The Bloomington City Council will review 2021 departmental budget requests in September.
Bloomington Mayor John Hamilton is proposing a $95 million budget. He said responding to health and economic issues of the pandemic along with climate change and racial inequality has made creating a budget more challenging than years past.
More Coverage: City Finishes Up 2021 Budget Hearings, Prepares For Final Budget Talks In September
Isabel Piedmont-Smith is District 5 council member. She said the 2021 budget reallocates funds for five police officer positions to create new non-sworn positions. But she’s not sure this goes far enough to address policing issues that generated outcry nationally this summer.
“The proposal from Mayor Hamilton is a modest change," she said. "In a way it’s recognizing that police are being asked to intervene in situations where perhaps they are not the best people to intervene.”
She said currently there are about 95 sworn officers with Bloomington Police, but there's been funding for 105 positions until the reallocation.
Piedmont-Smith said the city should reevaluate how it approaches public safety by creating a resident task force to examine local issues and ways to address them in the 2022 budget.
