So third week of the month, as always, Bloomington Mayor john Hamilton agrees to Facebook Live for this week's show. And we find ourselves headlining with, you know, the protest rallies over the fight against racism. And as you know, Bloomington no stranger to activism we had enough is enough rally protest on the square people are wanting to see change in systemic racism. So the bottom line is, how can local government change here? What What can Bloomington residents look back when they look back at the year 2020 and say, these were the changes that were made?
Well, you know, we did have a major rally, actually, I think the biggest in recent history that folks could think of in turn on Friday, June 5, that was thousands of people calling for response activity, advocacy in response to racism in particular recently In weeks and months, having seen examples in the public safety arena but but really broader than that thinking about how does our country and how does each community like Bloomington respond to the legacies of racism, those that are still here? Joe will almost certainly see some evolution in the public safety world continuing, we've been very focused on that. Let me just say the rally itself was a huge, powerful statement against racism. It was non violent. The merchants many merchants kind of put out water and treats and welcoming the marchers and supporting the marchers. And Don and I were there. At the distance. We were a little physically distance but it was very powerful statement of the importance of change. And I'm, I'm confident we're going to continue to see the evolution in the public safety world. Just some examples we've seen in Bloomington and last five or eight years. We have body cameras. They came in 2014. We have downtown resource officers that came in. Let me just say they came in part because people asked, how do we do better and put pressure and advocated for change. We have the downtown resource officers for five or so years that focus on particularly homeless services. We now have a social, social. I'm sorry, we have a social worker as part of the department we've added. We also have neighborhood resource specialists. We've become CALEA nationally credited. We've followed the 21st Century Policing reports. But those have all been important steps. And I'm and I'm proud of our community doing that, but we're likely to get to see continued evolution tonight on Tuesday night when we're taping Tuesday night as a Public Safety Board meeting that will hear a lot of ideas to be sure about that. And then, you know, more broadly economic justice, housing justice, education, justice, healthcare, justice, all those have racial components to them that we'll be continuing to work on.
You know that we've seen some backlash to the last couple years with the city purchasing the lenco bearcat, the armored vehicle. Is there been any talk about things being revisited like that?
Well, people sure some people are asking to revisit that decision as they are looking at lots of things in the police department. I'll say that that armored vehicle has been used every month or so since we had it to respond to extremely dangerous situations. Every use is reported to the citizen Public Safety Board to review its use, make sure it's used under the appropriate protocols. And, you know, I wish we didn't have 10s of thousands of weapons in Monroe County that get involved in dangerous situations at different times. I wish we didn't need an armored vehicle to respond to extremely dangerous hazardous situations of hostages or, or other situations like that, but we have needed it. But that's not to say we shouldn't talk about it and review how it's used, review how many times it's used, and keep considering whether it's the right thing to have. Public Safety continues to change. Our communities continue to change and we should always revisit those at any occasion.
I wanted to follow up with another incident this past week or so it was Ken's West Side service and towing there was a Facebook racial viral video with an employee who happened to be the son of the owners of the city has a contract. But I understood with that company, but I understand that the city terminated that
contract, is that right?
That's correct. We invoked a clause that allows us to terminate it within seven days notice,
and there's no new contract with that company being made.
No, there's not.
You know, I look I've been very vocal. In my tenure, and I know my predecessors in a community advocating loudly against white supremacy, it's that view that Scourge continues with us. It's like a virus that spread person to person, generation to generation. And when that arises any way we can we want to respond appropriately, we had the authority that's a contract that we hire and pay with government money to provide services to us. And we're allowed to terminate that contract for any or no reason within seven days, and we chose to do so.
So I wanted to kind of compare that with the farmers market controversy. You know, the city claimed free speech as a right to the vendor who was a self professed white identitarian. But yet the city took a stand with the contract and tow truck service for using the racial slur. So how are those two incidents different?
Well, the first thing I'll say is we stand against white supremacy every chance we get. I do personally in our city government makes clear that on behalf of the people of Bloomington, we do we do not support and we in fact a poor white supremacy and want to speak out against it and act out against it on behalf of our community every chance we get. This is an inclusive, welcoming community. And we want we want to embody those values as full as we can. Now you know, the details are important and when you hire a contractor with city money to represent you and be your agent, if you will, in this case in the towing sector. That's one set of rules on what we're allowed to do when we are hiring a contractor with our money government money to do that. And the contract explicitly allowed us to terminate within seven days, when we run a farmers market. We are we are offering a service to any member of the public who wants to be a farmer and vend at our at our at our market, they sign a contract and they actually purchase a least if you will, to be a member of that market and pay money to the public to be a member of that market and the rules are just different. I know it's complicated, but under the First Amendment, we cannot refuse just like we couldn't refuse somebody to come to a swimming pool or use other public amenities. We can't refuse you to come because we don't like what you think or what you say. That's clearly not allowed under the First Amendment. It's tricky. It's complicated. You know, what's not complicated is the city continues to stand strongly for inclusion and against racism. And we do that every chance we get when we're allowed to do so.
And then you have that broadening inclusion subcommittee of the Bloomington Farmers Market posting that controversial statement on Facebook, several of those committee members resigned, I believe last night that committee was disbanded. But that group was there to deal with those or to try to be more diverse in the market. So how did something Like that happened, and then does that speak to how deep systemic racism isn't in Bloomington?
Look, Joe, you know, racism is a hard reality. And it's a hard subject to talk about. It's complicated. These conversations are not easy. If they were, and we could have solved this generations ago, you know, God wish we would have but we haven't and we need to keep working on it. The broadening inclusion committee was a volunteer committee set up by the farmers market Advisory Committee, which is a volunteer group of farmers who wanted to help think about how do we how do we change the farmers market to make it more welcoming both to vendors of color to attendees of color, be more inclusive market and they made some recommendations in the past few months that the parks department has used. The statement that that group of volunteers made let me just first be clear, that's not a statement from the government or a statement from the mayor's office. Or the city. These are individuals who have chosen to make statements to advise the government about what they think. And that group, which was a mix of people from different backgrounds, different races, different approaches, put out a statement that had some inappropriate language in it. And I think members of the committee, were not comfortable with some of that. And so they chose to disavow it and even that committee has has, as you indicated, it's been disbanded. Now, you know, for me from my Mayor seat, the bottom line is, we have to keep having these conversations and talk about how do we deal with the racism that still exists. And these are, these are hard conversations. every employer needs to do it. Every household needs to do it. Every government needs to do it and we have to recognize at the bottom line, we embrace inclusive inclusivity opportunity, eliminating racism But it's here and it's difficult to get rid of and it's going to take hard conversations and hard work to keep that up. And that's what I know we're committed to do with our community.
We're about halfway through. So I did want to get to some of our questions. We have to hear this one. How would you area police IU PD City County, evaluate the effectiveness of the implicit bias training their officers receive?
Well, in terms of evaluating the effectiveness of it, every year, we have implicit bias training. But training is not enough. Training is really important, but the culture of the of an organization is at least as important as the specific training that you go through. And, you know, I, I think people I've heard described that Minneapolis Police Force had outstanding anti bias training. But the culture wasn't sufficient to stop the terrific the awful incident of They're in Minneapolis and we have to be attentive to that to trainings are done with reviews, feedback on that, but the proof is in the pudding. And I'll I'll just say we have to keep doing our work every year make sure we get better at this continue to train, continue to listen to continue to de escalate, continue to look at data. And that's what we're going to continue to do.
Luke send an email and we'll Mayor Hamilton commit to implementing and enforcing the eight can't wait. and former President Obama's commitment to action to reduce police violence and brutality.
Absolutely. In fact, and these these meetings, again will be happening this week and ongoing to review. The eight Can't wait list that I've reviewed, we actually are already in compliance in terms of the the items of that except for one and that one will be reviewed. The one that is Question is about vehicles and using firearms, either from a vehicle or add a vehicle. And and look, I think this is a really good question for our community to decide. And I don't pretend to have the answer. But if a police officer sees a vehicle heading toward a crowd of protesters, for example, with clear intent to run into that crowd, do we want to police officer in no circumstances to to try to stop that with firearms? Or do we want to say it's up to the judgment of a police officer based upon the definite dangers of ricocheting in difficult situations? And that's a fair question. That's one of the eight Can't wait all the others in terms of reporting in terms of de escalation in terms of no chokeholds and many and those others we are already in compliance with and and we'll continue to debate that as a community about how we want to go forward.
farmer's market question what are the updates on the market efforts to become more diverse and inclusive. They love to support local vendors but cannot continue to support the market that supports his self admitted white supremacist?
Well, again, what I would say is the market supports inclusiveness and the city supports inclusiveness in his pores, white supremacy or those who advocate for it. However, the market is a public market that cannot discriminate against viewpoints by those based upon their viewpoints or we will lose a First Amendment case. So I encourage you to participate in the market. The best way to protect the market is to demand its inclusiveness to be there and be inclusive. We're continuing to work with the whole agriculture community about making it a more inclusive community and we welcome ideas about how to do that. It took it's a tough conflict. We've seen it now for well over a year the conflict between the right to believe what you want to believe in this country and the right for the government, and most of them to advocate for inclusiveness, but that conflict we have, we have to be careful and reflect the deep values that protect all of us country and our freedom to say and think what we want to think even in circumstances where things are abhorrent to us. We need to be able to balance that in the government.
This is kind of shifting over to the Coronavirus COVID-19 john emails and he wants to know, he wants to know to what extent you and the county counterparts consulted, not updated but consulted before I use restart report. And are you concerned about I use lack of provision for testing asymptomatic students, staff teachers?
Well, we work very closely together. As you think i think you know we meet regularly with a group from the county and county health and I you and I you health in the city to talk about the health related challenge. Is that we still face. I use restart efforts themselves were extensive and intensive involved dozens of committees and hundreds of people. And while I would say we collaborated, and we're kind of updated and informed about those, I was not a direct participant in those and wouldn't, wouldn't ask to be. I will say that the university in the city are working very closely now, to think about how do we navigate the changes that will come when thousands 10s of thousands of young people return likely in August? That does present health challenges. It's complicated in that I you will probably have some quite strict regimens appropriately so on campus, while the state rules and probably the local rules we don't know for sure will be dramatically different from that and looser off campus. And we're working very closely with IU to think about how do we manage the safety of all of us in that in that regard and all of us want to avoid the problem of opening up our community. And then having a surge or an eruption of cases happen that would cause us to have to go backwards, close things down, maybe even have to send people home. We absolutely don't want to do that. So we're working very closely to think through that.
Just a quick follow up. I think I heard you say that you were not a direct participant of the IU reopening. Is that concerning that that city or county administration is not with IU on on the same page in terms of reopening?
No, I think what all I wanted to say was they created a a pretty robust infrastructure inside the university to explore the restart issues and have done that extensively. I was not personally on any of those committees and wouldn't expect to be I mean, regularly with the provost, I meet with the President. We have a town gown meeting that meets regularly to explore these issues we met last week. I meet with the Provost two or three times a week. To talk about all these issues, so we're coordinating very closely but IU is not on the continuity of city government task force that we set up to figure out how city government keeps working and and yet we collaborate very closely on that. And it it's going to be complicated. How we protect everyone's health as these major changes happen in the fall, where we're in touch with big 10 University cities, and their counterpart, the universities to talk how is Champaign Urbana doing and how is Madison Dillon How is Columbus Ohio, Ohio dealing with how is College Park Maryland dealing with it so we're we're all trying to learn for West Lafayette. I should mention them to you know,
how do we all do this in these challenging times.
Mike sent an email in the numbers for Indiana COVID-19 positive tests and debts do not match from federal sources. The numbers reported by the state for the Monroe County do not seem to reflect the numbers by nursing home facilities and He thinks that that seems to be protecting nursing homes that have significant problems from negative publicity. I think we talked about this last month too. Did we were able to get more information about the reporting of nursing homes from the state because it's due to that was an issue of transparency.
Yes. I don't think Indiana's being as transparent as we should be at the state level. And I think the governor and the health department and the legislature should be more transparent. Many states do require nursing homes and long term care facilities to to report publicly, their their infectious disease numbers. And I think that's the right thing to do. We don't have that done in Indiana, which means we like us, others have to scramble to figure out what are the data My father was just in a long term care facility and they can tell you what their numbers are, but it's not run through a health system. It's not run through the standardized reviews and quality control reviews that it should be. It's very frustrating when data is not coming. That's true. We've seen the federal level not do enough on data and testing. We've seen the state level from my perspective, respectfully not be open and transparent enough and, and I've urged at the local level that we'd be transparent and open I, for example, as soon as we had a case of an employee in the city government, I reported it I said, we have to tell people we had a firefighter we had a parks department employee, thankfully, we haven't had one since but if we did, we would report it publicly. Because, look, we shouldn't be ashamed of these diseases. This is nothing to be ashamed of. It's a it's a public health threat and information is how we solve it together.
Becky wants to know why Monroe County can provide surgical masks to all residents, it could save money and lives. Thank you.
Well, a lot of masks are being supplied in a lots of different circumstances. But I think it's a good question to the health department and to the Emergency Management Department. There are supply issues At times, if there's somebody who does want a mask who cannot get a mask, I would welcome them to contact us or the health department directly if you feel you cannot get a mask. Many employers are providing it the city as an employer is providing it. I know for example, the march organizers on Friday the fifth handed out many masks which were provided by many of the governmental entities. So we do not have a mandatory mask order. Our County Health Department has not done so and the state health department has not done so for everybody that's worth talking about. And we'll be looking at mask usage, particularly in the fall with concerns of Erie resurgence. But for right now, if you if you can't get one yourself, I would encourage you to reach out to government folks to see if there may be sources we had many thousands of volunteer people volunteer mass created and distributed to many people so we can try to help with that still.
One more question here. Maryann wants to know. Have the switchyard Park cameras have been installed. And if there are cameras there are can they be used from for residents to identify a stolen like backpack or something. There are
quite a few cameras, part of switchyard park that was one of the one of the community's goals when the planning was done for that park many years ago. They are not actively monitored cameras, they are only recording devices that can be used. If there's a crime or some event that occurs they can be reviewed to see footage that can help respond to that appropriately. So circumstance that was described. It could be helpful with that there are several dozen cameras at the park that again are used to in retrospect to try to resolve something if something like that happens.
Should she just contact the
police department? Yes, she should. In fact she probably knows there's a police new police station right at the North. center of the park. That's one place to go if you want to go online or telephone, that would be welcome to to ask about that.
I know we're at the end of our time, but I wanted to ask you about the public's invited to a zoom meeting about the city's new seven line. I think it's an east to west bicycle lane and bus corridor. Is that along Seventh Street, would you want to tell us a little bit about that?
Yes, Thursday night is a meeting to begin the public process of designing and responding to the seven line which is part of the Bicentennial project that was a gift to the community in 2018. It is meant to extend basically east from the Beeline along Seventh Street, onto campus at Woodlawn, and then eventually through campus and then eventually all the way to 446 on the east side to try to create a really nice East West link, both for pedestrians and bicyclists and creating a separated bike lane there and we want to get the public involved in thinking about how to make that as useful and attractive as possible.
Do you have any other announcements or anything else we should know about?
You know, I would just thank people for your patience and your care. These are hard times there's a lot of things in front of us a lot of things going on. There's a thing called we can get fatigued, we can get fatigued with doing the right thing. But it's really important to continue the physical distancing and using masks and frankly, being kind to each other and listening to each other and hearing recommendations about how we can become a better community. I want to thank everybody for doing that and encourage us to keep doing so as we take care of Bloomington.
As time goes by so fast. I think we got a lot in, but we'll have much more next month in July for ask the mayor. Thank you very much.
Thanks, Joe. Good to see you. Bye bye.
Well, you know, we did have a major rally, actually, I think the biggest in recent history that folks could think of in turn on Friday, June 5, that was thousands of people calling for response activity, advocacy in response to racism in particular recently In weeks and months, having seen examples in the public safety arena but but really broader than that thinking about how does our country and how does each community like Bloomington respond to the legacies of racism, those that are still here? Joe will almost certainly see some evolution in the public safety world continuing, we've been very focused on that. Let me just say the rally itself was a huge, powerful statement against racism. It was non violent. The merchants many merchants kind of put out water and treats and welcoming the marchers and supporting the marchers. And Don and I were there. At the distance. We were a little physically distance but it was very powerful statement of the importance of change. And I'm, I'm confident we're going to continue to see the evolution in the public safety world. Just some examples we've seen in Bloomington and last five or eight years. We have body cameras. They came in 2014. We have downtown resource officers that came in. Let me just say they came in part because people asked, how do we do better and put pressure and advocated for change. We have the downtown resource officers for five or so years that focus on particularly homeless services. We now have a social, social. I'm sorry, we have a social worker as part of the department we've added. We also have neighborhood resource specialists. We've become CALEA nationally credited. We've followed the 21st Century Policing reports. But those have all been important steps. And I'm and I'm proud of our community doing that, but we're likely to get to see continued evolution tonight on Tuesday night when we're taping Tuesday night as a Public Safety Board meeting that will hear a lot of ideas to be sure about that. And then, you know, more broadly economic justice, housing justice, education, justice, healthcare, justice, all those have racial components to them that we'll be continuing to work on.
You know that we've seen some backlash to the last couple years with the city purchasing the lenco bearcat, the armored vehicle. Is there been any talk about things being revisited like that?
Well, people sure some people are asking to revisit that decision as they are looking at lots of things in the police department. I'll say that that armored vehicle has been used every month or so since we had it to respond to extremely dangerous situations. Every use is reported to the citizen Public Safety Board to review its use, make sure it's used under the appropriate protocols. And, you know, I wish we didn't have 10s of thousands of weapons in Monroe County that get involved in dangerous situations at different times. I wish we didn't need an armored vehicle to respond to extremely dangerous hazardous situations of hostages or, or other situations like that, but we have needed it. But that's not to say we shouldn't talk about it and review how it's used, review how many times it's used, and keep considering whether it's the right thing to have. Public Safety continues to change. Our communities continue to change and we should always revisit those at any occasion.
I wanted to follow up with another incident this past week or so it was Ken's West Side service and towing there was a Facebook racial viral video with an employee who happened to be the son of the owners of the city has a contract. But I understood with that company, but I understand that the city terminated that
contract, is that right?
That's correct. We invoked a clause that allows us to terminate it within seven days notice,
and there's no new contract with that company being made.
No, there's not.
You know, I look I've been very vocal. In my tenure, and I know my predecessors in a community advocating loudly against white supremacy, it's that view that Scourge continues with us. It's like a virus that spread person to person, generation to generation. And when that arises any way we can we want to respond appropriately, we had the authority that's a contract that we hire and pay with government money to provide services to us. And we're allowed to terminate that contract for any or no reason within seven days, and we chose to do so.
So I wanted to kind of compare that with the farmers market controversy. You know, the city claimed free speech as a right to the vendor who was a self professed white identitarian. But yet the city took a stand with the contract and tow truck service for using the racial slur. So how are those two incidents different?
Well, the first thing I'll say is we stand against white supremacy every chance we get. I do personally in our city government makes clear that on behalf of the people of Bloomington, we do we do not support and we in fact a poor white supremacy and want to speak out against it and act out against it on behalf of our community every chance we get. This is an inclusive, welcoming community. And we want we want to embody those values as full as we can. Now you know, the details are important and when you hire a contractor with city money to represent you and be your agent, if you will, in this case in the towing sector. That's one set of rules on what we're allowed to do when we are hiring a contractor with our money government money to do that. And the contract explicitly allowed us to terminate within seven days, when we run a farmers market. We are we are offering a service to any member of the public who wants to be a farmer and vend at our at our at our market, they sign a contract and they actually purchase a least if you will, to be a member of that market and pay money to the public to be a member of that market and the rules are just different. I know it's complicated, but under the First Amendment, we cannot refuse just like we couldn't refuse somebody to come to a swimming pool or use other public amenities. We can't refuse you to come because we don't like what you think or what you say. That's clearly not allowed under the First Amendment. It's tricky. It's complicated. You know, what's not complicated is the city continues to stand strongly for inclusion and against racism. And we do that every chance we get when we're allowed to do so.
And then you have that broadening inclusion subcommittee of the Bloomington Farmers Market posting that controversial statement on Facebook, several of those committee members resigned, I believe last night that committee was disbanded. But that group was there to deal with those or to try to be more diverse in the market. So how did something Like that happened, and then does that speak to how deep systemic racism isn't in Bloomington?
Look, Joe, you know, racism is a hard reality. And it's a hard subject to talk about. It's complicated. These conversations are not easy. If they were, and we could have solved this generations ago, you know, God wish we would have but we haven't and we need to keep working on it. The broadening inclusion committee was a volunteer committee set up by the farmers market Advisory Committee, which is a volunteer group of farmers who wanted to help think about how do we how do we change the farmers market to make it more welcoming both to vendors of color to attendees of color, be more inclusive market and they made some recommendations in the past few months that the parks department has used. The statement that that group of volunteers made let me just first be clear, that's not a statement from the government or a statement from the mayor's office. Or the city. These are individuals who have chosen to make statements to advise the government about what they think. And that group, which was a mix of people from different backgrounds, different races, different approaches, put out a statement that had some inappropriate language in it. And I think members of the committee, were not comfortable with some of that. And so they chose to disavow it and even that committee has has, as you indicated, it's been disbanded. Now, you know, for me from my Mayor seat, the bottom line is, we have to keep having these conversations and talk about how do we deal with the racism that still exists. And these are, these are hard conversations. every employer needs to do it. Every household needs to do it. Every government needs to do it and we have to recognize at the bottom line, we embrace inclusive inclusivity opportunity, eliminating racism But it's here and it's difficult to get rid of and it's going to take hard conversations and hard work to keep that up. And that's what I know we're committed to do with our community.
We're about halfway through. So I did want to get to some of our questions. We have to hear this one. How would you area police IU PD City County, evaluate the effectiveness of the implicit bias training their officers receive?
Well, in terms of evaluating the effectiveness of it, every year, we have implicit bias training. But training is not enough. Training is really important, but the culture of the of an organization is at least as important as the specific training that you go through. And, you know, I, I think people I've heard described that Minneapolis Police Force had outstanding anti bias training. But the culture wasn't sufficient to stop the terrific the awful incident of They're in Minneapolis and we have to be attentive to that to trainings are done with reviews, feedback on that, but the proof is in the pudding. And I'll I'll just say we have to keep doing our work every year make sure we get better at this continue to train, continue to listen to continue to de escalate, continue to look at data. And that's what we're going to continue to do.
Luke send an email and we'll Mayor Hamilton commit to implementing and enforcing the eight can't wait. and former President Obama's commitment to action to reduce police violence and brutality.
Absolutely. In fact, and these these meetings, again will be happening this week and ongoing to review. The eight Can't wait list that I've reviewed, we actually are already in compliance in terms of the the items of that except for one and that one will be reviewed. The one that is Question is about vehicles and using firearms, either from a vehicle or add a vehicle. And and look, I think this is a really good question for our community to decide. And I don't pretend to have the answer. But if a police officer sees a vehicle heading toward a crowd of protesters, for example, with clear intent to run into that crowd, do we want to police officer in no circumstances to to try to stop that with firearms? Or do we want to say it's up to the judgment of a police officer based upon the definite dangers of ricocheting in difficult situations? And that's a fair question. That's one of the eight Can't wait all the others in terms of reporting in terms of de escalation in terms of no chokeholds and many and those others we are already in compliance with and and we'll continue to debate that as a community about how we want to go forward.
farmer's market question what are the updates on the market efforts to become more diverse and inclusive. They love to support local vendors but cannot continue to support the market that supports his self admitted white supremacist?
Well, again, what I would say is the market supports inclusiveness and the city supports inclusiveness in his pores, white supremacy or those who advocate for it. However, the market is a public market that cannot discriminate against viewpoints by those based upon their viewpoints or we will lose a First Amendment case. So I encourage you to participate in the market. The best way to protect the market is to demand its inclusiveness to be there and be inclusive. We're continuing to work with the whole agriculture community about making it a more inclusive community and we welcome ideas about how to do that. It took it's a tough conflict. We've seen it now for well over a year the conflict between the right to believe what you want to believe in this country and the right for the government, and most of them to advocate for inclusiveness, but that conflict we have, we have to be careful and reflect the deep values that protect all of us country and our freedom to say and think what we want to think even in circumstances where things are abhorrent to us. We need to be able to balance that in the government.
This is kind of shifting over to the Coronavirus COVID-19 john emails and he wants to know, he wants to know to what extent you and the county counterparts consulted, not updated but consulted before I use restart report. And are you concerned about I use lack of provision for testing asymptomatic students, staff teachers?
Well, we work very closely together. As you think i think you know we meet regularly with a group from the county and county health and I you and I you health in the city to talk about the health related challenge. Is that we still face. I use restart efforts themselves were extensive and intensive involved dozens of committees and hundreds of people. And while I would say we collaborated, and we're kind of updated and informed about those, I was not a direct participant in those and wouldn't, wouldn't ask to be. I will say that the university in the city are working very closely now, to think about how do we navigate the changes that will come when thousands 10s of thousands of young people return likely in August? That does present health challenges. It's complicated in that I you will probably have some quite strict regimens appropriately so on campus, while the state rules and probably the local rules we don't know for sure will be dramatically different from that and looser off campus. And we're working very closely with IU to think about how do we manage the safety of all of us in that in that regard and all of us want to avoid the problem of opening up our community. And then having a surge or an eruption of cases happen that would cause us to have to go backwards, close things down, maybe even have to send people home. We absolutely don't want to do that. So we're working very closely to think through that.
Just a quick follow up. I think I heard you say that you were not a direct participant of the IU reopening. Is that concerning that that city or county administration is not with IU on on the same page in terms of reopening?
No, I think what all I wanted to say was they created a a pretty robust infrastructure inside the university to explore the restart issues and have done that extensively. I was not personally on any of those committees and wouldn't expect to be I mean, regularly with the provost, I meet with the President. We have a town gown meeting that meets regularly to explore these issues we met last week. I meet with the Provost two or three times a week. To talk about all these issues, so we're coordinating very closely but IU is not on the continuity of city government task force that we set up to figure out how city government keeps working and and yet we collaborate very closely on that. And it it's going to be complicated. How we protect everyone's health as these major changes happen in the fall, where we're in touch with big 10 University cities, and their counterpart, the universities to talk how is Champaign Urbana doing and how is Madison Dillon How is Columbus Ohio, Ohio dealing with how is College Park Maryland dealing with it so we're we're all trying to learn for West Lafayette. I should mention them to you know,
how do we all do this in these challenging times.
Mike sent an email in the numbers for Indiana COVID-19 positive tests and debts do not match from federal sources. The numbers reported by the state for the Monroe County do not seem to reflect the numbers by nursing home facilities and He thinks that that seems to be protecting nursing homes that have significant problems from negative publicity. I think we talked about this last month too. Did we were able to get more information about the reporting of nursing homes from the state because it's due to that was an issue of transparency.
Yes. I don't think Indiana's being as transparent as we should be at the state level. And I think the governor and the health department and the legislature should be more transparent. Many states do require nursing homes and long term care facilities to to report publicly, their their infectious disease numbers. And I think that's the right thing to do. We don't have that done in Indiana, which means we like us, others have to scramble to figure out what are the data My father was just in a long term care facility and they can tell you what their numbers are, but it's not run through a health system. It's not run through the standardized reviews and quality control reviews that it should be. It's very frustrating when data is not coming. That's true. We've seen the federal level not do enough on data and testing. We've seen the state level from my perspective, respectfully not be open and transparent enough and, and I've urged at the local level that we'd be transparent and open I, for example, as soon as we had a case of an employee in the city government, I reported it I said, we have to tell people we had a firefighter we had a parks department employee, thankfully, we haven't had one since but if we did, we would report it publicly. Because, look, we shouldn't be ashamed of these diseases. This is nothing to be ashamed of. It's a it's a public health threat and information is how we solve it together.
Becky wants to know why Monroe County can provide surgical masks to all residents, it could save money and lives. Thank you.
Well, a lot of masks are being supplied in a lots of different circumstances. But I think it's a good question to the health department and to the Emergency Management Department. There are supply issues At times, if there's somebody who does want a mask who cannot get a mask, I would welcome them to contact us or the health department directly if you feel you cannot get a mask. Many employers are providing it the city as an employer is providing it. I know for example, the march organizers on Friday the fifth handed out many masks which were provided by many of the governmental entities. So we do not have a mandatory mask order. Our County Health Department has not done so and the state health department has not done so for everybody that's worth talking about. And we'll be looking at mask usage, particularly in the fall with concerns of Erie resurgence. But for right now, if you if you can't get one yourself, I would encourage you to reach out to government folks to see if there may be sources we had many thousands of volunteer people volunteer mass created and distributed to many people so we can try to help with that still.
One more question here. Maryann wants to know. Have the switchyard Park cameras have been installed. And if there are cameras there are can they be used from for residents to identify a stolen like backpack or something. There are
quite a few cameras, part of switchyard park that was one of the one of the community's goals when the planning was done for that park many years ago. They are not actively monitored cameras, they are only recording devices that can be used. If there's a crime or some event that occurs they can be reviewed to see footage that can help respond to that appropriately. So circumstance that was described. It could be helpful with that there are several dozen cameras at the park that again are used to in retrospect to try to resolve something if something like that happens.
Should she just contact the
police department? Yes, she should. In fact she probably knows there's a police new police station right at the North. center of the park. That's one place to go if you want to go online or telephone, that would be welcome to to ask about that.
I know we're at the end of our time, but I wanted to ask you about the public's invited to a zoom meeting about the city's new seven line. I think it's an east to west bicycle lane and bus corridor. Is that along Seventh Street, would you want to tell us a little bit about that?
Yes, Thursday night is a meeting to begin the public process of designing and responding to the seven line which is part of the Bicentennial project that was a gift to the community in 2018. It is meant to extend basically east from the Beeline along Seventh Street, onto campus at Woodlawn, and then eventually through campus and then eventually all the way to 446 on the east side to try to create a really nice East West link, both for pedestrians and bicyclists and creating a separated bike lane there and we want to get the public involved in thinking about how to make that as useful and attractive as possible.
Do you have any other announcements or anything else we should know about?
You know, I would just thank people for your patience and your care. These are hard times there's a lot of things in front of us a lot of things going on. There's a thing called we can get fatigued, we can get fatigued with doing the right thing. But it's really important to continue the physical distancing and using masks and frankly, being kind to each other and listening to each other and hearing recommendations about how we can become a better community. I want to thank everybody for doing that and encourage us to keep doing so as we take care of Bloomington.
As time goes by so fast. I think we got a lot in, but we'll have much more next month in July for ask the mayor. Thank you very much.
Thanks, Joe. Good to see you. Bye bye.
