- Hello and welcome to Cats Week. I'm Annalise Poorman. On September 3rd, the Monroe County Commissioners
- met to discuss a series of funding approvals for improved spam and phishing detectors, as well as for
- fixing the air conditioning in the Monroe County Courthouse. The Commissioners also voted 2-0 to set
- aside funds to replace the emergency exit doors in the Justice Building. A representative from Indiana
- Door and Hardware Specialties, Inc. explained the contract.
- We had two exit devices fell at the Justice Building and due to the secure nature, Commissioner Thomas
- went ahead and signed the agreement so we could get that going. This request is to ratify the agreement
- with Indiana Door and Hardware Specialties Inc in the amount of $7,840 for the replacement of two delayed
- egress exit devices at the Justice Building.
- Also during the meeting, the commissioners appropriated $20,000 for the public relations company, Hallowell
- Consulting. Commissioner's administrator, Angie Purdy, explained the spending. This is a requirement
- with Hallowell Consulting Services who will provide professional communications for the board
- of commissioners, your county government using strategy, positioning, looking at...
- development of those messages, working on media relations and public relations and engagement. Bloomington
- resident Jamie Ford, who is also a volunteer at WFHB, disagreed with the decision. It seems to me that
- you wouldn't need to spend $20,000 for a PR consultant firm to develop, quote, a strategic communications
- framework designed to improve public understanding of the project and establish a consistent cadence
- of communication, or, quote,
- develop a clear, fact-based response to recurring questions and concerns surrounding this project,"
- if you didn't repeatedly say one thing and then contradict yourselves by saying and doing the complete opposite.
- I hope the public is paying attention. More importantly, I hope the council is paying attention. Budget
- hearings have started and departments are trimming their budgets as much as possible in an effort to
- allow a mere 2% COLA increase for its employees. Meanwhile, y'all are throwing $20,000 at a PR firm
- to help you keep your story straight. Clearly your budget is overinflated and therefore council needs
- to slash it to the bare minimum. The commissioners unanimously agreed to pass the contract. The next
- Monroe County commissioners meeting will be held on September 10th.
- The Bloomington city council met on September 2nd and considered several pieces of legislation. Amongst
- these was a discussion of the Bloomington city and place branding report. A representative of the company
- civic brand discussed their process of branding for the city. If the city of Bloomington actually did
- spend $95,000 for a logo, I would be right there with you and say, that's insane. But that's not what
- a brand is.
- That's not what we were tasked with. That's not what the 116 page audit found. That's not what the 50
- page implementation plan suggests. There is a visual identity component. It's a small piece of that.
- We're going to talk about that. But place branding, what it is, is going back to those decisions that
- people make every day. It's not about selling Bloomington.
- to an outsider, it's not about an outside audience, it's about an internal audience. It's actually probably
- more about council and staff and leadership and arming them with making choices. How do we, we're all
- doing the best we can to make choices, decisions every single day, but even if you're making the right
- choices, if we're all making choices in different directions, the sum doesn't add up to greater than
- the part, so we're kind of just aimlessly drifting, and that's the challenge with a lot of cities.
- And what a brand does is it creates a shared vision, a shared north star of this is what we're all trying
- to solve. So that at every level of staff, council, budget, policy decision, all of those decisions
- can slightly align towards one shared direction. Council members brought up a number of concerns.
- Specifically, council member Sydney Zulek raised questions about the contracting process, questioning
- why local firms were not considered for the $95,000 project.
- Councilmember Isa Kasari went on to question the methods used to gather information for the report didn't
- thinking about the method so You did two site visits. How long were you here on both site visits? I
- think it was actually three because I think our team technically split the second year here now and
- I'm here now Which is a separate visit? I think I don't know it was
- three to four days per trip, so about probably eight days on the ground. And then those in-person trips
- bookended some really robust virtual engagement that happened between those. How many in the virtual
- engagements, how many people did you actually speak to? I don't have that number off the top of my head.
- I do think it's captured in the audit, because we have here's the survey results, here's how many focus
- groups, here's how many interviews.
- I don't know that like at the pop-ups what was the methodological approach to choosing who you spoke
- to. Yeah so at first we were looking at different stakeholder groups we want to talk to you know business
- owners we would start to hear things we need to talk to students right so we were.
- Identifying different groups and demographics that we felt like we needed to hear from also as we did
- the online survey We're always paying attention not just who are we hearing from but who are we not
- hearing from and then going to that and saying like hey We're not really getting responses from students.
- For example, let's do a focus group And so we would work with staff of can you help us pull together
- a focus group of students? members of the City Council also expressed concerns that the report was redundant
- to the city's comprehensive plan and
- Jane Cooper-Smith, Director of Economic and Sustainable Development responded. The primary recommendations,
- one, two, three, four, five, six.
- I think actually most of them have been implemented. So branding Bloomington was the first one that
- didn't happen in the previous administration But it was identified because we knew that if we couldn't
- tell our story as a community we could not market our community to other employers or talent so Councilmember
- Rosenberger made a comment about attracting employers with abatements, but actually the primary The
- primary we drive primary way we drive attraction is through quality of place initiatives. So quality
- of place initiatives attract
- Workforce and workforce attracts employers. It used to be decades ago that employees would go wherever
- the jobs were but that's not the case anymore So what we've done in Bloomington is we've made a really
- beautiful community with lots of assets that we don't know how to talk about so back in 2016 they had
- already identified that we had this gap in In our communication and our way of talking about Bloomington
- So that's why it was recommended number two create an innovation culture. So this is
- Why we've been investing so significantly in the trades district, which has been incredibly successful
- and there were questions about KPIs during my council presentation and I think It would be great to
- share some of those successes and numbers with you in more detail creating quarterly business slash
- academic stakeholder gatherings these were created and
- It was called the Lido meetup. It was organized by the mill They happen now in different ways, but that
- original Lido meetup that had town and gown economic development orgs some employers present those those
- have been paused because I think that they were not They were helpful for relationship building, but
- they weren't purposeful enough to
- require the time skills, skills gap training to match Bloomington's existing labor pool with high demand,
- high wage, local jobs. Well, we knocked this out of the park during the pandemic, frankly. And then
- we have really great resources through work one and the state's workforce development programs and Ivy
- tech and all the training that they do. City council member David Rollo questioned the value of the
- report in the context of the city's budget constraints. This whole process has shown me that there is
- a communication problem.
- I think that The message has is flat as far as I can tell from feedback from people I've spoken to I
- think mostly because we've just started budget We have budget constraints We are drawing down reserves
- We're not keeping pace with Jack Hopkins funding social service funding relative to inflation which
- I brought up
- We're looking to raise taxes in various ways. We're looking to raise water rates. We're looking to raise
- parking fees. And people are scrutinizing discretionary funding or spending. And so it comes at a time
- when people are, I think they're limiting their budget right now and they wonder what they're getting.
- Community member Rowan Morse expressed frustration with the lack of tangible suggestions presented to
- the public.
- My grandfather, Tom Coleman, he was the one who created the Bloomington Transit logo, the BT. And as
- a whole family of graphic designers, I just gotta say this new one is just really not it. It does not
- feel like Bloomington. The one, as Liliana said right before me, it feels like home. It feels like something
- that's comforting and that I've known my entire life. This new one, as Rollo, you've presented like it
- There's a bunch of them. I spent a couple of minutes and I printed out eight different versions of pretty
- much the same exact logo. And any graphic designer should double check that it's not a logo that is
- already well known or that you might have any competition with. And I think just the lack of effort,
- the lack of care that they've shown
- and just putting into making a logo or interacting with the community to have them work on a logo has
- shown that they don't really care about us. Frankly, have you guys gotten anything of what that was
- supposed to be, any tangible thing that we are supposed to do that makes our city better? I got zero.
- I mean that was a whole presentation where that should have been sold and I don't think any of that
- was sold. And so I just I'd say we've spent ninety five thousand dollars on this already and I really
- implore you just don't spend any more money wasting time on something that truly nobody wants. The council
- also heard updates regarding the removal of Raynard Cross from the Bloomington Historic Preservation
- Committee. Council attorney Larry Allen explained the allegations against him.
- Under for cause under the municipal code The council has specifically referred to a code of conduct
- that applies to all boards and commissioners that is kept by the clerk's office and that code of conduct
- applies to Certain behavior treatment decorum in meetings. There are several factors to that. There
- are four factors I can read them off if you prefer more specificity of that Those were
- violated or thought to be violated at least that's the Allegation here is that those were violated the
- code of conduct was violated in two particular meetings those occurring on July 9th and at the end of
- July as well Secondarily there was Messages sent to all commission members asking for immediate response
- that has a potential of violating the open-door law that is one of the other allegations that was made and then
- Finally it is there and this kind of goes hand-in-hand with the code of conduct There's a requirement
- to be able to do the business of the Commission and to respect the time of the public and the Commission
- significant amount of time was being taken to delay the action of the Commission and also of staff's
- time over the course of that period and that was inhibiting potentially the business
- of the commission. The council voted to postpone the decision until their next meeting, which will take
- place on September 16th. The Monroe County Election Board met on September 3rd. Council Clerk Nicole
- Brown gave an update on a recent tabletop event that she conducted, which was held in preparation for
- the upcoming general election in November. The feedback that I got from that, I'm just going to read
- an excerpt from the feedback that I got on August 13th.
- 2020 26 Monroe County conducted in a tabletop exercise to assess abilities to deal with possible emergencies
- on Election Day. The test was conducted at Election Central. Clerk Nicole Brown hosted the exercise.
- Seven members of the public representing various perspectives were invited to observe the test. The
- participants discussed how to respond to example emergencies in three areas, polling sites, Election
- Central and natural disasters.
- The observers were invited to contribute to the debriefing after each scenario and the exercise concluded
- with a general discussion of what went well and potential problems that were not included in this scenario.
- The collaborative relationships among the participants were evident, and the discussion of potential
- new problems demonstrated the ability to work across jurisdictional lines. So I'm incredibly grateful
- to my staff, incredibly grateful to our friends. We had a really, really positive experience.
- I already felt as though our plans in Monroe County were good, but this kind of reinforced that and
- just gave us a little bit of feedback on something we could do to improve with respect to the upcoming
- tabletop event, the secretary of state. Democratic board member Penny Githens expressed her concern
- about not being part of the event. I would like to know why I was not invited.
- It was my event. Neither of you was invited. I had proxies for you. You did not have a proxy for me,
- not one that I appointed or that the Democratic chair appointed. And how you could claim that a proxy
- who does not live in Monroe County and who, although is a wonderful young woman, how you can claim that
- she is the Democratic representative when she votes in Republican primaries, I do not fathom this. I
- was incredibly, incredibly shocked since I'm the one that asked last
- and then to see that one was held here in Monroe County and I was not included. That's very disrespectful.
- Neither neither board member was included. I did not want to publicize that I was having a tabletop
- exercise. We picked people to role play. They did very well. You do have an opportunity to attend the
- tabletop exercise that I am getting ready to read if I can finish my update. Well, but again,
- To claim that somebody was the Republican, I'm sorry, the Democratic representative who is not even
- a Democrat and who does not live in Monroe County is an insult to the Democrats in Monroe County. Clerk
- Brown explained that there is another tabletop event scheduled to take place in the near future.
- Approximately halfway through the meeting, Republican board member Danny Shields announced that a proxy
- would take his place for the remainder of the meeting. All I have been interested in
- In these complaints is that if a law was broken. And that's with any of the complaints we've dealt with.
- Then we pass it on and let the prosecuting attorney make the decision about whether or not something
- should happen. I don't want this to become a circus. We've seen. So what I have decided to do is for
- the old business and the remainder of the meeting.
- I have assigned proxy for Mr. Jack Schmidt, Dr. Jack Schmidt, to come finish the meeting and handle
- the complaints. That way we don't have any of the arguments that you and I are biased against someone
- before it even started. I just, I want the truth to come out and I want the law to be followed. So,
- Dr. Schmidt, the... Are you leaving the meeting? No, I'm going to go sit with, sit back and...
- So you returned because I've got a couple. I'm sure the balance would like sure so doctors made the
- board then discussed the next steps needed to address the complaints submitted by Monroe County Assessor
- and incumbent Judy Sharp and Assessor candidate Janay Trimble. My position has not changed. Oh,
- I am not. Here to vote. To move this forward. I believe it.
- The violation has occurred and would be voting to move it forward. But now by moving forward, that means
- for us at another meeting to hold a hearing and then to decide whether or not to forward that to the
- prosecutor for prosecution. We don't make a decision legally on whether or not a violation occurred.
- our responsibility, if I understand it, and, Molly, please correct me if I'm wrong, our responsibility
- is to determine whether or not this is something that should receive further investigation. Ultimately,
- the board voted to dismiss both complaints. Later in the meeting, Penny Giffins asked election supervisor
- Kylie Farris why some Richland township ballots contained a question regarding the town of Aletsville,
- while others did not. When I reviewed the ballots this morning, I think that there was a major...
- question about some stuff in Richland and I want to make sure that we get that resolved. The ballots
- can be printed on time and ready to go. Ferris said that communications are ongoing to ensure that all
- ballots have the relevant questions on them. I will add to that. So I was reading through some of the
- emails, one that you Miss Giffins had sent and then some that was in response from the IED. I'm going
- to move forward with requesting a certified statement from the
- group proposal that has put together the question for Ellensville. And then I'm going to move forward
- from there. Once I receive that stating exactly which precincts they would like to have the question
- on, then I will send that to the election board, make sure you guys are all informed as well and make
- those changes. The next Monroe County election board meeting is scheduled for October 1st.
- The Bloomington Common Council Committee on Council Processes met on August 31st. The meeting began
- with a presentation on structural changes to the city's transportation and environmental commissions.
- Council member Hopi Stasberg explained a new guideline regarding school superintendent recommendations
- that ensure the city does not overstep its legal authority. We can't really tell
- superintendent what to do of schools which of course is a good point and so then instead put in this
- mayor shall request line the superintendent recommend up to three applicants and then in the event no
- qualifying applicant is identified and
- Basically, that's if the superintendent at some point in the future declines to put forth any
- recommendations. Then I defaulted that to the mayor, she'll just appoint somebody who is a resident
- of the city and then preference for appointment to somebody related to MCCSC, which is how the language
- currently reads in terms of that preference for appointment. I'm not sure
- if we should put any kind of a timeline in here in the event of no qualifying applicant. But I guess
- I'd kind of like to keep it simple unless it becomes problematic. Committee members also weighed whether
- to keep a fixed number of seats for the Transportation Commission or to allow expansion due to high
- public interest. Ultimately, the committee decided to keep the body at nine members to maintain consistency.
- The meeting then turned to the Environmental Commission, where Deputy Clerk Jennifer Crossley highlighted
- long-term vacancy issues that have repeatedly prevented the body from reaching a quorum. I actually
- have been able to work with ITS because I wanted to have council be able, like, board discussions like
- this. I wanted you all to be able to see, like, seats that have been vacant. So on board,
- When you go to seats, it should show you field and vacant and it should show you the length of time
- that a seat has been vacant. And so that just happened within the recent weeks. And so if I'm scrolling
- to environmental commission, one seat has been vacant since October 23rd, 2024.
- Following the discussion, the committee voted unanimously to recommend the proposed structural changes
- to the full Common Council. Next, the committee addressed procedural issues at the Historic Preservation
- Commission, which were brought to light in a briefing by advisory member Reynard Cross. The committee
- focused on how the misapplication of Robert's rules and a lack of training led to confusion over motions,
- debate limits, and the chair's authority.
- Committee Chair Isabel Piedmont-Smith specified what went wrong during the commission's June meeting.
- The first issue I think that came up was that HPC commissioners, a subset of them, wanted to postpone
- a vote on releasing a dumb omission delay, but did not think they had the opportunity to do so. And
- Then the second issue was that there was a motion to limit commissioner comments to three minutes. It
- was adopted without meeting the two-third majority that's actually required by Robert's rules. And then
- the third issue was that the chair limited a commissioner speaking time without a motion or a vote by
- the commissioner, which actually is required per Robert's rules. So I think that
- taking the first item, while all of these items, I think, reflect a lack of familiarity with Robertsville's order.
- Council attorney Larry Allen agreed that there were procedural mistakes, but said that state law and
- local code leave little room to reopen the decision. If it's a clerical error, right, you can maybe
- go back. If it's an actual substantive question of law, it looks like the Inespera court has decided
- you cannot go back unless expressly authorized by statute. Again, there's
- smaller nuances, but I don't know that this rises to a small clerical error that you could go and fix
- as much as it might be substantive, particularly now that, and Mr. Cross pointed this out as well, the
- 30-day deadline for challenging this in the local Monroe County Circuit Court has also passed. The meeting
- moved on to public comment where participants expressed frustration over these procedural errors and
- a possible proposal to remove Raynard Cross from the HPC.
- However, the committee clarified that the removal of a commissioner falls outside of their current purview
- and will only be presented to them if the City Council so decides. HPC member Dr. John Butler publicly
- apologized for his own procedural confusion and urged city leaders to provide better educational resources.
- I am Dr. John Butler. I'm also a member of the HPC. I just want to bring up a couple of sort of corrections
- or add to the
- the record. As per our training that we received, we did receive training. It was like an hour long,
- I think, or a little over an hour. But it covered such a range of topics that Robert's Rules was maybe
- 10 minutes. And if you know Robert's Rules, that's not enough time to really understand, especially
- if you're a new member, because we also covered open door law and, you know,
- respect and how to treat each other as commissioners. I would urge you to consider more training because
- I certainly felt under-trained. As to whether or not a lawyer was present, there were no lawyers present
- because at the same time, city legal was holding a training session and so all the city attorneys were
- at that and there was no attorney present online or in person for that meeting. We also did not have
- a parliamentarian.
- Um, our chair does not understand Robert's rules in a way, um, in a deeply enough to, um, fully instruct
- the members of, you know, how we're supposed to run the meetings. For instance, the 4-2 thing, you know,
- I don't even know. Um, so, so we need more training. Um, and then, uh, you know, for Commissioner Cross
- to sort of be the
- person who's facing some sanction for attempting to get us to do a better job of following Robert's
- rules, I think is sort of sad. I think really as a body we need to do better. And so I think the failure
- lies with all of us.
- And myself in particular, I did not make the motion in the proper language, and that is on me. I also
- didn't understand when I was allowed to make the motion. And prior to that, when Commissioner DeSolar
- was the chair, a person, the tradition in the HPC was a person would phrase the, you know, I would like
- more time, and then DeSolar would say,
- Am I hearing a motion to delay? And then we would say yes. And so since that did not occur that evening,
- I didn't know when I was allowed to bring it forward. And so unfortunately, since it's a subsidiary
- action, the vote, if we release it for demolition, we can't delay it. So the delay vote has to take
- place before we release it, obviously.
- And that didn't occur. So then once we released it, I couldn't get my vote forward at that point, even
- though that was my intention. So I apologize for messing the whole thing up. But I feel like we really
- could have and should have handled it better. Amy Butler spoke on behalf of Cross, criticizing the potential
- removal and calling out leadership for failing to maintain proper rules of order. I'm just really disappointed.
- that it's even considered to remove Renard. I have been to multiple meetings with HBC, none of them
- before August of 2025. So I have no idea how it was run before that. But that meeting on the 25th, or
- whatever date it was, was ridiculous. And there were many things that were wrong. And every meeting
- that I had been before, like when commissioner members and members of the public had asked for more
- time, when more time was in the time frame allowed, it was granted.
- And this was blatantly ignored. And Sam, who had been the previous chair, as far as precedence, if a
- commission member was asking for more time, he would say, do I hear a motion? And then it would be brought.
- And that was not the case that day. I don't know what happened. But it seemed to me like decisions were
- already made before that meeting happened, like people's minds were already made up, and that they were
- going to let those buildings go down. And that really upsets me that Bernard is going to be bullied.
- and try to be kicked off the commission for trying to make things right because he is speaking truths
- and I am here to speak truth that Renard knows Robert's rules better than anyone else. In response,
- committee members discussed implementing mandatory training on Robert's rules and rules of conduct for
- all commissioners while working with the clerk's office to make simplified rule summaries. The committee's
- next meeting is scheduled for September 28th.
- And that is all for Cats Week. Thank you for joining us. For Cats and WFHB, I'm Annalise Poorman.