- to all city employees. And what do you do about people who work in utilities plants, right? Or like
- places where the value of a free parking space is the same as the value of a free parking space downtown.
- So that does add some complicating factors. I'm not saying a straight up cash out is the right structure.
- And what was settled on was something like what exists now, some kind of dollar benefit. I think it
- changed once or twice. Like there was a slight iteration on the
- the policy design. So equity is kind of the central purpose. I would characterize it as a TDM policy
- of sorts, but I don't know, probably any HR benefit, like healthcare. I don't know, there's lots of,
- I guess, I don't have an opinion about where to live, respectfully. I mean, but that's super helpful
- because if it is that, and it's not about changing behavior,
- that makes a lot of things work. Like that already is a huge amount of clarity. And other kinds of HR
- benefits, for example, quitting smoking or wellness, those have direct impacts on our health insurance
- rate. And so it's a perfect day to live in HR because HR has an interest in keeping our pool as healthy
- as possible for all kinds of reasons. And also costs. So we look at what's the goal and who's in the
- best position
- you know, make that happen. And, and, and HR also looking at, you know, how can we make administering
- these various different kinds of programs simple for them and also clear to employees. Like what are
- all the things and does everybody understand what they're for and why? Yeah. So one of the talks you
- actually might be Hannah Drakovich as well, because she ran the programs at IU formerly. They did this
- and they had a structure that's a little more traditional where
- Like a good policy, it's like basically you forego the parking spot benefit and usually to make it workable
- for folks. There's some like, you can buy up to 20 day passes a year with a certain spot, you know,
- some flexibility, right? Or things like that. But generally, the idea is you're giving off a benefit
- that are not taking advantage of a benefit that other folks get and you get this other benefit in a
- sense. You're picking your benefit, basically. And it's hard to visualize the parking benefit because
- we own the land.
- and we're not quantifying the budget. Just for awareness of everyone in this room, you know, whenever
- we bring up, whenever there's, whenever anyone has access to something that someone else feels that
- they cannot have access to, different questions and equity get raised. And so we have a ton of employees
- who live in the county, like Wilmington organizations. And occasionally, occasionally we hear from those
- folks who are like, well, it's unfair because I have no other option.
- but they get the free parking benefits and they have it. They do, but their point is you want me to
- work for you and Ergo, you should give me a parking spot because there's no bus option and it's too
- far to ride by for, you know, whatever the other reasons are. Go and listen to everybody in the carpool.
- It doesn't have to be a parking spot. It doesn't have to be a parking spot. It doesn't have to be a
- parking spot. It doesn't have to be a parking spot. It doesn't have to be a parking spot. It doesn't
- have to be a parking spot. It doesn't have to be a parking spot. It doesn't have to be a parking spot.
- It doesn't have to be a parking spot.
- Even if it's $4 a day, someone somewhere is like, man, that $4 a day. So just for your awareness, they're
- not lobbying you. No, I understand. I wonder about from an educational standpoint and a behavioral
- standpoint, I think packaging these things has always made sense to me. It's like when you're talking
- about here's how to get a parking spot for the year, the conversation changes. It's like, here are your
- transportation benefit options.
- you can choose a free parking space in downtown Bloomington, or you can choose a $500 cash out,
- or you can, you know, like those are your options, and these are roughly similar value. So based on
- your own situation, you pick the benefit you want and need. Well, I'll sort of say, because the other
- thing that I had been thinking about as we were looking at it is, you know, you're checking this off
- in a time track, and let's say it even lives in HR, is that really the way to do it, or should it just
- be a $500 once a year, once you start something committed and say, this is what I'm doing, and I commit that,
- you know, 50, 50% of the days of the year, I'm going to, or I'm going to take a parking pass or,
- or yeah, um, that would be another way to try it. That's actually, that's actually a really good route.
- Somebody who lives in Ann County, it could say, make a choice to not have a parking pass and arrange
- to park at the mall, carpool.
- You know, like somebody could literally like park in some other public parking like like there's always
- tons of mall parking spots open Friday and then like take a bus in.
- I mean, I'm just saying that that's a choice that they make. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. Right.
- Just the messenger to be the voice of your family. You have kids to have to be in daycare with this.
- Oh, yeah. Oh, we work at this one now.
- And then you have a meeting that's off-site that's five minutes after that. Sometimes driving is your
- only option. Oh, yeah. And the best benefit for you is the green working space. Right. The green working
- space. Yeah. It's that you could, you know, in that scenario, though, go, like, oh, I don't have all
- these other priority factors. So I will choose to park somewhere farther away. And then, like, I actually
- had a friend who didn't want to get enough pay for the ID parking spot, who was like,
- I think your house and then leave my car at your house. If I cannot be paid, I will think that that's
- fine with me. And I'm sure you've also had a person who might go just so we're aware, too. You know,
- public works recently sent out a reminder that, you know, you don't need to park invalidated in the
- trade district, just because you're having to, you're inviting someone to a meeting and you want them
- to park before you, so just, you know, we are being diligent about it, charging people for parking in
- the trade district. They are.
- Anyway, so very helpful. This is Neil and Anna are two recommendations for people to talk to you as
- Anna has professional expertise and background at IU. And Neil has been here long enough that he understands
- the iterations of the program. That's great. Thank you. Appreciate the opportunity to have that. I recall
- the wording excluded walkers. So I walked for about four years. I think it was very specific. Oh, that's
- absurd. That's weird. Is it an old program? It could be an old bike. Yeah, might have been an old bike.
- I didn't follow that because I didn't like it at all. That's terrible. Yeah, that is terrible. Yeah,
- actually, right now, I'm literally reading from the employee handbook. The sustainable commuter incentive
- allows any regular employee to receive a taxable $4 incentive up to a total amount, annual amount, $500.
- But each time, they sustainably commute to and from the work site for this scheduled shift. Which accounts.
- And I'm sure that that's recycled from, you know, whatever HR caravans are now ready for that piece of it.
- That's great. This is very lovely. If anyone wants to follow us. And lastly, Jeff Jackson, he might
- have insights on like best practices for parking and cash out policies. He's an expert on that. You
- were talking about parking pass. You know, whether you're going to get a parking pass or not. Yeah.
- I mean, one way to, I mean, I know you're on the honor system and I don't suspect cheating, but when
- you have an incentive to cheat, people might. Maybe parking passes are
- are given, but they're not, but you have a place where you can verify. In other words, if you're, if
- you've got it in your car, you're, you know, you're not gonna bring it in, but you could bring it in
- and check it in and say, I'm, I'm biking today. And that would validate that. I mean, I think we need
- to make it as simple as possible and clear. And so I think, I mean, I'll talk to Sean about it, but
- I think the idea of, I think the one time,
- Some other system then adding up to time track is probably best practice practice. It's really confusing.
- Anything that we can take out of time track is a benefit to everyone. So, all right, thank you so much.
- Yes, thank you guys. Council was one to help shift the program to be more about focusing on insuring
- equity in terms of access and all for whatever your situation is. And then how it was administered
- We weren't going to be involved and I wasn't particularly a fan. I think part of it was that the controller
- under Mayor Hamilton was insisting that there was no way to do it. And that the tax implications were
- too complicated and it was like, we can't do the parking action. Well, I mean, it's taxable.
- one time thing, but I remember what that was. Some places do have, so I'm pretty sure parking passes
- paid by employer, like they're like providing you a parking pass that is a tax-free benefit, federally,
- and I don't think other, like maybe like some, like this isn't an issue of like our train passes or
- transit passes, a tax-free benefit as well, like exactly what the federal landscape is on that. So there
- are tax implications, but worst case, yes, this is a taxable benefit for this case and not the other thing.
- Yeah, yeah, we should probably keep moving because it is 910. No, I think that it's that it's fine,
- because I also think that it's maybe a shorter discussion, the next one and then we talked about scheduling.
- So I think this is just going to have to be a super short discussion right now about the proposed new
- text, but we are moving on to.
- the elected official compensation framework. We met in Visibel. What do you want to say about your proposed
- new tax career guiding principles, which also actually has some process attached to it, which kind of,
- you know, goes into that, you know, basis of salary setting part, I think. So basis for salary setting
- and the process for salary setting seem to be like related. So which one of you wants to talk? I have
- to agree with this, though, because she's the one predominantly working on restructuring, but developed
- by the committee previously.
- And I just gave a small, I reviewed it in a small, I could be back and edit. Yeah, I mean, the guiding
- principles, I'm basically, like I said a month ago at this meeting, I felt like the first three were
- the values and then the last two are more about how we make the decisions. So that's, I separated those
- two out into those two chunks.
- And then I just filled in some language to explain better what we mean by accessibility, a closed service
- and quality community service because they did seem pretty similar and it was hard for me to understand
- what the difference was. So I put those one after the other and tried to describe them in a little more
- detail. And then in the process, informed decisions
- I've kind of added what, based on relevant objective data, and then I added such as budgetary limitations,
- city compensation models, comparison with other cities, historical events. So this is things that we
- may consider in making up informed speeds. And the rest, I think, is transparency and consistency.
- So that reflected what used to be transparent and document a process. Also emphasizing that we need
- to make it clear to the public what the basis is for our decisions. I think that's pretty much it. I'm
- going to assume. We're good. Yeah, I like it, too. I like it, too. All right.
- You're reviewing that, Matt, any other things? I mean, I appreciate, I guess I'll expand a little bit.
- I appreciate the, it does feel like between accessibility of service and quality community service,
- you've defined some, like what we need to engage might mean that defined attainability and that type
- of thing. Well, and breaking it up into the values of the process needs to be,
- add clarity as well, so. Yeah, I mean, so accessibility, I think I focused on the office was financially
- viable. So somebody at various income levels could say, I could do this, the time I've spent on this
- would make me enough money that maybe along with something else, I could pay my bills.
- And then the quality of community service is more about officials are paid at a rate that motivates
- them to prioritize their city work to put in time to do their best work. And the compensation levels
- lead to highly qualified people. So it's still kind of related, but still the distinction, I think,
- that is well clear.
- I appreciate your time. Thanks. So if there are no edits or complaints or concerns, then I'll call that
- good and that will end up getting put into, probably I think what I'll do is do a report to all of council
- with as much as possible in terms of updated stuff before sound recess. But that's maybe especially
- keyed. All right.
- So comparison cities, Dana and I got together, we don't have quite as much process going as you can
- see maybe, but we got together, we trimmed down the number of cities. So Port Fulton, they're hopefully
- shared first spreadsheet again with all of the second class cities. And so we trimmed down to fewer
- second class cities that seems to be more,
- act to be like the comparisons either because of the population or other aspects of the city. And then
- we also selected some entities that are from outside or that are either not second class cities within
- Indiana, like Monroe County and Ellsfield because they're close to us or from other states. And then
- also like Indiana state reps and Indiana state senators as like other
- similar maybe types of positions, just as like curiosity. And then we split those up between us in terms
- of who's gonna look up all of the information about them. And as you can see, that's the part that we
- haven't totally flipped in. One of the helpful things from the clerk's original sheet was this calculation
- of like salary per meeting for legislative bodies. And so we kind of,
- further down, kind of drew that out a little bit, thinking the number of regular meetings per year averaged
- over the last three years. And that's just like regularly scheduled meetings, not counting things that
- haven't come up. And then also looking at like number of committees and other appointments and things
- like that to try to calculate that. And then percentage of those three against each other, at least
- for the certain class cities. And then
- Um, so I didn't adjust that percentage part once with the other, um, with the comparison with the other
- cities, but that, or the other state and types of things. But that's the, that's the essence of the
- data that we are going to collect and then kind of see where it leads us. Um, so I guess they, do you
- have anything you want to add to that?
- In summary, I would just say one question I have for the group is, you know, when it was proposed last
- time we were, the proposal would place this as pretty much an outlier relative to other EDM cities.
- However, when we go through and look at, as Hope said, the amount of work that we're giving to the customers
- due to relative to other communities,
- in terms of meetings, meetings and so forth. You know, we will have much more work than both communities.
- The question I have is with public, taxpayers say, are you creating more work for yourself? You know,
- in order to basically place yourself in a higher salary bracket. So that's just something that
- Because we are more or less self-directed and in charge of, and we have some obligations in terms of,
- you know, statutory what we approve in the hearings and things. But there are many things that we do
- that we've added on to be more effective. And so that's just the debate. I don't know how to resolve
- at this moment, but I think that I am my money, right, as it goes forward.
- Well, it's not like we suddenly created, like, I think that the number of other meetings and stuff we've
- had for a long time. We always have this long list of council members that serve as representatives
- to, you know, the account development commission, all these other long list of committees.
- So I think that there's some history that we could follow up on and say, it's not like we're just creating
- this. Well, maybe in order to get more money. But there is bureaucratic free, too, over time. I mean,
- your analyses tend to bloat, and then people say, well, Carmel can do it with half the meetings, or
- why are you meeting so often? Yeah, right. And that's, I think, the main thing is the number of regular
- meetings, not as much as the committee is in the other appointments.
- Some of the other entities like it at least it had, and this is where like Dave and I were like we actually
- don't reach out to these cities and like in their meeting schedules and that kind of thing, which is
- why it's gonna take a little bit of time and you know average those beads over over three years in case
- there's some weird stuff going on.
- for goldens like original charges have like whether they meet like once a month or twice a month or
- for whatever, you of course tend to meet three times a month and some others, other second class cities
- only meet once a month. And so then it ends up what we end up getting like paid roughly the same as
- the ones we're meeting once a month. And so then when we looked at it like per meeting, other entities
- get paid a lot more per meeting than we do. And so that's what everybody's talking about. But then we've
- also talked about the expectation that is maybe on the maintenance council
- around the creation of legislation that is not necessarily on other councils, like in some other places,
- the legislation primarily just comes from the executive branch and that's not an expectation, but I
- think that is an expectation of council members. And so that's some of that, like, so that's why I have
- like at the bottom of the second chart adding in responsibilities specific to legislation creation for council.
- just to be like, you know, what is that expectation? And kind of the overall job, which is also gonna,
- you know, require conversations and understanding of these other places. So it'll take a little bit.
- What does the heading number of other appointments mean? Like total for our council members or for our
- council members?
- Overall, so the number of council committees is there, there are eight council committees. And that
- includes three interviews, at least for us. So the total, the number of other appointments, it's like
- a planning commission, it's utility service board, it's, it's ENOC development, it's. Yeah, like there's
- all, there are all those things that we like, appoint or vote on about like first weekends of year.
- And I kind of assume that other entities have similar types of appointments. And that's something that
- I haven't quite figured out. It's pretty easy to just go, okay, council member paid for regular meeting,
- you just divide, but we add in those other commitments. And I did actually fill in the one for Bloomington
- just after I needed to turn this in. And so what I decided is added the committees and the appointments
- to the number of regular meetings kind of on this assumption that each of those just adds one meeting
- per council member per year, which is not accurate necessarily, right? But I, there needs to be a consistent
- way that that can stun. Yeah, but, but all nine council members aren't on all eight committees, right?
- Yeah. And so that's where it was kind of like, like there's no good way
- to piece out the number of appointments that each council member might have, because that's shifting
- in here. And if somebody has a great idea of how they want me to do that, like let me know. Otherwise,
- I think that I'll just kind of add those to the number of regular meetings per year. I assume it's like
- one, which is just not accurate, but it's maybe, at least it's a consistent way to. As long as you have
- data, do the same thing.
- and right here. That's going to be a lot of work. I would volunteer to take a few cities if you want.
- OK. Let's see what happens over the next month or so. Any other comments? So to anything that you guys
- want us to investigate from these others? All right.
- Because of time, I want to go to public comment. And let's go ahead and take public comment on anything
- that we discussed, including fund balance stuff and the feeder method and any of the spaces for salary
- setting. So if there are any members of the public, there are none in the room. If anybody's online,
- let's do that. Go ahead and raise your hands. And I will time you on my watch for three minutes.
- There's also some chats that came in. If you chatted with me, you're going to have to mention it in
- the comment. So who has raised hands up there? I can't find it. I have invited on my own.
- It looks like I just see a hand raised from Mr. Kehoe. There we go. Mr. Kehoe, whenever you're unmuted,
- you can go ahead and state your record and then we'll hold up to three minutes. Kevin Kehoe. I want
- to talk about the compensation framework currently in discussion. The issue of maybe a closed loop system,
- maybe a red flag,
- Unfortunately, our political environment has become a one-party monopoly, where the primary effectively
- serves as the general election. This week's primary results are case in point. There are some good races.
- But the people who vote in the primary, we need to just acknowledge that they're fewer in number than
- the actual general election.
- So this comes into effect, and you're not middle management or employees, you're fiduciaries, but we
- start using pay ranges, market rates. There might be, I'm just suggesting there may be, the council
- pay may create this false sense of equivalence, and you're really not getting that independence I think
- you really want.
- And again, back to this closed-loop political system where these market competitive salaries or whatever
- you pay risk incentivizing candidates to view these seats as a career path rather than a sacrifice,
- and this professionalization of the council may deepen the divide between government and those being
- government. I'm just asking for a reasonableness check.
- just asking you to reject this HR style benchmarking. Again, I've said before, just look at what the
- median income is and what people you serve. I think we deserve a council that values fiduciary duty
- of the office more than a paycheck. Let's ensure this compensation model remains a modest stipend for
- services, keeping your interest aligned with the citizens, not the payroll. Thank you. Thank you.
- Are there any other members of the public who wants comments? Let's see, any other hands? So those are
- public comments. Then move on to scheduling notes. So I did put in at the end of our packet today, the
- little scheduling calendar thing, because we are getting to like the ends of
- this first session in some ways. I didn't particularly add anything to the budget-related notes up there
- above. Jeff, do you have anything that should be added to the 2027 budget notes, or is that pretty much
- set as is? Yeah, I don't think we have anything else right now, just to let you know that we did have.
- All departments have now turned in their very first initial cut at the budget.
- I haven't even had a chance to dig into them. It was due yesterday, so. Perfect. We have two more meetings
- of this schedule. The next one was on May 22nd and then June 12th. In theory, going on our thing, the
- 22nd would be something from the administration. The 12th would be something council physical business
- related just because of
- dates and times, et cetera, the 12th direction of Marataka, having sanitation and having that discussion
- about sanitation rates and that kind of stuff on the 12th, which isn't really administrative and isn't
- really counseled, but it's kind of like both. But Jeff, do you have something that you were thinking
- of that would be appropriate for the 22nd or? Well,
- Yes, at some point we need to kind of return to the reading plan and engage with that. So that may be
- the best. I can't guarantee that I can get somebody from reading, but I think that discussing, let's
- just say discussing the financial plan. Okay. All right. So wonderful. So we will say, if I wasn't sure,
- I was like, should we cancel that? Should we need to brainstorm some data from? So that means that right
- now we're setting our next two meeting dates and topics.
- And then I also wanted to consider how this two meetings per month is working for everybody.
- And if we're set, I'll tell you from my standpoint, it's a little bit like I get done with one meeting
- and then I have to figure out the attendance stuff for the next meeting. And that's okay, I think, as
- long as you guys, I'm trying to do better about getting that stuff posted a little bit earlier, which
- means my communicating with the clerk's office a little bit earlier. And that's probably would,
- have a little bit less lifetime if we had more staff right now but we don't so yeah and then should
- we meet over summer recess at all and then our next our first regular session meeting with the full
- council after summer recess is july 22nd which means the first right july 23rd so we could consider
- basically having a fiscal break from june 12th to july 24th and that might actually
- My thought was that would give us a good long summer to do the research that might be needed for those
- pure city comparisons, and then come back on July 24th to talk about the results from that pretty well,
- but I wanted to know what other people thought. Yeah. And we like the two meetings a month. Yeah. And
- this time is still good for everybody.
- Um, so I'll then work on, uh, with the clerk's office on getting those scheduled and posted, starting
- again every other week, starting on July 24th. Does that sound good to you as well, Jeff? Okay. And
- there might, the only thing that I, that I might say, Jeff, I'll, I'll talk with you about it, um, when,
- uh, during like the budget week and stuff, and those two weeks of budget weeks, I might think about
- skipping a week or something like that, just because that would be a lot, um, for everybody
- to deal with, especially our controller, so. Okay, wonderful. Anything else that go to the order? Just
- a comment. I think where we're at in terms of counts of salaries right now is much more run with the
- median area. So we're going to check just FYI. What do you mean in the line of what? Well, it's within
- a closer minus $1,000 per year.
- I think it's more than that. It depends on what we're talking about. I don't think it's like super far
- off. I guess what I'm saying is it could be another comparator.
- But it's 50% of AMI. Everything ends up feeling completely arbitrary. Yeah, and actually, that's 80%.
- I think 80% of AMI for one person in Bloomington right now is $60,700. That was for fiscal year 2020.
- First thing over tomorrow? Really?
- That's the low income category. I think the low income is, and can't remember if that's 120 or there's
- a percentage that's implicit there. Maybe that's the 120 percent, but I think that low income is 80
- percent. Remember, Emily Hansen said the other night that essentially the spectrum of AMR is not relevant or not
- It's really challenging. Because we've got so many students that don't have income, particularly from
- their parents. Or just don't have it. Right. Right. They're being supported in some way. Or taking a
- debt, but either way, it creates that data.
- Um, that would be a very good conversation for, uh, for her day to figure out that kind of consideration
- and there'll be more of these. So anyway, anything else? So there's the order. Thank you all very much. Thanks.