City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. We'll go ahead and uh call to order the committee of a whole for of the city of Bloomington for Tuesday, February 17th. And we'd like to um um ask everyone to stand please for the pledge of allegiance and remain standing for a moment of silence. Please Roll call, please, for attendance.

Council member Karns, here. Council member Mosley here. Council member Mottney here. Council member Dannenburgger here. Council member Strazza here. Council member Hendris here. Council member Lee here. Council member Scott here. Mayor Brady here. Thank you. Um, under public comment, clerk, do we have we received we received no email public comment. Um, and we did have one person, Barbara Stewart, register to speak in person, but I don't see her present here at the meeting. Uh, so I think we can just move forward.

Thank you. And I think we've been advised maybe next month for Miss Stewart. Okay. Um next then we'll move on to the um consent agenda and um [clears throat] ask for uh consideration [snorts] action to approve the minutes of the January 20th 26 failure committee the whole uh is there anyone that has any uh issues with the consent agenda questions? If not, go ahead and motion. Motion to approve the amendments as they are. Member Strazza and seconded by me. That would be member Danburgger. All right. And I'll just do a voice vote. Yes. Council member Karns. Yes. Council member Mosley. Yes. Council member Mottney.

Yes. Council member Dannenburgger. Me. Council member Strazza. Yes. Council member Hendrickx. I. Council member Lee. Yes. Council member Scott. Yes. The item passes. No names to announce. Thank you very much. Next, we'll move to the regular uh agenda items. And first off will be uh under 7A presentation of the Bloomington Normal Economic Development Council uh strategic plan update. And uh Mr. Jurgens,

thank you very much, Mayor and Council. and uh invited Patrick Cobin, the executive director of the BNEDC, uh to come forward tonight with a presentation to update us on what they've been up to and uh the work that they do on behalf of not only the community but also specifically the city of Loomington. Patrick, thanks.

Thank you. Next slide. Awesome. Well, first of all, happy Marty Gro, y'all. This is a quarterly economic update. Did one of these for the county. Happy to do one for you guys as well. Next slide, please. Here is all of my education. I don't think we need to go through this. Working on a PhD if you guys want to help. Next slide. This is the experience. I just started my 20th year in economic development. Before that, I did work in the commercial sector for real estate development as well. Uh this is my second public private partnership I've worked for. I've also worked for two municipalities. So I I know what you guys go through. Next slide. Ah, so what do EDOS's do? Economic development organizations. Goodbody asks. We are here for the retention, expansion, attraction of jobs and investment. That is what we are judged on. Next slide. Why we do it? Uh we're here to grow the economy, increase wealth, ideally for all and then also stabilize the tax base. That's where you guys come in. Next slide. Okay. So, I thought it'd be good to differentiate between the different types of EDOS that are out there. Um a public EDO is what you guys do. So you guys have your own economic development team and I was a part of an economic development team like I said for a municipality. These are pluses and minuses. These are not Patrick's pluses and minuses. This is from the International Economic Development Council of which I am certified and I also teach um these as well. So some of the pluses for you guys is you guys obviously have pretty stable funding. You have the regulation ability but also you can put in policies. The negatives that are out there, there are debt limitations. I think the biggest one for you though is probably that you can only build public buildings. Um, and there's also the foyable challenge compared to our organization which is not foyable. Next slide. Private EDOS. These are your chambers of commerce whether it's state, whether it is our local chambers of commerce. They're a really good public private liaison. So they can be the voice of business finding out what's needed. Um, they can do tax deduction donations. They've got private funding. Uh, one of the challenges though is that they are

really prioritized by their membership. So as membership changes, so their priorities. Next slide. Again, I didn't make this up. There are more pluses on this. This is from the book. Um, but this is a P3. So public private partnership. We are a mixture of both. Um, so you know, our goals reflect public consensus. We do a strategic plan every single year. Um, I like to say we kind of act like a priest in a Catholic church where we get everybody's confessions. We come out, we try to figure out what the sermon's going to be to meet everybody's needs. Um, we do have freedom of staffing. We have few political constraints. There are some negatives though that is accountability and questionable activity inappropriateness. I'm not going to tell you what that means on the mic. If you want to talk afterwards, I can give you examples of where that's gone astray in some communities. Next slide. All right. So, who is our EDC? We're made up of 65 different investors. Everybody in red is a private sector. Everybody in blue is a public sector. If it is bold and underlined, they are our board members. These investors fluctuate. There are some years we get some new ones. Actually, we just had a new one today. SVN Core3 just joined us. Um, there's no rhyme or reason. We have some members that pay us $500 a year. Other ones can pay us up to $120,000 per year. We're not a membership organization, so we will still do the best that we can with the funding that we receive regardless if you pay us or not because we represent every citizen and every business in the entire county. Next slide. All right. So, how do we do it? Every community is different. When I was in Decator, it was more manufacturing and industrial. when I got to Tinley is more quality of place, quality of life here. It's a little bit of everything. Um the concept that we teach though and there is like a three to four day class on every single um strategy that's up there from infrastructure, real estate all the way around is that if we have a solid community then your businesses are going to stay and they're going to grow. If they grow then you're going to develop the economy which econ side. Our role is really in designing incentives, marketing, selling and then doing the deals. Again, everything that we do is

to get to that deal making at the end so that those dollars coming in go right back to you guys. Next slide. Now, this is a hierarchy of needs when it comes to where you need to start. I just got back from a site selection conference. The big talk now is data centers. I think a couple years ago it was EVs and they keep saying the same thing. It's people, it's power, and it's place. That is the bottom of the pyramid. That is the foundation. You have to have the infrastructure, have to have the available real estate, good place to live, and you got to have people. If you don't have that, you're not doing deals. We ran into this multiple times. Um, we'll get to the pipeline later on, what our opportunities are, but we also know why we lose. And a lot of times we lose because we don't have the infrastructure in right places. We don't have the available buildings other communities do, and we're definitely running out of people because it's getting a little expensive to live here. Next slide. All right. So, deal opportunities. These have fluctuated over the years. We're usually averaging around 100. These come in in a variety of different ways, whether it's an existing business, whether it's a startup or if it comes in through an RFI or RFP request for information from the state, or sometimes just directly site selectors. So, 430 shots, 430 at bats. Do we hit them all? No. Next slide. We've landed about 87 of these. I say landed, they've been announced. There's a difference between actually announcing something and actually getting to the ribbon cutting itself. Just because we say it's going to happen doesn't mean it always goes through. Anything in red is a town of Normal. Anything in blue is the city of Bloomington. And there's one purple um that's up there that is a recent battery storage project that the county has done. But you also have to remember everything in red and blue is the county because they are all inside the county and pay county taxes. With that combined with the 20 lease grants, 18 recovery loans, 14 back to business grants, you're looking at 87 deals that have been announced. Again, some of these have been announced, like the Kinder Bueno line, like R2, not actually complete. Urban Equities not complete. Holiday properties not complete. There's some other ones that have been announced that I just took off the list because they're kind of dead, even though one of

them just came back last week. So, we'll I might add it back. Next slide. So, deal flood again. 430 atbats, 87 of them been announced. Now, once they're announced, they're not done. I mean, all those deals can turn into multiple projects. Rebian itself is a lot of projects. 356 is what comes through. For each of those, we are the administrators of your enterprise zone. We've had to issue over basically 1500 enterprise zone certificates to individual contractors, which has led to 77 actual compet complete deals. Next slide. So, what does that mean to you guys? Basically, you give us $100,000 a year. Over the past six years, your return just Bloomington al loans has been $455 million, which is for every dollar you give us, $757 return. That's not as high as normals because there's been a lot more development up there. However, one to 757 is not a bad return. I would take that any day. Next slide. So, what we're going to do going forward, we do this every single year. Um, we report out on this monthly where we're at. We also have our quarterly public updates, [clears throat] but we're always going to do deals. We're always going to do BRE. So, we're going to ask our businesses, one, thank you for doing business. Two, are you growing? If not, what's in the way? If we find out what's in the way, we literally help locally and at the state level craft incentives to get them moving. Same with developers. Um, same with business attraction. We have to do fundraising, administration, up and down. Um, we've got one voice coming up actually next month, actually in a couple weeks. Next month is a couple weeks. Time's flying. We're doing community asset mapping. uh doing a feedback listening tour, finding out from the community what they want in some of our vacant buildings, updating the housing study because that was back in I want to say 2021 when we started that new tool that just launched, size up MLAN county is helping our entrepreneurs and smaller businesses find the data, the business intelligence that they need in order to get the loans. Most of them are not bankable. They got great ideas. They don't have the data behind it to get a business plan that will give it to them. Um

whenever they need technical assistance, we do a lot of this. A lot of times you'll have a business come forward. They've got a great idea for a development. They don't know how to get through the system. So we prep them to get through the system to make the asks before they get to you guys. Uh also working on some entrepreneurship incentive specifically around child care, possibly even housing as well um with the state. Still running life multiplied as retention strategy and then doing more economic development awareness. Last year we did an econ 101 course for elected officials and community champions. We might try to do a 2011 course that talks about the incentives and the data that goes behind closing the deal and also trying to certify our staff. It is an ongoing process. Next slide. So staff goals breaking it down by individuals for the cost of one entry level economic developer. You're actually getting four. I don't want to say how much experience we have together. Um but there's a lot of experience up there and we average a master's degree. Um each of us get five tasks in the strategic plan itself. There's four things we're trying to do. But as I mentioned, Nora's got one voice coming up. Um, publishing the child care study, which was just recently complete. Doing the RFI completions, monitoring every single available site in town. Uh, Carl's big deal is VR and entrepreneurial assistance. Courtney is doing our marketing, running the podcast, and planning our next by the numbers. I have a plethora of different things in the background, but also filling in gaps, doing a retail gap analysis, housing study update. Um, and just like I said, completed that site selection conference. I've got about 10 pages of notes to type up, but we're pushing that out pretty soon. But a lot of the comments that I make at VM by the numbers coming directly from the site selectors and the businesses on what's working in other states. Next slide, please. So, how do we do it? It's with everybody. Like, we can't do this without you. It's a good combination of using Bloomington normal economic development staff. And I use it as a football analogy. You might have a really good run game, but you also have to have good wide receivers. You have to have a good quarterback blocking and tackling. Um, it takes everyone to get something done. This is not a oneanddone. Somebody doesn't make a phone call and all of a sudden you get a

deal. I've seen these things start and stop. Um, as I mentioned, there was a project that started two years ago that just came back. I was at the tail end of a project in Tinley Park that went on for 11 years and closed it. These are not overnight deals. They appear like when they come out and make the announcement, but there's a lot of work, a lot of people that are involved, and we can't do it without your team and without your continued investment. Next slide. With that, I'll open it up to questions for my time. [clears throat] Thank you. Uh, are there Thank you, Patrick. Are there questions, comments from members of the council?

Yeah. Hi, Patrick. Thank you for the presentation. Um, you mentioned earlier, uh, we're kind of losing people because it's getting expensive to live here. Have you looked at variables? What's causing that? Um, Is there anything we can do to course correct that? Um, as council, can we take any action to help that? Um, any suggestions?

I I think you have the whole missing middle concept that you've come up with is definitely been beneficial. You guys have more housing projects lined up than anywhere else around here, but this is truly supply and demand. Um, if you just go on Zillow and look at what it costs to rent or purchase in any of the surrounding communities compared to ours, I know we've always been a little bit more, but it's getting a lot a little out of control, but you guys are taking the right steps in order to keep the projects that we have on track. Really looking forward to what could be going on in downtown Bloomington um at this former State Farm building, but then also bringing in the developers uh to take on the old Verizon site. That'll be a really cool concept, too. So, you got you guys are on track. I just wish we could speed it up. you know, we brought this to light back in like 2021 and here we are five years later. Yep. You're doing the right thing.

Um, first of all, I just want to say um, thanks to you, you and your staff. Um, I spoke with Nora last week. I mentioned that just the accessibility of of folks to clearly excited to share um, information. You mentioned childare. Can you expand on that a little bit?

Sure. Um, we've already covered this a little so I don't want to like what I always say is you guys are my product. communities a product. You don't want to highlight some of the negatives, but we are the second highest when it comes to the cost of childare in the state of Illinois. Um it literally costs more to send a um child to uh early childhood whether it's I think under two than it does to go to college right now here. And that is we we cause some of this. When you bring in good paying jobs, there's an opportunity to jump up the ladder. When you can jump up the ladder, you have to pay more, which is good to pay more. My wife was a early childhood teacher and I always joked I made more as a bartender than she did you know developing brain cells. However, because of that the cost has gone up for everybody. So that that's been a really big challenge.

So with that what is the solution? I mean we you know because we have this housing issue, we have the you know child care uh issue. What are the solutions to do that? We know that rising costs are going, you know, getting out of control and that people can't afford housing. They can't afford child care. So, what is the solution for our community to look at how do we make it I'll start with the housing one, which is similar to what Mr. Lee said. It's just getting more supply and you do have supply coming in the pipeline. Um, there are incentives that are being done for both of those, I believe. Um, so there's enterprise zone amendments underway right now that will help out the Verizon site one and you guys have I think development agreements in place uh for both. So you guys have handled the housing one, they'll set the standard child care one, the study that we have and as investors you have access to the draft that is on our website right now in the investor portal. In the back of that there's probably two to three pages of different solutions which we've already got in front of the governor right now. So we're looking for not to have the burden on us but to maybe have some type of a siphon situation. uh maybe changing some of the regulation, improving some of the tax credits that you can get. There's, like I said, two, three pages of solutions. We'll see if any of them bite, but again, there has to be a way to offset the cost because recently we've had a couple childcare centers closed because of this, too. So, again, supply and demand. We need to have more of it to lower the cost. Um, but where that incentives come from, we've offered multiple solutions.

Member Matney. Thank you, Patrick. Um, you use the term solid community as the foundation for anything to happen. Um, how do you define solid community? Well, solid community for me is having that there's room to grow. There is a very diverse background. It's not like we are stuck and that we're only good at one thing. So, I took this job honestly because of the university system that's here. I saw that workforce was turning into a number one issue for economic development. if you did not have talent, you weren't going to win. Knowing that we have 25,000 college kids here, there the future's here. How do we stick how do we get them to stick around? So, it's having um a solid foundation when it comes to the diverse industry that we have, the occupations that we have, and having opportunity. The opportunity is here. The goal is going to be how do we keep it affordable because people already want to be here. It's a great place to live, work, and play. Um but I just think that we've outgrown ourselves when it comes to investment. Other members with questions or comments? Patrick, you indicated, I believe, that the city's commitment financially was $100,000. Is that correct? Do you

Yes, in the past. I'm sorry. In the past, it was in the past. Yeah. There was a recent pledge for 120. 120. Yes. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions or comments? If not, thank you again. anytime. Uh, next we'll move on to um [clears throat] next item which is a presentation and project update on the bridge and our city manager, Mr. Jurgens, will introduce our guest.

Thank you very much. asked Matt Burgess, the executive director of Home Sweet Home Ministries, uh to come forward. And I'm not going to steal any of his thunder. Um uh but may have a couple of comments at the end with some just some of the impacts that we're seeing from this and what it we're able to do with closing down some tin encampments and and really uh having fewer of those within the community, which is a benefit to us as well. So, with that, go ahead and turn this over to Matt. Yeah, thank you for uh having me speak with all of you this evening. Uh I have a picture to show. I don't have a bunch of slides like Patrick did, but I I I wanted to show this picture. This is um two weeks old uh as the picture. I climbed up on our neighbors roof uh to take this picture myself uh to show everybody that I'm talking to about where we are with the bridge. As you can see, we're basically um fully constructed. Uh we've got some finishing touches that I'll go into here uh in a couple of minutes. That snow that you see on the ground was a thorn in our side from Thanksgiving through February, which was really unusual. Created some some challenges for us with with construction. But I'm thrilled to tell everybody here that beginning on January 19th, we started moving people in into the cabins. Excuse me. Sorry. Um, having never done anything like this before, we came up with a really um, elegant plan to probably average about 10 people a day over the course of the the first couple of weeks that we'd be trying to move people in. We set an 11:00 a.m. orientation time on that Monday the 19th. And by 8:00 a.m. the first person showed up with his life possessions in a suitcase saying, "Can I just come in and

wait? It's cold out here." And of course, we said, "Yes, come on into the clubhouse." [cough] We had somebody else show up about 10 minutes later. By 11:00, when we expected to have six or seven people there, we had 26 people in the room waiting anxiously to move into their cabins. By the end of that first day, we had moved 31 people into the bridge into their cabins. Way more than what we thought we would be able to do. Um, and we just kind of rolled with it and everybody was uh of the right mindset and spirit to say, "This is new for all of us. We're going to figure it out together and and we're going to we're going to make this work. By the end of the first week, um we had already uh surpassed our occupancy goal that we had established through our grant with the county. We had projected that we would be 75% full within 30 days. Um I think I sent a message to the county that we were at 98% full at that point. We had a couple of uh cabins that were not operational um for a couple of different reasons, but um of the space available, we had moved in that many people. I want to emphasize that every single person that we have moved into the bridge is somebody who had previously been staying outside, either the encampment in the gravel pits, the encampment off of Adelaide, or elsewhere in town. We had encountered people all across the the community through our street outreach work. And so we we stayed true to what our stated purpose in building the bridge was to move people inside who were stuck out there. Um and we have done that with every single person that's moved into the bridge. They're no longer outside. We were able to move people in. January 19th was like the day before the worst cold snap of the winter hit our community. Um, I appreciate this

help. Um, thank you so much. We've had I I mentioned we've had some facilities issues. Uh, we we thought we had everything functional to to start off, but uh when we turned all of the the heaters on in the cabins, we had a couple of heaters that didn't work. They would just blow cold air. Um had something to do with it being 0 degrees outside. I'm sure that the immediate full load demand on those units, a couple of them just didn't work uh as we had hoped that they would function. So, we couldn't move people into those cabins. Uh we immediately started working to get those units replaced. Um we also had issues with door handles falling off of the doors. Um the the the the handles themselves just would pull off, not through excessive use. It was just a poor design. So, we have been busy as we've been uh operating busy addressing those facilities issues. We've gotten replacement heaters. Um we are in the process of swapping out all 48 door handles uh to something that's more heavy duty and and and higher quality. Um but we didn't let that stop us from from making sure people were inside and safe. Um tonight, well, yeah, as of today, I got this information earlier this afternoon. Uh we have 47 people residing at the bridge out of a total 56 spaces. So 47 out of 56 spaces. That's about 84% occupied tonight. We've had a mixture of departures over the last week or so. We we uh when we first moved everybody in uh we entered into what we knew was going to be our honeymoon period uh where everybody was adjusting and uh quite frankly people were trying to get accustomed to being indoors. had different people share their experience of saying, "I feel like a caged animal. I haven't been in four walls with a door in years. It this is feels really uncomfortable." I had I had

people asking, "Could we can I just take my bed out and set it outside the cabin and sleep on it outside the cabin?" And we're like, "No, no, that defeats the whole point here." Um, and so we we had some of those initial adjustment uh issues, but for the most part, for the first few weeks, we everybody was uh just trying to get rest. People came in really really uh haggarded from being exposed to the elements for so long that that people were just exhausted. And so we had a lot of rest. But over the last week, week and a half, um we have found the need to um uh we've had two people leave on their own because they've decided that this doesn't work for them. Um I I don't know what the their circumstances are in detail. My my team would know those stories better than I, but two of the individuals that we moved in after giving it a shot for a few weeks have said, "This just doesn't work for me." And so they have moved out on their own. We've required four people to leave for safety reasons. Um, as we've been doing this, we've been faced with exactly what we knew we were going to be dealing with. People with significant mental health symptoms, people with uh sobriety struggles, you know, really uh significant substance use issues. For the most part, those struggles are we're able to to maintain people's safety. Uh but we have had a couple of occasions where people have gotten aggressive, have been outrageously either racially or sexually offensive uh to others. Uh and we've we've said that's not acceptable in this setting. As low of a barrier setting as we've tried to create, we do have some safety rules that must be maintained. Now I will say as soon as we require somebody to leave the planning that we do starts to see how can we bring them back? What is their pathway back to

receiving services? So even though we have to tell people to leave sometimes we're always trying to figure out what is their pathway back into coming inside getting re-engaged in services. uh and that looks different for each person based off of their particular uh set of circumstances, the behavior that they engaged in uh things like that. Uh and one person has entered residential treatment for substance use. Uh we are holding that individual's space uh until they get back from treatment. We don't want that positive step that they chose to take to be a reason that they lose shelter at the bridge. And so we're holding that bed for that 28 day period. they will return uh to their cabin following that. Uh we're also working to move additional people into the spaces that have opened up. We've gotten uh cabins. I think I have all but one cabin operational at this point in time. And so we have uh a pipeline of people that we are trying to move indoors. Um it takes a while to catch up with people when they don't have a functioning phone, they don't have a a set address, we don't know what their schedules are. Um it takes us some time to to catch up to people sometimes uh to really bring them inside, but we are busy in the process of doing that. Um we expect by the end of the week that we'll probably have most of those spaces filled. We we will have caught up with those individuals. We've been able to move them in uh and and get back to close to 100% occupancy. Um I mentioned that our construction is almost complete. We're we're almost done. Um, this picture does not really allow us to zoom in very much, but but my security gates on the front of the fence aren't fully installed. We've been at the mercy of our supplier getting them produ made, manufacturing the gates for us. Uh, they're custom built to the specs of our of our lanes and we've just been waiting, frustratingly waiting uh for them to produce that. The last information I have is that by Thursday

they should be done. Um, and so they could be installed by the as soon as the end of this week, if not uh by the beginning of next week. Our fencing, our gate company has committed to as soon as they get them, they're going to come out and install those immediately. Um, we've got temporary construction barricades that we have so many of in downtown Bloomington right now. Uh, we've got a couple uh at the bridge still. Um, that will be replaced by those permanent gates. The gates on the fence will be egress gates. Uh, we have a centralized entry point through the clubhouse. That's always been our design. That allows my staff that are there 24 hours a day to keep eyes on people. We do daily check-ins with individuals. Um, but then we're going to have exit gates uh for people to leave when they want to leave. They don't have to come back through the clubhouse to do that. Uh, our electronic lock system is now operation also. That's something that we've been anxiously uh waiting to get in place. We're we're we're uh trying to coordinate uh key cards with the police department so that if we do have the need to to call uh the police to provide assistance to us um that they've got a key card in every squad car uh that they can just come in freely and and not have to worry about are my staff at the desk to buzz them in those types of things. Um we're excited about that getting established here really soon. My security camera systems are up and functioning uh except for the the ones that go on the decorative arbors that hopefully will be done. Again, weather has impacted all of these outside part portions of the project, but those should be getting done in the next couple of weeks. And then, of course, we're going to turn our attention to landscaping. We're really excited about the plan that's coming together for landscaping to make sure that this is an attractive property. I've got a a landscape architect who's donating his time and expertise to help us build the master plan. I've got the master naturalists from the wild ones. I've got the Bloomington to Normal Garden Club.

Um I've got um ecology action center uh is going to supply trees. Uh we've got a really strong team put together to make sure that this is uh an attractive property inside the fence and outside the fence. Uh we're actually going to do most of the landscaping in that expanse of snow that you see uh facing Oakland Avenue uh to really make sure that this is uh something that that our community can can feel good about being uh featured in that location. I mentioned that we've been experiencing exactly what we knew we would be experiencing. Um and we're serving the people that we knew through our street outreach work. people that have significant mental health symptoms, uh substance use issues, uh people who are quite frankly in really poor health, uh from living outside. And so we have had the occasional need to contact emergency services. Uh a couple of times we've we've had to call the police uh because of people being aggressive on site. Um couple times we've had to call an ambulance for people who are having a health emergency. Um, this is not unusual in a shelter environment. We do that in our existing shelter. We've been doing that in our existing shelter probably since 1917 when we were founded. Um, I can say with confidence the frequency of calls to 911 are drastically lower than they were when we had the encampment next door to home sweet home. That was daily or multiple times a day. Now we're averaging maybe about once a week that we're having to make a 911 call either for health or uh police assistance. So that's really encouraging uh to see that uh improvement. Uh we're also regularly inspecting our residents cabins. My staff make uh a schedule of doing cabin inspections. So we're going in and uh making sure that they have a hygienic environment that they're not smuggling stuff in into the

bridge that they're not supposed to. We have been finding some uh 40 ounce uh cans of beer that we've been uh getting a little bit more diligent about uh trying to keep out. We when we find those, we tell them they can't have them there. For the most part, they say we'll just throw it away. Um we are now doing bag checks as people enter with their backpacks through their front door for people that we know, hey, you've done this before. We're going to just kind of keep an extra eye on you and make sure that you don't think that you can get away with this uh repeatedly. So we are uh increasing our vigilance on an as needed and indicated basis for a few individuals. Um been very pleased with the initial response from some of our service partners uh in particular Fuse Bridgeway Project Oz Mid Community Action and the Cornbelt Kennel Club. That's been a delight for us to discover uh their eagerness in supporting what we're doing. fuse. We've been able to get three people connected to those services that had not yet been able to uh get connected to those intensive supports that are available. Um that's really really encouraging. We've also gotten three people connected through Bridgeway to employment opportunities. We have some other people who have gotten back into employment after having been outside. Now that they're in a in a stable place, they can bathe every day. They can feel a sense of rest and capability. they've returned to jobs that they had previously or they've found new employment. Um I don't have numbers on that. That's just anecdotal that people are telling me, "Oh yeah, I went back to work today or I got my job back out at Ferrero." And I'm like, "This is fantastic. This is this is what we're hoping for." Um and then Project Oz Mid Central uh are doing their specific outreach to folks uh in those in their programs. The Cornbell Kennel Club is helping us with animal care and supplies. They got us some uh dog waste uh scoopers and and things

like that for uh maintaining uh clean cleanliness on the campus. We're still formalizing the schedule with some of our other providers, but those were our early partners that I wanted to acknowledge. Um they really showed up uh from the day one. [snorts] Um I only have a couple minutes left. I have so much more that I could tell you. Um, I look forward to opportunities to share more and more with you. But I want to um wrap up before I tell you all the communities that have already expressed a desire to learn from what we're doing. I want to tell you a story that happened yesterday. I walked over to the bridge from my office at our main campus. Took me about 90 seconds to walk over there. That's a fantastic efficiency for us in that location. And I did some business over there. And then I was walking back uh to my office and I happened to be walking back with a gentleman I bet you know I bet you would recognize from being on our sidewalks downtown. This is a gentleman that when he moved into the bridge was very angry and very prickly and very surirly in his demeanor. Um, and for the first couple of days, it was all like I I would say good morning and he was like, "No, it's not right." And and respond in that way. But after a week, he started to change his demeanor. After a week, he got a fresh haircut. He shaved that scraggly beard that he had off and he was clean shave and and and I could tell just by looking at him that he was feeling rested that he hadn't felt before. He also um takes pride in keeping his cabin very clean. When I give tours to to guests and I see him, I said, "Hey, you know, do you feel like showing your camera?" He's like, "Yeah, come on. I want to show you." And and he takes pride in showing that. I did that uh earlier this afternoon with somebody. But as we walked back from the bridge to the Home Sweet Home main campus, he was walking over there to go to the food

co-op because he works in there, as he told me, every day. He finds value in being there helping us out every day. He does a little grocery shopping in that space, too. More importantly, he started to tell me about himself. Started to tell me about his service in the National Guard. Started to tell me about his struggles with MS in his life. Struggles with all sorts of issues that I had no idea about. And he started opening up to me. That's a a a significant departure from no, it's not it's not a nice day to being vulnerable with me. I I just was really touched by that. We're seeing that over and over and over again with the people that we're serving. We've got some folks that aren't taking the opportunity, but for the most part, they are. Really quick, I'm going to tell you in rapid succession the communities that have already come for tours or who are scheduled to come for tours. Danville, Peacin, Peoria, Urbana, Wkegan, Molen, and Pontiac. That's the impact that we are having to inspire other communities to think creatively about addressing homelessness uh that they're dealing with in their own communities. So, I'm happy to answer questions. Like I said, there's so much more to to say. I hope you ask me the questions that uh that uh are on your mind so that we can continue to talk about this. Thank you. Thank you very much, Matt, and and to you and to your entire team for for what you've done on this project. And I'm gonna certainly let my colleagues go first with any questions or comments that they have. And member Lee, your lights on. So, congratulations to you and your staff and everyone involved. Um, just how how's your staff feeling? Um, do you feel you're adequately staffed? Um, you know, um, in terms of being able to keep up with the additional responsibilities of running this, um, you know, homeless,

um, congregate shelter. Yeah,

it's definitely not an encampment. I I always like to be make that distinction. Um, for the most part, yeah, we staffed up uh based off of our our staffing model of our other shelter. We have found that um we've been pulling staff from our other building over there. So, there's little like during the daytime. Um we're probably a little understaffed during the daytime. I'm also in between uh incumbents in one of my main roles over there. Our program manager position is open right now. So once I get that filled, that should stabilize. But but but for the most part, yes, we're keeping up with things. We're definitely very busy. Um I will say the training that we've provided to to to our staff on trauma-informed care, deescalation skills, um understanding substance use disorders and things like that, that really comes in handy for them to feel equipped to respond to most of the things that we uh experience over there. On the rare occasion where we have had to call for assistance from the police, um they've been very responsive. They've been f fantastic to work with us uh and and really been great partners in maintaining a safe environment.

Yeah. Um thanks. And I think this is a great opportunity for like um ISG and Wesley and for people in you know social work or something to come and do an internship or something. I don't know if you have interesting programs. We're in the process of scheduling interviews with interns for next academic year right now. We also have uh uh some professors from Illinois Wesian who are going to help us do with data analysis and and and uh tracking our outcomes over the long term. So, we're really excited about that connection, too.

Member Hendricks. Yeah, I don't have any questions. Just and I've got a lot of thoughts in my mind, but just want to express uh my thanks to you and your team and and the fact that we've gotten to this point. uh you know obviously this is in my ward so I get asked about it a lot and because of the stigma that surrounds it some people may not you know be thrilled that we have this and sure I would love that everywhere in America we wouldn't need this but I I am happy that we as a community and especially your team and and the larger community has stepped up in such a way so want to express that and also I think it's just I know it's not an exciting night we don't have anybody here mostly for from the public but how great it is that we're talking about how we're helping individuals without housing meeting that that gap that we have, you were already fulfilling it with the congregate shelters that we had. The fact that we're talking about housing and how do we find that next step and that we're talking about affordability with child care, right? These are issues that plague every community. Uh and I think it's because of you guys and the larger community that we're stepping up and doing these things. So, I'm really proud of the presentations that you guys are presenting here because I think it speaks to our community as a whole. So, thank you both for everything you guys do.

Member Danberger. Hey Matt, thanks for the presentation. Um, might just have a quick question. Um, when it becomes time to put plants in the ground, will there be an opportunity to volunteer uh to do that to do the planting, the actual the landscaping and the planting? And if so, how would we coordinate that with a couple groups that we're working with in our wards and at schools that we volunteer at?

Yeah, we definitely uh will look to to get volunteer assistance with that. We will uh publicize those opportunities like we did with uh the painting of the cabins and building the furniture. We'll do a lot of social media and email communications. Um I'll make a a point of reaching out to you specifically since you expressed interest in being update updated on that. Perfect. Thank you so much. Other members? Yeah.

Wow. What an update. I've been well, you know, I drive by there daily and so have been very curious to see how the day-to-day has been going. So, thank you so much for all the information that you provided. This is very helpful. And then just my small little curiosity. Well, one thing, let me back up a little bit is um about the staffing. I um one of your staff members I think also is going to try to volunteer with with our program at the my program at the library. So the law library. So I'm very excited to have his the training that he comes with because you know there's a lot of

that there's a crossover in that ven diagram of the people that that you know have legal issues that might try to to access our services. But I did have one curiosity because I saw like at the the the fencing, the outer fencing in some of those areas. I don't know a lot about fencing, [laughter] but that you know like there's the gaps and things and do you feel like you've addressed those?

Uh we have field dirt that we need to still bring in. uh the dirt will be graded up to a sufficient level where that gap will be so small that people right now uh if you drive by and you'll see a bunch of boards that we've tacked on to the bottom of the big gaps. That's to to ensure that we've we're not having people crawl under the fence until we're able to bring the fill dirt in here in, you know, in the springtime. Right. Okay. Gotcha. All right. Well, thank you so much. Good question.

Other members with comments. Member Straza. Yeah. Yes. Thanks, Matt, for explaining more. It's just it's exciting to see uh the the success it's had so far and understand the challenges that you're you're also having. Is there anything that uh that the public needs to know or just that we need to know that uh needs that you're seeing that you didn't realize, but now you're saying, "Hey, besides, you know, planting's coming up and all these other things you want to get finished, is there other things that you're gonna that the community could be involved in to help if there's any other things that would need to be provided?" Uh that's a great question. I don't know that I have a I have great clarity on that. You know, we've been having people in the bridge for four weeks and so we're still figuring some of those things out. Uh, you know, I can I can say um transportation was a known issue before. Um, but it is really on our minds. Uh, the amount of money that we're spending to buy bus passes uh for people to get around town is is it's a lot. It's we're, you know, we're spending hundreds of dollars a month uh to to get bus passes so people can get across town to appointments uh to to to services that they receive and things like that. So, uh continuing to to try and figure out transportation long term, uh opportunities that we have to to enhance that, especially for our more marginalized neighbors in the community. Um I think those are those are things that are on our radar, but we don't have a good answer for what we do about that quite yet. other members. If not, thank you. And couple uh Matt for me. First off, uh again, thank you uh for what you and your team have done. Um back in June, I think it was, we had uh two town hall meetings on two separate days at the library. Um and we had uh big turnout on on both those days as I

remember. and and you addressed and the audience and answered questions. One of those questions uh that was out there was how long how long and I know you're new just opening I mean at least how long does somebody stay can somebody stay with you?

Yeah, that's a it is probably the most common question that I get asked now at this stage of of the of the project. Um, and I and I answer that by highlighting the name of our facility as the bridge, right? And I and I would like to illustrate that different bridges are different lengths in our community. That's true. Takes us longer to cross some bridges than others. That's true for the people that we are serving at the bridge. Individual by individual, the bridge that they have to cross to get to permanent housing varies in length. And so we have no arbitrary limit on how long of a bridge people get. We don't want to get people out to the middle of the the the chasm that they're experiencing and then say, "Well, that's that's long enough." And then they have to step off without the supports. So the bridge that each one of our residents crosses will be different length of time. And so we're structured that way to to respond to that. I accompany this explanation by saying the intention is not to get people on a bridge and have them stop in the middle of the bridge. Right? That's not what we do on bridges. Bridges are there to help us get from one place to another that we can't cover on our own. That's the point of our bridge. Also, we do start with housing related goals, stability related goals from when we move people in. Uh we just don't know how long it's going to take. These are our neighbors who have the most significant obstacles to housing. Um, I've been estimating 6 months, but we'll find out uh through experience how long that actually will be.

How does your numbers at the main campus, how are they now? Are they still

Yeah, we still we still have waiting list uh for our other shelter as well. We're we're constantly moving people into that. Uh you know, the reality is um the the the need for shelter uh is extensive in our community. The bridge was built to bring most of the people who are stuck literally outside inside, but not every single person who's outside inside. Um, and then we have people living in doubled up situations in other situations that don't meet certain definitions of homelessness, but really are unsafe for them. Uh, and so there's quite the the need for for services. And I know that uh via the city that um we're looking at the Martin Luther King area uh campus there by uh to the west of town that had been an area where people were calling home off Martin Luther King Drive and and some other areas of um closing that securing that in a different way now because numbers have gone down apparently. Are you still having that outreach as you once did intensely, meaning going out and checking in certain areas across our city?

We still are doing outreach. It's not going to look like what we had been doing to those big encampments because we don't really have big encampments anymore. There are are a few people out at the gravel pits where you're where you're talking. Um there are a couple people at the encampment at Adelaide. um we are going to still do outreach in the community and and go to to frequent locations, but it's going to by nature have to look different than than what it did when we had 20 30 people in those encampments. Um the intensity of the outreach out there won't won't be the same. We're we don't have that figured out either. We we knew it would change. Now we're at the point of rebooting our outreach uh to really make sure we're meeting the need that exists. Um and that's a work in progress for us right now. Thank you. And again, obviously from all of us, thank you. And as you close, I believe each town hall discussion uh close to this was if anybody has any better ideas, I'm all yours.

That's right. So, thank you. And and if anybody has any questions, I invite them to come and see. I'm always happy to to share what we're doing and and allay uh misperceptions or provide clarification. So any anytime anybody wants to uh ask a question that you're not don't feel equipped to answer, Jeff knows where to find me. [laughter] I'm pretty easy to reach. So thank you.

Thank you very much. Uh again, um next we'll move to the U to item [clears throat] C, which is a presentation on the city's 2025 accomplishments. Um and will be explained by our city manager, Mr. Jurgens.

Thank you, Mayor. So, every every year we try to pause for a moment and talk about some of the accomplishments and reflect on the past year. So, we're going to take a few minutes to do that tonight. We're going to start by a video that Katherine Murphy put together. And we um tried to include everything in here and it was going to be like a 10-minute video. So, this is really cut down to about three minutes. And then I'll talk about some other accomplishments. So, Phil, if you want to go ahead and start this. Every year tells a story. [music] In 2025, Bloomington's story was one of visible progress across our neighborhoods, our infrastructure, and the services residents rely on every day. [music]

The year welcomed new leadership with Mayor Dan Brady and council members Mike Strazza [music] and Abby Scott joining the city council. Together with city staff, they advanced the work already underway across our community. Bloomington's arts and entertainment sector delivered a strong year. Attendance at city venues increased by 22%, welcoming more than [music] 233,000 guests. A successful season for the Bloomington Bison and major touring acts [music] energized the arena and strengthened long-term sustainability. [music] Downtown reached a major milestone with the start of construction on the downtown streetscape [music] project in the 600 block of Main Street. The area was also recognized as a state designated cultural district, [music] affirming its economic and cultural vitality. More than 100 events generated nearly 3 million visits downtown in 2025. Bloomington also secured additional housing rehabilitation funding to continue strengthening [music] targeted neighborhoods. The Bloomington Public Library welcomed more than 284,000 visitors and [music] circulated nearly 1.3 million items. Outreach expanded through BPL on the go, reinforcing the library's commitment to [music] access and innovation. Parks and Recreation maintained more [music] than 12,200 acres of parkland across Bloomington, earned its 38th Tree City USA designation, and supported the development of an accessible playground at Stevenson School. Golf participation reached a record [music] 68,700 rounds played and celebrated another strong year at Miller [music] Park Zoo. The Bloomington Police Department delivered measurable results. Shootings declined by 43%. [music] All homicides were solved and the department responded to tens of thousands of emergency and service

calls, contributing to a safer community. The fire department continued its focus on prevention and response, [music] handling more than 14,000 calls for service and delivering community risk reduction programming throughout the [music] year. Infrastructure and essential services remained a priority. Construction advanced on the 1 milli enterprise water tower to strengthen reliability. Public works responded quickly during summer flooding and modernized fleet [music] operations to improve efficiency. engineering resurfaced nearly 28 lane miles of [music] roadway, reconstructed GE and Fort Jesse roads, progressed on the Hamilton Road east west connection, and completed 240 [music] sidewalk improvements to enhance walkability. In its first full year, the development services department guided [music] more than $221 million in investment supporting responsible growth [music] across the city. Together, these accomplishments reflect steady progress across our community. It's the work of making life better today and for generations to come as Bloomington [music] continues building a stronger future.

We'll put that uh video along with some attachments uh up on the website. Um those are some of our more public facing departments and there's a lot more that goes into all of that. I also wanted to take a moment and recognize some of the supporting departments and we'll put this up as well on our website. Uh Phil, if you can put my presentation back up. And I'm not going to read uh all of these for every single department, but just starting with the city clerk department. Uh they had an increase of almost uh 50% in foyer requests. They handled 4,000 I think there were seven shy of 4,000 foyer requests last year. Um and they did it on time. They actually exceeded a lot of times the statutory time limit. I mean, they they met uh they did not take as long as the statute allows. Let me rephrase that. Um but but they are a very busy department and we're trying to figure out better ways to handle FOYA and and get information uh out there. They also handle obviously all the business and liquor licenses, over 600 of those, all of the legislative records and the commissions. And they do that with a staff of four people and that includes the city clerk. And so they are like all of our departments an extremely busy department but had a lot of great achievements. Next slide. Our another big department, our finance department. Um just you know to kind of take into account this 30,000 utility bills and payments processed every single month. Over 2,000 vidter payments processed every single month. And the thing I wanted to highlight here is is just how many visitors uh that they work with in the hub. 900 over 900 person in-person visits and then uh over 200 calls a month. Next slide. In addition to our handling our budget audit and everything else that the finance department handles for us, human resources um both finance and human resources have had staffing cuts over the last couple of years as we've gone

through attrition. Uh human resources, they handle the 11 different bargaining units that the city has. And of those 11, we had seven union contracts up in 2025 and they got all of them negotiated and approved by this council. A part of that, they imple implemented the new fire schedule. Um, and so they they do a lot of great things for the city as well and had a a really successful year. Next slide. It another uh very busy uh department. When you look at that, they processed over 7,000 service requests. Uh, so when my computer doesn't work, I I send it a note and and so that's what that is. I did not do it 7,000 times, but I I did it a handful of times. And and the subheading there is they they resolve those. They track that. Our IT department does a great job at tracking things and and um making sure they're continually improving. They do that with a 90% uh on-time compliance rate. So, they do really great work there managing that and again up there managing over 5,000 devices at the city as well as supporting and maintaining the public safety, the police and fire department on a 247 basis. Next slide. Our legal department, just a couple things to highlight here. Obviously, they handle our administrative court. Last year they had uh almost 200 property maintenance cases that they filed and 375 behavioral uh ordinance cases that they filed and handled in administrative court. Um the other thing here is they help us with the collective bargaining negotiations. So with seven contracts up they were very busy. Uh we also have procurement within our legal and they handled 40 solicitations worth over 86 million in contracts. So that that's a twoperson team in our procurement within legal. They stay very busy and are uh very effective at what they do. Next slide.

And then just uh overall the the video said a lot, but I I just want to take a minute and when I think back on some of the the greatest accomplishments of 2025, um probably one of the biggest is the closure of the Market Street garage. uh we came forward that was a failing structure and we came forward and said we could put a you know a couple million dollars more into this and extend the life of it a little bit and everybody up here looked at me like I was crazy and so I said okay we're going to do something different with that and we closed the Market Street garage way ahead of when we were scheduled or planning to close it and thanks to the staff of uh the great work of the staff including Billy Tyus and and Sue and the others we were able to close that garage and make it work with the businesses and the residents downtown. And so we got that headache out of the way as we prepare for for bigger and greater there. Uh getting the the phase one started on the streetscape was a huge accomplishment last year. Getting through the nooks and crannies of that and you know we've we've really accomplished a lot with that as we now look to finish up the the first uh step of that and then get on to the 500th block here very shortly. uh progress made on the front and center. That building had been uh vacant for decades, uh literally dead animals in the windows there and uh just nobody could rehabilitate it. So, the idea that that building is now down and is going to be repurposed, the the fact that we've got the Elks building down, we are seeing real progress on some of these uh issues within our community. And then also housing. I just wanted to give a shout out to that too. Um we we did not build as many single family homes as we did the year before, but what we have done is really laid the foundation for what's going to come in this year 2026. Uh we did not put any multifamily up in 2025, but we have laid the foundation for a lot of multifamily coming online in

2026. And so this is something that we monitor closely, but with the housing incentives that this council has adopted with the, you know, appreciate Patrick being here tonight and talking about some of their housing, uh, we really look like we're going to be able to put some large housing numbers up on the scoreboard in 2026 and hopefully get the market a little a little more so that the prices don't continue to skyrocket like they have. Uh, so we're excited about that and appreciative of the groundwork that we laid on these and so many other projects in 2025. And I'm happy to answer any questions. Thank you. And and with that, are there questions or comments from members? Okay. If not, thank you again, Jeff and staff for all your continued hard work and and for the presentation tonight as well. uh and for Katherine's help with that. Um always good to share good news. Uh with that um if there's any other issues before um our uh committee have a whole tonight from anyone doesn't look like it. Then there is no executive session that we have to uh accommodate. So with that I believe that we can adjourn.

I'll make a I'm sorry. We need a motion to adjurnn. Second by member Hendricks and seconded by member Strazza. And with that I to journ.