City Council - Regular Meeting

Council Member Kearns. Here.

Council Member Montney. Here. Council Member Straza.

Here.

Council Member Hendricks.

Here.

Council Member Ward. Here. Council Member Lee.

Here.

Council Member Scott. Here. And Mayor Brady.

Here. Next, we'll move to public comment. And do we have public comment, Madam Clerk?

Yes, we do. We had five people send emailed public comment, read their name for the records. Chris McPhail, Laura Dudgeon, Alyssa Foulkes, Esther Freeburg, and Mark Zablocki. And then we have four people to speak after you read your statement. And we will start with Melissa Breeden.

Thank you. Public comment is an opportunity for speakers to provide their views and feedback to the city council. It's also an opportunity for for the city council to listen and hear diverse points of view. To maximize the impact of public comment and show respect for the expression of all viewers, speakers should maintain civility and focus on city issues. Speakers must identify themselves for the record, but are not required to give their address. Each speaker is given the floor for three minutes. and the council does not respond or engage in debate. Any speaker that engages in threatening or disorderly behavior will be deemed out of order and their time ceased. So our first speaker.

Good evening. My name is Melissa Breeden. I am here today from birth to five Illinois as your local region council manager. I'm also here with a unique perspective of living in Bloomington for over 15 years, raising my young son, as well as recently providing childcare for over 15 years with YWCA McLean County. I wanted to come tonight to just give a public comment on the childcare crisis, especially since milestones is closing July 31st. That is the few of quite a few recent childcare closures in our community. And after July 31st, we're going to see hundreds of families displaced and passionate child care caregivers without a job. And so I wanted to just come here tonight to remind everybody that having access to child care is a critical workforce issue. People need child care in order to work. Investing in early childhood education actually yields a positive return of investment. And when I listen to the vision of long-term Bloomington ideas, I think Some of them are wonderful, but we will not be able to achieve any of those without sustainable, long lasting childcare options if we're bringing workers to our community. So not only is this a childcare crisis because there are wait lists across our community, affordability is also a huge barrier. Right now, the affordability of childcare rests solely on families of young kids. as well as those local childcare providers, just trying to provide care so people can work. So right now I'm asking all of you, because you are elected officials, you're well aware that this is a nationwide issue, has been an issue in Bloomington for several years. I ask that you please add this as a consistent agenda item. This is an economic infrastructure. People and community members need access to care. for them to work, go back to school. And so I'm here tonight to just remind you that we really need a voice from the city at the table to lift that burden from families and local providers. So again, my message is simple. Investing in early childhood education not only supports the next generation of workers in our community, but it also helps to stabilize our infrastructure in Bloomington economically, as well as socially. So I strongly urge you to please connect with me so we can have, I hope this is the first of many conversations. Let's strengthen our community together. It will take all of us. And we can't just leave this problem on families of young kids, as well as local providers. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. Next.

Next up, we'll have Mike Fitzgerald. And then to follow will be Tracy Henry.

Evening, Mayor, City Manager, Mike Fitzgerald, 1805 Dunn-Raven Road in Bloomington. I'm here tonight to talk about the data center and some of the questions that are arising from folks, the constituents that belong to each of you about the data center. In relation to this, I've looked at several newspaper articles and some of the things that have come out Like in Spartanburg, South Carolina, a mega data center slipped into town, catching residents by surprise and spawning a revolt. They knew nothing about it until it got going. They said lack of awareness for local citizens was no accident. Local officials lured the project by publicly referring it to an anonymous name. which was not honesty to the constituents. And when they talked about increasing, there's an increase in electronic usage. The megawatts in the plant would be expanded from 50 to 450. That's a 900% increase. What impact would that increase have on individual housing? It also talked about tons of pollutants that would come out from some of the smokestacks that they may make that is linked to asthma, birth defects, and lung cancer. And a member of the Southern Environmental Law Center said, the lack of transparency is stunning. And I just made a comment to the panograph, gentlemen, here that with the new ownership, I hope the panograph starts to take a look at what the data center is or could be. And the folks that I've talked with are concerned about public health, about their increase in electrical charges, about the increase in water charges, and the lack of available waters that could be used and could have an impact on the population that's here. Also, to be open and honest, and one of the things that I would recommend is that each individual council member have meetings with their constituents and make a determination by the end of the moratorium as to what the constituents in their wards would like. So I've got some more, but I see my time is up. Just please be open and honest. Get out there and get the information out to the constituents. Thank you. Thank you. Next. Also, I gave this information to Alderman Lee. And if you have any questions, my name, my address, my phone number, my email is on what I've provided to Alderman Lee. So thank you for this opportunity.

Thank you. Next.

Next up, we have Tracy Henry, and then to follow will be Dale Dirkholz.

Good evening. My name is Tracy Henry. I am a resident of Bloomington for 35 years. My husband and I raised our family here. We think this is a wonderful, wonderful community of caring people. It's nice to talk to all of you today and be heard and I thank you for that. Um, my question or my concern is about the data centers. Um, I'm concerned about the noise environment, property values. Um, it's the not knowing. I feel like, um, there is, um, we're just headed down this path and there's no guardrails and there's no restrictions. It's just the wild, wild West. I, um, have a lot of concerns. I was hoping that I would not have to talk tonight. Um, sorry, I've never done this before and my heart's racing. So I don't really have, it's not a clear plan of what I want to say, but I encourage you all to watch the documentary, the AI doc or how it became an apocalyptic optimist. Um, I ask all of you to please, um, educate yourselves and, um, Know that you have a lot of, you have all of your residents and you're making decisions for us. I think that's all. Thank you.

Thank you.

All right. Last up, we have Dale Derkos.

Mr. Mayor, Councilman. I don't live in the city of Livington. I live in rural McLean County. I live out towards Downs, close to where the Freedom Station is. But I wanted to talk to you about the data center because I think there's things here you may know, I suspect, but they don't, and neither do your public. Number one, it begins with the siting of data centers. And the one thing I started to piece together, and I got active and kind of involved in the proposal down by Latham, Illinois, because I have farmland that I have to manage down by Mount Pulaski. When you look at that, there are two and they start south of Taylorville, high voltage power lines. One of them goes through Mount Pulaski, one of them goes through Lake Latham. The one that goes through Mount Pulaski is the one that goes and crosses to Wanda Barnes out by the railroad track where the substation is. And did you know Ameren built a brand spanking new substation out there? The other one crosses through the edge of the village of Downs. The one that's here close to Wanda Barnes, terminates on the north side by the Dresden power plant that's just east of Morris, nuclear power plant. The other one terminates near Chinley Park. Both of those are on a huge east-west interconnect line up there. The thing that I'm here to tell you is you need to get involved. You need to get the county involved. And it's not just the city and the county or the city and normal. It's all the counties that are tied to this high-voltage power line because those are an attractant to bring a data center in as we go forward. Kincaid plant's meant to close at the beginning of 2028. Guess what? We can send electric south down that huge high-voltage power line instead of sending it north. So anybody along those two power lines is subject. There's talk of a data center here in Bloomington. I think it's going to be out near where the new substation is. I'll ask any of you, have you talked to Ameren? Have you talked to ComEd? Because I think ComEd still owns the lines. I think the data center is a done deal. Seriously. The one in Latham, I think was a done deal long before people knew it. The way that one's going to get built now, they went to the village of Latham, and the village of Latham is going to annex land to go out there, and the village is going to approve the power plant. They did the same thing here 30-some years ago, approving that little convenience station at 150 and Tawanda-Barnes. And Down, Daisy changed some land to put it up into there. So that was approved by the village of Downs, not the county. And now you're sitting here thinking it would be easy for them to an exit on north up Tawanda-Barnes and get up into the intersection around where that new substation is because that's the thing they need is power. There are a lot of things going on with data centers. You need to get active. You need to get an organization active to everybody involved in this along those two high voltage lines. There's a lot more I could say, but I could spend 10 minutes up here talking or 15.

Thank you.

Next.

There's no further public comment.

Thank you all. We'll then move on to the consent agenda for tonight's meeting and The items are listed in the consent agenda. Are there any members who have a question or wish to have one of those items pulled for further discussion? Seeing none, is there a motion?

I'll make a motion to approve as presented.

Second. Motion by Member Hendricks, seconded by Member Straza. If the clerk would take the roll, please.

Council member Scott, how would you like to vote? Yes. Thank you. The item passes. No nays to announce or items pass.

Thank you. Next, we'll move on to our regular agenda for this evening under number seven, which is letter A, consideration and action on a resolution approving a memorandum of understanding with Habitat for Humanity of McLean County. the creation of a new affordable housing project. And our city manager, Mr. Juergens, will discuss further.

Thank you, Mayor and Council. This is somewhat of a continuation from the last time we had Director Cordero Patrick come and talk to us and is specifically following up on the conversation related to Habitat for Humanity and our ability to add a couple of affordable homes to the community. and the potential partnership with them. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Director Patrick.

Thanks, Jeff. Good evening, Mayor, members of council. As Jeff mentioned, this is one of the items that I mentioned at our last council meeting that we're bringing back for you for consideration. Staff is recommending that we expand our partnership with Habitat for Humanity of McLean County by investing in the construction of two new affordable housing units out on Trailside Court. These homes will be built alongside the two Habitat homes already underway, which will create four new affordable home ownership opportunities in one neighborhood on one block, all contiguous with each other. This opportunity will also allow Habitat to build two additional homes sooner than they planned because of this effort, right? And so with this investment, we'll be building, or at least Habitat will be building more homes quicker in our community. Funding for this item will come from general fund. However, these are not new general fund dollars. These are dollars that are already budgeted in this fiscal year, which Council, you are approved for $100,000 for the Rebuilding the Block initiative with the intent of supporting neighborhood revitalization and creating affordable housing opportunities. This request is one of the ways the staff is proposing to implement that funding. Habitat for Humanity has been a housing partner of ours for many years and will carry out the project. The purpose of the investment is to achieve a public objective that Council has already identified, which is creating affordable homeownership opportunities and strengthening our neighborhoods. The item before you this evening is an opportunity to put those dollars to work. We're requesting an investment of $40,000 per home for a total of $80,000. Again, that investment will leverage Habitat's volunteer labor, their private donation, and other funding sources to create two new affordable homes. In addition to the homes they are breaking ground on right now out on Trailside Court. And this will provide a long-term benefit for families in our community. I will pause there and happy to answer any questions that council members may have.

Thank you. And with that, are there questions from members of the council?

So thank you so much for alerting us to this opportunity and for the conversation also last week. obviously a big fan of Habitat for Humanity. I mean, they've certainly had a long track record of doing very meaningful work in the lives of others, including here in this community. My question is about the highest and best use of the money that we have set aside for affordable housing initiatives. You know, Habitat in McLean County is fortunate to have many sponsors and donors who support their steady cadence of providing affordable housing for people in this community who wouldn't otherwise perhaps have the opportunity for home ownership. We have on the other side a number of opportunities that we have other smaller funds for for grants to help people with significant repairs or things that allow them to stay in their homes and so forth. So I'm not really speaking out you know, against this, but I really just want to have a conversation and I'd love to have the input of the council as to the highest and best use of $80,000, which in this construct would touch two families. And with that same investment amount that has been budgeted and set aside for housing related opportunities, is there an opportunity to do more good in a broader way

So I would say that a couple of things here. One, the line item for the funds, where these funds are coming from, is Rebuilding the Block Initiative, which is one of the key priorities that came before council during the budget cycle to approve. That initiative is designed to create new units, right? So not necessarily rehab an existing unit, that has a family in it already, but how are we adding to affordable housing here in Bloomington? And so from staff's perspective, I don't know if we can get any cheaper of adding a brand new unit to our market at $40,000. And so while we're getting two new units by council only putting in $80,000, What this also does is speed up the number of units that Habitat would be able to do. So those same two units, Habitat wasn't going to have the resources to be able to build on those lots for a couple of years out. Well, now they're able to build, with your approval, able to build on those properties right now, which means that there are two more houses that they'll bring online. So essentially, we'll be getting six units out of this, two that they already have funding for, two that we're proposing tonight and then the two that we were proposing tonight that was going to be done a couple years ago, they can now start moving on those two units. So it is speeding up the number of affordable housing that we're putting on the market in our community. And let me just say, this is not the solution when it comes to adding more affordable units here in Bloomington, but we certainly believe that it's a piece of the puzzle, right? It's a piece of the puzzle of adding new units to our community. But for this investment, that's two new units, two new families that we wouldn't have with affordable housing opportunities.

So just to follow up question and commensurate with their approach, no bottlenecks with regard to the availability of volunteer labor, of all the various trades that are required in this construction process by accelerating that and trying to move on all fronts uh in the shorter term i guess i'm asking that because i'm reading you know every day on next door where people are still struggling to find um resources um you know with with the um building trades here in town yeah so in conversation with jolene who is the executive director of habitat as well as the board president um

we can't do this fast enough for them.

They have a long way on this to be able to do more affordable housing and to rehab vacant houses as well to make them affordable. And so according to Habitat, they don't have any bottlenecks as it relates to volunteering and other resources needed to make these properties happen. They have committed to having these two properties done and occupied in 12 months. And so For this purpose, I'm not aware of any bottleneck that Habitat may have.

Others?

I'll move approval. Second.

Motion on the floor by Member Ward, seconded by Member Hendricks. If the clerk would take the electronic vote, please.

The item passes. No nays to announce.

Thank you. Next on our agenda, we will move to our finance director's report. And our finance director, Mr. Scott Rathbun, is here. If you, sir, would proceed.

Do we have the presentations? There we go. Okay, so here we are talking about FY26. Three months ago, almost three months ago, the fiscal year ended. It's quite a ways in the rearview mirror. However, we only received the final sales tax revenues last month due to the delay in the way those process through the state. The audit is ongoing. There shouldn't be any more material changes related to that. I went over the details a couple months ago. We skipped last month. We usually, in the last few years, we've reviewed the prior year three months in a row and then before we started in the next fiscal year just because there's such a delay in the financial transactions. So we'll really be kind of focusing on some of the changes this year by doing a little bit of a high-level discussion related to reserves, related to the general fund. Next slide, please.

I've got to take my glasses off.

So with this major tax revenue, I'm just going to jump to the bottom on the year-to-date budget variance, the $9.3 million. That has been increasing every month. We built the projected increase into the coming fiscal year. That was primarily driven by home rule sales tax and state sales tax that came in, $8.7 million over. but also contributing there were income tax at 387 food and beverage at 223 and hotel motel 404. This indicates to finance, you know, very strong local economy. The sales tax numbers were related to that legislative change that went into effect early in the fiscal year so that we were seeing, we don't have the calculation here, but seeing double digit increases from prior year. So in the prior year to date variance column, you'll see $4.7 million in For home rule sales tax, the variance of prior year, that's a 15% increase. And then state sales tax showing 13, that's 2.8 million. That's a 13% increase. One note I wanted to bring forward tonight, we'll be going over it next month. But what we've seen the last three months of fiscal 26 was more of a flattening year over year. So those double digits, because we started getting into the months where that impact, that legislative impact was captured in the prior year, we were seeing 2% one month, 2% the next month, and then it was relatively flat. And then this first fiscal month of FY27, we've seen about a 3.9% increase. Those revenues are pretty much flattening out now after that legislative impact has gone into effect. And what we did, we built that revenue increase into FY27. We talked mostly about the prior year budget versus the coming year budget. But what the results of these actual numbers are was we have about a 5% increase budgeted for sales taxes. over what we've realized in FY26 in FY27. So that first month, we're seeing 3.9%. Talk more about that next month. The months prior to that were just 2%. So we're going to be watching that. That's really leveled off. Again, that full number was captured in FY27. Just want to reiterate that. And also, with the home rule sales tax, $5.7 million overage related to the budget just For the community and council, just a reminder that 10% for both asphalt and concrete and the county mental health gets allocated out of that revenue category. So basically $1.1 million of that home rule sales tax increase doesn't hit the general fund. It goes to home rule, hits the general fund for mental health, but it gets allocated out. And then last comment on this, local motor fuel tax. So we thought this category was starting to decrease somewhat. You can see that in FY25, we budgeted 3.9 million, or we realized 3.9 million, we budgeted 4 million, and it came in right at 4.1 million. So a very consistent revenue pattern there. This category is not impacted by inflation because it's just that straight and 8 cents per gallon. So that's a real steady revenue source, but it doesn't go up as expenses go up for asphalt and concrete. Next slide, please. So the same format we've used in the past, we'll be revisiting this format going forward from a month-to-month standpoint, but we always like to emphasize the general fund. It's our largest fund, and it's funded by tax revenues versus fee revenues like water and sewer and storm. So that's why it gets the most attention. I'm going to focus on the projection budget adjustments column and the projected year end column. Projection budget adjustments. You can see that we're projecting to finish $10.7 million over budget. Most of that's related to the tax revenues that we just discussed, 8.9 million. This is just an $80,000 increase over the presentation I made a couple months ago. And there's just some dialing up and down related to interest income, which we're still benefiting from those high interest rates. Charges for services coming in over budget. The BCPA did really well this year. the fire department with the ambulance fees, and even the eye center did well in charges for services. But again, just an $80,000 change from prior month. Next slide, please. Expenditures. The projected budget adjustments, we have actually a decrease here. So that was one, I wouldn't call it a material change, but a change from two months ago. We've actually decreased our projected expenditures by a million dollars. Most of that is related to the contractuals category and it's related to, and commodities related to part of our audit. We do a purchase order review and we close out old purchase orders. So that's just a straight to the bottom line and it increases or has a positive impact on those line items. In general, that $2 million in contractuals that came down, over half that is related to IT initiatives that were pushed out into FY27 because they had vacancies in their staff. They were really understaffed. They just couldn't address those initiatives. Multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars in that one. And then there was a DECIO-related grants in engineering related to the preemptive traffic lights that was pushed out to FY27 as well. So that was over $1 million of that $2 million contractuals. reduction or negative variance in contractuals. And then with salaries, you know, we're just still experiencing a difficulty filling the ranks in the PD. So a lot of vacancy savings in the police department there. So where does that drive us then in that projected year end? Down at the bottom, we ended fiscal 25 with a little over $40 million in reserves. We're projecting now a little over $39 million. Two months ago, we were showing $38 million, so the $1 million drop. change was related to that expenditure reduction. So why are reserves high? Why are we maintaining a high reserve? Well, when we went into FY26, we thought we were going to have a deficit. So we were projecting a $4 million deficit. PPRT had come way down. So we kicked out a bunch of equipment expense, about $3.9 million equipment expense. We didn't do very many, or we didn't budget a large transfer to the Capital Improvement Fund. And then revenues came in as they did. So we budgeted low, and then revenues came in high. So that contributed to those reserves. And then, as I mentioned with the cost categories, we had those delayed initiatives, and that's adding to our reserve total as well. And then we had the three-month moratorium or hold back on the mental health. And so that added $840,000. Now, the discussion with the city managers that that should be set aside for, that for like purposes, but right now that's included in that $39.2 million. We're not showing that as a restricted total. So, you know, the use of the reserves, that's up to council, administration, been a lot of discussions and questions even in the employee forum that we've had recently, what's going on with Owen's Nursery, the Public Works Campus, fire, police department addressing those building needs. So there's plenty of available uses or needs related to that. We're going to have to do something about Owens and the public works campus related to addressing the East Street Basin and flood mitigation. So a lot of kind of dominoes related there, but we're fortunate that we have those reserves. As I mentioned already, I'm going to mention it again, a lot of the additional revenues that came in in FY26 were needed to backfill that projected deficit for FY26. So we kind of just made up some ground, but it's a benefit for this fiscal year. Next slide, please. And then I'll just roll through this. There was no material changes here. Revenues stayed steady at the bottom. We bragged on golf two months ago. Golf's had a tremendous year. Next slide, please. And information's out on the internet. The city's website, all the budget documents are out on the website for the community or council to review. And next slide, please. And questions or comments? Jeff, you had anything you wanted to add there?

Thank you very much for your report. Are there questions from members of the council, Member Hendricks?

Just a really quick one. Could you talk about what is the difference between the reserves that we should have on hand and the overage, which is the extra money that we can use for projects, just so that the public is aware that it's not $39 million that we're just sitting on waiting to spend?

Thank you, Council Member Hendricks. That was bullet number one on my reserves notepad here. So we're utilizing currently a 20% of revenue target. So the rating agencies have a lot of different views on the amount of reserves you need to hold. Depending on where you are geographically in the U.S., you know, if you have hurricane exposure and stuff like that, a lot of things can impact what you're targeting. So we're kind of relying on the rating agencies. That's 25 to 30 percent of revenues for an entity with our rating. So that's full reserves. We published our unassigned or budgetary reserves, so we take out purchase orders. So if we've encumbered a project that's $5 million, even though we haven't spent a dime on it yet, we're going to show that as coming out. So we know there's a difference between the rating agencies, and sorry if this is too much detail in our calculation, but it kind of correlates 20% total revenues, that number equates to 25 to 35% of reserves not including encumbrances. So we're using a 20% of $145 million roughly budget for the general fund, so about a $30 million target. So that's a long way to get to $30 million. So using that formula and that target, we're about $9 million over. Reasons for reserves, one-time expenditures. I've been talking a lot lately internally. We've got a great IT department. I don't necessarily view cybersecurity or cyber risk as just internal. We've had issues with how we were getting paid by the state recently. So not to air dirty laundry about them, but they switched us from getting EFTs to checks because they upgraded the system. So we've got exposure. We have $70, $80 million that comes through the state. So if a problem occurs there, we need to be able to exist for a few months. on our own revenues. So the old GFOA standard was at least two months minimum expenditures. Long story for what could have been just a short answer, sorry.

Are there other members that have a question or comment?

Yes, thank you. $10 million swing is a pretty big swing. Do we see that?

Revenues?

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, so to kind of go over that, Timeline again, over the last five years, the state has implemented legislative changes to kind of shore up out of state online retail sales and the sales taxes that are being collected by those retailers. So it was like, I'm probably gonna get the year wrong, but 2021, 2020, where they made the first big change where they require those retailers to collect at least a six and a quarter percent state sales tax. And then a couple of years ago, which had impacted FY26, They ratcheted that state legislation up to include those online retailers needed to collect the local sales tax, the home rule sales tax of where the final destination of the purchase was going. So not only did we just recapture sales tax that hadn't been occurring, but we started recapturing that 2.5%. So it just made a huge difference. It's impacted all municipalities, local governments in a positive way, as long as they have home rule But it's still the state sales tax has gone up. So big, you know, I was talking about 15% increase just related to that. Now, there was another tax court category, the local use tax court category that went down $770,000 because we used to get paid that way. This is getting into the weeds a little bit, but it converted to home rule and state. So it's not an annual recurring thing. It's not. necessarily inflationary driven other words inflationary components to that too when you have high inflation we're gonna realize more sales tax but most of it was related to this online retail sale that was gonna be my next question legislation is this something that's gonna be consistent or year-over-year or is this a one-time deal well one-time deal for that that material of a change IML issued revenue projections before we adopted the budget that said that we were going to have another legislative change that was going to impact local use tax and by X percent. So Kristana and myself, we kind of calculated what that meant related to what we realized with this last one. So we adjusted our revenue targets for this coming year for our budgets. Use tax is actually coming in higher. So IML has issued some information that they're not really sure what's going on. But to me, it looks like that additional legislation is just forcing more online retailers just to remit total State sales tax, the six and a quarter, and it gets distributed per capita. So we're not seeing anything at home rule in state. That's why I say the last couple of months, we were only seeing a 2% increase over prior year. And this last month was 3.9%, but it was 2%, 2%, and it was basically flat and 3.9%. So no major increases there. Does that answer your question?

Yeah, almost. Yeah, gotcha. Just to summarize, do we think it's a one-time deal? Or we don't know? Gotcha, gotcha.

Other members? Member Montney.

So it seems like, and I don't have all the spreadsheets with me, but we've seen a substantial increase in our home rule and our state sales tax over the last four years at least. Is that correct?

Yes, but this past year was the most material. Thank you.

Member Strauss. So I just want to make sure I understand from everyone's saying is that so in the future, as we look at budgets for the coming fiscal year, the next one coming around, We'll be a little bit better on the overage. I mean, it's great that we have reserves, and we need that percentage for the reserves itself, but then above and beyond. As we look at this coming – the following coming up as we'll be looking at fiscal pensions and everything else, I just want to make sure we're not under – under spending or trying to come with a number. And then we basically are 9 million above what we thought we would have for revenue, because that's, that that's a huge thing that we, as we are looking at, you know, increases and things like that, I don't want to put the, you know, continue to go back and say, we need to increase taxes and we're bringing in an extra 9 million.

So great, great question. And I apologize for getting too much into the weeds again, but when that legislative information came out, it was supposed to take effect in January. We don't see the impact for three months. So the first time it came around, we had adopted the budget before we even started seeing the impact of that. So January, we didn't see it until April. So we had adopted the budget already, and we're seeing that. And we started issuing, Chris and myself, information to the administration that was showing the year-over-year increase. And then we started discussing that with council, saying, hey, this legislative change is having a very material impact. We had already adopted the budget. thinking we were in kind of a deficit position, so we lowered expenses. So we get visibility as a three-month delay on any kind of like legislative change or if there's material inflationary impacts. Like the last few years have been a large inflationary impact driving sales taxes up. Now that impacts our expenses too, but sales tax does go up with that. So that's why I'm bringing forward tonight already some information about what we're seeing right now related to year over year and it being more like just an inflation-related increase, the 2% to 3.9%. So unless there's something we're waiting on to get visibility on and we miss that window where we're adopting, we should be able to have fully informed discussions about where we think we're headed revenue-wise and then apply that to the expenditure side of discussions as well.

Okay. I just want to make sure the public understands because it is very complicated and there's a lot of moving parts. I just want to make sure everyone understands where we're going and what the plan is for the future. Thank you.

Any other members? If not.

Excuse me, Mayor.

Yes, sure.

Thanks for the report. I just need some, to make sure that the notes that I took are correct. Did you say that the homeroom sales, homeroom, home rule sales tax Is that by $5.7 million or 18.66%? Did I take that down correctly? Does that include the grocery tax?

The grocery tax in prior year was part of the state sales tax. So the next line down. So can you bring up? Keep going. Keep going. Keep going. There we go. So we have home rule and state sales tax. So grocery tax is part of that $24.1 million realized up from $21.3 million prior year, $2.8 million increase. $2.8 million. Right, which was a 13% increase.

$3.03 million. So property tax, homeroom sales, home rule sales tax, state sales tax, the variance is 3.032025?

Yeah, that's the variance versus budget. And then if you go out to the right two more, you can see that it was 2.8 million higher than prior year. The prior year number is at 21.3 million.

So that's the state sales tax, and it would include the grocery tax.

That's correct.

And how much of that can you tell us? Maybe you don't know off the top of your head, but... Like before? How much of that 2.815 is grocery tax?

I can't tell you that. They being the Department of Revenue, once that grocery tax was repealed by the state and then municipalities approved it individually. Now they're splitting that out for us to see individually. But there was no way, we had to try to build in assumptions, because even the SIC codes, like Walmart Superstore wasn't considered a grocery store, so we just had to assume how much of it was grocery sales and stuff like that. So we have no direct visibility on grocery tax other than what started in April of this year. And I can tell you what that is about.

Could you?

It's between $175,000 and $180,000. So that's going to be $2.2 million, something like that. That's what we're seeing right now. There were some grocery stores that did not implement it or continue it. I think most of the major ones are on board, though. So I'm going to say around between 2.1 and 2.3 is the current visibility on that grocery tax. Thank you. Yes.

All done? Done? Okay. Remember my name.

Just one more quick question. When you do your budgets for home rule and state sales tax, do you apply seasonality to that or do you just use a straight line?

So, I don't have it. So, we do seasonality. I mean, it kind of starts with what we're seeing as far as like just a total increase year over year, you know, economic trends. any legislative changes. So we do kind of start with just like the high level. We think it's going to go up 5% or 3%. But then we apply that through the months. We track monthly budgets for those large tax revenues manually because our accounting system doesn't allow us to do it like that. So we do apply seasonality where those year to date, I mean, we have 12 months up there now, but if it shows two months, it's going to have you know, 20 years of history behind May and June so that we can get a good apples to apples, not just a straight line.

Thank you.

Any other members' questions? Director, one question regarding the grocery tax. The City of Wilmington is a dedicated fund, is it not, for our infrastructure needs?

We do. I mean, we have the Capital Improvement Fund. Right. for the general fund infrastructure needs. And then the enterprise funds, they pay infrastructure out of those funds individually though. So it's a little bit of a mixed bag.

Thank you. Anyone else? If not, next we'll move to our city manager's discussion, City Manager Juergens.

Thank you very much. very quick presentation tonight. Just want to give an update. I think last week I talked about the sidewalks being in on the 400 block after a lot of rain that we had in June. Glenn, if you could go ahead and go to the next slide. This week, just excited to share that the curb and gutter is now in on both sides of the block, and they've started putting in the making way for the pavers that will go in as well. So Finally starting to see some really good progress on the 400 block and excited that all of those businesses, you can get to them now, easy sidewalk. You don't have to travel through the gravel or anything like that. And that's all I have.

Thank you very much. Next for council members. Let's start with Council Member Kearns. Any information?

Yes. Since Council Member Mosley isn't here, I'm just going to give a brief update. On Thursday, July 23rd, the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council had an opportunity to meet. They meet quarterly. And there was a great presentation on the FUSE program, which is frequent user system engagement program, which is a program that Shared Sales Tax funds from that Shared Sales Tax is used for this program. And it's essentially to identify frequent users, frequent users of the criminal justice system. And kind of the short answer is yes, it's working. So it was a really great presentation about the different details of people who, you know, just the statistics that ISU and the Stevenson Center have collected and analyzed from the data that the county collects. There was another presentation about a nice program that the juvenile department helps with. It was, what's it called? Community Exploration Program to help those that are involved in the juvenile justice system, exploring programming, other things, enrichment opportunities that help them hopefully grow. And they appointed the incoming sheriff to the funding advisory council that's related to the sales tax. And the next meeting is Thursday, October 22nd at noon in this very room.

Thank you. Next, Member Montney.

Well, thank you. I mean, there have been a lot of great events that the city and also the library have involved many of us in. I think probably everyone. So I just wanted to say thank you. And it was great to spend time with everyone out at Tipton Park a few days ago. Thanks.

Yeah, I just want to say that it was great to see everybody out at Tipton Park last. What was it? Thursday. Thursday. Time goes by. It was great to see all of our different city staff talking to people in the different wards just to discuss what's out there, what's available, and just having that time of community. And it was nice to have people out there. And it was a nice day weather-wise, unlike tonight.

Thank you. Member Ward? Member Hendricks?

Yeah, I... I had the chance to go to O'Neill Park for the same event as Alderperson Straza. And that was a really great event on the 16th. And so great to see city staff out there and a really good showing from the community. Also, last Wednesday, we got the chance to finally light the ring downtown, which was a great event and really appreciated member Kearns, Mosley, Straza, Scott, and of course, the mayor and city staff for being there for that really awesome activity. So thank you.

Thank you, Member Lee.

I just want to say thanks to the Dunravian HOA for coming out and giving us input on their thoughts. So I appreciate you coming out. And I also had the opportunity to visit with the bookmobile in my ward. One thing that struck me, I was really surprised, I didn't expect to see, was the number of kids coming out to that bookmobile. And a lot of them just walk by themselves over to the bookmobile. And I thought, you know, what a great community we live in where kids can just walk over to a bookmobile portable library to check out books and resources. So, yeah, I just thought, you know, what a great way to serve the community.

Thank you.

Member Scott?

Yes. A couple things I want to say. One on Thursday's Forum on the Unhoused and Housing at St. John's Church. Representation from some great organizations, including Heartland Community College, Regional Office of Education No. 17, Salvation Army, Mid-Central Community Action, and Home Sweet Home Ministries. And thanks to Catherine Dunlap from our Community Impact and Enhancement Department. I saw her there. And also a big shout out to seeing her too and representation at Pride Fest, which I can't wait to see the numbers on that one. That was a great party.

Thank you very much to all of you for your comments. And I've got a couple of comments myself that we'll try and move through here quickly. The very first was I was joined by a Member Ward and former member Mike Matika, trained historian and enthusiast to see the Union Pacific's big boy when it was here recently, the 4014, in the train yards and overnighted. It was a great event. A lot of people turned out, not only here in Bloomington, but all along. the corridor for it. Construction-wise, I had the ability to tour recently with Jim Karch, our director of engineering and our city managers in regards to, in particular, Hamilton Road and the expansion that's going on there east and west and all the work that's been done and that continues to go forward. So, We look forward to that. Um, member Hendricks alluded to, uh, the downtown ring lighting, uh, that occurred recently. And thank you to all the members, uh, from the council that were there and all those that came out, uh, from, um, the city and all those staff wise that worked so hard, uh, making sure that became a reality. And there's many, many, many, um, next, the, I had the opportunity to go by the arts and wellness fair that, uh, the Cultural Commission of Faisal put together in Franklin Park. And it was a very nice event with the number of vendors that were there as well. We also had the FIFA soccer ball presentation, which is right there next to Member Kearns from Faisal. And actually, he was able to coordinate with the Council General of Pakistan, where the balls, hundreds of thousands of those soccer balls that were in the national tournament are manufactured and they presented one to the city. A number of individuals were there when the Council General was there and I was joined by Council Members Scott and Council Member Hendricks. Also over the weekend, the Gaston Memorial Scholarships that occurred at the Bloomington Public Library was another outstanding event. The 100th anniversary of the Western Avenue Community Center was well attended and had a great turnout. And then, of course, Pride Fest was Saturday in downtown Bloomington. So a lot of things going on in Bloomington in the last several days and weeks. So thank you for counsel and others that have made that possible to attend. And before I close, I would like to ask that Chief Symington asks that maybe your interns that are back, they got to meet earlier. If they would stand and give us a wave as they're getting ready to wrap up their internship at Bloomington Police Department and head back to school. Thank you, ladies, for your work. And also from Illinois Wesleyan University, Brady, if you'd stand. Great first name. This gentleman is interning for Illinois Wesleyan and observing council meetings. So thank you to all of you, and good luck as you get ready to head back to school. With that, I believe, unless there's any other council members that have any comments, we've covered everything or closed? And is there a motion on the floor? Motion to adjourn. Member Motley to adjourn. Seconded by Senator Lee. All in favor say aye. Aye. Thank you very much. Have a nice evening.