The mayor explains why he wants to close vehicular traffic through Cascades Park, the controversy on council representation on the city capital nonprofit board and responds to the H-T report on low firefighter pay.
In this week’s installment of Ask The Mayor, Bloomington Mayor John Hamilton addresses these issues and more during an interview Tuesday afternoon at city hall. 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: You’ve asked members of city council to consider permanently closing the part of Old State Road 37 that runs through Lower Cascades Park to drivers. More than 50% of park visitors surveyed about the project said they preferred the road open to vehicle traffic. Why push this?
Hamilton: If we built a park today, we would never build it with a road right down the middle of it. This was a park that developed when that was the main way into town. And it's great. It's 100 years old. We do want to trail through that park in our transportation plan says we need to have a Bike Ped Trail from Miller Showers and then kind of though the center of College and Walnut and on north up to Griffy and all that. And so the question really is do we build a new side path for quite a few million dollars next to that road to give bicyclists and pedestrians a way to get up there? Or do we convert the road to that side path?
And I do think it probably makes sense not to have a major thoroughfare going through a park and turn it into a Bike Ped path. It saves us millions of dollars, which we can use in other places. But I understand there's some issues, different people have different views about it. And we'll let the City Council vote on it.
Hren: City council isn't happy about their representation on the new city capital nonprofit board. The mayor appoints four to the council's one - are you going to address that?
Hamilton: We've been talking about the nonprofit for many months. We have really big projects going on at city government, including the development of Hopewell 24 acres of the former hospital site, we have the Trades District developments still going on, we have new arts facilities, the Waldron that we manage, and in a new report that suggests how to go forward.
Right now, all of that planning, all of that oversight is inside city government. It's in our Economic Sustainable Development Department or controller, we're all meeting regularly about all this stuff. And it's frankly, a lot to do. And my proposal has been let's create a nonprofit that can oversee some of that on behalf of the whole community.
My basic view, I'm not going to be mayor next year. So this isn't about Hamilton wants to have this. This is I do think that what is now an entirely internal to the administration project, which I oversee, with my cabinet, we're actually opening it up to make it less inside City Hall and a little broader. And I want to be sure that the next mayor has the authority to make sure that project goes well. It's really not an advisory board. It's an execution board. And that's really important for the next mayor, not me, to have the ability to make sure it's functioning well.
Hren: I wanted to give you a chance to respond with the Herald-Times reporting last week about the fire department not being funded enough, members leaving for other jobs, Ellettsville paying more than the Bloomington Fire Department, understaffed... this has a similar ring to the police that we talked about the last couple of years.
Hamilton: Like many employers these days, we're facing pressure from competition and more retirements - we've had the great resignations happening. We're seeing that. And that is true in the police department and the fire department both we're seeing it a little more in the fire department now than we did four years ago. And we're dealing with it very directly.
I'm incredibly proud of our police department, our fire department, we're the only city in Indiana you've heard me say that has a one ranked Fire Department, ISO one and a nationally accredited Police Department. No other city in Indiana has that we're really proud of that.
There's a lot of public stress now compared to 10 years ago, and being a police officer and a fire department too, they're dealing with overdoses. It's a stressful job. We're very proud to work with the unions on making sure we stay top ranked. We wouldn't be able to do what we're doing now, if we didn't have the new revenue from last year. So I do appreciate the City Council support. They didn't give me quite as much as I asked for.
They're in a labor contract, we have done substantial things this year outside of that contract of $1,000 bonus and a almost $800 savings incentive we've offered. We're offering major housing incentives, we're actually offering $100,000 to help firefighters buy homes in the city and live there that we forgive over 10 years. So we're doing a lot of things and then we'll begin to labor negotiations early next year to get a new contract for the firefighters.
Hren: The city hasn’t signed new operating agreements with scooter companies, but will propose next steps for agreements with the companies to city council soon, what's next?
Hamilton: There have been really good conversations I think around this issue. You know, scooters arrived on our doorstep five or six years ago, we've had over a million rides taken in Bloomington by those scooters that are very popular people use them to get around. We've been working really closely with Indiana University and a scooter companies to identify ways to keep people safe, number one, and then to make sure that it doesn't impinge on other transportation options, but that we let people use this new option.
Read More: Bloomington had more than 600 scooter parking violations in last three months of 2022
So in the next week or two, I think pretty soon there'll be a presentation to city council about some recommendations of changes. They'll get the chance to weigh in if they want to from city council. And I expect we'll see some tweaks in that as we go forward to maybe restrict where the scooters can go maybe restrict some speeds and make sure they're complying with all the rules that we have.
