- This is a special full committee meeting, April 10, 8.33 a.m. Hopi-Sasker, District 3. McClary, at large.
- Isabel P. Mott-Smith, District 4. Gretchen. Oh, sorry, Gretchen. Thank you, Mayor. Pauline Lines and
- Deputy Clark. Thank you. So, gender review and approval. Yes, Jeff is not here.
- And this is why the first thing is review of controller reports. So part of that is recording questions
- for Jeff to be able to answer next time. But similarly, if there are reports that are not included in
- here. So essentially, you know how we've been going back and forth between council stuff and controller
- stuff. This was supposed to be a controller meeting. As he's not here, we essentially flipped that.
- And so next time, there will be a more
- have complete conversation around the reports that he submitted and if there's any other additional
- reports. So that's the first agenda item. That's also why I don't have any public comment related to
- that agenda item. He's not here. So I didn't think people would comment on this next time. And then
- I figured we could take this opportunity to look at that elected official salary framework stuff that
- we kind of talked about last time and there was general agreement.
- So to look at that again, to modify it, to see if we can do something with that. Any notes? So there
- is public comment related to that agenda item. Any notes related to budget calendar? Because I updated
- a couple things based on the elected official salary stuff, and then a term on it. So do you want to
- move approval of agenda? OK.
- All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Great. Thank you. So these controller reports, I figured
- the easiest thing to do would just be to kind of scroll through them. And they're in the packet.
- I don't know. Actually, I didn't join the Zoom. I don't know if I should. That would be helpful for
- anybody to have them on screen. Remember the public do we have? We do have several participants up there, don't we?
- I should start doing the Zoom so that, yeah, it may work on that. I should have been working on that
- while I was waiting, and why? Can I ask you a question? Yes. Were these quarterly expenditure or budget
- performance reports as it's described shared with the fiscal committee last year? No. Because these
- are new to me, and I appreciate it.
- It's certainly something that's come up in angle, but it's like before is sometimes a rather large delta
- between what's budgeted and spent. I don't think we're thinking on a routine basis. I'm trying to dig
- into that, but this makes it way, way easier to see you understand and direct. I'm not recording anymore.
- Probably can't talk about this one. Yeah. These are, you should probably,
- Make sure that we're aware of like, obviously they can look in the fiscal committee packet, but just
- like a heads up. Yeah. Yeah. These reports are in our packet. If you're interested, take a look. Good
- question. All right. I'm now in the meeting.
- Where did my screen share go? All right. And I hope this is the right window. Oh dear. No, this is not
- the right window. Sorry. We really have too many windows open here.
- Because some of these are probably cyclical like you see, you know, 2% has been expended because this
- thing happens in June or whatever. Yes. And so that's part of what, you know, we can make sure to ask
- him to make sure that this is there. So we have our first, yeah, is budget performance.
- One of the things that John might do is we sat down last week and he was like, how specific do you want
- these? And so I did sort of like a mid level of each of the funds, but he could break this down even
- further in terms of say under animal shelter, all of the different, you know, personnel expenses, this
- expense, that expense. Did he do that somewhere in the end? That's great. And so I thought that this
- first one,
- was specific enough for our purposes. Actually, I guess that's the thing. I hadn't looked at these closely
- since we had that discussion. And I said, if it's easy for you to do a second one that is more specific
- in case people want to see it, go ahead and do it. Because of course, all of this has to be made accessible.
- And so it's this time to make sure that he can put all of these together.
- And so he did. So if we have feedback for him on whether we want to see all of these splits or not,
- that would be helpful. Or whether we want to see, you know, this is a quarterly report, right? So do
- you want to see this kind of split every quarter? Do you want to do it, you know, once a year,
- twice a year? What do we want? And then, so that one is very, very long, kind of scrolling through this quickly.
- for you folks online, it's of course available in the packet from this meeting. And of course it's long
- because we have a lot of funds and a lot of detail in each of those funds. And then we're getting down,
- actually there should be one more different one that's not budget performance somewhere. Yeah, the next
- one is the revenue overview.
- Yeah. And he thought about putting transfers in and did not have the time to get a report on transfers.
- But that is one that I think, Matt, you might have mentioned being interested in that. I think he also
- said there were not many transfers that had happened yet this year. So it would be very unusual. Yeah.
- Um, there is this line inter-governmental, which, yeah. Oh, these are revenues though. Yeah, these are
- revenues. So this is the revenue performance run. So I think that that means that we just have those
- three in here. Well, revenue performance details in this report. Okay. And so one of the things that
- he did mention, of course, is that, you know, we haven't,
- actually gotten our tax, like property tax this year. Yeah. And then there's revenue performance. It's
- a little bit more in depth. So Isabella, you mentioned that you have questions for him. Are there questions
- that would be good to share right now, and then I can
- let him know about or are the questions that should it's just easier to put them on the spot for next
- time like what did you want to know oh actually i was thinking of questions not related to this report
- but i do have a couple of questions here okay um so i see the controller's office budget uh under the
- general fund has been extended to 64 percent and then
- When I dig in, it looks like a lot of that is, like the entire amount that's budgeted for inter-fund
- transfers under the controller's office has been done. So I guess I just wanted to review what those
- are. Okay. So I'm going to put that up. Obviously they happen in the first quarter of the year.
- It's all done. All right. So that's under controller's office.
- So you want to review the inter-fond transfers. Yeah. All right. Other questions that we can pass it,
- Jeff, in terms of them, like? Things to be discussing within the next meeting, but if there's things
- to tee up. Yeah, if there's things to tee up, or similarly, if you feel like there's something missing
- that you want,
- Well, I think, oh, I'm starting to go in my bathroom. I'm very sleepy. Yeah, I want to just hear the
- presentation more to make sure I understand the context of all parts. But yeah, I think this is really
- helpful in getting us closer to kind of having a full picture of revenue for bonds to expenditure, which
- we've kind of just never had. Yeah. And I think the inter-bond transfer piece is
- important part of that because we do a fair amount of that. So you feel that it's not like revenue sources
- are just starting to respond and staying there and then being spent. So to fully understand, sometimes
- that's helpful. I think the detail is really, really nice. Not necessarily review every single line,
- but when you have a question about a certain substantive area or a particular department's budget coordinates,
- summary, you can dig in. So I found that helpful in preliminary review. I don't want it to be important,
- but I mean, it's quarterly, and it is something that we need to automate to make, you know, a generated
- report and meet accessibility requirements or to be delegated if it's, you know, due time consuming
- for the enroller itself. Like, I think that's, I think, yeah. When I, when I spoke to them about it,
- it was like, it was more like,
- He wasn't sure how long it was going to take. Yeah, that's where we were still in the preliminary. But
- I think he included it, so it might have been fine. But so he would like that detail every time. I think
- having this detail accordingly makes this be incredibly valuable for us and for the council. Wonderful.
- Isabelle, what were you going to say? Another one I noticed was already significantly expanded. It was
- under the lit economic development
- the ESD department has already spent 53%. And then when I drill down on that, it looks like
- their organizational support line is already 89% spent. So out of a $4.4 million budget, they've already
- spent $3.9 million. So I'd like to know more about that. And of course, that's another one.
- Oh, is that the line that they used to say? Okay, thank you. And it's questions like that that Jeff
- wouldn't necessarily know. It's a miracle that I know the answer to that. Yeah, because all he does
- is the numbers and so he wouldn't necessarily know those things. So that's one of the reasons. And then overall,
- I'd like to know, and maybe I should do this, but how did the adopted budget become the amended budget?
- Like, when did we amend it? It's encumbrances. So that's what amends it. So if you have money that you
- didn't spend in the previous year that you have to encumber for the next year, that gets added to the
- budget, and that's the amended budget.
- And it is confusing sometimes. I had to freak out. For example, yesterday I was looking at our phone
- line. I was like, why is our phone line so far ahead? And it's because the PO for the entire amount
- that we'll pay for the phone is already open. So even though we haven't incurred all that and spent
- all that yet, actually, since the months haven't happened, the PO is open. And so it shows this hasn't
- been spent in new world terms.
- Great, so we have to get some questions answered. I mean, very basic. Right. And do a counseling 101,
- and that's about it. Well, I had a question. Which fund is being used to pay FLOG? I think it would
- probably either be ESLIT or general fund. I don't know that each
- each line for each invoice is attributed to a fund in these reports. You'd have to look that up individually.
- So that would be a question outside of the scope of a report, but you could ask Jeff and he can put
- that up for you. I have a non-related question for Jeff, which maybe Gretchen could help with. We're
- done with this, but maybe we can do more. Are we done with this?
- I didn't have public comment on for this one because Jeff wasn't here to like give the full presentation.
- I would actually move that we accept public comment on this agenda item because I think like we could
- similar to us asking questions or making comments that we could inform for the conversation. So if you
- folks may be interested. All right. We can go ahead and amend the agenda right now.
- So then we want to do public comment before you ask your general question. The question again, the answer.
- Yeah, because it's, it's not related to the reports. Great. So, is there any numbers of the public who
- are interested in commentating on those reports? See that Mr. Keough was raised to say, I'm going to
- stop my screen share. So that then we can, there we go. Mr. Keough, go ahead and go ahead.
- For lack of a timer, I'm timing on my wrist. So if you try to keep to three minutes, I'll be sure to
- go ahead and start with your name officially whenever you do. Yes. You hear me? Yes. Good morning. I'm
- Kevin Keough. As a CPA and internal auditor, I've spent my career writing and analyzing reports. I'm
- here today because lately, Bloomington's reporting is moving in the wrong direction, from transparency
- to obfuscation. Bloomington deserves the best.
- We deserve a city that treats reporting not as a burden to placate the public, but as a fundamental
- commitment to excellence in public service. Two recent attempts to report to the public show exactly
- why our current approach is failing us. First, the AFR. Our 2025 annual financial report was due March
- 1st. The official submitted report date is 3-25-2026. We can debate if it was late or not. But worse,
- when the public tries to access it,
- We are no longer provided with a simple downloadable document. We are forced to navigate a complex gated
- portal, effectively hiding the information behind the technical barrier. This is not transparency. It's
- a retreat. Second, the politics of paving has reported in the B-Squared Daily Bulletin of April 6th.
- We see data discrepancies between the State of the City address and internal department reports.
- Geographic miles versus industry standard lane miles. This isn't just a technicality. It's a failure
- to provide a reliable, verifiable source of truth. Reliable information adds value. Misinformation breaks
- trust. Using geographic segments to make an administration look better isn't reporting, it's spin. The
- solution. I honestly don't understand why we're struggling with this.
- Why doesn't the city simply adopt best practices for reporting? The Government's Finance Officers
- Association, the GFOA, has provided a clear roadmap, the distinguished budget presentation criteria,
- and their financial reporting framework. This isn't reinventing the wheel. It's adopting a proven standard
- used by high-performing cities across the country to ensure data integrity. I'm asking committee to
- move the needle today.
- Stop the backslide. Restore the direct one-click access to our financial reports. No more gated portals.
- Formalize excellence. Formally adopt the GFOA best practices for both our accounting financial reporting
- and our budgeting frameworks. End the data spend. It just doesn't work. It only serves to break the
- trust and confidence of the people you serve. Bloomington is a world-class city. Our financial reporting
- and budget presentation should be too. Thank you.
- Thank you. Are there other members of the public who would like to comment on these reports? I don't
- see other hands. All right. So bringing that back to the committee then.
- unless there's other specific mentions of the report as well. What was your question? My question was
- referring back to our March 13th meeting with Rudy and when we should, or whether this has already begun,
- the conversations with the county about the MUST task force,
- to come up with a county-wide rate? The Mayor Jeff and Margie are mad about that and we're going to
- work until the primary is done so that we know who would actually be in office voting on it and why
- that would happen. So there's a, we've been talking about it, but there's not an actual step-by-step
- report immediately. Okay, but the committee has to meet before October 1st. Yes, but because the actual
- people who would be
- accountable for the money having. We're going to talk to. We're involving all of the appropriate parties
- who would be involved in the future as well. Okay. And then also related to the March 13th meeting,
- was there a written report that really was going to provide to go along with their analysis of the
- SB1 and party crisis legislation impacts. I think that's a Jeff question. It's easier to use contact.
- So was there a written report? Yeah. I think he mentioned it, but they were still working on it. And
- like many other courts, such as the AFR, if it's no longer accessible to the public, we have a little
- lag in how we can treat that on the website.
- We can get that to this group since we're trying to make everything accessible. If something cannot
- be made accessible for a third party, we have some work around us. Okay. So in other words,
- the administration is working on getting the AFR back on our website in a next fully accessible way.
- Right now, the step that we're at is removing everything that is not accessible by the April 24th deadline,
- which is 14 days away.
- there's a lot to do and it involves much more than just the AFR. So it'll be a minute. Okay. So before
- we move on from that conversation, it looks like we've got about maybe 25, 30 minutes to talk about
- the Selected Official Compensation Framework. And I think, I'm sorry that,
- Dave is not here this morning. He has feelings about this. But I figured to start with, of course, that
- was also on this committee a couple years ago. We could start by looking at the annual process, honestly,
- not even regarding principles, which in April says that we validate and update the framework.
- And it is April, so we are validating and updating the framework at this point. And so at least we're
- doing that usage from it.
- A year and a half ago when we did this, we really started trying to very deliberately start from scratch
- on it without any preconceived notion of anything. We started the conversations around the
- guiding principles, wanting values to guide how city council makes decisions regarding the compensation
- and thinking about making sure that that public service was accessible so that
- community members of all socioeconomic statuses could decide to run, that it was equitable according
- to respective levels of responsibility and acknowledging the full-time versus part-time nature, that
- compensation enabled quality community service, that it also enabled informed decision-making in terms
- of research, et cetera, et cetera.
- and the whole thing was transparent and documented so that anybody could go like, why did they decide
- on a salary? Why did they get paid this much? Oh, it's because of this. And so I guess the first time.
- Sorry, the informed decisions, I thought it was talking about us making informed decisions
- about compensation. Yeah, so like. So the reason he referred to was to enable the decisions about sound.
- Not just general. Oh, yeah. I guess in the parent process, in the last one, it's more about ability
- for understanding how decisions are made on kind of a basic standard. Sorry, I have to interrupt.
- That's OK. But I figured that the first thing that we could talk about today were those guiding principles.
- And Noel, do we like those guiding principles? Do we feel like they need amending in some way? Do we
- want to add more? Yeah.
- I think my original comment indicates that I find them a bit confusing. All of them or specifically
- the number four? Well, also number three. Okay. Because I don't, I see it very closely aligned with
- number one. So level compensation makes elected office attainable for all community members.
- as far as socioeconomic status. And then compensation enables elected officials to meaningfully engage
- with and serve the community. Can you explain that difference to me? Go for it. Good question. Maybe
- they are very related. Maybe it's a little bit more about the front end, like ability to choose to run
- and serve in the first place versus
- the expected impact or outcome of paying people equitably or barely for the work and like does that.
- I think in general, their pay leads to better performance and outcomes. Like people don't feel undervalued.
- This is not about consultation in general. People don't feel undervalued. They feel motivated by their
- work. Like it matters, like it's valued, et cetera.
- To me, there's some differences in those, but I understand how they're definitely related as well. And
- I have no qualms of reformulating this framework. I think when I read through the values, they don't,
- yeah, they can probably be clarified what some of it means. I mean, forward-by also kind of filled me
- in demand. And so we could combine that too, and maybe just wanna
- three values, you know, and why I like reshaped them in ways that we think are clearer. And I do strongly
- with preference around that. I would say, as I reviewed them again, I think they are sound, like those
- are things that I value, how I make decisions, you know. I guess, um,
- A source of confusion for me is, especially on number four, is the perspective. Okay, so first, the
- first three are like, we want to set the level of compensation in order for it to be, in order for the
- job to be accessible or pay equitable, or I guess I would rephrase number three, something like the pay to,
- the motivational or recognized service or something like that. But then number four is when we're making
- these, when we're implementing these top three, we need data and relevant objective data, which is who
- says it's relevant? I don't know. So it's kind of like a different,
- perspective. Like, yeah, you know, these are nouns and this is the verb. Yeah. My collection is that
- like we kind of, and number five also, four and five are more process oriented and first three are more
- kind of value and past oriented. Also just to note on number three, another thing we talked about in
- that context was like literally people being able to do things like pay for childcare or pet care or,
- you know, other things that they need to be able to free up more time in their lives.
- Yeah. Isn't that number one? Well, and that's where I think that they are related, but number one goes
- back to, you know, feeling like, okay, I'm going to run to do this job and this job is going to actually
- pay me enough to so that I can fit it into my life. But you're right. I mean, they are related. But
- I think one of the things that we talked about once we get elected, the bar is actually really low.
- or what we have to do. And so number three is almost like making the bar a little bit higher, you know,
- in terms of people not just feeling like they need to do them or that they can only do the minimum.
- It's that they can really invest more time because their compensation is high enough that they can chat
- care, pet care, do evenings, all that kind of stuff.
- Well then, were you, I can't, you were in a lot of these meetings. I was, I was just going to add, it
- might help to think of it as number one, the accessibility of public service was meant to mean that
- no matter what your socioeconomic status is, your own personal circumstances, you can afford to run
- for office, period, because right now, some of the ways salaries are set, they are so low that you cannot
- possibly actually run for office unless you have a partner, independent wealth, or some means that would
- actually support a salary that's
- running in 20,000, which is not even enough to, I don't know, pay for a home in Bloomington.
- Number three, I think, was once you're there, can you actually do the position without needing to take
- multiple extra jobs to do so without the things? So one is more before you run. The other is while you're
- there, are you actually meaningfully engaged on your last priority on a list of very, very
- because it's a big job and it's important. You guys, I'm putting it in council terms, my apologies for
- that, but I tend to think more about the council salaries in this respect, but once you're in the position
- and you actually afford to stay there and give it the time that it deserves, it's a big, big job. And
- even though it's technically part of time, it's, you know, you need to be able to engage with it and
- not have your full-time job that actually would mean that.
- Yeah, I think everybody's grappled with this. We always have kind of a patchwork of people who have
- no outside employment, part-time outside employment, or have full-time outside employment. I'm in a
- situation where, for instance, well, the beginning of my council service was a year and a half, I was
- doing part-time research for professors at IU, doing council. Since then, I've had full-time jobs, but
- I'm also in a situation now, or was anyway, where I could have requested
- 30 hours a week or 25 hours a week instead in my work. And like if compensation is at a level where
- like you can do that, like none of these are guaranteed outcomes, of course, but like the idea is, are
- we in the same way, you know, giving whatever average $10,000 raises to all our staff, like across the
- government, like doesn't guarantee better government performance, but I think it does set up a system
- where you're supported to be able to like maximize the chances of achieving that.
- I also want to mention that these guiding principles are supposed to be related to all the local official
- compensation, mayor, clerk, and council. But just for the sake of the public, I think that we focused
- a lot more on council in some ways, maybe because we are council, but also maybe because the clerk's
- salary, mayor's salary are already full-time salaries. Yeah. And the council isn't so not that they
- might not also
- need improvements in their compensation, but that it's a different calculus that those positions are
- needing to settle. Yeah, I think our assessment was, in applying these, that there were different levels
- of smaller and bigger deltas between where we were and what the values are for those different offices.
- So it's not like they don't matter for all of them. If the mayor's salary was $70,000 a year, yeah,
- we'd have a real problem across multiple people. It's not. It's perfect.
- Um, that does relate sometimes to the expert or pay these on number two. Um, yeah, does that help them
- both? Yeah, I guess I would, uh, suggest we rephrase. I don't disagree with anything that's been said,
- but I just think it's not clear. That's fine. So what I have written down right now, we could separate
- them to like a process oriented and like,
- that maybe the values themselves, the guiding principles should become a restatement of those first
- three in some ways. And I'm fine with one or three being combined, like it doesn't matter too much.
- And then four and five, what's kind of contained in those maybe is just a separate statement about process
- and how we see credit, what we see to be learned from process. So separate them into like one category
- of like process to set salaries.
- and then the actual values. Is values the right word for principles of the work once we get into it?
- The actual work? No. Number one is value. So I think doing it as
- pros paragraph is probably going to make it more clear than trying to bullet point at least work because
- there's number one, number three, kind of tying those together saying, you know, level compensation,
- you know, makes it allows people from various socioeconomic backgrounds
- to hold the office or to hold the office regardless of, I don't know. It's a little bit of both. It's
- like the ability to run in the first place and the ability to prioritize it appropriately when in office.
- Write that down. Write that down to fit it. I wonder about the data to, if we, some of this comes in
- the application. So I would say where like my high level reflection of all this is that like,
- Nobody really disagreed with the values. We disagreed with how they were applied. And in particular,
- people did not feel comfortable with the outcome reflecting something that is considerably different
- than the current submit, than the status quo. And so we talked at length about the role of benchmarking
- with other cities as a data input. And the question is,
- is that relevant to folks and to what degree versus other data inputs, like using the, you know,
- molded part, set apart, whatever it is, compensation framework, you know, categories and trying to actually
- like, there's one or two of those that don't apply well to elected officials rather than the staff,
- but still, like you can more or less use that system to at least get, you know, relevant.
- There's a subjectivity to the ratings, of course, inevitably, but it does give you at least a data point
- that you can try to make a decision based off. So I think that level of detail, I don't know if that
- needs to surface in the data process piece, what types of data we end up using.
- that comes to the application, because I think it was. I think that comes in the application, because
- we have the relevant information and data list down there, which we're not talking about yet. Oh, yeah.
- But in number four, it does say based on relevant objective data. And who's to say what's relevant?
- Yeah. So I guess this is the possibility to. So the question is, should the. So under guiding principles,
- do we need to
- explain what relevant objective data is? Is that what you're bringing up? Well, I was going along with
- a new structure where we have items one, two, and three under the Heading of Principles, and then items
- four and five under the Heading of Process. Okay. All right. The relevant information slash data list
- is down below. Thank you. Could it be like just
- you know, a subpart of that or a footnote. Yeah, I mean, like it is, regardless of how it's organized.
- I mean, like that is what it's referring to. And that is another piece of this that we either validate
- or change. Yeah. And this is like the other thing that I want to remind us all right now, including
- the public is when we first had published this framework a year and a half ago, it was in a very nice
- like graphic kind of PDF. And it,
- had to get shifted into something that was accessible. And so when it does get rewritten, it will need
- to get redone as an accessible document. And so that will make paragraphing maybe a little bit more
- important. I mean, we wanted to think about the format of this for us last year or two years ago a week.
- It was definitely more of a nice graphical presentation
- which goes back maybe to the bullet point thing. So even if paragraphs not bullet points, they're probably
- as bullet points because it fit nicely. And the consultant. That's right. So any other comments about
- the guiding principles piece in terms of things to change, things to combine, how to modify? So who's
- going to modify these? I think that
- We should keep talking about it, and then at the end, make some decisions about roles and responsibilities.
- That's kind of my thought at the end of our discussion today. Yeah. So if we want to go down, why don't
- we skip the basis of salary setting, because we were already talking about relevant information and
- data. Well, we're coming back to it.
- Probably not today, but eventually. Yeah. I'm not totally convinced that council members salary should
- be set as a percentage for major stuff. I think that I agree with that. Yeah. But I guess because we
- were already talking about relevant information data a little bit, I felt like that might be a good
- place to skip to right now. Okay. Yes. Yeah, that sounds good. Yeah.
- The information that was already on there that we looked at and considered, civil city pay ranges, which
- Matt already mentioned, budget restraints and capacity, which is super important, especially right now,
- talking to everybody, input from council members on the hours related to meet expectations, contextual
- information, reasonableness check, elected official salaries, comparisons with other cities, and then
- area median income and cost of living.
- So with the civil city pay ranges, one of the things that we ran into a year and a half ago was time,
- because as Matt said, there were, I mean, it's like an algorithm that the civil city was using, right?
- And so there are a couple of pieces of that algorithm that didn't work well with the elected officials.
- And I don't remember what all of them are right now, but I remember one of them was education, because
- it's not like there's a minimum education requirement or a certain degree requirement or anything like that.
- And so we couldn't just easily put in the responsibilities of elected officials into that algorithm
- and see what it spit out. But we did talk about figuring out how that worked a little bit in bottom
- line and then figuring out how to put it in just to see what it would do. And I guess I'm still interested
- in like kind of figuring out how we should do that if that is possible.
- It's not possible. The reason is we don't use that algorithm anymore. The algorithm was developed by
- an in-house person to support the process. But as we've gone on to work with our conversation experts,
- we've gone through the AFSCME salary study, which was a separate study, and then adjusted there.
- wages and had other conversations. Best practice is actually not to use anything like that for for civil
- city. It's market rate. That is the number one driving determinant is what is the market rate for that
- role in similar cities and then adjusting for compression problems with supervision and adjusting for
- equity for similar roles across the city. So administrative assistant office manager, program manager,
- similar titles like that exist in multiple departments, and they may do different kinds of work, but
- typically would be compared to each other in some way. That framework didn't come from Chrome? As a
- consultant, I thought that did. Yeah, I thought that did too. It was a way that HR was using to evaluate
- requests as they came in to, so Chrome created the A framework.
- And that was the main framework that was used. But when we were trying to resolve those compression
- issues and people were doing their job descriptions on them, we were trying to assess. So I had a question,
- but then I realized this is not the appropriate place. It's not really my meeting, so I just. All right, sure.
- I mean, we're clearly going to be talking about this for at least probably two or three or four more
- meetings. So yeah. What? I have to come back. Then you can watch that for it. It's fine. So do you think
- that knowing that, that there is a way to assess the elected salaries based on civil city pay ranges
- in that kind of like database mutual sort of
- My personal opinion is that legislative work was really different from the kind of work that gets done
- in the civil city. When you're writing legislation, it's very different. So, you know, if this was happening,
- if these salaries fell under, you know, the executive branches for review to set, we would be using
- benchmarks of similar cities in Indiana. That would be our top consideration because that would be closest to
- the methodology followed for the other. But I understand you have different methods you want to do,
- but you're sort of reinventing the wheel. So I have no thoughts on how to do that. So we probably need
- a different wheel. Members have thoughts on that. And I also actually have a question like differentiating
- council positions as legislative positions from clerk, from mayor. Because do the clerk and mayor
- in terms of responsibilities and because those aren't as strictly legislative as council member jobs
- are legislative. So is there a better comparison or more of a comparison in terms of those responsibilities,
- like the actual job responsibilities? I'm looking at or calling a little bit for this. Actually, I was
- going to ask the question, which is,
- Are you benchmarking to other second-class cities in Indiana, or are you benchmarking to peer cities
- around the country? We don't use peer cities around the country because we're not competing with the
- labor market in San Francisco for civil city positions. We might be with Madison or Ann Arbor or other
- places in the Midwest for some roles, but really not all. So no, just second-class cities in England.
- Well, if you want that detail, you would need to talk to Director Pichak. She's the one who
- has engaged all those incentives and could give you all that information. It was based on a misspeak.
- No, we just spoke yesterday actually around a similar topic. So it was, she said something about two
- resources for benchmarking salaries. And I didn't know what the other one was, but you referred to other
- cities. Oh yeah, they have specific data sets that they look at that are created by third parties.
- To your question about clerk positions versus mayoral positions versus council positions, are you asking
- for the actual duties as enumerated in state code? No. Or are you asking the actual duties that each
- different office does? The actual duties of like the actual stay-aligned skill set, just in terms of
- whether it actually is possible to, because I mean, what I regret to say was that
- You know, the legislative work is very different from what it's done in civil city. And so that that's
- not small, like an apples and oranges. And so what I guess I'm asking is if it, if it is more of a closer
- comparison in your opinion, between mayor responsibilities, park responsibilities and civil city employee
- responsibilities, like if there's so they're, they're apples and oranges too. And all of those.
- I guess I would say I'm not sure that I entirely followed the way that you're asking the question. So
- I don't think I can answer it, because I don't want to answer the full question. So that's why I'm kind
- of going, I don't know, because I don't, yeah, the question isn't very clear to me. Do you want me to
- show them after? I think so. The broader thing here, which is, OK, we're using the system internally
- in city government.
- uh, to sort of like weight a variety of factors that definitely are relevant, you know, in terms of
- impact, precision, making a matter of pressure involved, level of expertise. Like these things do matter.
- Uh, what I'm hearing now is that we, that we don't use that anymore. We just use market rate comparisons,
- uh, as the primary determinant. Like, well, the former wasn't perfectly suited to, uh, use as a,
- as a basis, but it seemed to have some relevance. Market rate.
- also obviously doesn't apply. I mean, it's just not a relevant comparison. No one is, with the exception
- of, what was that? I was going to say Tennessee Trade owner or colleague in Europe. But no, no, no,
- no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
- no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
- If that's what everybody's doing, it's just a level of circular reasoning that like doesn't have any
- value at all. Other than like this is existing conditions, we're going to keep replicating it, which
- is what we've been doing forever. And the question is, is that a good approach? And it seems like because
- it's the status quo, it is the default unless you can get agreement on something else. I would say the
- level of compensation for city council specifically does not support the values we've stated and we do know
- without any real doubt based on data analysis from the court's office and others like that. We demand
- considerably more of city council members in Bloomington than other peer cities do. We want to go to
- two meetings a month and no committees. Great, let's do that. And no legislation. Often most city councilors,
- city councils in Indiana, I think do not propose legislation. So that's
- So right, it's kind of a race to the bottom situation. Clearly, we're misaligned with what we're saying
- is valued, and that leaves us with a very, I mean, it leaves us with equity issues, and also accessibility
- and other related issues. So it's not an easy thing to solve, but the question would be then, what is
- the right basis if we have no relevant framework that we think we can draw on?
- city benchmarking alone, it's not a good, I mean we could use that as a starting point and actually
- try to do some data analysis about the relative expectations of the roles, like are we expecting twice
- as much of living through city council than like what other city councils do and you know, Greenwood
- or like whatever, like I don't know, like so that can be back to the drawing board, I mean it's just.
- Go ahead, Isabel, and then I need to be conscientious of the time. We need to see a public comment on
- this. And we need to kind of wrap up the, like, who's going to take some responsibilities of what to
- do to prepare for our next meeting. So go ahead. Well, I was just going to agree with Matt that there
- are things that were used in 2024 in the process of determining pay grades for city staff
- that are relevant, I think, to council members. I mean, the level of responsibility, the consequence
- of making a mistake, that kind of thing is very high for council members and that should be recognized
- somehow. So I hate to throw all of that out just because it's not used now. So Gretchen, am I understanding
- correctly those things are no longer used for? I wouldn't say that those things aren't considerations,
- rate is where we start. And then when you run it again, those compression issues or you're looking across
- similar roles, it goes down. It's always based on the job description and what is required for the job.
- So one of the difficulties you face, of course, is that you can't require anyone to work X number of
- hours as elected officials. You can work as many hours as you want or don't want. And it's illegal to
- use your time to set hours or to track time even. So it's just a,
- They're just kind of different situations. You can be fired in a civil city. Yeah, okay. Okay. Okay.
- So let's go to public comments real fast on this idea of the electric official salary setting.
- I see Christopher M.G. with a hand up. Once again, I'm going to time you on my watch, but try to stick
- to three minutes or less. Go ahead, Christopher. Good morning, Hopi, fiscal committee. This is Christopher M.G.
- speaking just as a resident today. The issue of compensation and I think going, piggybacking on what
- the deputy mayor had to say, there's a pretty high dispersion, I would argue, between the council members
- on how much
- and I don't think there's a real formula based on constituents and interest and everything else. So
- that's really kind of a hard way to sort of look at it. But the real reason I wanna push back is kind
- of this idea that the salary is going to open up socioeconomics, a wider range of candidates, which
- doesn't take into having in this field, going to city council and talking to our business members and
- talking to people to run is,
- It's the running for office that you did that you're not even bringing in. It's not being an office
- is where you're at now, but it takes substantial amount of time commitment to campaign while maintaining
- some sort of job. I can't imagine like a single mother doing something like that and the family.
- sacrifices that involve running financial fundraising, logistical fundraising, and just building a name
- recognition. That's all a lot of work that I don't think any data proves that if you raise the salary
- $5,000, you're going to open up this wave of diverse economic backgrounds to run for office. I just
- don't think it is. And compensation, I get it, it doesn't matter. And I look at the school board of
- members and MCCSC, it's $2,000 a year.
- I mean, I look at them and go, oh, that seems painful. We have volunteer members of the plan commission
- and the BZA who put a lot of work in there for the community for nothing. So I think we just need a
- little bit of balance on this. Cause I imagine some people based on the hours and on council probably
- over or underpaid if you're doing it by hourly or overpaid if you're doing it hourly. But I don't think
- there's a formula on what's right and what's wrong. The council chooses, I think,
- to speak to what Matt said, to go into some issues that Bloomington just goes into, but we do it by
- choice. And some of the details we get into, we do that by choice, not necessarily, I think the job
- demands it, but we want to do it. So I'm just gonna look at that in perspective as a fine resident of
- the wonderful city that is Bloomington, Indiana. Thank you. Thank you. I'll just add on 30 again to
- you. Okay.
- Kevin Keough, is your hands up anew? Yes. All right, go ahead. My clock has started. Kevin Keough, CPA
- internal auditor. I've reviewed the compensation framework and heard your discussion this morning. As
- a professional who deals in governance and oversight, I'm deeply concerned by the premise this is directed
- at the city council members
- I just don't see this as a position. This document uses language of human resources, pay ranges,
- market rates, and socioeconomic attainment. But although you may be employees of the civil city, you
- are truly fiduciaries of public trust. This is a fundamental difference between a job and a service.
- In my field, a fiduciary is someone who's held to the highest legal and ethical standard to care with
- the act of the best interest of another, in this case, the taxpayers. When you frame your
- compensation relative to departmental leadership, you're creating a false equivalence. Departments as
- our professional staff managed by the executive. You are independent legislative body. By benchmarking
- your pay against the very people you're tasked with overseeing, you compromise the independence required
- as elected members of the city council. You are not middle management of the city. You are stewards
- of its treasuries.
- Public service is a sacrifice and a calling. It's not a career path and a pay grade.
- focuses heavily on financial accessibility, but ignores the significant inherent benefits that comes
- with these seats. The professional stature, the community influence, and the platform that shapes policies
- are intangible assets of immense value. In my decades as a CPA, I've seen true accountability only exist
- when those at the top view themselves as servants of the fund, not beneficiaries of it. When the motivation
- for office shifts towards salary,
- The fiduciary duty is diluted. We don't need a market-based competitive salary for council members.
- We need a reasonableness check, though, that keeps your compensation as a modest stipend for service,
- ensuring your interest remains aligned with the citizens, not the payroll. I'm asking committee to reconsider
- the entire direction of this framework. Stop treating the council like a department. You are fiduciaries,
- not employees.
- If you must look at a date, look at the median income of Bloomington residents you represent, not the
- salaries of the administration you oversee. Ensure that being in council marriage remains a public service
- that honors the fiduciary duty you owe us. Bloomington deserves a council that values the office more
- than the paycheck. Thank you. Thank you. Sorry.
- Are there any other members that would like to make comments on this? Okay, so going back to past members
- or committee members acknowledging that it is past 930 now, the last thing on my agenda,
- was looking at the schedule. And so if you notice that I have down first elected official salary discussion
- today, and then I threw in an initial goal of November 4th as being the actual like adoption of that.
- And the next meeting that we're talking about council is the business is on May 8th. So that's approximately
- four weeks. And so to council member Piedmont Smith's comment from earlier,
- Who's going to rewrite these guiding principles? And then similarly, we only talked about specific pay
- ranges and that kind of benchmarking talked a little bit about benchmarking around the state of Indiana,
- other second class cities. I guess I am interested a little bit in some volunteerism of who wants to
- reach out and try to collect some data, who wants to rewrite this compensation framework.
- How do we want to do that? We can, since we are a committee of four, do this in pairs, and then report
- back in a month. And I guess that is something that I'm interested in doing. So what are you guys interested
- in doing? I could work maybe with Matt on rewriting the guiding principles. Does that work for you,
- Matt? Or I could do that with somebody else.
- I would say been mad at him, hopefully, since we were on the original committee. Yeah. And I'm the one
- that seems to be most confused by them. So that's why I would volunteer. And I would similarly volunteer
- to communicate with Dave and see about, and maybe, of course, Bolden, too. I don't know, or Bolden,
- if you're interested in or have the time.
- to think about refreshing, because you did a bunch of research a couple years ago with the second class
- city and you've got that spreadsheet somewhere. So, you know, wrangling Dave and trying to update that
- spreadsheet to see how cities have moved in the last two years in terms of salaries. And I actually
- had an interesting conversation this week with Madison, Wisconsin, and they are doing a similar sort
- of study right now and figuring out their alternate pay.
- And yeah, so I would absolutely harness Dave's because he also really wants to do benchmarking against
- other second class cities. So if you are the very least able to share that spreadsheet with me again
- so that then I can have the whole list and that would be great. Matt? I'm fine with that. I'm a little
- loathe for us to like do a ton of work in any direction if it's not going to be used at all.
- If I were a vetting man, I would bet 95% plus odds we do a total on this year's sample salary. And that's
- what we said and saying next year. I think we're just, it's just there are too many diverse opinions,
- even just reflected a little bit now to like actually do anything. We can't lower salaries. The mayor
- makes 140,000. We make 25. Is that equitable based on what we expected both? I don't know. Do we care?
- Should we all be paid nothing? Maybe. But that's not a decision we have, you know?
- So it's just like, again, like people are all over the board on this. And the one thing that I feel
- strongest about actually is that this is the way it is now. So therefore that's the way it'll be is
- like the worst way to make a decision. And so I'm interested in another method that is rooted in some
- type of value. I mean, both members of public expo were also speaking for values, you know, essentially
- elected service as a,
- as a privilege and service, it doesn't really, the compensation couldn't really go back through it,
- you know, which is also a fine way to look at it. But again, we're not in a situation where we can lower
- salaries. So all that to say like, I wouldn't want those who are included to spend a ton of time updating,
- you know, data on the other sanctified cities if it's not relevant to anything that we're doing here.
- So maybe just like a note of caution about,
- trying to get alignment on something before we put a ton of time into it. Maybe we want to review, if
- there's a past spreadsheet, maybe the next step after that, our next meeting could review that together
- and say, is this even worth updating? Is this relevant for our decision making? Yeah, and I guess remembering
- some about that spreadsheet, at the time, I think Gary was at the top and Richmond was at the bottom.
- Are you talking about concepts now?
- And I can't, I don't remember the details on manual salaries or clerk salaries, but they were similarly
- like all over the place. And I remember those two as the, cause Richmond, I lived in Richmond before,
- it was like $7,000 a year. And so I guess I'm kind of interested in at least kind of looking at the
- ends being like, how much have people changed? And like even some simple, you know, it's like, how much
- shift has there been in different places and to the point like,
- So Gary, I think was a few years ago at this point, really increased their salaries of things, calling
- them up. Has that resulted in better governance? What has that done for y'all as a city and your service?
- I have no idea. And so I think that that is worthwhile to at least see, though I take your point, and
- not necessarily spending a ton of time on it, but at least getting some preliminary information.
- getting the numbers in is not impossible. If your next meeting is a moment from now, that's the type
- of thing that is kind of a downtime activity. And it's not so many pieces of information that are being
- paid for. It may not be complete, however, because there are subsidies that are more difficult to find.
- And my impulse is not to go to the AIM salary study because that's people reporting.
- but really to go to the ordinances themselves that actually do it, which is where it became a little
- bit more difficult. So I don't mind doing it. It's not a huge time stop. It is worth at least looking
- for, for my purposes, because I'm also having my staffs always looked at. So for me, it's related to
- information we're already starting to look at. And it is helpful.
- But we're in a very weird position of flux right now because I'm not entirely sure how the clerk's office
- is going to be changing over the next year. That depends on you all as a body, as a whole body, in terms
- of what work is going to be done and where. So I say that just to say, yeah, we can do some work. We're
- going to be doing related work anyway. And I really do appreciate you calling that out. Let's do a bunch
- of work and then kind of get back into it. And if I may be so,
- hold, as she's saying, to a member of the public. We talked about running for office as a single parent.
- We did that with young kids and worked in an elected office. And I don't think that any of these positions,
- even if you wildly increase their salaries, are going to make anybody wealthy. And I think it's difficult
- because the people who tend to talk the most about keeping salaries lower and that it's a service and
- you all should be doing it
- or the owner and the influence or tend to be people who are in the higher tax bracket overall. Not to
- pinpoint any members of the public in particular today, but I tend to hear that argument from people
- who are making well above what most of the council members are making and it's painful to hear in part
- because I see the work that council members do and you never ought to be even who you are.
- And one last thing, thank you, which is that the ability to do a fairly broad research through AI has
- changed quite a bit over the last couple of years. And like all problems at the city level, we are one
- of thousands of cities grappling with similar questions. And I know there are differences between Indiana
- and other places, but we might be in a better position now to actually try to use AI tools to
- get a broad base of how the salaries are set for part-time municipal legislative bodies across the country
- in a way that we weren't previously. I think that was Mr. M.G. at a previous meeting. He said, no, what
- you don't know. I mean, absolutely. We're all generalists. And that's part and parcel of the job. And
- so we're always looking to data experts, et cetera. And so that's what we did when we set this two years
- ago is we used the compensation
- um, uh, consult, you know, that the city had also used for its salary study. And just to, to refresh
- too, but they were, they, they didn't think that we were wildly off base in the framework and the values
- they did, uh, I think understand that there would be reactions to any major change from the status quo
- and anticipated that, uh, which is not unreasonable to anticipate, but like,
- This was informed by people with expertise in compensation setting. Um, and, you know, but again, maybe
- we can look to data sources and try to collect more information about how this is done elsewhere to
- inform us in a way that like, we probably weren't as, it wasn't as easy to do two years ago. Yeah. Well,
- and it really was interesting conversation that I had yesterday with the Madison and Wisconsin folks because
- they are contacting, I think that they said they had 18 cities on their list. I'm not quite sure how
- Bloomington got on their list, but we did. And they said that they'd be happy to share their conclusions
- with me. And though I think that that's their timeframe and our timeframe might be a little different,
- but I'm also gonna bring this to one of our base or one of our relevant data is city budget constraints
- and capacity, which has also changed a lot in terms of SB.
- But anyway, the conclusion, you guys are gonna get together and kind of rewrite or reformat the guiding
- principles. You feel like that's still like, or it's worth it? I mean, honestly, I think that even if
- we're aspirational about this, especially in the context of budget constraints and capacity and understanding
- that we can't lower elected official salaries once they're set, and that that's like a realistic thing,
- I think that it's still good to have.
- and aspirational. Yeah. So definitely with the values, like that feels like the easier part of like
- trying to reformulate in a way that just connects with our conversation. I think some of the stuff around
- the basis of salary setting and irrelevant information and data is a little more complex. We could-
- Oh, I thought you and I were just gonna work on the values only. That's all you guys- That's fine. I'm
- interested in the next part also and like what we do there. So I'm gonna try to do some independent
- research and picking on that. Okay.
- Yeah, I wonder if we want to have, like, I'll try to come to our next discussion on this topic with
- some additional thoughts around the approaches we consider. Yeah. So yeah, and then I'm going to get
- Dave and work together with Clark Holden to figure out benchmarking against other second class cities.
- And I can reach out and back out to Madison to send a dimension to them. Actually, we're talking, starting
- to talk about this again.
- And I also might reach out to HR around that instead of the city. I'm sure I have somewhere in my thing
- there, that language that was used a couple of years ago, which I think could be relevant again, because
- as a public commenter said, market rate, you can't necessarily do elected official salaries on market
- rate, because we're in the place where we're in.
- So it's not as though we're, it might even be that it's not so that people are shopping around just
- to figure out where they're going to run for mayor or where they're going to run for council. But that
- doesn't mean that people in those positions shouldn't be adequately compensated in my opinion. So I'll
- leave that up to you guys. All right, anything else before we go to the order before I apologize for
- being 15 minutes over? Okay, thank you. We are adjourned.