Hi, everyone. I am Mayor Carey, and I have with me tonight David Hiddle, who is the Director of our
Planning and Transportation Department. And welcome. I see some new faces to Traveling Town Hall. So
thank you for coming. We do usually start with a children's book. So I picked out hedgehogs don't wear
underwear, but they're my size tonight.
And we don't usually actually start by reading a book, but I will tell you there are great books here
to buy. And so when we're done with Town Hall, I encourage you to have a cup of coffee or peruse the
book selection and find something silly or serious to take home with you. We are really grateful to
Morgan Stearns
for having us tonight. Matt welcomed us well as did the rest of their staff. And these conversations
are really meant to be conversations. So I'm gonna give sort of high level update on what I'm working
on in the city. And David's gonna tell you a few things he's been thinking about, but then we'd really
like to take
questions from you all so that we can target some of our comments and information to exactly what you're
interested in. And we are doing a sociological test this evening. The most comfortable chairs were placed
right in the front, yet everybody still chose the wooden ones. So if you would like to blow the sociological
experiment instead of
confirming my bias here. You may sit in these comfy chairs. Oh, yes. See? Welcome. And you won't even
be on cats. I think you'll be out of the picture. Isn't it great? Yeah. If you had an ottoman, it would
be perfect. Yeah.
So thank you all for coming. I do these every other month, and we move around throughout the city so
that we can get into different neighborhoods, we can get into different places.
And that's all targeted not only to be close to you wherever you live, but also to provide comfort for
people who don't love to come to City Hall. So of course I meet with people at City Hall every day.
So does David. But these traveling town halls get us into different neighborhoods and hopefully meeting
different people. And I usually bring one of the members of my cabinet with me and we always invite the
the city council member from the district and unfortunately Dave Rallo whose district we're in tonight
wasn't able to join us this evening. He's at a Jack Hopkins meeting but he sends his he sends his regrets
and I'm sure he'd love to hear from all of you.
Let me talk a little bit about what's been going on in the city from my perspective. Last week, of course,
we had State of the City. If you want more statistics and a full rundown of everything we've been doing,
go onto CATS and watch that recording. It is good nighttime viewing. And I'm happy to go into more depth
on some things that we covered there.
high level. This year we have gotten fire fully staffed for the first time in a very long time. So we're
really proud of that. When I came into office I was wanting to work on three primary areas, housing
and homelessness, economic development, and public safety. So public safety,
Fires fully staffed. We anticipate being fully staffed in police by the end of this calendar year. So
we're really excited about that. We got unanimous union votes on those union negotiations, both in fire
and police. And we're back at those union tables now. We did a short round to do some catch up. So.
That's what's going on with fire and police. And I will talk about Seminary Point in a minute. We have
a sign holder. What did you say? Okay. Well, I will tell you honestly everything I know about it. Let's see.
So that's a good thing to talk about now, housing and homelessness. One of the big things that we're
talking about right now is the new state legislation, which is Senate Bill 285, which goes into effect
on July 1st. And that illegalizes sleeping outside on public property. And so we are working together
with Heading Home and the county to
work with people who are living in two remaining public encampments. One of them is on city property,
one of them is on county property. And so we've been working really hard on encampments since I came
into office. And the way we do that is that we approved a process
during my first couple of months in office where we reach out to people who are in encampments. And
we have somebody here tonight who knows a whole bunch about this process. We reach out to people who
are living there and we send outreach workers and then our own city staff is out there. We give at least
a 30 day notice before we set that date to clear the camp.
And lately we've been really successful in partnering with people who are living outside and the last
two camps that we've had to clear nobody's been living there by the time the date comes to.
to move so we are proud of the process that has been in place and we're also really grateful to all
of our partners that have outreach workers and health workers and housing partners along the way. The
other significant housing piece that we're working on is the Hopewell South neighborhood and Hopewell
South is the first phase of
the housing development that will be where the old hospital was and Hopewell South is now in front of
council. It got a unanimous support from Plan Commission.
That is proposed to be 98 homes and the price range starts well anticipated if we could build them this
year but now it's been delayed. The anticipated starting price was $83,000 for an owner occupied place
and those go all the way up and those are small studio homes. It goes all the way up to
a home that we anticipate costing about $600,000 and is more of a four bedroom larger home. So those
are right on the beeline. We're really proud of what we've proposed there and we're really happy to
have that in front of council. Council has a number of things they'd like to see in that neighborhood.
We are working through that with council and I really believe we'll get to some
some kind of common ground there and I'm committed to working towards a neighborhood that actually works
well. The affordability is the most important thing to me though because we increasingly have people,
especially
younger folks in Bloomington who move here and they can't find a place that is affordable for them to
live. So this is a way into home ownership where you can buy something small that's within your price
range and then you can move up as your household expands or as your finances expand or both. So we're
really excited about Hopewell and I'll say just a
Just to note about Seminary Point, we've had some folks talking about the very affordable units that
are sort of near the corner of Second and College. They are part of the county-owned property. The city
is not involved in that land deal, but they are scheduled to be,
vacated because the county is giving that land to the capital improvement board as part of the convention
center project. So that's a county land deal and the commissioners are working on that. I'll take questions
later but I actually didn't hear what you said.
question, you were asked what you thought about that and you said you wanted to speak positively of
your colleagues and say they were just doing their business. So in the in the Herald Times I was quoted
as saying that I was supportive of my county colleagues. What is what is my understanding of the of
their dealings with that building is that since they
Since the convention center was planned and since they acquired that property, it's always been their
intention to take that building down and that's been communicated for a long time to folks surrounding
that building. So that's, thanks for your comments. Public safety, economic development.
So economic development, we are a number of things happening on the economic development front. We've
been working really hard with folks at the trades district, which is our tech park and trades district
has really been filling up the mill and the forge opened recently. It's a class A office building and
that is getting filled up pretty quickly.
That is really our center for entrepreneurship and startups in the city. And that's going really well.
Partnerships with IU and with Crane happening, as well as many, many different startups being incubated
there. And that's important because as IU is really paving the way towards commercialization and innovation
in their research,
Students and faculty alike need a place to do business and a place to incubate those businesses. And
so that's gonna be great for Bloomington. And that is part of our strategy to grow wages here in Bloomington,
which is critically important. We also are thrilled that the Convention Center's finally coming out
of the ground and really excited about various redevelopment pieces that are gonna go on on the South
College and South Walnut
corridors and what else do I need to talk about? I think that covers it and I know you all are gonna
ask more questions of me, but I will hand things off to David and let him talk for a few minutes about
all of the very exciting things that are happening in planning and transportation. Thank you.
Yeah, my world is all about housing, housing and housing right now and probably will be for a while.
One of the things that we're in the planning world, the world of urban planners realizing is that we've
spent, and I'm speaking about Bloomington, but really everywhere, is that we've spent the last 60 years
just making our ordinances bigger and bigger and adding layers of rules on top of layers of rules.
And they don't really make the place that they serve better necessarily, but they do make it a lot more
expensive and a lot more hard, a lot more difficult to build things. So we're taking a close look at
our ordinance to see what we can reasonably take out, for lack of a better phrase, just to make it more
friendly, more intuitive, and more useful and more valuable.
We need to be able to allow for more types of housing to be built. Right now, it's pretty easy to build
a house, a conventional house, and it's pretty easy just to build a big student housing mega complex.
And everything in between has kind of been lost in the wind over the last decade. So we kind of want
to restore our ordinance to be able to allow for that. So that's a change to ordinance. We also want
to change our processes, which have kind of taken the same tack.
In the past decades, they've just become more complex. Rules on top of rules, my department,
other departments, the utilities, really everybody having to do with development. There's a lack of
coordination and it's just really tough to build things here. So we've commissioned a third party external
audit of our department and utilities department, other departments.
to help us figure out where we've just put in one step too many, where we have communication
gaps, redundancies, bottlenecks, things like that. So again, make those processes easier. It'll make
it less expensive to build, more predictable. And those are costs that eventually find their way or
a lack of costs that find their way to the consumer. And it should have a positive effect on housing
prices down the road.
I've worked other places and Bloomington, everybody has this problem, everybody has issues with their
zoning ordinances, everybody has issues with their processes, but Bloomington has a big issue. We just
have lots of rules, lots of invested in engaged people with lots of projects and concerns.
Those get written into the rule book and you have those coming from five, six, seven, eight, nine different
types of special interests and it just makes things really tough. So that's one of the things that we're
working on right now. We also following, interestingly enough, a big, big bucket of state legislation
that kind of came into February.
really big and kind of breathing fire and promising to change things really significantly. It would
have compelled every Indiana city, town, and county to dramatically loosen how they handle housing,
a lot of it in a good way, some of it not so much. But by the time that bill got enacted, as House Enrolled
Act 1001, it had been completely gutted and all of the juice taken out of it. So a little bit of a letdown there.
The upshot is that we have to report to the state now every year on our housing activities, our efforts
to make housing more accessible, efforts to change the zoning ordinance, things like that. So it's a
reporting mechanism that came from that, not too much more. What's interesting though is that other
states, coastal states, blue states, and increasingly red states have kind of gone down this preemptive
state legislation road in the past.
This is Indiana's first year trying to get some legislation moved. And what happens is typically the
first one, the second one, maybe the third, they get shot down or they get dramatically gutted like
ours was, and then they come back year after year with something more meaningful. So like a state like
Montana, which is ruby red, but which has a very engaged governor and housing issues, has really progressive
zoning reform and they've been working at it for about five years, six years.
So that, I think, if we're all hopeful that that is something that might happen in Indiana, next year
there'll be another package. Might go a little bit further and have a little bit more teeth to it. But
for this year, it was a big puddle of, big puddle and nothing at the end of the day. So anyway, that's
what's exciting. If you can call that exciting in the world of planning these days. Did we open it up now?
I think, you know, I think, David, you've been a star of evening reality TV lately. So I think that
means that planning is, it is exciting, right? It is entertaining. If you watch Board of Zoning Appeals
hearings or Plan Commission hearings, it's reality TV. So much fun. So we will open it up for questions.
And just to make space for lots of questions,
It's best if you really do ask a question.
that you want to hear about. I am happy to hang out afterwards and hear about issues or talk to people
about issues if you have an opinion to share. But we'd really like to hear from you about what you'd
like to hear from us about so that we can share information that's targeted to your interests. And if
you are not somebody who loves to raise their hand in public and speak, there are some note cards on
the back table. And I can't see Jennifer.
Jennifer's back there. There's Jennifer. If you just slip your note card to Jennifer, she can read questions
from people who don't want to speak them. Additionally, another reason that it's hard to take long comments
is because Katz is recording this on TV. And so I will repeat your question back so that the camera
can take it in and people at home can know what's being asked. So who has a question?
Oh, lots. Okay, let's take this one first. Hot topic at the moment is the Bloomington Iron and Metals
property there on Rogers, let's call it Rogers and 10th, that is just kind of a dirty field at the moment
or, you know, open space, but is supposed to be something monstrous.
That's the iron fail property. Yeah, gray star is a developer that's they had some variances they went
for and I think they have to go for major site plan approval for apartment complex to pretty much fill
up that site.
of the plans for the hotel for the convention center? Yes, so the question is asking for an outline
of the development of plans for the hotel for the convention center. Right now, there are no plans drawn
for the hotel for the convention center. The CIB, which is the Capital Improvement Board, which is a
shared board, county and city appointees, but it's outside of
elected officials, so it's meant to be non-political, which is a genius move. So they manage this, and
they selected a hotelier. The hotelier selected a site that is owned by the city. And that hotelier,
in order to get their vision accomplished, needed some incentives to get that done.
there wasn't an incentive package that ended up working for them for that site. They moved to a different
site and then they ultimately have moved on. The CIB is putting a new request for proposals out. So
there is no plan yet and I just wanna just take an opportunity to explain to folks that convention center
hotels operate differently than
other hotels. They have to guarantee reduced rate room blocks. That's part of their contract. And so
their financing mechanisms are a little bit different. And it is pretty typical for convention center
hotels to receive some kind of incentive package from somewhere because they're going to be bringing
in a bunch of visitors and
essentially tourists who are going to spend money in the community. So CIB has put that back out for
bid, and I actually can't remember the timeline for selecting the new hotelier, but then they'll go
back to selecting a site. So no drawn plans. I have take it outside, and then the person right behind
him will be next, and then we'll get to the very back.
You're taken outside. Is it all right if I ask each of you all a question? Is that all right? OK, so
I'll ask you first. My sister, she sometimes needs a wheelchair. And I'll go around town. I'll notice
my sister would have a hard time getting around this or around that. Is your administration going to
improve the ability of people in wheelchairs to get around town without a car?
Yeah, that's a very good question. One of the things that, oh yeah, Mr. Take It Outside's sister is
in a wheelchair and has trouble navigating the city, getting to where she needs to go in a nutshell,
right? And what are our intentions to try to ease that burden? So we have an awareness that the universal design
regulations in our ordinance are pretty primitive. They touch on the idea of making the world accessible
to as many people as possible, but it's not done in a very thoughtful way. And so one of the things
that we've committed to looking at is examining some places that are doing it a lot better.
Bullingbrook, Illinois is a city that does it wonderfully. And so we're gonna update our ordinance.
And with that, then new development, the way that the front doors are situated and arranged relative
to the sidewalk, the way the sidewalks are arranged, the way that you're able to get from one place
to the next is intended to be just a much more accessible environment for everybody. So accessibility
has been a big topic of conversation on Hopewell.
And the development consultants have pledged to do really quite a bit more than what the ordinance requires
right now and make a good number of the homes accessible. We're learning from that and I think what
we're putting in place there is going to look a lot like what we do when we improve our ordinance.
number of things in the pipeline for ordinance amendments this year that is still on the table is something
we want to get done in twenty twenty six. But beyond the ordinance amendment I think there's just sort
of a need for awareness what we have the CCA the Community Council Community on accessibility. Very
very active in town and they make sure that their voices are heard whenever there's
amendments to ordinances whenever there's a development and we've engaged them and are committed to
work with them as we improve our ordinance. So that's kind of the nutshell answer. And I want to give
just another little bit of an answer there. Outside of our official planning and transportation department,
of course, Bloomington Transit is not a city department, but it's affiliated.
And they have been taking lots of steps to try to serve people better, including a pilot that we did
last summer called Blink, and it was microtransit. So you could arrange for the bus to come, and it
was a small bus, and literally take you door to door.
When Bloomington Transit does these kinds of pilots, it's so important that people help us get the word
out because we can fund programs like that and our normal transit.
by ridership and that's how all the federal dollars are attracted as well. And so would be interested
to hear barriers that your sister or others that people know of are having to accessing Bloomington
Transit. And we have a really forward thinking director there and he's always open to hearing how we
can do better. So would love to hear from you. And I'm looking forward to your next question.
So I value my privacy. I mean, we're Americans, we all do. But I've been noticing a lot of these new
Flock AI cameras. And I mean, they track so much. I mean, where you're going, who you are, who you're
with. And according to the website DFlock, there's a couple around town. I mean, just on the way here,
Third Street's got a few. But anyway, some of those are even monitored and maintained by IUPD.
Should we expect more flock cameras? And what do you say to concerned citizens about that amount of
surveillance? Yeah, so the question is about flock cameras, but specifically flock AI cameras. And it
was noted that IUPD. OK. OK, what you said was IUPD.
but okay so it was noted that BPD has some there are actually so.
What BPD has are license plate readers, not the AI cameras. And so there are 11 of those that are owned
by BPD. And I want to thank, there's been a number of people involved with raising flock awareness to
us over the past several months. And I want to thank you for bringing it up.
folks have had one-on-one conversations with me, with our police chief, with others. And as you may
know, I don't know if you do know, we have a report that we'll be giving to council that's to be delivered
by April 15th, and then they'll take it into their discussion on the 22nd of April, I believe. So we
are looking at
at all kinds of things with flock, but I wanna be clear that the cameras that you see up on streets
are not the AI cameras, they're just the license plate reading cameras, still privacy concerns. And
so my job as mayor, obviously, is to help keep our community safe and we are very carefully weighing
people's privacy
and how those flock cameras have been used in other places with our ability to solve crimes as well.
And so we're in the middle of the study that we will be producing for council in a couple weeks. Yes.
I also have two questions, if that's allowed. One is directly related to flock. Okay, great.
what extent, and if you can name people, I would love to hear it, are you working with privacy or security
experts in figuring out what your policy is? Because it seems that universally the public is against
this. Like the general public, I haven't met a single person who's in favor of being surveilled like
this. So I would imagine there must be a good reason to outweigh the security and privacy concerns.
But I'm wondering what those conversations are like.
if there's any, I guess, very good reason that you would have for going against what the majority think
of it, what the majority are concerned about. I know the report's forthcoming, so I know I'll have to
sit tight for a little bit, but I'm just curious. So the question is, who's involved in consultation
as we go through this process, et cetera?
and a statement that the majority are against FLOC. We have a number of different folks that have been
consulted and are still being consulted. That's why you don't have a report yet. And I'll just say that
I don't, I just wanna be clear that we are getting both kinds of feedback in the mayor's office. So
it's not 100%
against flock and I would say may not be even a majority. Nonetheless, our job is to take everybody's
concerns seriously and to see what we can do to protect privacy, but also there are serious concerns
related to our immigrant populations, trans populations, all of the frequently already
at risk populations, especially with the federal government we have right now. And so we are taking
it really seriously and I can tell you that no decision's been made yet because we really do want to
do a good job with this decision. And yet another question. Yes, this one's related to seminary point.
I know you mentioned that this is a county issue
Largely, the county is selling the property to the CIB, and the CIB wants to make it a part of this
convention center development. But I don't know if you've been made aware, people have talked about
this to you personally, but especially some of the people who live in those homes have expressed concern,
people in the community have expressed concern about just getting rid of 29 units of affordable housing
at a time where everyone agrees that there's a housing crisis.
And there actually seems to be a decent plan that's within the city's power to promote and to act on,
to have the CIB, once they receive the land, to then sell it to the city. And the city can spin it off
into whatever, what have you, to be a cooperative, a land trust, details aside. But is there any reason
why that plan is unworkable? Well, first time you heard about it. Is there any reason that plan is unworkable?
of why alternatives are not being considered. So this is a question about Summit Point and an acknowledgement
that, sorry, I'm sorry, Seminary Point. Summit is a different housing project that we're working on.
And question about the loss of 29 units of affordable housing and, you know,
is a city considering intervening essentially and taking on that project. That is not under our consideration
right now partially because, partially because first of all, it's county owned and they already have
something going with the CIB.
I have not looked at the details of that building, but from talking to others that have, it is prohibitively
expensive to get those apartments even up to code. They don't meet our rental code now. And so it would
cost some significant money to bring them up to code.
I hope that the people who are living there have reached out to our housing and neighborhood development
department to see if they can help them with housing resources. I don't know what the timeline is with
those either, but I would encourage you to talk to your county commissioners who have this in their
hands at this point. Can I just have one follow-up question? Sure.
Is the main reason why you're not considering it because this hasn't been brought to your attention?
Or is it because you have looked at it and you've just considered it prohibitively expensive, even with
the affordable housing fund? We have not looked at it. We simply haven't looked at it. And I'll tell
you, we don't have capacity to take on another project right now. We simply don't. If you're tracking
what's happening at the State House
Senate Enrolled Act 1 has significantly cut the income that Bloomington will have. HUD has made cuts,
et cetera, et cetera. And so financially, we don't have the means to take on another project at this
point. Our TIF is maxed out. I mean, we're just, we're at a point in the city where we really are looking
at how do we maintain what we already have?
and do a really good job with that and try to meet people's expectations with the basic city services
that we must provide. And so I've been talking for a year now about we're not taking on new projects.
We don't have any capacity to do it, unfortunately. Yeah, you had a question in the back? So from your
perspective,
What is the single biggest barrier for Bloomington to becoming a top tier hub for entrepreneurship and
innovation? And if you have to design one single initiative for Bloomington to overcome this barrier,
what is it? So the question is, what is the number one barrier for Bloomington to become the top tier
center for innovation and entrepreneurship?
If I were going to design an initiative, what would that be? I'll tell you, the top barrier to any business
development right now, honestly, is housing. What you're hearing about from several people, that's the
answer. People can't move here and they can't grow businesses here because
there aren't places for them to live and afford. Now, more directly, what levers in the entrepreneurship
world can we pull? I think the most obvious one is how are we incentivizing or allowing student and
faculty research to come to market and have them own their own IP? That is a resource that we have here that we
you know, unlike most other communities, we have that here in spades. And I think we, you know, the
administration at the university has been trying to move to commercialization. So I think we have a
moment, but we haven't totally pivoted that. And so that IP is really a critical barrier from incentivizing
the growth that we need.
We do have amazing, are you involved already with Amplify? Yeah, okay. So I'm just gonna give a commercial,
this is not for you, but Amplify Bloomington's doing an amazing job. They're over at the mill, used
to be the mill, they've expanded what they're doing. And they're really becoming a fairly magnetic center
of entrepreneurship and innovation.
There's really no reason why Bloomington should not be the leader in the Midwest in innovation
and entrepreneurship. The state of Indiana is among the bottom of all states in entrepreneurship and
innovation. And if we could get that right, again, that's where our wage growth is going to come from.
And so we really need to nurture those entrepreneurs
help them keep working out of the box to generate some awesome things that come from Bloomington. Yes?
You mentioned earlier, I think it was Montana, that do push through some bails in their state that made,
I don't know if it was easier or better for transportation and building and stuff. Is there anything
that's in their bills that we should be trying to push through here
Because you said ours got gutted, but what did they get through that we didn't? Yeah, I don't know that
they did it this year, but it's been in recent years that they've done it. Oh, I'm sorry. I had mentioned
earlier that the state of Montana is, as a red state, kind of leading the pack of red states in terms
of zoning reform for housing, kind of following on the heels of what a lot of blue states have already
done, especially in the coasts. And he asked, what?
did Montana do with regards to their housing reform. And they required, certainly required, they required
that different types of housing be allowed, specifically in single family zoning districts. They required
that ADUs or accessory dwelling units, also known as in-laws quarters, granny flats,
that they be allowed in all residential zoning districts. We allow them here. Most of the rest of the
state of Indiana doesn't, but in Montana, that law compelled every city, every town, every county to
allow them by right in residential zoning districts. They put in place different incentive programs
with regards to funding so that if you're a city that has made modifications to your zoning ordinance
to be more housing friendly, then you're eligible for certain streams of funding. I believe that they,
They dramatically decreased the minimum lot sizes, minimum structure sizes that the zoning ordinance
usually imposes. We've done a lot of that here. We can still do a little bit more of that. But it essentially
cut out the things that were driving sprawl, especially residential sprawl. Yeah, so those are the big things.
10 minutes to think about it. I'd probably come up with some more, but that's kind of the lion's share.
And North Carolina's doing it. Tennessee has made some progress. So it's kind of spreading out from
Montana to do what? California and Washington, Oregon, and some other more progressive or blue states,
Minnesota. Minnesota's made some big changes, have already done. Sir?
The population of Bloomington is affiliated with the university, possibly. And we have a housing shortage,
yet the university isn't building dormitories and hasn't for years. Are you working in conjunction with
the university to try to get the university to pick up some of that housing need?
I'll take that one. The question was, you know, we're talking a lot about housing tonight, and yet the
university is not actively building dorms. And are we talking to them and putting pressure on to help
with the housing need? We do talk to them frequently about this.
Where they are with it is that they already are exceeding the percentage of undergraduates that are
housed on campus. The challenge that we have in Bloomington is that we have so many undergraduates that
are really
ending up driving the cost of housing here. And the way that housing has been developed really since
2009, and it has to do with the lending markets and things like that, are that student housing has been
some of the most reliably funded housing, because it's secure. The people who live in that house, by
and large, do not source the income in the community that they use to pay for that house.
And so as David spoke to earlier, our UDO, unfortunately, has made it really easy to build these large
student buildings. And those are marketed directly to students. They have amenities, you know, pools
and volleyball courts.
weight rooms and the things that undergraduates really want. And it's really a lifestyle place to live.
And so you wouldn't want to put a single mom with a couple of kids in there if you want your baby sleeping
through the night, right? And so our challenge in Bloomington, and especially if we're not gonna get
more on campus and we can talk to the university about providing more housing,
but we have no significant lever to compel them to do this. And so where we are at the city is how do
we incentivize housing for people who live here long-term and how do we get that built and how do we
make sure that it's available at a price point that the people who are sourcing their incomes here can afford.
So while we are working with entrepreneurship and innovation and business to try to drive wages up.
We also need to really manage the cost of housing both rental and ownership and that's part of the great
pilot project at Hopewell.
And our hope is that it'll really set a pattern so that other folks can develop in that way, in a way
that really magnetizes the people who live and work here long-term to want to stay. Other questions,
Carol? Yes. So my first question is, keep talking about growing the region, but since the hospital
Any discussion with the hospital about expanding that at all? So there's more room. So the question
is that the hospital is over capacity. Is there any conversation about expanding the hospital? IU Health
is very aware that they are over capacity. And so I know that they are looking at
They have a floor that they can expand into. I know that they're looking at that very seriously. And
for a community to be whole and healthy and thriving, we do need a health care system that is the same.
And so I know those conversations are happening. I am sometimes part of them.
But we've been clear and the hospital leadership is very aware that the model that was set for this
hospital, which was that we get people in and that the new healthcare is that people don't stay overnight,
right? We know that that's not necessarily true.
And so, and we're a regional hub. And with the way that Medicaid and Medicare have gone, the regional
hospitals are closing very quickly. And so more and more people are coming to hospitals like Bloomington's.
So we're really seeing an evolution in healthcare that is concerning, not just in Bloomington, but across
the nation. And so yes, that conversation is happening.
on Crawford? Yeah, I actually am getting an update on Crawford. The question was, can I have an update
on Crawford? I'm getting an update on Crawford, I think, on Thursday. So no status change on Crawford
as of yet. Other questions? Are there any note card questions? Yes. Maybe you can clear up those.
understandings or something. The state legislature moved to keep us from subsidizing low-cost housing,
and at the same time, it seems that there are incentives
So the question, and then I'm gonna have to ask a clarifying question to be able to answer the question,
but the question is that there's confusing information out there about housing and that there's some
state legislation that prohibits, prohibits what? Low income housing. Low income housing? The state
legislature said that we couldn't do that.
So, okay, so the question is there's something in the state legislature that prohibits low-income housing
and yet we also have something that is incentivizing vacancies in apartments. Okay, I'm not familiar
with the state legislation prohibiting low-income housing. Are you talking about a decrease in levels
of federal assistance?
There's a thing called inclusionary zoning, which is the state does not allow and has never allowed
That is a situation where when you're building something, you have to build a certain amount of affordable
units in it. Right now, we have those as incentives. So we don't say you have to include these. We say,
if you want an extra floor or if you want a bigger building, then include some affordable units. So
that's not really changed. The other thing that maybe came to mind, maybe not though, is that Fishers
and Carmel just passed laws that limit
rentals in certain neighborhoods. So you can have, in a given subdivision, like a maximum of 15% are
not owner occupied but are rented. The state did strike those down. Now the prohibition of those laws
doesn't go into effect for another two years. The state has essentially said you cannot say in this
house there must be an owner occupant. There cannot be a renter, which is pretty common.
So the state did strike that down, two things that Fishers and Carmel did, which presumably because
it's for renters would be people with lower incomes, but that's the only thing that really came to mind
based on your questions. And I don't know of incentives to keep units vacant, but there,
But I think what happens and what I've heard people talking about is that, especially in large developments,
the landlords, it's more profitable for them to keep their rents very high, even if they have a few
vacancies, than to drop the rent to get those filled. So I think it's mostly in economics
discussion and that's why, and I do believe anecdotally that there are starting to be some vacancies,
okay? Now, IU is increasing their enrollment and so they may get filled, but we believe anecdotally
that there are some vacancies now. We've built a lot of housing that's specifically targeted to undergraduates.
Yeah, you have another question? Yeah, I have questions for days. My question is that, given that we're
in an election year and there is at least 10 Democrats running around for state house seats, for the
win we get rid of the super minority status, which might stem the tide of terrible legislation coming
from the state house, I'm wondering if in your conversations with Democrats around the state,
If these conversations happen, is there some sort of plan for if you should reduce the single majority?
What sort of steps that can be had at the state house that would affect places like Bloomington? Leveraging
that non-super minority status to allow regulating landlord-tenant relationships, for example, or all
sorts of other
Yeah, I think that the, I think many of us dream of lots of things we could get done at the State House.
And I won't say that there's a cohesive plan around that at this point. Most of the planning is going
into how do we get people to vote? And that's the root of,
a lot of problems that we have. We have very, very low voter turnout. And what that means, and I used
to think that voting was like the minimum engagement in the democratic process, but it's actually, it's
sort of up here now. People are so disengaged. And so I think if we got people voting, then no matter
what party you were,
you would probably be more representative of the people. And so that's where I think we should be working.
We need people to get to the polls. And we need them to know that it matters. And you know that because
you show up at all of these meetings and hold electeds accountable. But when I go knocking doors, which
I do once a month, I hear from so many people that they just don't even vote because they think it doesn't
make a difference.
They literally tell me that. I didn't vote for you and I haven't voted in years and I'm not going to
because it doesn't make a difference. Well, I'm showing up at their door to figure out how I can make
a difference, right? But I need those folks to vote. We all need them to vote because that's how our
communities are gonna get represented. Okay, we're running out of time.
Is anybody waiting to be the last question? Somebody wants to be the anchor question tonight. I'm gonna
ask the last question then. I want somebody, maybe multiple people, to tell me one thing they love about
Bloomington. Yeah, what do you love about Bloomington?
I like the small town feel and its proximity to both Indianapolis and national parks. Nice. Small town
feel and proximity to both Indy and national parks. Yes? Wilmington Speedway has been here since 1923.
It's one of about 10 of the oldest tracks that continuously operate and crash in the world. Wow. Wilmington
Speedway has been here since 1943? 1923. 1923.
one of the 10 longest continuously running tracks in the world. Apparently in the world. And I will
say one more thing. I'm a race fan. You might have heard that. I have personally seen 24 people drive
at Bloomington and driving the 500. I don't mean I saw 24 people drive here that did. I saw 24 people
drive other places. This track is, I mean, it's national.
OK, I want an invite to go to the track with you. I've never been. He's seen 24 drivers that have driven
at Bloomington Speedway and up in Indy. Any Friday night? OK, awesome. I've heard it for years, but
I've never been. Yes, Jeff. I love the Arts and Griffey Reservoir, a hidden gem. Yes, the Arts and Griffey
Reservoir with new trails.
Any other, why do we love Bloomington? We have fantastic teachers. Yes, we have fantastic teachers in
Bloomington. Such great schools. Any last thoughts? Katz is gonna cut us off. Okay, I'll be here hanging
out if you want to talk afterwards. Thank you for being here at Morgensterns. Thank you to our cafe
crew who has,
kept us caffeinated and well-hosted. And thank you to Morgan Stearns for hosting us. And thank you,
David, for even more of your time by joining the town hall.