HREN [00:00:00] Hello, welcome to Ask the Mayor on WFIU. I'm Joe Hren, it's spring break in Bloomington, Indiana. Kind of peaceful, I'm not complaining, are you?
THOMSON [00:00:13] Happy Spring Break to all who celebrate.
HREN [00:00:16] And that's Mayor Kerry Thomson. Welcome to the show. Thanks for having us.
THOMSON [00:00:20] Thanks Joe, thanks for being here.
HREN [00:00:21] Hey, let's just start with what broke last week, and I know you sent out a press release. We appreciate that. We were able to get some information in response to you about annexation with the full, the city's full response to the appeals decision against the city now. City hoping the state Supreme Court will take it up. You know, I think the part that really stuck out to me was the part asking the court for guidance, clarity on the rights of local governments to govern. Is that kind of what you're looking for here?
THOMSON [00:00:48] Absolutely, and you know there are several areas where we'd like some clarification in the law, but certainly the most concerning piece of these annexation rulings are the invalidation of the waivers. And so when the state can take over and invalidate a contract, There are implications far and wide, we believe, for other contracts, both with municipal government and school systems everywhere else. And so that's the part we'd really like some clarity on.
HREN [00:01:30] And then, of course, to further that, you say if the decision stands, it sets a precedent that potentially allows the state to interfere with local governance. But the previous, the appeals court, and of course, the Monroe Circuit Court points to different. court cases in the past that say this can happen. So is this something that needs to change within the state legislature?
THOMSON [00:02:02] Perhaps, perhaps that's a conversation to be had. And of course, this annexation was originally filed before the state legislature changed some things. So there's been a very long path with this annexation. And we'd really, we have invested a great deal of time and energy. And our ultimate concern is for the financial well-being of the entire area, the county included, because when a city's boundaries have no elasticity, what we know is that it starts to go into economic decline and population decrease, which is already happening. We haven't expanded boundaries in 20 years.
HREN [00:02:51] So this kind of talk about some leads us to the annexation legislation from Dave Hall from the Indiana House covers Bloomington, Brown County, Jackson County areas. This requires from what I saw on the state website requires a city and annexation petition by signatures of at least 51% of at least 75% assessed valuation of land in the annex territory. So it kind of to me, it eliminates remonstrance waivers it kind of flips. and having the city going out and getting the response for annexation rather than the waivers kind of going the opposite way of cities or residents petitioning. What do you think? Have you had a chance to look at this and what do you think about it?
THOMSON [00:03:38] Yeah, so I want to be clear that the waivers actually are in place for people who are already receiving city services. So they have sewer and water and that's why the waivers are there. Then some folks have also signed remonstrance petitions. So they're officially declaring they don't want to be part of an involuntary annexation. So those are two different things. Dave Hall's legislation essentially seeks to eliminate involuntary annexation and then create a path for voluntary annexation. I think that Representative Hall has really done a great job with voluntary annexation and how to do that. The concern is for cities like ours that have already extended services with the understanding that those places would be annexed anyway. how are we gonna catch up with those areas if they are not annexed already? Because essentially, once you create a wall around the city of places that have refused to be annexed, then you lock the city boundaries. That should be concerning for economic development for our entire state if we're saying that all of our urban areas cannot grow.
HREN [00:05:03] So have you had any idea? Right now I saw it's in its second reading. Have you heard anything more about the progression of it or if it will continue?
THOMSON [00:05:14] The last contact I heard from Representative Hall was that he was making amendments to it and we have not seen those yet.
HREN [00:05:25] Let's move on to the Utility Service Board, approved a resolution, making several upgrades to the Monroe Water Treatment Plant. It's part of your transition report, Enhancing Infrastructure. So this is a priority. What needs to happen there, and where are the funding mechanisms coming into place for this?
THOMSON [00:05:44] Right. So the utility, of course, is tied to the city of Bloomington, but it is paid for by ratepayers. And so they've been in the middle of a rate case. They're studying that infrastructure and we budget for capital improvements during those rate assessments and then and we further budget so that we should have some savings. to invest there. There are several improvements that really need to be done soon and so those include fluoridation and some things like that. So those are being done and we are incorporating others into the right case and so that we can maintain infrastructure as we go.
HREN [00:06:42] CIB meets in a couple weeks. Haven't seen the agenda, but wouldn't be surprised if something about Dora hospitality is on it. John Weickart mentioned that the previous CIB meeting. So Dora was chosen as a full-service hotel. They want the Bunger Robertson property, which is owned by the city, not by the CIB. So it's just been kind of quiet and just wondering if you've heard anything or if you know about negotiations going on with Dora.
THOMSON [00:07:07] Absolutely. And we've been in active discussions with Dora about that hotel. They are putting together their financials right now and schematics and things like that, so that they know what it's going to take incentive wise to get that hotel built. And so those conversations, they're ongoing as they're putting their financials together. And then we will need to come to the table with some kind of incentive package to get the hotel that our city really needs. So that's where it is and that's why we're not hearing a lot publicly about it because there's a lot of math and bidding involved.
HREN [00:07:50] and just drove by a few days ago and that whole area is blocked off. So I assume they're gonna start maybe doing some pre-groundwork, but it's hard to believe things are moving on that expansion.
THOMSON [00:08:02] Well, I know it's hard for many people to believe because it's been so many years in the making, but really want to give a lot of credit to John Whikehart and the CIB for the great work that they've done. The reason that we have the CIB is so that we can get these, get the process out of politics and get moving on development and they've really done a great job.
HREN [00:08:25] And I still see a lot of things pop up on social media. I mean, I've done a lot of stories on it and people saying, well, great, there's $56 million going, not going to feed the hungry or house the homeless. What's your response to that?
THOMSON [00:08:40] Yeah, so, you know, we have a lot of needs to be met in the community, and there's no doubt about this. This is all food and beverage tax that we added for the specific purpose of doing this convention center, and so we are obligated by law to use that in certain ways. And again, it was put in place just for the convention center. And further, I will comment that. Our economic prosperity, which includes our tourism industry, which is pretty profound here in Bloomington, is a part of taking care of everybody. When we can lift the whole boat, we will have more resources as a city because we'll be getting more taxes in the door to meet those other needs in town.
HREN [00:09:33] I wanted to ask you about, this is City Council disbanding the Climate Action Resilience Committee and directing those initiatives to other streams within City Council. What does that mean and why are they looking to do that and are you behind that?
THOMSON [00:09:52] So the the City Council has several different committees that and I want to be clear a committee is not a commission so a commission works for the entire city it is has appointees by the council and by the mayor's office and they work in many different ways to help us set policy but also to carry out programs. This is a committee of city council, but we also have two commissions working on climate and environmental issues. Each of those commissions has 12 different community members on it. And so there is, I believe council decided, and again, council committees are not under mayoral control in any way. And they are, the legislative body is. is doing its legislative thing, and so they have full right to dissolve or add committees as they see fit, and they have decided to dissolve that one. That does not have impact on our commissions.
HREN [00:11:00] Does that change the way the city looks at environmental aspects?
THOMSON [00:11:07] Our climate priorities remain the same, the city as a whole, and I imagine that they're doing that, although I have not had specific conversations with council members about it. I imagine they're doing that because having an entire separate group working on something can, while it can provide some helpful redundancy at times when you're getting something started like our climate action plan. It can also really tax our resources. And so I imagine channeling our climate and environmental energy into those commissions and into delivering that climate action plan is the priority there.
HREN [00:11:48] Had someone ask me, next time you see the mayor, ask her about Hopewell. What's going on with Hopewell? What's next? You know, a lot of the — I drove by it, a lot of the infrastructure, the streets are reopened again and everything looks brand new, sidewalks, curbs, but what's next?
THOMSON [00:12:03] Yeah it looks really cool. So we have received bids for Hopewell East. Those will be opened officially in early April. That's a public bid opening and also we're in discussions about Hopewell South and then Hopewell West will be later. The core building is on track. And so progress is being made there. They'll do their exterior work, I believe finishing up mid-summer and then move inside to do that work. And we also are having conversations about moving our police department over to the building at 714 South Rogers Street, which is part of that Hopewell development. So there's lots of action at Hopewell. Perhaps the most fun action, though, is that we put in some temporary pickleball courts, which haven't been announced officially, but the dedicated pickleball players have already found them, and I have seen the lines waiting to get onto those courts. So it's a great community builder.
HREN [00:13:13] And when you say bids, public bids, open up soon for, was it East?
THOMSON Hopewell East, that's right.
HREN So that's for the neighborhood plan that's in place for that area. So the buildings, the housing?
THOMSON [00:13:27] That's right. The housing the housing units that go there. And so so those will be officially received. They were due, but we opened them publicly. And so that was in early April.
HREN [00:13:38] Okay. What's the feedback you've been getting on the location for the new police department?
THOMSON [00:13:43] Broadly very positive. We've gotten a lot of support from the neighborhood there in McDowell Gardens. The police are for it. Many community members are really for it. Beeline Trail users are for it. We've had some concern from from some neighbors there and so we really are listening hard to any concerns and addressing whatever we can. to make it more palatable or to create solutions for whatever problems exist.
HREN [00:14:18] I know we just have a couple minutes left. Actually, we have one minute left, so I'm gonna kind of leave that for you. Is there anything, any announcements, anything else that we need to know about?
THOMSON [00:14:27] We're really we're excited about spring in Bloomington and we do have some do not park signs up in downtown areas. There's a there are a few intersection improvements that we did last year that needed a little tweaking. We're doing them during spring break week so that so that it's not taxing during the school year and I just wanted people to know about that and State of the City is coming up, that's at the Waldron, and that is happening on April 3rd at 6 p.m. Doors open at 5.30, and so we hope the community will come join us for the State of the City.
HREN [00:15:07] And really quick, how much feedback are you getting on the stop signs going back up on 7th Street after coming back down?
THOMSON [00:15:13] Yes, so far the people who know about it are broadly super supportive. We have had quite a number of safety incidents and of course our safe streets for all is pointed towards reducing those accidents and it's pretty clear from the data that those stop signs are needed. We're really needed to be.
HREN [00:15:41] Thank you so much. See you next month.
THOMSON [00:15:43] Thanks so much, Joe.
