20 percent of positive COVID cases are the delta variant, a 900 bedroom apartment complex is approved at the former K-mark location, why Kirkwood floods, and will the city be able to maintain a proper police force staff after annexation.
In this week’s installment of Ask The Mayor, Bloomington Mayor John Hamilton addresses these issues and more during a Facebook Live Zoom event Tuesday. Listen to the full conversation with Indiana Newsdesk anchor Joe Hren by clicking on the play button above, or read some of the questions and answers below. A portion of this segment airs 6:45 and 8:45 a.m. Wednesday on WFIU. Here are some highlights.
This conversation has been edited for clarity and conciseness.
Hren: Let's start with a COVID update... at Friday's weekly press conference, officials are worried about the spreading delta variant, stagnating vaccination rates - 56% Monroe County residents are fully vaccinated, 20% of positive cases are the delta variant, a little concerning, especially when the state was going from about 100 to 200 new cases a day and then shot up to 560 a day. Are you concerned?
Hamilton: Yes, I am. Joe, it's really frustrating. I mean, here we are in July, I think you probably remember we thought maybe July last year, there was some hope that would really be climbing out of this thing. And of course, we didn't. And we're still not there. These are really disturbing and concerning trends in the state and in the country. And locally, we haven't seen the same real doubling or tripling of hospitalizations or deaths yet, which is great and important.
But we know how to fix this. And it's just really frustrating that we can't get our vaccination numbers up higher. You know, we're working with our own employees. We're working with the community, I want to applaud again, institutions that mandate it, require it, seriously incentivize it. It really does concern me that over the next two months, we could we could see serious backsliding, and there are people in the hospital and dying who shouldn't be.
READ MORE: State Officials Report 713 New Cases Tuesday – Highest Recorded Number of Daily Cases This Month
Hren: Any threshold for mandatory masks or any type of shutdowns if numbers keep going up?
Hamilton: We meet weekly as a group for over a year and a half almost now. And we have great fortune of having IU and their extraordinary health and medical expertise, as well as IU Health here, as well as our health department. And it's really that trio that can be so helpful to people like me, who's not an epidemiologist or a medical expert, or a school system or county government to help give us guidance.
I know we're open to continuing to do whatever we need to do to protect our public and protect our economy and recovery. So it's frustrating. I mean, you heard Dr. Fauci say if this is how we had approached smallpox or polio, we'd still have them. And what a tragedy that would be, but we need to get rid of this disease. So I just sure hope people will talk to their loved ones, talk to their physicians, their health care advisors, their spiritual advisors, whoever it takes to remind us this is how we get out of this through vaccinations, they're safe, they're effective. Most of the world is desperate to get these vaccines and we have them free and available. So let's use them.
Hren: The 900 bedroom apartment complex got final approval at the former Kmart site on the east side by the mall. Right now it's a huge parking lot and vacant building. More housing, no retail, but a big park. It was not what was envisioned there, pre COVID. Is this development good for Bloomington?
Hamilton: Well, I think it is. Everybody can see things they might do differently. But look, we know we need more housing. This includes both student housing and workforce oriented housing. We know having a great big 95% hardscape unused place is not a good thing for the city. There's tons of retail around there, of course, very close.
It's on a major transit line. There's a lot of really good positive things about it. The fact that we have people who want to invest in Bloomington is also a good signal that they think the community is continuing to thrive and do well.
Hren: Some question that there was no requirement for affordable housing like other projects?
Hamilton: Well, you know, let me first say, I'm really frustrated again, that the state legislature prohibited us from having requirements for affordable housing - inclusionary zoning is popular around the country, it's effective, it's the best way to get affordable housing in this kind of development. And state legislature, in a very ill advised move from my perspective outlawed cities all across the state from using that. So we have to do other things, we have to use our zoning code, we have to use revenues that we can generate from other places, we have to use incentives, which we do all of those.
We're actually continuing to talk to the developers of that site about potential incentives for workforce affordability, which I hope may come to pass. It's built into the new unified development ordinance. And we're going to continue to tweak that another development on 14th Street will have affordable housing, and we're going to continue to grow the 1000 new units that we have, over the last few years, a step at a time.
Hren: I think we need to hear a little bit more about the great flood of June 2021. Some areas had up to eight inches of rain. It was similar flooding to what happened in 2008. A lot of people wondering, why did this happen again?
Hamilton: Well, the short answer is it happened again, because we had the once in a century rain, as you said of six to eight inches in one hour, not just even over 48 hours, but basically six inches in one hour. And there is no infrastructure system that we have that can handle six inches in one hour. We are expanding the downtown storm-water system, and we're going to double it in size over the next year or so. That's going on now. But even if it were doubled today, and that rain happened again, we would have serious flooding expected downtown.
So there's lots of things to be done. We have to look at building resilience. This is probably climate change related, we're going to see more severe events like this. We're looking at that in our fire headquarters and our police headquarters, but we may have to rethink how they're structured, where they're located. We have to look at green solutions as well - more green roofs, more creating inside our watersheds, ways to manage rain as it falls to hold it where it is right now. We're all gonna have to be working together.
READ MORE: City Says Hidden River Pathway Project Will Help Alleviate Flooding Issues Downtown
Hren: Let's dig in to annexation. One area we really haven't talked much about is the police protection. And this really came up in May, Bloomington police detective Jeff Rogers on Facebook publicly posted a letter to you on how the plan to add more police officers won't work. And I wanted to get your your comment on that because, he mentions the city has hired 65 offers since you took over the January 2016. But 67 have resigned and I think his point is that how do you expect to hire that many more officers by January 1, 2025 for annexed areas?
Hamilton: I appreciate that question. I've met with detective Rogers and the head of the police Union Fraternal Order of Police as well and of course meet regularly with the police chief. I don't think it's a secret to note that being a police officer has been a challenging job over the last several years and that police departments and their relationship to the communities they serve has been evolving and sometimes stressful. We're not immune to that.
Every city in Indiana and basically every city in America is struggling to hire officers. We have very high standards in Bloomington. We have not lowered them in terms of the kind of officers that we want. I've got a budget coming up. We have negotiations with the police union next year. I'm confident that we have four years to develop this force to cover whatever annexation is approved by the City Council. And once that approval is done, which we expect in September, we'll be implementing a four year plan to move forward.
Part of what we do is enhance our ability to attract and retain police officers - we have some take home car programs and housing programs to help people deal with expensive housing. We're also expanding the range of the police department. Now we have three social workers, we have community service specialists, these are non-sworn members, non-armed members of the police department who can help do some of the work of the police department and keep public safety. So it's a whole mix and wide range of approaches.
READ MORE: Bloomington's Annexation Proposal A Hard Sell For Some Non-City Residents
The city is offering virtual office hours to discuss and learn about annexation. Stop by for a virtual chat on Zoom if you have questions.
Dates:
Thursday, July 22: noon-2 p.m.
Thursday, July 29: 2-4 p.m.
Thursday, August 12: 11 a.m.-1 p.m.
Thursday, August 19: 3-5 p.m.
For the latest news and resources about COVID-19, bookmark our Coronavirus In Indiana page here.
