Unknown Speaker
Hello and welcome to Ask The Mayor on WFIU. I'm Joe Hren. Third Wednesday of the month, and we're at Bloomington city hall with Mayor John Hamilton. Hello, welcome again, always thanks so much for doing this.
Unknown Speaker
Joe. Thank you. It's really good to be with you again.
Unknown Speaker
So let's just start with some more of the recent news. A white correctional officer at the Monroe County Jail, seen in body camera footage punching a black inmate during the struggle has been fired. Obviously, this kind of hits close to home with some of the news lately. Have you been briefed on this? And your your thoughts on what's been done there? And I understand this is not under your purview as well.
Unknown Speaker
Right, Joe? Thanks for asking about it. You're right, the county runs the jail with the sheriff and the fiscal oversight and the judges and such all involved in that. But you know, we we care about it, and many of our residents end up in that jail and then come out. So it's a very concerning, I was aware of the incident made aware of it, you know, certainly support the sheriff and taking the actions that he thinks are important. I, I do think it reminds us how critically important reform is both in the jail itself as a physical place. But to me even more importantly, reform of our criminal justice system, we should be investing much more in my view in prevention, and treatment and services that help people avoid going to jail and succeed when they come out of jail. That's mental health services, substance use disorder, job training, education, those kinds of things. And I hope as a community, we will very quickly and this is really county investment to be done very quickly invest substantially in those services, even while we're improving and fixing the jail.
Unknown Speaker
And that's of course, been a big news topic down here as well is, first of all location for a new jail. The involvement of the city and county, I haven't heard too much lately has anything more developed on that that you know, of or have been involved? I know the city wants to be more involved.
Unknown Speaker
We've offered to be more involved, Joe, and you may not know it's been a couple of years now I've I initiated in our county friends. We have every three weeks meeting of leadership of county and city government councils of both city, the mayor and the commissioner, and we just had that recently, we did talk about criminal justice reform. I think the county is struggling to identify locations, in my view, we really should be leading with the non jail service improvements, which can happen quickly and should happen immediately on substance use disorder, mental health, etc. Those kinds of services that we need. While we're looking at a jail. I think everybody in the community understands we need a high quality place to detain people. And what we don't have that we have a travesty as the sheriff described. We need to fix that but but I believe we ought to lead with the other thing was the the services. So we've offered to help the county think about that. The assumption that we need a 25 acre site assumes a lot of things that I'm not sure are really what the community should support and want.
Unknown Speaker
Since we're just on this topic with county commissioners haven't heard an update lately on a CIB, or convention centers been kind of quiet. Has there been any more discussion on that?
Unknown Speaker
There really hasn't been Joe, I've I continue to say my doors open to talk about how to advance this. I obviously have a different approach. But I haven't heard of any progress being made on what's a little frustrating.
Unknown Speaker
City council moving forward with the plan to buy a portion of the downtown showers building to rehouse the City Fire police headquarters, something that you've been pushing forwards a close vote, lots of debate, lots of concern. Is this a done deal?
Unknown Speaker
It is we got the vote from the city council. It was close as you indicated a lot of debate and different views, which was fine. But in the end, they voted to appropriate the money to purchase the showers which we have now done that we now are the owner of the that western third of the showers building. We're looking for an architect to get under contract to do the redesign. We'll be working very closely with the frontline police officers, the fire administrators, all the folks who will be in that building to design it. I'm very excited about it. I think it's the right thing for the city and for our public safety efforts. And in the months ahead, we'll be digging into the details and rehabbing that as well as three new fire projects as well to update some fire buildings and build one new one.
Unknown Speaker
With this also entail this part of City Hall to restructuring or just that portion primarily
Unknown Speaker
it will deal with the new portion but we do think we'll want to punch through the walls if you will and make some connections which will mean we'll think about does that cause some adjustment over time. And as you probably know, we don't need the whole space immediately. So we'll still have some tenants, private tenants over there. But in the long haul, it's a great thing for city government to be more co located and to have room to grow over the decades to come to.
Unknown Speaker
I want to take some questions from our we have a Facebook city limits group where we post Bloomington stories, and it really generated some good discussion which I wanted to bring up here. And one of those items was could the purchase have been done by eminent domain paying the assessed value, the poster claims the offer was about half million to a million more than this, or the city could have saved that by doing eminent domain?
Unknown Speaker
Well, you can use eminent domain for public purposes, we, you know, we would be careful, we don't like to do that. And eminent domain appraised values don't always give you the fair market value. It's a little tricky, perhaps in a circumstance where we weren't using the whole building, as well, if we were going to keep some private sector folks in there that can make the eminent domain a little complicated we we do look at that. But we really only use it as a last resort.
Unknown Speaker
concern that the showers building can't be brought up to the same safety standards is that something you're worried about,
Unknown Speaker
we care deeply about safety, of course, is the building where I am and where many of us work. And it says at least as safe as the current police headquarters, it is true that if we built a building from scratch, a brand new building, you do have some different standards than if you're rehabbing an older building. This is preserving 100 year old historic building, which we're also pleased with, but it will be safe. There's a lot of detail to review. But we're very confident that it'll be a great police headquarters in Fire Administration Center and really connects us all together in City Hall a little better.
Unknown Speaker
I'll take one more from this there is concern the showers building is a very social area that that area that Beeline is right there, the farmers market. So police response time transport back and forth will be more dangerous and take more time than the current location.
Unknown Speaker
Well, there was a lot of debate about that as City Council. I think one one statement that was made, which I think is true is there's no perfect location for a police headquarters. I think this is a much better location than where they are. If you really think about where they are now. They're next to a park with hundreds of kids that go in and out of the park all day. And they're they're going by them when they dispatch, it's also really important for people to remember that a police station, unlike a fire department, you don't get dispatched from the station. The police officers are generally out and about among the community when calls come in. It does happen sometimes from the station, but not that much. These are issues that we'll be working with with the architect. But you know, ultimately do I also say, it's actually really good, the more the police interact with the community and the community with the police, not just in criminal response settings. But community policing means we're all part of this public safety effort in the police department. So I'm actually happy that we'll have more interaction in more different ways with the police department, our public safety officials and the community as a whole.
Unknown Speaker
The city's seventh annual joint public safety report issued Thursday stating violent crime up about 6% overall crime down 1%. Can you put that into into perspective for us try to understand like, is there a cause for concern?
Unknown Speaker
Well, always, you know, the reason I started these public safety reports back in 2016 17, I think was the first one we did was this is important stuff, the data we need to pay attention to this. Sometimes the media, let's just say that generally focuses on particular events, and we can get a perception of what's going on. So the general trajectory has been crime rates going down, generally in Bloomington for a number of years, which is terrific. However, particular concern about gun violence, which we see rising, and some violent crime increases as well. Our police chief emphasize that the most the vast majority of violent crime is between people who know each other. A lot of it's within a household. And so that's concerning. It's not something that the police can do a lot about except respond to, but it does remind us as a community, how important violence prevention is now the gun violence, we are doing some specific things on and that's been a particular concern over the last two or three years. We're doing more integration with the federal government. Now every shell and every bullet fragment is shared. They can trace these every weapon is traced to see was it used somewhere else? So we're, we're doing a lot more of that. But it's, it's important. And you know, I know we're talking right after what happened in Michigan State, a college town, the big 10 university, our hearts go out to them. Actually, we do town gown meetings with the big 10 and the most recent one was up in East Lansing just a few months ago. So all of the big 10 public safety folks were there. It's it's a reminder of how important continuing to educate and protect about gun violence is for all of us.
Unknown Speaker
You know, when you talk about this, too, when I was reading the report about an increased Have you talked about attempted homicides, rapes, assaults, domestic battery, it just such a wide variety of items? How does the city or police tackle things like this?
Unknown Speaker
Well, you're right there. And with many of these being relationships among people who know each other where violence erupts, I mean, part of it is there just more guns around and what used to be a fistfight can turn into a gunshot these days. So there's only so much we can do. But we try to do that I do think continuing to focus on civility and education and mental health services. And all those things are important. We're also we do you have a new grant program that we created to support neighborhood based anti gun violence and violence prevention. So we're encouraging neighborhood groups and faith based groups and others to come to us and say, here's what we can do to help because I do think a lot of this is not on the police. I mean, the police will respond. But they're, they it's hard for them to intervene in in a domestic situation, the community can better do that. So we're trying to encourage more of that. It's also why we hire social workers. It's why we're hiring integrated health specialists in the fire department to do more prevention work. And that's also why bringing the public safety folks together is important because that stuff's more complicated. It's not traditional policing or fire prevention and response, but it's what we need to do going forward.
Unknown Speaker
And speaking of hiring police, public safety officers, there's some new benefits that you just announced, I believe, just this past week.
Unknown Speaker
Yes. At the public safety state of the public safety report, we did announce and one of the things I said is the biggest challenge in way in public safety is personnel. Just trying to make sure we have enough we're down in the police department, we're also seeing a decline in the fire department a little bit. So we announced what I think is the first in the nation program where we're going to help firefighters and police officers in a pilot program up to 2010 each buy a home in the city $100,000 downpayment assistance, no interest loan, that we will forgive over 10 years $10,000 A year, really encouraging these first responders and these heroes of our community to live in our neighborhoods, which is hard for them, it's often too expensive. So we hope this will let us see a way to help more people in our public safety world live in our city. We just launched it. We're already starting to get phone calls from people who say I'm sure this is for current employees to help them stay here as well as new employees to help attract them here.
Unknown Speaker
Wanted to address something I read on Reddit and then the HT also reported on this saying the fiber installation is causing some sewer backup leaving the repair bill to unhappy homeowners. What's the city's response to this homeowners
Unknown Speaker
shouldn't be subject to the bills. Now there are there are we're very excited about this the fiber build we've I think I've seen the latest number close over 30 miles of conduit have been installed, there's more to go a couple of 1000 homes have been crossed, if you will. And in the drilling in the placement of those there can be can hit some sewer lines, which are not on the utility locate processes easily but the homeowners should not be responsible for whatever company did that and some of them are the gigabit now but some of our 18 T or Comcast to whoever whoever did that is responsible for fixing fixing that with the homeowner. So if anybody has a problem, we're happy to talk to him we generally will steer them toward the contractor that did the work and they should repair the damage and put the put the situation back to normal.
Unknown Speaker
Also see the city and is it the the mill signed a partnership agreement for management of that area. And just news I believe today that the mill is hiring John Fernandez former mayor to help develop that area. That's big news. It
Unknown Speaker
is big news. Somebody who sat in this seat Yeah, so we're very excited about the trades district overall the trajectory is wonderful. We've got a lot going on the fastest growing cowork space and rising Tech City in the Midwest etc. This is kind of a next step and John Fernandez the former mayor has been brought on full time to help advance the Texas Tech Center that includes a new building it includes relationships with IU, it includes activating the property there with more investments and it's it's really the kind of the next step I think in the trades districts activation. We've had a number of building sold some built but we need to keep that momentum going and John helped found get the whole Tech Tech partnership going. He'll be working with Pat East there and as a city we've kind of empowered them to take As to the next level,
Unknown Speaker
anything at the Statehouse that you've been keeping an eye on?
Unknown Speaker
I'm always watching
Unknown Speaker
so many things. I kind of hate to zero in on one thing, every mayor seems to have something different business personal property tax. Haven't heard too much about that. sunsetting the food and beverage taxes? Haven't heard much.
Unknown Speaker
We're watching a lot, Joe. You know, we're concerned about a number of things. There's There's fire district impact legislation, there's all kinds of things. I think the thing I most want to see and hope to see in this budget session is serious investment in public education, which is so important to the success of a city like ours and all across the state. serious investment in public health, which the governor has called for. The commission has called for I hope city that state government will it will advance that we have huge public health needs. Much of what we see in our city that causes stress, people living on the streets, substance use disorders that are causing all kinds of behavioral issues. Much of that reflects the lack of investment in public health. And it's an opportunity to do it. And I very much hope they'll do those two things, maybe leave the rest of it alone a lot, rather than to try to tell us how to do our lives.
Unknown Speaker
That was all I had. Did you have any major announcements or things you'd like to talk about
Unknown Speaker
welcome people to the state of the city. It'll be Thursday, February 23 at the Waldron this year, so a little different place where have refreshments before and after. So it's going to be a happening place. Thursday, the 23rd starting at six program at seven. And that'll be my eighth and final state of the city. So I'm looking forward to talking about the future. And we'll be there. Thanks, Joe.
Thank you
