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.