Bloomington council appoints Ammerman to transit board, sends Cross removal question to committee

On Wednesday (Sept. 16), Bloomington’s city council appointed Zach Ammerman to the Bloomington Transit board.

In a separate boards-and-commissions matter, the council referred the proposed removal of historic preservation commission member Reynard Cross to a council committee for further review.

Both actions came with unanimous support during the council’s Wednesday meeting. The three-member committee reviewing Cross’s case is supposed to report back to the full council on Oct. 14.

Ammerman to Bloomington Transit board

Ammerman’s appointment came one day after longtime Bloomington Transit board member Kent McDaniel announced that he was leaving the board, following its 3–2 vote to hire Keolis as its new management company. McDaniel, who had served 36 years, voted against the Keolis contract and left the meeting immediately after the vote. His four-year term had expired at the end of July, but he had continued serving during a holdover period.

It was Kate Rosenbarger who made the motion to appoint Ammerman. She was one of three members of a council interview committee, which had interviewed four applicants for the seat. The four were McDaniel, Ammerman, Hank Duncan and Perry Maull. The committee, which consisted of Rosenbarger, council president Isak Asare, and Hopi Stosberg, had not settled on a recommendation while McDaniel’s intentions remained uncertain.

Rosenbarger said Wednesday that Ammerman would bring two things she thought the five-member board was missing. One was the perspective of someone who regularly relies on Bloomington Transit and the other is experience working with data. “What it is missing right now is someone who consistently rides transit,” Rosenbarger said. She described public transit as Ammerman’s primary transportation and pointed to his background in data mapping and analysis.

During his Aug. 13 interview with the committee, Ammerman described himself as a data visualization expert and map maker and said a transit board’s role should be independent oversight rather than direct management of the agency. He said his priorities would be frequency, reliability and route optimization. He also told the committee that he rides the bus regularly and encounters the system’s shortcomings firsthand.

Rosenbarger also raised the possibility of expanding the transit board from five members to seven, which state law allows. The transit board itself created a committee Tuesday (Sept. 15) to explore that possibility. Bloomington Transit is eyeing the possibility of adding a representative from Indiana University and Monroe County.

Removal of Cross from HPC?

The council’s handling of Cross’s situation was less conclusive.

Cross was appointed by the council April 22 as a nonvoting advisory member of the city’s historic preservation commission. The council can appoint up to four non-voting members. The mayor appoints all of the voting members, subject to city council approval.

An Aug. 21 letter from interim council attorney Larry Allen told Cross that city staff had substantiated claims that he had disrupted commission business at its July 9 and July 23 meetings, violated the city’s board-and-commission code of conduct and violated Indiana’s Open Door Law through attempts to communicate with commissioners outside a noticed meeting. The letter said council appointees can be removed for cause under Bloomington Municipal Code.

The June 25 meeting that became part of the dispute involved the proposed demolition of two buildings on the Seminary Pointe block south of the convention center. The buildings at 424 S. College Ave. and 222 W. Second St. were rated “contributing” in the city’s 2018 historic survey, triggering demolition-delay reviews after Monroe County’s capital improvement board (CIB) sought permission to clear the block for possible development of a convention center host hotel.

On separate 4–2 votes, the HPC released the demolition delays rather than allowing more time for review or recommending historic designation. Cross, as a nonvoting member, advocated for taking more time to investigate.

Cross disputed the allegations in a 13-page Aug. 25 response. He argued that the notice did not identify the specific conduct or evidence underlying the accusations, challenged the Open Door Law theory and contended that his efforts to revisit the commission’s handling of a June 25 demolition-delay case were permitted under the commission’s parliamentary rules. He also asked that the matter be referred to committee rather than decided immediately.

In an email sent to councilmembers late Tuesday (Sept. 15), deputy city clerk Jennifer Crossley recommended that Cross be removed for cause. Crossley is the deputy clerk responsible for coordinating the various matters related to board and commission appointments. Crossley wrote that at the July 9 meeting Cross repeatedly interrupted the chair and staff and was ruled out of order several times. At the July 23 meeting, she wrote, discussion of earlier issues turned into a roughly 45-minute exchange that delayed other commission business.

On Wednesday, however, several councilmembers said the situation warranted more consideration before a removal vote.

Councilmember Hopi Stosberg said she had watched the meetings at issue and agreed with Crossley that the code of conduct had been violated, but suggested sending the question to a committee. Councilmember Isabel Piedmont-Smith said she was not comfortable voting on removal that night. She said other commission members had also failed to follow Robert’s Rules of Order and that Cross had raised legitimate concerns about what happened at the June 25 meeting.

“I think we need to act very deliberatively here,” Piedmont-Smith said. She added that removing Cross would not by itself solve the underlying problems on the commission.

After some discussion about which committee should take up the matter, Stosberg moved to send it to Interview Committee C for a recommendation to the full council. That’s the committee with responsibility for making recommendations to the full council on historic preservation commission appointments. Its members are Isabel Piedmont-Smith, Sydney Zulich, and Dave Rollo. The committee is supposed to report back to the council on Oct. 14.

Wednesday was the second time the council has told Cross that it would be considering his removal, without taking a vote on it. The first time was in Allen’s letter, which told him the council would consider his removal on Sept. 2. At the council’s Sept. 2 meeting, the council put off the matter for two weeks, until Sept. 16. Cross attended both the Sept. 2 and the Sept. 16 council meetings, but was not given a chance by the council to say anything on his own behalf.

Wednesday’s lack of any final action by the council means Cross will wait at least another month to find out if the council will remove him from the HPC.