It is now 6.30 on Wednesday, September 16th, so I will call this meeting to order. Congratulations.
There's probably nowhere else you'd rather be on a Wednesday night. Will the clerk kindly call the roll?
Council Member Flaherty? Here. Stasberg? Here. Piedmont-Smith? Here. Zulek? Asari? Here.
Daly? Here. Rallo? Here. Roth? Rosenberger? Here. Did anybody hear that? Excellent. Today the meeting
agenda is posted on the walls. There are some printed out over there. We have a handful of minutes for
approval. We'll have reports from council members, a handful of offices in the city.
There'll be two times of public comment, one at the beginning of the meeting and one at the end. You're
able to speak at one of these two. We then have some issues concerning boards and commissions. And then
we have two items for first reading, one of which the council sponsors have asked that we don't discuss,
but this is the
depending on what the council wants to do. And then we have one, two, three, four, five things for second
reading. So with that, I'll move to minutes of which I think we sent out some, oh, then the clerk is
gone. I think he sent out some amendments that everybody get the amendments to the minutes. Okay, well
when the clerk returns, we can continue on doing the thing we do at this time.
All right. So with that, are there any motions? We need to approve the minutes from February 18th,
March 4th, March 11th deliberation session, March 11th special session, March 25th, all 2026. Be approved.
Second. There's a motion and a second. Any further comments or edits needed to the minutes? Seeing none.
No one online. So all those in favor, say aye.
Any opposed? That carries. Thank you very much. We'll move on to reports. Do any of my colleagues wish
to give a report or any comments? Start to my right with Councilmember Piedmont-Smith. Yes, thank you.
First of all, we're in the midst of National Hispanic Heritage Month, and I invite you all to join the
celebration at Switchyard Park for Fiesta del Otoño this Saturday from 12 to 4 p.m.
On a totally different topic, I wanted to address briefly the dire conditions that continue in Gaza.
On April 3rd, 2024, we unanimously passed Resolution 2024-08, a resolution calling for a cessation of
hostilities and for delivery of humanitarian aid to civilians in Gaza. Well, those civilians, those
that are still alive are suffering greatly.
Today, a war-damaged building in Gaza collapsed, killing at least 21 people, including children, and
trapping many more beneath the wreckage. Just from the New York Times, the incident shines a light on
the perilous conditions in Gaza after the devastating war that followed the Hamas-led attacks on Israel
on October 7, 2023. Officials have warned that many more buildings damaged in Israeli airstrikes are
at risk of collapse.
the lack of progress on reconstruction has forced residents to choose between living in seriously compromised
buildings or in tents. And this is a quote from Pat Griffiths, a spokesman for the International Committee
of the Red Cross. With the heavy rains and winds of winter approaching, the risk of damaged buildings
collapsing will only increase, putting more lives in danger. Choosing between life in a tent with little
privacy or space and exposed to harsh weather, or a building that is damaged and at risk of collapse,
just to have a roof over one's head is not a choice any family should have to make. And a recent report
by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said that the humanitarian situation in
Gaza remains dire as Israeli airstrikes and other attacks continue to hit populated areas, causing casualties
in property damage and driving further displacement.
Persistent shortages of critical medical supplies are undermining treatment for communicable
and non-communicable diseases, while access to already overstretched water and sanitation services remain
precarious. Against this backdrop, humanitarian partners are working to improve living conditions and
mitigate flooding risks at overcrowded displacement sites as winter approaches. However, funding shortages
and ongoing restrictions to the entry of critical materials
Engine oil and spare parts continue to severe severely curtail these efforts So I just wanted to bring
that as an update because this body expressed two years ago. It's It's concern for the humanitarian
situation in Gaza and that situation is ongoing. Thank you Yeah, thanks a few things I'd like to mention
One is Before I forget councilmember Ruff and I have our monthly constituent meeting on Saturday this
Saturday September 19th from 10 a.m. To usually goes to noon So it goes for a couple of hours and you
can find the link at Bloomington.in.gov Slash council if you want to attend Everyone's welcome. Not
just people obviously it's a large Representative, so everybody is welcome to that meeting
I wanted to mention Last evening there was a joint Meeting between the environmental Commission and
the sustainability Commission Sustainability and resilience Commission on the subject of light street
lights in the community and The fact that they are growing in intensity with LED lighting and that this
is problematic for both people and
for wildlife and They took action on a resolution to send to the City Council so that we might do something
about that So we can look forward to that coming briefly if lights are at 4000 Kelvin extremely bright
they're often blue and this the blue light is problematic for a lot of wildlife including insects and
which then are
Trophic level where birds feed Actually the chair of Justin vassals here this evening. I see so perhaps
you were going to report on that So nothing wrong with that here twice He'll provide more detail but
in referring to the lighting situation there was a meeting between the Administration and members of
the council were invited with Duke energy two days ago, I took notes happy to
Share them with the the council Liz Irwin, who's the community liaison for Duke Energy? kindly sent
materials relevant to the lighting situation and What they are doing about it And I can send that out
to and make that publicly available I did want to mention
I wasn't going to mention this last week because I had already mentioned it but the world woke up to
the existential threat of AI Last week suddenly everybody is talking about it, which is a really great
thing. It's no longer a fringe subject. It's mainstream It's on all the media. Thanks to a young researcher
named Jacob Coxson who went public and said this is a existential threat might kill everyone and it
could happen soon he puts the
Estimation between the next six months and the next couple of years. That's his words not mine So we
know these things are super hackers. So they're already superior into humans at least in in cybersecurity
and hacking and their capacity is growing exponentially by measures of their workload increasing doubling
every three or four months and
They form swarms to collaborate they form hierarchies to get work done and they sacrifice themselves
if they run out of their allotted tokens, so And this has all been confirmed. So I'm not telling you
anything that hasn't been published the danger of course is recursive self-improvement whereby they
completely humans are out of the loop the AI is designed themselves and
the next AI model designs the next one, and then the next one, and then the next one, and you get this
takeoff of intelligence, which is the danger. So I would just say that Congress is aware of it. There
was a big meeting at Washington, D.C. yesterday sponsored by the Future of Life, whose chairman actually
attended our council meeting in support of the resolution we passed calling for a moratorium on artificial
superintelligence in June.
He was a host of the meeting, involved Bernie Sanders, spanned the spectrum. Steve Bannon showed up,
so pretty wide variety of people. There were a lot of congresspeople, some senators there. All the AI
safety experts of note were there. And I had a few acquaintances who attended, sent me up to date sort
of information about it. It was fascinating. A lot of media were there. It was a New York Times story
today. So that's very welcome, but we shouldn't be
We shouldn't assume that something is going to happen why? Because although the AI companies say yes,
we're producing something dangerous in fact Jacob Cox and as soon as he tweeted and got 170 million
views on his tweet or x-post He was followed by the head of AI safety for Open AI who confirmed it who
said yeah, I agree with everything. He's saying it's it's an existential danger is that to
Gain market share. Is that to promote a product? Would you promote a product saying it's got a 10 to
100% chance of killing everyone? I Don't think so. I think that's kind of a cynical thing people say
they're just doing it because they're bragging about their capacity In any case, I wouldn't expect Washington
to take immediate action Simply because some 400 million dollars are pouring in every year for to prevent
regulation of any kind so
This is an ongoing thing and it's capturing our representatives and it's preventing them from doing
the right thing So we got to keep the pressure going. We got to do what we can Wherever we are to inform
people and to make sure that something happens soon. So, thank you Thank you so much
I just wanted to give council a brief update on Planning Commission this week. There were three petitions
that we dealt with two of them are already headed our way one of The ones headed to us already has to
do with UDO changes essentially changes and requirements related to what triggers site improvements
and those shifting and so that got forwarded by the Planning Commission with a positive recommendation
and Then there was another petition related to a rezone of our zoning map that Planning Commission forwarded
with a negative recommendation And then the third petition which was not forwarded yet, which was continued
is also UDO Changes and so one of the reasons why I want to talk about that one is where Planning Commission
got a little
bit held up was wanting to have continued discussion about changes being made to the UDO with regard
to duplexes.
Basically how duplexes are supposed to look and some of those regulations and discussing whether or
not to remove those or keep those And so we are gonna have lunch session tomorrow to talk about that
a little bit more But if anybody has any opinions on that, I was actually asked for council opinions
and I only have my own opinion So if anybody has any opinions on that, that would be great to share
with me and I also wanted to announce that the county has scheduled the must
meeting, the must task force, the municipal, I can't remember what they all stand for, but it has to
do with the financial changes coming down with SB1 and the House bill. And that meeting is Friday at
1. And it's, of course, a public meeting. It is in the courthouse. And I do plan to attend that meeting.
But of course, if any of my colleagues are interested, you are also welcome to attend. It's also available
online. Thanks. Thank you so much.
Anyone else? Comments or updates? Okay. Thank you all so much. Let's move on now. We have a report from
Director Adam Wason. Oh, background music. That's great.
Party quite like a public works party and this is the this is a real big celebration tonight So I just
wanted to take a quick minute here before I turn it over to Mike Millett regional director for the American
Public Works Association We're here with Mike tonight to receive our official accreditation of
Plack and metals for all the work. We've been doing over the last three years, but before I do that
I just do you want to thank the staff in attendance particularly Christina Smith our special projects
coordinator Christina was our accreditation manager worked on this project for several years and
Joe Van Dievender, our Deputy Director of Public Works, as well as all of our different division heads,
JD Boroff, Michelle Wall, Virgil Souter, Corey Snyder, and Lazarus Sears, as well as Nate Nickel and
several other staff members. This was a huge undertaking over the course of many, many years, and just
want to thank them on camera and in front of the public tonight, and then turn it over to Mike as well.
And intern extraordinaire, Michailo Miller, our two-year SPIA fellow who did a ton of work. Thank you,
Michailo. Thank you. You did my job for me. Good evening, President Asari, members of the Common Council,
Mayor Thompson, Clerk Bolden, staff, volunteers, and residents of the city of Bloomington. My name is
Mike Millett, and I have the distinct privilege of being on the board of directors of the American Public
Works Association representing Region 5.
I bring you greetings on behalf of President Robert Garland, Chief Executive Officer Scott Grayson,
the entire Board of Directors, staff, and over 34,000 members of APWA. Greetings and sincere congratulations
on your Public Works department achieving accreditation. Accreditation is the mark of professionalism,
indicating that a Public Works agency has made the commitment to continuous improvement in the delivery
of operations and services to the residents of its community.
Accreditation recognizes an agency's policies procedures and practices which have been evaluated against
nationally recognized management standards That are determined to be appropriate for that specific agency
For example your department handles animal control whereas other communities may be in a location where
their county handles that function So therefore accreditation is tailored to the individual agency
A team of evaluators consisting of public works professionals from Missouri and Ohio reviewed 291 practices
to confirm your department's compliance with those nationally recognized standards. I am proud to report
that Bloomington Public Works achieved a rating of 100%. You have now joined 233 other accredited agencies
across North America and have become only the second in the state of Indiana.
Accreditation is a journey. We emphasize the continuity of evaluating those policy and procedures and
practices and adapting them to changing needs of the community. The process requires the input of the
whole department and adds a measure of ownership and, might I say, pride to every staff member. Now,
you may know that Public Works tends to be the most introverted group in a government. After all, we
are the mechanics, operators, technicians, and engineers. The most stereotypical left-brain folk
around begging the pardon of current neurological studies, we tend to keep our heads down, do our work,
and not want to draw attention to ourselves. Part of the accreditation process helps us to realize that
it is okay to be proud of our work and take the occasional victory lap and realize how important that
work is to the community we serve. Last March, I experienced a prime example of that importance. On
Monday night, I was driving to the road school
at that college that went up north, the other Big Ten school, the one that's not the national football
champion, that one. And anyway, I was heading south on 65. It was snowing, snow came down fast, and
they closed the interstate at Remington, so I got across, so I was gonna go on US 24, come down US 231.
That was also closed, so I had to go all the way to Reynolds to pick up I-43, Indiana 43. And
I'm white-knuckling it down, and as you are out to do,
Out in the distance was the savior of the day for me, which was the green and white flashing lights
of the Indot plow driver. So I followed that person mostly into the way the West fell off. I didn't
have a chance to thank them personally, but that is an example of when the public sees us. That's one
example of they know what it is that we do. But when things are going well, Public Works is generally
part of the background. But when we look at those 291 practices and see how vast is the breadth and
scope of Public Works
We realize that what we do truly matters to the core of what makes cities like Bloomington wonderful
places to live, work, and study. Now, please permit me to present this plaque officially to Director
Adam Wason and your Accreditation Manager Christina Smith as a recognition of this achievement and awarding
APWA accreditation to the Bloomington Public Works Department. There you go.
All right. We're also photo adverse. We sometimes tend to do that, too. Thank you. Thank you for doing
that during a council meeting. That was very exciting. We'll move on to consolation stage and screen.
We have Gabe Golden here.
Over to you, sir. Thank you so much for having me here. Love following our friends at Public Works.
My name is Gabe Glodin. I'm the managing director of Constellations Stage and Screen. Thank you guys
so much for having us here at Council, members of the public. Thank you. Oh, do I just hit the forward
button? I'm a genius.
Just wanted to come here as Constellation enters our fifth year of operations as the managing partner
for the city-owned John Walden Art Center and the final year of our current contract, I should add.
We thought it'd be an opportune time just to kind of run through some updates on the state of the city's
community arts anchor here in downtown Bloomington. I'm just gonna run briefly through some information,
including operations and program highlights, and hopefully, we'll have some time for you guys to shoot
some questions my way.
Just some recent history, as many of you know, in July 2022, three local arts organizations, the Bloomington
Playwrights Project, Cardinal Stage Company, and Pegasus Institute merged to create Constellation Stage
and Screen. Concurrently with this merger, we worked with the city to enter a five-year management agreement.
to reopen the center in October of 2022 after a $1.5 million repair and renovations campaign. I don't
recommend doing a three-way merger and doing a giant renovation at the same time. Can't recommend it,
but we did it. Our manager agreement also established the Waldron's visual arts program, which still
is going strong today.
And then two years later, the city and Constellation entered into an agreement to support the Waldron
operations and programming, including the employment of a full-time facilities manager, enhancements
to our visual arts programming, and the establishment of an open stages grant program, which I'm going
to talk about in a little bit. It's really exciting. That partnership has provided the foundation for
continued investment in the building.
And since 2022, we've invested an additional $200,000 in leasehold improvements and technical upgrades,
including new lighting, sound, and projection equipment, a new art gallery hanging system, and even
assisted listening devices for both of our venues. So now if you have anyone that has hearing issues,
we have those devices free of charge. Anyone can come up to our box office and request them.
All of these enhancements, obviously focusing on the Waldron's accessibility and production quality.
And obviously, none of these improvements would have been able to be possible if it weren't for all
of these artists that we need to fill the spaces with incredible art, right? So there was another barrier
of accessibility that we needed to address, and that was affordability. So all of, as many of you know,
larger established organizations like Constellations C,
venue and occupancy cost is just one piece of the pie, but our vast majority of all of our community
arts organizations that have budgets under $100,000 a year and are volunteer run, well, those groups,
those costs are incredibly prohibitive to them. Rental and occupancy accounts for a huge chunk of their
annual production budget, and so that's why we work directly with the city to create open stages. It's
an ongoing
grant program that subsidizes performance and exhibition space for Bloomington-based artists
and organizations. And with this grant, the Rose Fire Bay Theater, our 70-seat black box, rents for
less than $800 a week. Our 150-seat auditorium rents for under $1,600 a week. I can tell you, as someone
who used to rent the auditorium at the Waldron, that is a huge discount and makes it very capable for
these spaces to be more occupied with amazing work and, more importantly,
giving these artists the opportunity to devote more resources to that work. So we're talking about more
consistent, high-quality arts programming throughout the year. But of course, this level of access at
such a low cost requires a significant operating investment. This past year, Waldron-specific expenses
for Constellation
totaled over $200,000. That's an increase of over 18% from last fiscal year. Most of those increases
were in places like overhead, like maintenance and utilities, and our open stages subsidies, which is
really exciting. These additional resources that we've devoted to Waldron operations absolutely have
translated into substantially greater
public and artistic activity. And I wanted to just briefly share some highlights from this past season.
Attendance wise, Waldron is open for the public 188 days out of the year. That's huge. That's a 42% increase.
from just two years ago, which is really amazing. More than 21,000 people attended over 54
public performances and events. And the Visual Arts Program, too, is thriving with over 30 exhibitions
last season, featuring 100 artists, including the successful launch of a holiday market in December,
which is really cool. I encourage you to check that out this December, as well. And, of course, more
days open to the public means more opportunities for artists to be seen, supported,
Paid and our open stages grant program. I think really creates that huge impact that we're looking for
just in this last year We awarded 27 open stages grants representing over $38,000 in subsidies for these
groups That's a 42% increase from the previous fiscal year, which is really awesome. That means grants
supported 20 area artists and subsidized 225 rental days it's
To me, abundantly clear that this public investment in the Waldron Arts Facilities is making access
to these spaces more affordable and is creating a really measurable public impact. So in closing, Waldron
Going great, more effective, accessible, and capable because of our sustained partnership with the investment
from Constellation and the city. And if you haven't been to the Walder in a minute, I encourage you
to come. I just want to add a live theater. It's been AI-free since around 3000 BC and will continue
to be. So if you don't like AI and its encroachment in our lives,
come check out some live theater. Definitely this weekend, I encourage you to check out, you know, we've
got a little bit tipsy, which is a cool new original musical from our upstart performing arts groups
after the storm. And Constellation has
really cool show called Heist Running and its final weekend. This is a show that started at Bloomington
Playwrights Project, originated from an idea here in Bloomington. It closed due to complications with
COVID during the pandemic, has since gone on to gross millions of dollars in North America, and has
come back home here to Bloomington. It's a real incredible success story about
what we can do when we invest in the local arts community here. And I can't stress how wonderful it
is to see this building so vibrant and alive with art. So just a big thank you to the mayor's office,
all of our partners at ESD, Jane and Paige have been wonderful. A big thank you to Jennifer Lloyd, our
Director of Operations. She absolutely helps us document all of the great work that goes on at Constellation.
Couldn't do this without her.
I just want to say finally that I don't think the Waldron has realized its full potential. We're definitely
going to need some further investment to ensure that long-term viability, but hopefully you see that
we're making great progress. So thank you again and happy to field any questions you might have for
me. Thank you ever so much.
Updates I guess the main question I have is since it's been a two years since the two-year subsidy was
agreed upon I'm wondering what the status is of the city's ongoing support for the Waldron I don't know
director Cooper Smith wants to speak to that or if you can Mr. Golden Speak to that the the city support
has remained consistent We are we are on track to fund the Waldron operations the city level
the same amount that we were in the last two years I Don't know Jane if you want to add anything else
that I don't want to misspeak on this issue Hi Jane Cooper Smith director of economic and sustainable
development I would just say there's a line item in our 2027 budget proposal for sixty three thousand
three hundred and thirty three dollars, which is the annual
Divided total the two-year agreement was negotiated at all at a funny time of year So we were able to
break it up over the course of three years. So the 63 333 is a third of that total support So they'll
have that coming in January We hope if the budget is approved and then we'll be in discussions about
other ways to support them as we can Thank you Thank you
Sounds like you guys are doing some exciting things over there. I was just curious You had a comparison
of the hundred and eighty eight days and twenty five twenty six to twenty three twenty four But not
attendee is do you happen to know off the top of your head? What's your actual attendee? Twenty one
thousand is in there right that was I mean, yeah, I mean compared to the prior year We can we could
definitely pull those numbers again into but I don't have them in front of me. I
I'm just kind of curious because my guess is more Considering you were open a lot more days probably
more but I guess I'm just yeah Thanks for being here for this report. I Love this building as you know
has such a rich history to within our community. So I'm just curious What would you say is the like
ratio of? constellation use versus community use within the building and
It's a great question. Constellation does use the Waldron as its primary venue for its theatrical
productions. We're doing seven productions this season, mostly in the auditorium, but we do have,
you know, more than 50% of the auditorium days are available for use, but it is definitely the least
open in terms of venues for community groups.
But I will add that we also manage the constellation playhouse on 9th Street just up the street here
and that venue is booming with community activity and we have open stages grants available for those
folks too. So I'd say in terms of all of the total days open and constellation manage venues to the
public, we're talking maybe a quarter of those are constellation events. The rest is this really vibrant
growing community arts
Infrastructure particularly the performing arts sector. We saw two new theater groups established themselves
Just this last year the year before that two other new ones and all of them have multiple production
seasons that are coming out of constellation managed venue city-owned venues like the Waldron So yeah,
it's a really exciting time to get involved in the arts and it's not just constellation It's this whole
universe of community arts organizations that are doing amazing
I was just at a production at the Playhouse last weekend with Cyrano. Yeah. So that was really exciting
to be back in that space, too. Thank you. Thanks, Courtney. Thank you again. Anyone else? All right,
well, thank you so much. Thank you very much. Have a wonderful evening. Well, two great reports, wonderful
news. Anybody in the, oh, first, actually, council committees. Do we have any council committee reports?
Fantastic. So does anyone in the public want to give some type of a public happy report? Or it doesn't
have to be happy, but does anybody have a report that you'd like to give? You'll have three minutes.
Just make sure you state your name or something similar for the record and write it down importantly.
And then we'll go online. We'll start in council chambers. To you, Mr. Alexander.
all that preamble I gave, you know. Is there anybody online? Well, well. Okay. There you go, sorry.
Go ahead. A little technology trouble. I'm Greg Alexander. When this council failed to stand up for
a pedestrianized Kirkwood, there was a lot of commentary that I felt kind of missed the mark. Some people
clearly expressed a vision of Kirkwood as a kind of regional theme park where people would come from
neighboring counties and bring their money and their business to our downtown and I think that's you
know Others wanted it to be either a perfect Sylvan Glade or like car supremacy and they couldn't imagine
anything in between I feel like they're kind of missing the point about what our actual reality is in
this town is that there's not very many cars or people on Kirkwood in the summer and so
You know, we need a good public space for the people that are here, both students and townies. And we
told you again and again, we enjoyed the no frills closure, the pedestrianization. So during county
summer this year, hard leaning cars, hard leaning people, still strict car supremacy, there was a rolling
closure for construction and so we did see that there was a demand for kids to play in the street
I saw kids playing in the street in those roll-in closures. It was not as good an environment as in
years past. Then August rolled around and the environment suddenly changed. For several weekends we
had like Taste and Pride, you know, pedestrianized Kirkwood for those people. Presumably several more
over the next couple weeks or months. Now we see how that works. We see what's really at work here.
These are commercialized.
for-profit, well, not necessarily for-profit for all the participants, but they're vendors. There are
steering committees. There's branding. There's sponsorships. To put a fine point on it, at Pride, a
lot of the booths were just big corporations trying to put a positive PR spin on themselves. So,
you know, it's clearly an attempt to build a visitor or tourism-based economy,
not to build a space for us. So I hear this slogan, local, over and over. Local is not something you
feel in your heart. Local is not ownership or profits. Local is about location. I am loyal to downtown
because I live right here. Something that's designed around visitors will be very fragile. It'll always
be hollow. Visitors can always go somewhere else if they're willing to travel. But something that's
designed around locals, it'll be attractive to us.
It'll be attractive to everybody. So I think some of you were comfortable siding with drivers
over pedestrians, some of you comfortable siding with old people over young people. But did anybody
really mean to be siding with money over people, with tourism, over placemaking, with visitors over
locals? If you want to look at what is destroying the soul of Bloomington, exhibit number one should
be this policy. Thanks.
Thank you so much. Is there anybody else? Is there anybody else in town who in town? Good evening. My
name is Justin vassal. I just wanted to kind of follow up on some of the Comments that councilmember
Rallo made earlier this meeting just about the the joint meeting that happened between the
Commission on sustainability and the environmental Commission last night Regarding light pollution resolution
So I'll probably be here at another time to go through more of the specifics of what that resolution
entails But really it's about thinking about what we do with our light where it goes and What sort of
access we have as a community to the sky to the stars to the Milky Way? and the effect that light has on
You know the various creatures around us birds bats that sort of thing But for me sort of as a personal
reflection, you know, one of the most exciting things about this resolution was the collaborative nature
of it The two commissions sort of came together and we spent months digging into the research and trying
to put together a set of recommendations that were Largely achievable maybe in
some circumstances, maybe a little bit of a stretch, but a good kind of stretch, but nothing that's
really impossible. And we really tried to focus on the benefits here. We call it the dark sky resolution,
so it's about making the skies darker. It's not really about making the streets darker or anything like
that, right? And we focus a lot on things like light temperature. Most people would agree that when
they go outside at night and you see this bright blue blinding light, that that's not
very enjoyable. We can convert some of those to lower temperature lights, warmer amber sort of lights.
There's a handful of recommendations there that hopefully could send Bloomington in the direction of
getting that sort of dark sky certification sometime in the future. But yeah, it was really a collaborative
project. I mean, we're two different commissions that have two different
Different missions and a different focus, but this was one area of sort of overlap between them and
so it was a great opportunity to collaborate and you know hosting a Joint meeting as I think you all
know between two bodies that normally doesn't meet together is a bit of a lift But we made it happen
and we're really happy with at least I'm
Personally, very happy with the result that came out of it. And so we'll be transmitting it to you soon,
and we would welcome an opportunity to come and brief you all on some of the specifics at a later time.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Anyone else like to make public comment? All right.
We'll go online. Is there anybody online? OK, fantastic. We will come back then.
We have some appointments and to Commission's another hiring Yes, sir. Yeah, please on behalf of interview
committee team see This is for to appoint Cedra Luna to seat c2 of the Commission on the status of children
and youth fantastic there's a motion and a second any discussion and
All those in favor say aye Any opposed all right that carries are there any other motions I Would like
I would like to make a motion to appoint Zack Ammerman to what to seat see three of the Public Transportation
Corporation board of directors
and I have a little bit of a discussion on this. So I am a part of interview committee A, is that right?
Yes. And we had several meetings and four interviews with applicants and in our last two meetings we
were sort of waiting for some decisions to be made and did not make a recommendation to bring to council
but thought that a council member could bring a recommendation just so we would not have to schedule
another meeting. Today, one board member, Kent McDaniel, announced his resignation from the board. And
I also actually want to first start by just saying a big thank you to Kent McDaniel. He served on the
board for 36 years. He studied public transit in college. He drove IU campus bus when he was in college.
And he was the director of IU transportation services
So he has really shepherded Bloomington Transit to where it is today and I have great appreciation for
him So thank you to him and then I wanted to recommend Zack Ammerman because the board as I think council
knows is five members and What it is missing right now is someone who consistently rides transit
And Zach is a person who consistently uses public transit as his primary mode of transportation. And
then he also has a background in data mapping and diving into numbers. And so in the interview with
him, it was really neat to see him synthesize pretty quickly stats over the years, patterns, and ideas
of change. And so I think that skill set
would be a really good addition to the board. And then the third thing I wanted to mention is that the
board is five members but by state code it can be seven and at some point I think it would be good for
city council to discuss whether or not the board could be seven or should be seven instead in order
to bring in more skill sets and more experiences because it's hard to get everything you really want
for Bloomington Transit on a five person board.
So that is my lengthy explanation of my recommendation for Zach to see see three There's a motion is
there a second motion and a second any further discussion councilmember Sasberg As well
And I also wanna say in terms of the five versus seven board members, I did bring that up in the CCP
meeting and I followed up in a couple other areas and there's actually an email thread right now and
BT actually in their meeting last night, they discussed that as well. So I think that maybe our discussing
that during our interview committee was something that led to a wider discussion about that. So that's
certainly in motion and I'm glad that
getting brought up tonight, just so that we can make sure that this appointment can get made, because
this board is quite small. Thank you so much. Any other comments or questions? Okay, seeing none, all
those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right, that carries them. Congratulations, Mr. Emerson.
Any other motions?
Well, the next item on the agenda is Historic Preservation Commission appointment removal is I don't
know if there's a motion on it But I would like to hear the basis for having this on our agenda There's
a motion to hear I guess a point of information Point of information and
I think we both have Clerk Crossley here and Attorney Allen. I don't know who would be best suited to
answer that question. The basis for why it's on the agenda is because it was considered last time and
it was specifically moved to be heard at this meeting. If you mean the general basis in terms of the
allegations,
Those were the report of conduct came in. I think the the clerk had Observed some of the meetings and
written a memo to council council leadership after a discussion with me We agreed that the council staff
would send out a letter To notify of the opportunity to be heard and so that council could take formal
action on it And that's why it was placed on the agenda originally last meeting and then it was continued
to this meeting and
You all should have received a An information email that was sent at 1026 last night I love this job
so much that I send emails this late. Um, so I sent this email to all of you all last night to also
highlight what I had sent to council president, I'm sorry and council members do like I
In respect to your code of conduct that you all had implemented earlier this year I would like to say
for the record Do I think that at the end of this day a day do I think that? council appointment anybody
related to boards and commissions should be able to address a
and agree and disagree and do all of those things, absolutely. Just like all of you that sit up there
each and every time you have your meetings, you agree to disagree and sometimes you agree. And sometimes
those conversations can be heavy and sometimes you move along. However, what I have observed and what
staff has also observed and I believe there is also some pending
resignations pending on this particular moment. This is where we are. I don't take this very lightly.
I take all things into consideration and I think in the five years that I've been here with the city
boards and commissions have had a lot of scrutiny and sometimes I think we can we need to back off.
And then sometimes we have to take these things that staff is going through and some of the concerns
that are happening. And we really need to take a look into what it is. The other thing that I wanted
to highlight and point out is, again, you all implemented this code of conduct earlier this year with
that. You have a committee on council processes. I know there's been some conversation related to how
these processes should go.
That's something that also should be taken up at the committee on council processes I'd just like to
say the code of conduct is a tool that you all have at your discretion And code does say that if folks
violate the code of conduct that could be cause for removal And the points that were discussed last
night and the email and again just kind of highlighting what is
Points are in the code of conduct. It does say members appointed to city boards of commission shall
comply with applicable laws State laws city ordinances resolutions city policies members shall be patient
respectful polite courteous to each other as well as members of the public and city staff and shall
act ethically in all matters before the body members shall not engage in behavior or speech that is
detrimental to city operations or
or the public interest, members shall respect the rule of the chair and the city staff, follow the procedures
set in code by laws or rules and regulations and in Robert's Rules of Order. When speaking, members
shall be mindful of the public's time and fellow members' time and shall remain on topic and without
unnecessary repetition to facilitate the work of the board or commission. And the meetings that I've
observed and the meeting that I actually went to
There are some violations that are in there. There was one meeting that business was held up for 45
minutes and there was a petition that was supposed to be heard, but unfortunately that was a little
bit delayed until the dust settled and things were able to proceed. So again, I don't think that, I
take this very seriously, and I am not of the mindset of,
Let's just get ready and we don't like something. Let's just remove we see that in our federal government
and our state government That is not the role that city government should play. However This is where
we are right now and based upon what you all have implemented That would under my recommendations that
that's what I see Thank You clerk cross Lee to councilman Stossberg
Thank you. Thank you Claire Crosley for your memo and your perspective on this from your seat in terms
of your position I Have had a chance to review those three meetings. I've watched those and I agree
with Claire Crosley's Conclusion that the code of conduct was in violation and I
didn't want to just punt this again tonight, so I was like, I need to come in with a plan. And so my
thought is, depending on what you all think and whether you all have been able to review those and or
feel comfortable in just taking the recommendations to either vote or
have a motion around finding mr. Cross and violation of the code of conduct and removal or Potentially
referring this to a committee and I was thinking referring it back to the interview committee that is
in charge of the this board's appointment because you know, we generally take recommendations
for appointments from interview committees and so in terms of
Process I agree like the committee for council process Maybe needs to figure out like let's nail down
a process for how we actually do this and assess it But unless we all feel comfortable, I think taking
a vote on the actual Removal tonight. I I would think that moving it to the interview committee might
be an appropriate place for it Thank you Other comments counselor Puma Smith
Yeah, I don't feel comfortable voting on this tonight the Code of Conduct Was also violated by Other
members of this Commission because they did not follow Robert's Rules of Order So, I mean where do we
draw the line do they have to violate? More than one of these things in the Code of Conduct. There's
one enough is the degree of violation of
considered I I just think there we need to we need to act very deliberatively here because It's I Think
there were legitimate concerns raised by mr. Cross as to what occurred at the June 25th meeting I did
watch the meetings on cats and
So before we remove anybody, I think we need to consider process and how we determine whether somebody
will be removed and also address, I mean, frankly, I think watching the July, the second meeting in
July, whenever that was, I think,
Just a recognition that the Commission did the wrong thing would go a long way And that was not forthcoming
So anyway, I think I think we need to work on this and I think of removing him from the Commission is
not going to really solve the The problems that underlie this Thank you so much. I'm Councilman Borrello
Well, I concur with my colleague
Smith that I Think this is has a level of complexity to it and needs some careful deliberation I would
prefer it go to the committee and council process actually because they have the I Think they're uniquely
qualified to Because they did essentially decide on the on the quality on the and the rules yes, and
And that's not to evade because I'm a member of team C but just in terms of Put it this way it may be
setting a setting a review standard for the future That's I think this committee is the best place for
it to be considered. So that's what I would recommend Thank you others
I'll add, I think I 100% agree with Councillor Piedmont-Smith first off. The second thing that I might
say and I also agree with Councillor Stasberg, at least the suggestion of moving this to a committee.
I like the idea of moving it to the hiring committee. I do think there's two separate questions.
referring it to, I said hiring, I'm sorry, the interview committee as what I meant. I do think that
there's two separate processes though here. I think the question of establishing a better process, I
think that appropriately sits within committee and council processes. I think the question of sort of
what recommendation the interview committee makes could be separate.
If we did vote for it today, I would say no. I mean, on the basis of the fact that, as you said, I think
that there were a lot of issues generally. Now, I'll also add, though, that when we adopted this, my
personal view was that we shouldn't have the for cause statement in our council appointments, that as
the mayor is able to remove people
You know as they wish again, I wouldn't vote to remove mr. Cross to be clear, but I do think that as
we're considering this process I do I would hope that we could also revisit this question of whether
or not we Need a process at all. I mean it seems to me that you know people if you're appointed by council,
you should serve at the pleasure of council, but again just a plug for that, but okay are there motions then I
Yes, I would like to make a motion that this matter be sent to the committee on council process And
I think that they should Deliberate on the entire matter. In other words the as my colleague Councilmember
Piedmont Smith mentioned that they should consider the conduct of the entire matter of everyone at the
meetings Not just mr. Cross
Okay, there's a motion in a second any further discussion counselor Piedmont Smith and Stossberg As
chair of the committee on council processes, I would like to say that we have a full plate already We
are way behind in title two updates that were started a year and a half ago and that
Councilmember sorry knows are important as we move forward to try to streamline our own processes and
clarify procedures So I would prefer that it did not go to the committee on council processes I will
note that I am also on the interview committee. So it's not like I'm going to get out of work here That
comes with us
Third well, I have two things first of all I think that any motion should include a date to maybe report
back to council so that it doesn't drag and so that the public knows when This body is going to deal
with it again But I guess the third option is also to have an ad hoc committee of some kind And I I'm
yeah like Yeah, third option. Sorry to add more options
Councilmember daily then Rallo. Thank you. And for clarification this issue did actually come up before
committee council processes and after discussing it we did discuss Procedure, you know for committees
themselves But the actual question of removing somebody from a body we had determined was not within
our purview Which is why it came to the full council. So just to give a little bit of more context for
why I don't support
For right now, I would be okay with the full body taking a vote or ad hoc or interview committee. Thank
you To be clear. I I wanted to be a recommendation to the full council Mm-hmm. Did I make that clear?
So I don't want the action should be the full counseling was implied Yeah, but it's just a recommendation
from the committee, but it sounds as though I should withdraw that commotion to entertain a new motion
Council member Stossberg. Did you have something in mind? I
committee or team see I mean Well, I mean I guess before I make a motion I'm curious as to whether people
at this point are thinking team see or an ad hoc committee it really I'm indifferent in a lot of ways
I'll say one of the benefits of well really I guess it's either if we say team see or
We know the three people. They can set a time to meet, and then that also gives people opportunity to
have public comment, which I think would be useful in this case. I feel like that's the option with
least friction. So if other people agree with that, then I'll move that this matter be referred to Interview
Committee C so that they can make a recommendation to the full council.
and that a report be And potentially and hopefully a recommendation be given at our next regular session
meeting on I believe October 7th Wait, it's the 14th October 14th is the next regular. Oh the seventh
is a special session great then on October 14th There's a motion any second second
Motion in a second any further discussion. All right seeing none all those in favor of referring this
matter to Interview committee see and for them to report back on October Date again 14th all those in
favor say aye Any opposed? All right, so that it has been referred to committee see thank you all and
apologies again for the second time that you've come to
But motion is moving. Okay Let us move on any others. I think we have another issue Issue C. Is there
a motion? Yes, I move that Jose Fuentes be removed from the Commission on Hispanic and Latina affairs
due to non attendance Motion in a second any discussion Have they been informed? Claire crossly I just
want to clarify
It's not like folks are just in the business of just removing people. Just to clarify, because I hear
some grumbles. So the liaison reached out and had asked about this person and their attendance. We reached
out to him. I did talk to him the first time that you all had wanted to take up this matter. He knows
that he has missed it.
Again, this is the second go-round where he's missed a series of meetings to this time frame now. I
checked with the liaison this afternoon to see if she heard from him, and she still hasn't heard from
him at all, even after reaching out to him once this motion was in place by you all. Thank you.
All right, so there's a motion and a second. Anything else? Seeing none. All those in favor say aye.
Aye. Any opposed?
All right, fantastic, that motion carries. All right, we'll move on unless there's anything else for
boards and commissions. All right, let's move to legislation for first reading. I move that ordinance
2026-21 be introduced and read by the clerk by title and synopsis only. Second. Motion and second. Any
further discussion? All right, all those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Will the clerk please read?
ordinance 20 20 26 dash 21 updating title 2 to provide better of This is a hard word to say Apportionment
of representation on the Transportation Commission and Environmental Commission The synopsis is this
ordinance sponsored by councilmember Stossberg makes changes to the membership of the Transportation
Commission
by creating a dedicated seat for an employee of the Monroe County Community School Corp and consequently
refrigering the remaining community member seats. Additionally, the ordinance reduces the size of the
environmental commission to eliminate seats with long standing, hold on, vacancies. Oh. Thank you.
I move to discuss ordinance 2026-21. Second. Motion and second. All those in favor, say aye. Aye.
Any opposed? All right. Let us discuss. Councilmember Stasberg. Thank you. I actually have a slideshow.
I don't know if we can get staff to put it up there, and I don't have the little clicker, so maybe staff
can click for me, too.
Or we can get a clicker over to me. So I Have been working on this for a little while I'm gonna wait
for the next for the next slide to come The origin of this was the committee on council processes Where
when we did the Transportation Commission last year we had
created a seat that prioritized an appointment by an employee or a volunteer or board member of MCC
SC and the person who the Would be a great person for it in terms of somebody in their transportation
department who was willing to do it And interested in doing it couldn't do it because they were not
a resident within the city limits and so had this discussion at the committee on council processes and
this idea of expanding the allowance to allow
those outside of the city limits to serve on this. And my kind of competing idea was, hey, instead of
just opening it up broadly, let's specifically target a seat for the MCCSE person. And so while I was
doing that, I
Cleaned up some related details and had to make some other changes So in terms of the process committee
on council processes has seen this a few times I've of course discussed this with MCC SC and
the superintendent and she is very supportive unable to make it this evening I spoke with staff the
staff who cover the Transportation Commission I Spoke with administration
Mayor and deputy mayor and they are also supportive of this and I went to the Transportation Commission
themselves And they were supportive they had some some good ideas about some specific language change
recommendations There were other things that maybe they were interested in changing that committee on
council Processes was not interested in doing at this time so the first thing I just wanted to remind
everybody of the Transportation Commission purpose and I highlighted the
seeks to provide adequate and safe access to all right-of-way users and Make recommendations and guidance
to the mayor and Common Council in terms of citywide policies so some really slight changes some capital
letters and Then the real change happens here with this
One member appointed by the mayor and the mayor was good with that to be an employee of MCC SC Involved
in student transportation and that the mayor needs to request that the superintendent recommend up to
three individuals for this appointment with no residency requirements that they just need to be an employee
of the school system and then there's some if there's no qualifying applicants identified and
Then the mayor can appoint somebody else with priority given to somebody related to MCC SC And so then
what was number six two members appointed by council and be residents With experience using forms of
travel other than personal vehicle moved to number seven. So that language didn't change it just moved
and then number eight
In the original one that I took off, it had some language around serving marginalized groups, especially
safety marginalized groups, so I gave the last appointed member by council priority for that individual
serving marginalized groups. And then I had to clean up terms a little bit because it's generally recommended
that terms stagger, and the terms of the Transportation Commission were not staggered, and so I staggered terms.
And then that was it for transportation Commission
Why making changes to environmental Commission because there were long long-standing vacancies on that
Commission currently there are 12 members And the proposal proposals cutting three seats off of that.
I also brought this before the Committee on council processes staff and administration The administration
so my proposal takes it from 12 down to 9 currently with 12. It's 6 and
Mayoral recommendations and six council recommendations when we have an odd number Of course there has
to be more of one than the other and I gave five to council and four to the mayor because at the time
I started this there were five members serving from council seats And just because there were more vacancies
on the mayoral appointments The administration
for full clarity, said that they weren't a fan of having one fewer seat and wanted to cut it down to
eight, but that at the time would have involved actually cutting a member who was already appointed,
and I didn't wanna do that.
And so, I left it at nine, and the Committee on Council Processes agreed with that. I was not able to
go to the Environmental Commission meeting because in July, I was traveling, and then in August, it
was canceled. I have spoken to individual Environmental Commission members, and I see some in the audience
tonight, so I will probably let them speak for themselves. They're really passionate about the work
that they do on that commission and don't love having fewer members on it.
Said that they understood because there were long-standing vacancies that this made sense and I've simply
changed the Number of members and that is the whole thing. So questions. Thank you so much. Councilman
Pujol said Did you want? Not necessarily, I don't think I didn't
Expect anything so great questions or comments. Well, actually let's do questions. I'm sorry. Hey Forget
that there's an order to things Sometimes phasing of the transportation Commission seats would be Would
affect current serving members. Is it shortening any members term or is it implicitly lengthening any
members term? I
Changes anything about the current terms Let me let me review that just to make sure Because you're
talking about The The staggering the terms yeah. Yeah, so It doesn't make any difference because so
first of all the Transportation Commission stuff doesn't go into effect until I think it's January
Yeah, January 31st because the current terms all end on January 31st. So that was why so like none of
the Transportation Commission changes actually affect the people who are currently serving
on the Transportation Commission It just affects the next round of people who are appointed and it's
just the single-year terms for the first instance to get us on the off Alternating track and then it's
yes in terms for everyone from there, right and so I did single-year terms for
the seat that is the CCA seat right now because I Can only suspect that that same person might serve
From because right now they expire also, you know next the end of next January that they will then probably
still serve another year and they'll be that consistency because one of the reasons to stagger terms
is to have consistency and so I tried to kind of be Smart about that. Yep. Thanks for confirming
Other questions councilman Barallo Yes, I I guess my question would be there was a motion to To have
a discussion on this this evening With the sponsor Care if we forwarded this to another meeting simply because
diminishing removing three seats from the environmental Commission without Having them discuss it and
make a recommendation. I Was assuming that this would go to a second reading. Yes. Okay. Yeah, that
was my assumption. Okay was okay. Very good. Thanks All right, let's go to public comment if anybody
would like to comment on ordinance 2026 21 Thank you so much same rules you got three minutes and
Say something for the record and write it down, please. Take it away. My name is Matt Caldy. I'm a member
of the Environmental Commission, but I'm not attempting to speak for the commission, just for myself.
I appreciate the committee efforts to help out boards and commissions, to make things the right size,
to make it so they're easily able to meet and conduct business.
I'm not convinced that cutting seats is the best solution to this problem. I view it as sort of... I
haven't quite worked out how to articulate it. Somewhat of a short-term fix to a long-term problem because
any board or commission could be the next one that struggles with membership, whether they struggle
due to a lack of applicants or a lack of appointments. There's a lot of ways that this can go. I think
a better fix
would be a code change that clarifies the quorum determination for advisory boards and commissions.
Currently city code states that a quorum consists of a majority of members serving being present. Counting
the empty seats, I personally don't believe empty seats can be members and they certainly aren't serving.
So I think getting some clarity on quorum determination
would solve the problem in a way that I find preferable to removing seats. Because furthermore, if you
reduce seats and then interest swells, there are fewer residents who are allowed to be appointed and
serve and do the work. So yep, thank you all for your attention and your efforts on this matter. I'd
be happy to discuss it with anyone at another time if that's so desired. So thank you. Thank you so
much. Next in council chambers.
Hello, City Council. My apologies if I'm not very articulate right now. I'm working off of a 14-hour
day with very little sleep. But my name is Carl Geiser and I am the vice president of the environmental
commission. However, tonight I am only here in my individual capacity and my opinions are my own. I
deeply respect and appreciate the intention behind this proposal.
Applaud the proactive approach taken by Commissioner Stasberg and other council members to make sure
our boards and commissions are working effectively for the city of Bloomington As proposed this will
indeed fix the quorum issue. That's been plaguing our Commission for a while now However, I am ambivalent
about this proposal while it will help us in the short term I think in the long term this is going to
hinder the performance of the Environmental Commission and
With fewer members, we will necessarily have fewer people hours to dedicate to environmental research
and community outreach for the city. Things like, you know, Bugfest, Eco Heroes Art Contest, we do Earth
Day stuff, and we also do other research projects like the aforementioned light pollution previously.
Fundamentally, I do not think tree City USA has a lack of interest in environmental issues Rather I
think that we have an advertising issue Fundamentally, this isn't to disparage city efforts to get interest
in boards of commissions. I think they're doing quite a bit But as an example, I am currently a first-year
law student at IU after a decade of working as a molecular biologist
I have now had the opportunity to speak with many members of the Environmental Law Society on campus,
many who were completely unaware of the EC, but excited when I told them about the opportunity. We have
had talks on the Environmental Commission regarding increasing membership and doing some active
self-recruitment, and I think we have plans in motion to affect that type of work.
All this is to say I would like to ask that the City Council delay this resolution to give us time to
recruit and fill our ranks F after a reasonable time we fail to do so then I will have no objection
if you want to come back and pass this But I would ask for maybe a few months if possible. Thank you
Thank you chambers
Hi, my name's Greg Alexander. I want to talk about the change to representation on the Transportation
Commission. I really respect the goal. It's very important to include schools in our transportation
planning. For example, it's now 25 years since the city adopted official policy that we were going to
provide a safe bike and ped transportation connection to North High School. And across decades
of implementation, we spent about $5 million towards that goal. Almost every single penny of that was
spent on recreational facilities.
that don't have any transportation goal whatsoever. As a result, when my son, this isn't hypothetical
as this is happening now, when he stays after school for an extracurricular, he walks home on State
Road 37, where he walks in the middle of the street during rush hour, because that's when extracurriculars
get out, and he shares the street with cars going 40 miles an hour through a park. It's a damn travesty.
I'm speaking very mildly to you. You deserve much worse. But unfortunately, this proposal is exactly
backwards. MCCSC is both actively and passively antagonistic to safe transportation for its students.
For example, last year, the principal at Tri-North simply forgot that they had a plan for walkers to
use the back door, and they started locking that door. They just didn't even know that they had a plan
that people walk to school. The only reason they reversed course is that I happened to see
a stream of students walking in the driveway with drop-off traffic, and I was like, you can imagine.
And so they reversed course because I brought it to their attention. Another example, the planning department
had to convince the developer who was just by North High School to include a path to North High School
in the plat for their subdivision. And MCCSE staff opposed that path. Again, the path was ultimately
included because I made a stink
I care more than the entire MCCSC about this, duh, right? MCCSC is essentially unchanged from
the organization that about 60 years ago closed the downtown high school and made two suburban high
schools. They view their mission as serving the suburban population and not the urban one. MCCSC needs
to follow, not lead. Our planning staff needs a seat on the MCCSC school board. The MCCSC staff does
not need a position in our planning.
Infrastructure, unfortunately, they're a bad actor in this space. We need to reform MCCC We do not need
to give them more authority. Thank you, and I'm so sorry to bring this news Next in chambers Good evening,
Justin Vassel
I would also like to speak on the proposed adjustment to the number of seats on the environmental commission
I want to reiterate some of what's already been said just an appreciation for the council's attention
to this and specifically to the committee on council processes for You know thinking about ways that
that commissions can you know better do their work and be set up for success? In this particular instance
about the environmental commission I
I was looking through you know the ordinance that that set up the environmental commission earlier today
and Discovered this is one of the older maybe one of the oldest commissions in the city That was brought
to be back in 1971 and so I found somewhere in the archive the ordinance and and they had 12 seats from
from the beginning so You know this this change would be a significant structural change after 55 years
of sort of the same
You know set up so Not to say that that means that it's not a good change to make it may very well be
But I think it's worth taking a deeper look into sort of what the ramifications of such a change would
be as some of the others mentioned There have been some quorum issues, but those you know may be resolved
based on how you know the part of the municipal code that refers to quorum for our sort for the
The non statutory commissions is written in because for example We've had in our bylaws that it's based
on the number of filled seats Not the number of total seats and that's worked well for us for years
So in the immediate term, it seems that the Commission could continue to operate But of course, it's
not ideal when when five members or when there's five vacancies on a body of 12 members, right? That's
a pretty big gap
So my background, I'm an experimental PhD physicist. So data analysis is sort of one of my bread and
butter skills. So I went on to onboard and I downloaded the seat history for all the seats on the EC.
Made some charts. I won't talk you through them right now, but happy to share with anybody. Just looking
at how the vacancies and filled seats sort of played out over the years. And there's some interesting
stuff in the data. So for example, the five seats vacant at one time is not a unique thing. It's happened
at least seven times over the last 10 years. And there have also been sort of large stretches of vacancies
for a particular seat.
There's one seat right now that's been vacant for two years that has happened in the past. So it's not
completely novel. These are sort of statistical anomalies, outliers. And there's definitely ways to
get around that. But one thing that I found interesting that I want to just mention in the last few
seconds here is that if you take the monthly average number of commissioners over a 10-year period,
there's 10.2 seats filled. So reducing to nine would then reduce the
Effectiveness of the Commission. Thank you. Thank you so much. Is there anyone online who'd like to
comment and then we'll come to back to you. Mr. Mitchell No one to you, sir Hello council Julius Mitchell
from the office of the mayor I just want to say that the administration is largely in favor of this
ordinance. We just have one small request Councilmember Stossford was kind enough to mention it which
I appreciate I just wanted to share a request with the full council
Currently the proposed ordinance would remove two council seats and three mayoral seats from
the Environmental Commission We would just ask that you consider moving two council seats and two mayoral
seats to keep representation from the appointing bodies even If part of council's desire with this ordinance
is to have an odd number of commission members We would ask you to consider removing three council seats
instead of the three mayoral seats if it is your preference Our personal preference is for
even representation from the appointing bodies, but we're open to either option Thank you for your consideration
Thank you very much. Other comments? Coming back to council then. Any comments? Councilmember Stasberg
and then councilmember Rallo. I just want to make clear because several public commenters mentioned
the issue of quorum.
with this commission, and when the CCP first started talking about this, there was a quorum issue mentioned,
and that may have spurred the conversation, but if you notice, there's not actually anything about quorum
in the whereas clauses, because I thought that that was solved by the decision that quorum was out of
the number of seats that were appointed, and that was my impression like two months ago.
And so that did not make it into the whereas clauses. Instead, it's about those long-standing vacancies.
And so to Mr. Vassil, I would love to see your charts and the fact that there have been multiple
long-standing vacancies over the time that this commission has been in existence is actually justification
to reduce the seats because there's clearly been regular vacancies
including a couple that have been vacant right now since since 2024 and I will just reiterate to the
administration I appreciate wanting to keep it even and I am I did not want to get rid of a seat that
somebody was actually appointed at and so I'm Would not consider taking more council seats down because
of the actual appointments that have been made. Thanks. I
I didn't I want to interrupt anyone if they wanted to make any further comment Anybody else have comments
before the motion comes more clarity and then we can go back to customer Flaherty and then the motion
Thank you for the the ordinance I don't have especially strong feelings about it. I do appreciate the
public comment it feels relatively low stakes to me like I think
Fully constituted nine-member environmental Commission with people who are excited to be there and ready
to serve like will be highly effective and I don't really think there's like I know that's not the desire
of the commissioners who spoke tonight, but I don't I don't feel like there's a there's a major downside
on the transportation Commission front I appreciate mr. Alexander had to say I Tend to lean like give
let's give it a chance, you know, like it maybe perpetuates some of the problems that he was citing if we
don't seek to bring MCCSE to the table, and if needed, positively influence their appointments or their
superintendent or whoever it is on issues of safety and sustainability with routes to school through
the work of that commission. So I think I tend to lean in favor of that, which was already part of code,
the desire to have somebody working on that be part of the commission, and we just haven't been able
to get that done. So I understand, again, the critique, but I think I tend to lean in favor of that.
Just final note on the EC appointments thing. I was self-interested as a council member, but I think
I like bodies with odd numbers for the sake of deciding things, which is good. And I think it's reasonable
on advisory commissions in particular for the council to have the slim majority of seats for a couple
of reasons. First of all, that's not true for most of the statutory boards of commissions by a mile.
And second is that I think it's kind of like
easier for the single unitary entity of the mayor to have kind of a strong influence on their appointments
because they're just one person, whereas we're a deliberative body that conducts public-facing interviews
to appoint most of our seats, things like that. It tends to be a little bit more distributed in terms
of its outlook and things like that already and harder to probably influence by way of
You know from the appointing body role because again, we're nine different members who are meeting in
public only so For those reasons, I think it's honestly just entirely reasonable for us to have the
majority where we have that You know odd number of seats and so I would support that piece too.
That's all. Thank you. Thank you so much something I Appreciate my colleague bringing this forward,
but I am skeptical I
I served eight years on the Environmental Commission and I regard it as a lot of complexity. It doesn't
have a single domain expertise. It's composed of people who have various interests and it handles things
as varied as erosion and air quality and land use and biodiversity and a lot of different things. So
I would be skeptical about reducing the number.
I'm agnostic right now about the appointments of Transportation Commission, but in any case I would
like time for both commissions to Consider this and come come up with recommendation for the council
And so I will move to continue deliberation on ordinance 20 26 21 be continued to the City Council's
regular session meeting of November 4th
Which gives time for both commissions to to meet and discuss and maybe send a memo to us Hold on when
did you just We have to move it to second reading I think at our next regular session and then we'll
and Then we will probably okay
I'll amend it to move to our next regular session of October 14th for second reading All right, there's
a motion to second any discussion Seeing none all those in favor say aye Any opposed? All right, that
will be moved for second reading. Thank you very much. Are there any other motions?
I move that ordinance 2026-22 be introduced and read by the clerk by title and synopsis only. Second.
Motion and a second. Any discussion? I'll just say that if the body wanted to just vote for this today,
I would. But I think for the sake of time, it would be better for us not to spend a lot of time on it.
So anyways, just saying that for the good of the order. All those in favor of it being read?
Any opposed? All right. Will the clerk please read. Ordinance number 2026-22, prohibiting use of automated
license plate reader technology and certain video surveillance systems.
The synopsis is this ordinance prohibits the acquisition and use of automated license plate reader technology
and surveillance camera systems within the city of Bloomington and by any city agency. Thank you very
much. Any other motions? Seeing none, let's move to legislation for second readings. Move that ordinance
2026-20 be read by title and
Be introduced and read by the clerk by title and synopsis only Motion in a second all those in favor
say aye Any opposed? All right. Will the clerk please read? Ordinance 20 26-20 amendments to title 20
of the Bloomington Municipal Code to improve sustainability and housing for affordability pursuant to
council resolution 20 26-05
The synopsis is, scroll down, sorry. This ordinance contains amendments to the Unified Development Ordinance
per directives outlined in resolution 2026-05, a resolution to initiate a proposal to amend Title 20, the UDO,
The Bloomington Municipal Code in order to improve sustainability and housing affordability Thank you,
I move that ordinance 2026 dash 20 be adopted All right councilmember Flaherty and then I assume we
have folks from planning. Yes We did have some presentation and discussion What was it two weeks ago?
Something like that
I did want to share just a little bit, just a reminder of the process. As far as the genesis of this
ordinance, it started with a lot of engagement directly with staff, planning staff in the year 2024.
That ultimately led to the creation of a resolution in early 2025. For reasons I won't get into, this
body voted no on introduction at that time. But then when we discussed Hopewell South PUD later in the
year, we were considering a lot of these concepts then.
Seemed clear there was you know council support also, maybe increasingly mayoral support for a lot of
these kind of evidence-based policy solutions on affordability and sustainability So I brought the resolution
back beginning of the year. We passed it 20 26 05 and from there staff assisted planning Commission
in proposing this ordinance planning Commission recommended it favorably and I just wanted to credit
staff who I think did a really good job of navigating some
kind of open and complex questions that the resolution invited and also met all the statutory and legislative
deadlines with it. So again, the overall goals are what the title of the ordinance speaks to, which
is a through line of sustainability and housing affordability. Some of the public comment we heard a
few weeks ago seemed to kind of like not quite understand how some of these pieces fit together. They
were like, why is electrification part of this? Why does that matter? Why parking?
But they really do all have strong sustainability and affordability dimensions. And so, you know, we're
doing multiple things here, but all of them should increase the affordability of both existing and new
housing in terms of construction costs, in terms of operational costs. It will reduce greenhouse gas
emissions, allow folks to live closer to where they, you know, work and play in smaller homes that use
less energy.
And enabling that you know that development to be unlocked. So so that's kind of how it all fits together
why these things are in a package You know looking at really allowing Smaller modest homes on smaller
lots kind of a guiding principle was if you can build an ADU at the home. Why not?
Be allowed to make that actually a separate home on a separate lot of record Probably more likely to
be under occupied more likely to happen because you don't have to finance the thing for 200 grand You
can actually just sell a lot to a developer and it could be really nice option for a lot of folks It
could be an option for income for income constrained folks who've been in their homes a long time and
have a backyard that You know could be could be subdivided to create another small home Let's see
parking minimums become a barrier to housing construction and there's really quite a lot of evidence
and research on that and I'll talk about that more in a moment. On electrification, it's the only path
that's consistent with our climate action plan is we should be using electricity, which is increasingly
clean, already cleaner than using gas in your home, even in the grid here in Indiana, that we should
be using electricity for space heating, water heating and cooking in homes and residences.
And so using voluntary incentives to move that forward. There were some questions about the legality
of that from the city legal department We can talk about that more folks want I think our council has
also weighed in that they feel confident that this Is not violating any Indiana laws that prohibit us
from regulating
The use of gas in in homes this this ordinance does not do that It creates voluntary incentives that
folks can take up to do something beyond what code already allows in every instance every lot in the
city there will be an option to pursue it with with gas infrastructure if they want and even if someone
pursued Electrification incentives they would still you know, that would be non-binding on any future
occupant, you know future folks could still run gas
to their home if they wanted to in whatever processes the local gas utility uses to authorize that.
Finally, I did want to talk a little bit more about parking minimums because I know we have an amendment
on it later. It seemed like an appropriate time now though because I'm not the author of that amendment
to talk about the policy rationale vis-a-vis the ordinance as a whole. So just a few reminders. This
Ordinance that was directed through the resolution removes parking minimums citywide. It does not change
maximums as much parking as someone can build now They continue to be allowed to build it just gives
flexibility and doesn't require them to build parking that may not be utilized it gives that you know
judgment to a housing builder essentially we have
good examples of that being used productively in the past in the city, but it's always had to go through
some sort of special exception process. This would allow it as just a matter of course. Also worth noting
where I think there's been some concerns voiced in, you know, residential neighborhoods where there
might be a neighborhood parking zone, virtually all existing homes either already have off-street parking
or they have the ability to add off-street parking through the procedures in the UDO if they want to.
Another thing to note is that this change does not directly affect who has access to on-street parking
within a neighborhood zone. And that's another issue that has come up recently, I think all my colleagues
are aware of it, with folks in small homes not having the ability to get access to neighborhood parking.
That's a policy change that was made in 2018 by the council.
to prohibit anybody other than folks living in single-households detached dwellings from getting the
privilege of storing their private vehicles on the public right-of-way. So we just allow that one type
of housing resident, all other housing residents in the same neighborhood can't use the public right-of-way
to park their cars. I think there's been some temporary accommodations made, but it's poor policy in
my view. I tried to change it last council term. That didn't go anywhere.
I think we need to change it and so just noting that that is a distinct issue though though. I think
it's come up as related and if we adopt this ordinance You know the in particular the portion on minimum
parking requirements I think
Future change to the neighborhood zone policy that would update and improve that based on best practices
is absolutely needed and warranted I think we need to expand eligibility if you live in a neighborhood
you should be able to get access to neighborhood zone on equal terms not on segregated terms
and Additionally, I think if we have challenges with managing demand or supply rather we should manage
that through through through demand and
That's easily done through pricing and other design changes to the parking permit program in neighborhoods,
which right now is more or less nominal. Folks can get an annual guest pass for a similarly fairly nominal
fee. There's only a few of our neighborhood zones that are even constrained from a parking supply relative
to what people want to use. And I think pricing is the tool for that, not limiting housing development
through a parking minimum requirement.
I sent you all and my colleagues a fair amount of research and evidence on that front from places like
the UCLA Center for Parking Policy, which is one of the leading parking research and reform shops in
the country, other think tanks that work on these issues.
Included a study from commissioned by the Colorado Energy Office supporting a near statewide elimination
of parking minimums that found that a land use study that found that Parking reforms could could boost
home building by 40 to 70 percent So this really does unlock more housing. It keeps costs down. That's
very well documented This is also not novel or or innovative or new
Hundreds of cities across the country have done it. They've not gone back college towns like ours liberal
places like Bloomington Even about about eight or ten states have also if not fully eliminated parking
minimums really severely restricted municipalities ability to have them we may even see that in Indiana
in some time just the same way that you know, we weren't really acting much on housing reforms and the
state finally Walked in said actually cities have to look at these types of housing reforms. So
As this becomes better appreciated that this is actually a barrier to housing availability and affordability,
I think we're just gonna see it more and more. I'm hopeful that the council's ready to act on that tonight.
If not, that's okay. I wanted to make the case. So that's everything from me. Happy to turn it over
to staff if there's anything else they wanted to share beyond what we shared a couple weeks ago. Would
Director Coyne or Grulick, would you like to add anything?
We've already obviously discussed presented fantastic. Otherwise, we have I think three amendments so
for five now We have lots of amendments, so let's do them sort of in the order that they're in the packet
I think I'm councillor Puma Smith you you have the first one Sorry, go ahead I would like to move amendment
one Motion in a second go ahead
So amendment one replaces the minimum bicycle parking requirement. So that was something that the our
original resolution I think said vehicle And vehicles actually defined in state law and it excludes
bicycles, but Plan Commission by a vote of five to three Decided that they wanted to remove minimum
bicycle parking as well because they wanted to consider a
Bicycles to be vehicles. I was one of the three that dissented and so this is my dissent is putting
it back in I'm putting it back in exactly the way that it was I did meet with planning staff to discuss
Making any changes and if any changes made sense and I kind of read through it again some of the concerns
brought up at planning Commission had to do with cost of requiring minimum bike parking and especially
as I read through it that
Except for the residential uses First of all, the residential uses are one space per five bedrooms.
So, you know that that means some bicycle parking like There would be some nominal costs there the bigger
you get right, but if you only are having a relatively small Development then you're nothing there and the other
Uses have to do with what percentage of vehicle parking spaces are provided. So if you're a business
or You know, you're moving in somewhere and you're not actually providing any vehicular parking and
I'm thinking about small businesses that you know might be adjacent to
Large parking areas and they're not actually creating any parking themselves. They're just depending
on other parking They wouldn't actually have to add any bicycle parking that just would not be something
that would be this big cost on it so I Don't know that I have to say anything else about it tremendous
any questions Would staff like to comment on this at all
Excellent. We'll now then go to public comment. Would anybody like to comment on Amendment 1?
I guess it's me. Hi there, Zach Ammerman. I just want to say that I'm in support of adding bike parking back in.
I think that's a no brainer. It's a relatively low cost thing to do. It doesn't cost a lot for businesses
to add bike racks. They're relatively low expensive or not expensive. So I would support adding that
back in. I also want to say having lived in DC for 10 years, an alternative way of doing this, I think
we should keep the bike minimums. But on top of that, something that the DC government does that is
awesome is they allow anyone to request a bike rack on 311 and the city will install it.
And sometimes takes six months, nine months, a year, but they will install a bike rack wherever they
can. You just upload a picture, it shows, hey, a bike rack would be great here, and they will install
it. It's a relatively low cost part of the DC government program. It doesn't cost a lot of money, and
it's a great program. And I think it would be great for Bloomington to do something similar to that
here. That would be kind of the opposite end. We could have the required minimum for bikes for businesses,
but we could also add sort of a carrot on the other end, allow people to request extra ones where they're
needed. So thank you.
Thank you so much. We'll come back to chambers. Go ahead. Hi, I'm Jordan Connor, and I'm a member of
Bloomington Homes for All. I'm speaking more specifically about the entire ordinance, but I hope it's
not inappropriate to speak now about that. I'd like to ask that the council support ordinance 2026-20
For many in my generation and those younger homeownership is a fantasy accessible primarily to those
of privilege and fortune The solution to this affordability and housing crisis must be multifaceted
There's a point of order. We're only talking about amendment one at the moment So you can talk you'll
get another chance to talk generally about this one. Gotcha Just the amendment one It'll come
All right, anybody else wanna comment on amendment one? Another person online, go ahead. Hello, can
you hear me? Yes, we can. Okay, thank you. Paul Rousseau here, Bloomington resident. I generally support,
strongly support bicycle parking minimums
I'd like to take this opportunity to point out that there is a chronic problem with lack of bicycle
parking for commercial space in this town. It's been going on for a long time. Perhaps the poster child
of this is the Kroger on South College Avenue, which is on the B line for goodness sakes. And they have
space for something like four bicycles, maybe six. But they have a massive parking lot for cars.
And apparently there's no, the bicycle parking that they have, they just voluntarily did, but there's
no requirement for them to create more. That just seems like a travesty to me. So I strongly support
any minimum, I've not been able to read this current amendment because I've been too busy with work,
but when I hear bicycle parking minimums, strongly support it. Thank you very much. Thank you. Is there
anyone else online?
Tremendous will come back to council any comments before we vote the councilmember Flaherty Points for
creativity to the planning commissioners who brought this I think they're not wrong in terms of the
letter of the text It's not what I intended with the resolution. I do think biking is meaningfully different
variety of reasons explicitly in city goals We are trying to encourage more biking trying to get mode
shift to happen That's not true cars the other major change or difference is that?
We allow the use of public right-of-way for people to store cars virtually everywhere citywide If every
block of the city had one space of that right-of-way dedicated to bike parking We could have a different
story about you know Whether or not we needed the folks to to build it and put on the sidewalk, but
like it's just not the same So it's really not an apples-to-apples comparison. Finally, the costs are
really quite negligible relative to the the cost involved of adding Car parking so it's not as much
of a Rationale I think on the you know lowering development costs from so
Happy to support it, thanks for bringing it. Excellent, thank you. Others? Councilman Morello? I just
want to thank the sponsor, Councilman Stasberg, for this amendment. I'll be supporting it. Fantastic.
All right, let's vote then. Can we voice vote on this, or do we need a roll call? Okay, will the clerk
please call the roll on amendment one? Councilmember Stasberg?
Piedmont Smith Sorry, yes Daily, yes Rallo. Yes rough Rosenberger. Yes and Flaherty. Yes That carries.
Thank you very much. Let's go now we have Seven one, yes
We now have another amendment amendment to Yes, I move amendment to to ordinance 20 26-20 as amended
We'll say that when it's we're done with the amendments, okay, so amendment to Rejects one of the changes
that the plan Commission passed that was not mentioned in our resolution is
asking for changes, and that is that there was an elimination of retention of existing tree canopy that,
so the changes from the plan commission deleted the exception, no, sorry.
This is kind of a meta thing here. It's like somebody came with this and we're deleting and adding.
Okay, so in the UDO, there is a requirement for retention of existing tree canopy, and there's a table
in section 20.04.030 saying how much of the tree canopy needs to be preserved. The planning commission added
This does not apply to existing lots of record in r3 and r4 that are less than 5,000 square feet so
I want to Delete that exception and have it still apply to those small lots Any questions councilman
Flaherty Yeah, I had a good conversation with our two planning staff members here on Friday about this
specific thing and it's kind of Genesis like why it's being brought and that kind of
Ration offer that I did want to ask staff if they could share that Like I think I think it was about
When you're consistently seeing a variance for the same issue over and over again And they're usually
being granted like they're meeting the hardship that you know, you try to fix it via a code change Could
you could you elaborate maybe mr. Grulick if that's appropriate? Just for the benefit of yeah colleagues
in the public. I
Manager so as councilmember Flaherty kind of alluded to one of the challenges that we have encountered
especially on small lots Is when you have the presence of closed canopy it very oftentimes severely
restricts the Developability of that lot and so as we are looking at making lot sizes even smaller,
you know we're going to still encounter that situation and so you know in these situations we have a
Had to take these to the Board of Zoning Appeals for variances in those situations Those have been approved
pretty much all the time with a remediation plan But we still acknowledge that there is an inherent
problem that is created on these lots of
And the smaller you go, you're just gonna have that same problem Maybe even more so because the presence
of that closed canopy does severely with strictly develop ability of that lot Certainly tree canopy
coverage retention is certainly very important but you know as I as I mentioned we do routinely see
this challenge occurring and you know as the resolution was looking for ways to improve housing attainability
remove barriers to and
Providing housing within the community, you know, we identified this as something that could help make
that path easier and Alleviate the need to seek a variance, you know, the 5,000 square foot number was
just something that we suggested certainly that could be adjusted Yeah, and you know anytime there is
a subdivision on a property They would be held to these standards to the tree preservation standards.
So this language is just exempting development on existing lots of records
Thank you. May I follow up with the question please? Yeah, mr. Gerlich in Item four in the same section
of code it says for parcels of land less than two acres the preservation standards and table of zero
four dash eight may be altered by the city planning and transportation to director to allow preservation
of individual specimen trees or tree lines along property lines in lieu of minimum required vegetation
canopy has that not helped with this problem and
Sometimes sometimes not, you know, oftentimes at a staff level we tend to be more conservative and more
preservation minded So in that regard, yes, there is that allowance But we do you know usually often
look at it of you know, unless there's an individual specimen tree which is clearly kind of what we
were trying that that language was trying to direct us to you know, very rarely is that maybe the situation
but you know a
Scattering of trees that do create that closed canopy. So there is an allowance for that And we can
utilize that but you know, historically we've tried to err on the side of more conservatism Thank you,
thank you so much other comments or questions here questions then council member Stasberg
conversation about this at Plan Commission about that number 5,000 square feet and so when I met with
planning Whenever it was last week, maybe And we looked at different lots in terms of how many are actually
below 5,000 feet and would qualify for this Exemption it didn't seem like there were actually that many
of them but I guess I want to ask the sponsor of this if As opposed to scratching it if you would consider
lowering that number of
to like 4,000 square feet or 3,000 square feet so that we are actually like targeting those very smallest
lots and not generally allowing some kind of tree clear cut. Well, I would appreciate hearing from other
council members. I mean, if there is no appetite for deleting this exception altogether, then of course
it would be
Better than nothing to say it applies to lots smaller than 5,000 square feet. I mean, in my synopsis,
I of course give some of the reasons why I love trees. With increasing density and more built area,
more permeable area, it's especially important to retain minimal tree cover to counteract the heat island
effect. And of course, all trees provide natural ecosystem services like shade, carbon dioxide absorption,
et cetera.
I'm sure you all know that but this is where I'm coming from Okay, seeing none and we'll go to public
comment on amendment to And of which we have five anyone want to comment specifically on the amendment
about tree cover Hurry again is that game room? Unless there's somebody in the room
Okay, sorry. Go for it. Sorry. I can't tell what's going on in there. I just want to point out, the
amendment is eliminating something from section 2 of that, the subsection 2. The version that was passed
by the Plan Commission, and if you look on page 187 of the jumbo packet, was added to subsection 1,
the applicability section, not the retention of existing canopy.
So on page 187, if you look at it, except existing lots of record within R3, et cetera, that is the
applicability section, meaning it's going to everything else in the entire section, not just the retention
of tree canopy, is being eliminated by this, if it were to stay in. Not the retention of existing, if
it were just the retention of existing canopy, that would exempt only the table below, but if everything
else in the entire tree section. So for example, right now,
If this were to pass, as it was approved by the Planning Commission in Section 1, there would be no
obligation for their trees to be protected during construction whatsoever. Subsection 7 would not be
there. There would be no obligation for conservancy or tree preservation easements. Anything else that
might be added to this section would not apply to lots 5,000 feet or less in R3 or R4.
So it's the applicability section that is really why I've written you guys on it in opposition to this
and why the Commission on Sustainability and Resilience wrote a letter to you also opposing this, because
anything else in that section, it no longer applies. If it's just the tree canopy section, tree canopy
retention, I can understand the rationale there a little bit better.
because it is harder to do construction when you're having to retain 90% of the tree coverage. But everything
else in there that is in there now or would be added in the future is exempted under the version that
was passed by the Planning Commission, which again is in the section one, not section two. I just want
to point that out. Thank you. Thank you. We'll continue online from anyone else online and then we'll
come to chambers.
All right, person online. Hi, this is Kari Bennett, Habitat for Humanity of Monroe County. Habitat supports
the tree preservation exemption for residential small lots because it can be incredibly difficult to
retain trees and still be able to build a home on a small lot. This exemption can be particularly impactful
for homes that are affordable for low income residents.
While trees are very beneficial for a host of environmental and aesthetic reasons, the best and highest
use of a residential zone lot is a home. Thank you so much. Hi, my name's Greg. I'm sorry to use all
your time. I just want to speak very briefly. It is your time, not ours. Go ahead. Against this amendment,
if I'm understanding correctly,
I do love trees. I love trees in the city. But the fact of the matter is trees are extremely difficult
in the city. I can't have trees on my lot because on both sides of my lot, which is very small, there
are power lines. And so it's very few places I could plant a tree that they're not going to go in the
power lines. We had to get rid of a tree at the rental because it had Dutch Elm disease. We had to get
rid of another tree because it was dropping limbs on the house. It's very difficult to have trees in the city.
All sorts of problems and the simple fact the matter is the more housing we have in the city the less
housing We have in the forest and so if we want to preserve forest, it's best to urbanize the urban
areas. Thank you Thank you so much is there anyone else online Okay, anybody else in chambers on amendment
to That will come back to council. I think that's where Flaherty had a comment Go ahead
Sorry to sneak in here, but I think mr. Ammerman was absolutely right and I made a mistake in drafting
my amendment So the the phrase except existing lots of record within the r3 and r4 zoning districts
that are less than 5,000 square feet That was actually with item 1 applicability and not with item 2
as I have it in the amendment. So my apologies I Guess I would like to make an amendment to my amendment. I
Okay, that's a thing that has been done Yeah, yes, I think Attorney Allen is preparing that in the meantime
comes one for there. Do you want to make a comment? Good catch by mr. Ammerman I Agree that the well
more broadly
I think A, there's a mechanism for the director to exercise some discretion already, even if they haven't
really been using that. And B, through the conversation I had with staff about the variance process,
I generally agree with the rationale. If something is repeatedly causing a variance to be brought to
BZA and it's repeatedly being granted, we should fix it in code. But I'm not sure if this little carve-out
exception proposed by staff is the fix. And in particular, what's been happening at BZA is
folks have been proposing remediation plans. And that's not, we could require that via code or something
like it. And it could even go so far as to say if you can't, so there's a method or can be method for
calculating remediation if you're losing a certain square footage of canopy, plant X number of trees
that are gonna reach that level and Y number of years. And if it can't be done on the site because of
it just being too small, you could do it elsewhere. And so plant a street tree somewhere else.
And so, you know, we could preserve canopy in the aggregate in the city through remediation plans where
that's necessary and just make that clearer and like a clear set of rules folks can follow and kind
of codify the practice that's already kind of emerged or more organically I think in the BCA process.
But I think that's too tall of an order to...
to get done right now. But I think it is worth doing, and I encourage staff to maybe bring that at their
initiative with future UDO changes. So that's my two cents on it. Happy to vote for your amendment to
the amendment and the amendment. Thank you so much. Attorney Allen, is that ready yet? And if you'd
like, we could recess for a minute. Oh, there it is. Wow. Wonders.
All right, you already talked about this, but I'd love to give you another chance if you need it. I
don't think you need it. If we could just make that bigger, that would be good. Thank you. Thank you,
Mr. Allen. And so here is the amendment as reflected. Any comments on this? Any further questions?
Parliamentarian, do I need to go to public comment again for amendment two as amendment? Okay, I have
to go to public comment again. So anyone like to comment on amendment two as amended, as being proposed
to be amended? Anyone online? All right, come back to you all. You ready to vote?
All right, will the clerk please call the roll on amendment two as amended? No. On the amendment to
the amendment, and then we'll vote for amendment two. Got it, yes. So can you call the roll on the amendment
to the amendment, please? Councilmember Piedmont-Smith? Yes. Asari? Yes. Daly? Yes. Rallo? Yes.
Rough Rosenberger. Yes clarity. Yes Stasburg. Yes Okay, that carries a zero will now unless there's
any comments a vote on amendment to as amended All right, well the clerk please call the roll Councilmember
sorry, yes daily. Yes
Rallo. Yes. Ruff. Yes. Rosenberger. Yes. Flaherty. Yes. Stossberg. Yes. Piedmont-Smith. Yes. That motion
carries 8-0. Amendment 2 passes. Let's move on to Amendment 3. Oh, that's mine also. OK. You want to
move to move? I move Amendment 3 to Ordinance 26-20. Second.
Motion to second, go ahead. So this amendment deletes the Bloomington Municipal Code 20.04.060 in attachment
A and replaces it with a new version. Basically, I'm rejecting the deletion of all parking
minimum requirements in the UDO and instead proposing to delete only the minimums for the following
uses. Dwelling live work, dwelling cottage development,
dwelling, mobile home park, non-commercial urban agriculture, student housing, or dormitory. Let me
explain my rationale for this. We have a problem in the city that there's not enough space on some streets
in some areas for the number of vehicles that people want to park on those streets. This includes
neighborhood residential parking zones,
as well as areas that are not in neighborhood residential parking zones. In those zones, on-street parking
permits are only allowed per code to residents in single-family houses. In areas outside such zones,
on-street parking is a benefit we are providing for free to everybody. Where parking demand is high,
I think we should look into charging every resident who wants to park on the street for the privilege
of doing so. But in the meantime, we have a parking problem.
Problem will only get worse if we get rid of parking minimums for duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes in
the R1 through R4 zoning districts and for multi-family buildings within or adjacent to R3 districts.
This amendment reflects what I see in my district happening, that there are streets, often quite narrow
streets, where people park on both sides sometimes and do not allow enough
passage space for emergency vehicles and These are streets where single affordable single-family homes
are being torn down to be replaced by duplexes that are less affordable and Come with more bedrooms
and end up having more vehicles that need to park So parking I think we have a problem in this city
with on-street parking. We need a comprehensive solution and
And until we have one, and I'm willing to charge everybody for parking, but until we have that, this
is only gonna make the problem worse, removing the minimums. The minimums are minimal, let me say. For
a duplex, you only need one space for both sides, so you need half a space per unit. So it's not such
a high requirement, and I think that getting rid of it
Minimums at this time is unwise and I'm happy to work on comprehensive solutions to the on-street parking
problem Throughout the course of this year before the neighborhood zone permits are up next summer.
Thank you Thank you any questions Would staff like to comment on this Okay, seeing no questions, we'll
go to public comment on amendment three
My name is Greg Alexander. I was really disappointed by a comment made by this amendment sponsor a couple
weeks ago. She suggested that complaints about the scarcity of parking in neighborhoods south of campus
is evidence that parking scarcity doesn't induce bike and ped trips.
It doesn't work that way. For example, when I lived on the Upper West Side of New York City, there was
about one parking space per 100 residents. And people fought over those spaces. They were always occupied.
They were severely oversubscribed. The tiny minority that drove was always complaining. The sponsor
would look at this vocal demand for limited parking resources and say it proves no one is walking. The
biggest driver of bike and ped trips is proximity. If you build more housing in city limits, there will
be more bike and ped trips.
The second biggest driver is simply restricting car space, especially parking. When people do not complain,
it means they don't even notice the resource they're consuming. They're taking it for granted. But if
they are complaining, they're aware. They're confronted with this cost with awareness. They can make
rational decisions. The underlying fact of the matter is that for about 70 years, we have displaced
residences from city into the suburbs.
commuters have a nearly insatiable demand for parking, and yet we have satisfied that need. That's amazing.
Consider how much parking demand we have created, and yet we still have enough parking. People commute
here from all over. But we do have a housing crisis, a housing crisis, a crisis! It is existential to
every aspect of the city. It is causing a downward spiral in the quality of our public spaces as local
character is driven, that was created by our residents, is being replaced with a corporate soul driven
by the exploitation of visitors.
It is causing a crisis for government funding as we provide services for people who live outside of
our taxation umbrella It's causing a crisis for our school district Which is seeing declining enrollment
because families can't live here And it is most of all causing a crisis for those of us who do live
here because we find ourselves priced out in neighborhoods that aren't even really built for us
And in the midst of this price crisis, Councilmember Piedmont-Smith wants to introduce the non-sec order
that bike and ped trips aren't increasing because people complain about parking. Mr. President, bike
and ped trips increase any time you build more housing near campus, and people complain. Let's act like
our housing crisis is more important than preserving an oversupply of parking. I'm asking you to accept
the driver complaints that are inevitable in all desirable places. Please vote against this amendment.
Thank you very much.
I see another comment in in chambers strapping gentlemen And then we'll go online Cons members Steve
Olin chair of the transportation Commission, but I'm not speaking for the Commission I
Speak in support of section 5 of this ordinance as written and against this amendment It's high time
that we stop requiring the provision of parking in our built environment Driving is a privilege the
state requires someone to have a license to operate a motor vehicle The existence of the driver's license
shows that driving is not a human right There are other ways to get around many Bloomingtonians walk
bike scooter and carpool
We have the public transit system with the highest per capita ridership in the state by far But the
car is such utility and convenience that the majority Bloomingtonians use one the use of a car is such
an extraordinary Convenience that it can feel like a right being revoked when it is made less convenient
It is nevertheless a convenience based on a privilege
For many decades, we've made that convenience a requirement in local construction. Requiring land, let
alone structures for parking, is an extraordinary expense that all taxpayers bear, not just drivers.
It has also taken away space that could have been used for more housing units. In both ways, minimum
parking requirements have driven up the cost of housing.
Whether it's in a garage and a lot on a street in a neighborhood or downtown, there is not a need for
parking. There is not a right to park next to one's home. There is only a demand, and there will continue
to be a demand as long as there are more cars looking for places to park than there are spaces. Because
we do not have the money to build as much parking as some drivers demand, the only fair way to allocate
it has been its pricing.
the we need to adjust the price of parking to manage that demand the Problem that councilor Piedmont
Smith worries about will not emerge that quickly That's why after you approve the ordinance as written
There's more work to do to that end if you're worried about parking in neighborhoods any neighborhood
For example know that literally half of our neighborhood zones have a surfeit of demand and half of
them are underutilized
In the next few months, I'll personally be pushing the Transportation Commission to develop legislation
for your consideration to create prices plural for parking in some neighborhoods The price needs to
go up and some it actually needs to go down The same is true for metered parking one price no longer
fits all the price of parking needs to vary by area But I'll also be pushing for the development of
parking benefit districts which I can talk about with the ordinance as a whole but for now don't let
this concern
Fix the pricing over the next year instead New housing or new parking won't or new housing won't get
built so quickly to overwhelm the parking that councilman Smith is concerned about. Thank you Thank
you very much. Is there anyone online wanting to comment on amendment 3? Let us go to them then This
time this time
Person online, please take it away. The first commenter is John Lawrence. Mr. Lawrence or Dr. Lawrence.
Hi, actually this is Jan Sorby. Hey. But there are two people using this computer as confusing as it
may be. First of all, I want to say I support this amendment. It's a thoughtful amendment that's been
worn out by evidence.
The streets of many of the R1, excuse me, R3 and R4 were built before cars were something that everybody
had. They were built when only the rich had automobiles. And I know in my own neighborhood, the rich
never lived here. These are very, very modest houses. We have streets that flat sidewalks, storm sewers,
curbs and gutters.
There's no place for people to walk safely on many of the streets when they become wall-to-wall cars.
Where are the pedestrians supposed to walk? Where are the bikers supposed to ride their bike? Where
are the parents supposed to push strollers and walk dogs? Where are the children supposed to learn how
to ride their tricycle? These are very, very real problems that exist in my neighborhood.
and they've already emerged and they are real and they're happening every day. And when a bigger building
that offers six bedrooms is built, it takes all of the parking away. There's no shared street anymore.
So for these very real problems that were talked about by Isabel Piedmont Smith,
I ask you to please support this. Please support the small neighborhoods that were built with insufficient
infrastructure, and we all have to share that street. So please support them, and thank you. Thank you.
I think we have another commenter online. Hi, Zach and everyone again. First, I apologize if I was jumping
in too early before. It's hard to tell what's going on.
Anyway, I enjoyed it made exciting, but let us reset your time wait Okay, cool to the matter of hand
Generally have a lot of respect for councilmember Piedmont Smith, but so And thank you for the tree
amendment. I appreciate that On this one though. I think I think I just disagree with you. I just want
to point out a couple of facts quickly
Looking at the Parking Reform Network's website right now, I found that 3,772 cities around the world
have reduced parking minimums of some kind. 129 have completely eliminated parking minimums in the US
and Canada just in the past few years. And I just want to list some of those cities that have done so.
Buffalo, New York, Hartford, Connecticut, San Francisco, South Bend, Indiana, Berkeley, Minneapolis,
and St. Paul, Raleigh, North Carolina, Durham, North Carolina, Anchorage, Alaska, Lexington, Kentucky,
San Jose, California, Gainesville,
Burlington, Austin, Texas, Denver, and Baltimore, and that is not exhaustive. These cities are doing
fine. These are frequently much cities that have much larger populations, much more drivers than Bloomington
does, and they seem to be handling the situation fine. I also think some of those cities or cities that
have seen their housing costs go down,
In recent years, Raleigh is one of them. Durham is one of them. Austin, I think, is another one that's
actually seen housing costs as one of the few places where housing is actually kind of leveling off
a little bit and going down. So I think that's a good sign. Parking is expensive to put in. I think
requiring parking to be put in for construction just raises housing costs. Just let builders decide
whether they want to put a parking in or not. That's all I have to say. Thanks. Thank you so much.
Anyone else online? Anyone else in chambers? All right, we will come back to council for comments on
amendment three We Councilman Rosa burger Hi, I love these opportunities to bring out a book and talk
about parking this is Jeff specs walkable city rules super famous city planner and
This is pretty old now, but rule 16 eliminate on-site parking requirements There's a lot on this And
it's a lot of what people have already said. I think when this came out Wow, maybe 2012 there weren't
a ton of cities that did it and now it sounds like over, you know around 150 across the US that talk
about it Washington DC was big on it back in 2012 and
Removing off-street parking requirements will not eliminate off-street parking but will instead stimulate
an active commercial market for it I think it's important to to note that if we require parking on our
properties and we're looking at decreasing Lot size this is going to mean housing cannot be built on
the smaller lots. So I
we have an impervious surface coverage. Like it really is a question of do you want a house there or
do you want nothing there? Because we can't fit a house and parking and green space in our code on these
smaller lots. So it really is a time that we need to be talking about housing humans and not housing
cars. And we're not saying developers do not get parking. They can choose to add parking whenever they
so desire. And it is just their choice.
So I hope everyone up here can just get on board with trying this out. Thanks, colleagues. Thank you
so much. I'm Council Member Piemont-Smith and then Council Member Flaherty. Yeah, I just want to point
out that there is no parking requirement for single-family detached or single-family attached houses.
So if you want to build a single-family house, you don't need to put any parking. Thank you, Council
Member Flaherty.
Yeah, a few things. Thank you First of all, I appreciate customer Piedmont Smith's commitment to you
know, additional parking reforms I've said throughout this process from when we first heard this resolution
that additional parking policy changes are needed and are also warranted if we adopt this code change
But this is a UDO amendment modifying the neighborhood zone permitting scheme is not
like really appropriately in scope, I don't think, for like the UDO amendment. But again, I plan to
take that up. I think it's needed. I've always kind of committed to that. There are some other parking
issues that my colleague identified, like narrow streets, say, Wiley Street and Bryant Park. If people
park on both sides of the street, which is technically allowed, you may have issues with emergency vehicles
or other cars passing. That actually is a violation of existing requirements. You can't block
Passage and so if that's happening people either need to be ticketed or we need to fix it through policy
and so widely I think probably only you know further stretch from Lincoln to Henderson probably should
only have parking on one side of the street if that's not something staff has brought something we can
bring actually because it's in code so that's that's a Kind of bespoke and surgical fix though for a
particular problem. That's not in my mind like part of comprehensive reform I think
Anecdote from when I lived in Bryan Park. I had some neighbors Who always parked in the street and not
in their garage? Just because they wanted to and I think that's like pretty common like a lot of people
just kind of like if it's there and it's free or next to free and it's abundant People just kind of
park there. They don't appreciate that. We're giving this public space away for that purpose and so
yeah, you know adding more people to neighborhoods or allowing
more people besides single-family home dwellers in neighborhoods to park in the zones. That does increase
competition for the limited public space. That's why we price it. That's why we should price it. We
should redesign that program. But again, it's a supply and demand problem. The idea that we're gonna
prioritize some incumbents' preferences on how they wanna store their private views on public space
over housing affordability and housing development, I think, is just a misguided
policy aim. I think flexibility here is important. The bicycle apartments, I've referenced several times
in prior conversations. There's no parking. Did my mic die? Yeah. Mine is too. Some. There's no parking
there. People who live there either don't have cars and they self-select, or they have a car and they
park it somewhere else.
nearby that has free street space, and that's a choice they can make. It's reasonable. I don't think
we have to require it. I don't think it's some major catastrophic problem. I think it's a very incremental
thing that can be managed easily through parking policy rather than this code instrument. Earlier, Kerry
Bennett said something about the highest and best use of land is a home. I think that applies here. We just
It's just more important. I mean the empirical evidence on this from across the country is really quite
abundant and clear It is a fact that this amendment will have the effect of both limiting housing development
and increasing housing costs And I I don't think that the parking preferences of some people Should
trump those goals. So I just think we should be clear about the trade-off. Thanks. Thank you so much
customer floating. Sorry for all the Mike stuff during that any other comments customer Morello
Yeah, I'll be supporting this. I mean, I think it's, I guess what we fail to mention a lot of times
is that we are an exceptional community because of the high population of students that make up about
60% of Bloomington's population. About 70% live off campus. They invariably bring cars with them. They
invariably park cars somewhere. If they park on streets where homes do not have parking,
because they were built, say, early last century, which a lot of the small neighborhoods, a lot of the
neighborhoods around campus are, then we're essentially in competition. Those people are in competition
with the student population. So that is the reality. And I think because of that, I appreciate my colleague
for bringing this forward.
Thank you so much. All right, Council Member Stasberg, and then I'll call for a vote if that's okay.
I'm really having a hard time with this one. Partly, I think I'm having a hard time with it because
I see everybody's arguments as totally valid and legitimate. And one of the things that I've been dealing
with right now over in District 3 are
Boy how many are there right now five six seven New duplexes that have been put up in the last year
That the the statistic that gets thrown at me is that there used to be about ten people living in this
stretch and now there's 80 because it's a particular area where it's owned you can have a
five unrelated adults per dwelling unit, and they're all duplexes. So there are now 10 people per dwelling
unit per side, and it is a serious vehicle parking problem.
And partly, that is because they are students, as Councilmember Ola just said. They are coming from
out of town, and a whole lot of them are bringing cars. And when there's maybe two or three parking
spots for them behind each of those buildings, and there's 10 students who all came, even if half of
them brought cars, there's still this overflow that has to go somewhere else. And, you know, I got a
constituent comment recently that was,
Really solution based and part of the solution In his mind was saying hey, maybe they need to buy iu
parking passes and iu needs to you know somehow house these cars right on their property which which
might be a solution that's worth talking about with
IU, but at this current point in time, there is not another solution. And I have a real hard time saying
like, okay, well, we're gonna do this thing. It's gonna create this problem while we don't really have
a solution for this other problem that it's gonna create. And so that's part of the reason why it's
like, well, I kinda wanna support this because this is definitely creating a problem.
Right, but I also don't want to support it because I do think that it also increases housing prices
especially in the dwelling multifamily and that it's really more complex maybe and I'm looking at this
chart that just says all other zoning districts and the MD zoning district and it's all based on housing
type it's not based on zoning district and Maybe our zoning maybe maybe there needs to be more
Refinement you can say around this where neither one of these solutions are great where we shouldn't
you know councilmember Piedmont Smith Adjustment It is maybe sort of going to solve this problem, but
it's going to create this other You know issue that's still going to remain with you know the the dwelling
multifamily these large buildings like the bicycle building that
You know, we don't necessarily need to require that they have parking in those big buildings, but maybe
we do need to require it in some of these districts, some of these areas that are bordering campus in
such a way, you know, these older...
These neighborhoods that have been around for a very long time and when they were developed they have
narrow streets They have houses that are close together They may or may not be served by alleys that
stuff like some some of those places have alleys that are developed and some don't and so There might
not actually be a way to add parking to the actual lot Because there's no way to access the parking
They can't like leap over the house and there's not enough space between houses. And so Yeah, all that's
to say I'm having a really hard time with this one and I don't even know yet what I'm gonna vote Thanks
Thank you, I'm councilmember daily and then we will vote What she said That's all I'm likewise very torn so
Yeah, I don't have anything precious to add. Thanks councilmember Rosenberger redeeming your time We
want to hurry this along but I think we have two councilmembers who don't know what they're doing yet
So it's okay if we keep talking about it I am aware that single-family homes do not require parking
on site. I don't think that is super equitable It's the lowest density type of housing that's getting
a park that no other housing type
If we really want to encourage denser housing in our city We actually need to switch that and require
single-family homes to have on property parking and allow others not to I do think some public commenters
made great points We are very much more worried about where people will park their cars rather than
where we can house our humans IU does offer parking passes for students at the stadium students are
just hoping or wanting to
to park their car close to where they live. And if they can't, they won't. And they'll park it somewhere
else. It's not a problem. I lived in the dorms. I didn't have a car. I eventually had a parking lot
where I lived. You change your behavior based on where you can park your car.
Still think like if you are trying to build a duplex on a small lot You cannot fit a duplex with parking
and the appropriate green space in our neighborhoods and our walkable neighborhoods need things like
duplexes I think that's all I have for right now. This isn't a Crazy unique thing that we're that is
getting proposed. It's not something that's never been done It's getting done all over the place and
it's it's successful. Thanks Thank you so much
I Just want to make sure that everybody knows that I am not more concerned about housing cars than humans.
I'm very concerned I am I'm very concerned about housing humans. I volunteer at two different homeless
shelters I support the vast majority of this ordinance and
I recognize a lot of research has been done that says eliminating parking minimums is good for communities,
but I also see what's happening in my district and What's happening is that? Duplexes are being built.
They're already being built and The current parking requirements are not preventing them from being
built as a matter of fact usually they have more parking than the minimum and
And it's causing safety issues for other people on the streets because There's too many cars trying
to park where there's not enough room So that's what I'm trying to address here. Thank you I
My way and I'll say I'll say one thing which is maybe two things. I think The first echoing
what Councilmember Flaherty said that I'm not convinced that this is the right Mechanism to be using
to address This issue if it is an issue second that I'm not though. I'm not particularly sure that it
is an issue because again if
I mean, there's a market argument, which is that if people would not move there if there is not parking,
then presumably people would build said parking. And so eliminating the parking minimum shouldn't make
a difference really to this problem. So I think the discussion to me identifies very clearly that there
really is something else going on. And I'm always really concerned that we over-adjust to
sort of anomalies in our market, if you will, or in demand. You know, and then by that, you end up sort
of skewing things in the first place, and then you get other results. So you sort of squeeze here, and
then you get something else here, but we're never actually addressing the real problem. So I think sort
of just thinking about the theory of change here, that it makes sense to not really play with this in
this method. So that would be my position for whatever it is worth. Okay.
Everybody let's vote now. We have many we have many other amendments. So will the clerk please call
the roll on amendments? Three go ahead Councilmember daily Rallo yes, Roth. Yes Rosenberger no
Clarity no Stasberg Yes Piedmont Smith, yes Sorry no It fails for four or four okay that fails for four I
I'd like to move Amendment 4 to Ordinance 202620. Second. All right, Amendment 4. Is that yours?
That's mine. Please, go for it. It's got a kind of mix of things that we packaged. My one request would
be that if folks support some elements and not others, that they just make a motion to divide the question,
and you would just vote on the paragraphs separately or just one paragraph separately if needed. Otherwise,
we can proceed.
Apologize to do this, but we're gonna have to do a very quick amendment to the amendment at the outset
based on some confusion that referencing the variances section introduced. So if we could maybe display
Attorney Allen. This is the, so now I'm moving amendment one to the proposed amendment four.
This would strike a Thank you. Yeah, that would strike a sentence Does it show There was a sentence
that said or a really a portion of a sentence that said pursuant to section 20.06 208 OB variance that
has been removed and So that's what the amendment does it removes the reference to the variance section,
which I think invited more more ambiguity actually
And the reason being is that most of the things in the sustainable development incentives are not subject
to the variance process. If you agree to pursue the sustainable development incentives and have to put
solar on your roof, you don't get to then get the benefit of the incentives, but then later come and
say, oh, I need, it's a hardship to put solar on my roof. Like that doesn't make sense. And so the fact
that we were creating some specific exceptions for electrification for like a large PUD, say,
Where you're building a restaurant on site and we might want to allow gas for the commercial kitchen
I was trying to create some flexibility for Technical electrical grid constraints some other some other
reasons that well you might need to have some exceptions to electrification But it was trying to do
that through defining them explicitly in the incentive section rather than through the variance process
and so Thanks to also city legal for identifying that and giving some feedback on it. That's why the
amendment to the amendment I'm happy to answer questions if folks have them
Any questions on the amendment to the amendment? Okay, we'll go to public comment on the amendment to
the amendment Anyone wishing to speak on this updated language? Anyone online? Coming back to council
any further comments on this? Seeing none will the clerk please call the roll on the amendment to the
amendment and then we'll take up discussion on on the amendment as amended. Thank you
Sentence I've always wanted to say really Ruff yes Rosenberger Okay, sorry clarity yes Stasburg yes
Piedmont Smith. Yes Sorry, yes daily
Yes, that motion carries seven zero. Okay now amendment as amended. Thank you Yeah, i'll talk through
this if we could also maybe display on screen that would be helpful. Thank you attorney alan or staff
okay, so the first two paragraphs of this amendment slightly modify the Lot size minimum and lot width
minimum for the r3 and r4 districts if you'll recall the resolution we passed Gave some specific
examples of PUDs that have been had small lots and Also just the existing form of our older neighborhoods,
you know to look to to guide the updated dimensional standards for these districts and I found a reasonable
number of lots just with a brief kind of search that would still Be non-conforming even with the proposed
updates from Staff and Plan Commission essentially, there's a good number of lots that are
a little smaller than 2,500 square feet, which is what's in the ordinance now. And there are some lots
like those on the beeline south of Hopscotch that are narrower than 30 feet. If we're trying to also
allow creation of small lots, I could see that being an issue. It's not a huge thing, but I think we
are taking... Again, we're creating... We're not ameliorating as many non-conforming lots as I think
we could reasonably do so. And then, also, I think we're probably blocking some
Modest home development if we don't adjust these a little bit. So that's the modest change in our three
and our four 2500 square feet down to 2000 and then lot width from 30 feet down to 25 You'll also recall
that the ordinance actually proposes eliminating lot width minimums and lot area Minimums for other
districts, but staff suggested they didn't want to do that in our one through our four just out of caution
essentially and not wanting to Freak folks out. So like
So anyway, that's paragraphs one and two. Paragraph three is about, yeah, eliminating it. So the minimum
lot and widths I just mentioned in RM and RH are proposed to be eliminated altogether. Staff brought
that. That's consistent with best practices in form-based codes. You don't generally actually regulate
the width. Sorry, the minimums. You regulate the maximums.
And so this is kind of a broader effort to move in that direction. And I was thinking MN and MM could
have the same treatment. In particular, looking at the Hopewell site, the rest of Hopewell is zoned.
I think it's MM. It's one of those two. And you'll recall when we did the Hopewell South PUD, one of
the rationales for the PUD was that, you know, existing zoning wouldn't allow them to do small enough
lots. So I don't think there's a real downside here.
The vast majority of the time, this is not going to be used. People are not going to make very small
MM and MN lots, but if they want to, make a small mixed-use lot that's 20 feet wide and fits into a
little space where it just happens to make sense. I don't know, say like next to... This is different
zoning district, but next to the apartments by Crazy Horse there, there's a small narrow, narrow lot
that could be built out, but probably doesn't meet standards.
That's paragraph three. Paragraph four is about PUDs. It's exempting PUDs that are providing 100% affordable
housing from having to meet the sustainable development incentives. So this was brought up, I think
by folks at Habitat when we discussed this last. I looked at some other best practices across the country.
It's not uncommon to exempt from all electric building codes, affordable housing,
Developers sometimes especially at that hundred percent level this could apply not just to developers
like habitat But other affordable housing developers including a land trust, you know BHA others So
a hundred percent affordable housing is so much above and beyond what the the housing Affordability
incentives that we require PUDs to meet that that I thought that was a reasonable accommodation There's
also a broader issue here, which is that the sustainable development incentives aren't especially well crafted
for the context of single and missing middle residential housing, we probably actually just need a third
option or pathway within the sustainable development incentives that speaks more to the methods that
are more commonly used to assess sustainability for those types of properties beyond the scope of this
ordinance. Finally, on electrification, this change, paragraph five, as amended,
Was a little bit of confusion There's a sentence that's being struck that says the Plan Commission may
consider proposed exceptions for specific uses based on best practices in all electric building codes
That sentence comes verbatim from the resolution we passed It was meant to be instructions to the Plan
Commission for the development of the proposal not as language to go in the UDO and so sorry for any
confusion there so instead I just
worked myself to look at all electric building codes from across the country and identify the kind of
main reasons why exceptions are granted, and these are them. You know, kind of like technology feasibility,
so like deep fryers for instance, they exist in all electric, they are very expensive and maybe hard
to get, so I thought it was reasonable to exempt commercial kitchens, who generally run on pretty tight
margins as it is. Technical infeasibility due to physical or electrical grid constraints.
If you're adding a lot of electrical load to the grid, there may be grid upgrades entailed that aren't
easy to come by immediately. There might be a backlog for Duke Energy, for instance. So there's reasons
like that. And then finally, you know, critical services, hospitals, healthcare, emergency response
providers, you know, have, I think, a valid rationale for generator backup power, things like that,
or even just a supplementary source. So those are the exceptions to electrification that try to get
a little more flexibility there and make this, you know,
cost-competitive and reasonable Which is you know the goal so? Those are all the changes happy to answer
any questions again Just would request if you have one of these paragraphs that you don't support, but
you support the others Please do make a motion to divide the question as necessary. Thank you. Thank
you so much councilman for the questions I'm customer P. Smith The for the electrification change Is this for
PUDs or for use of the incentive. It can't be the use of the incentive if you're asking for an exception.
So is it for PUDs? This is in the sustainable developments Incentive section I think it could apply
for the incentive still if you have a large multifamily property that has for if it's a mixed-use property
for instance as a commercial kitchen in it and
And I think it could apply to the incentives if there's a reason why you could... So there's uses that
could exist within a single mixed use development that those particular components of the project would
be exempted. And again, if there was electrical grid constraints that make this impossible, I don't
think we should prohibit somebody from using the sustainable development incentives. They would just
have to follow the rest of the sustainable development incentives. So I think it reasonably does apply
to both the incentive section and to PUDs when making use of those incentives.
Okay, can you remind me is the incentive section kind of a? Laying aside the PUD question, but is the
incentive section kind of a you know You pick two or three of them or you have to do all of them So
it's two paths option one option two the the change has been drafted by staff actually and as directed
by the resolution makes electrification part of both of those pathways and
So electrification is just like a base layer on the sustainable development incentives now. Option two
is about US Green Building Council and other similar rating systems for sustainability. Option one is
about cool and vegetated roofs, solar, and some other kind of stormwater features, things like that
that you have to do. So those are the two paths, and electrification would be part of either. Okay,
thank you. I was envisioning that you can pick electrification, but then
You'll get an exception to it. So that didn't add up to me, but the reason it's a base layer is because
it's really not adding cost We have people like that really test development in the north the summit
PUD that are doing it more or less voluntarily because it is actually More cost competitive. I went
for a large development with that Thank you. Thank you so much councilmember rough Yeah, I'd like to
ask the sponsor
I'm working from the email that Councilmember Flaherty sent us on the 14th What's amendment for on that
in that email How are we defining Affordable under a hundred percent affordable housing with the exemption
for a hundred percent affordable housing PUD from sustainable development requirements Affordable what what is
the reference to in terms of what we're defining like Defined as defined in the as defined in the affordable
Sorry the housing affordable housing incentive section, so that's that's the definition I Don't think
the amendment cites that section of code I Think it's relatively obvious, but if we need to add that
Citation that could probably be done Because the affordable housing incentive section is divided by
percentage so you really
can't site to the affordable housing incentives section because it can't be 100% affordable housing
under the affordable housing incentive section. It's like 60% affordable housing or 40% is the definition
that's included in the incentive section. However, under the UDO chapter 20.07, the definition of affordable
housing in this case
Excuse me is means residential developments with a recorded restriction that requires housing of a certain
minimum number of years to be rented or owned by qualified very low or low income households, which
are terms that are used by both hand and HUD to determine affordable housing. In your opinion attorney
Allen, I guess is the paragraph in the amendment as written
For how to interpret it vis-a-vis the UDO definitions because it falls within the UDO. It'd be subject
to the definition I just read right instead of but if you intended or the council wanted to Further
alter this to afford to reference in some way the affordable housing incentives. We could find a way
of doing that It would just take a little bit more finessing than just referencing that broad section
of code Okay, thank you follow up on that question because the
The looking at that definition as those with a recorded restriction and if part of this was This particular
piece of the amendment was in response to a habitat of humanity concern or habitat for humanity concern
I'm not sure if their Units have recorded restrictions requiring the house
or the dwelling stay affordable and I don't know if anybody knows that up here but I guess I'm just
concerned potentially about leaving that to refer to the definition. There are potential opportunities
to add that as a
the condition to that being filed. So in this case the PUD being recorded within the recorder's office
that restriction could be added to that document without a separate recorded item to it. Wait what.
You mean like in a piece so where it says recorded restriction All I'm saying is that already there
there needs to be recorded documents for PUDs and site plans that would be approved through the Planning
Commission which would have to go through this process This language would be added to qualify for the
potential incentives for PDs to be allowed to go forward That because it's a hundred percent affordable
housing. It's exempt from the requirements of the sustainability of
Sections that could be added language to either the PUD itself or to the recorded plat And that would
be like enough. It wouldn't have to be like Officially recorded with the property as it is official.
That is the official recording for the property It doesn't I'm just saying there's no special other
document that needs to be filed for an independent Lot or something like that. Okay, so to qualify to
for the definition Like that would qualify
Yes. Okay. It's just recorded, so. Anyone else? Okay, seeing none, we'll go to public comment on amendment
four. Anyone online? All right, some. Go ahead. Who is the first some?
Okay, Kari. Sorry about that. I was trying to figure out if it was me or somebody else. Kari Bennett,
Habitat for Humanity of Monroe County. We support this amendment overall, especially the changes to
lot size and width reductions, because they'll enable more homes to be built
and residential zones. We especially appreciate the exemption from the sustainability development standards
for 100% affordable housing planned unit developments. For Habitat, 100% affordable housing, I wanna
explain what that means. The people who we serve are at or below 80% of the area median income.
That is what HUD considers to be low income for all of the programs. And that is what our Habitat affiliate
and all Habitat affiliates in the United States that where we set our upper standard. It also means
that we set our homeowners mortgage payments at no more than 30% of their income.
We do that, when we have to do that, and it doesn't cover the full purchase price of the home or the
appraised value of the home, that's where we do a soft second mortgage, things that we've talked about
related to Hopewell. And in general, we'll look at the definition, but I think of affordable housing
and the UDO, but we think that what,
Larry Allen just said about how this language in the UDO would be interpreted. I think that generally
makes sense. Thank you. Thank you so much. Who is next online? All right, Eric. Good evening,
can you hear me? Yes, we can, go ahead. Good evening.
My name is Eric Ost and I appreciate this opportunity to offer public comment. I would ask that council
carefully consider this amendment for its likely impact. There's a housing explorer website that the
city of Bloomington publishes and
It appears that the number, since 2018, the number of ADUs has been fairly consistent, but the number
of plexes that have been built went from about two or three in 2022 and 2023 to 13 in 2024 and 27 in
2025. There was a reference made to a District 3 streetscape that now has
housing for 80 individuals. And I want to note that the UDO revision that is still before the Plan Commission
not only removes the limit of duplexes, specifically in some residential zones, but also changes the
150 foot limit. So what the combined effect in the current housing market in Bloomington, Indiana will be
is that what this amendment, these amendments will do is incentivize the conversion of affordable housing
to unaffordable housing. You will incentivize the creation, the potentiation of a $300,000 single family
home being converted into a $3 million revenue producing asset by subdivising that into three lots with
a plex on it.
So I ask that you carefully consider this. I have another comment to offer later, depending on how things
go, that will make a recommendation. But I think there are going to be, with all due respect, I think
this is very ill-advised. Thank you. Thank you so much, Mr. Ost. Is there anyone else online? All right,
either John Lawrence or Jan Sorby.
Oh hey, now both of you. Hi. That's novel. It's me again, Jan Sorby. Wow, I'm just gobsmacked by the
comment that plan staff made that they wouldn't make these changes in R1 and R2 because they didn't
want to freak those people out. That's astonishing to me. You know, by the mall,
Well, first I have to say, what inequity is that? So the rich people get a buy, and again, the people
that live in the tighter, poorer areas have to shoulder all of the new burden of density increases again.
And I would really want you, like Eric Ost just said, to be really, really careful about these changes
that you're making.
I also wanted to say in some areas around the college mall, they have an acre, an entire acre per house.
This is where density needs to be made. Again, I'm just gobsmacked at this. But I'll go on to say that
housing policies take time to see results. People have to find land to build on. They have to actually
buy the land. They have to get architectural plans.
it takes time for results in housing policy. It was only in 2021 that we first passed any of the regulations
and changes to the UDO. It's when we accepted the UDO with massive, massive changes. And I don't think
we've had enough time to see the result. I mean, we're just starting to see, as Mr.
Osta said we see incredible changes in the neighborhoods already with our most vulnerable houses and
most vulnerable people being pushed out and areas being sold. Our cheapest houses, our NOAA, our naturally
occurring affordable houses are being torn down because now the land is more valuable than the house
itself. And I want to caution you, please let these
policies that we've already made have time to actually see the results of that before you start tinkering
with it yet again. We have to protect our natural occurring affordable housing. We cannot build our
way out of this housing crisis. We have to keep what we have and add to it. So please vote against this.
It's very dangerous. Thank you very much. Thank you so much.
Is there anybody else online? All right, Michelle? And if, Ms. Sorby, if you'd like to turn off your
camera, unless you're enjoying being on the big screen here. There you go, thank you. Oh, you like it,
okay. Michelle?
Good evening, everyone. I'm not quite sure if this is the best place for my comment, but seeing what
other comments are, I'm figuring that this is probably a good spot. Okay, great. Thank you for the timer.
Well, the intent behind this is really, I appreciate that and the housing to build a walkable, sustainable
Bloomington. We still have not
When looking at critical infrastructure, we do not consider our food supply. We could get people house,
we can get them water, we can help them make sure they have a place to park their bike. But where's
the food coming from? These severe structural vulnerabilities. I sent an email and there were over 20 of them.
24, which I've not checked this week to see if any need to be added. But it makes me feel like Bloomington
is kind of like a castle. We're highly efficient, self-contained, convenient until the external supply
lines are cut. And in regards to food, those are the vulnerabilities. You know, I can appreciate all
these things we want to do, but like John and Jan and Eric have mentioned,
There are some things I think we need to be cautious about. I don't know if this plan actually does
that. I do know that there are some possible possibilities of creating houses that could be like carriage
homes with parking underneath and the home on top that would fit into small lots. But until we actually
look into how we can ensure
food sovereignty instead of shipping in our food for food security because there is a difference between
food security and food sovereignty. When throwing money at something with ever increasing prices doesn't
work and there's just no food there, whether it's from drought, from lack of butchering facilities,
fertilizers, there's a number of different
things that could go wrong in our food supply right now. So I just would like to make sure that we take
our time in ensuring that all of these things are considered instead of going full speed ahead on this
because we don't know exactly what we're going to be facing in the next six months or a year or in a
few years as we've seen with the Plexus.
Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak. Thank you so much, Michelle Anyone else online? Okay,
anybody else in chambers back to council comments on amendment for Yeah councilmember Rough Mr. Chair,
I would like to divide the question for amendment for The that exempts PUDs provide 100% affordable
housing from the sustainability development requirements
Okay, so your mic is acting up, I think. There's a second. So the motion was to separate the question,
divide the question, I'm sorry. Is that right? Yeah, Amendment 4. You want the whole thing separated or?
The exempt PUDs that provide hundred percent affordable housing from the sustainability development
requirements separated from everything else Okay That's been motioned a second. So do we need to vote
on the dividing the question? Okay, so on the motion to divide the question Can that just be a voice
vote? Yes is procedural all those in favor say aye. Aye all those opposed Thank you very much that
Question is divided. So we'll when we'll take a vote here in a second. We'll vote first for The non
divided bit and then we'll do a paragraph for okay any other comments Also pull out to vote separately
on number five electrification There's a motion in a second to pull out paragraph five all those in
favor say aye any opposed
Okay, that's also separated. Any other motions to separate the question? Again, that request of the
sponsor here. Okay, fantastic. With that, let's go to a vote if that's okay. All right, let's go to
a vote on everything minus amendment, paragraphs four and five. Will the clerk please call the roll?
Rosenberger. Yes Flaherty. Yes Stasberg. Yes Piedmont Smith. Yes. Sorry. Yes daily. No And bravo, yes
Well now that carries seven one Will now vote on paragraph four, which is the exclusion of PUDs Will
the clerk please call the roll? All right Councilmember Rosenberger What am I voting on the exclusion
of the of paragraph so paragraph four, which is the exclusion of PUDs from the if they're a hundred
percent affordable
Yes. Okay. Council Member Flaherty. Yes. Stasberg. Yes. Piedmont-Smith. Yes. Sorry. Yes. Daly. Yes.
Rallo. Yes. Ruff. Yes. Okay. That carries. We'll now move on to paragraph five.
Was it paragraph sorry, okay, so so paragraph five as amended is okay So we'll move on to vote a vote
on paragraph five as amended. Will the clerk please call the roll? Okay councilmember Flaherty,
yes Stasburg. Yes Piedmont Smith. Yes I'm sorry. Yes Daley. Yes
Rallo? Yes. Ruff? Yes. Rosenberger, yes. That motion carries seven one. All right, so that is amendment
four. We'll move on to amendment five. I move amendment five to ordinance 2026-20, sorry.
I had to scroll way back to find what number ordinance we're on. All right. So this is... One second,
Council Member Piemont-Smith. I think there's a possible revote here. A motion to reconsider, is that
what I was hearing? Okay, so there's a motion to reconsider a vote really quickly.
You did you mean to vote to vote? Did you mean to vote no on any of those three? Yes So I'm four and
five those ones I meant to vote yes, but on the rest of them you meant to vote no I
Yeah, okay, so it's should do we need to redo the vote or can we just amend the councilmember it won't
change the outcome of the of whether it passes, but What's the what's the appropriate action here?
Yeah, it's a motion to reconsider reconsider and a revote to do the recast You can't just change the
vote retroactively as far as I'm so in comes more Flaherty stepped out So is it is it okay? Can we can
can we do a motion to reconsider in a moment? Like is that okay? Can we return to it? We can do that
at any time. I haven't necessarily heard the motion on the floor. So yeah, I think there's a Consider but
Haven't I have also not heard that motion. I think that that is what I make this I'll move that we reconsider
Amendment amendment for Yes, correct Is that correct? Motion to reconsider the vote on amendment for
paragraphs one two and three, correct? I
Can you ask the can you make that point of information? Oh, yeah, and do you have to be in the prevailing
party? This is what we
Just Sorry, just a moment of clarification. So by leave of council leadership, mr Askins just pointed
out by leave of council leadership a member can change their vote if it doesn't change the outcome even
though the vote has been announced which is what it typically is under Robert's rules, so if you'd like
to change your vote from Leave of council then that is permitted without having a full motion to reconsider
in a revote. I
Excellent, so if there's no if there's no issues here or no anybody against this I'd like to
allow councilmember rough to have his vote amended on Paragraphs one two and three to a no and he's
retaining his yes on paragraphs four and five Yes, thank you. Yes in my and I would like the same in
the same with so so to be clear that makes the and you did you also vote no and
Okay, so that means that it is five, three that carried the first motion, I guess. One, two, and three.
Okay. Everybody happy?
Thank you, and thank you for, yeah, I noticed that that's why I was laughing earlier. I was like, okay,
thank you. All right, with that, let us return, and thank you, Mr. Askins, also, for pointing that out,
as always. Okay, we are on Amendment 5, friends. 945, let's go. All right, so this amendment just seeks
to clarify language.
Confusing. Oh, yes. Okay. So this is about the the access for When if a lot is subdivided and there's
a lot There's a how a building or a house put behind the first house There were some requirements about
access, you know for fire personnel or vehicles And I found the language very confusing so I worked
with Eric Grulick to
Make the language more clear and that is what you see here in this amendment Thank you so much. Would
staff like to comment on this one? Fantastic. Any questions for the sponsor? Councilmember Stasberg
Motioned and who seconded that Well, I moved tonight somebody daily Or customer was that customer? Oh,
did you? Yeah, sorry comes from Rallo and then I interrupted the motion. Yeah, that's what did you get
that clerk?
Yes, it was before the reconsideration Thank you, I wanted that clarification because I I know that
I couldn't hear it and if I couldn't hear it I suspected that farther over also could not hear. Thanks
Any questions for the sponsor
Then we'll go to we'll go to public. I do have a really quick question. You worked with mr. Grulick
about this Was there any consultation with fire to make sure that? Did you just because I know that
no because it doesn't change any Substance, okay the ordinance it just makes it more clear. Okay. Thanks. I
We'll go now to public comment on Amendment 5. Is there any public comment on the clarifying language
of Amendment 5? No one in chambers, anyone online? No one online coming back to council. Any comments
on Amendment 5? Seeing none, will the clerk please call the roll? Okay, this is Amendment 5, correct?
Yes, ma'am. Okay, Strasburg. Yes. Piedmont Smith.
Yes, I'm sorry. Yes Daley. Yes Rallo yes rough. Yes Rosenberger. Yes clarity. Yes Okay, that motion
carries I'm excellent so
We are now with the ordinance 2026 20 as amended. Are there any comments? I'm sorry any further questions
on motion? I'm sorry on ordinance 2026 20 as amended a councilmember Rallo How many how many properties
would this affect in other words how many would be likely to
this To have a lot subdivided was there any estimation The subdivision I Mean in theory it could affect
every single lot in terms of you know being able to create a new lot You know using some of these provisions,
which is I mean obviously part of the goal, you know that any property could benefit from this well,
I would think that you know, it depends upon the
Lot size relative to the house, but yeah It would depend certainly on a lot of things a lot size where
the house where a house is on a lot You know is there even room to get a sick? I mean there you know
two different aspects obviously that were incorporated one is the six foot no build And then the other
provision was you know the 20 foot access road You know so the six foot obviously depends greatly on
where the house is on a lot and if
if someone bought a property, removed the house, that would, and then the subdivided lot could have
potentially two lots because there wouldn't be any restrictions in terms of setbacks other than neighboring
setbacks and for the potential access drive and that sort of thing. Yeah, certainly, yeah. Okay. I think
that's all I got, thanks.
Thank you so much. Any other questions? All right, we'll now go to public comment on all of the ordinance.
Now it's finally the time. And sorry, thank you for your patience. Ordinance 2026, 20. And out of courtesy,
we'll let the gentleman go first. Hello again.
I'm Jordan Connor with home Bloomington homes for all. I apologize. I was thrown a little earlier there
was no time to come in on the previous ordinance To many could you bring the mic? Yeah. Yeah.
Is this better? Thank you To many of my peers and generations younger than me homeownership
feels inaccessible the solution to this affordability and housing crisis that we're facing
must be multifaceted but one part of that solution is density and
Shrinking and in some case removing the minimum lot sizes could do tremendous good for many people smaller
lots can means more houses Increasing the supply can mean more flexibility for developments and additions
and it means closer communities Again, this is not a full remedy for the inaccessibility of housing
in Bloomington and the rest of the country We also need to preserve our existing affordable housing
It is however an important and necessary step towards closing the gap between owners and renters and
making homes available to all. Thank you
Thank you so much next in council chambers. Hi, my name is Greg Alexander Sadly, there are no magic
bullets like all zoning changes. This will take decades to really have an effect It will still have
problems even after this policy is mature It will not solve financial speculation class antagonisms
or the town-gown divide But it is a good step in the right direction at the margins There has been a
steady trickle of developers large and small who have wanted to supply more housing to
in a denser form, and the city has said no. I mean, most of them are profit-motivated, right? They can
see that they would make more money if they could make a larger number of smaller houses. Well,
I'm for it. There's specifically a huge shortage of small houses, starter homes. My house is 700 square
foot on a 10th-acre lot. I feel like I bought the last small house in Bloomington, so I'm sorry to everybody
that came here after me. If somebody wants to make a buck building houses like mine in between all the
houses and every little gap,
I'm all for it. This UDO amendment will have the effect of producing marginally more supply, especially
in smaller and relatively affordable houses in existing neighborhoods. And it will be better than the
status quo, an effective ban on small houses and new urban development. But the status quo isn't quite a ban.
Generally, there's been a political process usually a PUD for profit developers nonprofits and most
recently the city itself have had PUDs That allowed smaller houses on smaller lots just like this
But the PUD process provides no opportunities for the smallest landowners. When I was a kid, I admired
the kind of landlord who housed my mother in this city. They would subdivide an old house, they'd build
a crappy addition on the back. When there was leaky faucet, they would send their son-in-law to fix
it. There were lots of downsides, but it was affordable. And the landlords were as local as my mother
was. And it is disappearing in part because existing zoning has basically made it illegal for the past
30 years to build more of it.
Even for larger developers that can go through the PUD process, it sucks. I hate that it invites corruption,
because everybody has to start with a closed-door meeting with the mayor if you're gonna have a PUD
succeed. Also, hate it forces developers to run the gauntlet of NIMBY opposition. I hate that it drags
the process out for months, adds uncertainty and expense. And I would think you guys would hate it,
because micromanaging development, the way that you've been doing, it creates a bad environment in this room.
Please pass this amendment. Please normalize the kind of development we most want to see. Thank you
Hi, my name is Chris Dora my resident of Bloomington. I'm also a landowner. I'm in support of the ordinance
Increasing density is incredibly important
I'm always and certainly this ordinance does that but also measures that would allow more unconventional
housing like RVs converted school buses I have a converted school bus which I've lived in for a number
at different times but the fact that so many of our residents who are
working here, well actually they're not residents, so many people that are employed in Bloomington who
are having to drive half an hour, an hour to access this. Those of us who have worked with contractors
know this problem of people who are living an hour away and have problems with their vehicles. So it's
not just an affordable housing crisis, it's also just an affordability crisis. And I think this would
incentivize landowners, homeowners to
pursue additional building, additional housing. There would need to be some kind of financial incentive
as some sort of mechanism to assist them in building that. One of the comments earlier was on how, I
believe this example is a $300,000 house and if that gets
under this ordinance, more or less subdivided into three different things that would magically create
$3 million worth of private enterprise, which I find ridiculous. What it would do is provide more housing,
and we need to build more housing, we need more density, and in my neighborhood, Maple Heights, Kate
is my council representative, there's just so many big backyards that are literally just empty. People
don't use them. They're just sitting there. They have alley access.
I'm converting my garage into an ADU which again in terms of increasing density There's some problems
I have with that. I believe it was the state State initiative to facilitate that I couldn't have an
ADU or converted before because the lot size
But essentially, if we can incentivize people, developers in particular, who obviously own a lot of
private enterprise and private housing in Bloomington, that would certainly be a wonderful thing. But
we're in danger of losing Bloomington if we can't provide housing for our most vulnerable. It's not
even our most vulnerable. It's affordability at every level.
facilitate and allow people who are homeowners to have a financial incentive and financial gain in creating,
again, a separate, either selling half their lot or being able to build an ADU, et cetera. All right,
thank you. Thank you so much. Again, in chambers. I'm trying to sign and get out of the way.
My name is Kathy Berry and I have separately written the council earlier this week and I know I appreciate
council member Flaherty I know read my comments. I am again as I have all along asking for a no vote
on this. I believe that the changes from 2021 in the UDO can help people accomplish all the goals that
have been talked about tonight in terms of infill housing
And also in light of Hopewell, I feel like we're doing experiments right now that will show will this
become affordable? Will it do some of the things that we're saying about helping people who grew up
here live here? I noticed a number of you don't like cars and want to reduce the number of cars.
But as somebody who worked all my career in secretarial and customer service frontline type jobs, I
know so many couples, divorced couples or never married couples who are separately co-parenting children
and if one spouse lives in, one parent lives in one city and another in another, you can't
work in Bloomington and not have a car. You need every minute of your time in order to
have the shared custody of children. This is just one sort of random example. So so housing housing
humans instead of cars is is there's there's some sense to that slogan but it doesn't really always
answer what humans are doing with their cars.
I also am not against density and urbanization as far as a lifestyle choice. I totally get it. It's
great to walk everywhere. I am quite the walker. I love to walk to local places. But I also like a backyard.
And I looked up in most of the English, in many parts of the English speaking world, what we call a
backyard is called a garden. And the garden aspect of living in Bloomington is something that
It can exist even with more and smaller housing, but not increased just building right out to the street,
allowing this, especially the increase in impermeable surface. That's not going to create and allow
a diversity of housing in Bloomington. I also have not heard arguments that convince me that urbanization
anywhere creates affordability.
So I think that because it's only been since 2021 that we can have these kind of changes I believe that
the mechanism is in place to increase density This will keep it slow and it will keep the people who
want the density more local Thank you Thank you so much was very Is there anyone online? All right,
we'll go to you miss Bennett
Hi all, Kari Bennett, Habitat for Humanity of Monroe County. We support this amendment to the UDO because
it will enable more houses to be built in residential zones. We also offer a couple of recommendations
for additional ways to enable more houses to be built. First, rear setbacks.
The rear setbacks for all residential zones are greater than the front and side setbacks. We would like
to see additional flexibility by reducing those rear setbacks. So that's something that we ask you to
consider in this ordinance or in an ordinance in the future. Secondly, we would like to see
this ordinance allow for fronting of houses on public alleys. The proposed amendments do allow subdivision
of lots without access by easement for new lots. But we would also like to see that platted alleys
which are very common in core Bloomington neighborhoods, like the Near West Side, Prospect Hill,
Elm Heights, that they are also allowed. It would enable subdivision of larger lots into smaller lots,
and it would support more affordable homes. This could be done in the same way that the access easement
language in this proposed ordinance
would accomplish. Thank you. Thank you so much, Ms. Bennett. Others online? All right, Mr. Ost.
Good evening. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Okay. My name is Eric Ost and I appreciate this opportunity
to offer public comment again this evening.
The Unified Development Ordinance is an interconnected, legally binding framework that guides, incents,
and structures durable changes to our community's built environment. Revising it piecemeal through a
segmented pipeline of compounding largely irreversible changes without a comprehensive assessment of
their collective input, excuse me, impact would be ill-informed and unadvised. There have been prior
comments, and I've
know there's a general rule about not cross debating, but I want to say that this is not an abstract
concern in regards to or observation in regards to a $300,000 property being turned into a $3 million
rental revenue producing asset, not owner occupied. And I challenge anyone who doubts that to look for
themselves. I also note that the ordinance
talks about attainable housing, not affordable. Now I know, and we don't talk about attainable owner-occupied
housing. The market in Bloomington simply does not support significant construction or incentivize at
this point, and this ordinance, these amendments will not do that, of owner-occupied housing.
So I strongly urge you to examine the likely impacts to both vacant lots and parcels with existing naturally
occurring affordable housing that will be prompted and potentiated for redevelopment under this proposal
and its companion amendments now moving through the Plan Commission. The Council must carefully evaluate
the full cumulative impact of these policies as an ensemble before codifying them into law.
You have the authority to postpone consideration of this amendment to a specific date within the 90
day certification window. Moving to postpone to October 14th, 2026 keeps the council fully compliant
with state deadlines while giving the companion UDO revisions time to advance so you can collect fully
scoped data and deliberate on the full package of UDO revisions together. Please move to postpone ordinance
2026-20 to a time definite of October 14th, 2026. Thank you. Thank you so much, Mr. Ost. Is there anyone
else online? Okay, we'll come back to chambers where a man on a honeymoon is coming to give a comment.
Steve Olin, again, not speaking for the Transportation Commission, but a member of it.
Just speaking to section 5 in my initial comments earlier were Appropriate for this as well, but I just
want to urge you not to let parking policy lead housing policy We've always had the ability to fix parking
concerns outside of title 20 title 20 is not the place to To be saying hey Let's regulate parking in
a certain way. There's other
parts of code that are better for it. Perhaps we can even do it administratively outside of code altogether.
But the neighborhood zones that have been brought up several times tonight were a reaction to student
commuting. The first one was established in 1992. All of the first ones were established as they were
bordering the IU campus. But we've got zones that have gone farther afield now and
Even so, not all students have cars, and the neighborhood zones work. The only fair way to manage the
concerns that we may have about these public spaces that are being demanded by people who want to park
their cars is price. If it's true that the need for housing isn't necessarily gonna bring cars to other
neighborhoods farther afield from IU, then it's time for every neighborhood to think about a neighborhood zone.
That's the only way to fairly allocate the public right-of-way permits Any neighborhood with a perceived
shortage needs to think about a neighborhood zone We should need to charge for the privilege of parking
in a public space within a year or two You're going to know how much the permits should cost
We don't know how much demand is going to be except we already do know that there's some oversubscribed
neighborhoods and some undersubscribed ones But I also want to pitch you in the last minute on the idea
of a parking benefit district Which is also something we can do outside of title 20 after you fared
out the costs of implementing the zone Extra revenue in that zone goes to public works improvements
in that zone lighting
fixing curbs repairing those sidewalks at long last Anyone who objects to it should at first should
know that all that money should stay in the neighborhood I'm looking forward through proper more strategic
pricing and keeping excess revenues in the area Where demand requires pricing we can properly manage
the demand for parking without giving away our city I look forward to bringing model legislation to you
Hopefully through the Transportation Commission in the months to come. Thank you. Thank you so much,
sir anyone else in chambers Coming back to council for final comments and I'll start on my left with
councilmember Rallo and then I'll go to my right councilmember Flaherty Yes, thanks well, I won't support
this and It's because I support housing affordability and availability and
Back in 2021 Everyone realized that the changes in up zoning would increase density No one disputed
that however The argument was really about affordability and availability and it's been five years So
now we can sort of look back and we can see how that experiment went There hasn't been a study. So I'm
going anecdotally, but the ones that I've the experience that I've
And what I have noticed is that it is produced exactly the opposite effect We've had conversion of smaller
rentals that were once affordable say at $400 a month to yes more density but Duplexes three per side
that rent for 1200 per bedroom So it's actually excluded low-income people I
What I see happening here is similar, but a very and a similarly broad brush approach It wasn't targeted
I do believe that in some cases it could yield a good result You do have oversized lots that could be
subdivided another house could be placed there Particularly corner lots that should have been probably
you know preferentially targeted and that would actually
Be complimentary because it would allow street access fairly easily But this was you know our one through
our four it's broad-brushed as staff said How many properties would this affect potentially all properties?
I agree it in practicality it won't affect all properties because It will potentially increase land
values, but if the house that's there Won't be raised
to build two new houses. This will disproportionately affect smaller homes that are affordable. So you've
got a small house that is affordable and you have the property that will be more lucrative if there
were two homes there. So this is really a product of the fact that we are a unique community. I mean,
Bloomington is, as I said, 60%
students 70% of those live off campus I Think the demographics are that you know more and more students
have been able to afford very high rents in the community So as Charlie Munger the investor said show
me the incentive and I'll show you the outcome the incentive here is one that benefits developers the
rentier class people or corporations and
Who make their money by owning assets and charging rent? Those people will profit Actually handsomely
It will not benefit everyone it will come at a cost Right now sixty to sixty five percent of the housing
units in Bloomington are rentals. So we're the highest in the state in terms of rentals and
We have very a diminishing supply of housing available for owner-occupancy first-time home buyers and
This will diminish the supply further. It's not the only thing that's diminished it Airbnb's thanks
to the state not allowing us to intervene Have diminished our housing supply of a lot of affordable
homes by about a thousand a thousand units a thousand homes so
It will disproportionately benefit the renters who can pay high rents and want to live in whatever
neighborhood they want near campus. It will benefit the developers because they will seize this opportunity,
individuals or corporations that will come in, swoop in and convert the property. It will come at a
cost of low income residents, the first time home buyers, the low income renters.
Those will be the people who will be disproportionately affected and adversely and it will probably
affect obviously if the up zoning Example is relevant here. It'll affect the neighborhood as well So
I'll be voting no on this I wish that there was something here that I could vote yes on in other words
it would be targeted and
For the good result that we I think we want in terms of subdividing lots, but this is This revolt will
result I think in a mass casualty situation Thank you Thank You councilmember Rallo and we'll go to
councilmember Flaherty. Thanks Most of those things and think it can be refuted, but I won't spend time
doing that and
First of all, just thank you to my colleagues, to staff for working on this, and also to members of
the public who commented in a variety of different perspectives. I think broadly, we do generally share
the same aims and the high-level goals, even if we disagree significantly sometimes about what the right
policy path is to get there, so I do appreciate that and recognize that. Also, just wanted to briefly
address some of the comments from Kari Bennett on the alley frontage. I did explore that with staff,
and it's just
not feasible under fire code. Just so it just really can't be done. You can use, you know, a platted
alley as the access point for, you know, instead of a six-foot easement, for instance. So it can be
used in that way, but not as the fire access road itself. On the setbacks, I messed up. I intended to
bring an amendment to reduce rear setbacks to five feet.
and just had a very busy week and didn't catch that that wasn't in the amendment we put together. I
meant for it to be, and that's okay. It might be something that needs to come at a later date. I don't
think it's gonna be a huge issue. Those rear setbacks were reduced to 15 feet. I think it will be a
barrier in some small lot settings that we didn't get that reduced to 5 feet. The rationale for reducing
it to 5 feet is that's what it is for ADUs. So again, you know, if for an ADU and why not for a small
home? So I lament that, but...
You know, this can all be amended again in the future. So thanks for your consideration, I do appreciate
it. Anyone else wish to make a comment? Council Member Ruff and then I'll go to Council Member Stasberg.
I won't say anything about, I won't add to Council Member Rall's comments at all, except to say that
I agree with his, I agree largely with his analysis of what
what this will do in reality. That doesn't, and I'm not ignoring the intention of those who support
this and the sponsor are noble and certainly well-intentioned and admirable and aspirable, but it's
too blunt and too broad-based, too experimental.
Coming on piling on top of other changes that have been made for towards flexing and what's coming from
the Plan Commission You know some of my council colleagues I know I'm pretty confident, you know believe
they had they were elected with a mandate to aggressively pursue density in the name of of improvements
in affordability and reduction in
and carbon footprint, but things like that. And I certainly respect that. But I feel just the opposite.
I feel like I was elected in a mandate to proceed cautiously when it comes to the potential to dramatically
modify the livability of neighborhoods
There was a trade-off where affordability was definitely a good outcome and lots of small housing
opportunities starter housing opportunity for young people and That's a trade-off. I would make if I
believe that that was going to be the outcome, but as councilmember Rallo's I believe more much more
along the lines of councilmember all those comments. I don't believe the trade-off is is
We're going to result in a bunch of a large increase in affordability and a lot of of housing
that lower-income Folks in the community are suddenly going to find themselves having access to so Again,
just like has some role. I'm not opposed to those goals and I think there are ways we can incrementally
take some steps to really
Address on those issues. I mean I was a deciding vote on on 80 use in a former council term supporting
that and The idea of looking at how many corner lots we have that can be subdivided So the one faces
the one street the one unit could be facing one of the court one of the streets and then they The back
would be split created a lot that faces the other street
that corner and how much that we have I how many opportunities I know there's a couple situations in
the community where we have sections of street where we don't really need as much right away as as is
required under code that if that right away requirement was diminished we could get some lots buildable
lots without doing anything else except looking in a more targeted way at where our opportunities are
I just don't think that analysis
has been done in a responsible way that respects the potential negative impacts of this broad brush
approach. And so again, I respect the goals. I appreciate the effort. But I don't agree that this is
responsible or effective way to go about it. So I'm gonna be voting no.
You and councilmember Stasberg Hi, I'm really hoping that what I have to say it makes sense I First
I guess I want to like thank all of my colleagues for their very thoughtful discussion about this And
I similarly want to thank Plan Commission colleagues for their similarly thoughtful discussion about
this and changes I
I think that the little affordable house in Bloomington is a myth. It doesn't really exist anymore because
the underlying land value of where the little houses are is so extremely high. And I did a whole land
value comparison. I really went down a rabbit hole at some point on one of the county sites and the
assessment sites comparing, like you always compare your own
lake house and neighborhood and property to things, right? And just kind of being shocked, not really
shocked, but amazed maybe at the value of some of the very small plots of land because they are divided
into land value and improvement value, right? So even if my
home itself had a higher value, the underlying land had a lower value, and so overall, it was valued
lower than something half its size on a much smaller piece of property than my own home. So that myth
of... It's a really nice thought, but I don't think that it exists anymore in the way that it used to
exist in this town. And we can't
We can't make it exist again. I think that this tries to do that, right? To allow the smaller lots,
allow smaller houses. I think that it tried. It does what we can do because we have limited power. This
is market-driven, right? Everything about housing is market-driven. And what market drives Bloomington?
It is a market of students. And I don't mean to say that to disparage students in any way. Students
are part of our community. They're not just visitors. They are part of our community. They are part
of what makes Bloomington Bloomington, and students need to live somewhere. And we in city government
have zero control over how many students there are that are accepted to the university, that accept
their acceptance to the university,
that choose to live in different places and we don't have any control over that. And the market is going
to house them because once they get accepted and decide to come here while they're coming here and they
have to live somewhere, they're trapped in a whole lot of ways and those parents can't necessarily afford
it either. Those students can't necessarily afford it. They are all trapped. I had a kid go to college
this year and I'm trapped in that bubble in a whole different town now.
Okay, and I haven't quite figured out what the costs in that town are right But but it's an interesting
place to be So I wanted to say that and the other thing that I wanted to say which is also interesting
perhaps is You know we talked about the market and while the market will correct itself and there's
been a lot of conversation about vacancies and the one of the pieces the the zoning map change that
is coming and
to us from Plan Commission that was on Monday night, and there was very, I mean, we had three members
of the public at Plan Commission on Monday night, and we were talking about some pretty serious things.
Okay, and the three members that were there were all there about this rezone, where there is a multifamily
development that wants to change their underlying zoning district to a district that will allow hotels,
because they can't get enough
of tenants to fill their building. And my suggestion publicly at the time, as I said, Plan Commission
forwarded that with a negative recommendation to us, was to look beyond students as tenants, because
there's a whole lot of non-students out there that also need homes. And that is something that maybe
is gonna end up correcting itself at some point. And how it's gonna correct itself is the part
that's gonna be really interesting, because our single-family homes right now are priced based on the
rentals, based on being able to charge $900 to $1,200 for one bedroom in a three-bedroom apartment,
right? That's how it's based. You know, single-family home rentals are $3,000 a month, because they're
assuming three individuals each paying $1,000 a month.
and students will end up paying that because they don't have other options and because it's cheaper
than some of their other options and they gotta live somewhere. So we're in a real pickle as a city.
We're in a real pickle for everybody. And we all do want very similar things. And the real question
is, how are we gonna get there and how long is it gonna take to get there? And this is not perfect, okay?
love getting rid of all of the minimum parking right now in some of those places that we're having very
serious parking problems because we need to figure out those solutions. I don't love things that end
up feeling like giveaways to big corporations, but some of those giveaways are also gonna be solutions
for smaller individual property owners who can subdivide, who can do something slightly different on
their own little
Little plot of land and we can say well, you know, how many people is that gonna help? Well, maybe it'll
help one or two and Maybe that's all we can do right now. So I will be supporting this this evening.
Thank you. Thank you councilman Rosenberger. Do you wanna Have like a well of time like like start up
that you should use I'm going home at 1030
I hope this passes. I'm a yes vote on it. I think there are parts of it that could still be different,
but I am looking forward to the idea of having this amendment as part of our UDO. I think that just,
I don't know, thinking about what some council members have said, I think some said, you know, we're
in disagreement.
about Wanting maybe incremental changes. Okay, that's not okay. I'm sorry. I wasn't ready. Oh councilmember
is sorry Now I have a timer I love that. Okay. Okay. Okay. Yeah, so I Think that I'm in agreement with
a lot of council members that incremental changes are
Great and the disagreement is I think this is incremental and you potentially don't I think changing
minimum lot sizes is something that has been talked about for years here. I think some council members
Who are opposing this? I think a lot of what they've wanted over the years is actually Part of it smaller
houses on smaller lots. We've heard a lot about criticisms about duplexes
This is not that this is not really plexes This is looking at smaller single-family homes on smaller
lots and trying to make that easier and trying to make that infill in our walkable neighborhoods and
so I think it's a little bit of a bummer that Some of those in opposition don't see that but that's
okay. I think too sometimes I'm like how much
Econ 101 do I want to get into and the answer is almost none. I think this is a supply and demand problem
as always As long as we have limited supply people can charge as much as they want to sell a home or
to rent a bedroom As soon as we have oversupply things get competitive and you can no longer charge
a thousand dollars a bedroom anymore. I
The musical chairs of housing is an article that came out years ago and it is so wonderful It is a lot
like car ownership. A lot of people can never afford a new car Some people can when those people buy
a new car they sell their old car That is the exact same thing as how the housing market works people
with more money and means by the newer houses and different people get to buy the houses that are now
10 20 years old and
So we need to have a supply continuing of new houses being built so the musical chairs can Continue
and probably in a greater fashion A lot of times we're not comparing apples to apples We talk about
little houses in Brian Park that might be torn down and we specifically usually talk about Brian Park
because almost every other of our walkable neighborhoods is now
It's you cannot tear down a home because they are historically protected So we have not that much walkable
space that we can make these changes, but what happens? What can happen in Brian Park is that you will
tear down that single-family home and you will build a monster Single-family home that is 1.5
million dollars, but what we can now also get in Brian Park is duplexes So instead of housing a family
of four in a brand new home For over a million dollars we get a duplex that can house
Six or eight people. Six? I forget the numbers. I'm so tired. The last thing I want to say, I guess,
is that a public commenter on Zoom said only some neighborhoods have the burden of density. And I disagree
with that so very much. Density, to me, is not a burden. And density means people. So we are talking
about putting more people in our neighborhoods
And I like that. I like people. My neighborhood, Prospect Hill, used to have about 400 more people in
it, but households have changed the way they do kids per bedroom and everything like that. I would love
to have more people so it looked like the yesteryear. Just preserving the character of my neighborhood,
I guess. I think that's it, but I don't think density is a bad word. I don't think more people is a
bad phrase. So I hope this passes, and I'm looking forward to the small incremental changes it might
bring. Thank you.
Thank you so much. Any other first comments? Council Member Barallo for, I think, would we get two minutes
for the second time? Go ahead. Yeah, I just wanted to make a quick response. I think the speaker was
talking, when they were talking about the burden of density, they were talking about what I was referring
to, and that is affordability and availability. That because they're approximate to downtown and campus,
They bear the burden as opposed to people on the outskirts. So it's gonna disproportionately affect
them negatively as I explained how it will and here's an example so 800 East Grimes People the investors
spent two hundred thousand dollars on that lot the household for hundred and fifty thousand It took
forty thousand dollars to demolish it. That was in November of 2024 It was so that two-bedroom house
rented for
or had a mortgage of $1,000 a month. So all this is verified. Now, there's a four-bedroom, large duplex
that is renting for $1,200 a room, and it's yielding $5,000 a month instead of $1,000 a month in terms
of profit, in terms of rent. So that's a huge incentive.
to demolish small homes and you can go to Zillow and find them. So I invite anybody to go to Zillow
right now at home and look and see around campus and downtown how many small homes there are. Some are
rentals. So let me also say that students are disproportionately affected, low-income students, because
if they're paying $400 per room and now they have to pay $1,200, obviously it's a class thing.
It's gonna disproportionately affect low-income students. So it's not about students or residents. It's
about whether you want affordability, real affordability, and the accessibility of owner-occupied homes
and the potential for them, or you want that conversion, which will yield density with higher rents,
higher mortgages. Thank you so much.
Any other final comments? Seeing none, I'll ask that the clerk please call the roll. Councilmember Stasberg?
Yes. Piedmont-Smith? Yes. Asari? Yes. Daly? No. Rallo? No. Roth?
Rosenberger yes clarity. Yes That motion carries five three Thank you all very much. All right. What
time does our rule set in? It is 1035 so keep that in mind. I forget what the rule is but maybe
Parliamentarian you can tell us what the rule is Okay, roll call vote on all introductions so
That is the rule and we need two-thirds two-thirds of people present to continue Motion for our point
of order I just want a point of information We have one two, three four resolutions left are any of
them more Urgent than others in terms of dealing with them tonight versus another night That might be
for attorney Allen
The CIB budget is the more urgent one because it's on a deadline So if you wanted to move something
up, I would for you to move both of those So both the CIB and the fab tech resolution a little earlier
okay, can I make a motion to amend the agenda then to Deal with resolution 20 26 20 and resolution 20
26 21 as our B and C items second Motion second all those in favor say aye aye
Fantastic that that is done. Let's Let's do so then let's start with deep Well, what is that resolution
20 26-20 be introduced and read by the clerk by title and synopsis only Second motion in the second
with a clerk, please call the roll Yes, but we call the roll on reading it by title and synopsis, yeah
Almost. Almost. Stasberg. Yes. Piedmont-Smith. Yes. Massari. Yes. Daly. Yes. Rallo. Yes. Ruff. Yes.
Rosenberger. Yes. Flaherty. Yes. Stasberg. Yes, again. She started. Yeah, thanks. Thank you. Will the
clerk please read?
Yes, please 20 26 20. Yes. All right resolution 20 26-20 requests to approve the 20 27 operating budget
of the Monroe County Capital Improvement Board for the Bloomington Convention Center synopsis
This resolution approves the Monroe County Capital Improvement Board's 2027 operating budget for the
Bloomington Convention Center pursuant to the interlocal cooperation agreement between the
city of Bloomington and Monroe County. The approved budget provides $3,287,597 in revenues and $3,287,597
in expenses.
Following City Council approval, the budget will be presented to the Monroe County Council for its review
and approval. Thank you. I move that resolution 2026-20 be adopted. Second. All right, to you, Mr. Underwood.
Good evening. My name's Jeff Underwood. I'm Comptroller and Assistant Treasurer for the Capital Improvement
Board. With me this evening is John Weichauer, President, and Talisha Copic, the Executive Director
of the Convention Center. And this is the first time since we
Capital improvement board now has taken responsibility for the operations of the Convention Center per
the inner local as noted the inner local says that we will present our budgets to both fiscal bodies
and have them improve it and We would come to you first. So this is the resolution to approve the operating
budget two things I want to point out is there is no city subsidy or any kind of funds in the
Convention Center operating budget. It's funded primarily through direct revenues from leases of the
facilities and in keepers tax this budget has been approved by the both the CVC and the CIB and we had
our initial budget hearing with the Monroe County Council this evening and they've Doing their series
of hearings
And it went very smoothly with them and then their public hearing and appropriation votes are in October
So at this point, I'd be happy to answer any questions related to this resolution. Thank you very much
questions Seeing none we'll go to public comment would anybody like to comment on resolution 20 26 20
Is there anyone online? Coming back to council for comments
None will the clerk please call the roll? Councilmember councilmember Piedmont Smith. Yes. I'm sorry.
Yes Daley. Yes, Rallo. Yes rough. Yeah, Rosa burger. No Flaherty. Yes Stasburg
That carries six one. Thank you very much. We'll move on Resolution 20 26-21 be introduced and read
by the clerk by title and synopsis only Second motion in a second. Will the clerk please call the roll
on the motion to read? Hold on
Resolution 20 26-21 requesting the food and beverage Will you call the roll on the motion to read, please?
Yeah, I will Councilmember a sorry. Yes Daley. Yes, Rallo. Yes, Ruff Rosenberger. Yes Flaherty. Yes,
Stasburg Piedmont Smith Yes, that motion carries six one Will the clerk please read?
Let's do that again resolution 2026 dash 21 Requesting the Food and Beverage Tax Advisory Commission
to make a recommendation for expenditure of food and beverage tax revenues the synopsis is The resolution
this resolution is a request from the Common Council
for the Food and Beverage Tax Advisory Commission to recommend expenditures of food and beverage tax
revenues toward a 2027 budget for the Capital Improvement Board.
Thank you very much to you. Mr. Underwood. I move that resolution 2026 dash 21 be adopted Sorry to you.
Mr. Underwood Again, Jeff underwood controller assistant treasurer This is related to the construction
of the new facility and the remodeling of the existing facility Utilizes food and beverage funds in
addition to bond funds and
You all appropriate these funds as a part of the budget process We presented to you in August and the
numbers have not changed but a one little Difference in this one is that it has to go to the fabtac
the food and beverage tax Commission for a review and recommendation to come back to you prior to your
vote on the budget. So this resolution Just asked that the fabtac meet
Review that and make a recommendation back to the council prior to your vote on the overall city budget
We're happy to answer any questions. Yes, and this will be the last one Ever for this process. Oh, yeah
Thank you I have a first question. What's the timeline that it will come back to us? It will come back
prior to your adoption of the city budget so October the 7th 7th. Yes
Excellent. So what if you approve this tonight? Administrator will reach out to the county schedule
the fab tack We'll go and meet for that and then they'll send their recommendation back to you all council
members any questions Council member says Tosberg Figure out whether the question that I have is actually
attached to this resolution or the past or the one before this but I think that it's this one
There's a professional services contract for nine hundred and twenty two thousand. Is that this one
or the last one? That was the last no great then never mind. I'm good. Okay, and I can answer your question
just Moving to public comment is there any public comment on resolution 20 26 21 anyone online Coming
back to council any comments
Councilman Stasberg, I do have a question on this one. There's a contingency amount here of 2.6 million.
Is that the original contingency amount? Because there was a whole original contingency. Yes The original
contingency amount and it's just well, it's the 2027 part. It was a part of the overall contingency
So there's contingency in the construction fund and there was contingency in the food and beverage that
the council asks us to have 10% contingency. So this was a remainder of that and
Half of the contingency. Okay. Awesome. Thanks. Thank you Thank you very much with that will the coke
please call the roll Councilmember Ralla, yes rough Flaherty, yes Stasburg. Yes, Piedmont Smith. Yes
I'm sorry. Yes daily. Yes
I carry seven. Oh, thank you for your patience for being here for so long. Have a wonderful evening.
Appreciate it. Thank you
I move that resolution 20 26 dash 18 be introduced and read by the clerk by title and synopsis There's
a motion in a second with a clerk, please call the roll on the on the motion to read 20 26 18
Resolution 2026 Call the roll I think I'm getting tired Can't imagine why yeah councilmember rough Rosenberg
Oh Scott Flaherty. Yes Stassberg. Yes Piedmont Smith. Yes. I'm sorry. Yes, Daley. Yes. Thank you. Will
the clerk please read I
Oh and and Rallo, I'm sorry All right, so resolution 2026-18 a resolution of the common council of the
city of Bloomington Monroe County, Indiana approving certain matters in connection with the with removing
parcels from a certain economic development area and
Synopsis the synopsis is this resolution originated from Bloomington Redevelopment Commission to remove
certain residential parcels from the Bloomington consolidated economic development area and amend the
economic development plan Accordingly as these certain residential parcels are ineligible for tax increments
to be collected for the Bloomington Redevelopment Commission and cause difficulties of
Processing tax increment financing TIF that can be eliminated by their removal Thank you very much motion
To you sir Thank you very much for staying this evening this has been a long evening for you and really
appreciate it This is a resolution
Would support the declaratory resolution of the Redevelopment Commission to amend the consolidated TIF
to remove Residential properties that are ineligible to have the tax increment captured from the
consolidated TIF district and we have a two maps this one is an overview and the blue is the consolidated
TIF and the Little pieces there are hard to see so this is a zoom in of the top area of the northern
area and you can see these little places around town where there's these residential parcels that are
ineligible to be captured and in this next slide shows the southern area where there's some ineligible
properties as well. Justin Chang from Reedy Financial has actually been the one who suggested to us
to make this amendment to the consolidated TIF and he can explain more about the reasoning behind that.
Good evening, everyone. Good to see you all again. Just a quick overview for why we're doing this, and
I've sort of explained this before, but this is not something that's specifically happening in Bloomington.
This is for... There was a question about whether or not you introduced yourself
I'm Justin Chang with 3d financial group. I forgot I've been here so many times at this point. I'm just
kidding Yes, Justin Chang with 3d financial group. I'm the financial advisor for the city and the RDC
so essentially how this came about to sue our work with the RDC and annually what we do is we look at
the parcel list for
the RDC TIF allocation areas to identify what we call decrement, which is negative increment, essentially
parcels that are taking assessed values away from the TIF allocation areas. And this sort of goes back
to really prior to 2023, we can sort of just TIF parcels
Even if there are residential parcels, no, we cannot benefit from them But we but they also did not
hurt the TIF as either so it really didn't matter a whole lot whether they were in the TIF or not starting
in 2026 so starting in 25 assessment and pay 26 There was a software change where now instead of it's
being a neutral effect on the tip allocation areas We're actually seeing negative negative
effects to Capture increments. So that's why we're suggest suggesting this removal again It's sort of
just a correction. They should not have been in there in the first place. It just didn't matter so this
is just correcting what was done in the past and Making sure we're collecting incremental assess values
like we should have been Thank you so much questions on council councilmember Piedmont Smith
Yes, mr. Chang, could you explain the tax impact on overlapping units? Yes, of course, so Okay, perfect
So Dana what Dana has up here is the tax impact on the overlapping units but
Instead of looking just these numbers in isolation, I do want to share the total impact. So by removing
these parcels, what we're doing is we're adding $18 million in incremental assess value to the RDC and
essentially taking away $18 million in net assess value from the base units. So if we look at the impact
to the RDC, by adding $18 million in incremental assess value,
That's roughly around three hundred and seventy eight thousand dollars in additional value that the
city's RDC is getting annually So this isn't a one-time one-time impact This is where RDC will generate
three hundred and seventy eight thousand dollars every year for the next twelve years that the artists
that the tips are still active now what is showing here is
By taking away this 18 million dollars. What is the impact to the underlying until the underlying units
because we're taking away 18 million dollars to the base units So you'll see here really who's impacted
the most and it's Monroe County at $7,600 in circuit breaker impact, but Bloomington City is a close
second. We're looking at
You know $1,300 in circuit breaker impact if we look at total all the overlapping units If you add add
up that sixteen thousand that fifteen thousand, we're looking at a thirty one thousand dollar total
Impact to the underlying units, but we are gaining over three hundred and seventy eight thousand dollars
in the city's RDC. So overall, this is it's still a positive impact to To tax collections as a whole.
It's just we're shifting it from
entity to another So CB means circuit breaker and then the rate-driven funds impact is Yeah, so CB impacted
circuit breaker impact Rachel and funds impact are specifically to funds that are driven by rate but
not by levy so for the city and the county those would be our cumulative capital development funds because
those are fixed by rate and
If you change the assessed value that rate doesn't change So if we're applying a lower assessed value
to the rate, we're going to decrease our levies by that amount So that is actually dollars lost instead
of surga breaker adjustments Thank you, I have one other The I assume that there were some Residential
parcels that were left out of the original TIF districts because I know there are residential
Parcels looking at the map that that would That would be in the TIF consolidated district that are not
highlighted on the map So is that correct that that when the map was made some of them were left off
and some of them were That is correct and Dana may be able to better speak on this but I believe is to be
Make sure the TIF areas are still continuous because we can't have no parcel on this side of the map
and another one on this side So to make sure these two parcels connect we need to still have one parcel
in between and it just so happens to be a residential parcel So we have to keep it in Thank you other
councilmembers councilmember rough I'm sure I just misheard or I'm just confused in your opening comments.
You said something about a
This has become an issue mainly because of a software change or what? That is correct. I guess I don't
really understand. Could you elaborate on that a tiny bit a little bit? I can so essentially it's it's
a software change but not because the software is
sort of like, sort of up to the software's discretion. It's a DLGF guidance provided to the property
tax software on how they are treating residential parcels. So it's not even a county auditor's thing.
It's not even really a software. It's just a guidance from the state. Thank you. Other questions?
Seeing none, we'll go to public comment. Controller, you want to make a comment? Anybody else want to
make a comment?
Anyone online? All right coming back to counsel then for comments Seeing them will the clerk please
call the roll. Oh Council member Stasberg. I just want to thank these guys for sticking around this
long to To get this business done that will overall help the bottom line. Thanks. Thank you All right,
will the clerk please call the roll?
Don't know where I left off, so I'll just start with Ruff. Yes. Okay, Rosenberger. Oh, she's not here,
sorry. Flaherty. Yes. Stasberg. Yes. Piedmont-Smith. Yes. Asari. Yes. Daly. Yes. Rallo. Yes. That motion
passes 7-0. Thank you again for your time. Any other motions? I move that resolution 2026-19
Introduced and read by the clerk by title and synopsis only Have motion in two seconds will the clerk
we call the roll on the motion to read I'm gonna do this right this time Flaherty Yes, Stasburg. Yes,
Piedmont Smith. Yes. I'm sorry. Yes, Daly. Yes, Rallo. Yes, Ruff. Yes Thank you very much. Will the
clerk please read
Resolution 2026-19 a resolution of the Common Council of the city of Bloomington Monroe County, Indiana
Approving certain matters in connection with the formation of a certain economic development area Synopsis
this resolution originated from the Bloomington Redevelopment Commission to establish the new Hopewell
South economic development area the Hopewell South EDA and
and designating all of such area as an allocation area, having a residential housing program. Assuming
the statutory process is completed, this will establish what is commonly referred to as a residential
tax increment financing, TIFF, area for the Hopewell South allocation area. I move that resolution 2026-19
be adopted. Second.
Can you adjust your microphone? I can't apologize Dana Kerr with the legal department I work with the
RDC and the RDC has passed a declaratory resolution to establish the Hopewell South residential TIF
this is similar to the summit residential TIF that was
recently formed Where some it had several different neighborhoods? That would be different allocation
areas. This is a small tiff with one neighborhood. So there'd just be one allocation area and so what
the Premises is that the RDC will be expending funds and
Provide infrastructure for this development As it could not be developed without that and by creating
the residential TIF there will be the ability to capture the incremental Assessed value so that that
those funds can be replenished and used for other projects and
or used with inside the Hopewell South neighborhood itself as well. So to explain a little bit more
about residential TIFs, we have again Justin Chang with Reedy Financial. Justin Chang with Reedy Financial.
Remember to introduce myself this time.
So a little bit about residential tips you guys may have some recollection of the summit and Shasta
metals tip allocation area We created earlier this year. This is that exact same process, you know As
part of creation goes City Council is the third of the three set process So is that exact same process
and the residential tips works the same way? recently there's actually a legislation change that I
makes it so that a residential TIF's life extends from 20 years to 25 years. So since we're creating
this after July 1st of 2026, we are able to utilize that 25-year TIF life. We just completed a resolution
to remove residential parcels from TIFs. And the reason is because the consolidated TIF is not a traditional
TIF, and we're creating a residential TIF here.
the big difference is we are able to capture on residential parcels within this TIF because the plan
is for there to be residential developments here, but Happy to answer any questions. Thank you so much.
I'm counselor Rallo Yeah, I wondered about whether An RFP had gone out for Hopewell development. Yep
That's my question, okay
Go ahead and ask him Yeah, I'd like to ask I'd like to ask when the RFP for Hopewell South is gonna
go out. That's good question. I'm sorry Oh, we'll ask it again No, the question the question is about
when the RFP for Hopewell South is going to be issued the RFP for the infrastructure for Hopewell South
going to bid that will Hopefully be going out later this fall the plat
process is still ongoing getting ready to submit the final plat to the Planning Commission or and the
which would be the next step for the planning department And so that was is next and then there will
be a review process There's Duke Energy has a review process that takes several months and so once
All of that is complete the construction drawings could be complete and then it could go out to bid
for the infrastructure the RFP for the first Set of homes will likely be going out this fall as well
Because it can be going along on a simultaneous track As well, but we need to get the plat
done and recorded and our covenants and Restrictions all created and all those in place and we are currently
working on those so we're Looking forward to to moving this along as the fall continues Thank you very
much for that great question
Thank you. So we just took residential properties out of the consolidated TIF because there was basically
a penalty for having them in there sir similar penalty for having a Residential TIF where there's something
that's not residential in there No, that is there's not the same penalty that is applied in that case
Thank you. Oh
raising my hand for myself. How does this interact with the proposed... How might this interact with
the proposed site for the police station, for example, and the development of other elements of Hopewell
when we get to that? Okay. For the
police station would be zero assessed value because it would be a RDC slash city-owned property so it
would have no impact How does establishing this residential TIF? Because it's only for it's it's only
for the south the south portion of Hope well, is that correct?
Yes, so so do does the administration envision that when we get to the other parts of Hopewell? The
the other parts of Hopewell development However, we choose to go about that that will also establish
a TIF for those other sections. Well, we have a north TIF as well Yes, that is unknown at this point because
There has not been firm plans on what exactly is going to happen with the rest of Hopewell It is very
possible that as Hopewell continues to develop and the other segments of Hopewell May end up being separate
tips but it really is too certain to tell because we're not certain what will Become of them at this
point. Thank you so much. Any other questions?
Councilman rough Last time when we discussed the summit tiff you were able to I may be Miss Remembering
but you were able to explain I think to us that This actually does enable local government to capture
some tax revenue that we otherwise would not be able to get
Capture because the state took us away taxes, right? Is this the same type of thing? We'll actually
be able to use this to capture revenues that Would have been lost to us. Otherwise, yeah actually there
was a circuit breaker impact slide that essentially Put this basically pictures out what you were trying
to say there and
The similar to the residential parcels we saw this for the residential parcel removal this is saying
if the development for hopal was to have happened even without the Infrastructure provided by the RDC
to make this development happen and the assessed value was to drop into all the base units
This is essentially what the base units would collect because for If this development was still to happen,
so we're looking at
Thirty two thirty three hundred thirty three thousand dollars now from if we just did a preliminary
estimate of different what TIF revenues could be we're looking at closer to hundred and sixty thousand
dollars in revenues from this development if we were to TIF it so we look at 160,000 versus what I say
thirty thirty two thirty three thousand dollars We're looking at a hundred thirty hundred twenty hundred
thirty thousand difference. So that would be the additional
property tax revenues that would be collected from this development and because we utilize a TIF and
that's independent those numbers are independent of The development itself, right? It's if it was developed
the same exact way the same exact intensity The same exact value with the tip first without the tip.
That's the difference you're talking about
There's no change to the development the same word in our example We're saying twenty six point nine
million dollars with a tip without a tip without a tip We'd be looking at thirty three thousand with
a tip. We'd be looking closer to 160,000 Thank you and then comes over to us one quick question. What's
the duration of the TIF? I
The so for residential TIF there was a recent legislation change. So we're looking at 25 year after
closing on a bond So okay right now there isn't a bond yet. So right now is to be decided. So substantial
amount of time Yes, okay. Great. Thanks Yes going back to the question about capturing property tax
revenues that we wouldn't otherwise capture Why why is it that?
Can you explain like why is it that we go from 33,000 to 160,000 if it's tipped? So the main reason
is Without going to too too deep into the details because we're a levy based state So if we're looking
at how we derive property tax revenue, we take the assessed value multiplied by the tax rate and we
get our levy
Well, the way Indiana works is the levy, we don't establish a levy. The state tells us what our levy
is. So when we increase assessed value by a bunch with the development, and levy does not change, the
only thing that can change the rate, so the tax rate will go down. We still collect the same dollar
in property tax revenues through the levy. But through a TIF,
We're sort of isolating this development to its own tax rate So it captures the entire tax rate without
looking levy doesn't does not apply when it's in a tiff I hope that helps explains a little bit I'd
be happy to clarify if that I'm still confused. I'm sorry Trying to think of a good So
Let's say just simple we're taking simple math, right if we're saying 10 times 2 equals 20 But now 10
increased to 15 15 times 2 equals 30 but the state is telling us It still needs to equal 20 at the end.
So we we can't The only thing that could change is that middle number which is our tax rate so
When we add a lot of assessed value into our base We can't increase what our property tax revenue is
we can only decrease our tax rate. Mm-hmm Oh, but but if it's in a TIF then We we are don't have that
limitation or correct if it's in a if it's the assessed value is in a TIF then what happens is
It is it is not part of that equation that I just gave you that 10 times 2 equals 20 It is almost separated
out it with as its own Property tax base and whatever tax rate design is being applied will just apply
to that Tiff Assessor value so it does that what I mentioned about levy being fixed does not apply when
it's in a tiff Thank you Thank you so much
Seeing no more questions, we'll go to public comment. Is there any public comment on this resolution?
2619, anyone online? Back to council. Any final comments? Councilmember Stasberg. I'll once again thank
this crew of
Matthew numbers economic guys for Staying this late. Thanks. I would also add that I think it's pretty
impressive that you do math at 1130 at night. That's pretty cool All right, any other comments.
All right. Will the clerk please call the final roll? Stasburg yes, Piedmont Smith. Yes I'm sorry. Yes,
Daley. Yes, Rallo
Yes, rough. Yes clarity. Yes Yay that carries everybody voted for it now We have one last moment of
public comment if you have stayed this long and would like to Read an ode to the midnight. We'd be happy
to hear it anyone Anyone like to quote Camus?
It's too good. Okay. All right, we will Talk council schedule any important things councilmember Stossberg
fiscal committee meets at 830 on Friday and If anybody's interested in looking at that packet who's
not on the committee because everybody on the committee is gonna look at it, right? it has a lengthy
memo from sanitation about rates so that might be of interest to all of you and then of course that must be
task force meeting is at one o'clock on Friday. Thank you, and thank you for being our representative
there. Also just noting for everybody, as we said before, Attorney Rossman is gonna be, is still aiming
for that October 12th date. I'll be reaching out to all of you individually to set up some times both
for onboarding, but I think it would be really useful, as I think we discussed at several contexts,
for him to meet with everybody sort of individually once he gets going.
We'll set up those type of things here in the next couple of weeks. We will see you all next week. Thank
you so much. Adjourned.