In this week’s installment of Ask The Mayor, Bloomington Mayor Kerry Thomson addresses this issue 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: The redevelopment commission voted to support using the 714 South Rogers building for the new police headquarters. You supported this - what's next?
Thomson: We're ready to contract for design services and to begin the process of figuring out exactly what it's going to look like, and how this can lay out to really be the best resource for our community. And the exciting thing about this is it's a lot more than just a police station. This is really a public safety building. We hope to use it to co-house dispatch and an emergency operations center as well, and it's really exactly where the police wanted to be.
The city doesn't own any category four buildings, which are buildings that are rated to stand up to virtually any natural disaster, and it's really best practice to at least have dispatch in a category four building. So we will be putting an addition on 714, and that will house both dispatch and the EOC.
Hren: $30 million is being floated around as the cost, but with dwindling budgets and loss of grant funds, how does the city earmark that much money for this?
Thomson: This will be a TIF-backed bond. So it comes right out of our tax increment financing, and you know this is a need that has been recognized in our community for a long time. The police outgrew their current station a long time ago.
I want to be clear that this is not meant to signal, nor does it mean, an excessive growth in police force here in Bloomington. We actually are underhoused right now, and they've experienced major floods, all kinds of issues in that building. We think there'll be some community space in the new building as well.
Hren: The proposed space was also talked about for a possible arts incubator at one point. Would that be better suited for the Hopewell area than a police station?
Thomson: There was a study for where an arts incubator could go, and that was a potential site that was identified as a reason to reuse that building. That was also when Hopewell was originally being ideated, and as we know, we've been through a long process with Hopewell because all of those ideas that went into the official master plan of what we might do at Hopewell became very unaffordable and not really possible to achieve all of those things.
The good news is, though, that we have an arts incubator that has been funded and it is at the Showers Admin Building, which is proximate here, and that has some great space, both for artist studios, but also a performance venue.
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Hren: We received a question from a listener a while ago about the deterioration of the wayfinding signs around town, and I remember you said, hang on, we're doing a rebranding study about that. And I believe that is what just came out?
Thomson: So we presented the branding study to council about a week and a half ago now, and the brand while we've had some articles about it just being about a logo, it's not, and it never was about a logo. It is about helping us tell the story of Bloomington and who we are in a concise way and really focusing decision making and priorities based on who we are and what the unique assets are that we have here.
And so, in particular, you know that that branding work really identified a need to modernize our messaging and our look, and to really talk about the creative collisions that happen in Bloomington.
We are not moving forward boldly with any new logo at this point. So I just want to make that clear to the community. We do have a proposed logo. We do want to get some more feedback. I'll also say that any change is uncomfortable, and so you know we heard a lot from people who have grown up here, been here forever, and they look at the city logo and they think, yeah, that's Bloomington. That's exactly what it should do, right?
But the rest of the branding is moving forward, and that's what it was really about.
Hren: Like you said, there was some kickback about it. Some asking was it worth the about $95,000? So, from what I'm hearing, that is money well invested into helping the city grow more.
Thomson: Absolutely. And this really came as a recommendation out of our wage growth task force that happened under the last administration. Several prongs of that had already been implemented. This was the one piece that hadn't. And I remember sitting in a meeting probably 12 years ago and having the head of one of our startups say, "You know, Bloomington doesn't know what it wants to be when it grows up. So how are we going to attract companies here, and how are we going to keep them here if we don't even know where we're going?"
That's the important anchor of a brand. It tells you this is who we are, and this is where we're going. This is what we're about. And if we want to grow wages and keep companies here, attract companies, have people really know what we're about, we have to have a concise story and a way to tell it.
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Hren: I have an email from Luke who writes in that the Bloomington City Council and Monroe County Council both voted to end their agreements with Flock, and yet the cameras are still up. Can you find any more information about this?
Thomson: So the the city has already decided to end our our relationship with Flock. That was an executive decision. We made it. I made the decision. We ended our LPR, our license plate reader contracts back in the spring. There are other entities that may have Flock cameras in town, which means that within the city limits, you may still see flock cameras. Those could be owned by the university, by a hospital system, by private businesses. Our LPRs are all down.
