Speaker 1
Hello, and welcome to ask the mayor on WFIU. I'm Joe Hren. This week we're with Bloomington Mayor John Hamilton at City Hall. Hello. Welcome to the show. Nice to have you again. Joe.
Unknown Speaker
Good to see you. Welcome back to City Hall.
Speaker 1
Probably I don't know it's getting busy out there. Is there something going on in town? We do this every year
Speaker 2
1000s of people come in and who are these 1000s come into town. It's great to welcome students back.
Speaker 1
Lots of construction projects this summer. If you live in Bloomington, you almost can't turn going somewhere without seeing some construction. I don't know if you have any updates on what got done, maybe what didn't get done. I know there's still lots going on in 17th. Street,
Speaker 2
there is a lot Joe, you know, we really try to squeeze it in between both the University schedule and of course, our public schools to which start right at the beginning of August now. So we did a lot of work on 17th. A lot of that's done. We did major paving on college and walnut as well as a bunch on the south side. New big new pavement along 17th Street pathway. I mean, and then utilities is always working to on on the water systems. And we continue to have I think now we've had 100 miles of fiber put in over the last few months too. So there's a lot going on.
Speaker 1
We did get an email from a concerned residents about paving roads and then tearing them up again to complete or fix something he writes a couple of years ago was Seventh Street being torn up within a couple of months of being repaved this year at 17th and walnut within a month, there needs to be an investigation as to why taxpayer money is being spent limited resources being used extra greenhouse gases being emitted by those projects not being timed. Right. Do you know what he's talking about?
Speaker 2
Well, I know that we work very, very hard to coordinate all of those activities. And it's right to know, you know, we'd like when we do a street. We coordinate with utilities, with the State Transportation folks with all of our other public works, folks with parks. And we do very work very hard to limit any kind of unfortunate overlap. So pretty, I think a pretty good job. Now sometimes it does happen that there's a schedule that can't be changed, or actually I just heard. One of the things that happened this summer was we just finished paving a road, beautiful new pavement, and a water main broke right under it. So started bubbling up through the new asphalt and I say oh, well, you know, so you can't help that. But I agree with the principle, I think we do a pretty good job of coordinating all that stuff. But sometimes, either by accident or act of fate like that we can't help it or sometimes other utilities like the gas or electric they need to do something that they just didn't know they had to do or we couldn't schedule it. At the same time.
Speaker 1
Let's get to the relocation of the police and fire headquarters to showers Plaza here. That's right behind you. Where what are we haven't talked about this in a few months. What are the timeframes for all this? You know, there's only four months left in your administration? Is this something that's going to happen soon or something that's kind of being set for the next administration? Well, definitely
Speaker 2
finishing the next administration. Joe, this really began I think in December of last year that the council voted to issue the bonds and then we voted in January to buy showers West, which we then completed by February March. Since then, we've been working really hard diligently finding an architect, we've now selected an architect, finding a project manager which we've now selected. There's a whole bunch of design work that's been going on with Charettes and meetings with frontline police officers and firefighters and administrators and that's all we're gonna have about four or five different projections on my desk of options. We're looking at those. So so a lot of the behind the scenes work with with staff is going on. The next big step will be the architects will be given the okay to do the blueprint levels, and that's going to come soon. Then after that we'll come to bids and expect that to happen this year and on track to construct, which will also happen this year, but the actual construction will probably be next year. So that's towers West. We're also working on two major upgrades to fire stations and then a new fire building. That's all underway as well. I think all that will be well underway when I hand the reins over, but certainly construction to continue.
Speaker 1
So during a council meeting member Susan Sandberg says that the council received no information regarding the timeline cost projections, construction, transparency, and they need that information because budget hearings are coming up. So do they have that information? If not, why not?
Speaker 2
They do have plenty of information. Now, Susan, let me just be clear, voted against this plan. So she's been kind of asking questions from that vein. She wasn't a supporter of it from the beginning. But we actually have a council designee who's part of this. We've had shared maps with the council. We're going to certainly be talking about it with budget. But you know, we're doing a lot of the work that's going on right now is behind the scenes. It's the design work. It's working with frontline police officers and firefighters, etc. And the council actually we're working with them their their chambers may be changed a little bit their offices, we're hoping to connect the two atrium of the building. So that would require some shifts. So they're very involved. Susan, happy to call me talk to her about it. She may not have gotten all the information. Correct that she shared.
Speaker 1
Now, when you say working with them, are you working with the police department that absolutely,
Speaker 2
absolutely the from the chief of police, to administrators to the Fraternal Order of Police, their labor union and detectives and frontline folks who are all involved. Now, you know, they're not at every meeting, we have a lot of these planning meetings going on. But they had, for example, a planning session with I think about 20 members of the police force who sat down with the architects to give their view of what would be best from their perspective.
Speaker 1
So at a recent meeting, why would Paul post the FOP president say that the architectural team took photographs, layout, a layout suggestions made by participants and staff with the promise to bring back plans and have further meetings, but that has never happened?
Speaker 2
Well, there actually, that's not true. There are there have been further meetings, including with Paul post in them, and there will be more. Now I do think it's important to recognize it's kind of like if you're doing a big rehab of your house, or you're doing a major project, you do get a lot of ideas and people saying what they want they want to bathroom here, they want this kind of countertop, or they want these you know, and you don't always get everybody doesn't get everything they want. But that process is going on. I think we're going to create a great new public safety headquarters with the police headquarters and fire things can be really good for the community. I think it'd be really good for the police officers and the fire administrators. We're just in the we're in the nitty gritty right now figuring out within the budget, what do we do?
Speaker 1
But if they're saying there's not enough transparency, is that something that you're willing to work with them?
Speaker 2
Oh, we are? Absolutely. It's very transparent. We've they've seen new models by now I don't know when he said that. But we're very open. Now. It is also true that not every meeting has 20 police officers there. We just have to be able to make some hard decisions, make some, you know, aggregate things to figure out but there will be many more meetings with police officers involved as they look at it.
Speaker 1
How about plans for the current Third Street headquarters? Any negotiation is taking place regarding its sale the land,
Speaker 2
so nothing's happened yet. But that is a plan. That was part of the financial stack, if you will, that's going to pay for the new police headquarters is to sell the current one. I expect to see that happening in the next weeks ahead as we move forward. And but nothing, nothing dramatic yet.
Speaker 1
Let's move along to city council. You're asking city council to consider permanently closing part of Old State Road 37 runs through the lower cascades Park to drivers. We've done a lot of reporting on this. We added a new in addition on this to last Oh good. I didn't hear that. So yeah, so we had we had residents call in with questions, heard an option? Why not spend the $3 million dollars on a street and a pathway?
Speaker 2
Well, so just to back up a minute. You know, we have this our oldest park and we've got a road through the middle of it and we have this issue to fix the transportation plan for the city adopted by council after lots of review says we need to have a bike pedestrian connection through there which we do not have now. So the question is how to do it. Originally, we thought we could close half the road. Use half for trail half for autos. Engineers tell us that doesn't work not safe. It's not wide enough. Two other main options are keep the road open and build a new Bike Ped path which would cost about $3 million. Give or take. We think that the other option is to close the road and use that as the Bike Ped path. which saves about $3 million. So I've basically gone to council and said, Look, you guys, tell me what you want. I think it would be smarter to close the road. I don't think I don't think it makes sense to keep that road open forever. And it would save us $3 million. But ultimately the council will need to vote on that. They may vote this year. They may vote next year. I don't know. But I hope they decide sometime soon.
Speaker 1
Does the formal proposal though, for city council? Does that come from your administration, though?
Speaker 2
Well, I mean, we don't have to do that we could ignore the transportation plan. We could say, Hey, this is too complicated. But we wanted to try to say, look, we got to figure this out together, we made a recommendation. They though as a council can decide what to do about it. If they don't decide what to do about it, then the administration needs to decide, are we going to find $3 million somewhere and start the construction of the path? Are we going to just leave it as it is?
Speaker 1
Re emails, then has the city done a traffic count on the road to see how much traffic uses the road.
Speaker 2
We have. I don't know if we've done it very recently. But we know it's a pretty low volume road is useful for some people right there who use it to get around traffic, it's not a good through street, not a high traffic street, on the other hand, is a beautiful valley. And when we did close it, during pandemic, I've spent numbers of times walking and going through there and it's just a spectacular Park. So it's trying to figure out how to accommodate as many of the different interests that we have.
Speaker 1
Last question we had in on that could they paint a bike lane and pedestrian lane on the road with a warning for drivers to yield?
Speaker 2
So we've we've looked at that it's a possibility our engineers and the safety people say that's not sufficient. It's just too tight to have those three things all together on that road, bicycles, pedestrians, and cars, because we care a lot about safety. But I think in the next six to 12 months, it'll get figured out whether it gets figured out in the next four and a half months. I'm not sure.
Speaker 1
The Capital Improvement Board is moving forward. For the convention center expansion. Commissioners have named three members, I believe, to the city council reviewing their three as well. They're looking at their one appointment, they have one appointment, and I have two points. Where are you on your to a point,
Speaker 2
I'm kind of waiting to see who gets filled in. There's city council and I are talking, we didn't get a lot of conversation from the county about their choices. So they we they went ahead with him and that's fine. Look, my focus on this continues to be I want to be sure I do all I can to make sure a new convention center is a beautiful, spectacular addition to the downtown that it's done efficiently, that it's creating a great new product for us. So my biggest concern is that the CIB is full of a lot of cooks in the kitchen that may make it difficult to produce the excellence that we need. I'm hopeful and I'll be continuing to work. We're still negotiating a local, inter local, that's going on conversations are happening. But we haven't landed that plane yet.
Speaker 1
And that's what you said last month to when we talked about that inner local agreement. There was a draft but I know there was some items that you don't agree upon. Do you have just a couple of those give us an example of what you're concerned about? Sure.
Speaker 2
I think the the biggest example, that's that's challenging is is basically who gets the Okay. How many people have to say yes, to moving forward with a particular convention center design or plan. And my fear is if too many people have can say yes or no, that what you end up with is a process that takes forever and kind of regresses to the mediocrity. It's hard to build a new building, ask the county about building a new jail. It's really complicated. It's really hard. It's taken 15 years and they're not there yet. You know, when we built switchyard Park, we did a lot of planning. But then in the execution to delivery, you've got to have a team that can get decisions made quickly have a vision of excellence and deliver it. So that's I don't know that the county is ready to do that yet. And that's what we're talking about. There's some other issues of Where's land, where's the location, but I think those can get worked out. But I'm really worried that we these projects are not easy. And you've got to have a team that can get it done with good decisions of full transparency. But without too many cooks in the kitchen.
Speaker 1
Said he is looking to install 55 parking corrals for E bikes, e scooters, hopes limit being those littered all over as we know it has been a big problem. But how will the city and force people to park and those designated spots?
Speaker 2
Well, as you met, as you mentioned, you know, we've had scooters and electric bikes and they've kind of been a new thing and we're working out how to manage them. We've had more than a million rides taken people really like to use them. Their safety issues. We're putting some hours in place to make sure they don't get used late at night. When we get an Uber aged driver so and in addition, we're adding these crowds, they're really enforced both by the companies and by us on the companies, it's the company's responsibility to make sure their riders leave them there and pick them up there. And if they don't, they're not supposed to be able to end the ride. It's our responsibility to make sure that companies do that. And if they don't do that, that we have the authority to find them. We use their money to us to put those corrals in. We didn't use tax dollars for that, and hopefully, is kind of a new iteration in the downtown area with these 50 Plus corrals, and we'll see how that works. But I don't doubt that in a year or two people will be talking about scooters and a black still, because it's a it's a new way of getting around and we're still getting used to it.
Speaker 1
All right, and one more for me here. Bloomington residents can expect to pay more for curbside trash and recycling pickup next year. City rate that approved the race City Council approved the rate hikes as part of an ordinance that passed Wednesday. Why higher rates? Why not absorb that into the from the general fund?
Speaker 2
It's a great question, Joe. And it's one of the city council's wrestling with and again, this is kind of one of those where we tee it up to the council say you you tell us this policy, as hinted in that question. In the past, garbage sanitation was picked up. We use we use stickers that you had to buy, I'll remember those $1 person per can and we got rid of those and did it on a monthly fee. But most of the cost is still paid by all the taxpayers of the city. The simple question is, should all the taxpayers pay for picking up the sanitation in single family homes? That means all the people who rent all the people who don't own homes, help pay for that trash pickup for those people? Or should the trash pickup sanitation and recycling be covered by those who get to service? And I tend to lean toward the latter. I mean, I do think it's a very efficient service. It's much cheaper than private sector. And if you live in an apartment building, you have to pay for your own pickup. The city doesn't subsidize that, but it's a policy question. And I totally get it and their sensitivity about it. But in the end, the council votes on it. They're the closest to the people and they vote on how to do that they voted to increase the rates a bit not as not as it is not self sufficient, still. So it's kind of a hybrid approach that we're going to keep seeing.
Speaker 1
Well, I know we're about out of time, but I always like to leave the last word from the mayor, any announcements, news you'd like to share?
Speaker 2
No, no big announcements, Joe. It's great to have the people coming back into town. It was really fun. I cut a couple of ribbons last couple of weeks on the Rogers family park. It's a really exciting enhancement to what people may know as the old goat farm down on the southeast side a beautiful million dollar addition there. And then actually we cut the ribbon on the city's first scattered garden in the old Rose Hill Cemetery. So we now in the city to have something we never had before, which is a place you can scatter cremains it's a beautiful hilltop. And it's a way you can't get into Rose Hill Cemetery. However hard you try these days is basically full up and sold out. But this lets people access Rose Hill Cemetery with a new way so we're always figuring out new things and it's fun to open a new park in a in a new scattered garden.
Unknown Speaker
Well, thanks so much and we'll see you next month.
Unknown Speaker
Thank you Joe.
Hello, and welcome to ask the mayor on WFIU. I'm Joe Hren. This week we're with Bloomington Mayor John Hamilton at City Hall. Hello. Welcome to the show. Nice to have you again. Joe.
Unknown Speaker
Good to see you. Welcome back to City Hall.
Speaker 1
Probably I don't know it's getting busy out there. Is there something going on in town? We do this every year
Speaker 2
1000s of people come in and who are these 1000s come into town. It's great to welcome students back.
Speaker 1
Lots of construction projects this summer. If you live in Bloomington, you almost can't turn going somewhere without seeing some construction. I don't know if you have any updates on what got done, maybe what didn't get done. I know there's still lots going on in 17th. Street,
Speaker 2
there is a lot Joe, you know, we really try to squeeze it in between both the University schedule and of course, our public schools to which start right at the beginning of August now. So we did a lot of work on 17th. A lot of that's done. We did major paving on college and walnut as well as a bunch on the south side. New big new pavement along 17th Street pathway. I mean, and then utilities is always working to on on the water systems. And we continue to have I think now we've had 100 miles of fiber put in over the last few months too. So there's a lot going on.
Speaker 1
We did get an email from a concerned residents about paving roads and then tearing them up again to complete or fix something he writes a couple of years ago was Seventh Street being torn up within a couple of months of being repaved this year at 17th and walnut within a month, there needs to be an investigation as to why taxpayer money is being spent limited resources being used extra greenhouse gases being emitted by those projects not being timed. Right. Do you know what he's talking about?
Speaker 2
Well, I know that we work very, very hard to coordinate all of those activities. And it's right to know, you know, we'd like when we do a street. We coordinate with utilities, with the State Transportation folks with all of our other public works, folks with parks. And we do very work very hard to limit any kind of unfortunate overlap. So pretty, I think a pretty good job. Now sometimes it does happen that there's a schedule that can't be changed, or actually I just heard. One of the things that happened this summer was we just finished paving a road, beautiful new pavement, and a water main broke right under it. So started bubbling up through the new asphalt and I say oh, well, you know, so you can't help that. But I agree with the principle, I think we do a pretty good job of coordinating all that stuff. But sometimes, either by accident or act of fate like that we can't help it or sometimes other utilities like the gas or electric they need to do something that they just didn't know they had to do or we couldn't schedule it. At the same time.
Speaker 1
Let's get to the relocation of the police and fire headquarters to showers Plaza here. That's right behind you. Where what are we haven't talked about this in a few months. What are the timeframes for all this? You know, there's only four months left in your administration? Is this something that's going to happen soon or something that's kind of being set for the next administration? Well, definitely
Speaker 2
finishing the next administration. Joe, this really began I think in December of last year that the council voted to issue the bonds and then we voted in January to buy showers West, which we then completed by February March. Since then, we've been working really hard diligently finding an architect, we've now selected an architect, finding a project manager which we've now selected. There's a whole bunch of design work that's been going on with Charettes and meetings with frontline police officers and firefighters and administrators and that's all we're gonna have about four or five different projections on my desk of options. We're looking at those. So so a lot of the behind the scenes work with with staff is going on. The next big step will be the architects will be given the okay to do the blueprint levels, and that's going to come soon. Then after that we'll come to bids and expect that to happen this year and on track to construct, which will also happen this year, but the actual construction will probably be next year. So that's towers West. We're also working on two major upgrades to fire stations and then a new fire building. That's all underway as well. I think all that will be well underway when I hand the reins over, but certainly construction to continue.
Speaker 1
So during a council meeting member Susan Sandberg says that the council received no information regarding the timeline cost projections, construction, transparency, and they need that information because budget hearings are coming up. So do they have that information? If not, why not?
Speaker 2
They do have plenty of information. Now, Susan, let me just be clear, voted against this plan. So she's been kind of asking questions from that vein. She wasn't a supporter of it from the beginning. But we actually have a council designee who's part of this. We've had shared maps with the council. We're going to certainly be talking about it with budget. But you know, we're doing a lot of the work that's going on right now is behind the scenes. It's the design work. It's working with frontline police officers and firefighters, etc. And the council actually we're working with them their their chambers may be changed a little bit their offices, we're hoping to connect the two atrium of the building. So that would require some shifts. So they're very involved. Susan, happy to call me talk to her about it. She may not have gotten all the information. Correct that she shared.
Speaker 1
Now, when you say working with them, are you working with the police department that absolutely,
Speaker 2
absolutely the from the chief of police, to administrators to the Fraternal Order of Police, their labor union and detectives and frontline folks who are all involved. Now, you know, they're not at every meeting, we have a lot of these planning meetings going on. But they had, for example, a planning session with I think about 20 members of the police force who sat down with the architects to give their view of what would be best from their perspective.
Speaker 1
So at a recent meeting, why would Paul post the FOP president say that the architectural team took photographs, layout, a layout suggestions made by participants and staff with the promise to bring back plans and have further meetings, but that has never happened?
Speaker 2
Well, there actually, that's not true. There are there have been further meetings, including with Paul post in them, and there will be more. Now I do think it's important to recognize it's kind of like if you're doing a big rehab of your house, or you're doing a major project, you do get a lot of ideas and people saying what they want they want to bathroom here, they want this kind of countertop, or they want these you know, and you don't always get everybody doesn't get everything they want. But that process is going on. I think we're going to create a great new public safety headquarters with the police headquarters and fire things can be really good for the community. I think it'd be really good for the police officers and the fire administrators. We're just in the we're in the nitty gritty right now figuring out within the budget, what do we do?
Speaker 1
But if they're saying there's not enough transparency, is that something that you're willing to work with them?
Speaker 2
Oh, we are? Absolutely. It's very transparent. We've they've seen new models by now I don't know when he said that. But we're very open. Now. It is also true that not every meeting has 20 police officers there. We just have to be able to make some hard decisions, make some, you know, aggregate things to figure out but there will be many more meetings with police officers involved as they look at it.
Speaker 1
How about plans for the current Third Street headquarters? Any negotiation is taking place regarding its sale the land,
Speaker 2
so nothing's happened yet. But that is a plan. That was part of the financial stack, if you will, that's going to pay for the new police headquarters is to sell the current one. I expect to see that happening in the next weeks ahead as we move forward. And but nothing, nothing dramatic yet.
Speaker 1
Let's move along to city council. You're asking city council to consider permanently closing part of Old State Road 37 runs through the lower cascades Park to drivers. We've done a lot of reporting on this. We added a new in addition on this to last Oh good. I didn't hear that. So yeah, so we had we had residents call in with questions, heard an option? Why not spend the $3 million dollars on a street and a pathway?
Speaker 2
Well, so just to back up a minute. You know, we have this our oldest park and we've got a road through the middle of it and we have this issue to fix the transportation plan for the city adopted by council after lots of review says we need to have a bike pedestrian connection through there which we do not have now. So the question is how to do it. Originally, we thought we could close half the road. Use half for trail half for autos. Engineers tell us that doesn't work not safe. It's not wide enough. Two other main options are keep the road open and build a new Bike Ped path which would cost about $3 million. Give or take. We think that the other option is to close the road and use that as the Bike Ped path. which saves about $3 million. So I've basically gone to council and said, Look, you guys, tell me what you want. I think it would be smarter to close the road. I don't think I don't think it makes sense to keep that road open forever. And it would save us $3 million. But ultimately the council will need to vote on that. They may vote this year. They may vote next year. I don't know. But I hope they decide sometime soon.
Speaker 1
Does the formal proposal though, for city council? Does that come from your administration, though?
Speaker 2
Well, I mean, we don't have to do that we could ignore the transportation plan. We could say, Hey, this is too complicated. But we wanted to try to say, look, we got to figure this out together, we made a recommendation. They though as a council can decide what to do about it. If they don't decide what to do about it, then the administration needs to decide, are we going to find $3 million somewhere and start the construction of the path? Are we going to just leave it as it is?
Speaker 1
Re emails, then has the city done a traffic count on the road to see how much traffic uses the road.
Speaker 2
We have. I don't know if we've done it very recently. But we know it's a pretty low volume road is useful for some people right there who use it to get around traffic, it's not a good through street, not a high traffic street, on the other hand, is a beautiful valley. And when we did close it, during pandemic, I've spent numbers of times walking and going through there and it's just a spectacular Park. So it's trying to figure out how to accommodate as many of the different interests that we have.
Speaker 1
Last question we had in on that could they paint a bike lane and pedestrian lane on the road with a warning for drivers to yield?
Speaker 2
So we've we've looked at that it's a possibility our engineers and the safety people say that's not sufficient. It's just too tight to have those three things all together on that road, bicycles, pedestrians, and cars, because we care a lot about safety. But I think in the next six to 12 months, it'll get figured out whether it gets figured out in the next four and a half months. I'm not sure.
Speaker 1
The Capital Improvement Board is moving forward. For the convention center expansion. Commissioners have named three members, I believe, to the city council reviewing their three as well. They're looking at their one appointment, they have one appointment, and I have two points. Where are you on your to a point,
Speaker 2
I'm kind of waiting to see who gets filled in. There's city council and I are talking, we didn't get a lot of conversation from the county about their choices. So they we they went ahead with him and that's fine. Look, my focus on this continues to be I want to be sure I do all I can to make sure a new convention center is a beautiful, spectacular addition to the downtown that it's done efficiently, that it's creating a great new product for us. So my biggest concern is that the CIB is full of a lot of cooks in the kitchen that may make it difficult to produce the excellence that we need. I'm hopeful and I'll be continuing to work. We're still negotiating a local, inter local, that's going on conversations are happening. But we haven't landed that plane yet.
Speaker 1
And that's what you said last month to when we talked about that inner local agreement. There was a draft but I know there was some items that you don't agree upon. Do you have just a couple of those give us an example of what you're concerned about? Sure.
Speaker 2
I think the the biggest example, that's that's challenging is is basically who gets the Okay. How many people have to say yes, to moving forward with a particular convention center design or plan. And my fear is if too many people have can say yes or no, that what you end up with is a process that takes forever and kind of regresses to the mediocrity. It's hard to build a new building, ask the county about building a new jail. It's really complicated. It's really hard. It's taken 15 years and they're not there yet. You know, when we built switchyard Park, we did a lot of planning. But then in the execution to delivery, you've got to have a team that can get decisions made quickly have a vision of excellence and deliver it. So that's I don't know that the county is ready to do that yet. And that's what we're talking about. There's some other issues of Where's land, where's the location, but I think those can get worked out. But I'm really worried that we these projects are not easy. And you've got to have a team that can get it done with good decisions of full transparency. But without too many cooks in the kitchen.
Speaker 1
Said he is looking to install 55 parking corrals for E bikes, e scooters, hopes limit being those littered all over as we know it has been a big problem. But how will the city and force people to park and those designated spots?
Speaker 2
Well, as you met, as you mentioned, you know, we've had scooters and electric bikes and they've kind of been a new thing and we're working out how to manage them. We've had more than a million rides taken people really like to use them. Their safety issues. We're putting some hours in place to make sure they don't get used late at night. When we get an Uber aged driver so and in addition, we're adding these crowds, they're really enforced both by the companies and by us on the companies, it's the company's responsibility to make sure their riders leave them there and pick them up there. And if they don't, they're not supposed to be able to end the ride. It's our responsibility to make sure that companies do that. And if they don't do that, that we have the authority to find them. We use their money to us to put those corrals in. We didn't use tax dollars for that, and hopefully, is kind of a new iteration in the downtown area with these 50 Plus corrals, and we'll see how that works. But I don't doubt that in a year or two people will be talking about scooters and a black still, because it's a it's a new way of getting around and we're still getting used to it.
Speaker 1
All right, and one more for me here. Bloomington residents can expect to pay more for curbside trash and recycling pickup next year. City rate that approved the race City Council approved the rate hikes as part of an ordinance that passed Wednesday. Why higher rates? Why not absorb that into the from the general fund?
Speaker 2
It's a great question, Joe. And it's one of the city council's wrestling with and again, this is kind of one of those where we tee it up to the council say you you tell us this policy, as hinted in that question. In the past, garbage sanitation was picked up. We use we use stickers that you had to buy, I'll remember those $1 person per can and we got rid of those and did it on a monthly fee. But most of the cost is still paid by all the taxpayers of the city. The simple question is, should all the taxpayers pay for picking up the sanitation in single family homes? That means all the people who rent all the people who don't own homes, help pay for that trash pickup for those people? Or should the trash pickup sanitation and recycling be covered by those who get to service? And I tend to lean toward the latter. I mean, I do think it's a very efficient service. It's much cheaper than private sector. And if you live in an apartment building, you have to pay for your own pickup. The city doesn't subsidize that, but it's a policy question. And I totally get it and their sensitivity about it. But in the end, the council votes on it. They're the closest to the people and they vote on how to do that they voted to increase the rates a bit not as not as it is not self sufficient, still. So it's kind of a hybrid approach that we're going to keep seeing.
Speaker 1
Well, I know we're about out of time, but I always like to leave the last word from the mayor, any announcements, news you'd like to share?
Speaker 2
No, no big announcements, Joe. It's great to have the people coming back into town. It was really fun. I cut a couple of ribbons last couple of weeks on the Rogers family park. It's a really exciting enhancement to what people may know as the old goat farm down on the southeast side a beautiful million dollar addition there. And then actually we cut the ribbon on the city's first scattered garden in the old Rose Hill Cemetery. So we now in the city to have something we never had before, which is a place you can scatter cremains it's a beautiful hilltop. And it's a way you can't get into Rose Hill Cemetery. However hard you try these days is basically full up and sold out. But this lets people access Rose Hill Cemetery with a new way so we're always figuring out new things and it's fun to open a new park in a in a new scattered garden.
Unknown Speaker
Well, thanks so much and we'll see you next month.
Unknown Speaker
Thank you Joe.
