Unknown Speaker
Hello and welcome to ask the mayor on WFIU I'm Joe Hren, it's the third Wednesday of the month are with Bloomington Mayor John Hamilton. Thanks again for having us. Welcome to the show.
Unknown Speaker
Thank you, Joe. Good to be with you again. So you just
Unknown Speaker
got back from Columbus speaking with Mayor Lienhoop. We were there two weeks ago. What were you guys talking about? We're
Unknown Speaker
talking about you know how we deal with the mayor when we Marilyn and I co hosted the regional climate convening the first regional climate convening back in October. And this is really a smaller follow up meeting to talk about how our region approaches climate change what we might do together, so no big announcements, but we're working on it. I was really happy to have a good discussion with people from Monroe County, Brown County and Bartholomew County. And we'll have more More to come on that in the weeks and months ahead, I hope and I
Unknown Speaker
was out of town this weekend. And I almost couldn't believe that the photos have snow on the ground already to how did that work out with city where they prepare to move snow or salt.
Unknown Speaker
We are ready. We have the salt domes filled Adam wastes in our public works director was in touch saying we just need to do a little a little work on the bridges and hills because the surface temperature was was enough not to worry about it. But we never know when that's going to hit and I thank again our street department to do such a great job protecting our city.
Unknown Speaker
I'm sure we'll see more of that coming.
Unknown Speaker
I bet we will.
Unknown Speaker
Another Convention Center meeting another twist county commissioners sent the city a proposal to continue kind of where you left off before the pandemic does create a CIB as a Capital Improvement Board. But from our last show, you can change direction on how you wanted to go with this and move forward with the nonprofit organization. So where do you stand right now?
Unknown Speaker
Well, again, I hope we can get this resolved. I think Convention Center be really good for the city and the community at large. The commissioners had a different view, they actually out of nowhere kind of passed this Capital Improvement Board they didn't give notice their own staff didn't know it. There was a resolution that was passed and discussed in 15 minutes and created a CIB, which is a little unfortunate approach, I guess, not very collaborative. I'm going to continue to propose ways to go forward, I'm hopeful that we'll be able to move it forward, I continue to be optimistic. We we've seen six years of not being able to get this done. And I'm a little concerned that we're we're still kind of in a holding pattern. But we're gonna keep we said in early October that within 30 to 45 days, we'd be sharing a more detailed plan which we still plan to do in a week or two ahead.
Unknown Speaker
To be fair, though, you know, you're saying non collaborative, didn't the city kind of do that when announcing that they would just go on their own and not talk to the county? Oh,
Unknown Speaker
no, Joe. In fact, we didn't we we've been talking to the county and trying to meet with the county for many months, we've offered all kinds of discussions and meetings to explore it. Now, we did have a time deadline and said we need to know by early October, this was way back in the summer talking about that. And when the time deadline wasn't met, we said okay, that didn't work. We weren't able to reach agreement. We're going to propose another path forward with a third path forward. So we did that we have although all that has been very public and very open and very collaborative. What happened last week was surprised everybody and wasn't even publicly noticed as a vote. Didn't nobody knew that they were going to create a CIB. So what you know what, look, I still think the public mostly wants to see this happen. So I'm hopeful we'll be able to figure it out. But I'm not sure that last week advances very far.
Unknown Speaker
Chamber president Eric spoon Moore says compromise is something that really needs to happen right now. Can the city compromise and work on a CIB?
Unknown Speaker
We've Well, look, we've compromised for years trying to figure out how to move it forward. My focus is on how do we be sure we create an excellent efficient process to create a great new expansion to the convention center. I'm not going to compromise on quality. But absolutely, we're happy to talk about how do we get that done. We've been trying to do that for a number of years and we're going to continue to focus on that what I don't want is a process that will produce a mediocre or not very good end product. We're going to focus on look, you know we in the city, we deliver great products we've driven great switchyard Park, we've delivered a great mill we're delivering a great hope well we do have a neighborhood and so I want to make Sure, that's what we focus on, but happy to compromise on how the best way to get there is.
Unknown Speaker
What about any work from City Council? Have you talked to them? What are their thoughts on this next proposal? And do they support? If they support a CIB? Would you support
Unknown Speaker
it? Well, so what we what we've said all along is, this is ultimately a choice for the community to make in the county council and the city council are key players in deciding which way they want to go forward. So we're laying out some options. And ultimately, they can decide how to go forward. And I'm, I'm happy to live with whatever whatever the community decides how to go forward. We're making our best case, we'll see what the options are. And again, I'm optimistic we'll be able to get it done. But I'm I'm not certain, but I'm optimistic.
Unknown Speaker
Any timeframe on the response to the commissioners on like, I guess what's next? Well, the
Unknown Speaker
commissioners ordinance, which again, nobody had read before they passed it, but I believe has a deadline for the end of the year to get back. It's interesting, though, technically, they don't, they can create a CIP without any approvals. And so it's not clear even what the ordinance meant it was hastily drafted. It's got a lot of uncertainties in it. So but we want to move ahead very quickly, we'll be sharing a plan in the week or two ahead, about an alternative way to go forward. And then it'll be up to the various bodies to decide which way we want to go.
Unknown Speaker
midterm elections are over more than 60% of Monroe County residents pass to mccsc referendum soon, you're happy with that, and at least with the local election results can be not so much the statewide
Unknown Speaker
Well, it was a mixed bag. Right. As many elections are I was very pleased as community again, third time strong support for the public schools to to one vote virtually, which was terrific, and really important to strengthen our public schools. Locally, I think we did very well. With with the results that we saw, we didn't get every every race we wanted. We're disappointed in a couple but and statewide very disappointed. But of course, nationally, I was pleased to see a lot of the progress that we've been making in the last couple of years, we hope to be able to continue that.
Unknown Speaker
Columbus Mayor Jim Lindop announced he will not be running for a third term. Are you running for
Unknown Speaker
much I didn't know enough that he didn't tell me that he didn't tell, you know, yeah. I said, I'm gonna wait till after the elections. Those are now done. I will be announcing soon, but not right now. About my plans for the next term.
Unknown Speaker
Just curious what goes through a politician someone running especially in your position to whether or not to run for reelection again?
Unknown Speaker
Well, I don't know what goes through other people's minds. But I think naturally, a lot of us think about, why did I run for this office? What am I doing? Am I being effective? Am I moving our community forward in a mayor's role? Do I feel you know, I'm excited about the work ahead. Being a mayor, it takes a lot of energy. It takes a lot of attention and focus. I love what I'm doing. And I've loved the progress that I think we've made with the city. But you know, sometimes there's family considerations. Sometimes there's there can be health. I don't have any of those considerations, personally, but a lot of different things can go in, it's a look, it's a challenging job, and you have to love what you do. And I suppose we think about Hey, am I What's what's next? What's the next? What's the next round? What am I working toward?
Unknown Speaker
Do you have any idea of a date of when you will announce soon? Just soon. Okay. We do have an email from Pam. She wants to know the mayor's plan for our homeless population. She says that you have sent cops to raid several homeless encampments, they have been displaced. No winter shelter, no section eight housing available, no low income housing built. So where can our homeless be when we enjoy great amenities here in Bloomington?
Unknown Speaker
Well, thanks for the question. It's something that we work on every day here in the city and with a lot of partners. I am very pleased that we have a new institution really called the housing security group that I helped found and get started a couple years ago and it's a very inclusive group of government nonprofits and funders. That is front and center folk on this focused on this we announced a couple of months ago the built for zero commitment, which is to build our community to zero effective homelessness. There's millions of dollars have been dedicated from the city from the county working together well from the private sector. We're looking for support as well. I do want to make clear we have very strict rules in the city about how any encampment is dealt with there's there's lots of notice we are not from the city sending police into break up encampments. We of course respond to emergencies but encampments are a challenge. We do have many more units of affordable housing over 1000 more units than six years ago, including about 100 that are focused on people with homelessness, but we still have people I am a strong advocate for Testing, particularly from the county public health dollars, we should be spending more on mental health support substance use disorder. We have millions of dollars from the federal government we have, I think we'll get money from the state. So I do think we need to do more on the on the kind of services side, we have emergency shelters, we are working that bill for zero. So I know there's still people going through really hard times. But there's a lot of this community that is locking arms together to try to make that solution better.
Unknown Speaker
Thanks, Pam, for your question. Something we should probably follow up on too is as the month get colder, just give some updates Now, moving police fire station over to this neck of the woods is anything more happened on that.
Unknown Speaker
We are deep into that, Joe, I was actually working on that today. We will be deciding that this month, in November, on exactly what we know we need a downtown fire station that's got to get replaced or rehab. We are very much committed to improving the police headquarters as well as some other ancillary things. And that was in the local income tax budget that was adopted passed by the council and adopted by us. So we're going to be moving forward. I think the council first presentation maybe November 30. And then by December, I guess is the actual votes on that, that we hope to move forward with.
Unknown Speaker
I hear there's a study about I think what gets people's attention is changing traffic patterns on college and walnut is about going one way right now there one way north and south and about changing that and going to way. But this that's a small part of a bigger study, isn't it?
Unknown Speaker
So Bloomington has a very extensive transportation plan. It's called that advises that Council adopted comes through the planning commission that tells us what to do about transportation. And one of the things that big document says is you should do corridor studies. And two big ones have one of them is the whole walnut college corridor from 46 bypass on the north down to Allen Street on the south. So a couple miles and it says you really need to just look at that. How does tramp traffic and transportation flow? How does development work? And so that study is going on this year and next year, a lot of feedback, it will look at the one way streets and whether those are the best, the best kind of structure or not? You know, that's an open question. The second big corridor study is kind of the East West Third Street Atwater corridor. We're not launching that study yet, that'll be next. But there'll be a lot of chance for the public to weigh in whether you have a business or house on walnut and court or college whether you drive on it or walk on it or bike lane or whatever. So we're doing what the transportation plan said which is study that we're hiring an X some experts to come in. That study is kicking off this year we'll go into next year and I think conclude by summer, so
Unknown Speaker
Okay, so that's an ongoing study. There's no decision, no change traffic.
Unknown Speaker
And that study will make recommendations that would then have to go to city council if there's any major changes, zoning, you know, traffic widen, narrow change all that stuff.
Unknown Speaker
Well, another study that did come out at Arts feasibility study report key recommendations, including rent, retain the Waldron Art Center as a core asset, increased downtown neighborhood programming. This one was interesting to me create an Arts Incubator to address shortage of affordable spaces. So did you learn anything new from this study? And what's the city doing now?
Unknown Speaker
It was really instructive, Joe, I really appreciate that. Now, just this came out of the whole Waldron thing, because when we got the Waldron back from Ivy Tech after 10 years, we said, what? What are we gonna do with this? So we created a big community steering group that looked at that, and they said, well keep it, use it for at least five years for the arts, but then you should commission again, a long term study to really look at the arts, what we can do in the community. So that's what this study did. I'm really excited about it. It's been almost a year in the making. And they recommended a bunch of things. One was they said, Don't do not try to build a great big, fancy new arts venue. They said you have so many venues in town, you have great venues, from the university, to churches and synagogues, to schools to facilities, you don't need a brand new one. But you do need some other things. And you mentioned some of the programming and others and one of the really interesting recommendations surprising in a way was you need to you should really think about an Arts Incubator, a place kind of like the mill for the tech tech sector, but a place where the arts community whether you're a painter, a sculptor, an actor, a singer, a podcast or whatever, a place where you can kind of be and make things happen maybe with some performance and and practice space. So they suggested looking at that in the city, including at Hopewell one building, maybe some other places. So that's on the table to look at over the next few months. It was a really interesting study. It's online if people want to read it
Unknown Speaker
We're almost out of time but I would like to leave the last minute to you any announcements anything else you'd like to let everyone know about?
Unknown Speaker
Well, it's holiday time you know, Joe I have no big announcements here sorry but holiday time I do hope people enjoy the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays with their friends and family. Stay safe. It is gonna get colder go Hoosiers. You know, we got we got a lot of things kicking off that way. But I'm really proud of where the city is and what we've been able to do. We hope we're this winter we won't see the same kind of pandemic issues. We know that's still an issue. So if I can stay safe, I hope we'll get boosted. And let's turn our turn our attention to the holidays and family time and we'll be in touch again.
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, it's hard to believe next time I see you we'll be talking about Christmas. Unbelievable.
Unknown Speaker
Honor we go holidays coming. Thank you. Thank you, Joe.
Hello and welcome to ask the mayor on WFIU I'm Joe Hren, it's the third Wednesday of the month are with Bloomington Mayor John Hamilton. Thanks again for having us. Welcome to the show.
Unknown Speaker
Thank you, Joe. Good to be with you again. So you just
Unknown Speaker
got back from Columbus speaking with Mayor Lienhoop. We were there two weeks ago. What were you guys talking about? We're
Unknown Speaker
talking about you know how we deal with the mayor when we Marilyn and I co hosted the regional climate convening the first regional climate convening back in October. And this is really a smaller follow up meeting to talk about how our region approaches climate change what we might do together, so no big announcements, but we're working on it. I was really happy to have a good discussion with people from Monroe County, Brown County and Bartholomew County. And we'll have more More to come on that in the weeks and months ahead, I hope and I
Unknown Speaker
was out of town this weekend. And I almost couldn't believe that the photos have snow on the ground already to how did that work out with city where they prepare to move snow or salt.
Unknown Speaker
We are ready. We have the salt domes filled Adam wastes in our public works director was in touch saying we just need to do a little a little work on the bridges and hills because the surface temperature was was enough not to worry about it. But we never know when that's going to hit and I thank again our street department to do such a great job protecting our city.
Unknown Speaker
I'm sure we'll see more of that coming.
Unknown Speaker
I bet we will.
Unknown Speaker
Another Convention Center meeting another twist county commissioners sent the city a proposal to continue kind of where you left off before the pandemic does create a CIB as a Capital Improvement Board. But from our last show, you can change direction on how you wanted to go with this and move forward with the nonprofit organization. So where do you stand right now?
Unknown Speaker
Well, again, I hope we can get this resolved. I think Convention Center be really good for the city and the community at large. The commissioners had a different view, they actually out of nowhere kind of passed this Capital Improvement Board they didn't give notice their own staff didn't know it. There was a resolution that was passed and discussed in 15 minutes and created a CIB, which is a little unfortunate approach, I guess, not very collaborative. I'm going to continue to propose ways to go forward, I'm hopeful that we'll be able to move it forward, I continue to be optimistic. We we've seen six years of not being able to get this done. And I'm a little concerned that we're we're still kind of in a holding pattern. But we're gonna keep we said in early October that within 30 to 45 days, we'd be sharing a more detailed plan which we still plan to do in a week or two ahead.
Unknown Speaker
To be fair, though, you know, you're saying non collaborative, didn't the city kind of do that when announcing that they would just go on their own and not talk to the county? Oh,
Unknown Speaker
no, Joe. In fact, we didn't we we've been talking to the county and trying to meet with the county for many months, we've offered all kinds of discussions and meetings to explore it. Now, we did have a time deadline and said we need to know by early October, this was way back in the summer talking about that. And when the time deadline wasn't met, we said okay, that didn't work. We weren't able to reach agreement. We're going to propose another path forward with a third path forward. So we did that we have although all that has been very public and very open and very collaborative. What happened last week was surprised everybody and wasn't even publicly noticed as a vote. Didn't nobody knew that they were going to create a CIB. So what you know what, look, I still think the public mostly wants to see this happen. So I'm hopeful we'll be able to figure it out. But I'm not sure that last week advances very far.
Unknown Speaker
Chamber president Eric spoon Moore says compromise is something that really needs to happen right now. Can the city compromise and work on a CIB?
Unknown Speaker
We've Well, look, we've compromised for years trying to figure out how to move it forward. My focus is on how do we be sure we create an excellent efficient process to create a great new expansion to the convention center. I'm not going to compromise on quality. But absolutely, we're happy to talk about how do we get that done. We've been trying to do that for a number of years and we're going to continue to focus on that what I don't want is a process that will produce a mediocre or not very good end product. We're going to focus on look, you know we in the city, we deliver great products we've driven great switchyard Park, we've delivered a great mill we're delivering a great hope well we do have a neighborhood and so I want to make Sure, that's what we focus on, but happy to compromise on how the best way to get there is.
Unknown Speaker
What about any work from City Council? Have you talked to them? What are their thoughts on this next proposal? And do they support? If they support a CIB? Would you support
Unknown Speaker
it? Well, so what we what we've said all along is, this is ultimately a choice for the community to make in the county council and the city council are key players in deciding which way they want to go forward. So we're laying out some options. And ultimately, they can decide how to go forward. And I'm, I'm happy to live with whatever whatever the community decides how to go forward. We're making our best case, we'll see what the options are. And again, I'm optimistic we'll be able to get it done. But I'm I'm not certain, but I'm optimistic.
Unknown Speaker
Any timeframe on the response to the commissioners on like, I guess what's next? Well, the
Unknown Speaker
commissioners ordinance, which again, nobody had read before they passed it, but I believe has a deadline for the end of the year to get back. It's interesting, though, technically, they don't, they can create a CIP without any approvals. And so it's not clear even what the ordinance meant it was hastily drafted. It's got a lot of uncertainties in it. So but we want to move ahead very quickly, we'll be sharing a plan in the week or two ahead, about an alternative way to go forward. And then it'll be up to the various bodies to decide which way we want to go.
Unknown Speaker
midterm elections are over more than 60% of Monroe County residents pass to mccsc referendum soon, you're happy with that, and at least with the local election results can be not so much the statewide
Unknown Speaker
Well, it was a mixed bag. Right. As many elections are I was very pleased as community again, third time strong support for the public schools to to one vote virtually, which was terrific, and really important to strengthen our public schools. Locally, I think we did very well. With with the results that we saw, we didn't get every every race we wanted. We're disappointed in a couple but and statewide very disappointed. But of course, nationally, I was pleased to see a lot of the progress that we've been making in the last couple of years, we hope to be able to continue that.
Unknown Speaker
Columbus Mayor Jim Lindop announced he will not be running for a third term. Are you running for
Unknown Speaker
much I didn't know enough that he didn't tell me that he didn't tell, you know, yeah. I said, I'm gonna wait till after the elections. Those are now done. I will be announcing soon, but not right now. About my plans for the next term.
Unknown Speaker
Just curious what goes through a politician someone running especially in your position to whether or not to run for reelection again?
Unknown Speaker
Well, I don't know what goes through other people's minds. But I think naturally, a lot of us think about, why did I run for this office? What am I doing? Am I being effective? Am I moving our community forward in a mayor's role? Do I feel you know, I'm excited about the work ahead. Being a mayor, it takes a lot of energy. It takes a lot of attention and focus. I love what I'm doing. And I've loved the progress that I think we've made with the city. But you know, sometimes there's family considerations. Sometimes there's there can be health. I don't have any of those considerations, personally, but a lot of different things can go in, it's a look, it's a challenging job, and you have to love what you do. And I suppose we think about Hey, am I What's what's next? What's the next? What's the next round? What am I working toward?
Unknown Speaker
Do you have any idea of a date of when you will announce soon? Just soon. Okay. We do have an email from Pam. She wants to know the mayor's plan for our homeless population. She says that you have sent cops to raid several homeless encampments, they have been displaced. No winter shelter, no section eight housing available, no low income housing built. So where can our homeless be when we enjoy great amenities here in Bloomington?
Unknown Speaker
Well, thanks for the question. It's something that we work on every day here in the city and with a lot of partners. I am very pleased that we have a new institution really called the housing security group that I helped found and get started a couple years ago and it's a very inclusive group of government nonprofits and funders. That is front and center folk on this focused on this we announced a couple of months ago the built for zero commitment, which is to build our community to zero effective homelessness. There's millions of dollars have been dedicated from the city from the county working together well from the private sector. We're looking for support as well. I do want to make clear we have very strict rules in the city about how any encampment is dealt with there's there's lots of notice we are not from the city sending police into break up encampments. We of course respond to emergencies but encampments are a challenge. We do have many more units of affordable housing over 1000 more units than six years ago, including about 100 that are focused on people with homelessness, but we still have people I am a strong advocate for Testing, particularly from the county public health dollars, we should be spending more on mental health support substance use disorder. We have millions of dollars from the federal government we have, I think we'll get money from the state. So I do think we need to do more on the on the kind of services side, we have emergency shelters, we are working that bill for zero. So I know there's still people going through really hard times. But there's a lot of this community that is locking arms together to try to make that solution better.
Unknown Speaker
Thanks, Pam, for your question. Something we should probably follow up on too is as the month get colder, just give some updates Now, moving police fire station over to this neck of the woods is anything more happened on that.
Unknown Speaker
We are deep into that, Joe, I was actually working on that today. We will be deciding that this month, in November, on exactly what we know we need a downtown fire station that's got to get replaced or rehab. We are very much committed to improving the police headquarters as well as some other ancillary things. And that was in the local income tax budget that was adopted passed by the council and adopted by us. So we're going to be moving forward. I think the council first presentation maybe November 30. And then by December, I guess is the actual votes on that, that we hope to move forward with.
Unknown Speaker
I hear there's a study about I think what gets people's attention is changing traffic patterns on college and walnut is about going one way right now there one way north and south and about changing that and going to way. But this that's a small part of a bigger study, isn't it?
Unknown Speaker
So Bloomington has a very extensive transportation plan. It's called that advises that Council adopted comes through the planning commission that tells us what to do about transportation. And one of the things that big document says is you should do corridor studies. And two big ones have one of them is the whole walnut college corridor from 46 bypass on the north down to Allen Street on the south. So a couple miles and it says you really need to just look at that. How does tramp traffic and transportation flow? How does development work? And so that study is going on this year and next year, a lot of feedback, it will look at the one way streets and whether those are the best, the best kind of structure or not? You know, that's an open question. The second big corridor study is kind of the East West Third Street Atwater corridor. We're not launching that study yet, that'll be next. But there'll be a lot of chance for the public to weigh in whether you have a business or house on walnut and court or college whether you drive on it or walk on it or bike lane or whatever. So we're doing what the transportation plan said which is study that we're hiring an X some experts to come in. That study is kicking off this year we'll go into next year and I think conclude by summer, so
Unknown Speaker
Okay, so that's an ongoing study. There's no decision, no change traffic.
Unknown Speaker
And that study will make recommendations that would then have to go to city council if there's any major changes, zoning, you know, traffic widen, narrow change all that stuff.
Unknown Speaker
Well, another study that did come out at Arts feasibility study report key recommendations, including rent, retain the Waldron Art Center as a core asset, increased downtown neighborhood programming. This one was interesting to me create an Arts Incubator to address shortage of affordable spaces. So did you learn anything new from this study? And what's the city doing now?
Unknown Speaker
It was really instructive, Joe, I really appreciate that. Now, just this came out of the whole Waldron thing, because when we got the Waldron back from Ivy Tech after 10 years, we said, what? What are we gonna do with this? So we created a big community steering group that looked at that, and they said, well keep it, use it for at least five years for the arts, but then you should commission again, a long term study to really look at the arts, what we can do in the community. So that's what this study did. I'm really excited about it. It's been almost a year in the making. And they recommended a bunch of things. One was they said, Don't do not try to build a great big, fancy new arts venue. They said you have so many venues in town, you have great venues, from the university, to churches and synagogues, to schools to facilities, you don't need a brand new one. But you do need some other things. And you mentioned some of the programming and others and one of the really interesting recommendations surprising in a way was you need to you should really think about an Arts Incubator, a place kind of like the mill for the tech tech sector, but a place where the arts community whether you're a painter, a sculptor, an actor, a singer, a podcast or whatever, a place where you can kind of be and make things happen maybe with some performance and and practice space. So they suggested looking at that in the city, including at Hopewell one building, maybe some other places. So that's on the table to look at over the next few months. It was a really interesting study. It's online if people want to read it
Unknown Speaker
We're almost out of time but I would like to leave the last minute to you any announcements anything else you'd like to let everyone know about?
Unknown Speaker
Well, it's holiday time you know, Joe I have no big announcements here sorry but holiday time I do hope people enjoy the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays with their friends and family. Stay safe. It is gonna get colder go Hoosiers. You know, we got we got a lot of things kicking off that way. But I'm really proud of where the city is and what we've been able to do. We hope we're this winter we won't see the same kind of pandemic issues. We know that's still an issue. So if I can stay safe, I hope we'll get boosted. And let's turn our turn our attention to the holidays and family time and we'll be in touch again.
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, it's hard to believe next time I see you we'll be talking about Christmas. Unbelievable.
Unknown Speaker
Honor we go holidays coming. Thank you. Thank you, Joe.
