Go ahead and call to order this meeting of the Special Fiscal Committee of the Bloomington Common Council
for Thursday, October 23rd. We have with us committee members, Isa Casare. Hello. Hope it's Dotsburg.
Myself, Isabelle Piedmont-Smith, and Dave Rollup. Hello. And from the council office, we have Ari Bennett
and Lisa Lanner.
From the clerk's office we have Sophia McDowell and hopefully soon we will have the Treasurer, I mean
the Controller and Deputy Mayor join us. So looking at the agenda, are there any suggestions for revisions?
On revision suggestion, I just want to appreciate that there's public comment under each of those subheadings
because I think that'll be an easier way to include the public.
Good improvement. Thank you, Chair, for having me. Well, and I think that we need to add public comment
under number four. I think that might be helpful. I was wondering why it wasn't under number four, but.
Eh, oversight. OK. Do we need a motion to do it, or are you just declaring that we're adding it unless
anybody has objections? Does anybody have objections to adding public comment to item four? OK. Let's
just do it.
Now that Deputy Mayor Knapp and Comptroller McClellan are here, I actually would like to propose that
we move number two to after number three. Because Deputy Mayor Knapp, you have to leave at 12,
is that right? Yes. Comptroller McClellan, do you also have to leave early or? I have to leave early.
No, I do not. OK.
So I wanted to do item three while Deputy Mayor Knapp was still here. We might get to that anyway, but
is that all right if we just move that up before number two? All right, so let's start with that. So
improving the budget process, reflecting on what we just went through and next steps for outcome-based
budgeting.
I think we do need to talk about actually prioritizing our outcomes, increasing public engagement, and
then looking at the calendar for the next budget season. There's somebody in the waiting room. So I
will open it up. Do people have suggestions for?
I don't think so. We've been kind of informal about these things. So I don't know if Gretchen or Jessica,
speaking of being informal, all these first names, if you don't mind, if you have ideas already about
next steps. And then I think Isak also, since he was part of the task force, might have some ideas.
So let's just have a discussion.
Okay, and I think Jessica has a very, she's been thinking through timelines and tasks and so I'll let
her address that. But I think just from our standpoint, some things that would be helpful I think would
be having gone through the exercise and you've seen kind of what the, what some of our struggles were
in trying to figure out how to communicate information. What would be, there are two things that would
be very helpful for us to have from council. And one is some feedback on how granular
you would like the reporting to be in the examples. Whatever the outcomes are, we need to decide how
granular to be in and how we use our new software tool. Because how we use that, that is the tool for
assigning costs to programs.
So as we're measuring outcomes against what we're spending, we need to make sure that we agree on some
of these fundamental concepts. And so the two examples I would ask you to compare and think about, and
we don't have to discuss in this meeting unless you have immediate thoughts, but give us some feedback
on would be comparing, for example, Parks, who put all youth programs, was just youth programs. That
was one number for them, one category. Versus CFRD, which has a lot of discreet programs that we could bundle,
into, for example, I'm making up these categories, but it could be resident commission-led events or
cultural events versus community trainings, things like that. How broad or how narrow would, for council's
purposes, would be effective? That would be helpful to know. And then the second thing I would say is
that we need to understand and agree on what an outcome is. So if you think about a logic model,
A lot of things that were discussed as outcomes this year are actually inputs, not outcomes.
So for example, hire a person is an input. Double the budget to fill in the blank is an input. The outcome,
presumably, would be something like get all of our roads to 30% status or grade 99 or something like
that by X year.
double the budget of roads. That would be the way that you would achieve that outcome. So I think some
certainly hearing from council with some of those outcomes, reframing things as outcomes would be helpful.
And you might, I would understand naturally need some input from the departments in question about how
does that work? And then the final thing I'll say is that we do have a person in our legal team who
was in Dallas at the time that
They implemented their outcomes-based budgeting, and she told me one thing they did there in terms of
public engagement that I thought was really cool, which was they engaged all of the staff. Once we had
the outcomes, they engaged the staff in preparing the information on, you know, here's what this program
costs, here's how we'll get there, and then had like a public fair with tables so that people from the
public could circulate and actually talk with the employees who do that work.
to better understand what it is and how they had come up with these particular goals and subsets. So
understanding how granular would be helpful for the information and maybe there are some areas where
you would like us to be more granular than others, that's fine. Setting some actual outcomes and then
working backwards from that to what would the inputs be to achieve those outcomes would be helpful.
And then I just wanted to throw that kind of resource fair or involving all of city staff because it's
such a heavy lift to make this transition. And having a bunch of presentations in depth on each outcome
from each person, each program would be extraordinarily time consuming and probably not very effective.
So it might be easier to start with something where folks can circulate and learn about the things that
interest them the most and then have some more formal events around that.
That's my speech. Great. And then as far as the timeline, we'd like to get started with staff again
in sometime in November. But it will probably be due to January because of Thanksgiving and Christmas
and end of year work. But get started in November on going back to every department doing their work on
signing all their costs to all of their programs. And that's going to be a huge, huge lift. We did all
the work to define all the programs, and that was all in the budget. And now we have to assign the cost
that we are spending on each of those programs. And so that's the next part of the work. And then if
you decide that you would like to roll some things up, it's easier to roll them up once we have the
granular detail. Easier to do that than to say, we've put in all these numbers, and now we're going
to go back and break them up and create
So we'll keep going on our end while you ponder the granularity question. I have a bunch of questions
and thoughts. First, a general question for counsel is, are we required by law to have presentations
on the budget the way that we do it? So we can choose what gets presented. So for example,
We could say, as one test case, we could say, you know what, we only want to talk about homelessness,
just as an example. Could we choose to do that and not actually have, okay. So with that in mind, I
think it's, and then also a question about the software. So the software that we have now allows what
level of granularity and are we gonna be fully implementing in terms of the software, like we have it,
We're making the full transition this year, so we'll be able to actually do exactly as Gretchen said.
It allows you to go as granular as you want. But they have done this in hundreds of cities, and they
don't recommend going too granular. Right, super granular. That it just doesn't work. Exactly. And also,
it's impossible. I mean, the more granular you get, the more difficult it actually is to assess it.
Exactly. That is the reason it doesn't work well. The software works fine. It will do it.
reason you're doing it, then you can't achieve that goal if it's too granular. Our office has been going
through this process too. Right, right. So my initial thoughts and maybe high level reactions I think
to both of those things is that I think what
could be a way to go about this is that, so thinking about stages, we need to much earlier have our
set of outcomes, right? And so that we should really, I think that needs to be like quarter one discussions
need to be outcome setting discussions where we've usually left for what, quarter two, right? Or even
quarter three, right? And so I think we should,
have that first round of this is what we think we're working towards the things we want to see in next
year's budget so that we can have the discussions about I think there's a theory of change part maybe
that was that that that that then helps with the and by fear changes mean like some type of concept
that would have to be worked out with departments about okay if if if
if this is the outcome we want, how do we think we can move that needle with our program spending,
et cetera, with our inputs, I think, as you put it. So I think that if we started that, could we start
that in January? Could we start that in, how early is, can we start that conversation? I think the earlier
you start it, the better. And I think on the city side, we have a sense internally in departments and
at the administrative level of what outcomes
we're looking for, although translating that into a smart goal and really taking the thing you think
you know and making it one sentence that's very clear is a challenge. But for you all, I think just
thinking of your usual calendar where your first meeting isn't until a little later in January, we start
working on the math and building out what we actually can do for the budget in May. So whenever you
start it, having that information to us by
April would be fantastic, because let's say that you're an outcome that you want is something that we're
not currently doing. That requires the people who are doing the work to really think about, okay, what
would I do that would achieve that goal? How would that impact? Where would I make cuts? So it's not
just, oh, we got it and we plugged it in. There's a little work to do. And that would give us enough
time to do the work, the conceptual work,
enter it into the math work, enter it into the program, and then get us on track for having a budget
that's on time. So I think with that in mind, I think that this committee continues to meet. I think
that this committee, we should
at our next meeting, start having conversations about potential outcomes, because it's gonna take,
I think, a long time to get to some real agreement about that, but I think that this committee would
be very useful to have a sort of wire frame, if you will, something to react to that we can give to
the rest of council that we can then build upon. And I think we should start that work now. I agree,
and especially if you think about if we want to do any kind of public engagement, like fitting that
in as well,
What we're saying is we're going to do all of the math, all the conceptual work, come to agreements,
do all the public engagement, and essentially six months. Because we'll be building the budget book
in July. Whatever it looks like, that's when the work has to be done. So that's a pretty fast timeline.
In terms of that engagement there that you were talking about, what would be a good time of year in
terms of staff figuring that stuff out for that kind of event to happen?
have to be after we'd come to some agreement on some outcomes and created the work, right? So if people
are going through, it's not very fun to go to the table and say, oh, we have this program, but I don't
know how much it will cost or what it will achieve. So I'd have to think about that. I don't know the
answer off the top of my head, but I think we have to plan for that. Is that like a three summer thing
or like a budget season thing in terms of like August, September-y kind of time?
That's a great question. I don't know. If we really want to embrace what feedback we get from the public,
it would have to be earlier. Right. But then I guess I'm wondering whether then staff would be able
to get that kind of stuff together. Well, Lisa and I already started talking a little bit about the
schedule for next year and thinking about things like deliberation sessions and thinking like in June,
should there be some kind of a budget
Deliberation session type thing right before we go on summer recess and so depending on What the needs
are that that could potentially be a really interesting fair type June is way too late for that Okay,
and I think we have to shift our paradigm like don't I don't think based on what what Gretchen just
said and what I was just saying
I don't think, I think you need to totally disabuse yourself of the way that we've done it in the past.
Like, it does not track. Like, we need to have made most of the decisions that we make in, like, April.
We need to have made those decisions in, like, February. Well, I guess, like, what's the point of that
fair then? Because I thought part of the point of that fair was to communicate to the public how we're
spending our money, not to get the public's input on how they think we should be spending our money.
So I was approaching it from that first assumption that we're communicating to the public how we're
spending, not getting input from the public about how we should spend. Well, I guess here's what I say.
Thinking about staff and thinking about having been at the city all of two whole years now, the pace
is excruciating. And there is always a lot of work to do. And so I can't overestimate enough how big
of a lift this is for staff. It is enormous.
And so if we can be supportive of that and acknowledge that this is a big lift for our people. And what
I mean by that is not everything that we might want to do for this process in the future may not be
able to fit in the calendar for this year. So we should probably try to be realistic about what would
be good progress to make in this year and how much of our ideal packet can we get done in one year and
what could we do
add in next year when we've crossed you know the first bridge of okay we agree on the granularity we
know how the process works you know what else can we add in because I will say it's very discouraging
when staff have worked very hard to make some progress and then we have public discussions where people
criticize us for not being fast enough when you know we made a pretty big
lift for the team including finding the software thank you Jessica that could interface with layover
our our city software which is not very friendly you know that was work that basically got done in three
or four months and I understand that we all want to see a lot more progress but I just want us to have
a shared understanding what can we really get done and feel good about you know we got we got 50% done
we got 75% done whatever it is instead of saying well you only did 99 where's the other 1% or the other 10%
Yeah, for context, just as a staff person, responding to the prompts and questions from Tyler Technologies
requires a lot of thought and analysis. It's important work. It has value, but it takes time. And the
great thing is, once we make that initial investment, it'll get easier with each passing year. But the
first lift is hard. Right. So going back to that public engagement fair type idea, is that a better
2027 goal, then?
Like, because I guess I'm just trying to, because I like that idea. I mean, I think we need to have
more public engagement around the budget. I think part of that is making the budget a more accessible
thing for the public to understand. And that kind of presentation and fair would be, I think, very accessible
in terms of, you know, any random sort of person, regardless of your education, coming off the street
and going like, OK, what does all this mean?
I think that that's just a really great concept to have. But is that too big of a lift for 2026? Is
that a better lift for 2027? That's what I'm trying to get at right now. That's why I'm asking when
in the year would that be good? Well, maybe if we think of it over two years, like in 2026, maybe we
have this kind of fair informational, how do we spend your money sort of thing after the budget is already
drafted. And then in subsequent years,
people would be able to maybe come back and understand and give input earlier. I like that idea except
for the part where you said after the budget is drafted. I think that we should do it. I think that
there's not enough time in there. I think that's the point when we really get hot and heavy on the budget
and do the budget book and start hearings and doing slides and submitting things to council. We can't
add anything to that time period. But we could do something in like May or June where there
departments sort of prepare what their programs are, which is work they've already done, and like a
summary of how we spend your money. And they sort of get, they sort of start working that muscle of
presenting how to present to the public the information of how we're spending your money. We have the
2025 budget that's been approved. I think May or June for next year would even be too soon. Here's my
suggestion, and we can all throw out our ideas and think about this. But my suggestion would be for
next year that we use the fair either in addition to or in place of or somehow
think of it as the typical budget presentation, like instead of going and hearing someone. So if you
think about what is the public normally encounter, they can read the budget book, they can go listen
to the presentations, they can make comments there, and already we don't have time to address their
responses. But of course, all of us elected officials and administration are getting feedback and using
the tools that the city, the surveys and so on that city puts out there to gather input on what residents
think is important. So it's not like we're starting coal, but
I would think that like August presentation that's similar in timing to budget presentations might be
a good baby step in year one. We've done all the work, we've got the numbers, we've figured out what
the outcomes are that we want and the granularity and figured out how to make the software work and
whatever adjustments we'll make to the formal approval and review process we have with council and then
here's a chance to
explore as a community what that looks like in a new format, and then maybe move it earlier the next
year. Does that feel skeptical? Does that add too much to, I mean, Jessica was just talking about the
staff challenge of getting all the things together for the August presentation anyway. Does this add
to this? Well, I think one thing that might be different about it, and I would want to talk to our staff
person who lived through this once before, is that it wasn't necessarily department heads sitting at
those tables.
It was the people who actually do the work. So that might be a way to engage staff and the people who
really do the work, giving them a chance to meet the public and explain what they do and answer some
questions. So I don't know that we can decide today. Maybe it's even September. But I agree that July,
not possible. June, not possible. I think May would be too soon because I think we're going to be scrambling
still to figure out to just do the math.
And like Lisa, the Office of the Mayor also goes through this process. And our programs are nowhere
near as complicated or long as what Public Works and other departments have to do. So it's a big lift.
What about prioritizing outcomes? I mean, we all have visions of more drivable roads, more walkable
sidewalks.
better connectivity and helping people who are unhoused and all this. But I mean, we have a limited
budget. So at some point, we have to put some outcome priorities over others. Can I tag on that? Yeah.
So we're operating under a different fiscal climate. And when will there be estimates of budget limits
that are being imposed on us?
And what will that outlook be? So Gretchen, you were talking about outcomes. And so my priority, I'm
one of nine, but my priority would be a budget that doesn't tip into resources and reserves, a budget
that doesn't increase future debt obligation. That may be.
a big lift. An outcome that avoids increasing burden on those residents who are already overtaxed. So
if we're operating under austerity of some kind, then we should distinguish between needs and wants
and basic services versus expendable projects. So for instance,
where you were talking about level of service or the quality of roads versus large projects that might
be expendable. And then if we are to avoid putting a burden, which might be, again, a very, very challenging
thing with the state, with how taxes are structured in Indiana,
How do we avoid putting a burden on low income people? There are creative ways maybe to do that. So
tier pricing for parking meters, for instance. So if you have, we have a common rate right now. If we
were to tier it based upon location, we still have the opportunity for people to park who are low income.
They may have to walk further.
But the point is that there are ways in which we could approach trying to limit that. Anyway, it's a
lot to say. But my main concern is, what are we operating under? What kind of fiscal box are we in?
I mean, I think those are really important questions. And I think the great thing about setting outcomes
and then prioritizing them is that that tells us when you have less, however much money we have, we
know that those are the priorities and the outcomes that we want.
Let's say we had an outcome. I'm going to pick one that would obviously be expensive. Sidewalks everywhere
repaired and built and fill every gap in however many years. That's an extremely expensive, hard to
achieve goal. But if there was some sense of that is in our top three, I'm not saying it's one of my
top three. I'm making this up just to be clear, just an example.
then that would tell us, OK, if you only have $100 and you have these five priorities, maybe $100 isn't
enough to get any single one of them done. But that tells us that that's where we should spend the $100
we do have. So I think that conversations go hand in hand. But I think our priorities and our outcomes,
our outcomes might have to shift in terms of timing or scale. But part of the outcome is, you know,
make there be more sidewalks or maintain roads so that we don't slide back. If that's more important
than some other infrastructure type of project, then we would know that going into it and that would
help us move the dollars around. So my preference again is basic services and making sure they're at
an optimum before we entertain other projects.
So last night we had a presentation by the MPO. They have new projects that are recommended by engineering.
Maybe we ought to be thinking first of putting those dollars toward repaving rather than a new project
of some kind. But, you know, and this gets into, as they said at the MPO, sometimes those dollars aren't
transferable. You know, unfortunately, you know,
We don't get to pick the project. Someone else picks them. And if you say, I don't want to do that,
we don't get the money back to spend on something else, which is, I think, a part of the budgeting
conversation that could be really helpful with the public. And I know I learn from it all the time,
because as a citizen, I used to always have these questions, too. Like, why don't you take that $2 million
and spend it on fill in the blank? And sometimes, you can only spend it on that project. I think that's
really a good point, the fungibility of the money that we have. So anyway, I've said enough, but that's
I'm just wondering when, so do we have a time when we might have an idea of what limitations we're operating
under for 2027? We all know from the state estimates in I think June or July, so very late. And we do
have the parcel by parcel analysis where we can get another financial analysis estimate. But we will
operate under that estimate
And I think we're still operating under the assumption that next year is going to be kind of similar
to this year, that we're going to grow a tiny little bit, but not as much as we normally would have.
OK, so we should have a good benchmark. Yes. So this year is a good benchmark for what next year will
be like. And SEA 1 was written.
to try to use the lit rate to replace the lost revenue and property taxes. But that doesn't take effect
until 2028 when the new lit rates would go into effect. So these first two years, 26 and 27, are going
to be lost property taxes with no opportunity to replace it with lit. And so after that, after 2028,
even though it wasn't written very well, they're supposed to fix it.
so that we do have the ability to pass a lit rate that will fully replace our property tax loss. When
you say in 2028, do you mean for fiscal year 2029 or fiscal year 2028? Fiscal year 2028. OK. So you
said we do have a parcel by parcel analysis. So would that allow reading?
in-house estimation of the SEA-1 impacts for 27? Yes. They did that parcel by parcel analysis. They
did ours first before we even got the 2025 net AV net assessed value. So they actually need to run it
again with our actual net assessed value. And I talked to them about that this week. So they're going
to have to run it again. And then we'll get a more accurate estimate.
How did our actual assessed value change? It went down. Our assessed value went down this year. Really?
Mm-hmm. Yes. I'm not surprised by that. You're not? No. I am. Looking at our property tax bills, they
keep going up. And then there's a lot for sale right now. What does that have to do with? Doesn't assessed
value have something to do with? The market shift in that. Yeah.
how much the neighboring properties are actually selling for. I mean, I'm kind of looking at Jessica
because she has way more experience in this field than I do. But doesn't that have something to do with
the market and how much the actual value is? Yeah, assessed values are supposed to be market-based.
Not all of them are, especially multi-unit housing. There's other valuation methods.
But cities and schools and counties get a levy. So no matter what the market is, we're going to collect,
say, $5 million. It's way more than that. Every unit is going to collect what the state allows them
to collect. And your tax bill is going to keep going up, mainly because our levies keep going up. The
rate is going to be different. Your assessed value is different.
but we're still trying to collect the same amount of money. And sometimes the market going up and down
and your rate fluctuating doesn't really affect, doesn't really change the fact that we're still going
to collect a little bit more money every year than we did the prior year. We get to collect $5 million
no matter what your assessed value is. Assessed value doesn't control the levy. So our levy is $5 million
no matter what your property value is.
Sometimes there are shifts to, huh? Sometimes the share of the levy gets shifted based on exemptions
and deductions with commercial properties. Residential owners bear more of the property tax burden as
a whole than commercial does. And sometimes if the commercial properties get more exemptions, that shifts
more of the property tax burden to the residential.
that could make a resident's taxes go up and there's just a lot of different things in play with the
whole property tax picture but yes our bills are definitely going up and it's really hard thing to explain
to citizens as well you know that they want the city to change the way we budget and change the way
we spend because our bills keep going up and it's kind of like well our levy is our levy and we're still
going to collect it and your bill is
is not going to really change much if we spend less. We don't have to collect the full levy, right?
Right, unless we, yeah, we could decide... Then we'd be doing services. Yes, we could not collect the
full levy. That would be really the only way for us to make your bill go down. But if we don't collect
the full levy one year, then the next year... You don't get... If we save money this year and don't
want to recoup it, you can't do that, so that sets us all. Yeah.
if at our December deliberation session of the council, we should talk about budget outcome priorities.
That's not too early. Can I make just two simple comments or questions or whatever? But the first is that.
We shouldn't overcomplicate thinking about outcomes because we already have a lot of outcomes in all
of our many, many plans. So the easiest way to go about this process, easy again in relative terms,
is that you take our existing outcomes and that we rank them. We say these are the things that we think
are most important for this year.
And again that that may include just continuing services that the part of our continuing services like
there isn't you know it's also it's like a misnomer like that that there's like just a stasis like right
like certain us continuing services.
Also, there's a certain progress that comes with us continuing services, like filling potholes is like
a continued service to some extent. But so very much agree with the framework, those, that by setting
an outcome-based budget, we have the opportunity to actually have that conversation of like, this is
not something that you dip into reserves to fund, right? But then the second part, and I think that
this is just a, I mean, take it as you will.
When we're thinking about change management, you want to think about user journeys, and we're conflating
everybody's user journeys. So we're talking about staff user journeys, our user journeys, resident user
journeys. You actually think about each of them individually and go, OK.
what how are they going to interface with what it is that we're putting out and then ask yourself an
outcome question like what is it that you would like them to be interfacing with and and so then we
should then we should map those three and so um if we're if we're going in between what does council
need to get out of out of the conversations versus what is the city if we conflate those two things
we're going to make a lot of
bad choices or at least over complicated choices. And then what we're doing then is jumping to, yeah,
but what should we schedule in July, isn't the question. The question is, what is it that residents
should be experiencing in our budget experience? And then that will answer the when should we schedule
these things questions. That's another outcome, isn't it? What do we want our constituents to experience? Exactly.
And then the thing I was saying earlier before we went on that track is, you know, I think one way that
we could think about, you know, this gets to, but this is thinking through the lens of council. Like,
how do we as a council do our job in actually evaluating and being a contributing member to the budget
process? What I would really like, or,
I don't know if I'd like this, but I think what would be interesting is to have the actual budget hearings
be actually things that we go, here are the things that we'd like to hear, that it's not, that we're
not gonna, we don't need to talk about trash collection insofar as we all agree, okay, that's fine,
like we're okay with that, like there's certain things that we're gonna focus in on. And so you could
imagine, you know, just picking the contentious,
the contentious outcomes and saying like, okay, we're going to actually work on discussing these publicly,
because there's other things that maybe you don't need to have, we don't need to waste time talking
about things that are just matter of fact things. So you may, again, we may want to think about a different
venue to inform the public about things versus you have our budget hearings, which are actually about
us working on the budget and approving it.
I think are two different goals.
I think that it gets really touchy to think about what we're wasting time talking about, because I think
that every council member is going to think that a different thing is a waste of time. Yeah. And so
I think that that's the, I mean, otherwise, like, I mean, who gets to judge them? What's the waste of
time? What's not the waste of time? And I don't think that. I think that this year we were presented
a bunch of things that we didn't ask questions on, because there was nothing to ask questions about.
And that when I say we, I mean, the majority
of people on council, and that is both empirically evidenced by the fact that we did not write questions,
and empirically evidenced that we did not ask that many questions in the session, because we did not
have time to ask those questions. We just go through, here's a presentation, here's a thing, okay, good,
let's go to the next one. And then we still had to have a further deliberation session afterwards. You
said in this meeting that the goal of those sessions is partially to inform the public that's
operating in two different goals. Now, you can do, I mean, we can chew gum and walk at the same time,
that's fine, but I just think we have to be clear about, you know, if you think that the main purpose
of the budget hearings is to inform the public, they take a certain form. If the main purpose is for
council to give input to it, they take a certain form. But if you're in between the two, they'll become
a performative thing. Now, maybe that's not a waste of time. Maybe we should be doing more performance,
but like, you have to think
what it is that we want to want to accomplish. I think that I actually learned a lot from the budget
presentations and I asked a lot of questions so I'm I guess and there were there were very few community
members who really actively engaged in that but there were some and that's what I mean by it needs to
be accessible.
That's why I like the fair idea because I think the fair idea is more accessible for the ordinary person
and not just for accountants and professionals in financial fields. Exactly. I think another purpose
for the budget hearings is for the council to understand the budget, not just to give input. It's a
little late at that point to give input, but we need to understand how things are budgeted, why things
are budgeted in certain ways,
so that maybe in the future we can have more input, but also just to understand what the heck we're
doing. I think that's what I get the most out of the way we have been doing budgetary. I don't think
we've served the public well. Because like Hopi said, we had three people who actually asked any questions.
And they asked a lot of questions. The ones who asked questions really engaged. Which is great. Which
may be one wanting to get in this meeting right now.
He knew we were talking about him. Yeah, exactly. Yes. Oh, no, I just wanted to let him in. So go ahead.
We actually, back in the day, had budget hearings that were extremely detailed. I mean, it was really
granular. And the idea at the time was if people at home were wanting to, or people who would come to
the meeting,
wanted to know what the city was doing. They would know in really exquisite detail everything that the
city was doing. It was an interesting concept. It was excruciating. I think the staff really, you know,
it was a heavy lift and everything. I'm not saying we go back to that, but that did happen at one point.
I was satisfied with the budget hearings and presentations and everything and I understand you're working
under constraints that
We're not in control of it over. So what I was wondering is, are we anticipating any fee increases in
the coming year? Stormwater, sanitation, parking meters, things like that. We just had a water rate
increase. Honestly, I barely digested this year's budget. You guys just voted thank you on the salary
ordinances last night. I am woefully unprepared to answer questions about our spending for next year
right now.
We didn't work any fee increases into the budget. Anything that increased, we would come and do a full
presentation and ask you to increase it at that time. Yeah? Yeah. A heads up, more than just say it
landing in the packet would be great. Right. Yeah, definitely. I would like to preview those increases
here before they even get to the full council. OK.
Okay great. I learned a lot about what I learned more about what council was truly interested in from
the conversations that I learned from the document you sent with your priorities. Yeah. So and seriously
like it is really so I encourage you know when you were talking about the being super granular in the
past one of my observations for myself about working in the city is that there is
It is as deep and it is like an ocean of sand. And sometimes when you get in there, you miss the big
picture. Like, oh, I've learned everything about this tiny program in one division of one department
that serves 50 people. But what's the big picture for how we're serving 80,000 people? Can get really
lost in that sand. So I really encourage you, going back to that what is an outcome, to really
think about how you can communicate with us in human language. Here's what I think you should spend,
but why do you think we should spend that? Why are you asking to create XYZ position? Why do you think
doubling the budget of XYZ is important? When you say we value XYZ abstract quality, we might value
that too, but we don't know what you think that looks like in practice. And so all those conversations
about studies versus infrastructure projects,
That was fascinating. I learned from that. But unpacking the why and the big picture of what is the
actual outcome that we're striving for in human terms would be great. And then how to figure out the
people and the money part of that is much easier once we really understand what we're trying to do.
members of the committee think about using the December deliberation session for talking about outcomes
and prioritizing outcomes. Sounds great. Yeah. Depends on who has to plan it. Well. I'm already very
deep in the weeds of planning the November deliberation session, and I have only so many spoons to
Right. Spoons. Yes. Yes. It's an internet thing, Google. Six, seven. Oh my god, Eric's six, seven last
night during our meeting. I don't know if anybody else caught that, but six, seven. Eric Spirmore? No.
No. Grulick. Oh, oh, oh. I can't remember what they were six, seven of anymore. He's too old to six,
seven. But anyway. I'm sure it was an accident.
He does have teenage children. There you go. Well, I could try to do it. So I would put my name down
for that. I didn't know what six, seven months like Google. And if anyone is wondering, Google says
the humor comes from its randomness and the fact that it annoys and confuses older generations.
Right. It means nothing. There's like six, seven million kids out there doing it, though, constantly.
You got to put the hand motion. That was a good one. That was a good one. Actually, while I'm really
glad that this is being recorded right now, because I've been telling my kids for like three months
I'm going to try really hard to slip six, seven, and somewhere on purpose, and I keep missing it.
I mean, there were like six or seven opportunities last night. Think about them the next morning. No,
you're trying to make it make sense. It doesn't make sense. OK. All right. So let's go to public comment
on improving the budget process. Is there anybody in the public who would like to comment on this item?
We have KRK, somebody. Can you hear me? It's Kevin. Kevin Tio. Oh, hi, Kevin. Can you hear me all right?
Yes. Yeah, the first thing is, and our first one, I always want to say, you know, my intention is to
add value and to improve transparency. Hopefully, that's the intention. But I'd say, number one, from
a process base, to have the audit completed. I guess what I'm really getting to before you even start
the project process, I would think.
I'm really promoting that. I know you've been behind and there's been some issues with that. But I'm
just saying from just having the best data available is good for everyone. So I would really, and I
know the due date is 930, but I believe that's a top dead date. And you really can have an issue to
the public 30 days after the audit completed.
I've not seen your engagement letter with your auditor. But I would think it's in that. They agreed
to get it done by a certain date. And I would hope you can move that to a June, May, June deadline to
get it done. Because you think you have good data. So I'm really pushing that. And I've got my eyes
on it, because you guys say you'll be completing this by the end of the year. So I'll be looking for
that. The other issue is.
I'm an accountant, so there's this concept of fixed cost and variable cost. And when you, I say that
because if you know your fixed cost, this is your overhead. And this could be a significant amount of
the budget. And this would be things that really you could do today, I would think. Because these are
the things you have obligations for fixed costs. These things you could put aside. Yeah, this is gonna
be part of the budget. We are obligated to do this. But then you look at your variable cost, and that's
really focused on units.
And how many of these things you need, these units, could be any, you know. And they're really looking
at the activity and what's the cost of those activities. And also, I know you're looking at performance
space. Is there a clock? I don't know. I'm usually up against the clock. Go for it. We'll have another
minute. OK. Thank you. I didn't see the big clock, and I don't want to go over.
But the other thing is, I know you're performance-based on the budgeting, but I would also look at key
performance indicators. And you can include that with it. But it's really focused in on these units.
How many of these things are you getting done that are very important? And how much do they cost? I
hope that would help. So that's my intention, not to criticize, but to add value. So I want to make
that sure. So thank you for that.
Thank you. Any other public comment? Anybody here? Thank you, Isabelle. This is Christopher MG from
the Chamber of Commerce. Thank you for your time. Fun, interesting meeting. I appreciate Jessica and
her public finance, Kurt Zorn, Property Taxes 101, on how the pie works. And it's a little bit
goes to the fact that I've talked about population increase. How do we get less taxes paid? You get
more people moving into Bloomington. And that's going to be increasingly more important as we rely on
Lytmore. So I can't stress that enough. And I want to echo Dave's point on sort of the fiscal environment
we were in, because I was getting a little bit earlier
or is it it was like I didn't want this sort of outcome based to be a staff validate me. I used to institute
validate me Friday where we would validate all of the employees in our office. We want to get a sense
of what are things costing and what are we getting from them. And that is ultimately that. And from
the council point of view and I back that public engagement, your best bet for public engagement is
to learn the budget yourselves and explain it to your constituents.
during those constituent meetings or when people are at the grocery store. People don't look up things,
they call me usually because I'm usually at these meetings. This is their best way to get it and you're
the best sort of conduit of that information. So that's really important as well. From the council point
of view as well, what is going to be success look like for this year? If we're in September, what is
this priority-based budget going to look like as like we've succeeded?
We're doing great. And that might be just a few things on what we're spending and what we're getting
from. I use certain things like the lead pickup that we don't do anymore. Probably on a cost benefit
basis didn't sort of work out. The numbers didn't. And as we get into where this fiscal crunch comes
is we're going to have to make some tough decisions. We want to have the data in front of us to make
those tough decisions. And the council, I think, is an important partner in that. So just keep because
this can go in a lot of different directions and you can
find yourself next September nowhere farther down the road. So that's where I'm hoping on and I want
to be helpful. The chamber wants to be helpful in any way possible. Thanks for your time. Thank you.
Any other public comments on improving the budget process? Okay. Any final comments? Looking at Gretchen
because she has to leave.
Yes. Mr. Keough has brought up our audit several times, and I just want to acknowledge that those are
very important questions. And I'm not sure, it's been mentioned several times at various meetings, but
I'm not sure the message is really getting through to the public that when we came into office in January
2023, the 2021 audit had just been completed. So I want to- It was office 24. 24, sorry. But the point
is our controller here and her staff have been really,
working very hard on getting us caught up. They inherited that delay, and we will be caught up by next
year. So I share Mr. Keough's enthusiasm for having the audits done and published on time. That's why
we're cleaning up our backlog here, and I really appreciate. I'm sure he knows in his professional capacity,
and I've been through audits before too, they are incredibly time consuming. It's not a, oh, we just
whipped it out in a month kind of thing.
It takes a long time and many, a lot of work. So thank you, Jessica, to you and your team for getting
us caught up and back in compliance and back in being transparent with the public. We appreciate that.
And I also appreciated Mr. MG's comments about Validate Me Friday. And I think that's one of the really
tough things about making priorities and outcomes based decisions is that individually you could pull
lots of programs from the city and you could say well this is this program does something that's good
and the person who's working on it is working really hard and so it doesn't feel good to have to go
back to the person who's working hard and doing something that's good and say it is good you are working
hard but we still have to cut it to accomplish things that are more urgent important
expensive, and it's people we love and work with every day, and it doesn't feel good, but that is what
that really means. And so I'm also not a fan of Validate Me Friday. I want to validate us for real.
I don't want to just give us a participation certificate and say, you get a pass because I like you.
And I do have to go. Thank you, everyone. Good conversation. I look forward to the next steps.
Thank you. Thank you.
Okay, is it all right if we go to the next agenda item? Which is actually the previous agenda item.
Setting salaries for elected officials. So in your packet, we have the draft ordinance. Thank you, I
think Kari drafted that, thank you. Where we have a 2.7% increase for the mayor, the city clerk and
city council members. Is there any feedback on that or does that look okay?
committee members for us to forward to the full council. Just a clarifying question. So when we do a
COLA, does that change? It changes the base rate for everyone moving forward, right? So when people
are elected in the next year, that happens. It's not just an adjustment to the current people. It's
for the position. Right.
I really, it bothered me last year, too, that the mayor's salary has some change there on the end of
it. I don't know if that bothers anybody else, but. Seems weird. I mean, it was like that last year,
too, and I don't know if we want to round that, but I find it kind of obnoxious to have
I can't remember what the random change was last year, but there was random change associated with last
year's, too. I think that our salary ordinance has change on everything, too. I think if that's what
it came up with in the budget documents, we just try to be exact and put that same number in. So it
just happened to be that clerk and council member salaries didn't have any change?
That was the amount that I confirmed. And I think you're right that last year the mayor's salary had
some change so it sort of continues on. Well, the grades don't have change. Like grades 1 through 14
and those steps don't have change in what we approved last night.
I mean, I'm looking at it right now. Yeah, yeah. It's trying to pull it up. There's no changes.
And I think, because I did check those to make sure that that COLA, I mean, I didn't check all of them,
but I checked enough of them, and there should have been change, but it was rounded. Yeah, I think we
really have that. And I think that the COLA are rounded. It's totally fine to take off the change. I
don't care either way. And I think we should send a message to Carrie.
cut this $0.57. I think that I would have a similar sort of like, oh my gosh, if it ended with an 11.
It's hard enough that it ends with a 10, but it's like a little $10.57. So shall we just cut the $0.57?
Yeah, just take off the $0.57. I mean, that literally is like my
like issues with numbers and evenness. But I would like to somehow have there not be change and just
round in one way or the other. And whether we round $0.57 down or $0.43 up, I'm really not sure that
I have a strong opinion about. Well, then we should round up, because that's the math rule. Over $0.50,
you round up. Treasury's doing away with pennies.
Yeah. It's consistent. Meltdown. I've heard that there's actually enough pennies still in circulation
that it shouldn't affect us for a while, though. People just have to stop hoarding the three billion
pennies that they have. All the copper is going to go out of circulation. Yeah. All right. So other
than that change, do we have agreement? And I think we'll need a motion and a vote.
to send this to the full council for consideration with the adjustment that the mayor's salary will
be $146,011. I motion to approve or to what recommend to council ordinance to fix the salaries of all
elected officials. Second.
OK. Sorry, with an amendment of $0.43. All right, let's vote on that. Councilmember Stosberg?
Yes. Councilmember Rallo? Yes. Councilmember Asari? Absolutely. I mean, yes. We also vote yes. What
was the last part of that motion? As amended, I guess, is what I should have just said.
So what the mayor's salary is, Isabelle said, of $146.11. These motions. These motions. OK. Does anybody
have thoughts on the process and rationale for the future of setting these elected official salaries?
for this meeting and look at the discussion that we had for the survey that got filled out.
But my recollection is that there was a majority of council members who wanted some kind of process.
And so I guess my suggestion is to have that information, to remind us all about that information going
into our next meeting and kind of start working in some ways from
what was done last year and assessing that. And I feel like this group might be a decent group to assess
that with. There's only, I mean, I'm the only one that was on that committee. And I know council member
Rallo at least has expressed, I'll say concern with the, like the result of that and like how those
priorities are being. So like your perspective is just really different from what was presented.
On that I think and so yes and no, I mean I I just want to again say the process really was Broken and
it's not a fault of the committee because you were under a time constraint but Having it land in the
packet without a discussion from the full council I think placed everybody in this weird position at
the end of the year during You know a very
not well attended meeting, increasing salaries of us, of ourselves. I think it was something that took
a lot of people back. So I think under a more relaxed process where we have more time, I know the mayor
has expressed that she wants to see some kind of metric going forward, some rationale.
for setting council salaries, for instance. I guess what I mean by that is the rationale that we based
our stuff on, that you disagreed with some of that rationale in terms of the conclusions. It was only
lacking context of other elected officials. That was something that was missing. Otherwise, I thought
it was the committee did good work. I think that ESOT had more
issues, and correct me if I'm wrong, with the principles that the committee came up with last year.
Yeah, and I think we did this process by collecting all of these responses, right? I think that each
of the principles presents in my mind a sort of, in some cases, I think in some cases,
what do you call these, you know, if we think it this way, then there's, there's, there's a follow on,
there's follow on. Yeah, there's the, there's like a logical thing where we go, if we say, okay, if
we're saying this, then, you know, we need to be consistent about this is sort of some of the issues.
I think some of the other issues though, are that I think they presented those, some of those following
through with this thought presents
presented externalities that we haven't figured out how to address from my perspective. And I listed
those in detail, I think, for each one. I think sort of regardless, there's going to be a couple of
externalities. And I think I, namely,
the question of whether or not the optics, as always, of setting our own salaries, I think, is always
going to be something that has to be contended with. But I think we did have, I gave some suggestions
for things like that. Like, for example, whether or not we could establish a commission, an external
commission, and appoint residents to have these discussions and make the recommendation to us to draft
an ordinance.
We've tried to explore questions of whether there's ways to raise salaries without doing it permanently.
So are there some type of structure that you can put in? And I'm not necessarily saying this is the
best option, but like a longevity pay or something like that. Can you put in some type of structures
that enable us to get around the fact that once salaries are high, they can't come down?
And then a sort of separate thing is I think that maybe perhaps a more important critique, and maybe
I should have started with this, is that if you actually follow through with all of those criteria,
we end up I think where we were, which is where we are currently, which sort of gets at the sort of
I think epistemological challenge, which is that
if we're building a thing to justify giving ourselves larger salaries. My point is that you look at
this at the standards and you'd go, yeah, you'd pay us about $25,000 by looking at all of those things,
especially then if you add Dave's criteria as well. So yes, I don't know if that's particularly helpful
in moving us forward in any conversation. Well, I think that when it came down,
of some of the principles I agree with. I think that most of the principles that the ad hoc committee
came up with last year I agreed with. I did read your extensive comments, thank you, on the survey.
And I think you had some good points we need to incorporate. I think where the problem really arose
is saying we are a percentage, we need to get a percentage of what the mayor makes. That somehow that did not.
lead to a dollar amount that I thought was reasonable. And I think most of us, obviously, thought was
reasonable, because it's not what we passed. Right, right. But it even came like that. That was a very
hard to measure metric, because you say, OK, we make what the mayor makes. Is it all divided by 9, divided
by 6, divided by a veto majority? How do you?
How do we say that? And then is that the mayor doesn't work.
work sort of hour-based and so we made other arguments about like how much time we spend doing it so
so then how do you determine the percentage you know is it you know is it like again so is it just divided
by us as individuals or is it divided by the percentage and I think the argument they made was like
the percentage of hours worked and so okay well the mayor doesn't work 40 hours a week so you know so
then it becomes again it's just like what are we pegging it to so I think we just have to be really
consistent I agree with with Isabel that you know I think I think that it's the it's a step in
in the right direction, if we want to set just a thing that then automates itself, I think that that's
the ideal. So that it's not us saying, you know, we by some virtue have come together, we've come out,
we've decided we must give ourselves raises. But it's saying, like, here's the standard, and this is
the standard, and we're gonna put the standard to practice. But again, it's a question of consistency.
We have to think through it all the way, and we can't,
We cannot be inconsistent and say, well, the mayor makes 142 and she works 40 hours and we work 25 hours
or 14 hours or 15 hours, so we should make that percentage of what she makes. Those are two different
arguments. I want to be really clear about a couple of things. One is that the group last year did not
We didn't start or envision or have any initial conversations that were like well we should be paid
more so let's figure out a way to have us paid more. That was not ever part of any of those conversations,
and we very deliberately had multiple conversations.
very specifically said we need to start with like nothing and build something as opposed to starting
with an assumption that we should get raises or that we deserve raises. So that's the first thing I
wanted to mention. And secondly, in terms of that 40 hours, we also had several conversations around
the idea of burnout and healthfulness.
and looking at the 40-hour week not necessarily as, oh, the mayor works 40 hours, so that's what we
should base it on, but that full-time jobs are pegged at 40 hours in this country. That is the standard
kind of weekly thing, because that is what has been kind of considered a reasonable number of hours
to work to avoid things like overwork and burnout, and that somebody working 40 hours philosophically
should be able to
make ends meet, which I think is a democratic ideal. And so that is what you're basing that 40 hours
on. Not necessarily that the mayor works 40 hours, but that as a full-time position, which we counted
the mayor's position as a full-time position, that's
We shouldn't expect, oh, well, count the mayor's 60-hour position because we expect our mayor to work
60 hours a week. We thought that that was an unhelpful kind of lack of balance to expect a mayor to
always work 60 hours a week. And so we based that 40 hours on the societally kind of accepted measure
of 40-hour work weeks, which I want to recognize right now there's a whole lot of people who have to
work more than 40 hours a week or more jobs than one.
because they can't make ends meet, because there are larger issues related to pay in the country,
and wages, and not just them, but also how much things cost. And so then people are stuck in unhealthful
work cycles in terms of how much they have to work to make those ends meet. So that is where the 40
hours came from. Not that we think the mayor works 40 hours, or only works 40 hours, or whatever, was
pegging it on the fact that it was a full-time position.
And I just want to make those things really clear, because I've heard those things a couple of times,
and I've tried to say that kind of comment a couple of times. And people don't always seem to listen
or hear when I make that comment. So making it really fixed again, those were the assumptions that we
walked in on. Would you say the mayor has an exempt or a non-exempt position? So when calculating hours
for a full-time pegging?
Because you do build that into a salary expectation. So in my job, I am expected to just work whenever
I have to work. So I get paid as though I'm expected to work whenever I have to work.
Probably to some degree. But I also think then that our department heads also have that expectation.
I was just actually meeting with the department head this morning about something that we're working
on together. And they very much were like, yeah, I'm really going to need the weekends to work on this
thing because my weeks are full of meetings and I can't actually get things done during the week. And
that was about the moment where I was like, how healthy is that? So we also then.
pegged the mayor's salary to our department head's salary in that kind of ideal way, recognizing,
you know, we've got to recognize that our department heads also probably are putting in significantly
more than 40 hours a week. And, you know, and probably a lot of people in positions, you know, high
ranking positions like that end up putting in more than 40 hours a week. Now, is that actually healthy?
But that's our society. That is our society. But that's why we base it off of 40 hours. And I think
that's a really great point that, again, you noted. You said multiple times. I think, though, then there
was a follow-on part to that, which is how much council members work. So the argument was based on the
hours we work as a proportion of that 40-hour work week, right?
That then the challenge that I've said multiple times is it's like, okay, wait, we have almost 100%
control over the amount that we work. And so it becomes this, you know, it's like,
So again, it's not the best measure of that. So I say, well, maybe a better measure is that you say,
if we like that argument, that we're a portion of the mayor. And I think that's, again, don't get me
wrong. The critique does not say that this was bad. I'm just pointing out, let's follow this all the
way through. If it is that we say that we like that argument, that we're a portion of the mayor, then
my argument would be that we as a council collectively are, so you either define
you either divide her salary by nine and you just say that
we make the equal part of a mayor. Or you say a majority of council members, because that's what it
takes to pass anything, is what it is. But I think if we do that, we end up at 25. So that would be
my approach to the metric if we're taking that approach of pegging it to the mayor. So my objection
with pegging it like that is that that assumes that all of us,
So if we say that the mayor knows all of the information and all of the things, then dividing it by
nine assumes that each council member only needs to know a ninth of the things. And so if we take what
Mr. MG said earlier about one of our tasks should be as council members to understand the budget so
then we can communicate the budget to our constituents, we all then need to understand all of that thing
so that we can communicate it effectively. So each of us need to understand all of the things
so that we can communicate them effectively to our constituency, which doesn't mean dividing us all
by nine. It means that we each have equal onus and responsibility to do that. And I know that we don't
all do it. And that's where it gets into something that I said earlier that I think in one of the budget
things, or maybe in that survey, that spitefully, I would rather everybody get paid less
even though that means that some people are getting paid less than they deserve, then have one person
getting paid for things that they don't do. And that's where it is on all of us individually to be a
good representative. And it could be all across the board, and the only people that are at all possibly
tracking that are voters every four years. In local elections, that doesn't always happen. In any elections,
that doesn't always happen. We have tons of unqualified, underqualified people who don't do their jobs.
at all levels of government in this country.
And there's no guarantee for that. So spitefully, yeah, I would rather underpay people who are doing
a great job than overpay people who are doing a crappy job. But how do we do that? There is an interesting
point is that we do have a mechanism that if we really wanted to go in this direction, we have a mechanism
where as a council, you can remove another council member. Only for non-ordinates, though. But the point
is we could also change that ordinance in relation here.
politically well right because because then it could be that I just don't like this person like right
but but but I think but it but it does illustrate the the challenge to your point is that we don't have
we don't have that accountability mechanism you know that
We could be absentees, in essence, or just show up to a meeting having not read anything, say nothing
at said meeting, and leave. But then there's a flip side of this, which I think is also, and I've raised
this multiple times and in the response, is there are some natural inequities then that exist because
what happens then for an at-large member,
I have a larger amount of constituents that I need to talk to. How do you balance that out? This is
what first got me thinking about the longevity idea is that I recognize
the amount of people that reach out to Dave on things where he's not even their representative. It's
just like he's been here long enough that people will include him in things, right? We actually talked
about longevity and we decided that that was just not
a good idea, partly because of how that could actually encourage people to stay in office and fresh
eyes and fresh blood. Exactly. It's really important. Exactly. We talked about that. But all I'm saying
here is that, and we've got to go to public comment, but all I'm saying here is just that, again, it
was like that the tension is that if we go with that thinking, we're like, yeah. So then we actually
think very differently about council president's salary, actually. We have to think very differently about
if you're at large versus district, you have to think about committee assignments. But maybe that is
actually part of the answer, is that you start structuring incentives for a particular thing.
So it's like, I don't know, and maybe there's like a, it seems strange, but like a bonus pace structure
for, so you have a baseline within you say,
council member you get you know whatever $500 for being on a committee or something like that you know
whatever it is and then it's like but but must attend 80% of said meeting you know like and we have
just some very stringent so so that we're actually getting compensated for the additional things like
I've raised this I mean I am on more committees than and I have been like as met every both two years
I'm just like I will do it like you want to put me I think I'll be on that's actually not necessarily accurate
Okay, that's fine.
at the top of some, but it's also like every committee requires different amounts of work. Sure, and
that's a fair point, right? That's a good point. So there's a lot of variables. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because
planning, for example, is something that is a very intensive committee to be on, right? And so thinking
about those assignments, maybe you just break it down. You're like, planning gets $600, and the other
one gets $100, and the other one, we just have the structure.
I do want to go to public comment. I do want to just before I'll get to Dave as well, but just briefly
want to say that part of me thinks we should just not be spending time on this. Because there's no good
solution. This is what I wrote on my sub stack. There's no good way to do this.
Dave, and then we'll go to the public. Well, just to say that I hope you brought up something last night
that I agree with very strongly, and we all agree that there's extreme wealth inequality in society
and extreme pay inequality. I hate to have this baked in the cake in terms of inertia going forward.
So Hopi's point is that the percent increases of COLA in salary yields much more in terms of dollar
amount for higher paid individuals within the city. And that's apart from whether COLA is an insufficient
measure of cost of living increase too. So I would like to bring up lower paid employees and
One means of doing that would be to, in some way, cap the highest paid. Keeping in mind that there is
a differential of responsibility. You know, if you've got a problem, department head, after hours, has
to pick it up or go into late hour working or weekends and so forth. So I'm not talking about absolute
equality here, I'm talking about just kind of
narrowing that gap, which I think was your intention of bringing that up, and I think it's a good point.
So it is related to the mayor's salary. It's related to the department, obviously, tangentially to the
department heads. But it's something we should discuss, I think, with the administration next budget
cycle. Whether it could be, how do we effectuate that? Okay, let's go to the public. Is there any member
of the public who would like to comment on
Setting salaries for elected officials, I think we have Kevin Keough. Yes. First of all, I was in on
this conversation at the council meeting. You didn't have public comment, so I was ready then. So I
was hopefully prepared for this. But if not, I'll probably need to send you an email. But first of all,
the council service is not a full-time administrative or executive position.
I think it's a fact that it's a civic responsibility rooted in representation and accountability to
the people who live here. And that's why I've been throwing out this concept of the median household
income as your basis. And this is something that the Redevelopment Committee or some economic committee
out there has that data that would show what the median household income is for Bloomington, Indiana.
And you can use that as your basis. And that goes up and down based on how well Bloomington is doing.
So it's kind of a good measure. It's not political in any way. You don't have to talk about who else
is making it or how much time you're putting into it. You're talking about the successful outcome of
people who live in Bloomington. Their wages are increasing. So I really hope, sometimes I feel like
an imposter syndrome.
It's weird, but I hope you're listening that, you know, that might be, I know you've talked and talked
and talked about this, but that might be a great basis to use or something very comparable to that.
And I beg you to do that because this is excruciating listening to this. Anyway, that's my point and
hopefully it's coming across. Thank you. Thank you. Any other public comment?
Seeing none, I think we can talk about median household income when we continue this conversation at
our next meeting. And I think for the next meeting, we should reread the survey results and have those
in mind and see if we can come to any kind of agreement or plan for elected official salaries.
So talking about the next meeting, I think that item four will have to be postponed until then. I think
it's very important. This is part of our duties as a fiscal committee is to track the city's fiscal
position, have an understanding of how we're doing. And so let's definitely talk about that next time.
Let's try to schedule our next meeting.
And I propose we have a meeting in November, but not in December, because in December we will have a
deliberation session. And that will be, that can count as our fiscal committee duties, if that's all
right with everybody. So looking at, we used to do Wednesdays at 1.30, is that right? I thought it was
1.30. I thought it was 1.30.
So we look at maybe the week before Thanksgiving. That be the 19th? Right open on the 19th. Does that
give enough time to talk about any deliberation for certain stuff, or are you just going to do that
kind of outside of meetings?
I was just gonna do it. I can, you know, text you all for advice. I'm not saying I won't need advice,
but I don't think we need to do that in a meeting. Say again the time on the 19th. At 1.30? 1.30. 1.30
on the 19th. I think we should do an hour and a half. If that works.
Does that work for Jessica? 130 to 3? Yep. It's November 19th, 130 to 3. And it looks like there is
a room. OK. Does that work for our council staff? Is it this room? Too bad. This is the good room. Yeah,
one of us can come in. All right, let's do that. And then we are adjourned. Yay.