- to order this meeting of the Bloomington Commission on Sustainability at 6.03 PM. And we'll go to the
- roll call. Tara Dunderdale? Here. Here. Justin Vassell, I'm here. Matt Austin? Present. Present.
- Zero Rose. I don't see him online or in the room. Dave Rollo? Here. Here. Quentin Gilley? Now, I know
- Quentin's. I'm on the phone, but I'll do it then.
- Perfect, yeah, yeah, Quentin said he's just a couple of minutes behind. He'll be here in person, but
- he's just dialing in in the meantime. Okay, Alex Jerk. Not present. Okay, Jamie Scholl. Here. Here.
- Evan Nix. Not here. Annalise Jenke. Here. Here. Diana Agrodowsky. Here. Here. And Shenghuai Xu.
- Not here, and I have regrets from him for tonight.
- Did I miss anybody? Perfect. Well, we have a quorum, so we'll move on to the approval of the minutes.
- two sets that were sent around, one from July 8th, 2025. So there was a bit of a backlog on the minutes
- for a little while. This is the last of that backlog. So we are now caught up after these are approved.
- And then of course, from our last meeting, October 14th, 2025. So as we did last time, I'd like to just
- approve these two together, unless anybody has specific changes they'd like to make for either of them,
- then maybe we can do them individually.
- So I'll give folks a moment to speak up if they saw something that they want to change on one of these
- minutes. OK, hearing none, I'll move that we approve both of these sets of minutes as they were distributed.
- There's a second. OK. Any discussion? I assume not, since nobody said they wanted to change anything.
- All righty. And we'll see. OK.
- Let me just note down that. Do we approve the agenda first? Oh, did I? Yes we do. Thank you. Sorry.
- Okay, so I don't know how to do that procedurally. We'll come back to this motion in a second.
- Hold it. I don't think this is strictly Robert's rules, but we'll make it work. Okay, is there a motion
- to approve the agenda? Motion.
- Perfect. And there's a second. OK. Are there anybody who would like to modify the agenda? OK.
- Hearing none, we'll do a roll call vote since we've got one commissioner virtual for the moment. So
- this is to approve the agenda. Tara? Yes. Yes. Justin, yes. Matt? Yes. Yes. Zero is absent. Council
- Member Aralo? Yes. Yes. Quentin?
- I don't want to ask you to turn on your video if you're driving, but we'll double check with you when
- you walk into the room. Alex? Yes. Yes. Okay. Jamie? Yes. Yes. Evan Nix is absent. Annalise? Yes. Yes.
- Diana? Yes. Yes. And Shenghuai is absent.
- Okay, perfect. The agenda is approved. So we go back to our motion to approve the minutes here. So I
- think we're going right into a vote unless anyone decided that there was something that they wanted
- to change. Okay, perfect. So these are to approve both the minutes from July 8th and October 14th from
- this year. Tara? Yes. Yes. Justin? Yes. Matt? Yes. Yes. Zero is absent. Councilmember Aurelio? Yes.
- Yes. Quintin?
- OK, that was a yes. Thank you. Alex? Abstain. I was adopted the question in July. Ah, OK. Good point.
- Abstain. Jamie? Yes. Evan is absent. Annalise? Yes. Diana? Yes. And Shenghuai is absent.
- OK, those minutes are approved. That brings us to the public comment portion. So we have up to 10 minutes
- allocated for this, up to three minutes per person. Is there anybody online or here in the room who
- would like to do a public comment? And for online, maybe just use the hand raise feature so we can see.
- I don't think there's anyone in the room.
- can't find the raised hand. Fair enough. Well, I think you're the only other member of the public that's
- on online right now. So if you've got something that you'd like to address the commission with, please
- feel free. Yes. Hi. I would like to, my name is Ellie Spear, and I wanted to express concern about the
- challenges with the grant process
- lots of the grant process for not only the commission but other ESD grants. They are not only
- very complicated which scares people and I understand that there is help with the grants but I've heard
- from multiple people that they start the grants and then they go this is just over and beyond what
- I want to do for a $500 grant or a $1,000 grant. So I wanted to bring that to the commission's attention,
- that they're very complicated grants, and would there be a way to reduce the number of questions,
- simplify it, and then also, with that, the instructions that are provided, the summaries that are provided
- are misleading
- oftentimes where someone thinks or an organization thinks that it will apply to them and they go through
- the process, they answer lots of questions, they spend hours and hours doing things, and then they're
- told, I'm sorry, this does not apply to you. So I think there's a lot of room for improvement so that
- more people, residents, and organizations
- would apply to help the city move things forward. Otherwise, it's a lot of, you know, lots of grants.
- It looks good, but we're not making any progress. We're not making any movement, and it's a
- lot of greenwashing. So I just want to throw that out there, to ask this commission and ESDE to work
- on these things. Thank you very much.
- Thank you, Ellie, for that comment. Is there anyone else in the room? I don't see anything. And we do
- have some time on the agenda a little bit later to talk a little bit about that specific grant here
- as a commission, so we'll be able to. Sorry. I'd like to address some of those comments since it was
- directed to ESD. We provide a lot of funding throughout our city. We issue hundreds of thousands of
- dollars worth of grants.
- We try to make the process as streamlined as possible. I'm not hearing a lot of complaints
- from organizations. There is an issue that we're going to be talking about later with the working group
- grants. We just try to make sure that every application is consistent, that we apply all the funding
- consistently to all the applicants, and make sure that we have all the information that we need to make
- an informed decision.
- And so sometimes that information isn't brought forward during the initial application. So we really
- work hard with all of the organizations to make sure that we have all the information that we need,
- that they're informed about the process. And we're really proud of all the work that we have done in
- ESD. I'll be providing an annual report to city council on December 3rd.
- And you'll see all of the amazing work that we have done across our city. So it's not greenwashing.
- We have a lot to show for what we're doing. So thank you. Great. Thank you. OK, so that brings us to
- reports from commissioners. So we'll start with the chair report. I did not get slides made for this,
- so this will just be a verbal update. So apologies for that.
- There's not, I don't think there's any changes to the org chart since the last time that we met, but
- we are expecting some level of turnover at the end of this term cycle that's ending in January and maybe
- at the end of this year. I know, I believe there's,
- somebody who's coming before council for consideration for this commission tomorrow or whenever their
- next meeting is. So we may have a new member potentially for December. But otherwise, mostly unchanged.
- Let's see what else.
- Yeah, so we're approaching the end of the year. As far as working sessions go, my plan was at least
- to not have one for December. It tends to be a pretty busy month for folks. I'm going to be out of the
- country for the next couple of weeks. And then our next meeting is fairly early in December, I think.
- So we'll probably just do one more business meeting before the end of the year. And if anybody has something
- that they think is very
- urgent time sensitive or something, let me know and we can try to work something out, but I'm not aware
- of anything. Yeah, so I started work on the annual report for 2025, trying to get ahead of that so that
- it's ready to go at the beginning of the year. So I may be able to bring sort of a first draft of that
- to the meeting next time with the caveat that anything we do at that meeting would then
- get integrated into that report and then as for a final version hopefully would come here in January
- for approval and then we would send that to to council in the mayor's office. Let's see so yeah what
- we'll talk about the grants a little bit later on usually I should show the grant chart there so
- You know, we didn't get any working group grants approved for this year, and we'll talk more about that.
- Tara and I both had a meeting with ESD and City Legal. I see Audrey's here in the gallery, so thank
- you for coming. So yeah, we had a meeting to discuss the Bukashi working group grant, and then ended
- up discussing some other topics as well.
- things like some of the document. Yeah, go ahead. Oh, I wanted to add. We talked about it at the working
- group at the working session about the grants that I had.
- brought education grant that I had brought at the last meeting. We're not voting on, not because we're
- not pursuing that work, but because legal said that that just falls in like regular budgetary work for
- ESD and we can just, I can just work with Jolie to order those supplies. We don't need to do it as a
- grant. So that's why it's off the agenda. We went over that at the working session, but I want to make
- sure it was for the business meeting. Yeah, that is a good point. Yeah. And Jolie was at the working
- session and took some really nice notes. And so those are posted on board. So folks, if you weren't
- at the working session,
- you want to see kind of what happened, what was discussed. You can go take a look at those. And yeah,
- we got a lot of good work done on the resolution that we're voting on today. So there was a lot of sort
- of workshopping of that, among other things. But yeah, so we had a meeting here at City Hall this past
- week, mostly surrounding the grant stuff. But I'll maybe save that discussion for that time on the agenda.
- The other couple things that we discussed were some of the document management stuff that we've been
- working through before with the Google Drive and stuff on board and trying to make sure that things
- that are on the drive are synced to on board and making sure that commissioners have access and ease
- of discovery for documents that are on board. So there was some discussion about potentially looking
- into being able to
- add some additional tabs to onboard or something that might make it easier to search for documents that
- aren't minutes, agendas, or reports, things like tracking spreadsheets or research notes, things like
- this, which we have a lot of from the past. And we also talked about minutes. So ESD expressed an interest
- in being the ones to write the minutes going forward.
- Um, our bylaws have that with the secretary. Um, so, you know, I think, I think the main issue there
- was that, uh, ESD wants to have, you know, possession of some sort of document of what happened at the
- meeting that could then, you know, be provided to somebody if they file an open records request, that
- sort of thing. Um, you know, in between the time when we have the meeting and when we actually approve
- those minutes. Normally that's about a month.
- Obviously, earlier this year, we had a bit of a backlog. So several months sometimes for those to come
- through. So if we're going to switch completely over to having the staff liaison or ESD staff write
- the minutes, we'd have to adjust aspects of the bylaws. We've been talking about making some changes
- to the bylaws for a while. So I think this next year would be a good time to look at overall changes
- to the bylaws.
- If folks are interested in that sort of transfer of authority, we can discuss that. I think for now,
- at least, I know Julie took minutes at the work session, probably taking minutes now if I had to guess,
- or taking notes. And much like what City Council does is they'll post pretty quickly after the meeting
- a memorandum, which has sort of the minimum information that's required by open door law. So the date
- and time, location of the meeting, who is present,
- the results of any votes and sort of a general synopsis of the discussion. That's what the open door
- law requires. It does not require that minutes are produced. Minutes are sort of a more fleshed out
- version, right? There's some amount of sort of editorial discretion, I would say, in minutes relative
- to memoranda, where you sort of decide how in depth into the conversation you really want to go.
- And so, you know,
- It's my opinion that I think it's a good practice for BCOS to do that level of minute taking where we
- really summarize kind of the full scope of the discussions that have been had. But obviously, it's important
- to have these memoranda, too, that are available shortly or right after a meeting. So at least for the
- moment, that's what we'll be going with. I believe we talked about in the meeting, Justin, that Jillian
- is taking minutes.
- She's going to send those to Tara to add anything that Jolie might have missed. And then she'll send
- those minutes to you. Those will be the official minutes. So she's not taking memoranda right now. She's
- taking full minutes. OK, yeah. I know we discussed that. I didn't agree to that. And I don't think that,
- based on the way that the bylaws are written, that that's an appropriate way to do things, at least
- without going through some sort of formal process. It allows the city to have full minutes if anyone
- were to request.
- Right. But that's breaking the bylaws. And that feels like ESD is trying to take control like they did
- last year when you were writing agendas. There's no other commission for their staff taking minutes.
- Even city council, they have their own staff taking minutes. And so I don't know why BQAS would be any
- different. Because the bylaws say that it's different. Right. I mean, the Bloomington Municipal Code says
- the clerk will take the minutes for the council, right? And I don't know what the other commissions,
- what their bylaws look like, but I know that the code says that the BCOS is free to decide how it wants
- to conduct its business. And we've done that through our bylaws and the bylaws says that the secretary
- takes the minutes. So I think we'd have to change that.
- I don't know if other commissions do it this way. I'm sure there's plenty that rely on their staff liaisons
- to take those minutes. We said that Tara, she can make edits to those minutes. And so that's still allowing
- ECOS to have input into the minutes and that those minutes will be sent to you to post. Well, I believe
- that violates the bylaws. Those do not. And I. Audrey, do you have any?
- to say here. It's rehashing what we talked about in the meeting about minutes. Do we make time for this
- to happen? We have an agenda and this is not part of our agenda. We can, well, so this is the chair's
- report at the moment. We can, I don't have a whole lot else, so we can give maybe five more minutes
- on this before we move on. Yeah, that sounds good. Yeah, go ahead.
- My reading of the bylaws is that I think it would satisfy them if staff were to work with the secretary
- to create the minutes jointly. I think the suggestion in our meeting was that staff draft them and the
- secretary continue to take minutes and they basically square them away with each other before the next
- meeting and then the secretary presents the drafted minutes
- at the next meeting. A lot of this, again, as Sean pointed out, is a document retention thing. It's
- not about trying to take control. It's about making sure that we are legally compliant with our requirements
- when certain requests or certain things come up. And we're supposed to be the ones who are retaining
- and controlling official documentation. So that was the solution that we had discussed.
- totally reasonable, though, to request to amend the bylaws to clarify that. I don't see why that can't
- happen fairly quickly at the next meeting. And I think it can still be in there that, again, the secretary
- and staff work closely together to square the bylaw or to square the minutes away with each other and
- that the secretary still present them at the meeting.
- with legal, because we've had legal come in before and say something, and they were completely wrong,
- and they came back and admitted they were wrong. So I have a tough time trusting legal, because legal
- is always going to side with the city, not with the commission. So I struggle with that, because we
- had legal come in before and put their foot down, only to find out that they were completely incorrect.
- I appreciate that people, I'm an attorney. People don't trust attorneys. That's entirely reasonable.
- I'm also an attorney for the city, which means I represent the city. So you're right.
- The commission is a commission of the city. So I represent the commission, but I don't represent any
- individual commission members in our requests, if that makes sense. So you're absolutely right. I'm
- going to be on the side of the city because I am absolutely a city attorney. But I'm happy to look into
- questions that you have and come back with answers. Again, this is my reading of the bylaws.
- I think that it gives us the flexibility to allow staff and the secretary to work together to create
- the minutes to come to the next meeting. Again, I think it's totally reasonable to want that clarified
- in the bylaws. And I think that that is something that could be easily drafted. And that's
- your interpretation. And the commission's interpretation could be that that's not OK. And so it's one
- interpretation versus another. Why does your interpretation take
- take precedent over our interpretation. I don't think there's any way to interpret that the city needs
- to retain ownership of legal documents. I don't see how you can reinterpret that. That wasn't what I
- was talking about. I think it would be helpful to know what the requirements are. So for example, the
- open door law does not require minutes. It does require something like a memorandum, something that
- encodes that basic information. We choose to do minutes.
- to go beyond that and have a document that's more fleshed out. I understand the access to public records
- sort of thing there. You want to have that document ready to go in case somebody asks for it. Of course,
- if somebody did submit a request for that document, we could reach out to our secretary. We could provide
- that draft version of the minutes. I think as a commission, those open records requests
- you know, be sort of addressed to us as well, right? Like it would, someone would say, I want this document
- from this public body because, and of course it would probably come through the legal department at
- some point, right? And then you reach out to us, but. The problem is, let's say the secretary leaves
- all of a sudden and we don't have access to those documents. Here at the city, everyone has access to
- our documents. ITS could pull those records. We're not able to pull the record from
- Tara's laptop. Are the emails between commissioners regarding official VCOS business subject to the
- open records request laws? Could somebody file a records request for an email that I sent to Tara about
- some business we had with the commission? They could. My concern goes beyond
- Public records request, timeliness is a concern there. But I'm more concerned about the fact that official
- documents that are taken by a border commission are required to be retained in perpetuity. So you're
- right that you're not required to take minutes the way that you guys take minutes, right? But you choose
- to take minutes the way that you take minutes. And that creates a record that we're required to retain
- properly in perpetuity.
- meeting minutes forever. There's no actual destruction date for those. And so it becomes more of an
- issue when, like Sean said, I understand that Tara's been doing a very good job with this, and I appreciate
- that. I think that my understanding is that there have been timeliness issues with the minutes in the
- past, questions about whether or not the minutes were turned in. I am new to this commission. I'm not
- trying to, like,
- make any claims here i'm just trying to make sure that we are retaining the official documents in perpetuity
- in the event that tara is no longer the secretary in the event that y'all are no longer on b-cost you
- know that there's not a google drive somewhere of someone who's not on b-cost anymore that just like
- we don't have access to that has minutes on it that we're legally required to keep forever if that makes
- sense this is not
- any nefarious thing. I promise this is just me trying to maintain a record of documents for this commission
- in a way that's compliant that we can make sure that we are maintaining them forever. Yeah. If the issue,
- it sounds like, is largely around ownership. And it sounds like from our end, she was kind of more on
- the act of taking minutes.
- Google Drive documents have a solution that's that you can share ownership. Could we create documents
- that have that joint ownership with Tara and with city staff so that you have that permanent forever
- access to it initially, but we are doing the initial note taking? So we can't, ITS doesn't allow permanent
- Google Drive access into the city's Google Drive, right? Like to create a shared drive across
- multiple networks like that I think they think opens up right we do this for because we have 30 something
- boards and commissions we do this with 30 something boards and commissions and so it opens up a whole
- host of concerns regarding cyber security on their end that's my understanding I'm not a cyber person
- that was the solution for about a year and a half ago there was a drive that
- missionaries could access that I think was owned by the city and our access was turned off. And I mean,
- I don't know that they're directly related, but cyber attempts against the city are a real thing that
- happen regularly. So, you know, I understand ITS is concerned with that. While I don't think a shared
- drive necessarily would work, again, I do think that there is
- a way for Sean. It doesn't have to be the recommendation that Sean and Jolie draft everything and then
- send it to Megan. It can be more collaborative than that. I don't mind. And I appreciate that Google
- Drive would be like an easier solution for this. But at this time, it's not a solution that we're comfortable with.
- Well, we should probably move on for now, but I think it would be helpful to get some information about
- what the specific legal requirements are, especially as it relates to minutes as sort of a special thing
- versus any other sort of public record, like an email or a draft resolution that one of us is working
- on that hasn't come before the commission on a meeting yet, or any other document that would otherwise
- be subject to an open records request.
- that might be on one of our laptops because it's still in its early stages. So if we could get some
- guidance on that, those sort of legal requirements, that would be helpful. I think if it's any draft
- document that you've discussed in a meeting, this meeting or your working group meeting, I think the
- draft document should be sent to be placed on board. Sure. But let's say we agree, let's say at this
- meeting we say, we want a new resolution on X.
- And I say, I'll take a swing at that. And so I go home and I draft up a resolution on X. It hasn't come
- before the commission yet and just sits on my laptop. But then somebody sends you a request and says,
- can I get a draft of that resolution? I heard they were doing that at the last meeting.
- That's a good question as to whether or not that's a document that's been created yet. I actually don't
- know. I don't know the answer to that as to whether or not that is a document that's been created if
- it hasn't come before the board and it's created by a commissioner. I think it is, but I genuinely don't
- know. I'm not the public records person. I can ask about that. As I said, my main concern is actually
- not necessarily public records. It is a concern about getting things in a timely manner, especially
- in with prior minutes taking sometimes months to be posted. My main concern is the continuity question
- of like who has the documents, who has them in an organized way, particularly the documents that we
- are required to keep forever, which is just kind of a document management nightmare when you're dealing
- with document retention things. And so I would prefer to
- have the documents managed in a way where we know that these particular things, we have ownership of
- them, we are keeping them forever. They are not lost somewhere else. But I can look into the other public
- records thing. I generally don't know about that gap in time, and I'm happy to research it. OK, perfect.
- I'm just wondering if it was decided,
- We just print them, and it's the second day if they got approved. There you go. There's no access, anything
- like that. It's more about between when the meeting happens and when they get approved. Yeah. So if
- somebody asks for the minutes from this meeting and they ask tomorrow, we haven't had a chance to approve
- them yet. And USD's concern is, OK, how do we provide them with that? Yeah, but there's a delay between
- the records request and when legal gets back to you.
- I know people have requested records that have taken three, four months. So that delay itself, because
- legal is backed up, is going to give enough time. So it seems like a moot point to me. I appreciate
- that. We've actually gotten our average record request response down to nine days in the last. Yeah,
- there are definitely some that take a lot longer. So if we get a records request in for every email
- that has to do with
- the topic of plants between the dates of January 1st of this year and January 1st of this year, we're
- going to have a lot of emails to go through. It depends on the request itself, but that is the average
- right now response time. We got it down to about nine days. Now, I was told that about a month ago,
- so I don't know what it is exactly right this second. Positive. Yeah, it is.
- Great. Well, thank you very much. All right. Let's move on to the next item here, Waste Management Working
- Group. Matt, do you have anything for us? Yeah. Just a simple announcement. If anybody's heard of Richland
- Farms, which you probably haven't, they are now offering service in Bloomington, residential and commercial.
- They're sending out mailings to businesses in town. This is an effort that I've been working on every
- level of food waste. So this is a new solution. Unfortunately, they are not in Monroe County.
- They're about 90 miles away, but there is nobody else offering anything. So I'm working on all levels
- of that. And don't worry, I am not related to Richland Farms in any way, shape, or form. What? What
- do they do? They're doing residential. Composting? Residential food waste collection. So they're doing
- that, and they're sending out mailers to businesses in Bloomington. So they've done a tour of their
- farm. They're fantastic. They have a vegetative license, which is different than
- commercial or industrial composting license. So hopefully some residents, that wasn't really my point,
- inviting them to Bloomington. It was more the commercial and the restaurant side, but they are also
- offering residential. So hopefully residents will take them up on that and we can stop sending 100%
- of our food waste to Lancet. So that's all I've got. Awesome. Thank you.
- Okay, that brings us to the report from Councilman Alex DeFisio, Councilmember Rollins. Yeah,
- a couple things. One is the commercial urban ag ordinance that was offered to the council was voted
- down, eight to one. It's complicated, but I'll just briefly say that it was a complicated ordinance
- because it referred to things like forms, setbacks,
- timing, the duration of growing, and education and an employee component. So there were several aspects
- that why it failed. One was evaluating those components and prioritizing them, I suppose. Some, I think,
- were an overreach.
- Number two, the employees and education component could be addressed in code relative to already existing
- businesses, but expanding that to include outdoor businesses, because right now it's limited to indoor
- businesses. And then the last one was there was significant blowback from some people in the community.
- And I think that that could be addressed
- I think through maybe this commission could be an avenue for discussion regarding it and or alternatively
- city council and the planning commission or planning department jointly having a deliberation session
- where we could talk about these different components and find points of agreement, find points of differences
- and then revisit this.
- But right now, you know, there is a current urban ag ordinance, and it does allow selling of produce
- that you build on your own site. And then the other thing I wanted to announce was tomorrow night at
- the council meeting, this is something that might be of interest to the commission, and that is we will
- be hearing an ordinance on SROs, which are single-room occupancy dwellings.
- which are sort of otherwise known as boarding houses. So you have a single room, yet you have shared
- bathrooms, shared kitchens, and things like that. And there is a number of restrictions on them that
- came to us from the Plan Commission. Limitations on number of bedrooms, a requirement for owner occupancy,
- and an inclusion of conditional use with certain buffer.
- of 150 feet between them in residential areas. So there may be some amendments to this offered tomorrow,
- but I would just, without taking any more time, I would refer to the packet, council packet, to see
- and go to the use table to see specifically what it includes. So if you have any questions, I'm happy
- to answer them right now, but that's all we've got.
- This is a different, this would be like a different categorization than the multi-use student housing
- that allows that single room rental. Is this amending and existing or creating a new category? It's
- creating a new category. It's replacing residential rooming house and putting in place single room occupancy.
- I mean, the hope is that this form of housing could be transitioned
- to maybe a larger dwelling, larger apartment, but something that would be affordable and something that
- would be where HUD money would be available to subsidize it as well. I just found out today there's
- one that's being developed in Columbus, Indiana. I want to talk to the person involved in that. So,
- yeah, that's what it is. Yeah. What are the people that are against that?
- shows people for and people against. What are the people that are against that? Is it too much density,
- too many cars parking? Against SROs? Yeah. I think it's limited to three bedrooms in residential areas.
- So it seeks right now to mimic what you would find in a residential area as opposed to a large building.
- In mixed use areas, you can have
- much larger structures with more bedrooms. So that would be a larger. And so it's sort of right now
- kind of a experiment to see if this form could happen, if we get investment to do it. But neighborhoods
- are concerned about density. It's a density concern, you're right.
- How is it different from the multi-use student housing that allows the rental of single bedrooms and
- apartments? I don't know. I'm not sure really how this differs very much from a standard boarding house,
- except for its title.
- So these are questions I'm going to ask tomorrow. I don't know. I mean, clearly, because we're in a
- university setting, some of these apartments will be available for students. I mean, we don't discriminate
- against students. And rightly so. I mean, it should be available. But this particular form is to try to offer
- shelter for somebody who doesn't have the means to have an apartment. So I think it's under $500 per
- room is what I've heard is rent, which is still pricey, $500. But we're thinking several hundred dollars.
- Does the code include rent stabilization or rent caps like that? No, it doesn't.
- Is that allowed by the state? Right. I think that's probably the prohibition on setting rent caps. Otherwise,
- we would have done it by now. Or at least I would have done it. I don't want to speak for other people.
- Rebates or something like that? Sorry? Do they do rebates? Rebate.
- I would invite you all to come and ask questions or zoom in and ask these questions, because they're
- good. They're good questions. I'm not sure. I don't know. I don't know about how the rent might be paid.
- Thank you, because I just assumed that it was focused towards students, SROs. But you've made it clear
- that that's not the primary focus.
- to bring people who couldn't live in Bloomington to enable them to have a place to live in Bloomington.
- Yep. Got it. I mean, there's one dilemma that I think that several of us are in, and that is that, so
- we're talking about a room that is, in HUD standards, is a minimum of, say, 70 square feet. And if you
- have a person, right now at a loss, the code is proposing two adults live in that room. But there's
- no limitations on children.
- So you could literally have an entire family living in a single room. That density frightens me. And
- that's going to happen. And it could happen. So there's some consideration of whether we should limit
- the number of adults in the room to a single adult. There could be a single mother with children that,
- of course, she could then provide shelter for them.
- So it's complicated, and there's concerns about health safety concerns that are part of this. I think
- that's why the planning commission, one reason they included the provision for owner occupancy. But
- it seems like some kind of form like this would need a 24-7 attendant of some kind to oversee it. I
- think there may be an amendment to remove the restriction of owner occupancy.
- I think Isabel Piedmont Smith is offering one for the mixed use areas. So we'll be debating this.
- I'm sorry, I went over time. This is part of the council's business agenda tomorrow, or is it secondary?
- Yeah, yeah. It will be decided. So it's up for a second reading. Well, thank you very much for the report.
- Okay, that brings us to our discussion on the working group grant application, community food waste
- education and network development. So we have a little background here or maybe Matt very briefly in
- two or three minutes you could describe just what the proposal was, a little bit about, because it's
- gone through several iterations through the past, just to give it a quick introduction. Yeah, so everybody
- should be,
- You might not be fully familiar. We proposed to partner with the Taste of Bloomington because they did
- not, in their waste management plan, they did not have anything for food waste. And so the idea was
- to combine that with an educational component for the community. And yeah, so that was pretty much the
- idea was to collect the food waste and then take it out to
- the community gardens out at Will Dettmer to create soil for community members and then have educational
- sessions to teach community members how to be fully responsible for all of their food waste through
- the Gokashi method. Yeah, and so it went through multiple iterations and the goalposts unfortunately
- kept getting moved and then yeah, it just didn't get passed because of
- because my sister is the executive director of the nonprofit. And we've been at this for over a year
- and a half, so it would have been appreciated if it was just said no in the beginning and not had a
- massive amount of time wasted trying to do this. So I received an email on October 31st from ESD stating
- that the proposal in its current form wasn't, there were some major concerns with it. One of them was
- that appearance of impropriety.
- There was also some concerns with the fact that some of the funds were going to be used for paying sort
- of like for labor costs, hourly wages, that sort of thing. And a couple other things. And so, you know,
- right away I asked for some follow-up questions and got to work working on a sort of new version of
- the proposal revision that would address those concerns.
- We took out the labor costs from that, which significantly reduced the amount requested for the project.
- And I volunteered to serve as the project lead instead of Matt, and kind of restructured it so that
- it more closely matched the template, the format that we've been given by ESD, how we should format
- these sorts of things.
- and then sent that back. And then we had this meeting last Friday, Tara and myself, to discuss it in
- more detail. But essentially, the appearance of impropriety is strong enough that ESD's not gonna approve
- it, legal's not gonna approve it. And I think those sorts of things, appearance of impropriety concerns,
- are very valid concerns, and they're concerns that we should be thinking about
- as well in this commission. I think a large part of the reason we've selected Garden Quest for this
- is because they're pretty much the only people in Bloomington that are doing this Bokashi thing. However,
- Matt does serve on the commission, and his sister does run that nonprofit. And so there could certainly
- be an appearance of impropriety there that we need to be careful about. So we tried to address that
- in the rewrite of the proposal, but it didn't quite
- It didn't quite get there. So we were told it was not going to be approved pretty much in any form.
- So it was a process that I was a little frustrated with. I think the point that you made earlier, Sean,
- is well taken, that you guys give out a lot of grants throughout the year and do a lot of really great
- work through that sort of thing.
- One of the things that Ellie said during public comment that sort of resonated with me was just the
- frustration of not knowing what the requirements are always. And I put a pretty good amount of work
- in for about a week trying to get this proposal into a form that I thought was going to be kind of check
- the boxes of the concerns there while I was waiting for responses to the questions that I'd asked. I
- was told multiple times that they were just working on some answers and they'd get back to me with those soon.
- I never got a written answer for. We addressed some of them in the meeting that we had on Friday.
- So yeah, it was a little frustrating to put all that work in and find out that it wasn't going to get
- approved anyway. There's nothing that we could do to the proposal. So that's my frustration with the
- process. But really, the reason that it's still on the agenda here is I wanted to open it up to the
- group to be able to ask questions, share any concerns that they have, either with the process or with
- the proposal itself.
- You know, hopefully this can be a learning experience in a way that will allow us to, you know, move
- these through a little more effectively in the future. And so that was a good time to sort of debrief
- and figure out what could we do differently? What went wrong here? I have asked ESD to make some updates
- to the standard operating procedure, which is sort of the set of guidelines that we follow when we're
- putting these proposals together.
- I think some of the requirements that we have now are sort of out of sync with what's in there. And
- so even though it's not a sort of a legally binding contract of a document, it's still the checklist
- that we use as commissioners to go through and make sure we're putting together a proposal that is high
- quality and sort of ready for a proper review right off the bat. So yeah, I'll open up to the group
- now if anyone wants to share concerns, questions.
- I was going to add, if there was maybe a standalone document that sort of said for all the commissions,
- that says these are the business norms and expectations that everyone's supposed to have, and then that
- would set aside the details on the grants and things like that.
- Yeah, my understanding is something like that might be coming, because I know the clerk's office has
- been working on doing some sort of, working on documents and guidance and things that would apply to
- all commissions. And so I imagine we'll see something for them at some point soon. Audrey, did you have
- something like that? No, I mean, that's exactly what I was going to say, what we talked about. I have
- a dream that that happens in January.
- It might not happen in January. But yeah, I think that is something that is missing clearly is we tried
- to come in. I think Margie and I were here. Margie came and talked to this group a while ago and tried
- to give a primer on conflicts of interest. Obviously, there's more stuff to go through with board and
- commission members beyond conflicts of interest. And so legal is working with the clerk's office. We're
- trying to come up with
- onboarding documents and training and we would love to see that implemented early next year, but I'm
- not sure on the timeline. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, I know from my point, it's very confusing because Garden
- Quest has been approved from multiple neighborhood grants. And so why, how is this any different than
- those neighborhood grants? Yeah, there's other households that are involved with the neighborhood grants.
- So on and so forth. So we would just much rather have not applied and wasted, we probably, my sister
- probably put in over 100 hours on this. And so the letter that you wrote was basically a slap in the
- face saying, as if you didn't know that she was my sister this entire time, and that just feels like
- an excuse you're using, you're hiding behind legal, to use that excuse to, I'm still talking, Sean.
- So it's like you're hiding behind legal.
- to use that excuse to not fund something. And so that just makes me feel that the city doesn't care
- about food waste, and that they're just fine sending it. That's the message that's being sent out. The
- city doesn't care about food waste, and you keep getting calls about food waste, but nothing's being
- done. Here's a solution that's already been tried once, and it was successful, so why not fund it again?
- So I understand the look of impropriety. I wasn't gonna vote on it, none of that stuff. It just feels
- like a massive excuse.
- And that letter was just a slap in the face, because you've known. It's not a surprise that she's my
- sister. You've known that for a long time. So let me respond. So for the sustainable neighborhoods grants,
- those grants were for terra-cycle projects for neighbors to collect terra-cycle products. There's no
- funding to sell products that's in this food waste proposal. You're selling. You're wanting funds.
- to conduct workshops, and at those workshops, in the proposals, it says that you're going to
- sell fermentation kits. So this working group grant, it's not startup funding for a nonprofit. I know
- that that's your sister, and I wanna back up to say that the original proposal that was received to
- fund Taste of Bloomington this year, it wasn't until I reached out to Tom McClassen at the Solid Waste
- Substruction District to find out that that proposal was already funded.
- And so at that time, I didn't do a full review. I said, this project's already funded. You know, you
- can look for an additional project. So that proposal was not sent to Legal for their review. So you
- came back with a new proposal. This one, I noticed that it has information in there that you're going
- to sell products. So at that time, we sent it to Legal. Legal reviewed it, also Office of the Mayor.
- And so I had to wait for their feedback.
- on how to handle the situation. This is a conflict of interest. It's inappropriate to provide funding
- to Garden Quest for workshops where you're going to be selling products. That's incorrect. And I understand
- what Garden Quest is doing. I believe in what you're doing. It is in alignment with sustainability.
- And if BCOS wants to continue to work with Garden Quest, I have no problem with that. Matt would have
- to step down as the commissioner in order to provide funding for this project.
- That's the only way that we would be able to move forward. So it's not that we're against food waste,
- composting, bokashi, any of that. It's in propriety here. So to clarify, there's a TRY program. And
- that's what is funded by the Waste Reduction District and could have been funded by ESD. And those are
- not sold. When people want to buy stuff, that's completely separate. They have the option to try it
- before they buy it.
- No, this would not be funding buckets that Garden Quest has been selling. Yeah, because some people
- want to buy it, some people want to buy it, and some people want to try it. So it's very simple. There's
- no way around the impropriety here. I think this is part of the frustration that I felt here. If one
- of the issues was the fact that these buckets were being sold and we were made aware of that, we could
- have potentially
- taken that out of the proposal. But that might have been a move point anyway due to the appearance of
- impropriety. If as long as Matt sits on the commission, it wasn't going to get approved, then I don't
- know why I was led to rewrite the whole proposal in the first place. Right. So I struggle with
- the impropriety of city council voting on their own pay raise. I struggle with the impropriety of you
- being on B cause and then you getting a job with ESD that is then the liaison.
- because so you know there's there's so yeah I'm struggling for the amount of work that we put in we
- would have rather has never done any of that work and you know I will consider stepping down for because
- to get that funded I don't know if that's what would be the best idea I'm gonna feel like I've contributed
- a lot to this to because over the last four years
- Any thoughts from anyone else? Can I say something? No, yeah. As part of a nonprofit and lead of that
- small group, I rewrote some of this to try and address that in very straightforward language. So perhaps
- when addressing this and having the legalese, but maybe some very clear guidelines and case studies
- as an example of what is OK and what's not, because sometimes this can be very muddy waters. And I think
- having something that's much more clear would be very helpful in the future. And then folks would know
- immediately whether this, and maybe from ESD as well, immediately that this does not apply. Maybe we
- need to look at restructuring whatever the proposal is.
- or that we just don't qualify. It seems like it's been a big waste of time all the way around. And I
- think this is something to address immediately. It's been a learning experience for me as well. I think,
- you know, I've been trying to work with BCOS commissioners as much as I can to get proposals to a point
- where they could be approved. And I think from now on, whenever I receive a proposal, I'll immediately
- bring Audrey in on the review.
- Just so from the beginning, everybody's on the same page. I think one thing that I encountered also
- is there were two times that I asked ESD staff about if something was like an allowable use. And the
- response that I got was that ESD was too busy to consider any approvals. One was very recently, which
- I understand that we're at the end of the business year.
- But I was basically told that even if I wrote it and brought it, that they wouldn't process it. But
- I was also told that back in September that my question was, is this an allowable use of funds? Can
- I pursue this? And the answer that I got was, we're too busy to consider any work right now. Which,
- again, is part of the transparency of I just wanted to know if something was an allowable cost and was told,
- I appreciate that y'all's team is understaffed. That's not the commission's responsibility to do less
- because you're understaffed. That's the city's responsibility to fix. Honestly, I've been trying to
- provide funding for B-Coast for the past two and a half years. And I do try my best to work with you
- as much as I can and allocate a lot of time to B-Coast. It's almost at the point where, you know,
- Is this the best use of our staff time? We have $1.6 million worth of funding, and I'm spending hours
- and hours and hours on a $1,000 project. So I think there needs to be some grace for Jolie and I in
- the amount of work that we're doing and the amount of support that we're trying to provide with this
- funding. I understand. You're a volunteer, so I'm not getting paid. This was on my own time, and I guess
- my point is that,
- It was discouraging as a commissioner to say, can I try this project? Would this be something that is
- in line? And the answer was, basically, we won't pursue anything because we're too busy, which I spent
- all year trying to partner with organizations. But if the answer was going to be ESD is too understaffed
- to do this, I wouldn't have spent my personal volunteer time to do it.
- That's the part that's frustrating. It's like, I appreciate that city agencies are understaffed, but
- it's not my job to do less in my charge to serve the city in this voluntary capacity. That's the city
- needs to deal with that. Yeah, I feel like what I was trying to say, and correct me if I'm wrong, is
- that it just doesn't speak in good faith to the working relationship between the commission and between
- ESD. Yeah, personally, I would have rather not had the money to grant
- because then we wouldn't have taken all this time when it just wasn't going to happen anyways. So I
- totally understand your frustrations. You guys need three or four more people in your department. I
- can only imagine how frustrating it is. Yeah, it's sort of like, OK, what project do I stop working
- on so that I can research this other thing? I have a $200,000 grant that I'm trying to put together,
- and I've got to stop to answer these few questions.
- It's very difficult. And then you had all that federal grant work that just got ripped away from you.
- And that was all for nothing. And that's extremely frustrating. And I was trying to tell you that we
- did get a $250,000 grant. And I was going to tell you what that's about if we have time. Quinton,
- you had a? Yeah, well, this is just like a, if there's a way to make something like this work, like
- we mentioned a minute ago about creating some sort of expectations sheet to kind of make it a little
- bit more clear.
- for people. Like imagine like once that comes out, could there be like a, has there been a precedent
- for saying, hey, you know, this was, you know, not quite where the norms were. I'm sending it to the
- city council to see if they'll prove it to make an exception because it was like a, you know, I'm not
- saying that this would be one of those necessarily, but like, could you, is there a precedent for that
- saying, yep, this one, we looked at it, it's, you know, it's not that bad or this one is bad or,
- you know, it shouldn't happen.
- Can they override that sort of, I guess that's what I'm trying to think of. It's the mayor's office
- now, the city council. It would be the mayor's office. Yeah, so that's the first part of it. The funds
- are funds from the executive branch. So it wouldn't be overridden, I don't think, by city council. They're
- already allocated as part of a budget. And so I don't think it would be a city council override. I don't
- think that would work, because there are already funds that are
- within the executive branch's control. I also think that this might be helpful in terms of a way to
- think about the conflicts of interest and why we take the appearance of impropriety in these particular
- situations very seriously. So there is a legal conflict of interest statute. It's a felony statute that says if
- you are an elected official or an employee or you sit on border commission and you are a part of a body
- that makes a decision to allocate funds that results in your pecuniary gain or I believe an immediate
- family member's pecuniary gain. Then that is committing a level six felony, I believe. That is not the
- situation here at all. I want to make that clear.
- But because there's such a serious statute regarding that, the city, for its employees, it is in the
- employee handbook. And we try to apply this to boards and commissions as much as possible, which is
- why I very much want to draft a handbook for board and commission members on this, is that we broaden that out.
- right where like it's it's not just pecuniary gain like if you are working on a project in general where
- your family member is going to benefit um financially from city funds then that has the appearance of
- impropriety written all over it and i totally appreciate that you guys put a ton of work into this project
- i am sorry that we did not
- that faster that it didn't get dealt with faster that I think is totally on us to have figured that
- out and it's partly on me for I'm sure taking longer than I should have in city legal. It's also I think
- on the fact that personally I don't think that we train everyone as well as we could and that's what
- we're trying to work on desperately on these issues. So I am sorry that you guys spent so much time
- working on this and that we're just not going to be able to approve the release of the funds due to
- the appearance of impropriety here. But hopefully thinking about it that way that we have this like,
- because there are a lot of things that have the appearance of impropriety, but especially where this
- situation comes from when you're dealing with city funds is we have this almost anchoring conflict of
- interest statute that we then kind of balloon out further to make sure there's no appearance of impropriety
- when it comes to
- how we're spending city money. I'm sure there's a million examples you can think of in terms of city
- council voting on their own salaries. There are statutorily prescribed ways that they are allowed to
- do it. So you're allowed to vote to raise your salary, yes, but you can't do that after the end of the
- year. So they can't come back in February and say, oh, I really think my salary should be
- higher than this, right? And that's in part also for turnover. Turnover city council. I don't agree
- with that. They get way underpaid. Yeah, for sure. No, for sure. I get what you're saying, though. What
- I'm trying to say is that there are some statutes in place that try to address the fact that that clearly
- feels like a conflict issue. And in a small town, you can't address everything.
- But anyways, I hope that's a little bit helpful and hopefully we'll have more guidance and case studies
- or perhaps like just examples when we're creating our documents.
- So you can define something and then describe it with a case study and maybe anything else that you
- would need to know about it. It can be very clear, I think, and very easily done to get a very rudimentary
- understanding, even in some more complex
- situations and an explanation of not just direct, but how it's viewed. Because you don't even want to
- have that view to bring that kind of wrath from the outside that might result in some kind of legal
- action. Sure. And I can tell you I have done ethics work with various departments and boards and commissions
- and things like that. I can tell you that
- There are no amount of case studies I can bring forward that would capture the situations that I,
- you know, it's, everything is just, you can't capture everything. This is one of those areas where you
- get another set of facts and I'm like, oh, wow, okay. I can tell you that you guys can always email
- me a few questions or call me in the city legal department. You can,
- You know, you can contact Sean and Julie and they can loop me in you can also email me directly and
- that's fine Could you just make sure to copy them, okay Okay, just make sure that they are included
- on the email because I will say that's also for everyone else's benefit because I am my email is
- wild. So they'll help bump things to me. So that would be best. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Well, I
- appreciate the discussion, everybody. We should move on to the resolution. So we have time to do that
- and hear about the grant that Sean was mentioning. OK, so we have a second reading of the resolution.
- Let me pull it up here. OK, so this is the resolution as we
- As we advanced it at the last meeting, like I mentioned earlier at the work session the other week,
- we discussed this quite a bit and came up with some ideas to add some amendments to it. Instead
- of introducing a bunch of amendments over and over, we figured we'd just sort of merge those into one
- monster amendment and try to pass it on one go. And then, of course, if anyone has anything else that
- they want to add in, for example, actually choosing a name here.
- you know, Bloomington Commission on Sustainability and Resilience or Bloomington Sustainability and
- Resilience Commission, something like that. You think about like the acronyms and how easy it is to
- pronounce or how similar it looks to our current acronym and name, you know. So, you know, that's one
- that we might consider as a second amendment is, you know, actually solidifying that name. Okay, so,
- Well, I guess first I'll start by asking for a motion and a second to adopt this and then that'll bring
- us into the debate stage where we can then introduce the amendment. So is there a motion to adopt resolution
- 2025-04? A motion that we adopt resolution 425-04. Perfect, is there a second? Second. Okay, excellent.
- Okay, so that brings us into debate. We do
- So since this was a complicated amendment, it wasn't just like striking a couple words, I decided to
- take a play out of council's book and put together an amendment form here, which is basically, if I
- were going to make this amendment, I might just say this stuff out loud, right? I moved that,
- all this stuff. This is a little bit easier, right? Because there's a lot of stuff here. So this is
- sort of the specific details of what changes.
- The second part of this is just like the change law, right? So what it looks like if you compare the
- two, what's added. And one thing that we added here besides just this text and the resolution is an
- attachment that is draft ordinance language that we could send to council.
- This is our first time doing this, but this is our way of saying, here, if you're interested in this,
- we've already written one for you. You could just pass it, or you could make changes, whatever.
- But here, now you don't have to go and write it. And I did my best to match the format that I've seen
- in other council meetings and things like this. So that's also part of the amendment. And then the last
- portion that I have here in the packet is just what the resolution would look like if we adopted that
- amendment in its current form.
- since it's really hard to read with all the green stuff on the page. So there's a couple ways we can
- go about this. For example, if there's something in the amendment that you want to change or you don't
- like, we can do this in two ways. We can adopt this amendment, and then we could introduce another amendment
- after that to then make a change. Or we could introduce this amendment, and then somebody could make
- a motion to amend the amendment.
- Robert's Rules lets you go two levels deep. Motionception. I don't know if anybody has anything that
- they want to specifically change about the amendment itself, but those are the two ways to do it. The
- way I would recommend is if you're not happy with the amendment unless something were to change about
- it and you want to see that change happen, then I would recommend the amendment on the amendment. But
- if you're like, I just have something else that I want to add to this and the amendment is mostly fine,
- and I might just suggest something else beyond that, then maybe doing it in sequence, first amendment
- one, then we introduce a new amendment for that. Does that make sense, how I'm explaining this? As much
- as it could. Yeah, I think this is the most complex procedurally resolution. So if we want to change
- what's written in this new version, we'll do a nested amendment. If we want to add another whereas clause,
- or we'll do
- one than the other, right? Yeah, yeah, that would be ideal, yeah. Yeah, so I think maybe the best way
- to do this is I'll pull up the actual document so I can live edit in case people introduce stuff, because
- this will be hard to go back and try to reconstruct just based off of notes. Usually it's pretty easy
- to do that. So let me share my other screen.
- OK, good. So well, first, before we go any farther, is there a motion to adopt Amendment 1 as it was
- circulated to everybody? Motion. OK, is there a second? Second. OK, perfect. So now we are in debate
- about the amendment to the resolution. So yeah, go ahead. I just had a question. I need to make sure
- I'm reading this correctly. So is it stating that adding resilience will make
- we're defining our original scope in a different way, or does this change our scope in some way specifically?
- It only changes the name. We provide some rationale for why we think that name should be changed, but
- effectively we're just asking for the name to be changed wherever the name appears in the code. It doesn't
- change anything about our purpose or mission. Resilience was recently added to some of our
- are like organizing philosophies in the Bloomington Municipal Code not too long ago, and so this is
- sort of a way to acknowledge that in the name itself, to reflect that in the name. It's a big question.
- Okay, so discussion on the specific amendment that we have before us. Does anyone have any questions,
- concerns? There are some things that, I know there was a comma,
- in the first, I think it was in the first whereas clause between socioeconomic or socio-ecological comma
- and economic system. OK. So you wanted to see a comma go in there. Sustainability seeks to maintain
- and enhance the long-term integrity of the integrated socio-ecological and economic system. Does that
- need a comma dramatically? That does not need a comma.
- Well, it does if you're looking at the socio-ecological system and the economic part of the social part.
- Because the economy, just like technology, cannot exist outside of a social context. And the social
- impacts the ecological. So the economy is somewhat
- nested in, using another term that Tara used, nested in the social system. Because the environment can
- exist without an economy. It can exist without technology. However, those things cannot exist without
- human society and the environment. And since the common separates the socio-ecological,
- and the economic system. It's still part of the same system, but that allows for more depth. So you
- would put a comma before and after system to kind of make? Integrated socio-ecological. Comma and economic
- system. Comma. I don't think a second comma needs to be after system, because they are. You're considering
- economic system
- a special subcategory of socio-ecological? It's integrated socio-ecological and economic system. So
- those things are all integrated in, but the economic is somewhat a subset of the social ecological,
- or the social system. I think if that's the case, the commomites are like,
- might serve to kind of separate those more instead of bringing them closer together as a concept. At
- least that's how I would read it. I think people would get confused by the comment and want to take
- it out. I'll accept that. So the two comments then, one after socio-ecological and the second after
- system. I think if we leave it as is, then it doesn't.
- then it achieves the meaning that you're going for. Yeah, that's how I read it at least. Yeah, I think
- the two commas might even further. Yeah, I was going to suggest replacing the commas with like dashes
- or something. Oh, again, dashes? Yeah. Well, that would be funny to me too, I think. Yeah. But I mean,
- So anyone can make a motion to make an amendment. So if you feel very strongly about it, you can do
- that. So we can go one more level deep amendment on the amendment. That's what we're talking about here.
- But there hasn't been a formal motion yet, so if you will. OK. Any other thoughts? Discussion about
- commas. Oh, hey, I can't have discussions about commas all day.
- Somebody mentioned an M dash. Yeah, now we're cooking. M dash or an N dash? N. N in this case, yeah.
- Okay, any other discussion on the amendment or proposed amendments on the amendment? Do you have a second?
- Yeah. So on the last whereas clause. This one here. Yeah. So the commission does more than public education,
- and community partnerships. So I'd suggest, I think I emailed that to you, providing reports and information
- comment, overseeing grant projects comment and advising about related policy affecting community
- sustainability and resilience to the mayor and city council through reports and resolutions.
- As we do report, do resolutions do have these other responsibilities
- in addition to what's mentioned there. So it would just be an addition. Now, Tara may have thoughts
- about this because she wrote this one, but I read this one to be like, it's a, by naming it, by adding
- resilience to the name, we're then projecting outwardly to community partners, you know, and, you know,
- our public facing side that resilience is part of what we do.
- Not so much to encompass all of the responsibilities that we have or all the areas that we focus on,
- but just to say sort of from a branding perspective. This is good for branding, because then community
- partners and stuff. Exactly what it was. And that was the discussion at the working session, was that
- when we're trying to do outreach at events and stuff, folks might not know that their organization is
- closely aligned with the kind of scope of work for BCOS, because they
- are in that more like resilience category and so this is public facing, communicating off our scope.
- Because this resolution doesn't change that those are part of our responsibilities in code, right? Like
- we're just saying, this is part of our responsibilities. This will be helpful when we go to reach out
- to other groups or when other groups are looking for people who deal with
- I was just going to maybe try to say something a different way to see if I got it right or if it makes
- sense. So like, if you look at the second, whereas it says in recognition of significant past and near
- term disruptions, such as including drought, economic downturns, monetary AI displaced with food systems,
- federal policy pandemics. The way I think about adding resilience to that would be that, you know,
- Maybe our scope of work doesn't necessarily address job displacement from AI, for example, but a sustainable
- community is one that's resilient to that sort of event, right? Or a change in monetary system,
- the same. These are all things that we wouldn't directly be approaching necessarily on the front of
- it is like an emergency response.
- if we're a sustainable community, we will therefore be one that can survive and thrive in these situations,
- is that right? Or do a better job at it? Yeah, so fundamentally you're asking what's the, what are we
- trying to say with this? How am I going to be able to communicate it quickly and easily like that? That's
- kind of how I'm thinking about it.
- where if we're putting resilience in there, we can align ourselves with these other groups, right? Because
- even though you might not directly see a connection to a different group, but we are supporting the
- fundamental backbone of what would make anything sort of thrive during a stress test, is the word you
- kind of used, of a system that we rely on, of our infrastructure.
- The reason I find this really helpful, I wrote the original code 20 years ago, and even then, I mean,
- sustainability is, by its nature, forward-looking. And so it's anticipating change. Much of that change
- is going to be disruptive. And so it seems part and parcel of the commission's charge to anticipate
- and recommend adaptation to that change.
- I think it's very much in alignment with the original meaning of sustainability. But I think that even
- more so, we need to think about how are we resilient. We can reduce our carbon footprint, but we still
- have to adapt to what everyone else is doing. We're going to get more rain, or temperature,
- whatever it is. Does that? Yeah. I didn't say it in a sentence, but.
- Well, no, and I appreciate the context of it. You were part of the original group. That was another
- thing that was on my mind as well. So you were there. This was on your mind? Yeah. I was on the Environmental
- Commission. Clearly, the scope of the Environmental Commission was sort of going into things
- like sustainability. And they have their own charge. They have enough to do. And I thought, what we
- need is this integrated approach of social, economic,
- and an environment. And I sent you a figure. I don't know if we have time for that. Did you want to
- pull it up now? Could you just put it up for a second? Because it goes back to what Jamie was saying
- a few minutes ago. And we don't have to discuss this right now. But on the left is sort of the standard
- way of perceiving sustainability, right? It's the Venn diagram.
- and you aim for something that integrates all of them sustainably. What Jamie was referring to is a
- nested version. Clearly, the economy can't exist without a society that it exists within. So it's nested
- within society. And human society can't live. It can't exceed the environment. So we have to adapt to
- those constraints, in a sense.
- almost but health and economy in the same way in that core center as well. Yeah. But Tara's right. I
- don't want to take any more time on this. This is for another discussion. Sure. Excellent. OK. So let
- me really quick go back to, Jamie, what you were talking about with the final whereas clause there.
- Hearing how it was described here, are you still interested in amending this to add more to it?
- I don't necessarily think it's necessary, but I'd like to defer to Dave, Council member Rallo, to see
- if this is going to be something that you would want to support or not from council person. I think
- this works. The way it is? Yeah. But I think your idea is good. But since it doesn't, since that's already
- sort of embedded in the church,
- It doesn't really need to be reiterated. So I see your point. So I'm okay the way it is. I'll pull up
- the section here. So those are the whereas clauses where we basically provide our rationale for why
- we're making this resolution. And then this is the real actual meat of it. This is what we're resolving.
- And so what we're doing is we're
- We've just rewritten it here a little bit. It's essentially asking for the same thing, but it mentions
- this attachment one, which contains that draft ordinance text and explains what that does. And that
- draft ordinance text is down here. The whereas clauses are the same as in the amended resolution, except
- for this final one, which just mentions that
- assuming this passes, this draft would then say that, by the way, BCOS asked for this. And I think that's
- an important thing for council to know if they were to actually take this up as an ordinance, right?
- Yes, so we're still on this amendment here. Is there any other discussion about the amendment or any
- proposed amendments to the amendment? If not, we can move to a vote on the amendment.
- Yeah, we can address that in just a second after we do our. So actually, so we're at the end of our
- time. So I'd like to move that we extend until 7 45. Is that reasonable or do people need less time
- than that? Okay, there's a second. Since we have everybody here in the room and nobody's virtual, I'll
- just ask if there's any objections.
- I have to go, but we should still be good on the forum, so it should be time. Yes, I believe that is
- correct. Yes, we are good. I'm OK with it, but I won't be able to stay in the order of amendment. OK,
- perfect. All right, well, without objection, we're extended until 745. So we're on the question of the
- amendment here. I don't think there's any more discussion, so we can move to a vote for that. For that,
- we'll do a roll call vote, since it's not routine business. So this is a vote to adopt.
- the amendments that were just on the screen here. Okay, Tara? Yes. Yes. Justin, yes. Matt? Yes. Yes.
- Zero is absent. Councilmember Barallo? Yes. Yes. Quintin? Yes. Yes. Alex? Yes. Yes. Jamie? Yes. Yes.
- Evan is absent. Annaliese? Yes. Yes. Diana? Yes.
- Yes, and Shanghai is absent. So the motion passes and the amendment is adopted. So let me really quick
- figure out how I can accept all of these changes now. Does anyone like a wizard with word knows exactly
- where the button is to accept all?
- proposed changes. The tab here? Yep. Okay. Here we go. Nice. Okay, great. Okay, so that brings us back
- to the resolution as amended. Okay, so is there discussion about this, that people have thoughts about
- the name? That's maybe the one thing that I figured we'd be discussing and potentially amending. So
- is the suggestion that we are the
- be coarse, building a commission on resilience and sustainability? So right now it's written
- as sustainability and resilience. So it's a bit of a tongue twister, I guess. So when we were discussing
- this at the working session, the benefit for that is that it still has BCOS in the name. So it's like
- we're just adding something to it. But it doesn't really roll off the tongue very well. Somebody had
- also suggested potentially, instead of commission on, be like,
- Bloomington Sustainability and Resilience Commission or something like that. You know, BSARC. Yeah.
- Right. I kind of like Bloomington Resilience and Sustainability Commission, the BRSC. Or B, yeah.
- B course. BRSC, yeah. Bloomington Commission.
- I think the question is whether we think that there's value in retaining
- Because the commission has been around for so long, rotating that front end BCOS for like, I mean, I'm
- not really worried about our SEO. But for some sort of historic continuity, if there's value in keeping
- that, or if it doesn't matter. Which I think I could see a valid argument. Well, I don't have strong
- feelings about it. Keeping, so it would be using.
- That's fair. What else? Keeping it, it would be Bacasser. It would be the acronym, but retaining the
- existing name and amending it to add an resilience. For historical continuity purposes. For historical
- continuity, but it's the same commission that's been around since 2005, right? It's great when the letters
- might throw off the...
- I can call it bcos. You can call it bcos. You can call it whatever you want. Sure, in regular everyday
- language, you can just say bcos. It's just hard for me to remember new words. They're the same thing.
- Are there any other suggestions of names that we haven't talked about besides those two? I have a very
- slight preference of probably changing it to bcores.
- leaving it, you include the O for on, and you leave out the A for and, because I think B course rolls
- off the tongue really well. And I think that thinking about this organization being around for decades,
- that that can become a new normal. But I have a 2% preference and don't really care. I have the same
- thought, but I don't have a 1% preference. We are also going to, council can
- fiddle with it also. Is your 2% high enough that you want to introduce a motion to amend that amendment
- or are you waiting for somebody else to have higher conviction? I don't feel like anybody cares enough.
- This is something we're asking of city council, but like this
- passing that will not change our name. It will not. We have no power over that. All we can do is say,
- we think it would be great for a name to change like this, and we offer that for consideration to council.
- And it's not just nostalgia. I actually, at the time, sustainability was very controversial. And really,
- we had to sell the, you remember that, and go to radio stations and say, this is
- It's not the UN and Blue Mountains coming to enforce whatever. It's very strange. For anybody who wasn't
- at the working session, the logic behind having the draft legislation there is
- to increase the likelihood that city council takes it up because it's less work for them. Yeah, if we
- can do some, take some work off their hands. No, I'm not saying it's not worth it to consider. Oh no,
- I just mean that like, if they did, they would probably pursue it as is. It'd be like a rubber sample
- type of, yeah. Yeah. All right. I'm getting the sense people are... Sorry. You've done all the heavy
- lifting. Yeah. You and Jayden. Well, he did the other...
- Yeah, the ordinance part. Yeah, but you did most of the resolution. OK, so I'm getting the sense that
- people aren't super adamant about changing the name as it's presented here. Is there anything else in?
- I have an annoying question. Yes. Do we need to vote to change the spacing in that third whereas clause?
- Because it's like justified. Oh, yeah.
- We don't need to vote on that, right? We can just remove those extra spaces. Are there any objections
- to that? I mean, that doesn't change any of the substance of the resolution. It's simply there's some
- weird white space that ended up left over. I think it's just a carryover from the track changes.
- That's right. Yeah, unless there's objections, I think we're safe to do that. It's not a substantive
- change. And I will change some things like the past, XYZ, and the date and stuff. So there's some little things
- that get inserted at the end. Okay, any other amendments? Otherwise, we can move on to a vote. Okay,
- so this is a vote to adopt resolution 2025-04 as amended. Tara? Yes. Yes, Justin, yes.
- Oh, we already moved it. Thank you for checking. Matt? Yes. Yes. Zero is absent. Council Member Rallo?
- Yes. Yes. Quintin? Yes. Yes. Alex? Yes. Yes. Jamie? Yes. Yes. Evan Nix is absent. Annalise is absent
- now. Dan? Yes. Yes. And Shenghuai is absent. Okay. The resolution is adopted.
- I have a question, a recording question. Is an lease reported just as not voting or as an abstention?
- As, I guess, not present. I guess that's effectively the same as an abstention, I guess. Yeah, I would
- just say not present or something. OK, great. Very good. So I guess we'll transmit this to council.
- What do you think the best way to do that is, like, how does council get this so that they can decide
- whether they want to put it on a future meeting agenda or something? Yeah. Well, send it to the, send
- it to Hopi Stossberg, who's the president. Okay. And maybe CC it to Lisa Lager, who's our council attorney.
- Okay. Should I CC the clerk as well? Yeah. And obviously you guys at EST. Yeah. Okay. That should work. Okay.
- Perfect. Great. Well, thank you everybody. So we still got a few minutes left in our extended time.
- Sean, did you want to fill us in on what's new with ESD? Thank you. So earlier this year, I talked about
- ESD applied for funding through the Municipal Investment Fund. We were selected out of several cities
- in Indiana. This is a market building grant. Our goal is to
- is to develop a list of energy efficiency and renewable energy projects across our community worth at
- least $50 million. We will submit a public-private partnership plan to the organization that is providing
- this funding. They're called the Coalition for Green Capital. And so the goal is to bring low-cost capital
- financing to Bloomington to fund these projects. So we only have until March 15th to put our plan together
- and to develop our list of projects. We're going to be offering free technical assistance to
- any large building owner, so commercial businesses, manufacturing businesses, nonprofit organizations,
- academic institutions, you name it, we're going to provide free technical assistance to give them an
- opportunity to have a level two ASHRAE energy audit and to develop that list of projects that's in need
- of funding. Also, we are partnering with a local nonprofit called Electrify Indiana.
- They will be conducting a door-to-door campaign to educate residents about the benefits of energy efficiency
- and renewable energy, and also training volunteers to give group presentations. So we hope to launch
- within the next couple of weeks. So be on the lookout for a press release about that. We would love
- to have your participation. We're looking for volunteers. So if that's something you're interested in,
- just let us know. It's going to be a really exciting project.
- So the grant agreement, our partner for this project is the Indiana Energy Independence Fund, which
- is the state's green bank. So it's really exciting, and we're really thankful to be selected for this
- program. So we're competing with 48 other cities across the country. So this is our chance to raise
- our hand and say, yes, we're ready for these investments. So, yeah.
- The funding body, you said? Coalition for Green Capital. Would it make sense to have the local non-profit
- come in and speak to Beagles? Yeah. Yeah. They can do that. If they're willing to. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
- So it's going to be really fast and furious here for the next couple of months.
- So Jolie's managing the volunteer program, and I'm managing the technical assistance program. Great.
- Thank you. Great. Well, thank you very much. Any member announcements? I just want to officially vote
- yes on approving the minutes. Oh, gotcha. I think noted for the record. That was a yes vote. OK, great.
- There's no new business.
- Yeah, I just want to say, you know, this was a good productive meeting this is very productive year
- we're coming up on the end of it. I really appreciate the work that everybody's been doing this has
- been really awesome to be a part of.
- I think we've had some good and important discussions here today, sometimes a little bit contentious,
- that's okay. It's good for us to talk about these things even when we have disagreements. And I just
- wanna say how much I appreciate everybody for participating in that. I wanna say how much I appreciate
- both Sean and Jolie and ESD for all the work that they put into this commission and all their energy
- that they bring. And to Audrey and legal as well for her support in all this. So thank you everybody.
- Do I have a motion to adjourn? Is there a second?
- Okay, without objection, we are adjourned at 742. Our next meeting is at December 9, 2025.