Mayor Thomson responds to the budget surplus, DORA legislation, why major downtown road construction now, fire station headquarters update, and more annexation follow-up.
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: One week of budget hearings are complete, what comes next?
Thomson: We've had conversations with individual council members about their priorities, and feel like we're really in a good collaborative space. And this was really an important moment for a new administration and a new council. Frankly, we can talk about priorities all we want. We can agree, we can disagree, but the rubber really hits the road in collaboration when you have to put together a budget, and I would say that that we have, I hope, gained a lot of trust in this process.
Hren: The H-T had a story about city reserves, almost $59 million in surplus, how much is the general fund budget?
Thomson: I think we're at about $83 million.
Hren: So about two thirds of that are in reserves. Where did all that money come from? Is that normal?
Thomson: We've taken only $10 million actually out of reserves. And part of the reason that we did that is because frankly our reserves were so significant, and because we have a big push this particular year, and so that push is to really come into executing on the wage and salary survey that was done to get our city pay up to something close to market, and really to be competitive, because we have jobs that we're unable to fill, and we're having retention problems without that.
So the survey was done on non-union employees, and so the union employees, though, we have already had a successful negotiation with fire, so they are now going to be caught up, and then we're moving in with police as well.
Hren: But how did the large reserves come to be, I know taxes went up in the previous administration, are city residents paying too much in taxes?
Thomson: It's been accumulated over the past several years, and so we have the operating budget. We'll use $10 million of reserves there. We also have the ability to bond for different things. And my goal as mayor is really to look at the strategic way that we can use different funds. And so, you know, we have our redevelopment fund. We have TIF funds, etc, and so we want to be really strategic with our money. We also don't want to overtax the public. Bloomington actually has one of the lowest tax rates in the state of Indiana, so we're doing really well with that right now, but my administration wants to ensure that we're just making the absolute best use of every resource we can.
Hren: I drove by the fire station yesterday and the renovations look almost done, so the fire department will move back into that building and the headquarters moves to Showers Plaza here?
Thomson: We're painting in that space now so the Showers West property is ready to host them. Really could be ready in the next week or so. They'll move at the same time. So we're looking forward to that grand opening, and of course, there'll be a grand opening at The Forge sometime around the 22nd of November. So lots of exciting things happening.
Hren: The Annex of Bloomington bills itself as the city's newest workforce housing development. What does that provide? And how does this help the market?
Thomson: The Annex is one of the market rate properties that has incorporated some workforce housing into their property, and that workforce housing is offered to people at a certain percentage of our area median income and those units can only be offered to people within that income segment. And as rents escalate every year by a certain amount, those workforce units will stay stable.
Hren: What's the difference between workforce housing and market rate housing?
Thomson: The workforce units are targeted toward to an income level, and my hope would be that then the rents actually will be also reduced there. I did ask the question yesterday, what is the rent in the workforce units? They're able to actually charge market for those workforce units. I would argue that means that we probably haven't hit the mark, and we would want those workforce units to really be guaranteed to people that otherwise couldn't enter the market.
Hren: We were both at the CIB public meeting session last at the convention center. Three hotel developers are looking in that area and all three talked about some type of public-private partnership so that could be negotiations about parking garage use, green space requirements, the size of a ballroom, or land. How much is the city interested or looking at being part of a private-public relationship with the potential hotel developer?
Thomson: My leadership is interested in making the convention center and its hotel a success. And the CIB will be selecting the hotelier for the convention center project, and then, based on who that is, they'll have their list of ways that the city might be able to help, or the county might be able to help. I think it may depend on what property they are looking at and what funds they're looking to tap, but we will be eager to support a new hotel.
We think it's critical for both the success of the convention center, but also tourism, generally downtown.
Hren: There's lot of road construction downtown on College Avenue. Why is that being done now and not during the summertime, when there's less football and school traffic?
Thomson: So our streets program has a schedule for when we do all of these things, and it's based on on both when we can get to it and when it's most practical. What's happening right now on College is actually not street construction. We are doing ADA compliance on some of those sidewalk aprons and pedestrian walkways, so Sixth Street is next. While it might have been ideal to do that during the summer, we had a very significant project on Indiana Avenue. And you know that disruption would have been worse to have that going on through the fall.
Pushing City Limits: Bloomington Annexation Coverage
Hren: John emailed in as a follow-up from last month's annexation questions. He writes, as mayor, former executive of Habitat for Humanity, would not make sense to override the prohibition on extending sewers on an ad hoc basis, so that a nonprofit could build affordable housing?
Thomson: I'm pro-housing, of course, the fact of the matter is that extending city services outside of city limits really puts all of our infrastructure under roads that we don't maintain. It is at more cost to the city to do that and to maintain those and with an outlook that we will essentially be landlocked, we're not going to continue to extend the geographic footprint of our city services, because we need to make sure that we are ensuring the very best services for people within the city limits.
