Mayor Thomson joins us on Zoom at the Democratic National Convention to talk about new initiatives to help those experiencing homelessness, the water accident, and appealing annexation.
In this week’s installment of Ask The Mayor, Bloomington Mayor Kerry Thomson addresses these issues and more. 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: Thanks for joining on Zoom since you're in Chicago for the Democratic National Convention. How's it going?
Thomson: What a privilege to be part of this historic moment. It's incredibly exciting to be here. We had Vice President Harris on the stage to surprise us last night, of course, as well as many others, and the energy is just really high here. And of course, President Biden was our close-out speech last night. I think there were a lot of tears in the room last night as we thanked him and really, tried to honor him for this incredible final act of service to our country by allowing somebody else to run for president at this point.
Hren: What's your role? How are you spending your time?
Thomson: I'm a delegate, and so we will officially nominate Walz tomorrow night and then Harris on Thursday night. There are lots of caucuses and committee meetings happening as well as it's a great opportunity for me to be in the room with other mayors talk about best practices. There are several Mayor specific events happening here, so when I'm not in the hotel room trying to put final touches on our budget, I'm at committees and caucuses.
The U.S. Conference of Mayors this year for 24-25 has set their priority as housing, and so we're working together on a pretty significant housing bill that we will propose no matter who is the next president. We want this to go through. Homelessness and housing is on everybody's radar.
Read more: City, local nonprofits roll out plan for unsheltered homelessness
Hren: The city is rolling out a plan for unsheltered homelessness. Can you help define this for us, when we talk about unsheltered, emergency housing, short-term, long-term?
Thomson: We're looking at this from many lenses, and the plan that we just launched really focuses on unsheltered homelessness. So these are people who are literally living on the streets. They don't have a couch to stay on. They're not in one of our emergency shelters. That number has grown drastically in Bloomington. It's grown throughout Indiana over the past year, and so we put together a housing action plan that really focuses on that, and the key is getting them into some kind of shelter along with the services that they need.
There's no one size fits all, depending on your health needs and other needs you may and your family make up, you may be well suited to one type of shelter and not another, so our goal really is to provide a spectrum of housing from shelter all the way through permanent housing.
Hren: Let's get an update on the water treatment plant sand spill Friday evening, it caused a county-wide boil order for a couple days. We got a couple emails from concerned residents wondering just what's going on.
Thomson: It was actually a precautionary boil warning. And to be clear, restaurants have a different standard than residences do, but there was sand that got into that tank on Friday night, and that causes the possibility that some of the bacteria may not be filtered as well. The counts, frankly, were never at alarming levels.
So we did put out an alert on the county emergency alert system. We had multiple tests over the weekend, which were all coming back well within the safe range, but IDEM needed to process some things in their labs on Monday morning, and so we couldn't lift the ban or the precaution until Monday morning.
Hren: I did see the Bloomington Bagel posted not having coffee today. I was thinking about breweries or maybe production plants in town. Did this have a big ripple effect across the city?
Thomson: It did have an impact on those restaurants, especially because it was move-in weekend, and I just want to express my deep apologies to those restaurants. Accidents happen, but this could have been timed better. And Jane Cooper Smith, our economic and sustainable development director, was on the phone this weekend doing outreach to restaurants to see how we can support and help them understand what the precaution was.
But I just want to send out my apologies for any business interruption that happened.
Hren: The city decided to appeal the latest ruling that blocks annexation areas 1A and 1B What key elements do you think that the judge didn't weigh enough that merits annexation?
Thomson: I'll let the legal team respond to legal issues, but we were really disappointed in the ruling and feel that there are elements that need to be considered and so frankly, the annexation is really key to our economic development and our prosperity as an entire region. What the studies clearly show is that cities with zero elasticity, the entire region starts to go into economic decline. It's not just a city issue. It is a county issue and indeed it's a regional issue as well.
Pushing City Limits: Bloomington Annexation Coverage
Hren: You said you're talking to people intended to be annexed, what are those conversations like?
Thomson: A lot of what I'm hearing is that people didn't feel listened to the first time, and that the message they were getting is that the city could annex because it was their right and they didn't owe them anything as new residents of the city. I disagree. As as the mayor, I take it very seriously. The service that I provide and our team provides to residents who are within the city limits and I take their input very seriously.
There's also some myths out there about what annexation really means, I've had residents tell me that their understanding is that they will have to pay to put sidewalks in front of their house as soon as it's annexed. This is simply not true. The city will look at a sidewalk plan and many areas that do get sidewalks will be in our sidewalk plan at the city's cost, but there will be no order to put in sidewalks on your property, especially if you're not developing anything on it.
Hren: In the judges ruling, he stated your testimony that the city needs affordable housing, but that undermines the city's policy of refusing to extend water service outside of its boundary for housing projects. How do you respond to that statement from the judge?
Thomson: It's true. It's very hard to develop with any density if you don't have water and sewer. So if I'm understanding your question correctly, and it is our policy that we are not going to extend water and sewer any further outside of the municipal boundary unless there's already a will serve letter. That's because we now see there is no way in the future then to annex those properties and voluntary annexation necessitates contiguous landmass. And so if the city's here, and we have an island with water and sewer here that is not in the annexation area, the people on the other side have no way to annex in.
And so that, in fact, locks up the boundaries of the city and frankly, our utility is not structured to serve outside of the city boundaries. All of the areas that are currently served by the city of Bloomington utilities had waivers on them, and they were in areas that were intended to be annexed. And so essentially, a redrawing of the plans that happened because of the State Legislature's ruling on those waivers and then the constitutional case. What that means is that it really puts us all between a rock and a hard place with sewer and water.
