Hamilton responds to a city council member and police official who say there's not enough transparency in the police/fire headquarters move. Also, more on the CIB for the convention center expansion, and we take your questions.
In this week’s installment of Ask The Mayor, Bloomington Mayor John Hamilton addresses these issues and more during a visit to 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: We received an email from a concerned resident about paving roads and then tearing them up again to complete or fix something. The email states a couple of years ago Seventh Street was being torn up within a couple months of being repaved. This year at 17th and Walnut within a month. There needs to be an investigation as to why taxpayer money is being spent, limited resources being used, extra greenhouse gases being emitted by those projects not being timed right.
Hamilton: I know that we work very, very hard to coordinate all of those activities. We coordinate with utilities, with the state transportation folks, with all of our other public works folks with parks. And we do work very hard to limit any kind of unfortunate overlap.
Now sometimes it does happen that there's a schedule that can't be changed, or I just heard, one of the things that happened this summer was we just finished paving a road, beautiful new pavement, and a water main broke right under it. So that started bubbling up through the new asphalt and I say oh, well, you can't help that.
Or sometimes other utilities like the gas or electric they need to do something that they just didn't know they had to do or we couldn't schedule it at the same time.
Hren: Let's get to the relocation of the police and fire headquarters to Showers Plaza here. What is the timeframe for all this?
Hamilton: Well, definitely finishing the next administration. We've now selected an architect, finding a project manager which we've now selected. There's a whole bunch of design work that's been going on with Charettes and meetings with frontline police officers and firefighters and administrators and we're gonna have about four or five different projections on my desk of options. We're looking at those.
The next big step will be the architects will be given the okay to do the blueprint levels, and that's going to come soon. Then after that we'll come to bids and expect that to happen this year and on track to construct, which will also happen this year, but the actual construction will probably be next year.
Hren: During a council meeting, member Susan Sandberg says that the council received no information regarding the timeline cost projections, construction, transparency, and they need that information because budget hearings are coming up. So do they have that information? If not, why not?
Hamilton: They do have plenty of information. Now, Susan, let me just be clear, voted against this plan. So she's been kind of asking questions from that vain. We actually have a council designee who's part of this. We've had shared maps with the council. We're going to certainly be talking about it with budget.
Hren: Now, when you say you're working with them, are you working with the police department?
Hamilton: Absolutely, from the chief of police, to administrators to the Fraternal Order of Police, their labor union and detectives and frontline folks. Now, they're not at every meeting, we have a lot of these planning meetings going on. But they had, for example, a planning session with I think about 20 members of the police force who sat down with the architects to give their view of what would be best from their perspective.
Hren: Why would Paul Post the FOP president say that the architectural team took photographs, had layout suggestions made by participants and staff with the promise to bring back plans and have further meetings, but that has never happened?
Hamilton: Well, that's not true. There have been further meetings, including with Paul Post in them, and there will be more. It's kind of like if you're doing a big rehab of your house, or you're doing a major project, you do get a lot of ideas and people saying they want the bathroom here, they want this kind of countertop, or they want these you know, and everybody doesn't get everything they want. We're just in the nitty gritty right now figuring out within the budget, what do we do.
Hren: You're asking city council to consider permanently closing part of Old State Road 37 runs through the Lower Cascades Park to drivers. We've done a lot of reporting on this and had an email asking why not spend the $3 million dollars on a street and a pathway?
Hamilton: We have our oldest park and we've got a road through the middle of it and we have this issue to fix the transportation plan for the city adopted by council after lots of review says we need to have a bike pedestrian connection through there which we do not have now. Originally, we thought we could close half the road. Use half for trail half for autos. Engineers tell us that doesn't work not safe. It's not wide enough.
Two other main options are keep the road open and build a new Bike Ped path which would cost about $3 million. Give or take. We think that the other option is to close the road and use that as the Bike Ped path. which saves about $3 million. So I've basically gone to council and said, look, you guys, tell me what you want. I think it would be smarter to close the road. Ultimately the council will need to vote on that. They may vote this year. They may vote next year. I don't know.
Read more: City installing more than 50 parking corrals downtown for e-scooters, bikes
Hren: The Capital Improvement Board is moving forward for the convention center expansion. Commissioners have named three members. I believe the city council is reviewing their pick. The mayor has two picks. Where are you at?
Hamilton: I'm kind of waiting to see who gets filled in. There's city council and I are talking, we didn't get a lot of conversation from the county about their choices. Look, my focus on this continues to be I want to be sure I do all I can to make sure a new convention center is a beautiful, spectacular addition to the downtown that it's done efficiently, that it's creating a great new product for us.
So my biggest concern is that the CIB is full of a lot of cooks in the kitchen that may make it difficult to produce the excellence that we need. I'm hopeful and I'll be continuing to work. We're still negotiating an interlocal, that's going on conversations are happening. But we haven't landed that plane yet.
Hren: Bloomington residents can expect to pay more for curbside trash and recycling pickup next year. City Council approved the rate hikes Wednesday. Why not absorb that from the general fund?
Hamilton: It's one city council wrestles with. In the past, garbage sanitation was picked up. We use stickers that you had to buy, I'll remember those $1 person per can and we got rid of those and did it on a monthly fee. But most of the cost is still paid by all the taxpayers of the city.
The simple question is, should all the taxpayers pay for picking up the sanitation in single family homes? That means all the people who rent all the people who don't own homes, help pay for that trash pickup for those people? Or should the trash pickup sanitation and recycling be covered by those who get to service? And I tend to lean toward the latter.
I mean, I do think it's a very efficient service. It's much cheaper than private sector. And if you live in an apartment building, you have to pay for your own pickup. The city doesn't subsidize that, but it's a policy question. And I totally get it and their sensitivity about it. But in the end, the council votes on it.
