City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening, everyone. Council member Lohman is unable to attend the meeting tonight and the mayor is traveling on city business today. So when we have this happen, the council adopts an acting mayor coverage schedule for those rare meetings when Tim Bussey's not here. As such, I am council member Lona D'Alessandro and I'm acting as your mayor tonight until he returns. It is 6.30, so I'm going to call this September 28th meeting of the Bloomington City Council to order. Please silence your cell phones, if you would, please, during the meeting. And a copy of the full city council packet is ava

Okay. I can run through it very quickly for everybody here. We have our introductory items. We're going to work through Latino and Hispanic heritage Month proclamation which I'm super excited to do tonight. We're going to have the introduction of some new employees. Then we'll have our consent business. Council member Carter has the consent agenda and I believe there's 12, what, 13 items on the agenda. We have four public hearings tonight as part of our hearings resolution and ordinances. And then finally, we'll have our organizational business. We'll have a review of Centerpoint Energy's netw

All right. So Council Member Carter made the motion and Council Member Robinson made the second. So we are, I guess, getting ready to say all in favor, please say aye. Aye. All right. Any opposed? No. Okay. Five nothing is the motion carrying by a vote of five nothing. There we go. I'm going to get this right, guys. I promise. All right. Well, the fun part comes now. Right. So we'll move to our introductory business. Our first item is 2.1, a proclamation recognizing Latino and Hispanic Heritage Month. I'm looking forward to community members, Martha Mendoza Mendista, Rios, and Juan Cerezo Cort

I know we have a couple of shorter folks coming to the table, so we'll make that adjustment now.

Thank you very much. Yes, that's great. Thanks. All right, come on up and join me. All right. Whereas in 1988, the United States Congress adopted a resolution designating September 15th to October 15th of each year as National Hispanic Heritage Month. And whereas September 15th marks the anniversary of independence for Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua, followed by the independence anniversaries of Mexico, Chile, and Belize. Whereas the rich and diverse cultural heritage of Hispanic and Latino communities has profoundly influenced our country, and generations of Hispa

All right. You want to come over here, Estela, and we'll have you guys. I know you're going to be doing the proclamation or your comments in Espanol and then followed with a translation in English. Excellent.

All right folks, thank you very much for that. Our next item of business tonight is the introduction of new employees. And I believe we have Scott Anderson and Emma Struss that are gonna do that for us. We'll start with you, Mr. Anderson.

Yeah, absolutely. Good to have you here. How long have you been on staff so far?

Well, good. What do they usually say? After a period of time, you become just part of the team, right? Perfect. Well, good. Welcome. Thanks for being here tonight. Thank you so much. All right. Emma? Good to see you again up here, Ms. Drost.

That's super exciting. Welcome, Dr. Fuller. How are you?

Wonderful. Thanks for coming tonight and saying hello. Appreciate it. Thanks. Appreciate it. I know the mayor usually says at this moment that whenever we talk to the new employees of Bloomington, it's important for us to recognize that oftentimes you are the people that most of the folks around here see. We get to sit up here, but you get to go out into the community and be the face of Bloomington for a lot of that. So much appreciated to you. We're glad you chose to work here and appreciate your commitment to serving the community around here. So welcome. Thank you very much. All right, it's

I do. So I have not heard of any holds. Okay. So I would move to approve items 3. Oh, sorry, I'm holding 3.1, donations. Okay, perfect. And then would move to approve 3.2 through 3.13. Do I have a second?

Second. Okay, so thank you Council Member Carter making the motion and Council Member Robertson seconding the motion to approve the Consent Business 3.2 through 3.13 as presented. All right, if there are no comments or questions, I would look for a vote. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Great. All right, motion passes 5-0, and you held 3.1.

Yes, so this is our donations, and so I just want to... Say thank you to a lot of our community partners and individuals who have donated to the city in the last couple months very very grateful for the partnership as a city I can I think I can say very confidently that we can't do this on our own and so having so many wonderful partners is really truly we're very fortunate so I wanted to say thank you to the American legion post 550 who donated dollars for five dog tags for the memorial, which is amazing. And then there were several anonymous donations to the bpd for things like office suppli

Second. Okay. We have a motion by Councilmember Carter and a second by Councilmember Robertson to approve our donations, item 3.1. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Great. Motion carries 5-0. Wonderful. Thanks for doing the consent business, Councilmember Carter. All right. We're moving on to our, we're moving quickly here. We'll be out of here. You're going to get to wherever you need to get to tonight, Ms. Manderscheid. Our hearings, resolutions, and ordinances. So we have four public hearings tonight. Each of them is a little different. The last two will kind of happen t

All right, so our first one, I believe, Ms. Long, are you doing this first one with us? Wonderful. Julia Long, come on up. We're going to do a public hearing regarding a public street name change for a portion of Hopkins Road to Mission Road.

Wonderful, thank you, Ms. Long, appreciate it. Are there any questions of our city engineer? Nope, go ahead, Council Member Nelson.

Yeah, thank you, Acting Mayor. Just a quick question, given that we have an election coming up, are there any implications for folks that live in these few houses in terms of that?

Anything else? That's a good question, Council Member Nelson. I'm hoping that this one falls right in the middle of a precinct and therefore won't make a difference.

Just the implementation of it. That might work too. Great. Thank you. Appreciate it. All right. Thank you for that. We'll go ahead and open the public hearing then on item 4.1. Is there anyone present in council chambers tonight that wishes to speak on item 4.1? Ms. Rye, do we have anyone who is participating remotely that would wish to testify on this item?

Okay. Great. I'll make one more request for anyone in the council chambers who wants to speak about 4.1. All right. Seeing that no one wants to speak on it, I would look for a motion to close the public hearing. we have a motion by council member Robertson and a second by council member Nelson to close the public hearing all those for item 4.1 not all of them by the way all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed great motion carries 5-0 to close the public hearing very good okay does anybody have any additional discussion items on this seems pretty straightforward to me I agree And I ap

Second. Could I also just offer a friendly amendment to make it effective after the election? Just so. Does that work, Ms. Manderscheid? A different address than the registration.

we would look to have it after November 3rd is the idea.

So in case PL202-600-157 the motion then reads to approve the public street name change for a portion of Hopkins Road lying northwesterly of 10-526 Hopkins Road and 600 Mission Road to Mission Road effective November 4th, 2026. Okay.

All right. Great. So a motion by Councilmember Robertson and a second by Councilmember Nelson as stated. Any further discussion on this item? Okay. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Great. Motion carries 5-0. Thank you, Ms. Long, for that. And again, thank you for being so comprehensive about your idea.

Acting Mayor? Yes. Can we just ask staff to let the impacted residents know that effective date so they don't Move forward with getting a new license or something before it's.

Yes, that's a great idea. And just let them know that their voter registration is still effective at their current address. So they don't have any challenges with same day voting or whatever they plan to do. That'd be great. Yeah. Good call. Thanks, Council Member Nelson, for thinking that through. Our second public hearing of our second public hearing of the our second public hearing of the night our second public hearing of the night is our second public hearing of the night is a our second public hearing of the night is a privately our second public hearing of the night is a privately initi

Good. You feel comfortable. I love to hear that. Wonderful. You're welcome. Thanks very much for being here. Yeah, thank you.

You're welcome. I had one question and I'll turn it over to council. We have C4 and we have FD2. Can you remind me exactly why we have two essentially freeway districts and what their purposes are, the difference in their purposes?

Sorry, I always need to, just because I wanted to see you today in this new relationship that we have, Mr. Johnson.

Given that I know we had a C4 change not that long ago for another, is there interest at the planning department to combine those two at any time in the future, or do they do have distinctive characteristics?

Council, any questions for either Mr. Sherrard or Mr. Johnson while I've got him up there? No, we're good. Okay. Thank you very much. Is there any comment from the applicant that they'd like to make before we move to public hearing? Any additional testimony that you'd like to make? There's no obligation to either. I don't want to force you to, but you're welcome to if you'd like. Good evening. Good evening.

That's great. I appreciate you being here. Thanks very much. Any questions for the applicant? Right on. Thanks for being here tonight. If we get any questions as part of public hearing, we'll come back to you. Thank you very much. Okay, so I think we're here ready for the public hearing then. I'm going to open the public hearing on item 4.2. Is there anyone present in council chambers who would like to speak on this issue or make any testimony? Okay, great. Ms. Rye, do we have anyone on the phone who wishes to speak tonight?

Okay, very good. I will make one final request here in the chambers for anyone wishing to speak on item 4.2. Okay, if no one is coming forward, I guess we will make a motion to close the public hearing. So moved. So we have a motion from Council Member Robertson and a second from Council Member Rivas to close the public hearing. All those in favor, please say aye. Anyone object? Motion carries 5-0 to close the public hearing.

Anything anybody wants to make a comment on before we make the vote?

It's making my job really easy tonight. I appreciate that. Very good. So there are two motions tonight on item 4.2. So the first one is for the actual amendment and the other one is for authorizing summary publication. So I'll first entertain a motion to adopt the ordinance.

I would move to adopt an ordinance amending Chapter 21 of the City Code to designate sports training facility as a permitted use in the FD2 zoning district. Second.

A motion by Councilmember Carter and a second by Councilmember Robertson to adopt the ordinance amending Chapter 21 of the City Code. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? Great. Motion carries 5-0. Summary Publication.

I would move to adopt a resolution authorizing summary publication of the ordinance we just approved, adding sports training facilities as a permitted use in the FD2 zoning district, thereby amending Chapter 21 of the City Code. Second.

Councilmember Carter and a second by Councilmember Robertson for summary publication. All those in favor please say aye. Anyone opposed? Great. Motion carries 5-0 for summary publication. Thanks very much for that and thanks very much for being here tonight. Nice to see you. Nice to see you as well. Thank you. All right. We're going to move to our third public hearing tonight which is our miscellaneous issues ordinance. We're going to talk about the cleanup items. I believe we have emily Very good. Did I pronounce that correct? Good evening. Hestbeck. There we go. I will get that right. Should I get that little T in there? Yes. Right. Very good. Thanks for being here tonight.

Sorry about that. Are there any questions of the city staff right now? Yes, go ahead, Council Member Carter.

Thank you, Acting Mayor. I just have a really quick question related to B, ordinance B about the goats. So I'm fully supportive, but I'm just curious. Does this only apply to the city or does it also apply to residents?

Sheep, we're allowing sheep now. In addition, if we pass this.

Well, no, I have actually heard about this issue, though, and I heard about it at National Night Out. Yeah. that there were some people in different neighborhoods who wanted to, I guess there's businesses, right? Where you can hire goats or sheep or whatever. And they have a pretty large plot. They're actually right across from the bike park truck bow. So it's like that hill and there's tons of buckthorn. And so they were like, we can't, they've removed all these, and they've been doing all this work and they wanted to have goats, but then they found out they couldn't because their lot's not a

Maybe we can make a future motion to consider. Yeah, maybe we can make a motion that maybe groups can come together and solicit as a group of an acre or something. Yeah, well, okay.

Right on. Yeah, we'll see if we can get sheep on an acre to start with and then we'll go from there. Any other questions for the staff tonight? Very good. Okay, so I'll open up a public hearing then on item 4.3. Is there anyone here in the chambers that wishes to speak on item 4.3? No one coming forward. Anybody on the phone, Ms. Rye?

Okay. I'll make one more request for anyone in council chambers. Seeing none, I would look for a motion to close the public hearing on item 4.3. Was that Council Member Rivas? Sorry, I wasn't looking your way. So a motion by Council Member Rivas and a second by Council Member Robertson to close the public hearing. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? Great. Motion carries 5-0 to close the public hearing.

Any discussion for Ms. Hesbeck? Aside from potentially coming back to us with some updates to sheep and goats, which I love the idea of, it doesn't look like we have anything we need to discuss. So I would look for a motion then if you all are willing. Thank you, Councilmember Robertson.

I have a motion by Councilmember Robertson and a second by Councilmember Rivas to adopt the ordinance as stated. No further discussion on this. All those in favor, please say aye. Anyone opposed? Great, motion carries 5-0. Then we have summary publication.

second thank you motion by council member Robertson is second by council member Carter for summary publication all those in favor please say aye aye anyone opposed great motion carries 5-0 for summary publication all right one of two Ms. Hesbeck thank you very much our second our second I guess our last public hearing of the night is going to be the minor policy items update it's a public hearing regarding the miscellaneous ordinance issues ordinance minor public policy items review and I'll turn it over to you

Questions for staff tonight? Yes, council member Carter.

So I have a question related to the car detailing. And there are some businesses that are, like, traveling car detailers. And how would this apply to them if they're going to, like, resident homes and, like, I don't know. Yeah.

All right, so they wouldn't be restricted by this at all. All right, thank you.

Okay, Council Member Rivas. I have a quick question for you. Just a clarification. According to your map, all the blue are where you allow car washes, right? And the pink ones are where the detailing takes place.

So basically everything that is blue could allow a car detailing. I was just asking that because in most places they have a car wash and by the side that's where they detail vehicles also. That's all I need. Thank you.

So said another way car detailing is a broader application across the city than car wash but car wash isn't independent you can have car wash and car detailing in the same location right okay very good yeah it's a good clarification and I was a little confused by the map so I'm glad you asked the question I was going to ask something very similar very good is there any other questions okay very good it's time for me to open the last public hearing of the night so I'll open up the public hearing on item 4.4 Is there anyone present in council chambers that wishes to speak on this item tonight Ok

Very good. I'll make one more final plea for someone to come and speak on item 4.4. No? Okay, great. That's fine. I'm not upset about it. With that, then I'll make a motion to close the public hearing.

Motion by Council Member Robertson, second by Council Member Rivas to close the public hearing. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? Great. Public hearing is closed with five to zero. All right, I guess we do we have any discussion on these that is there so just so you guys know. Because we have the two motions if if you want to cast a different vote on one or more of these individually, we can do that, but we need to hold it back and do it kind of separately so just want to double check. Is everyone is there anyone that's interested in holding any one of these aside and do

I have a motion by Councilmember Robertson and second by Councilmember Rivas to adopt the changes to ordinances R through V as included in the meeting packet. No further questions for anyone? All those in favor please say aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? Great. Motion carries 5-0.

Council Member Robertson made the motion. Council Member Rivas seconded the motion to approve the ordinances R through V amending chapters 10 and 20. Oh, I'm sorry. Whoops, this is summary publication. My bad. So we have authorized summary publication. Did you guys get that? I'm sorry. Robertson and Rivas? Excellent. All those in favor? Anyone opposed? Great. Thank you. Summary publication passes 5-0. Thanks very much, Ms. Hesbeck. Nice to be with you tonight. So that does it for our public hearings. I know. Nobody wanted to come and see me tonight, apparently. That's fine. That's fine. The ma

Do you mind if I ask you, Ms. Struss, for just a quick thing? I know that you and I participated in a meeting last week that kind of sort of talked about this. And so has Bloomington been interested in pursuing this kind of as background before we have a conversation with the pilot? I guess what's the context or the reason behind why this is coming to us?

Wonderful. Thanks for setting the context for us. Appreciate it. Welcome to Bloomington, Ms. Knudson. Nice to be with you tonight.

Well, thank you very much for being here. It's nice to hear you talking about this. Are there any questions? Yeah, go ahead. Council member Nelson.

YEAH. Thank you, acting mayor. So there's three sites left, obviously. I think all of us hope Bloomington is chosen. Are there things as a council and a city we can do to help make that a reality? Are there things that you're looking at in terms of our policies, our initiatives, our participation, things of that nature that we can do to make sure everyone understands just how excited we would be to have this in Bloomington?

Anyone else? Okay. I have a quick question for you if you don't mind. Thank you very much for being here. I'm assuming this will be for you. Can you talk a little bit about what the construction actually looks like on a site like this? I'm asking because we have some construction with the community health and wellness center going on in this exact same area which means there might be some construction fatigue in this neighborhood around this and so what would that maybe entail?

Thank you. Acting Mayor, I apologize. I just had to do a couple more questions. I wouldn't be myself if I didn't. Is there any role that Xcel Energy is playing in this project as well, given that this can also help, obviously, with the electrical load, specifically air conditioning and things of that nature? Is there a role? Are they helping out with this as well, given they are regulated as well?

And then my second question is, do you have programs that would work for developers that are looking to do multiple units and use geothermal? We've had a number of recent projects come forward that have Multiple units up to maybe 30 some units and things like that. We have other properties that are on the market that would be available for that type of thing. Are there things that we can be talking with the developer community about to help them with those projects? Obviously, that's different than what you're looking at here. You know, I see those as opportunities where sometimes people may f

Anything else? Not related to that. Yep, perfect. Got it. Well, thank you very much. I think that's it for us tonight. Appreciate you being here and we'll make sure that we tell folks to come between 10 and noon on Saturday to talk to you further about things.

And thank you, Ms. stress, for coordinating this for us. Well, very good. That concludes our organizational business, I believe, other than we have our council policy and issue updates. I will go ahead and recap our listening session tonight. So we had four speakers tonight with a special guest in one of them. So Brian Emerson and Elizabeth Carbone spoke again to us about concerns regarding the construction of the community health and wellness center. Sally ness spoke again about the shared agreement. Matthew spoke to us about ideas related to drying food, reducing the use of sod and other sus

Very good. Well, it sounds like a productive meeting for the organization, and I'm looking forward to seeing what they come up with. I assume we'll see some 2027 work plan items show up as a result, which is great. Thanks, Ms. Tolman. Okay, that brings us to the end of tonight's agenda. That concludes the business, if you can believe it. At 7.42 p.m., let the record show. Councilmember Carter.

I'll just say one quick thing kind of building on Mr. howlett's comments in the listening session. I do think it would be really I think it would be a good policy or project for maybe our planning group, our planning staff and planning commission to look at what policies we have in place that either help or hurt people who want to grow and produce their own food in Bloomington. So obviously, I think this would be very good for the environment, which I think is the perspective he was bringing. But also, from a public health perspective, as food gets more and more unaffordable and more and more

I think that's a great idea. Of course, I think I know I've heard over the course of the last couple of years here, things like community garden expansion. I think Mr. Howitt mentioned that we talked about make a boulevard trees that are actually food growing trees. Right. We've talked about that. So I think there's a lot of opportunity here. And it would be nice to see maybe the Planning Commission and the Sustainability Commission working together on some of these things. So we could put that bug in the ear of the folks for the 2027 work plan. I think that'd be great. Great idea yeah awesome