Thomson said elected personnel salary adjustments should wait until an election year. She gives an overview of her first year as mayor and an update on fire and police headquarters.
In this week’s installment of Ask The Mayor, Bloomington Mayor Kerry Thomson addresses these issues and more 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: I know you've been fighting for higher pay for police and firefighters, but we really haven't talked about looking at salaries across the board. Is this part of your agenda?
Read more: Mayor disagrees with proposed raises for city council members
Thomson: My administration has been looking at salaries for all regular city staff, as well as our unions. And of course, we had the first unanimous votes for both fire and police union negotiations this year, and we're really proud of that.
We had allocated a total of $6 million to go over 800 different employees, but it was not in my plans to do significant increases for the elected officials this year. The Council formed a committee, and that's where this proposal came from.
I ran for office knowing that I was running as a public servant and I know Council is reconsidering these salaries. I think when you run for office, you are committing to the the salary band that you have run under and anything very significant, I think should wait until an election year.
Read more: Bloomington City Council approves amended pay raise proposal
Hren: You have a countdown on your desk - it's digital and looks like a clock. Can you tell everybody what that's for?
Thomson: That's how many days are left in this administration. And so I leave it facing out, because when cabinet comes in and others come in, I want us to remember we have a lot of work to do, and only so many days to get it done, and so we're down to about 1000 days and every day, every hour that we get to be serving the city, is one that we should value, and we should get the most work done that we could possibly can.
Hren: What's your proudest moment so far? What's, the one thing that you're like, I'm so glad that we were able to get that through?
Thomson: I won't take credit for this, but I'll take credit for convening conversations around homelessness, and the housing action plan really sets the stage for some really pivotal motion towards getting some serious housing done. I think on the on the administration side, we are showing real signs of valuing our public safety officers and firefighters, and that's that was really important to me. Everybody who works for the city does an important job, and for a long time, all of the salaries have been behind, but there were some critical things that really needed to happen with police and fire to let folks know that we value them and that this is a great place to work.
We also need to focus on our economic development, and I'm really excited about what we'll be doing with that in the year ahead. But we opened The Forge, and now with the CCC grant, we have a plan in place to transfer the property from our redevelopment commission over to to to the Trades District, so that we can get really serious about developing the rest of the trades district.
Hren: The city just released requests for proposals, I believe, for three lots in the Hopewell. So you're looking for developers now?
Thomson: We're really hoping to to hit a good mark with Hopewell, we have the prospect of building more than 700 units there right downtown, walkable to the Trades District, walkable to many of our big employers and to many of the resources that we need. So we're really thrilled about that development and I'm proud of city council, also for approving, and the plan commission did lots of heavy lifting for the Summit District - the development that's happening on the southwest side of town. So housing is coming, lots of details to be sorted out there, but there's been lots of movement on housing during this first year.
Listen to more: City officials discuss housing needs and the Sudbury Development | Noon Edition
Hren: I always like to look back at the first show of the year to see where we started. And at the time, you announced a city review and said, "unless you've been the mayor before, you're going to be surprised by what you find when you are the mayor." So what were the several things that you didn't know about back then?
Thomson: Right? Well, I encourage everyone to read the report that we put out after about six months in office. So that was a mid year review, and many of those things are in there. But we had a lot of catching up to do with our finances and getting those in order and audits back on track. We had several complexities in HR that were a surprise for us and, several other more minor things.
It was not minor what was going on with HUD in the hand department, but really all of our department heads are incredible. They've really done the work to sort of get us a new set point in those areas and get us moving forward in the right direction.
I came into a really good team, just really one of the great learnings and one of the gratitudes I have for this year is to learn at every level how committed our city staff are to doing a great job and serving our public.
Hren: How about a quick update on fire headquarters moving into Showers West here and police headquarters?
Thomson: It's here. The fire headquarters has moved. The renovations are done, and they're really happy to be here. That really needed to happen in tandem with moving out of that Fourth and College property, because there's no office space in the in the headquarters for the whole administration.
We are holding a public information session on the police department and what considerations we're giving to that the first week of January. And so we will start moving with that next year. We have already concluded that's not going to Showers West, and we have known for a long time that the police need a headquarters that really is up to date.
