Speaker 1
Hello everybody on WFIU, Facebook Live. We haven't done this in a while. I know. We've been I've been joining you in person recording and using it on air but we thought we were overdue for Facebook Live. I'm Joe Hren from WFIU news. And this month, April the third week we always have Bloomington Mayor John Hamilton as our guest Hello, welcome. How are you Mr. Mayor?
Speaker 3
Thanks, Joe. It's good to be with you. I'm fine. Thank you. Yeah, we got to keep our chops so we remember how to do this stuff like we used to do during the pandemic so good to be witness.
Speaker 1
Don't forget you can submit questions at news at Indiana public media.org on email we're also on Twitter at Ask the mayor and you can put comments down below and of course we if we don't get to them, I save them we'll make sure we'll have them for for next time. Just start with Kirkwood avenue I believe parts our parks closed again for outdoor dining.
Speaker 3
Yep, we've we've put up the put up the barricades on about two and a half blocks of Kirkwood. All the all the north south streets are through. But there's several blocks where we have more outdoor dining in on a day like this weekend last weekend to come and weekend is pretty popular place for people to enjoy.
Speaker 1
So not but not all businesses and are in support. And of course drivers even though the worst of COVID. I mean, as we know it is over from three years ago. Is it still a good business model?
Speaker 3
Well, Joe, all of this is really driven by our really close collaboration with the Kirkwood business owners. It's driven by their interest. It is true that there's they're not unanimous about this, but we we always take it to city council which has the ultimate vote on this. And we and other interested parties show up and encourage the this time we shortened the season a little bit, little less than the spring a little less than the fall late fall. But there are a lot of people who really stood up and wanted to say this is a good thing for the community. Not only the restaurant tours, but a lot of the people who patronize it. So it's you know, I look it's kind of like a work in progress. We were talking ahead about how the city always is monitoring what's going on whether it's stop signs, or scooters or or street closures like this, and we, you know, the world changes, tastes change, interests change. So we're always monitoring that. But I think overall, there's a lot of positive feedback we get about the partial closure during the good months of the weather to let people enjoy Kirkwood, in a new way.
Speaker 1
You mentioned a few things we definitely want to get to a new stop sign and scooters but let's jump over to election. primary debates are happening forums early voting Do you miss all the campaigning?
Speaker 3
Well, there are parts I don't miss. You know, the most fun part about campaigning and election season is engaging with the public and thinking about issues talking about issues and so it's a little it's a little hard for me after eight years and two election cycles to just sit back and watch but, but there's also some advantages. I do think you know, Joe see Seriously, I love talking and thinking about Bloomington. I've been doing that for eight solid years here and knowing where we are and where their challenges and where their opportunities, great momentum. You know, I'm really proud of where the city is. And I think we're positioned very well. And it's interesting to watch from the cheap seats as debates go on and that kind of thing. But I'm I'm hopeful that both at the council level and the mayor level that will get good choices, and the city will move ahead to continue what I think is really good momentum we have in place right now.
Speaker 1
Just two quick follow up questions. And I know, I have a whole year still ahead of us. But you know, the big ticket item and your administration you've been working on for so long annexation tied up in the courts right now. It seems like two of the three candidates one way or the other mayoral candidates would want to stop annexation or review it. What do you mean, how do you feel about that? Do you know? Can it be legally stopped?
Speaker 3
Well, I talked about that with City Council just last week, Joe, it concerns me greatly look at annexations always complicated. It's very much prescribed by state law. I'm afraid that some of the people thinking about these you don't really deeply know how it works or what the options are. You cannot just slow down annexation. Once you start it, you need to finish it one way or the other. And that right now is in the courts because of what the state legislature did. So it's really important from my perspective, to finish what we're in, get that decision done through the courts, if there are other ways people want approach in the future. But one of the one of the big problems that people don't think about is if the if the boundaries don't change. Now, through this process, it's quite possible that those boundaries will not change for a very, very long time many years decades, which which would just be a very bad result for our whole community in the whole region. Bloomington has annexed hundreds of times in our history, because you need to bring the densely populated areas into the city to manage them. We just learned one example. Last week I hadn't even thought about which is the rural transit, it could face losses of revenue, because it's no longer rural transit, because so much more of its territory outside the city is not rural anymore. And the federal government defines that it doesn't matter what we say. So it's it's really important, I think, to move forward. i It is a question that I care about when I asked city council candidates or mayor candidates, are you willing to go forward with this? We've talked about it a lot, Joe, you know that it's, it's a really good deal personally, if you get to live right next to city limits and don't pay city taxes. And that's why we have gradual annexation. And that's why we're doing the catch up that we're doing. But we'll see what happens. But the litigation really has its own momentum now in two different cases. And I hope we'll be the whoever is in place in the council and the mayor will let that play its course out.
Speaker 1
We just saw some campaign records come out yesterday. Notice you've donated to the Griffin campaign. Are you planning on officially endorsing him or anybody?
Speaker 3
Well, I have endorsed Don I mean, it's clear. He was my deputy mayor. I think he's the he's the one who will lead our city forward. Well, nothing against the other two who might know. But I think he is the one who best understands, in my view, how to keep the city moving. It's complicated. You gotta be willing to sometimes do some things that some people don't like, and that's why we have a democracy. But I think it's a very, you know, very engaged campaign. I hope everybody will get out and vote that's the most important thing is for everybody to get out and vote for your favorite. I have I have a pic with Don Griffin, but I know other people disagree.
Speaker 1
So I saw some pretty big news on the high speed internet installation about 100 homes can now tap into the service leaving the south Griffey neighborhood. Are you briefed on how many subscribers are signed up?
Speaker 3
I'm not I don't have a number of that other than I know that they're very pleased with the uptake so far. You know, we wanted to let the community know that that's beginning that the first 100 homes were available a by the end of next month, it should be about five or 6000 homes that we'll be able to sign up and by the end of next year, every resident in the city so, Joe, you know, it is something I've worked on very hard. I think it's a critical new infrastructure for our city to help competitiveness to help digital equity we have we think the best digital equity program in the country, which will mean a whole a whole lot to students, young students in our K 12 schools to seniors, looking for health care to people trying to work from home learn from home. All that's really important. I'm very excited that we've got that process underway. I know there's some digging going on around the city, but it's it's short term pain for really long term. Very important gain.
Speaker 1
And obviously, I know it's early 100 homes of 1000s. For right now, but but is that something in the future that the mayor or administration will be briefed on? In terms of, you know, how many people are actually using the service? Are they taking advantage of, you know, the different income levels, things like that?
Speaker 3
Absolutely. There's a dashboard, if it's not up, it's going up, I think was supposed to go up late last week, that gives that kind of information about just those things, how many subscribers, how many of which demographics, you know, this is a $50 million investment by this company, gigabit now that's with with Meridiam, the Who's your fiber networks is building the network, and gigabit now is using it. It's a big investment in our community, from the private sector, we're putting a million dollars on the table that get their 50 million, that helps build that digital equity program to make sure everybody can get good access to it. So I'm, I'm really pleased with it. Joe, if I were running, I'd be talking about this all the time. But I'm not but it's a it is a game changer for our city. Even even places like Smithville will be able to use this network in just a few years to reach more people than they otherwise would.
Speaker 1
just dawned on me, we did have an email and I can't remember the name of the sender, but wanted to know why the city wasn't working with other providers in using the same infrastructure like if they're coming through in digging, why not put both in? Why doing separate diggings for different installations?
Speaker 3
Well, it's a great question. And it's it was really a driving factor in our whole approach to this, which is we wanted to get fiber infrastructure designed and built as infrastructure. So that it's not 18 t's fiber or Comcast fibers that they will all be shared. And with this new Hoosier fiber networks, they are installing this and for a few years, it will be only gigabit now's access. But within a few years, it does open up to let anybody use the infrastructure. So you don't have to dig twice, you just dig once and you build the infrastructure for the whole city. It was really important for us that it'd be open that's really unusual around the country. Unless you built it yourself and pay for it yourself, which we weren't willing to do ready to do? I don't think so. It there's a period in which gig of it now gets exclusive use basically to let them enter the market and make a full blown entry into the market. And then after a few years, it opens up so you don't have to dig anymore. It's all one system available to him. I like our roads.
Speaker 1
City council moving ahead with a $3.5 million appropriation for the trades district Tech Center. You know, I did get to talk with the former Mayor John Fernandez leading the development of that area. And I remember him saying this was priority number one, there was some discussion about whether TIF funds, though should be used rather than is it cred funds. So are the funds going into the right places? Well, Joe, I
Speaker 3
really think that's kind of inside baseball that most people the difference between tax increment finance and community revitalization enhancement funds. They're both used to support development, economic development jobs promoting the future of our of our economy. And we actually took a little from each about 2 million from tax increment, finance, TIF and about 3 million plus from cred. As you mentioned, there were some on council who wanted a different ratio of that. But in the end, the council voted eight, eight to zero to one to support it. It's really exciting. We're going to have kind of a it's kind of the mill 2.0, if you will, that that is another new building showing the growth of Indiana's Bloomington tech sector leading the state in terms of our performance at the mill. So that's exciting. And I'm really pleased we shouldn't be breaking ground and see construction starting yet this year. So I look forward to maybe I'll see it a ribbon cutting I mean a groundbreaking sorry, a groundbreaking later this year. Several senators
Speaker 1
criticized the county and Bloomington food and beverage tax spending this past week, of course, both spent about $200,000 during the pandemic for it was for tourism business to stay afloat during COVID. The state is now saying that you had to do that with different funds. So was that something that city and county didn't know or check beforehand?
Speaker 3
No, we disagree with that. We don't always agree with what the state says we were very careful with our lawyers, making sure we could use those funds for emergency response to the appropriate entities during the pandemic. These were tourism related bills notices that we've that were really at risk of going away, and we wanted to use those we provided loans. They're getting repaid. We're very comfortable that that was all appropriate. Now, you know, look, I want the convention center to go ahead, too. I think that's kind of part of the underlying issue that the State House is looking at. We're ready to build it. I want to make clear if this if the county wants to create a Capital Improvement Board to CIB, they can do that tomorrow. They don't need my approval to do that. And that is one approach. We have a different approach, we think could work. But I'm still hopeful we can get that construction started. We're ready to build it. It's an exciting opportunity. We have the funds, I want to make sure it's an excellent product. And that's why I want to make sure we don't create a system that will produce a mediocre product but produce an excellent one. And that's what that's what I'm focused on. And
Speaker 1
I mean, obviously, this is something we've been talking about for a long time. You know, we've we've heard that, but there's just been no movement. Is there anything that you can give us today that's new that this project project process project is actually moving forward?
Speaker 3
Well, I continue to talk to people about it trying to suggest ways forward. Again, the county, which county commissioners, as a reminder, a couple of them didn't support the project at the beginning. And they've kind of been dragged along to reluctantly, perhaps endorse some parts of the process. But they can if they want to do a CIP, they can create one tomorrow, they have the authority to do it. They can they can get funding from the City Council, the city council wants to appropriate it all that potentially could have happened six months ago, they rushed us in the city to move forward last December. I said, That's not my preferred way. But if you want to go ahead, go ahead. And nothing has happened to counties, I think busy with other things. I'm continuing to talk to city council and county council and commissioners about ways to move this forward. But I don't I only want to move forward. If we're confident we have a way to do it to create an excellent product. I'm afraid that there are some people who want to just do it to get it done and check it off and not do a great job. That's not what the community needs. So I'm still hopeful. There's still conversations going. But we're not we're not where I think we should be
Unknown Speaker
a new four way stop, but
Speaker 1
is up at seven than done. It's where that new seven line bike lane was installed last year. I think the questions I see from our website, or social media coming up is Why wasn't that seen beforehand?
Speaker 3
Well, Joe, when we created the seven line, we took out five stop signs, I think. And in order to create a better flow for bicyclists pedestrians and buses, to use that connection. Of course, that's the first part of a much longer trail that we hope to go all the way to 446 on the east side. We got into it, we looked at it, it's working great. The bicycle traffic is way up. It's actually reduced pedestrian. Any accidents with pedestrians. So there have been some good things. But we did see one intersection where despite all of our best efforts, the cars keep banging into each other. And we haven't had they've mostly been car on car fender benders. And it done at seven was was the place where we saw the most of that. So we went through the same process of the pedestrian bike Commission and the traffic commission and city council to say, look, we took out five we see one of the five it looks like maybe it could be useful to put it back. So we're doing that in a emergency order. The city council will have to vote on that in the next six months sometime whether to make it permanent or not. And as you know, I mentioned we do that we are always watching as patterns change as we're watching for where we have hundreds of accidents a year in the city. And we always are looking where are they happening? What can we do to improve things?
Speaker 1
I know we're short on time, but I didn't want to try to get this question in a new program. The city announced the Indianapolis zoo will pick up certain invasives cleared from your property. And I guess in the Bloomington area for fodder for animals. How does that work? How did that come about?
Speaker 3
This is so fun. Joe, you know, part of this kind of comes from that bamboo thing right where we're we're really trying to get rid of a very, very invasive bamboo species here and people are cutting it down and then we have a connection to the zoo. Our Corporate Council has been very involved with them for a long time. And they said you know we really like bamboo, we need bamboo. We can feed that to our pandas or elephants or whatever. So we started talking and it turns out the Indianapolis zoo wants to do this with us and we're excited to say any any homeowners any any property owners, landscape folks, if you if you collect fresh cut vegetable material like bamboo or other other material, we will pick it up and feed it to our animals. And we it's an experience We'll see how it works. But we're very excited to do it. It's a way to, you know, use our debris, if you will, in interesting ways in the zoo. Get him down here to help us feed their animals. I think it's pretty cool. I don't know if we get free tickets from it or fed by Bloomington. You know, I don't know that. We'll see if there are any signs up there for that. But it's pretty cool collaboration, I think. All right. Thanks
Speaker 1
so much. I do like to leave the last question to you, though. Any announcements? Anything else you'd like to say before we go?
Speaker 3
Joe, thanks so much. What you do is really important to media coverage of all this. It's really important for people to vote, pay attention, please get out there and listen to the candidates and exercise your right to vote now early voting or on May 2 Tuesday, election day.
Speaker 1
Alright, thanks again for your time and hope to see you next month in May. Thank you, Joe. Have a good month. All right. You too, and everyone. Thanks for watching. We'll have this more tomorrow on our website Wfiunews.org
Hello everybody on WFIU, Facebook Live. We haven't done this in a while. I know. We've been I've been joining you in person recording and using it on air but we thought we were overdue for Facebook Live. I'm Joe Hren from WFIU news. And this month, April the third week we always have Bloomington Mayor John Hamilton as our guest Hello, welcome. How are you Mr. Mayor?
Speaker 3
Thanks, Joe. It's good to be with you. I'm fine. Thank you. Yeah, we got to keep our chops so we remember how to do this stuff like we used to do during the pandemic so good to be witness.
Speaker 1
Don't forget you can submit questions at news at Indiana public media.org on email we're also on Twitter at Ask the mayor and you can put comments down below and of course we if we don't get to them, I save them we'll make sure we'll have them for for next time. Just start with Kirkwood avenue I believe parts our parks closed again for outdoor dining.
Speaker 3
Yep, we've we've put up the put up the barricades on about two and a half blocks of Kirkwood. All the all the north south streets are through. But there's several blocks where we have more outdoor dining in on a day like this weekend last weekend to come and weekend is pretty popular place for people to enjoy.
Speaker 1
So not but not all businesses and are in support. And of course drivers even though the worst of COVID. I mean, as we know it is over from three years ago. Is it still a good business model?
Speaker 3
Well, Joe, all of this is really driven by our really close collaboration with the Kirkwood business owners. It's driven by their interest. It is true that there's they're not unanimous about this, but we we always take it to city council which has the ultimate vote on this. And we and other interested parties show up and encourage the this time we shortened the season a little bit, little less than the spring a little less than the fall late fall. But there are a lot of people who really stood up and wanted to say this is a good thing for the community. Not only the restaurant tours, but a lot of the people who patronize it. So it's you know, I look it's kind of like a work in progress. We were talking ahead about how the city always is monitoring what's going on whether it's stop signs, or scooters or or street closures like this, and we, you know, the world changes, tastes change, interests change. So we're always monitoring that. But I think overall, there's a lot of positive feedback we get about the partial closure during the good months of the weather to let people enjoy Kirkwood, in a new way.
Speaker 1
You mentioned a few things we definitely want to get to a new stop sign and scooters but let's jump over to election. primary debates are happening forums early voting Do you miss all the campaigning?
Speaker 3
Well, there are parts I don't miss. You know, the most fun part about campaigning and election season is engaging with the public and thinking about issues talking about issues and so it's a little it's a little hard for me after eight years and two election cycles to just sit back and watch but, but there's also some advantages. I do think you know, Joe see Seriously, I love talking and thinking about Bloomington. I've been doing that for eight solid years here and knowing where we are and where their challenges and where their opportunities, great momentum. You know, I'm really proud of where the city is. And I think we're positioned very well. And it's interesting to watch from the cheap seats as debates go on and that kind of thing. But I'm I'm hopeful that both at the council level and the mayor level that will get good choices, and the city will move ahead to continue what I think is really good momentum we have in place right now.
Speaker 1
Just two quick follow up questions. And I know, I have a whole year still ahead of us. But you know, the big ticket item and your administration you've been working on for so long annexation tied up in the courts right now. It seems like two of the three candidates one way or the other mayoral candidates would want to stop annexation or review it. What do you mean, how do you feel about that? Do you know? Can it be legally stopped?
Speaker 3
Well, I talked about that with City Council just last week, Joe, it concerns me greatly look at annexations always complicated. It's very much prescribed by state law. I'm afraid that some of the people thinking about these you don't really deeply know how it works or what the options are. You cannot just slow down annexation. Once you start it, you need to finish it one way or the other. And that right now is in the courts because of what the state legislature did. So it's really important from my perspective, to finish what we're in, get that decision done through the courts, if there are other ways people want approach in the future. But one of the one of the big problems that people don't think about is if the if the boundaries don't change. Now, through this process, it's quite possible that those boundaries will not change for a very, very long time many years decades, which which would just be a very bad result for our whole community in the whole region. Bloomington has annexed hundreds of times in our history, because you need to bring the densely populated areas into the city to manage them. We just learned one example. Last week I hadn't even thought about which is the rural transit, it could face losses of revenue, because it's no longer rural transit, because so much more of its territory outside the city is not rural anymore. And the federal government defines that it doesn't matter what we say. So it's it's really important, I think, to move forward. i It is a question that I care about when I asked city council candidates or mayor candidates, are you willing to go forward with this? We've talked about it a lot, Joe, you know that it's, it's a really good deal personally, if you get to live right next to city limits and don't pay city taxes. And that's why we have gradual annexation. And that's why we're doing the catch up that we're doing. But we'll see what happens. But the litigation really has its own momentum now in two different cases. And I hope we'll be the whoever is in place in the council and the mayor will let that play its course out.
Speaker 1
We just saw some campaign records come out yesterday. Notice you've donated to the Griffin campaign. Are you planning on officially endorsing him or anybody?
Speaker 3
Well, I have endorsed Don I mean, it's clear. He was my deputy mayor. I think he's the he's the one who will lead our city forward. Well, nothing against the other two who might know. But I think he is the one who best understands, in my view, how to keep the city moving. It's complicated. You gotta be willing to sometimes do some things that some people don't like, and that's why we have a democracy. But I think it's a very, you know, very engaged campaign. I hope everybody will get out and vote that's the most important thing is for everybody to get out and vote for your favorite. I have I have a pic with Don Griffin, but I know other people disagree.
Speaker 1
So I saw some pretty big news on the high speed internet installation about 100 homes can now tap into the service leaving the south Griffey neighborhood. Are you briefed on how many subscribers are signed up?
Speaker 3
I'm not I don't have a number of that other than I know that they're very pleased with the uptake so far. You know, we wanted to let the community know that that's beginning that the first 100 homes were available a by the end of next month, it should be about five or 6000 homes that we'll be able to sign up and by the end of next year, every resident in the city so, Joe, you know, it is something I've worked on very hard. I think it's a critical new infrastructure for our city to help competitiveness to help digital equity we have we think the best digital equity program in the country, which will mean a whole a whole lot to students, young students in our K 12 schools to seniors, looking for health care to people trying to work from home learn from home. All that's really important. I'm very excited that we've got that process underway. I know there's some digging going on around the city, but it's it's short term pain for really long term. Very important gain.
Speaker 1
And obviously, I know it's early 100 homes of 1000s. For right now, but but is that something in the future that the mayor or administration will be briefed on? In terms of, you know, how many people are actually using the service? Are they taking advantage of, you know, the different income levels, things like that?
Speaker 3
Absolutely. There's a dashboard, if it's not up, it's going up, I think was supposed to go up late last week, that gives that kind of information about just those things, how many subscribers, how many of which demographics, you know, this is a $50 million investment by this company, gigabit now that's with with Meridiam, the Who's your fiber networks is building the network, and gigabit now is using it. It's a big investment in our community, from the private sector, we're putting a million dollars on the table that get their 50 million, that helps build that digital equity program to make sure everybody can get good access to it. So I'm, I'm really pleased with it. Joe, if I were running, I'd be talking about this all the time. But I'm not but it's a it is a game changer for our city. Even even places like Smithville will be able to use this network in just a few years to reach more people than they otherwise would.
Speaker 1
just dawned on me, we did have an email and I can't remember the name of the sender, but wanted to know why the city wasn't working with other providers in using the same infrastructure like if they're coming through in digging, why not put both in? Why doing separate diggings for different installations?
Speaker 3
Well, it's a great question. And it's it was really a driving factor in our whole approach to this, which is we wanted to get fiber infrastructure designed and built as infrastructure. So that it's not 18 t's fiber or Comcast fibers that they will all be shared. And with this new Hoosier fiber networks, they are installing this and for a few years, it will be only gigabit now's access. But within a few years, it does open up to let anybody use the infrastructure. So you don't have to dig twice, you just dig once and you build the infrastructure for the whole city. It was really important for us that it'd be open that's really unusual around the country. Unless you built it yourself and pay for it yourself, which we weren't willing to do ready to do? I don't think so. It there's a period in which gig of it now gets exclusive use basically to let them enter the market and make a full blown entry into the market. And then after a few years, it opens up so you don't have to dig anymore. It's all one system available to him. I like our roads.
Speaker 1
City council moving ahead with a $3.5 million appropriation for the trades district Tech Center. You know, I did get to talk with the former Mayor John Fernandez leading the development of that area. And I remember him saying this was priority number one, there was some discussion about whether TIF funds, though should be used rather than is it cred funds. So are the funds going into the right places? Well, Joe, I
Speaker 3
really think that's kind of inside baseball that most people the difference between tax increment finance and community revitalization enhancement funds. They're both used to support development, economic development jobs promoting the future of our of our economy. And we actually took a little from each about 2 million from tax increment, finance, TIF and about 3 million plus from cred. As you mentioned, there were some on council who wanted a different ratio of that. But in the end, the council voted eight, eight to zero to one to support it. It's really exciting. We're going to have kind of a it's kind of the mill 2.0, if you will, that that is another new building showing the growth of Indiana's Bloomington tech sector leading the state in terms of our performance at the mill. So that's exciting. And I'm really pleased we shouldn't be breaking ground and see construction starting yet this year. So I look forward to maybe I'll see it a ribbon cutting I mean a groundbreaking sorry, a groundbreaking later this year. Several senators
Speaker 1
criticized the county and Bloomington food and beverage tax spending this past week, of course, both spent about $200,000 during the pandemic for it was for tourism business to stay afloat during COVID. The state is now saying that you had to do that with different funds. So was that something that city and county didn't know or check beforehand?
Speaker 3
No, we disagree with that. We don't always agree with what the state says we were very careful with our lawyers, making sure we could use those funds for emergency response to the appropriate entities during the pandemic. These were tourism related bills notices that we've that were really at risk of going away, and we wanted to use those we provided loans. They're getting repaid. We're very comfortable that that was all appropriate. Now, you know, look, I want the convention center to go ahead, too. I think that's kind of part of the underlying issue that the State House is looking at. We're ready to build it. I want to make clear if this if the county wants to create a Capital Improvement Board to CIB, they can do that tomorrow. They don't need my approval to do that. And that is one approach. We have a different approach, we think could work. But I'm still hopeful we can get that construction started. We're ready to build it. It's an exciting opportunity. We have the funds, I want to make sure it's an excellent product. And that's why I want to make sure we don't create a system that will produce a mediocre product but produce an excellent one. And that's what that's what I'm focused on. And
Speaker 1
I mean, obviously, this is something we've been talking about for a long time. You know, we've we've heard that, but there's just been no movement. Is there anything that you can give us today that's new that this project project process project is actually moving forward?
Speaker 3
Well, I continue to talk to people about it trying to suggest ways forward. Again, the county, which county commissioners, as a reminder, a couple of them didn't support the project at the beginning. And they've kind of been dragged along to reluctantly, perhaps endorse some parts of the process. But they can if they want to do a CIP, they can create one tomorrow, they have the authority to do it. They can they can get funding from the City Council, the city council wants to appropriate it all that potentially could have happened six months ago, they rushed us in the city to move forward last December. I said, That's not my preferred way. But if you want to go ahead, go ahead. And nothing has happened to counties, I think busy with other things. I'm continuing to talk to city council and county council and commissioners about ways to move this forward. But I don't I only want to move forward. If we're confident we have a way to do it to create an excellent product. I'm afraid that there are some people who want to just do it to get it done and check it off and not do a great job. That's not what the community needs. So I'm still hopeful. There's still conversations going. But we're not we're not where I think we should be
Unknown Speaker
a new four way stop, but
Speaker 1
is up at seven than done. It's where that new seven line bike lane was installed last year. I think the questions I see from our website, or social media coming up is Why wasn't that seen beforehand?
Speaker 3
Well, Joe, when we created the seven line, we took out five stop signs, I think. And in order to create a better flow for bicyclists pedestrians and buses, to use that connection. Of course, that's the first part of a much longer trail that we hope to go all the way to 446 on the east side. We got into it, we looked at it, it's working great. The bicycle traffic is way up. It's actually reduced pedestrian. Any accidents with pedestrians. So there have been some good things. But we did see one intersection where despite all of our best efforts, the cars keep banging into each other. And we haven't had they've mostly been car on car fender benders. And it done at seven was was the place where we saw the most of that. So we went through the same process of the pedestrian bike Commission and the traffic commission and city council to say, look, we took out five we see one of the five it looks like maybe it could be useful to put it back. So we're doing that in a emergency order. The city council will have to vote on that in the next six months sometime whether to make it permanent or not. And as you know, I mentioned we do that we are always watching as patterns change as we're watching for where we have hundreds of accidents a year in the city. And we always are looking where are they happening? What can we do to improve things?
Speaker 1
I know we're short on time, but I didn't want to try to get this question in a new program. The city announced the Indianapolis zoo will pick up certain invasives cleared from your property. And I guess in the Bloomington area for fodder for animals. How does that work? How did that come about?
Speaker 3
This is so fun. Joe, you know, part of this kind of comes from that bamboo thing right where we're we're really trying to get rid of a very, very invasive bamboo species here and people are cutting it down and then we have a connection to the zoo. Our Corporate Council has been very involved with them for a long time. And they said you know we really like bamboo, we need bamboo. We can feed that to our pandas or elephants or whatever. So we started talking and it turns out the Indianapolis zoo wants to do this with us and we're excited to say any any homeowners any any property owners, landscape folks, if you if you collect fresh cut vegetable material like bamboo or other other material, we will pick it up and feed it to our animals. And we it's an experience We'll see how it works. But we're very excited to do it. It's a way to, you know, use our debris, if you will, in interesting ways in the zoo. Get him down here to help us feed their animals. I think it's pretty cool. I don't know if we get free tickets from it or fed by Bloomington. You know, I don't know that. We'll see if there are any signs up there for that. But it's pretty cool collaboration, I think. All right. Thanks
Speaker 1
so much. I do like to leave the last question to you, though. Any announcements? Anything else you'd like to say before we go?
Speaker 3
Joe, thanks so much. What you do is really important to media coverage of all this. It's really important for people to vote, pay attention, please get out there and listen to the candidates and exercise your right to vote now early voting or on May 2 Tuesday, election day.
Speaker 1
Alright, thanks again for your time and hope to see you next month in May. Thank you, Joe. Have a good month. All right. You too, and everyone. Thanks for watching. We'll have this more tomorrow on our website Wfiunews.org
