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, 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, 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.