We'll go ahead and get started early because it's not like herding cats. In fact everybody
 is here and on time and my name is Carrie Thompson. I'm the mayor here in Bloomington and
 thought it would be a great idea to make the public aware of the broad implications of
 SB1 really across the board in communities across the state of Indiana and so we have
 partners that will introduce themselves in a little while from county from the school system
 and from the business and economic development community. This is a bill that is going to impact
 all of us and it is complicated and it has been changed several times as it has moved through the
 house and senate. It did get passed so we're not here asking for your specific advocacy
 for or against a bill. We're here to help you understand what this bill really means and how
 we as leaders in the community are approaching the bill as we move forward now that we understand
 what's within that bill. And so the structure of today we will we have Eric Reedy here from
 Reedy financial. He is going to brief us on the financial implications of the bill and then each
 of our partners will just give a brief introduction of themselves along with what their area of
 expertise is looking at related to the bill and then we'll be taking questions from the press only
 today to try to keep this to an hour. We've pulled a lot of busy people together at the last minute
 so we've committed to an hour-long meeting but you can expect that we will be having more community
 conversations about this as our plans roll out. So with that I'm going to hand it over to Eric Reedy
 to brief us on the bill itself.
 Thank you Mayor. My name is Eric Reedy with Reedy Financial Group. We work with cities, towns,
 counties, schools, lots of local units of government across the state. We're a strategic
 member of Accelerate Indiana Municipalities. We've worked with them closely on the bill
 throughout the legislative session showing impacts to each of its members whether it be
 a large city or a small town. As the Mayor mentioned this bill has very far-reaching impacts.
 Originally this was House Bill 1402. The provisions in that bill were hard to believe far worse.
 That bill actually included full personal property elimination which would have just been
 catastrophic financially on local units of government in the state of Indiana. This one's
 more manageable but it still has far-reaching impacts. Whenever you talk about property tax,
 you kind of have to begin with the circuit breaker and how a property tax bill is computed.
 I don't think that that was given much attention during the legislative session
 and I'd be happy to discuss what the circuit breaker is, the tax caps, and how that impacts
 a tax bill. In my opinion, giving property tax relief was done back in or really big property
 tax relief was done back in the special session in 2008. But to get into the specifics of Senate
 Bill
 1, basically what happened is about a month, month and a half ago, House Bill 1402 was rolled into
 Senate Bill 1. And from there, the Ways and Means Committee met a couple of times and the original
 House Bill 1402 got shrunk into what we see today. So I know that in a packet that I received,
 there's a memo that we prepared that looks like this. And we just summarize the different parts.
 And to begin with, there's deductions to your property assessments that will have major impacts
 on what taxpayers pay on their tax bill and then conversely what local units of governments receive
 in property taxes. And the very first one is the homestead deduction. And we have two different
 calculations here. We have it on a $100,000 home and a $500,000 home. And one thing that you can
 see is we're showing what that current deduction is in 2025 on a $100,000 home, $67,500,
 $217,500 on a $500,000 home. But you can see when this bill gets fully implemented in 2031,
 the deduction on the $100,000 home is slightly less. But on a $500,000 home, it's much more.
 So that's something to keep in mind. Whenever you talk property taxes and how it's going to impact
 the taxpayer and the overlapping units, you have to do a parcel by parcel analysis.
 That's one of the things that we excel in. We've done for AIM. We do for the city.
 So to fully understand this, we would have to do something like that. And we're currently
 in the process of doing that for the city and many communities around the state.
 On the next page, this is a brand new deduction. And it's for 2% properties. And a 2% property is
 any non-homestead residential property, so rentals, multifamily, things like that.
 And then this isn't applicable in the city, but out in the country, ag parcels, agricultural parcels.
 And then long-term care facilities got grouped into the 2%. And these are all circuit breaker
 terms that I mentioned. So this is a brand new deduction on assessed value, 33% on 2% properties.
 And that'll be fully phased in by 2032. So that's another one. And what this does is
 it'll reduce the city, the schools, the counties, every overlapping unit's tax base
 is what these deductions do. So the question is, how much are these deductions? And we know for the
 city in particular that the deductions on 1% and 2% equals $1.5 billion. And the net assessed value
 right now is about $5.5 billion. So big numbers is what we're talking about. And then the last of
 the
 deductions deal with the 3%, which is business, increase, they call it de minimis, for personal
 property. Currently, that exemption is $80,000. So if you have a piece of equipment, you get to
 exempt the first $80,000. That goes to $2 million. So for most small business, all their personal
 property will be exempt from property taxation. And then you have removal of the 30% floor.
 So under current law, business personal property can't go below 30%. Under the new bill, any new
 assets will have no floor. So that's going to be a big impact on any new assets. So that one's
 going
 to take a while to rev up, but we need to do planning and things of that nature to see what
 the impact is. On the 3%, you know, if you have a diverse community of different tax bases, which
 fortunately this community has, the impact won't be as severe. We know of some communities out
 there,
 Whiting, Indiana, is probably the worst. 75% of their tax base is personal property. They're
 going to have catastrophic impacts. Some notes that we have on the 1% properties, elimination of
 fixed portion of deduction, the homestead will disproportionately benefit higher gross AV homesteads.
 Taxpayer impact is regressive, shifts more of the burden to low AV homesteads. And that's because
 of what I showed you on the first page. On the $100,000 house, the deductions this year and six
 years out, when you have full deduction, about the same. But on the much higher dollar house,
 $500,000, it's a very big increase in the deduction. On the 2%, that's a brand new deduction.
 Benefit of 2% taxpayers, though, is going to be negligible because of the circuit breaker that's
 already in place. Most communities, the overall tax rate is over $2. And if you're over $2,
 your 2% properties are capped. So there's not going to be much of an impact on overlapping.
 The impact is going to be out in the unincorporated areas.
 And one thing I would mention, since Bloomington, for example, is going to lose $1.5 billion in
 assessed value, similar things are going to happen out in the country in these unincorporated areas.
 Tax rates are going to go over $2 out there because of the -- they're going to have a 33%
 deduction, but the tax rates are going to go up. So again, parcel by parcel is very much needed.
 Business personal property exemption will benefit small business because of the de minimis that we
 talked about, increasing from $80,000 to $2 million. Manufacturing, this should say on current
 assets, you won't see much of a benefit. It's the new assets that will come in later where
 you'll have the big benefit on business personal property. The best method to project impacts is
 parcel by parcel analysis. You've got to look at every parcel to see what the impacts are.
 Okay. And like the very last few minutes of the session, new credits were added
 to the bill. And the credits are far reaching. And what a credit is, is you calculate your tax bill,
 you take out all the deductions, you come up with your net tax assessed value, divide that by 100,
 take it times the tax rate, that's your tax bill. And then you look at the circuit breaker,
 you know, for Homestead 1%, and then that's the max you can pay. These are applied after that.
 Credits are applied after you figure the tax bill. So these are just things that the legislature,
 the General Assembly decided to add late in the game. So again, these are things we're going to
 have to study and see what the ramifications are. Again, we provided every city in the state and we
 looked at some county impacts. We did not model the credit portion yet, but it's $150 for all
 homeowners that are 65 or older, get $150 credit after the tax bill is computed. $125 for disabled
 homeowners, $250 for disabled veterans, and then the big kicker that's going to have the most
 ramification, because this will apply to, you know, anybody with a homestead, the lesser of 10% or
 $300 of the gross tax bill, and then in bold we put if other credits above apply, this credit is
 applied before all credits. So this is something that needs to be studied. That's going to have
 some big ramifications. The other deductions will as well. Now, the legislature did put in some
 some replacement, and that is with local option income tax. So instead of property tax,
 you're going to be looking at replacing that with income tax. Now, I would say that in 1973, when
 the property tax freeze was implemented, the state implemented sales tax to replace that. When the
 circuit breaker law was implemented, the school general fund came off the tax roll, county welfare
 came off the tax roll, the city's old pension funds came off the tax rolls. Well, guess what funded
 that? An increase to the sales tax. This time around, it's going to be relieved somewhat by
 local income tax. Now, we've done some projections, and the city is better off than most,
 but it's going to not receive as much local option income tax as it is the property tax is coming
 off
 at full implementation. So, what's going to happen is, is the current system is eliminated.
 Currently, the county has about a 1% existing rate that goes to the city general fund, the county
 general fund, the townships, the libraries, so on and so forth, and then it gets replaced. There's
 public safety, there's economic development, all those go away. The only one that's left is this
 0.003% special rate. Everything else goes away. Your current rate is 2.14. It will now just be
 0.003 is what survives, and in its place, these other rates come in. So, the county can do up to
 a 1.2% lit just for county purposes, a 0.4% for fire and EMS. Some of that would go to the city,
 some of it would go to Ellitsville, some of it would go to the unincorporated area fire providers.
 Up to 0.2% to municipal units for any lawful purpose. So, for example, that's the only one
 that, like, schools would participate in to absorb their loss from this property tax bill.
 The combination of the above rates cannot exceed 1.7%. One of the things in this bill is any city
 or town under $3,500, the county has to approve that. I believe you have one, Steinsville,
 so the county's going to have to compute what they need. Ellitsville's big enough to do their own.
 I think I've hit enough. If anybody in the audience is still tracking everything,
 then you probably have a tax degree. I want to really thank Eric for being here and helping to
 explain the complexities of this bill. Desiree, do we have more of these handouts? We can get
 them out to you. We are heartened to see how many people are here with us. Let me just jump off
 from
 where Eric is to talk from the administration's perspective at the city. Obviously, this is all
 brand-new information. We do have to do a property-by-property evaluation to determine
 what exactly our plan can be and where we're going to go. I know most of you here
 have the questions. Does this mean significant cuts at the city? Does it mean that we
 absolutely are asking for a new lit? The answer is we really need to carefully look at this,
 but we cannot do more with less. I can tell you that my administration has been laser-focused on
 making sure that we are running a really efficient government. If we have less, we won't be able to
 do as much. That is very clear to me. The great thing is we have the most creative team in the
 state. I know that we will be able to do incredible things with what we do have, and we will be
 looking
 at how we can provide the services that Bloomington needs, absolutely focused on basic city
 services
 first, and then being able to ensure that we can do many of these quality of life pieces that we
 have
 all come to really count on in the city. I want to be clear that when our federal administration
 speaks about tax cuts, what they're talking about is really saving money for the very wealthy.
 This bill is really mimicking that, so our state is falling in line.
 Every time any taxes are increased, what I hear from the people of Bloomington,
 all of whom got our property taxes in our mailboxes last week is, "Wow, this hurts."
 I know there are plenty of people in Bloomington that are okay and don't understand that the
 taxes that have increased are hitting the people on fixed incomes and people who don't have high
 wealth, but they very much are. I take that very seriously when we're talking about
 potential lit increase, and we are going to have to make ends meet at the city.
 This is a moment where we have, I believe, never received as many calls from the private sector,
 from our nonprofits asking, "Can you all fill the gaps that we are now missing because of the HUD
 cuts because of the social services cuts at the federal level?" And the answer increasingly is
 no, and we don't even know if we can do what we have been doing. So this is a moment that we all
 have to pull together. One of our ask of our colleagues at the county is, it's very concerning
 to us that the city's lit in this bill is now approved by the county.
 The city no longer has control over that. And so that's going to take a kind of partnership that
 we've never had before. I know we have great partners at the county, but that was an extremely
 disappointing piece of this bill. I'm going to hand it over to Peter Iverson from our county
 council.
 Good morning, everyone. My name is Peter Iverson. I am president pro tem of the Monroe County
 Council. As many of you know, county councils in all of Indiana's counties hold fiscal authority,
 and that's it. So today, I want to talk to you about how concerned the county is, and how
 seriously we are taking the analysis that needs to be done. The first thing I'll point out is,
 in this room, we have the county assessor, the county treasurer, and the county auditor.
 The entire financial team is in this room. That is how seriously we are taking this. I will also
 point out that tomorrow at 11 a.m. in the NatU Hill Room, the long-term finance committee of the
 Monroe County Council will be meeting. Financial Services, excuse me, Financial Solutions Group
 will be providing a county-oriented analysis. That is going to be, again, tomorrow at 11 a.m.
 in the NatU Hill. Councilmember Liz Fiddle is on that body, and she is in the room today as well.
 The county is concerned, and we are taking this seriously. I do not have in-depth analyses that
 I'm going to go through line by line and talk to you about what the impact is going to be on
 your individual tax bills, but what I do want to talk about is three things. Number one, the way
 that the county deals with inflationary pressures is through our maximum growth levy quotient, or
 the
 MLGQ. We are watching this pretty carefully. During the way that this bill walked through
 the legislature, we were pretty concerned that there was going to be some drastic changes to that.
 We are somewhat cautiously optimistic the way it turned out, but we're keeping our eye on that.
 We are very concerned about the way that the federal tariffs are continuing to play not only
 short-term but long-term havoc on our local economy, and so that's going to be an important
 thing for us to look at. Clearly, local income tax is a major topic. I completely agree with
 Mayor Thompson that this is going to involve a higher level of collaboration. I will point out
 that the Chamber of Commerce came to the County Council meeting last night and gave a very
 prescient comment that we are all one community. Our kids go to the same schools. They play in
 the same soccer teams. They play in the same baseball teams. We are going to figure this out,
 and I think it's really instructive that we're all sitting at the same table.
 The last point that I'll make, and these three points that are going to be talked about tomorrow
 at 11, is property tax. We are deeply, deeply concerned about this. Tens of millions of dollars
 in lost revenue to the county. We need to do some more in-depth analysis, and clearly the players
 that are going to be helping us with that analysis are in this room. So, let me conclude by saying
 the county is working very closely with the elected officials who are in this room,
 as well as Financial Solutions Group and our partners at the Association of Indiana Counties
 to do the analysis quickly so that we can get information to you so we can assess the impacts.
 We remain in the county council optimistic that we are going to be able to get through this
 together.
 We think that we have the right people in place to get through this together, and I want to leave
 you with that optimism that this is a major reorganization of the way that we do fiscal
 policy. However, there are the right people in the right positions to handle this situation right
 now.
 Thank you. Hi, thank you, Peter. So, I'm Hopi Stasberg. I am the City Council District 3
 Representative, and I'm also City Council President this year, and I think that my words right now,
 so
 City Council is the fiscal and the legislative body, so our role in budgeting is a little bit
 different than at the county level, but we still have to approve budgets, and so we as a body are
 still facing this kind of unknown place where we're not entirely sure exactly the details of what
 this means for our bottom lines. It is, as Peter said, kind of a reconsidering, a redistribution of
 how local government ends up being funded, and we're all going to be faced with this tough choice
 of
 how to cut, what to cut, or how to increase revenues, and what that's going to look like to
 people. As has already been illustrated, this is definitely in terms of tax benefit of greater
 benefit. The higher income level you're at, the more your house is worth. If local income tax
 structure gets changed, it definitely penalizes working poor more than anybody else, and if you
 rent, I'm not sure that you get much benefit from this at all, because I don't think rent is going
 to be decreased just because the property taxes are decreased. So there's this really kind of big
 calculus on my mind. How are we going to manage this situation in terms of still being able to
 provide essential city services, having minimal impact to things that make this community run,
 and still not highly penalizing our population? It's about trying to have as little negative
 fiscal impact on our residents as possible and still provide the services that are really
 necessary. So the next few months will definitely be interesting, and I won't say that I look
 forward to it, but I will say that I do look forward to the cooperation and collaboration
 that I think will be in this community between all of the units that depend on property taxes
 and thus have to respond in this moment. Thank you. All right, good morning. My name is Jen Pearl,
 and I'm president of the Bloomington Economic Development Corporation. We're a nonprofit that
 serves all of Monroe County in attracting and working to grow quality jobs for the community.
 In economic development, employers and communities are currently in a war for talent. Thriving
 communities have great schools, great housing, great services, great infrastructure, and those
 are the things that employers look for when they're choosing a place to land and grow,
 because that's what attracts people, and those are their workers. However, we've seen statewide
 that our population, our working force, our workforce has been flattening and aging due to
 an older population as well as dropping birth rates. So we see SB1 is complicating this
 situation, and it's really for four reasons. First of all, if governments have to shift to
 local property taxes, from property to local income taxes, that's not growth-oriented.
 The Tax Foundation recently came out with statements on how income taxes are generally
 more distortive, and they can influence the decisions of current and prospective residents.
 At the same time, business retention and attraction requires all these great things I mentioned.
 So remember, we're competing for people, and that makes it hard to do that. Number two,
 local income taxes are paid where you live, not where you work. 18 percent of our workforce
 actually commutes in from outside of Monroe County, and that's according to Hooters by the numbers.
 Number three, reduction to the business personal property tax. We think we'll have a mixed impact,
 so maybe good for smaller businesses, but we are concerned that it'll disincentivize their
 investments
 so that they get above that, you know, $2 million threshold. Eliminating the 30 percent business
 personal property floor, on one hand, could incentivize automation because people may want
 to buy more, you know, automated equipment. That can affect jobs, although that can also be a
 solution for workforce challenges. So really, the challenge there is how do you upscale your
 workforce? And then finally, a more complex tax system makes it harder to sell Indiana.
 When we're trying to promote the state, it'll be, well, it depends on where you go inside the state.
 So what can be done? You know, disruption is difficult, but as everyone has said here,
 it's a time for innovation. We know how to pull together. There are still aspects of the bill
 where there's time to advocate for those to change, you know, before they come into effect.
 Businesses, if you're listening, please know that you're not alone. There are many resources
 here to help you. And then for our fellow community leaders, we look forward to working with you
 all
 as we try to figure out what to do together. Hi, I'm Jody Madeira. I'm your brand new county
 commissioner as of January 1st of this year, and what a year to come into office. We have to talk
 really plainly about this because although SB1 was signed into law in Indianapolis, its effects
 will be felt most keenly at the community level. I'm also reminded time after time that there is
 nothing called SB1 that has ever been good for Hoosiers. At first, SB1 seems really appealing.
 Who doesn't love a good property tax reduction? But there are so many devils in these details.
 It's not even a good property tax reduction. It's just enough to say to allow state legislators to
 say that they cut property taxes. This regressive bill doesn't help Hoosiers that don't own homes.
 Because the state legislators who supported SB1 were too cowardly, and yes, I choose that
 word purposefully, to do their jobs, local governments are going to have to raise local
 income taxes to make up deficits. We're not going to have a choice. SB1 comes at the worst possible
 time. Federal and state funding for social and security safety net programs like housing and
 substance use recovery has been pulled, or drastically reduced, or its future is radically
 uncertain. We are facing tariffs and almost certain economic hardship on multiple levels.
 It comes at a time when our wages aren't keeping up with inflation, and our residents are having
 a hard enough time meeting their needs as costs for necessities rise across the board. It also
 comes at a time when federal and state dollars are being pulled for critical programs like
 education,
 secondary education, post-secondary education, housing assistance, and public health services.
 It's going to be very challenging to create a high quality of life opportunity growth base
 that make this country and this county such a great place to live. So now for the numbers,
 economists estimate a 1.4 billion dollar shortfall for local governments when this bill is fully
 phased in. Analysts project shortfalls for our county of 9.9 million in 2026, 11.8 million in
 2027, and 15.5 million in 2028. So the question is how are we going to maintain and grow service
 levels as they're going to need to grow with this shortfall? Plugging budget gaps with local income
 taxes could cost Hoosier families an estimated $1,250 more per year, and that local income tax
 bill is going to arrive whether you own a home or whether you rent one. This burden will hurt wage
 earners, renters, and younger families the hardest. None of us ran for a local elected office to
 administer scarcity. This is not our problem. It is a problem we are facing, a crisis we are facing
 that is not of our making, to which we are rising. Yet by passing SB 1, state legislators, in other
 words, deputized us to do this difficult work that they refuse to do, hurting our residents,
 pricing the public services we value, and choosing who has to pay for them. This event is a really
 important first step towards meeting that challenge, but we can only do it if residents stay
 informed,
 engaged, and insist that tax relief never become code for diminished opportunity and diminished
 community. Over the coming months, our county and city officials will assess budget scenarios,
 we will hold hearings, and yes, we will discuss new local income tax rates. We need you guys to
 show up, to ask the hard questions, to hold us accountable, and to tell us what matters most to
 you. Because in the end, again, SB1's impact won't be measured in abstract data coming out of the
 state house. It will be measured in our lives, in the quality of the education our kids receive,
 it will be measured in the response times of the ambulance or the fire truck that comes when we
 call, it will be measured in the social services we provide for community residents who need a
 helping hand, and it will also be measured in the vibrancy of the community that we choose to build
 together. Thanks. Hi, everybody. I'm Eric Spoonmore, President, CEO of the Greater
 Bloomington Chamber of Commerce. I appreciate everybody's remarks and being able to participate
 on this panel. You know, look, these are extraordinary times. This is unprecedented.
 I happen to be a former county council member, so I certainly sympathize with a lot of the heartburn
 that our elected officials are having to deal with right now. You know, this is not business
 as usual for Indiana and our communities. As Mr. Reedy mentioned earlier, businesses, particularly
 small businesses, you know, small businesses that I represent, Chamber of Commerce has about 900
 members, about 80% of which are small businesses. And when I talk about small businesses in that
 regard, I'm talking about employers with 10 or fewer employees. Now, we also have larger employers
 that are members. Corporations like Cook, Monroe County School Corporation, Indiana University,
 a lot of non-profits. So it's a very diverse group of membership, but our bread and butter
 continues to be small businesses privately owned. And they, through this legislation,
 really do stand to benefit the most. The legislation raises the minimum threshold
 for filing business property taxes from $80,000 to $2 million phased in over a couple of years.
 This will exempt the vast majority of Hoosier businesses from any property tax. And so I'll
 just kind of put this into context of what this means as it relates to individuals as well.
 A business with $80,000 in personal property would be paying about $2,400 per year in property
 taxes.
 A business with $2 million would pay $60,000 per year. So the new minimums will radically
 reduce business taxes in Indiana. And for context, a firm with $80,000 or less in personal property
 might be a small law firm or a plumber. A firm with $2 million would be a large restaurant or
 dental office at the high end. These firms will each get a tax cut equivalent to the total cuts
 to maybe 400 middle class families. And that's information that Michael Hicks put in a recent
 Indy Star article. I would encourage everybody to read that. But that kind of tells you what we're
 dealing with here. It's a shift where businesses are benefiting and it's now locals are going to
 have to make the decision on if they want to raise income taxes on working families and people
 that are working in our communities. So, you know, I think the knee-jerk reaction sometimes
 that communities may have is just say, "Look, we've got the ability to raise taxes. Let's do it."
 But I would challenge our leaders to think much more strategically, much more long-term
 about this, and much more collaboratively, city, county, school corporations, libraries,
 etc., on what is going to put us in the best position five or ten years down the road,
 what our surrounding community is going to be doing. As Jen mentioned earlier, we have a very
 big concern for me, which is a decrease of population happening right now in Monroe County
 for the first time in our history. We're losing population, particularly population
 of working-age people that will pay local income taxes. We ranked in the latest Indiana Business
 Research Center's analysis, which was just released a couple of months ago, Monroe County ranked
 dead last in population growth. We were negative. We lost more population than any other place in
 Indiana, so that's not something to really be proud of. And if we raise income taxes,
 it's not really going to help us out a lot. So we need to be looking at what other surrounding
 communities are going to be doing because if we raise taxes here and they don't raise taxes in
 Greene County or Owen County or Lawrence County or Morgan County, what do you think is going to
 happen? Are workers are going to leave even faster to those communities because it's number one,
 lower cost of living with housing and taxes will be lower there. So, you know, I really applaud all
 of our elected officials for their thoughtfulness and how we deal with these challenges. As I
 mentioned, these are extraordinary times. We have to be all working together across the community,
 putting differences, past differences aside and coming together and working on this head on.
 The business community wants to be a partner in that and we will be there every step of the way
 to help achieve long-term success for this community. Thank you.
 Thank you. Good morning. I'm Alexis Harman, the Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum
 Instruction and Assessment for Monroe County Community School Corporation.
 Thank you so much for including us in this panel discussion and I just hearing all of the comments
 that people have about the importance of education in a community and the community's vitality.
 Of course MCCSE is proud of the excellent work we've done to educate our students and are very
 concerned about the impacts related to Senate Bill 1. This will impact any of our funds related
 to taxes so that's our operations fund as well as our referenda fund. We're still analyzing the
 impacts and what that means right now we're looking at probably 17 million dollars in losses over
 three
 years over the next three years. In addition to those financial losses SB1 also puts in some
 stipulations related to referenda as you know in MCCSE we are so grateful for our community to say
 education is important and we're willing to to spend money on that and to increase our taxes so
 that we can have excellent education. So we have referenda here but starting in 2028 according to
 Senate Bill 1 we will start sharing referenda funds with charter schools. They have also changed
 to that any referenda related question has to be in a general election so it would have to be in
 November we can no longer run referenda in May. So those are two things that we're also looking at
 as we go forward. We're really in our discussions very much focused on how do we continue to
 provide
 the level of excellent service that we do to our students and continue to deliver that's of the
 utmost importance for us. We're looking at areas of efficiency we're looking at is there anywhere
 we have a duplication of services those are those kinds of things. We're looking at centralized
 programs and services trying to keep any kinds of efficiency movements away from the classroom
 away from impacts directly related to students and so those are conversations that we're having we're
 we really want that to be a collaborative discussion across our school corporation
 with our families with our staff with our teachers union both MCA and our AFSCME our support staff
 union as well. So that's the work that we're really doing now we're also I know we're here to talk
 about Senate Bill 1 we're also looking at the budget House Bill 1001 as well our other fund
 that is our education fund is really related to teacher salaries and wages and to speak a little
 bit to Mr. Spoonmore's comments about people living in our community and growth in our community
 that funding is our state tuition and it's a per student amount and we have a decrease in student
 enrollment but also now with the forecast for the state budget we anticipate that that per pupil
 ablotment won't be as great as it was they were predicting a two percent increase but we think
 now it'll be less than that so we're kind of experiencing it in a variety of ways and really
 anticipating some significant budget cuts that we feel prepared to deal with but it's going to be
 hard it's going to be challenging and we're going to need everybody in the innovation
 and creation of our our full corporation in our community thank you.
 Hi Talisha Coppock on behalf of Downtown Bloomington Inc. we represent downtown businesses
 and thank the city and the mayor all the county folks for coming together to address this issue
 as a community it's mind-boggling really it's just a mess and there's so many pieces to this
 puzzle that affects all of us in different ways now's a challenging time our downtown
 businesses are talking about you know so many unknowns at the federal level and tariffs and
 supply and this senate bill you know really just adds to that uncertainty now at the state and the
 local level just making it difficult to plan and to act we know it means less resources for our
 local government and but in the end i think we all still want to take care of our community
 we need to maintain our infrastructure ensure public safety have a place we're all proud to
 call home we rely on our local governments for help with the basics and those costs money
 and time and resources so i appreciate all the professionals in this room and working together
 and you know what other kind of tools are out there that that we can address some of these many
 many many needs it's just it's so sad to think that we all kind of survive covid and now we're
 going through all of this so so big hugs to everyone because i think it's that that time
 that we need that and and a lot of smart people working together all right those hugs are going
 to be needed when we have to crunch these numbers so we're going to go ahead and take
 questions from the press so if you can just identify yourself we'll field it to whoever
 you would like to answer uh donnie burgers with wfiu we've talked a lot about the there's a lot
 of analysis work that's going to have to be done post and everything there's a lot of figuring out
 but over the last few months and i'm looking at peter here for this um the county council has
 already had to make some tough choices with things like sheriff sheriff pay there was a discussion
 last night about health department salary things can you speak a little bit to how this has already
 started to impact some decisions about employment salary things of that nature that's a great
 question uh and for those of you that didn't hear the question how has uh local government
 already been taking action uh as news of this has been trickling down uh the the early versions of
 this bill were frightening uh they're absolutely frightening and so uh at the county level uh we
 started taking actions to say until we have more certainty and i think that's probably the biggest
 risk here is the uncertainty not knowing what's going to happen when it's going to happen until
 we have more certainty we're going to pause any new job creations and so as president of the
 personnel
 administration committee uh i wanted to make really sure that we were forecasting to our staff
 we are taking this incredibly seriously minroe county employs over 800 employees and we wanted
 to make sure that we were saying we value uh retaining you we value the service you're
 providing to the citizens of minroe county and we want to make sure that we're not making
 are taking steps now that in five ten months we're not going to be able to pay for uh you can go
 back
 and look uh at the uh the long-term finance committee uh meetings where you know a lot
 of these steps were talked about uh in public to say we need to be really really cautious
 particularly on the personnel lines uh to make sure that whatever we're going to invest in now
 we need to make sure that we can uh look at later and so the the two examples that you brought up
 uh you you hear us on the county council dais talking very much about this saying you know we
 we value what's happening in public safety we value what's happening in public health but we want
 to
 make absolutely sure that if we're making an investment today that we can pay for it in 10
 months
 hey hello um i'm dave askens with the beast road bulletin
 mayor thompson already in her remarks gave what i think would be the response to any question i
 might ask about plans to actually raise the income tax so i want to focus instead on an existing
 commitment of city of bloomington local income tax it's a five-year commitment for close to four
 million dollars and uh at least one person in the room john connell will recognize exactly what
 that
 commitment is it's the bloom to transit and the city of expectation is that bloomington will focus
 with that money on the east west uh corridor uh transportation corridor for rapid uh transportation
 so first question is uh it's only a five-year commitment and goes through 2027 so
 i assume that the city would live up to its commitment that it put in the interlocal
 agreement through 2027 but after that is that amount now on the table and if it's not on the
 table uh and the city wants to continue to fund bloomington transit at roughly around four million
 dollars a year uh would the city consider shifting the expected focus from the east west corridor
 instead helping to support uh transportation for public schools so uh the question for those who
 didn't hear is around uh the existing lit funds that uh that the city has um and as you heard they're
 they're all being restructured um what i can say um which will not make you happy in the detail
 that you're looking for dave is that um that things like public transportation directly impact
 people's cost of living and so when we're looking at what what we are and are not going to fund
 with lit funds and um and and potentially increasing lit funds um my administration is
 going to look for the the funding that will support what we are aiming to do overall in the city
 and
 one of the the most critical things is to decrease the wage gap that we have we have enormous wage
 disparity and making things more affordable for people to live here is key because that's the
 only way we're going to get a vibrant community we have to have great public education uh the
 schools
 have no way to uh increase their income like the county and the city do um this bill really leaves
 them behind and if we want to be recruiting top businesses to our community i would say it's very
 short-sighted to give relatively small tax cuts to small businesses and discourage people from
 living in communities um by increasing income tax this is really a way to to make small small
 cuts for a few people and then have people that really can't afford it carry the weight um and um
 and that's exactly what's coming out of the state house right now is public transportation a
 priority
 absolutely i think to get a thriving community with the population that we need we've got to
 have a vibrant public transportation uh company running here we also have other priorities so we
 are we're really going to have to balance all of these priorities uh tie simons from wr tv
 uh what two-part question what does it say about the bill that there is a stanley ramone crowd who
 wants to hear from you about what you're going to do and how does this reaffirm the commitment of
 everybody at the table to try and maintain the quality of life here in bloomington magro county
 for everybody here well i think what you see uh at the table is that um that really every leader
 that we asked to be here um is here and if had we invited more they would have probably said yes
 but it becomes a little bit cumbersome to have that many people on a panel um we're missing our
 library system here right um that that's going to have impacts as well um this this is a an
 unprecedented experience especially with what we're seeing on the federal level um my commitment is
 to
 work with the partners at this table and those that are not at this table and i think the standing
 room only crowd here uh represents uh probably just a very small portion of the people that are
 concerned about what's happening um so this is really all hands on deck um as as several people
 mentioned the bill has passed there are tweaks that can be made and um when i was spending time
 uh a couple weeks ago at the state house advocating against this bill what i kept being told is if
 it's
 wrong we'll fix it in a couple of years well a couple of years is too late right but your advocacy
 and your communication to your reps really still does make a difference even though we're going to
 have to pivot now so let me just the the the point that i made earlier i think is also important to
 point out here that the people in this room are also the stakeholders in the ones that are going
 to be crafting the innovative solutions so as i mentioned earlier there's multiple elected
 officials sitting in the audience the assessor the auditor the treasurer we have people from
 those different departments sitting in this room and and we also have other county council members
 and i think the the weight of the decisions that will need to be made eventually is a part of the
 commitment of this community to serve the residents and you think about what's happening at the on
 the county level that means not only filling potholes in our roads and making sure our bridges
 are stable but also making sure that our health is is intact that the water is clean that you're
 drinking the food you're eating at the restaurants is clean and also that our justice system is
 intact
 this legislature just cut one of our courts that's going to impact the way that we do justice in
 this
 community and we want to make sure that as we're moving forward we're keeping those things as
 intact as possible so that we're providing quality services to citizens here in meadow county thank
 you i just want to add uh to the sentiment up here i mean the original question asked about what
 does
 it mean that there's standing room only in this room right now and i think a piece of what that
 means is that the effects of this i mean it affects everybody in the community like potential cuts
 are
 going to affect everybody whether or not you've benefited from this this bit of property tax
 savings and you know i think about my own property tax savings i go okay so if i save that maximum
 three hundred dollars how much more might i spend in other places even if you exempt the potential
 of income tax increases and just think about potential loss of service i have two kids in
 public schools right now what kind of loss of service are they going to get that i as a parent
 might have to fill in in other ways and that that kind of thing affects everybody in one way or
 another because we all use public services some way in our lives we traveled here using streets
 using sidewalks you know however it is that you got here using the public bus system
 you have all benefited from city and local services today and we just don't know at this point what
 those the details of those changes are actually going to look like so that's the that's the message
 standing room only it affects everybody at every level of our community right now
 and if i could add something to um i think a lot of times it's easy to say oh well that's
 just bloomington that's just bloomington that's talking about it uh this extends beyond the room
 here um we had economic developers from across the state raising concerns about this bill
 there were teachers that you know public safety others that were raising concerns and so this is
 this really goes beyond all of us just here
 i'll say too monroe county is not like surrounding communities we are a high quality
 of life uh community we are larger than other counties we have a bigger tax base we have more
 resources in other counties but it's going to be hard to find counties like us to model we will
 have to come up with our own solutions and frankly my bottom line is commissioner and i hope not to
 sound too grim when i say this i want to prevent people from dying because the the level of cuts
 we're looking here and the level of essential services that are affected by these cuts it's
 really drastic and it's really grim and it's very serious and so when i talk about a high quality
 of life county we have to maintain what we are used to we have to maintain opportunities for our
 kids but at the end of the day our goal is to make sure that people don't die from these cuts
 and it's going to be very difficult because federal government is governing by fiat right now
 we have things announced that are not planned and they're taken off the table three days later
 we have a university that's faced almost close to a billion dollars in cuts right now
 and again none of this was anticipated and so we are essentially policy making on a sea that is
 in a in a basically a terrible storm you know the perfect storm uh where we have the wind the waves
 and we don't know when that weather is going to change it's not going to change potentially for
 four years and so we have to call upon our state officials as well to come back into session and to
 help out our local communities because the local communities cannot do it alone we need that state
 partnership and we need that federal partnership we have about a little over five minutes left
 so i want to make sure we're vetting other questions from the press
 can i ask the same question but in a slightly more boring way
 um so isn't sb1 an opportunity to drive cross collaboration across different taxing units
 that maybe we should have done already but now we have an excuse because we have this uh this
 stress and we can say because of the stress we now need to have the city and the county
 it departments get closer together to collaborate i mean for heaven's sakes we're the city is
 building
 a new website right now the county is also building a new website i look at that and i think well
 why
 don't we ask red chrome and repeat to get in a room and figure out how they can conserve some
 resources and capitalize on the fact that we have this great geographic proximity and it is surely
 politically neutral why are we taking this as an opportunity to say let's collaborate across
 taxi units in a way that is unprecedented
 uh thanks for the question dave i think that um while we are i i believe i speak for everyone
 while while we really love collaboration and um and we do a lot of it on the ground the
 complexities
 of um of essentially unigov is what you're what what you may be alluding to um first of all it's
 been outlawed at the state so um we already have regulations about not not doing that extensively
 um but i'll just speak to one of the issues that i have been trying to pull apart since i got into
 office which is building permits and just getting those two systems to talk to one another when
 when we do it and do it well it's going to be a dream but it's mine is not the first administration
 that's worked on this and um and so getting these systems to be one system getting increased
 collaboration i'll i'll tell you that those two it departments do talk and they do collaborate
 um and so there's there's lots of this going on behind the scenes um but i think to believe
 that we could um form unigov without the opportunity to actually form unigov um is a
 little short-sighted can i add something uh policy making works best when no one's holding a gun to
 your head and so i think that this is a distraction this is a layer of trying to figure out what we
 have to do again on shifting sands uh at the same time while we were looking forward to working
 and collaborating in other areas and so this adds a distraction to our plates that we did not need
 that we didn't ask for and frankly that was not needed uh yeah i'm gonna kind of echo that a
 little bit in that a stressful environment is not one that is really optimized for collaboration
 so this is this very stressful fiscal environment and that's i mean that makes conversations hard
 even if you're within your own like body much less across bodies kind of looking at different
 priorities that each of those individual bodies have so it it yeah it may force that collaboration
 but is it going to be like the best type of collaboration and then secondly there's also
 a difference in say philosophical collaborations versus nuts and bolts collaborations and i think
 that that we've you know kind of worked on philosophical collaborations for a long time
 and the nuts and bolts as as mayor thompson said is is a little bit uh more challenging to do
 let's take this question in the back hi uh skip daily south central indiana news uh council member
 ivison you mentioned uh during your comments uh rest assured we'll get through this together and
 you were talking about this brand of collaboration that is happening now is that perhaps a
 uh hidden silver lining that this new synergy that uh that has been forced upon you
 can help local government learn to do more with less i think it's realism uh you know we've been
 given uh dealt a hand uh from the state government and increasingly as commissioner medeira
 mentioned the federal government that statutorily uh we need to work with so uh we can adopt a
 position of woe is me the sky is falling or we can say we've got some serious elected official
 players in this room who know this uh like the back of their hand uh if you are going to craft
 a team in the county government to handle this situation you would want the people sitting in
 this room in that team and i think that i'm not being paulianish i think that that that should
 give people a good degree of optimism i also want to uh point out that one of the earlier questions
 was this is standing room only we've got law enforcement fire protection we've got multiple
 taxing units sitting right next to each other i'm very purposely sitting between two city officials
 uh and i think that speaks volumes to what this community is prepared to do to you know come and
 meets this challenge thank you of all these metaphors about change shifting sands perfect
 storm how are you all collectively trying to take a breath and you know get your feet under you as
 you take on a challenge that in your own words is this unprecedented so i i think we're in a time
 where there there is no stop and take a breath um we i mean this team has been running pretty hard
 since um since the um since the state house has been in session uh and uh with the shifting sands
 on the federal level uh i think i speak for all of us um we're working some long days and uh we're
 doing it for you our residents um so that we can get you the information that you need and we can
 advocate on your behalf and um this is this is my invitation to all of you uh to to stay informed
 thank you for being here today uh to do to please stay in touch with your state legislators um if
 you
 need more information um you know i i know these handouts are complex they're complex because the
 bill's complex um we will do our best to boil things down into um really palatable information
 as we move forward especially as we understand the implications and um and my my door and my
 email is open our phones are open um i'm i'm hearing from constituents about this as as people
 are realizing that this has come to pass now um and i think uh you know i i based on the response
 we got uh to this i think we'll uh we'll probably do another one of these in the future uh to help
 people people informed so thank you all so much for your time appreciate you being here thanks to
 the city and county teams uh school system and business community for uh being here and especially
 eric for the heavy lifting on translation have a great day
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