Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to our Tuesday Celebration of Service. My name is Tracy Yovanovitch,
and I'm honored to serve as your president. What a great turnout. I don't know what the deal is.
I don't know. Somebody special is talking? It could be. Anyway, please silence your devices, and we'll
start off with Where in the World? In the spirit of understanding that this is an international organization
and making sure people know that Rotary is in over 200 countries, has anyone heard of San Pedro?
OK, well, most of you have heard of it, because actually Madonna sang a song about it. But there is
Rotary Club in San Pedro Belize, and they focus on one of our key elements that we like to focus on,
which is literacy and education. They spend most of their time working with teachers doing mini grants.
And I thought that was interesting because it sounds a lot like our work at Teachers Warehouse. So that's
why I wanted to share San Pedro Belize. Next time you're down there, by the way, they have great scuba
diving, but you can also attend a Rotary meeting.
And with that, I will ask Winston Schindel, someone I know dearly, to come up and introduce our guests.
Well, it's my pleasure to introduce the guests. And so when I call your name, if you would stand and
we will recognize you and give you a hand. So we have a few guests today. The first Desiree de Molina,
a guest of our mayor. Jennifer Meyer, also a guest of the mayor.
Kira Penny, a guest of art. Kylie Bard, a guest of Amy Kendall. Carter Herman, a guest of Emily Herman.
And April Weatherford,
Guest of? Payton. There. Do we have any guests online? Well, I see we've got Katz TV who has joined
us today. So welcome Katz. And, you know, I'm going to apologize. I'm not sure if Henry Leck is a guest
or not. I was trying to look up real quickly our membership database, but
Henry, if you are a guest, welcome. If you're not, I look forward to meeting you in person next time.
There you go. Welcome to all. And if you're interested in Rotary, talk to someone around the table.
They can help you with that. It's a great club. We do great work here in the community. So welcome.
All right. And I want to welcome back our family that's been out in Mexico. Dave and Cindy are back.
It's great to see you guys back.
And actually just in time, because it's your birthday week. So speaking of birthdays, Dave Meyer on
the 18th, Randy Saunders on the 19th, and Mike Wade on the 21st. And for anniversaries, we have Vivian
Bridges, four years. Bill Murphy, 47 years. And Bill, I have to apologize. I think I called you Bill
Armstrong. I have no idea why. That was one of my teachers in elementary school last week. Anyway, Andrea
Murray, three years. Charles Pierce, three years. Lauren Snyder, 17 years.
Ellen Stroman, one year here and many years back at home. And then Dr. Markay Winston for one year.
And with that, we'll go to announcements. If there we go. All right. I knew it would go too fast.
There we go. Announcements. So club
assembly update wanted to give everybody we talked to our club assembly about restructuring some of
the committees potentially just wanted to let everyone know that we had a board meeting and we're meeting
with all the committee chairs next week after the meeting to discuss the role of the various committees
that we have there and should they continue you know the classic start stop continue or is there a different
way that we should approach it so that we are more efficient with everyone's time. So know that that
is going on.
Secondly, we will also be doing, Jill is going to help us with a DAC cleanup. And I'm sure everybody's
like, what's DAC? That is our system that we use. And I think three people in this room have probably
ever accessed it. But that's where we house all of your pictures, your phone address, et cetera. And
that is what drives our app, Ignite. And so if you're missing information, it's missing in the app for
Ignite. And that is what is something that we use. It's very helpful for us when communicating with
each other, et cetera.
You'll probably get hit up with by Jill for more information. And if you don't want to share information,
that's totally fine. And then lastly, I just thought I would share this interesting observation. So
does anybody know what that picture is? It's a pepper. Does anybody know where that is growing? No,
you do not because good answer art. It is on Eagleson Avenue at the median right across from the musical
arts center. It is just a seed fell.
And it's classic, you know, and I swear I've walked by it probably 20 times and Sunday I saw it and
I'm like, what's that orange thing? So I look and there's two other seeds getting ready to bloom. But
how interesting, you know, a seed can grow reminded me of a tree in Brooklyn, kind of, you know, you
just never know what's going to grow where. So I thought that was kind of cool. And. You got to help
me, Tyler, this thing's going crazy. All right.
So Futurecast is coming up, and I know everybody in here is just a computer genius. So I thought I'd
share with you how to get tickets. If you go to the community chamber website, you can look up under
events, see the little red circles, you click the events, and then you go to the November calendar,
which is in the middle, and you look on Friday the 13th, which sounds rather ominous, and you, especially
for an economic outlook, I'll just say. And then you go to the far,
right on the screen and it will have you click to register for the event. So you are now computer savvy
and you are now all able to join Futurecast, our partnership with the Chamber when we hear from all
the experts at the Kelly School where the economy is going. Martha, I can see you're very excited about
that. All right. And with that, I would like to ask Jeff Richardson to come forward and introduce our guest.
Well, I've been working with political campaigns and political people since 1970. And since you made
a movie reference, Tracy, to a tree in Brooklyn, I'm going to make a movie reference to Mr. Smith Goes
to Washington. In this case, Mrs. Smith Goes to Washington. I just feel that Carrie
really captures the essence of being humble, kind, smart, thoughtful, always prepared, always listening,
and especially passionate about her work. I admire her greatly. And a lot of us know that she's a former
CEO of Habitat for Humanity for 20 years, former ED of the Center for Rural Engagement. But I just want
to talk to you a little bit about what she makes me feel.
because we're going to hear about the specifics about what she's doing in the city and what
she's accomplishing and what's ahead, the challenges ahead. But I met Carrie the first time when the
last UDO, the zoning changes were somewhat chaotic and people were very energized and very excited and
had a lot of opinions of what to do and what not to do. And Carrie,
was on the phone call. We did Zoom calls and there's still COVID going on. And I went to Tommy Allison's
house across the street. I live on 1st Street. And I said, who is this Carrie Thompson?
I said, she's so thoughtful. She's so measured. She really is listening. She would after there'd be
like an hour and a half of people talking, we had every single city council member as a guest, including
mayor Hamilton at the time. And she would say, here's what I heard. And she would distill it down to
three items. And then you say, here's what I think we might consider doing. And it was just brilliant.
And so I said, you know, this is someone I think should run for mayor. I just,
just really met her through these these meetings and Tommy said, I've already asked her to do that.
And then I thought, well, that's good. So we're we're on top of it. And then later revealed to me that
Charlotte had asked Tommy had asked Carrie to run a few years earlier. But it was really through her
actions that we we were so impressed with her on the campaign trail. I mean, she has been so energized
going door to door and she promised when she was
Doing the campaigning that she would do something similar when she was in office and she's actually
done that she's still going door to door. She's doing these Outreach meetings town halls and the type
thing she loves being around people. She loves listening. She loves learning She's not a know-it-all.
She knows that there's a lot to learn and there's no better job I think when you're you're contributing
making a difference, but also learning and she loves learning I will say that I I feel that
I was very moved when I asked her. I do these check-ins with Carrie every once in a while and just say,
how's it going? Just open-ended question. And her first time I asked her that, she said, I can't wait
to get to work every single day. And I've called her and asked her sometimes in person, sometimes on
the phone, how she's feeling after some of these more, let's say, contentious meetings and struggles.
And she says, I still can't wait to get to work every day. She loves what she's doing. She loves Bloomington.
She loves the people she's serving. And she also does it again. I'm going to go back to this in such
a humble way. You know, touch of humility goes a long way. And it reminds me of President Truman's quote.
That's amazing how much you can accomplish if you don't care who gets the credit.
She doesn't care who gets the credit. She just wants to get things done. She loves Bloomington. She
loves her family. She loves her bike. She loves her neighborhood and she loves her friends. I'm so happy
and proud to introduce my mayor, my friend, Carrie Thompson. That was so much better than a canned bio.
We're gonna see if we can
get those kinds of intros all of the time. Good afternoon. And I see some of our team members from the
city. Jonas, I was just singing your praises today. And Michael's here and others. But what I really
see are a lot of community leaders here in the
in the crowd at Rotary today. And I am just so deeply grateful to each of you for what you do every
day for our community. It takes us all pulling in the same direction. And to be frank, it takes us pulling
in other directions to get to a place where we know we're supposed to pull together.
As I continue to learn every day in the office of the mayor, our entire community is rich with people
who just care deeply about this place, about the city, about how it works, about whether or not it's
working. And while I do love my bike, I really hate speed bumps. So if you're going to ask me about
those, I'll be pretty frank with you about those as well.
Um, the, uh, the honor of serving as your mayor, uh, is, uh, outside of, uh, parenting my kids is probably
the greatest honor I have had in my life. Um, because in this seat, um,
We are able to listen to people and I say we because we really take a comprehensive team approach at
the city. But we're able to gather people together that otherwise wouldn't come together.
uh, to listen, but also to sit through the hard questions. Um, and there are hard days, Jeff, right?
Um, there are, there are days when, um, we think, well, we've really, we've, we've picked the most wicked
problem now and, um, we're never going to get to a place where we all agree on this. Um, and, uh, and
while that may be true that we may not all agree, um, I think
almost always we get to a point where we have chosen something a path that is better than where we started
and and that and the best path forward is frequently
Not one that any one of us in the room ever had in our mind when we got into the room that we allow
each other to be changed by one another's thoughts and and that we we listen in earnest and work together
towards the best possible outcome for our entire city and
And that is a that's what I call a no lose situation. It's not a everybody wins, but nobody should walk
away a total at a total loss when we really are listening well to one another and getting to a place
where we can actually dream big dreams and know that we have problems that other communities may call
intractable, but we
believe that we can make actual progress on them in a way that we can measure and in a way that we can
believe that we can do probably better than any other community in the country. And while we're all
dreaming big, we know that we have
high engagement from our residents. And what I've learned at the city is that that means that we also
don't get anywhere very quickly. I don't know if that's government or high engagement, but we do like
to take the scenic route in Bloomington. And and I promise you, we always at the city try to take the
approach that that's just making it a better approach, even if it's taking a lot longer. And that that
is reminding me of Charlotte's
signature line on her email, that the impossible just takes a little bit longer. And so as one of many
in this community that wants to keep living Charlotte's legacy, I'm now a firm believer in the impossible
just taking a little bit longer. What we're working towards in Bloomington and our ultimate vision,
my vision for this community
is to create a thriving community, a truly thriving community where everyone can belong, where everyone
can belong. And so that means the refugees that we were talking about earlier. It means the people who
may not be sleeping indoors tonight. It means the people who are too afraid for one reason or another
to show up at a public meeting or even at the grocery store.
And what we're doing together through acts of service, but most importantly by being great neighbors
in every way that we can is making Bloomington a place where anyone truly can belong. And when I ran
for mayor, I committed to creating a city government that listens and listens in new ways.
As you are formulating questions for me today, I would also love your ideas and your comments about
how we can listen even better. And so what we've done is some structural things. I do a town hall every
other month. Everybody's invited. We move those town halls out in the community. They're not in city
hall and they go to a different city council district every single month.
On the months I don't have town halls, I have traveling office hours and that's an opportunity for residents
to sit down with me one-on-one. Again, we do these out in public, so sometimes they're at Jiffy Treat,
sometimes they're at the YMCA, other times they're at the library, et cetera. But what that does, and
as Jeff said, I still door knock, but I don't door knock asking for votes on city time. I door knock
just to see how people are doing.
and what they're thinking about and what's working and what's not working in their neighborhoods. And
if you have, if you think you have a neighborhood that needs some knocking, you can reach out to me.
It has to be in the city. Um, that's, that's the qualifier. Um, but do reach out to my office, uh,
because we, we pick very different neighborhoods all the time. Sometimes they're neighborhoods that
we know are having an issue with something. And sometimes they're just, we just haven't knocked there
in a while and we haven't heard from anybody in this neighborhood for a while.
That's where I get the best feedback. Just by showing up at people's doors when no one else is watching,
people tell me the real deal. They tell me what they're really thinking about and what their families
are really concerned about. So we also have a great team at the city and that was one of the immediate
things that I took on as mayor was looking at our team and our the
Um, the city had done a compensation study, uh, about a year and a half before I took over as mayor
and, um, didn't have, didn't have, didn't take the opportunity to implement it. Um, we implemented that
in my first year and, um, we, we have now the data to show that we have less turnover.
We have happier employees and we just won best place to work in Bloomington. And so we really have made
strides to make sure that the people who are serving you are getting what they need at work, not only
in terms of salary, but in training and also the ability to make decisions on their own. We also, even
taking on that salary survey and other things,
we started tackling the $16 million deficit that we were running in the annual budget. And we committed
even before SCA 1 to really focusing on preserving our assets. They do take financial resources just
to preserve what we already have and to really boiling down what is,
What do we have to do? What are the basic things that our residents need? And what are the choice areas
that we can choose to spend some money to make an impact? And so you may have heard about our outcomes-based
budgeting.
which we've dipped our toe into. Jeff McKim is here, our awesome controller. I don't know where Jeff
is sitting. There's Jeff. Don't ask him any budget questions. You can direct those to me today.
He's off duty. But he's done a great job of helping us understand the relatively small portion of our
budget actually that goes into anything that is
Directive anything that's not sort of essential so that we can do our work to to spend that on outcomes
in the future and to really drive what we're trying that the outcomes that we're trying to get to as a city.
We are obviously preparing for SCA 1 to be implemented. I'm not going to belabor that point too much.
That is the Senate Enrolled Act that happened about a year and almost a year and a half ago.
It was enacted. It was amended last year. We're told it's going to be amended again this year.
Part of part of our essential city services watch right now is to address that and to make sure that
we have no more of that deficit spending happening and that we really know where every dollar is going
and that we're making the highest and best use of those dollars.
But we also are advocating at the State House to get some things rolled back on that SCA-1 provision.
So I have confidence that we can do what we need to do with what we have, but there are some impacts
we would like to drive that we're not going to be able to drive without the funding that we have had.
Importantly, we have a process that we've taken on in partnership with the county. The county actually
called the meeting for a must task force. And that's the group that looks at how we look at local income
tax together. And if you go back and look at that first must meeting, I would challenge you to conclude
that the city and county are not working well together.
That was just a remarkable first meeting. It was really a textbook example of how we can all do better
if we're looking out for one another. And I have confidence that we're gonna get to a great place with
our discussions with the local income tax. So I wanna talk a little bit about community safety. What
time am I supposed to wrap up for questions?
Oh, piece of cake. We're going to try to save even more of that for questions. So one of my main goals
coming into office was to address community safety. And I'll note for anybody who has particular interest
in community safety, the council is having a deliberation session on safety tomorrow evening.
All are welcome. And I think that starts at 6.30, their normal council time. That's an open discussion
on how we can improve community safety. The safety issues were raised in the last one. This time, we're
coming up with solutions together. And again, that's a council session. So I'm not running that.
They are. I will be there. But we really targeted some pay changes for police and fire.
Importantly, we also got them the resources that they were asking for and needed, and lots of those
were non-monetary resources, supportive resources that they
had wanted and I'm really proud that both the fire and police union contracts first round passed unanimously
and we continue to have a really positive response. Fire is now fully staffed as they have been for
about a year and our police department had its largest recruitment class that we know of
in more than three decades. We had 11 new officers in a single class this year. So pretty remarkable.
You may have heard that we are looking at 714 South Rogers, which is the old convalescent center. It's
part of Hopewell and we would like to put the new police headquarters there. That is still going through,
partially I'll say it's a due diligence process because we're still doing some structural testing and
things like that. But really that is, we've vetted a lot of different properties. That is the top choice
at this point.
We're going to, the vision is to retain most of that building, maybe all of it. And we will additionally
have a category four building as part of that that will house our dispatch and emergency operations
center. And for those of you who don't speak category four language, as I do not, it just means that
it's a building that's constructed to,
to endure a significant tornado or other weather event, seismic event, et cetera, which is really best
practice for dispatch and emergency operations. The city does not own currently a category four building
at all, which means our dispatch is not in such a building now. So that'll be an improvement and having
police and dispatch co-located will also be an improvement.
You'll hear more about that new police station as we go through the process, both at the redevelopment
commission, because they currently own that building and likely at council when we have to bond for
it. But the important thing to know about this is that the police have really been under housed for
a very, very long time. They they work in a building that still has flooding issues and moisture problems.
They're very overcrowded. And so while this is a bigger building and it may be even more square
footage than what we're ultimately going to need for police currently and dispatch. It's not a signal
that we are aiming to dramatically increase our police force. We're aiming to get to the 106 sworn officers
that has been our allocated steady state for a while. And that's
and adequately house them. And that's the only growth that we anticipate, which is just trying to get
to where we we should have been a while ago. And and so that's our that's our vision with the police
and that police department. We have met with the neighborhood associations over there and get a lot
of support for relocating the police in in that area. And the police are all
The FOP and police administration are really supportive of that location as well. I want to take a minute
to talk about housing and homelessness. And you, if you know me, will not believe that I'm just going
to talk for a minute. So that I shouldn't have said that because I'm going to talk for longer than a
minute about housing and homelessness. You know, what I've been told lately is looking at the streets
Maybe you can't tell that anything's being done about homelessness. I'm hearing from people that you're
seeing people in Seminary Park. You're still seeing people sleep outside. And I want to take you behind
the scenes on homelessness, especially street homelessness, which is unsheltered homelessness. We do
have an increase in numbers in this year's pick count from last year.
Um, that can be due to many things. Um, it may be due to having more people who are unhoused here. Um,
but there are also things that can affect that data. Um, and we know the pit count was, uh, taken this
year on a very, very cold night, uh, which, uh, does increase the number of people who will come inside
to the Bloomington, to the emergency shelter, um, as well as to our other, um, shelter partners. Um, so.
What we have done is that we have reduced the established encampments in city limits and we had more
than 12 of those in 2024 when I started as mayor.
We are down to none now. And that includes the, so that was partially city work. There was one encampment
on county property and the county closed that earlier this year. That had grown to be a large encampment.
And so part of what you're also seeing is that people who had a place to stay in any of those encampments
have not been housed yet.
And so some of that invisible, unsheltered homelessness is now visible. But we do have Heading Home
and other organizations that are working together on a unified approach to ending street homelessness.
And what that means is that, especially in the aftermath of
the Senate Enrolled Act that illegalized sleeping outside on public property. So that was SEA 285 this
past year, which came with no resources to actually house people. It just was a moratorium on sleeping
outside. The Heading Home launched Streets to Stability, and that is a zone-by-zone approach to closing
areas of downtown to sleeping.
Uh, in our first zone, 19 individuals were identified on a by name list. And this is a very systematic
approach where, um, outreach workers are going out at four 30 and five o'clock in the morning to, um,
meet with people who are sleeping outside and they're looking at the trends. Who's always here, where
are they sleeping? What do they need? And they engage with them and get their names.
creating that by name list, but even more importantly, they're helping to get them resources like an
identification and other things that all of us need in order to be housed, especially if you're going
to sign a lease somewhere. And so that first zone again had 19 people on the by name list. And within
that month of working in that zone, 13 of them were housed.
So that's the vast majority. And caseworkers are still working with people who have much more complex
cases. But this is the kind of systemized approach that can really pivot things in our community. And
we're really grateful. I see we have some friends from Community Foundation. Community Foundation has
really helped take a lead in this and rally the community around this process.
that we're working on our next zone now. And that is a larger zone. And so it's going to take three
months of work in that zone. But we are seeing real tangible improvements downtown. And I consider this,
hopefully, we are seeing more activity in the zone we're working in. And we don't,
We don't publicize what zone we're working in, but when my team is engaging with people in that zone,
they say, Oh yeah, we're here because we heard that if we sleep here, we can get housing, which means
something's working. And I want to just say that a lot of the people that are being engaged through
streets to stability are the people that, um, that were, um,
disenchanted with services in the past. And so there are obstacles not only to housing them, but also
to gaining the trust that is needed in order to find a place where they can live permanently.
I don't think that we have all the resources that we need to solve homelessness right now. And so we
are continuing to innovate around that. And the city is playing active role in working with providers
on that and looking at what more we can do to improve life for our neighbors. We also, outside of homelessness,
All housing impacts homelessness, right? It's a lack of affordable housing that ends up leading people
to a place where they're unhoused. We have taken action against a long-standing problem property owner
who has been renting really unsafe units in our community for better than three decades. And that has
had a very tangible impact not only
for those people who are residents of those properties, and by the way, paying fair market rent, but
also for the neighborhoods around those properties that were really living with some issues that were
health and safety concerns. And with a combined effort, our team has developed an approach working with
providers and
and property managers to help reduce police calls and criminal activity around the areas of some of
our permanent supportive housing and to improve the housing conditions there. We also, in addition to
these things, we have to create some more housing. There's not enough housing that people can afford
in our city.
And so some of our existing processes in the city are frankly unnecessary scenic route through planning
and and that is that is a that absorbs.
resources from the people who are building the houses, but that's not the problem actually. So this
myth that developers just want to make more money and that's why they need a fast process. Developers
may want to make more money, but the fast process actually is going to reduce the cost of your house.
And so whether it's a technically affordable house or not, when a developer has to pay an architect
to redo plans or an engineer,
That's coming out of the bottom line of the project, no matter what. So that part has very little or
nothing to do with the developer making a profit. And so we did a full permitting audit, which was completed
this spring. Those changes are already starting to happen.
We have contemporaneous review processes throughout the departments where we're able to do that. So
it doesn't go from one department and sit and then go to the next department and sit and then go back
to this department. Oh, we forgot to comment on these things. No, where everybody's looking at it and
commenting at the same time. And there's a workshop around every one of those permits if there are challenges
and how can we help solve this and get this to a yes. So it's an incredible,
process. But the part of my blueprint when I ran for mayor was to make housing more affordable, no matter
what level it is. And part of that is the permitting process. Another part of that is land use. And
so the City Council
And ultimately the unified development ordinance is owned by the city council they they create it and
they amend it, it comes from the plan commission council can send changes back to plan commission.
And I'm really proud our staff supported some really pivotal changes in the unified development ordinance
that went through a couple of weeks ago. Those should change things in the face of what we're able to
build and where and our land use patterns.
And I think that an important part of that and an example of how this will live out is the Hopewell
neighborhood, which is another one of those governmental processes that took too long.
Where we landed with phase one at Hopewell is 98 new homes that will be constructed and they are on
small lots with modest size houses and they will be owner occupied. And that is really important because
we have a lot of people who are having a hard time affording to stay in Bloomington because our housing
prices keep rising, especially in the rental market.
And the rental market is really outrageous. We're the least affordable place to live in the state of Indiana.
when you can buy into something and start to earn equity in it the the vision at Hopewell is even a
young professional can buy into Hopewell with a very modestly sized studio home and as they're able
or as they have more needs a larger family etc they can
buy something else, either at Hopewell or elsewhere. We've had a lot of interest from retirees in Hopewell.
And so I really see Hopewell, it's highly walkable. It's close to all the services you need. It's within
about a half mile, not as the crow flies even closer to our transit center, but it's close to everything
that you need. And those taxes are gonna be really low for the people on a fixed income because your
assessed value should also be low.
So I'm going to spend the last five minutes, I'm sorry, I am going to take all of my time talking about
economic development and what we're looking at there. So for me, and hopefully for all of us, economic
development is a lot more than just supporting successful businesses and being even more successful.
It's not that for me at all.
good economic development means that our wages are rising in Bloomington. Our wages should be keeping
up with our cost of housing at the very least and when we can when we can encourage that housing stability
that allows people to grow a life here they continue to invest in our community and they invest in our
community by growing their businesses here by
getting better jobs here and we get the whole community fabric working together so that we as a community
are really thriving. And so economic development and our city commitment to grow economic development
is about increasing our workforce population. Our schools are suffering.
And if we don't get people living within the MCCSC district, we will continue to see a decline in enrollment
at MCCSC. That is not the only reason our school is suffering. We can talk about SCA-1 and we can talk
about school vouchers, et cetera, but it's also about population. And we need people to live here
to be able to find jobs where if you get into an entry-level job when you're straight out of IU or another
higher ed institution, when you're straight out of Ivy Tech, you come to this job, you work your way
up, and there may not be room in that company for you to grow anywhere else. You need another place
that you can go get your mid-level job, right? And you need to see a path if you're gonna invest here.
You also need, and our branding audit brought these things up. You need enough other people your age
to date and to go out and play. We laugh, but it's true. We're losing that population because if they
haven't found their partner, they go somewhere else. If there's not enough pickup basketball leagues
and ultimate frisbee happening in those age groups, then they're not going to stay here. And so.
part of our economic development is really encouraging the quality of place that's going to attract
people to live and to stay here so that we can grow businesses, we can grow our wages, we can grow that
workforce population. And ultimately what I started talking about, which, you know, earlier about housing
and homelessness, housing is part of the solve, but we also have more housing to solve that homelessness.
And so when we get the fabric working together and working together well, then we have a community that
really thrives. And so you do hear me talking about those three things all of the time, public safety,
economic development, and housing and homelessness, because those are the keys to really creating a
community that works and thrives together. And I am happy, it is 12.45 on the dot, I am happy to take
questions.
And Michael's got the question asked there. Thank you, Mayor. I'm glad you took all the time because
it demonstrates your great knowledge. And I'm so appreciative of your work on our behalf. I want to
flip the question now. Instead of how can you help us? How can we better help you? I'm personally disappointed
but the corporate community, the faith community, this university aren't more cooperative with the work
that the city is doing. And I, what can this Rotary Club think about and do differently so that we can,
I think your language was so that we can bring all of these pieces together. Yeah, thank you.
Phil, you of course teach master classes in belonging. And I think that in my mind, the secret to community
working really well is for each one of us to use our gifts in the way that
in whatever way we're called to do that. And usually using your gifts means you find it fun and time
sort of disappears when you're doing that thing. That means you have some kind of gift in that area.
and think about what those gifts are and find a way to offer those to the community. And it's harder
than it looks sometimes. But for instance, one of the things that we're hearing from all kinds of providers
in the social service realm is that there is a
There is a poverty of relationship happening. And I've heard many, many folks who really are experts
in helping solve
challenges with homelessness say that homelessness is not just a depletion of financial resources. It
is first and foremost, the exhaustion of your relationships and an absolute desert of relationships.
And so, you know, when I was at Habitat, we always used to say that we were passion translators. And
so if you came to us and said, you know, I want to get involved, but I don't really know how to swing
a hammer. If you could bake cookies, we could recruit students to swing the hammers, right?
Um, and so it's really about, um, trying to figure out where, um, where your gifts lie and how those
can help somebody else in the community or can help you in the community also helps us to use our gifts.
Um, and so I don't have a recipe book and that that's, um, by design, um, there's no recipe book. Um, but.
Uh, in, in today's day and age where there's social media, um, that people hide behind and, and take
cheap shots about what others are doing. Um, don't be afraid to get out there and use your gifts. Nobody
has to, um, approve of what you're doing. Um, nobody has to, um, nobody has to, uh, designate you as
the, um, queen cookie baker or whatever. Um, there are ways and I,
I don't spend a lot of time on next door, but I did notice, um, there's a young guy. Um, Brynn Ren is
his name, I think. Um, he, he started a window washing business, um, in the community, probably three
years ago. He, he just needed money and he had a, he's a young guy. He had a, he bought a ladder and
he had a bucket and he, um,
started advertising on Nextdoor that he would wash windows. Well, he posted a couple days ago that he
has now served thousands of people. But even more importantly, he was asking people what cool things
they were seeing out in the community. And on Nextdoor, where you can see everybody complaining about
everything, there was a whole stream of cool that was happening in our community
started by a young window washer, right? So he's just using his gifts to create a joy ripple in our
community. And that's really what it's about. And I really hope I did some good small business promotion
for Brynn because he came and washed my windows once and that post made me want to have more windows
in my house.
Thank you, Carrie. Thank you for your presentation. We've known each other for a while. We have. And
I think that, you know, my main thing in particularly in legislation is basic city services and the
best use of our tax dollars. I don't have a question, but I do have a comment. One of the things that
I've learned over time is that people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care.
And I just want to thank you for exhibiting that you care. And I think that'll go a long way.
So thank you very much. Thanks, Jim. Jim, Jim, we filled 9,800 potholes this year. And counting. Oh,
yeah, only about 100,000 to go. That's right. That's a lot more filled than what happened in Indianapolis.
Anyway, thanks for coming here, Kara. I think you're the best mailer we've ever had. Well, that's very
good. I really do. I just curious.
I live next to Griffin nature preserve and I used to love having deer stop by my property, but you started
having the deer calls. Um, I don't see any, you aren't going to do that again this year. Are you?
I hope not. Um, since I'm not the person who does the call, uh, I can't tell you, uh, it's, it's actually,
we, we did one this year already, cause it was in like February or something. That's usually when they
happen. I don't know if there's one scheduled for next year. Um, cause it's a,
It's Parks and Rec, I think, that does it. So I'll just tell you, this was a hilarious study in government.
The reason we got those Griffey Lake deer calls was because people had had it with deer in
their neighborhood. And there was literally, this sounds funny, but there was an urban deer task force
set up. Urban deer task force.
The only thing they could agree on was going somewhere outside of the urban area and calling the deer.
Um, so that's how we landed with that. And, um, I find it to be a hysterical Bloomington story.
Believe me. We have a question online. Okay. Good. Good afternoon. And thank you so much, Mayor Thompson
for that wonderful presentation.
I am Gerona Roteach, faculty member at IU. I think we traveled with you to Palo Alto, and I really appreciate
your passion for the community. My question is actually related to the comment that you said is that
people need people here to date and kind of that stuff. So my question is, given that some of us, and
what I've heard is from people from diverse communities, they say, as soon as they graduate or they
get another opportunity,
They want to leave Bloomington because it's not as diverse as they would love to be and there's not
a lot of things to do. So what do you have in mind for enhancing that diversity? And then one second
question associated with that is, I noticed that one of the things that helps is the sister cities.
I noticed that the city of Bloomington has two sister cities, one in Nicaragua and Cuba. Do you have
I know you're focusing on the community right now, but down the road, do you have any, any, uh, plans
to expand the sister city and maybe include others in Africa or Europe or other places? Yeah. Uh, great
question. Um, I'll tell you, I have a lot of, um,
I have a lot of enthusiasm for sister cities and we're actually working on a sister city in Ukraine
right now. But we also don't have a lot of staff resources to do that well. And so this is an area that
I would say is I am pretty hesitant to over promise and under deliver on a full sister city relationship.
Especially with today's federal government, I remain very open and eager to learn how we can work on
diversity issues in our community when we're, I think I'm not even supposed to say the word diversity.
I mean, it's a ridiculous climate that we're in. But one of the things that I do wanna just
It seems like it should be obvious, and I'm sure it's obvious to you, but it may not be to others. Every
time somebody from a diverse background can't find enough people here to feel comfortable, that's one
less person from a diverse background that ends up staying in Bloomington. And so I consider it all
of our work to figure out how to create belonging,
how to create inclusion, how to listen well and actually do things that help people feel at home in
Bloomington. And there are all kinds of things that we need. We need hair salons that know how to work
with diverse hair. We also need a community that knows that when you read
that ICE is here in the newspapers, we have people that are scared and can't go to the grocery store
and don't feel even comfortable sending their kids to school. So there are organizations that are organizing
grocery drop-offs and they're organizing rides for people to and from work, et cetera. And these are
all things that we can get involved in. And you don't have to speak another language. You don't have to
have a color skin other than mine to make somebody know that they're welcome and you're happy that they're
here and you want to help them feel safe. And, um, so as your mayor, I'm just encouraging everyone to
play ball with this. Um, but also as your mayor, I'm just going to tell you, I'm still learning about this.
And we all need to be learning about this because it's something that is impacting Bloomington. And
if you don't care for any other reason, if you want your economic development to grow, we have to be
more diverse. Last question. Thank you. Thank you for all you do. My question is, if you can name one
thing that you're the most proud of since you've been mayor, what has it been? And then second,
What do you look for on the horizon as your next big project? The single biggest thing I'm proud of
is that employer of choice award. And here's why. I at my core believe in asset-based community development
and that when you're running a large organization means that you have to have a distributed leadership
model, which means
The mayor's not the smartest person in the room. The room is the smartest, right? And the city had been
through COVID just like everybody else. It was just a really hard time when I took over as mayor. And
the morale was pretty low. And people would say that they'd walk down the hall and nobody would say
hi to them.
And, um, and that was, I think that was COVID, right? But it was really my goal to make it a great place
to work and a place that, um, people really felt proud of their service because our people are top notch.
I mean, what they are doing, you know, when, when our water went down, we had, if, if any of you ever
watched that show, MacGyver,
We had, you know, our, um, our water treatment folks were there straight through the night, two nights
in a row, MacGyvering things because we couldn't get a high voltage electrician out there until Monday.
And we had a football game, which means lots of people are drinking beer and peeing. Right. And it used
a lot of water really fast. Um, so.
you know these kinds of things happen behind the scenes and lots of times we're managing them in a way
that um and these are people that you you'll never know their names and you'll never know how hard they're
working for the city to make sure you never have to think about your drinking water but they are and
um and frequently they're getting us out of a bind so we don't have to do a boil water um alert um so
That was, you know, getting that award was, um, probably my proudest moment because it really was a
turnaround. And I think what that does is speaks to hopefully the level of service that you all are
getting from your city employees. What was your second question? Yeah. Um,
Well, let me clarify for those of you who read the paper, it's not college and Walnut two way. So that's
not happening during my tenure. I mean, we just are not gonna have that money anyway. So even if you
love the idea, I'm really sorry, but we're trying to be clear, it's not happening. I guess they don't
like it anyway.
Um, but, uh, but, uh, you know, I'm kind of boring or you could just say predictable. We've made strides
in the last three years in public safety, economic development, and housing and homelessness. There's
a lot of work still left to do. And that's what I'm working on on the horizon.
Thank you, Mayor Thompson. And dare I say that in these days, we appreciate predictability and boring.
Very much so. In honor of your talk today, we will be donating $100 to Shalom Beacon for the quarter.
And I'd like to thank, in the spirit of time, I'm just going to say, you know who you are. Thank you
to everyone who helped pull this meeting together.
appreciate that greatly. A couple of quick announcements because one of the slides was missing. We have
three slots for actually two available slots potentially for RILA. So if there's a young student that
you would like to attend the Rotary Youth Leadership Academy, let us know. Secondly, I know parking
is a bear. Remember, we still have the Atwater garage that we can leverage. And if you don't mind paying,
you can go to the one I always call it the Poplar's garage. That's easy, but we don't get that one for free.
So if you have a bind, you can handle that. There's also a Hayraiser 5K race this weekend. There's flyers
at the front or see Amy Osojima if you're interested. And then we have the book club on the 21st at
Liz Fiddle's home. We have toast tickets available. You can find your toast tickets as well as your
holiday party tickets on the roundabout. There are links. And next week, I'll bring you a computer guide
as to how to find those on the roundabout. And with that,
Let's see, I think that pretty much covers it. So if you wouldn't mind putting the slide up. And those
who are able to stand, please stand. Of the things we are able to do, first, is it the truth? Second,
is it fair to all concerned? Third, will it build goodwill and better friendships? Fourth, will it be
beneficial to all concerned? And fifth, is it fun?