoing maintenance, safety, things like that. Business improvement
districts kind of make it so that the businesses within that district, those district lines, you know,
pay a levy, pay taxes, some kind of a fee for ongoing maintenance, public safety, you know, have maybe
some kind of community officer roaming around to ensure like, you know, preventative services per se.
Sanitation things like that that are a really big concern for I would say like the business community
But also I'd say for the public. I mean a lot of concerns were about Cleanliness, you know other things
like that just like unfamiliarity You know, you want more foot traffic in Bloomington. You want to feel
safe things like that so considering something like a business improvement district might be you know
worth looking over and
So that's my thoughts on that. I also wanted to say I love the idea of meeting people where they are,
whether that's in neighborhoods or doing some kind of co-host event with Neighborhood Association. Yeah,
I loved it. People are gonna remember those events. So yeah, it's very impressionable. All right, so
thank you all. Thank you, thank you for being here. Is there anybody online? Yeah, please, person online.
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
say. I wanted to prepare for listening to and participating in this meeting yesterday, but the entire
agenda was unavailable. It wouldn't load. So that was that problem. And that was when I had time in
my work schedule to look at things. So I'm looking at the agenda for the first time about half an hour
ago, and I'm frustrated by that.
And on September 9th and September 21st, I was unable to attend those deliberations sessions, I think,
where you invited public comment on transportation issues, things like that. I would have loved to have
participated, but I couldn't. Predictability can be good for public meetings, but if it's always the
same day of the week, then they become predictably bad. And in my case,
This year, this semester, my schedule is pretty busy on Wednesdays. And so I find it difficult to make
a Wednesday evening meeting. So thank you. Thank you so much. And I'm so sorry that you weren't able
to access the materials. But also, thank you for, I think, bringing, highlighting that really crucial
point as well about sort of when things are offered as well. I mean, that's critical. OK, so are you
OK if we move on to priority area two?
Okay, so priority two, community care crisis response and supportive services. The first one was expanding
language access. Any thoughts there? House member Pia Smith. Well, this was the group that I was in
at the October 21st session and I learned that
There's only one fluent Spanish speaker who is available to help Spanish language speakers. If they
have issues related to the city of Bloomington, there's only one person to go to. So that's problematic,
I think. And when we talk about communications, we need to think about the fact that not everybody can
understand communications that are in English.
I'll just expand on that a little bit. English and Spanish aren't the only languages spoken in Bloomington,
and so I wonder how we might be able to partner with organizations like Exodus Refugee to better support
other languages or like IU. Thank you. I think we have a lot of different opportunities, especially
so close to the university, to communicate clearly with
everyone regardless of what language they speak. I think the other thing that we need to kind of keep
in mind is that there are I mean there's a lot of translation apps on phones and I have successfully
communicated frequently with folks who's you know we don't have a common language using phones and I wonder if
it would be maybe a good investment, generally speaking, to, instead of thinking about specific languages
or services, to have a more broad-based training about communication without having a common language,
whether that's, you know, just general communication techniques, patience, those sorts of tools, but
also translation tools and apps and, you know, I mean Google Translate is,
quite good that I have found, and there are probably some other ones out there, too, that would also
be good. They're often free, and they can respond to both voice or typing inputs. And so it can be a
relatively seamless process to do that if you know how to do it. And so having some
some citywide trainings in the same I think that there were some diversity trainings at some point maybe
before was that last term maybe and maybe that could be something that we could look into again which
could potentially be funding but also just maybe putting the right bug in the ear of I would assume
maybe CFRD to look into what that would mean and how we could do that.
Any other thoughts on this one? I just want to remind everybody we're trying to stay in the context
of public safety. There's so much overlap with other areas of government. And I'm talking as much to
myself as to my colleagues. I also tend to stray from that. And a lot of our conversations did.
But certainly language I mean if you can't understand the emergency alert then that's a problem. Right.
Right. OK. Access to emergency.
It might be something to look at translating some of your official communications and actually hiring
somebody to do that for websites and all that other basic information. And yeah the city does have one
person who is specifically paid to translate but there are actually other people in the city who step
up and assist with translation when that person is not in the office because we have a couple of people
in our office who do a lot of translating as well.
Emergency shelter access thoughts there and also particularly on council action Maybe harder for finding
council action there. Yeah What about improving coordination among service providers or increasing local
collaboration
That very defined goal there, discreet goal. In just my research about how to best combat the housing
crisis itself, one of the things that I've come across is the idea of doing a housing finance agency,
but not just for the city of Bloomington across municipalities and perhaps not only just getting the
county involved but also getting the school board involved and better understanding the needs of all
of the different demographics of our community. I think that that could be a really cool source for
collaboration. The other thing is
The county does not have a housing and neighborhood development department in the same way that the
city does. And so I wonder how we might be able to offer our support for developing that same program
in the county. I know a lot of people who have benefited from the rental inspections that hand does
and some of the other regulations. And when people have issues, especially when they're renting hand is
that they can call, county residents don't have that same luxury. And so I would love to see us better
work with the county to develop some of those programs across Monroe and not just Bloomington. Any thoughts
on any of these things? I think sort of all under the questions of collaboration, particularly? Well,
the Coordinate Homelessness
Response efforts. I think that's what heading home is doing or should be doing We also for the last
Two years almost we've had a Homelessness response coordinator with the city in the mayor's office who
supposed to be coordinating within the city. I don't know how much That person coordinates with Monroe
County or with IU, but I think there can be better
collaboration between local governments and with IU on public safety as well as everything else. And
then this broader question about expanding community-based supports. I'll say it before Councilman Rallo
does is that we could really continue to come back to these questions about Jack Hopkins funding, CFRD
funding, I think a better
maybe both increasing those pots, but also I think more coordination between them I think would really
help both lower the barrier for people seeking this type of funds and figure out a better way that we
can get them into the community faster. Any other thoughts? Seeing that I stole yours, would you like
to say? Okay. Happy to go to public comment on this one. If there's no other thoughts, I think this
Am I feeling that that that there we feel like there's maybe not a lot that we can do here I feel like
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
just had a lot of conversations around very like specific deliberation session conversations about Housing
and homelessness. Yeah, that's that's much category of thing and it is
To some degree it's like out of legislative sort of purview and there already is Various funding and
investment going into it in different ways from the city And so it's not like I feel like it's more
like what more can we do right now? and part of it is allowing some of the things that we've already
invested in to play out and maybe work while there's some
you know larger project kind of stuff maybe that is going on and Yeah, yeah I'll just do one little
plug in terms of expanding community-based Supports, I think that all of the things that are listed
here are great I also think that we could
Expand that even broader. I know that council members Piedmont Smith and Rallo have talked a lot about
local food production and expanding our food resiliency I think it was a public commenter actually during
our debate on flock and ALPR cameras that made the point that petty crimes go down when people have
all of their needs met and food is one of the highest needs that everyone
is looking for, especially when we have rising fuel costs that are contributing to rising food costs,
one of the best ways, in my opinion, that we can stay resilient as a community is to increase our local
food production. And I know that that might not seem like it directly has to do with safety, but it
does when we think about the effect that people's immediate needs being met does actually have a reduction
on crime statistics.
Thank you, thank you, thank you. All right, would anybody like to make comments on priority area two?
Someone online? Please, the person online. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Yes, Kevin Keough. I apologize,
but I want to go back to the capital planning, capital budget kind of stuff. I just want to promote the
Government Financial Officers Association, and they have best practices specifically to capital budget
presentations. And there's a six-step framework they have. The first one is capital planning policies.
Start with a policy and then have this concept of master plans and capital improvement planning, multi-year
capital planning, enforced capital asset management,
Five is communicating capital improvement strategies, and six is capital projects monitoring and reporting.
I guess it's part of the system, the whole framework, and it's really a responsibility of the administration.
And again, trying to move the needle. I know I've been a real stickler about trying to move up the annual
comprehensive financial report, which has happened, which is great. And I would hope that would even
move up to 630. This is kind of part of it, trying to get this information
a higher quality plus to give best practices framework because you discuss quite a bit about especially
the continuity. I think it was the one that really kind of spoke to me that especially it's not short-term.
within elections, it's a long term and it's always focused on what's best for the community. So I would,
you know, trying to adopt that type of framework, which is a best practice, I think would be in the
best interest of the city. So again, thanks. I didn't know you guys are taking public comment tonight,
but thanks so much. Thank you so much, Mr. Keough. Mr. Oest. Good evening. Thank you, everyone. My name
is Eric Oest and I just wanted to mention something in regards to food. So
Food is very important. Housing's very important too. But one of the opportunities that we have in this
community currently is there was a donation of almost 400 acres to the south of Moores Pike to the county.
And there's about 190 or so arable acres in that. And one of the opportunities is to work with the county
to establish a community food system.
of some kind, it would be an opportunity for, um, labor for paid people to work, work the land, to learn
how to do that. And there's training opportunities. And I pose, there's a question that I posed to myself,
uh, many years ago, and I think it's something to ponder is how many acres of arable land would be required
to grow enough food to provide every citizen or excuse me, every resident of Monroe County,
with two balanced meals a day for the year. I'm not talking about growing grapes or other things. I'm
talking about food that in the future, this may be a very, you know, in the past, people went to grocery
stores to buy things like cloth and salt and things that they couldn't grow. And, you know, we live
in a world where we can go to the grocery store and
by a myriad number of things. We don't know where they come from necessarily unless we invest time in
finding out. But we can actually grow food in Monroe County. We're still fortunate. So it's just something
to ponder. So I just offer that up as maybe you could collaborate with the county to establish something
like that. Thank you so much. Anybody else with comments? All right. Well, let's move to priority or
three. And if it's okay with you all, can we target
We have we still want to talk about the housing. So maybe no later than eight to transition to housing.
Yeah, and we'll be done at 830 Okay, so that priority error three is public safety response prevention
and accountability Anyone jump out here Please comes with us for Well, I'll start because this was the
group that I was in and one of the things that I was I
Thinking about after that group one of the things that we talked about a lot was just kind of uncertainty
that residents may feel like when they call nine one one and what's going to happen and who's going
to respond to different things and.
So we kind of discussed and also what resources 911 has to respond. For example, there are social workers
right now that are within dispatch so that they can support dispatch in various situations. And the
specific training our officers have around response to mental health and the connections that they might
have with Stride or other organizations in terms of partnership that we just don't know as kind of
General resident who hasn't necessarily utilized those services before so that this is kind of like
communication but the very specific sort of Some kind of publication maybe that like like when you call
9-1-1 what happens who might you get? dispatched to aid you depending on what the situation is and one
of the things I was
talking about with Councilmember Piedmont-Smith when we were reflecting on this was perhaps utilizing
the CAPS Commission as a group that could potentially publish this kind of thing, create and publish
this kind of thing in the same way that like the Commission on Aging publishes a little pamphlet specifically
about different services for our aging residents. So that is something that might
require legislation in terms of looking at the mission of caps and cap the caps Commission is kind of
under council's umbrella And so that is something that could potentially be like a council action And
then the caps Commission could could work on that with the departments involved because they of course
would have to you know, contact all of our departments to Understand all of those pieces as well Yeah
So yeah, that was one of the kind of takeaways that I took from the discussion that I had. That's a
great point. Council Member Pujospe? Yeah, I just wanted to remind everybody that the Law Enforcement
Action Partnership, LEAP, is conducting a study of our 911 response system and what calls
might be best handled by non-sworn police officers and what kind of response might be most appropriate.
Unfortunately, they were delayed getting started this year. Well, we put money in the budget for 2025
for this study, a very modest amount, $10,000. It wasn't until December of 2025 that the contract was
signed then. They didn't start until April.
And then they were delayed because leap had some staff changes. So now we're looking at March of twenty
twenty seven to actually get this report. So I just wanted to let you all know that that is still coming
and that should inform our future investments in emergency response of different kinds. And if that's here.
Let's go to public comment. Anyone want to comment on the questions of public safety, response, prevention,
and accountability? Anyone on that? All right. OK, priority area. I'm sorry. Can I add something for
the third topic area? The last bullet point is improve public emergency information.
And I know I've heard from a couple of residents who were like why did it take eight hours or something
for six hours for the notification about our water quality to go out to residents a couple of months
ago. So I think there is some oversight that the council could and should do here.
to better understand when information goes out and why and to make sure that people know how to get
that information. I think it would be really productive for us and for the administration to work together
to develop some very clear guidelines or standard operating procedures on
how and when and by whom information is going to be communicated in times of crises. And that can be
in times of when the entire county is under a boil water advisory, but it could also be when there is
a shooting on Kirkwood in the middle of the night and everyone has questions. I know we all wake up
to many texts and emails on our phones and that part of that might be circumvented by
everyone knowing exactly where to go to find information and knowing exactly what they're going to find
when they get there. Yeah, excellent, excellent. Okay, let's do priority four, communication transparency
and community trust.
So this one had a handful of suggestions like improving systems for reporting concerns, increasing
transparency around public funding, which I think Mr. Keogh just commented on, improving communication
and coordination within city government, more opportunities for the council, mayor, and relevant departments
to communicate about shared priorities, expanding neighborhood-based engagement,
including community partners earlier in planning and supporting public education about safety concerns.
Oh, sorry. Sorry. Not sorry. I'm just down here being quiet. It's fine. Regarding the transparency around
public funding and just kind of budgeting in general, because it's not just transparency, it's also
I'll say ease of access and ease of understanding because like our budget is large and can be very confusing
and that is something that I think that fiscal committee has talked about this year in different ways
that we've talked about in terms of budget presentations that I've you know explored with controller
McKim around how to make budget
presentations more palatable for the average person and I think that that is Something that that fiscal
committee should should figure out a way to do And the one of the challenges with that I would say is
that there are lots of things that fiscal committee could do and so it's hard to maybe it's hard to
fit it all in into a calendar and figure out how to do it, but I'm I'm
I think it's really important and I'm really interested in that I've been thinking about that a lot
this year and so as a piece of that one thing to Remember is that fiscal committee right now is still
a special committee as opposed to a standing committee And so we talked about it a couple meetings ago
And so I am as chair kind of working on that legislation to make it a standing committee. I'm so for
them so that then we can
Put some of those things into writing and give people that predictability that you know You want something
about you want to know something about fiscal stuff like a there is this committee So you could go to
those meetings but also be anybody on this committee should be somebody who you can contact about fiscal
things specifically that
Theory that committee should have I mean in theory all of us should be able to have that information
But the fiscal committee members may have it closer to the tips of their fingers than than other council
members do just in terms of Working with it more frequently. So yeah. Yeah agreed Councilor Aralo I
Really think that's a really important point is particularly
Guess the palatability I guess is with the word used which I think is a good one. But yeah how to communicate
You know very dense numerical data so that it's understandable to the public just tuning in I Think
it's great idea. I think I think this is no slight to our controller. I think does an excellent job,
but if there is a way to convey it so that
People can engage it Then I think that we're better off for it Yeah, I think Transparency of grants
funding and the outcomes From the the grants that the city gives is also an important thing to highlight
and that came up in
during the deliberation sessions. And I think we've mentioned it in other contexts also that how do
we know that the five hundred thousand dollars from Jack Hopkins is really making a difference. I think
that there are reports from the granting agencies that come back they have to report on the progress
but that doesn't really it doesn't
get to people who aren't on Jack Hopkins like myself on that committee and I don't think it gets to
the public. So I think both Jack Hopkins Housing Development Fund CDBG any grants the city makes. We
should have a report on that or a dashboard or at least those of us sitting up here should have a report.
So again it's about oversight of that public money.
others To that point and thank you to councilmember Piedmont Smith for bringing it up because it jogged
something in my memory I Think we also need to be very clear as a city on when grants are being distributed
As far as I'm aware beacon has still not received their 2025 and 2026 CDBG funds which are actually
supposed to go directly towards their friends play shelter which is
As far as I'm aware, the only gender affirming shelter in Bloomington city limits. And it also, as far
as I'm aware, is one of the only places that single women can go to find shelter beds. And so that's
about $37,500 between 2025 and 2026.
That might not seem like a lot of money when it comes to the city's budget overall, but it is a lot
of money when you think about how that is quite a lot of people's entire annual salary in Bloomington.
And so just some more transparency on when those grant funds are actually being distributed. I just,
since I served on the
on the CDBG funding committee for physical improvements this past month. I just wanted to say those
are federal funds and there are so many strings attached you wouldn't believe it. So I just caution
people against making assumptions that the city is somehow willfully not releasing funds. There's probably
some I's that need dotted and T's that need crossed
are preventing the money from going out the door. I think everybody wants to support Beacon's new facility.
Hopefully I did not lose my entire comment Okay, so good evening, my name is Eric ghost again and We
were talking about the budget and access to financial cities financial data and I would request that the
expenditure data be published in a way that doesn't use I believe it's called split transactions or
you want split transactions which means currently let's say that there's an expenditure for an item.
And the money is from different funds are used to buy that item. What you'll see in the expenditure
date is you'll see fund a has a thousand dollars fund B has a thousand dollars and et cetera. You can't
determine how what proportion was removed or spent by each fund. And so there's no way for the public to track.
and for you to track the balances of funds within the measure of update of the expenditure data. So
that's one thing. And I've mentioned that before. I do believe that, because I looked into the software
you folks use, which is Tyler, out of Tyler Technologies, and it is capable of doing that. So it might
require some work, but you can do that. The other thing I wanted to mention is that public records that
are released should be published in all but rare instances.
So that is the definition of a public record. That it literally be public. And that does not mean available
to, but also published for, published to. And I also want to mention again accident reports. And I'm
talking about accident reports as they're defined by Indiana Code. Are public record and not confidential.
And currently what is, they used to be published as public record data,
there was a decision made or some contract entered into that has now prohibited that, but that is a
violation of Indiana code, so municipalities can't enter into a contract that prohibits the publication
of public record data. So I would ask the council to engage that and have accident reports published
for access by the public, and that would be detailed. I think if you mention this, then you'll hear
that you already have a crash dashboard, but that is not
The same also the crash dashboard only retains five years of data So when five years elapses that data
goes away, which doesn't make any sense either. So anyway, thanks for all your work. Thank you Yes,
so going through each topic area was just part of what I was hoping to accomplish this evening I know that it's
We have another item on our agenda whole another topic but also just things that I was hoping to get
to include the lack of broad input. So as we look at the survey responses following session one and
recall who was in the room for both sessions whose input was lacking. Well I think people of color younger
people people maybe on the
lower socioeconomic end of the spectrum, we missed those voices. And how can we get broader input is
the question here as we move ahead with public safety. And then, really, what is our end goal? Because
we had talked about this all came up, I think, December of 2025 when we were starting to talk about
2027 budget priorities.
And we realized we have a lot of city plans that, well, we should prioritize enacting those plans and
fulfilling the objectives listed in those plans, but we don't have one for public safety. So is our
goal a public safety plan? And if so, what would be the next steps? So I'm hoping that we can take a
few more minutes to talk about those things. Yeah, I think, and I'm very happy to even punt to the other
topic that people would rather talk about this.
Do as you will friends. I would be happy to punt the other topic especially since we don't
have administration here to answer any questions about any of the information that was in the packet
addendum about that. I think that our end goal should be some kind of a public safety plan.
Similar to other plans that we have Maybe not quite someone out anyway something like that and in terms
of broader input I mean, I really think the thing is that we have to go to people where they're at and
one of the ways that Councilmember Piedmont Smith got a bunch of survey inputs in Spanish was to go
to Spanish Was it an event?
Like you sent it to me. I know you used you shared it with somebody who was Martinez from CFRD took
it to the event when the consulate of Mexico came to Bloomington. Yeah.
I wasn't there either way, but I mean we talked about that already the idea of meeting people where
they're at and we've talked about that a lot and so I think that you know if we're serious about figuring
out some kind of a public safety plan and I think that what we have right now is a good start to that
and that we do need more of that feedback from you know, we need feedback on what is already there in
terms of you know,
What do you think of this what's missing from this and we need feedback from from people who who weren't
in the room and that we just need to go and get that feedback if we're serious about actually having
a plan and the question like more the question is how to do that and what kind of timeline over which
to do that especially because I think that most of our other city plans have
been assisted by Contractors in different ways and I mean that's certainly not budgeted for next year
and Given budget stuff like, you know, I don't know how that's gonna go, but I think that there are
steps that we could take And we just have to figure out how that looks So I was thinking that it would
be sorry my thinking was that instead of
Instead of thinking about this as a plan, the way we think about transportation plan, comprehensive
plan, et cetera, because I think a lot of this overlaps with things that are already in a lot of those
plans, that we should think about this more the way that we think about capital improvement and almost
have like a five-year investment plan, right?
safety improvement framework, something like that. I think that may be a very good place where,
dare I say, we might be able as a council to come up with some outcomes that are desirable, where we
set baselines and we say these are things that we want to see moving in these directions and here are
the investments that we think need to be made over the next several years to do those.
And I think that we already, through our survey, so just thinking about it sort of empirically
or analytically here, I think that we already have, I think what's really useful about these surveys,
even though, and I'll come to the point about who participated, who didn't, but I actually think that
we managed to group things in a very nice way, and I think that CGM has done a very good sort of initial
job at looking at this and putting them in sort of nice, I think,
fairly well-defined buckets. I think that might be a really good starting place for us to come up with
some improvement framework. I guess I would ask my colleagues, do we want the administration to come
up with a public safety plan?
led by the executive branch, the transportation plan, the climate action plan, the comprehensive plan,
those were all led by the administration and as Council Member Stossberg said through consultants, those
were developed. Or I think what I heard from Council Member Osari was different. It was make a capital
improvement plan, tie it directly to the budget and say this is council
Public priorities for public safety and in the next five years we expect to see these investments these
outcomes Which will result from these investments? I think even in that Scenario we would need some
input from of course. Yeah stration to see how much things cost but but I think that's that's kind of
two different directions or
Could they both happen? I don't know. Well, I'll just say, and I think the councilman will pass back
to you, that I think one of my discomforts or hesitations around plans is I've come to realize that
plans are great if you're going to do them. But the issue is that I think we, and I'm not casting aspersions
or whatever.
I think that we often use plans as a way of delaying any decisions around things. First off, because
we're like, well, we're going to do a plan about that. When are we going to do the plan? Next year,
we're going to start the process of starting a plan. Okay, so now we're a year out. Then we do the plan.
We're two years out. Then we get the results back of the plan.
let's discuss whether we want to do the plan. We're three years out. Fourth year, now let's do the plan.
Oh, no, it's too late. We have to start all over again. And I think that though that feels like it's
a little bit of maybe a flattening of a lot of other intervening variables, the reality is that, I mean,
I think that archetype fits a lot of the type of plans that we have. And so that's where I'm starting
to think about what
our alternatives, what are our alternatives, so that we get to action. I think coming up with some things
that we really think we want to see and committing to doing those things and
just coming up ourselves with some ideas of what we think, how we'll hold ourselves accountable. And
then the last thing I'll say about planning generally is that we are a university town with the number
one MPA program in the country, with the top 10 business school. I just feel like there's a lot of places
where you could go very clearly to get expertise quite quickly, if that's what we needed as well.
To you, Councilor Sarsburg, sorry.
I think probably I largely agree with what you just said. And I think it's partly like in terms of your
response to what I said before, like yes, I think we need a public safety plan. I mean, it's all about
vernacular, right? It's about like, well, what does plan mean? Like there's lots of different kinds
of plans. And like I would agree that, you know, like the transportation plan, the climate action plan,
that, you know, like all of them do kind of have a certain mold. And I think that one of the reasons
why sometimes
City plans like that have a certain mold is because we need a plan to Apply for money for such and such
a thing. And so the plan does have to kind of follow a set Framework you could say to fulfill requirements
for whatever reason it is that we're making a plan for I mean Yeah, and so that wasn't necessarily
my vision of what a public safety plan would be at this point. I don't necessarily have a vision of
what a public safety plan would be, except that I think that we should have something that gives us
those goals, partly because it got raised last year in budget season, like yes, public safety is important.
you know, public safety is important. And all we could do was find something that said improve public
safety. Well, what on earth does that mean? And so I want there to be something that defines more what
that means. What is public safety? And so that's what I think these deliberation sessions kind of started with.
is that idea of the community helping us define, you know, what is public safety? What does it mean
to be safe? What do we need to be safe? When do we feel unsafe? And that kind of thing. And then it's,
well, how do we make more of our spaces, more of our community feel safe? And so that's then what leads
into the plan is going, okay, so, you know, we need this kind of stuff to feel safer. Now, how do we
do that kind of stuff?
you know, whether we get a consultant for that or not. And I think that it's of course much quicker
and easier and faster to not get a consultant and to figure out what can be done without the consultant.
And that's, you know, like that's the question is what can be done without the consultant and how can
it be done? Because if you have a consultant, then you can offload most of the work to them. And if
you don't have a consultant, then you can't.
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
the part of how to get more input that we were lacking. You mentioned that you were gonna talk about
that, and then you never talked about it yet. You know, so it's like, if we do say, okay, we wanna go
out to these other spaces where people are and get their,
Perspective on it. So how are we going to do that? Are we going to go out and have like deliberation
sessions kind of like we had in other places with other people? Is it going to be community surveys?
Who's gonna do the survey? Who's gonna you know, like how is that all going to actually work? Because
if we had a consultant the consultant would be dealing with it and we would not be and so that's That's
the real kind of logistical piece
Council Member Zulik. Thank you. This body has experienced a lot of frustrations with the administration's
either inability or unwillingness to institute outcomes-based budgeting. And so I think that one of
the best ways that we can push towards that without voting a budget down, which nobody wants to do,
is well. We're happy.
which, you got me off track. No, it's okay. I think that every way that we can tie specific strategies
to outcomes with approximate costs is our best way at moving forward and saying, you know, it actually
is possible to institute outcomes based budgeting. There may be an unwillingness to do so, but that
doesn't mean that
this is not something that the city is capable of doing and by modeling that we have a very good shot
at being more productive we'll call it during our next budgeting cycle and I am not sure that doing
a public safety plan in the same way that we do a transportation plan or this the safe streets for all plan
would be as efficient as coming up with Council Member Piedmont Smith's option two, where it's kind
of more of a five-year plan. These are the strategies that we'd like to see implemented. This is about
how much we think they would cost. And this is the specific outcome that we're looking to get out of
it. Thank you. Council Member Flaherty.
Thank you. This is a really interesting conversation. I appreciate the perspectives of my colleagues.
I think, I see it probably as a little bit of a both and. I recognize and agree with what Council Member
Rosario was saying about just the amount of time it takes to put something more comprehensive together.
I do think this council and our level of staffing, we're not,
well suited to independently lead production of a holistic public safety plan that will a have buy-in
from the administration or the community and be you know be The best product that the city could produce
I do think some expertise is relevant here and the community input that we've had through these sessions
is valuable and really important and I'm glad we've had the sessions
We might think of it as a jumping off point to inform next steps. I think we could try to identify from
this exercise what are some priorities we want to see in the next three year timeline and do that through
a council process while also saying, look, we want a holistic and comprehensive plan that centers,
you know, creates a vision statement, centers some particular values. You know, we talked about the
different experiences of different people in the results and there were some notes about
Reflections from folks in in marginalized communities in the sessions saying that actually police presence
doesn't make them feel more safe whereas other people say police presence does make me feel more safe,
right and so things like that like if we're not layering values around equity or You know who's not
being served by current systems things like that into the process I think we're just not really limited
in what we can accomplish and like to do that. Well, I really do think that
uh, requires bringing in some expertise and, yes, likely contracted support or maybe pro bono or,
you know, like, uh, lower cost support through, through, um, university resources or otherwise. I don't
know if my colleagues have looked up, tried to, I don't know, I try to look to other cities for examples
a lot. Uh, maybe you all have looked around for what, you know, uh, community safety plans look like
in other places. Uh, I'm just reviewing right now, I think I've looked them up before also, like in
our neighborhoods, our safety plan, uh, for Washington, D.C.
that was developed, I think, in conjunction with the Center in Georgetown. There's one in Greensboro
that's really quite solid. And establishes, yeah, objectives, timelines around, say, developing
an alternative response community-based program for safety calls, right? And then setting KPIs and strategies
for how to accomplish that. And there's some pretty good examples out there. And so, they're not identical
to something like a plan or a transportation plan, but they have some similarities, and I think that's
probably a good thing
and mostly what I've advocated for in the outcome-based budgeting space is that we do need some degree
of common framework for how we're thinking about measuring success and so that's I'm perfectly comfortable
with and again support us collectively trying to set some priorities in the in the near term that we
can actually make some progress on some on some things that are emerging from this process but ultimately
to have some degree of buy-in and a quality I think it would take probably a
a longer process. I think the administration has to be involved with that, otherwise I think we'll always
struggle to implement anything. We struggle enough with that even when the administration has been involved
in producing plans. So, you know, practically I think that's needed as well. So, those are my thoughts.
Thank you. Other comments?
Councilmember Piedmont Smith Yeah, I I guess we don't have to decide on our next steps tonight but the
Addendum that went out this morning had a shorter overview report that it was our intention to
Issue that to the public and try to get that out there and you'll notice On the last page of that report
it says the conversation doesn't end here. We want to hear from you Whether you participate in one of
the sessions or are learning about this work for the first time We invite you to review the findings
and share your thoughts So I guess I want to check with my colleagues
If we gather more input and there are a few questions that Wyatt Lawson from C Jam suggested, and we
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
on that. And also how we can get it out to people, because that is the struggle.
I feel like I already had this conversation with the Councilman repeat Mott Smith a little bit but I'll
start and say I think that it's a good idea and you know, like we talked about Going to people where
they are and we talked about the idea of having other special sessions in other places and maybe this is
kind of an ideal space for that is to do that survey, let it run over a few months maybe in terms of
trying to have it hit as many people as possible and then come back and do another deliberation session
conversation about it sometime next year during one of the deliberation session meetings and just schedule
that somewhere else that is not council chambers, not city hall,
Yeah, I mean I think that that could maybe be a conversation between now and the end of the I'm just
gonna say end of the year but really I mean like now and when we do our 2027 meeting schedule so then
if we can put them on our 2027 meeting schedule and because maybe maybe it would make sense to have
more than one of those and I'm not sure I'm not sure if it
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
want to just do one and pick like one
corner of town or one side of town that it would make more sense maybe to have four or five different
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
and make those extra bonus commitments But if two or three of us could be at each of those But then
I mean and that's not a quorum of council members anyway so doesn't need to be a council meeting because
if we don't have a quorum then it can't be a meeting and and So yeah, so tricky things like that get
in but I think that that that could be a
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
and Pick this up again. I don't know March April maybe before that actually maybe February February
March Because at some point we like start bleeding into budget stuff for 2028 Sorry to bring that up
so soon Perhaps that's something that we could plan around when we receive the information from leap and
Since councilmember Piedmont Smith said that it would should be coming out around March of 2027 the
other thing that I wanted to add to that is I think All of us go to fairly different and distinct community
events It certainly doesn't have to be that all nine councilmembers are at a specific place I would
encourage all of us to do our best to do that type of research anecdotally
out in our community at various events and actually give a report out back to our colleagues and take
advantage of our reporting time during our regularly scheduled sessions just so that we're all on the
same page as we continue to move forward and it doesn't all come out during these deliberation sessions.
I think that would make this a much more continuous structure rather than we just have a couple a year
and if you can't make them
Sorry. Okay, other comments. Council member Stossberg. I guess I just get like the anecdotal data from
different pieces. It's like good at the same time that I like to use caution with it. So as a piece
of these conversations, I would encourage each of us to
Share the study and share the link with the survey so that then there are survey results that all of
us can see and then we're like kind of hearing it straight from like that we're all hearing it from
the horse's mouth so to speak in terms of that being Documented somewhere Because I think the survey
is it's gonna be anonymous. Isn't that right? Can't remember Pete Monsmith. So then like people don't
have to be afraid of saying what they actually think and
and that that could maybe meet that difference. And I would assume those different, if we did have separate
meetings just on this focus, that they would all be recorded. Yeah. Great. Thank you. Anyone else? OK.
Perhaps we have naturally come to, oh, that is a great point. Would anybody like to give public comment?
please approach the podium, state your name, and tell us what you got. Hi, my name is Autumn. Okay,
so you guys were mentioning possible public engagements with public safety. I'm curious as to how did
you guys engage with the public for Safe Streets for All?
Thank you for that question. Most of us weren't on council when that was first developed. Are there
council members who did participate in that process who would like to respond to that? I know we don't
typically respond to people during public comment, but it's a deliberation session, and I'm chairing.
I think actually Safe Streets for All was developed while we were on council. We passed the Vision Zero
goal that set it up. The transportation plan was developed.
Safe Street scrolls been incorporated as part of the transportation plan. I think the Executive branch
through the planning transportation department and engineering departments led that plan development
So the council was involved as a stakeholder participant But not very directly in an outreach related
to public outreach related to it with the exception of the meetings we held here, you know for consideration
and option And
Expand on that there was also one of the big parts I think of the safe streets for all input gathering
was that map that like you could it was basically like this online survey I'm not sure if autumn participated
in that but you could go in and you could like put down Comments on specific streets or intersections
or sidewalks or whatever about anything and then they analyzed all of that data to basically You know
because there there were things reported on there that wouldn't necessarily have made it a crash or crash
made it to a crash report like close calls and discomfort and that kind of thing. And that was open
for a while. And I know that that was announced in various council meetings. I know I added things to
that. I know I shared that with my networks. And so that is one very specific way. And I do actually,
and that was also with a consultant that I kind of wonder if we could do a similar thing with
public safety in some ways in terms of, you know, those places where you feel more safe or less safe
because there were several things, you know, that got cited like, oh, the lighting is bad here or sidewalk
repair is bad here or whatever. And I kind of wonder what kind of tech would be needed as a piece of
that or whether it's necessary to have something like that on because we also have your report and
Like there are just other platforms that might overlap with that. So yeah, that technology piece would
be an interesting discussion. Thank you. That was a rabbit hole, sorry. No problem. And Autumn,
I'm so sorry. I don't know how that escaped my mind. I do remember that. Yeah, so I think approaching
the public safety issue in a similar way
you approach Safe Streets for All would be excellent. So for instance, when I was in Muncie, I was doing
Safe Streets for All engagement. We had this big old map, right? We would talk to people and be like,
hey, do you have any traffic frustrations here? And guess what? They love to talk about it. They said,
I hate this pothole. I hate this curb. Why is it here? This doesn't make sense. I could see a lot of
engagement coming from just talking to people, and I'd say,
Population dense areas, you know, obviously be strategic about where you would set up a stand like that
But people will talk to you They will engage with you and once they give you their frustrations you
say hey Can you fill out this survey for us? And I think this would be a good like multi-month long
Survey for sure if you guys need volunteers. I'm free this summer. So, you know, yeah All right
All right, and seriously, think about those business improvement districts. I just hope you all look
into it after this. A lot of the work that they do, they clean up your streets, right? They provide
some kind of preventative security, right? Maybe they see a light that's out, and they report it, and
then they go fix it the next day. So I just ask that you all look into that, and hopefully,
Yeah. Okay. Thank you, guys. Thank you very much. And I think there is somebody on Zoom. Take it away.
Please state your name. Yeah, Kevin Keogh again. First of all, on the water, the power outage, yeah,
that's something you should look at. That was a 10-hour incident, and it really, the power is only four.
There's much more there to look at, and I would encourage you. Back to the budget, though.
I'm sounding like a broken record, but the Government Finance Offers Association has a Distinguished
Budget Presentation Award. They have a framework that you can use, and I would very much encourage you
to take a look at that. I would encourage you to look at the City of Fishers. It's a little bit up north
near Indianapolis. They get the Distinguished Budget Presentation Award. It is an entire framework.
I know you've been challenged by the outcomes-based budgeting.
but this is a real framework from a, it's a best practice for budget presentations. So I really encourage
you to just take a look at that, because I know you're having difficulty with the outcomes based. This
is a recognized best practice. So anyway, throwing that out to you is something to consider. Thank you.
One more person on Zoom. Okay, take it away. Please state your name.
Hi, Paul Rousseau again. Thank you for taking comments tonight. I really appreciate it. I thought that
the comment by President Asari was really good about studies and the delays involved. On the other hand,
I appreciate the rebuttal from Council Member Flaherty about the expertise of consultants. But one thing
I do know for sure is that every time I bicycle through the intersection of 7th and Woodlawn,
the thought occurs to me, what the hell were they thinking of? On one hand, it appears that the university
had veto power over the project going all the way through. So then why was it built? Like maybe we just
shouldn't have built it because right now that intersection is just insane. And that brings up another
issue that I didn't hear tonight, which was that
and all the things that the city does, it seems like the university often has veto power. And in a way
that's sort of natural because the university's budget is what 20 or 30 times that of the city of Bloomington
and money is power. So just something to consider. Thanks again for the opportunity to comment. Is there
anybody else who would like to speak in chambers or over Zoom? Okey-dokey.
Any council members? Council member Stasberg. Thank you. I just wanted to bring up, because when Autumn
was speaking, one of the things that what she said made me think about was not just how safe a place
is, but about the perceptions of safety that people have. Because there are absolutely perceptions of
neighborhood safety in different places. You know, some people are like, oh, that neighborhood's so
unsafe. But well, they've hardly ever even actually been there.
And so that's all about perception and I think that that is another thing that as city officials we
should work on because you know, it feels I have lived in a neighborhood before that was perceived as
being unsafe by other people and
I did not feel unsafe in that neighborhood at all. And it can be really demoralizing to feel like you're
living somewhere that somebody else is perceiving as unsafe or somebody is perceiving in some way that
you don't feel is accurate. So I think using this as an opportunity to help air some of those perceptions
at the same time and perhaps either counteract them or go, okay, that's super legitimate. How can we
make that?
Space safer. How can it be perceived as safer by the rest of the community based on like we're doing
these steps We're making these improvements. We're serving, you know this area in this way and then
the rest of the city knows That the improvements are being made. So I think that that perception is
important, too And I wanted to make sure to say that Okay Anyone else
We do have one last item of business. Councilmember Piedmont-Smith.
where, as you all know and may the record show for perpetuity, that at the beginning of this year, the
council did not have staff. And we're in dire, dire straits when out of the abyss emerged a hero who
dusted off his cape and decided that he would return to once more serve the city. And he is certainly,
the hero that kept us afloat. But we're just beyond grateful to our incredible attorney, our former
deputy mayor, former city attorney, Larry Allen, for all of your incredible service to the city and
the residents of this city.
Um, what many of the residents may not know, um, and I don't know, please don't, please don't disfriend
me for saying this out loud, but, um, Larry or attorney Allen, um, has many of the,
What we are paying Larry is far less than what we should be paying Larry because Larry has waived a
bunch of his fees for things just because he said, well, this is just the sort of thing I want to do
out of service. And Larry took on a bunch of responsibilities that were not in the initial negotiation
when we brought him on. And we could go on and on and on about it, but he doesn't want us to,
so we will not. But we could go on and on and on about the many things that Larry has done.
And in the process also then made it throughout his tenure here in the city and then with us has made
us better. And I'm just beyond grateful for that. And I know Isabel has procured an incredible gift
for you. And so I don't know if anybody else would like to add to those words, but applause for the
incredible.
Thank you, Larry. So with that we are adjourned.