Bloomington City Council Speaker Isabel Piedmont-Smith (September 4, 2024)

Bloomington Mayor Kerry Thomson (September 4, 2024)

City Controller Jessica McClellan and Bloomington Mayor Kerry Thomson. (September 4, 2024)

Bloomington City Council. Left to right: Sydney Zulich, Dave Rollo, Isabel Piedmont-Smith, Hopi Stosberg, Isak Asare, Courtney Daily. On screen: Matt Flaherty and Kate Rosenbarger. (September 4, 2024)

Bloomington’s 2025 budget could be approved on the same timeline currently on the calendar — the City Council is scheduled to vote on adopting the budget on Oct. 9, following a public hearing on Sept. 25.

The motion is based on an exchange Wednesday between Bloomington Mayor Kerry Thomson and city council members at the end of a regular council meeting.

After four days of budget hearings last week, it was unclear whether the nine-member council could find five votes to approve the budget as presented.

One possibility was, and technically still is, that the council would vote on October 9 to reject or delay the budget to force concessions from the mayor.

The postponement was a tactic used by the council in October 2021, when John Hamilton was mayor at the time. The vote this year took place in late October.

Thomson was unable to appear before council in person last week due to illness. But standing before council Wednesday, with Controller Jessica McClellan, Thomson seemed in a good position to convince council members who had concerns about unfunded priorities that there was a path forward to getting some of those items funded.

Especially for unfunded capital projects, that road would be paved with revenue from issuing general purpose (GO) bonds, a possibility McClellan floated on the first night of budget hearings last week.

The conversation between the mayor and council was not originally on the council agenda. However, on Tuesday, the city council office issued a notice that the agenda would be revised to include a discussion of Thomson’s 2025 budget proposal.

Council members Sydney Zulich, Matt Flaherty, Kate Rosenbarger, Hopi Stosberg and Isabel Piedmont-Smith requested the following specific items be included: funding for infrastructure projects to support the Safe Streets for All initiative; allocating $500,000 to the council’s sidewalk fund (instead of just $350,000); and a $10,000 study by LEAP (Law Enforcement Action Partnership) to analyze calls for assistance received by Bloomington police.

The largest dollar amounts sound like they would be for Safe Streets projects that could be funded by a GO bond issuance. Based on last week’s presentation, it appears the GO bond issuance size could be around $5-6 million.

Of GO Bonds, Thomson said: “The operating budget is just one funding stream we have – it has to be used to fund wages.” She added: “We can’t bond for wages. Bonds can be used for infrastructure and capital projects.”

Thomson also noted that issuing GO bonds would mean increasing the amount of taxes that property owners would have to pay. She put it this way: “I would also like to note that even though Bloomington has a relatively low tax rate for the state, we have recently raised taxes.” Thomson added: “And if you don’t hear from constituents about the pressure that this puts on people, especially those on fixed income, I want to tell you that I am.”

Thomson said, “We’re doing our best to prepare a budget that addresses the city’s most important needs, we’re looking at other sources of funding to potentially fund capital projects that could do quite well for them, and we’re trying not to raise taxes.”

McClellan told council members the amount, which is expected to be announced in the budget by the Sept. 13 deadline for the Sept. 25 hearing, will be “high” and will include the amount of debt service to be paid on GO bonds. The actual issuance of GO bonds will have to be determined separately, once the budget is approved.

Asked specifically by Piedmont-Smith whether she would fund a $10,000 LEAP study of police reports, Thomson replied, “We could probably figure that out.”

But Thomson added, “I’ll just say that the best practice in hiring consultants is that you actually put out an RFP (request for proposals) and get multiple bids, so we don’t have to decide who we hire.” Thomson continued, “We say there’s some work that needs to be done and we put money aside for it—but I’m committed to doing it.”

Councilors Courtney Daily, Dave Rollo and Isak Asare seemed broadly supportive of Thomson’s budget as proposed, even if they were interested in improving the process next year. Councilor Andy Ruff was absent from Wednesday’s meeting.

Rollo said Thomson’s proposed budget “respects the fundamentals” he expects from the budget, namely adequate pay for staff, particularly police officers.

Daily said, “I will support this budget.” She cited the increase in workers’ wages as her reason for supporting it.

Asare said, “Given how we presented the priorities to the mayor, this is an equal reflection of what we presented and what was an equal set of priorities.” The list of items that the council marked as “priorities” in its letter to the mayor is in alphabetical order.

Asare continued, “We never said we wanted one over the other. I wish we did, but we didn’t.” Asare concluded by saying, “I support where we are now, but I look forward to further conversations about what we do with some of these other possible funding streams.”

Published
September 4, 2024September 5, 2024