Bloomington city council adopts letter to capital improvement board on convention center project
On a unanimous vote taken Wednesday night, Bloomington’s city council adopted a letter to the Monroe County capital improvement board (CIB) about its views on 21 different specific topics related to the renovation and expansion project for the Monroe Convention Center.
The topics range from use of on-site fossil fuels, to inclusion of space dedicated to monthly or biweekly youth and/or senior activities, to the portion of the food and beverage tax that should be spent on the expansion project.
The CIB is the seven-member group that is overseeing the renovation and expansion project for the Monroe Convention Center under the terms of an interlocal agreement that was signed by four parties in city and county government. Signatories were: the mayor and the city council for Bloomington; and the county commissioners and the county council for Monroe County government.
The 1-percent countywide food and beverage tax was passed in 2017 for the purpose of expanding the current convention center, which stands at the southwest corner of 3rd Street and College Avenue.
For the last several months, the 12-month rolling revenue total for the food and beverage tax has settled in at around $4.5 million. That sum is divided between Bloomington and Monroe County government based on the location of establishments that collect the tax. It works out to around 90 percent for Bloomington and 10 percent for Monroe County government.
The city council’s letter has been criticized in some circles as creating obstacles or an attempt to micromanage the CIB.
Councilmembers have countered by pointing to the interlocal agreement, which talks about the CIB’s use of “additional data and input from City and County leadership and the public.”
The B Square asked CIB president John Whikehart how, or if, the CIB would be reacting to the letter. Whikehart indicated that during the CIB’s meeting next week (June 12), he would be acknowledging the receipt of the letter, thanking the city council for its input, and looking forward to more input from all the other stakeholders and the public, as the design goes forward.
The criticism that the letter amounts to an attempt to micromanage the CIB was confronted by councilmember Matt Flaherty at a May 30 work session, when he said that he does not think “a couple-page document of high-level expectations” can be characterized as micromanaging.
The letter began life at a May 9 city council work session, when Flaherty outlined his concerns about the project, and grouped them into two basic categories: finances and design/use.
Into the category of finances, Flaherty put: funding source constraints; real estate allocation; bonding capacity, city subsidies; and operations and maintenance planning. Into the category of design/use, Flaherty put: sustainability; urban form; civic uses; and approval processes.
Credited with various edits to Flaherty’s initial draft of the letter were councilmembers Kate Rosenbarger, Hopi Stosberg, and Sydney Zulich.
The list of 21 items are phrased mostly as “should” and “should not” statements.
At Wednesday’s meeting, Zulich stressed that the 21-point list was not supposed to be seen as a list of demands. Zulich said some of the wording was changed “very specifically to make it clear that these are our requests, and that we understand that we are one of four bodies who are investing in this project.”
Having attended the CIB’s interviews of construction manager candidates earlier in the week, Zulich said she thinks the convention center expansion project is in “good hands.”
At a joint meeting of city and county officials immediately following the city council’s work session on May 30, Bloomington mayor Kerry Thomson led things off with the sentiment that the CIB should be allowed to lead the convention center expansion project. Several other county officials echoed that sentiment.
Thomson put it like this: “What’s important to me is that we really empower the CIB to move forward with the project—and that we get out of as many details as we can.”
Thomson continued, saying that the idea of creating the CIB was to appoint people to make decisions.
For the seven-member CIB, Bloomington’s mayor makes two appointments, the city council one, the county commissioners two, and the county council one. The six who are appointed by the city and county governments then choose their own seventh member.
Thomson continued, saying, “I strongly believe in a distributed leadership model. That’s what we’re running here at the city—so when we appoint a team, what we want to do is let them run at the top of their leadership ability.”
The CIB’s work should move forward, Thomson said, “not without interaction, of course.” She added that she hopes that “conversation and opinions can be offered, but that we as electeds will do our best to remove friction, and let this process really move forward, and move forward as quickly as feasible…”
