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.