> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://bsquarebulletin.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Bloomington Transit board pick hangs in balance before Sept. 15 vote on management firm - URL: https://bsquarebulletin.com/bloomington-transit-board-pick-hangs-in-balance-before-sept-15-vote-on-management-firm/ - Published: 2026-08-19T11:02:08.000Z - Updated: 2026-08-19T11:02:08.000Z - Description: The paths for two decisions are now running in parallel: Bloomington Transit’s Sept. 15 vote on a Keolis management contract, and a city council decision on Kent McDaniel’s board seat. McDaniel plans to vote no next month, but whether he gets to cast that vote could depend on council action. - Author: Dave Askins - Tags: Local Government, #no-inline-feature ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/20/6f/206f9007-c0a7-47d4-b87b-686c21961f22/content/images/2026/08/three-way-2026-08-19--bloomington-transit-board-PXL_20260818_213608510-1.jpg) ****Left:** Kent McDaniel. ****Top right**: Bloomington Transit board table, from McDaniel counterclockwise: Don Griffin and Doug Horn (BT board); human resources administrator Brenda Underwood and controller Christa Browning; Nancy Obermeyer (BT board); John Connell (general manager); James McLary (BT board); and Shelley Strimaitis (planning and special projects manager). ****Bottom right:** B Square file art of BT bus. (Dave Askins, Aug. 18, 2026) Kent McDaniel attended Tuesday’s (Aug. 18) Bloomington Transit board meeting expecting to cast a vote against a contract with Keolis as the agency’s new management firm. As McDaniel put it: “The only reason I came today was so I could vote against.” He did not get the chance. After more than 40 minutes of discussion about the proposed management contract, there was no vote. That’s because the introduction of the topic was just the first of two required steps. Under [state law](https://iga.in.gov/laws/2025/ic/titles/36#36-9-4-29), such a management contract requires the transit board to enact an ordinance. And to enact an ordinance, state law requires it first to be introduced, given notice to the public, and then voted on at a subsequent meeting of the board. The actual vote is expected at the board’s next meeting on [Sept. 15](https://bloomingtontransit.com/bt-staff/). McDaniel told The B Square after the meeting that he now plans to attend the board’s Sept. 15 meeting, so that he can vote no. McDaniel can continue to serve 90 days past the end of his term, unless the city council, which appoints his seat, chooses someone different. That was a different kind of ending from the board’s previous meeting on July 21, when Keolis was chosen as the firm that would provide Bloomington Transit’s general manager. It meant a change from RAPT Dev, which had provided the current general manager, John Connell. That choice also set in motion Connell’s departure. At the [July 21 board meeting](https://bsquarebulletin.com/bloomington-transit-picks-new-management-firm-on-split-vote-ending-connells-tenure/), McDaniel cast one of two votes against selecting Keolis. The other vote in opposition came from Nancy Obermeyer. McDaniel called the decision the biggest mistake he had seen in his 36 years on the board. With his current four-year board term expiring at the end of the month, McDaniel said at the July 21 meeting he was seriously considering withdrawing his application for another term. He made a somewhat dramatic exit before the end of the meeting, delivering the parting words: “It’s been a pleasure working with *some* of you.” The 3–2 vote selected Keolis over longtime management firm RATP Dev. But McDaniel’s departure from the meeting did not turn into a departure from the board. He decided not to withdraw his application for another four-year term. A three-member city council committee has interviewed McDaniel and two other candidates, and is planning to interview a fourth. Meanwhile, RATP Dev challenged the process that produced the Keolis selection, and Bloomington Transit has rejected that challenge. And the union representing most of BT’s workforce has asked the board to take another look at Keolis before the final vote. So two decisions seem now moving on parallel tracks: Whether Bloomington Transit will finalize in a contract the switch from RATP Dev to Keolis, and whether McDaniel will remain one of the five people making that decision. ### A vote that wasn’t Tuesday’s (Aug. 18) discussion started after the board unanimously approved Bloomington Transit’s proposed [2027 budget](https://bsquarebulletin.com/courthouse-square-18/). Board chair James McLary introduced Ordinance 26-02, which would authorize the management contract with Keolis. McLary said BT’s attorney had prepared a draft contract and sent it to Keolis, where it was still under review. Board secretary Nancy Obermeyer immediately raised a concern about an additional transition expense. Obermeyer said Keolis representatives had described a charge of roughly $20,000 connected to cover the new general manager’s transition to Bloomington. McLary responded that a transition charge had been disclosed in the Keolis proposal, although not as a specific dollar figure. He added that negotiations had reduced the amount. BT would pay only documented actual expenses, he said. McDaniel and Obermeyer both questioned why an estimate had not been included with the Keolis price proposal. Keolis had already submitted the higher-priced proposal of the two firms that emerged as the board’s serious finalists. Bloomington Transit’s later [disclosure of the scoring](https://bloomdocs.org/wp-content/uploads/simple-file-list/2026-08-15-RATP-Dev-Bloomington-Transit-BPTC-Procurement-Response-Letter-8%5F14%5F26.pdf) showed that RATP Dev received 66 of 80 possible points on price, compared with 61 for Keolis. But the advantage for Keolis on other criteria gave it a total score of 381 out of 400, compared with 345 for RATP Dev and 344 for Transdev. McDaniel also asked whether the board would see the completed contract before voting on it. McLary said the final version did not yet exist because negotiations with Keolis were continuing. The discussion included commentary from the president of the union representing most BT drivers, and went through re-litigation of sorts about the procurement process. It was only near the end that McDaniel explicitly stated his already known intention to vote no, but that foundered on the two-stage process that state law requires. Other board members also expected they’d take a vote. It was the agency’s controller, Krista Browning, who pointed out that no vote needed to take place that night. The Bloomington Transit board’s next regular monthly meeting, when a vote on the Keolis contract is expected, falls on [Sept. 15](https://bloomingtontransit.com/bt-staff/). ### McDaniel’s application for reappointment stays alive McDaniel’s current term expired July 31, which was 10 days after the Keolis selection vote. Under [state law](https://iga.in.gov/laws/2025/ic/titles/36#36-1-8-10), a board member can serve 90 days past the end of their term, but no more than 90 days. The city council’s committee that is responsible for making a recommendation for any of the three BT board seats appointed by the council consists of Isak Asare, Kate Rosenbarger, and Hopi Stosberg. At an Aug. 6 committee meeting, deputy clerk Jennifer Crossley said she had contacted McDaniel after his dramatic July 21 exit, to find out whether he actually wanted to remain under consideration. Crossley told the committee she believed McDaniel still wants to be considered for re-appointment. She said she thought McDaniel “was just upset at the situation that transpired.” Crossley also told the committee that McDaniel can continue serving for up to 90 days after expiration of his term, until the council makes a reappointment or appoints someone else. When the committee interviewed McDaniel on Aug. 13, he gave councilmembers a more detailed account of why he had not pulled his application. McDaniel said he had been about a day away from doing that when he received RATP Dev’s [July 28 letter](https://bloomdocs.org/wp-content/uploads/simple-file-list/2026-07-28-Bloomington-Transit-RATP%5F-Bloomington-Procurement-Concerns-7-28-26.pdf) challenging Bloomington Transit’s procurement process. Reading the letter, much of which he agreed with, convinced him to remain in place and see what happened, he said. But he also made clear to councilmembers that his willingness to continue was tied to the Keolis question. “I can’t work with Jim \[McClary\] and Doug Horn and Don Griffin, if they insist on taking this new path and hiring a different company and getting rid of our general manager,” McDaniel said. “If they do, I’ll quit.” Five days later, he was back at the BT board table ready to vote against the ordinance approving the contract with Keolis. ### Three candidates interviewed, at least one to go McDaniel is not the city council’s only option. Asare, Stosberg and Rosenbarger decided to interview four applicants for the council-appointed seat: McDaniel, Zachary Ammerman, Hank Duncan and Perry Maull. Ammerman should have been familiar to councilmembers, because city records indicate they appointed him to the Bloomington commission on sustainability and resilience in February this year. Ammerman introduced himself at his interview as a regular Bloomington Transit rider with a data and mapping background. Ammerman told councilmembers the board should exercise independent oversight rather than try to manage the agency directly. His priorities included higher-frequency service, less circuitous routes, better cross-town connections and improved on-time performance. Duncan is Bloomington’s Safe Streets program manager in the city’s planning and transportation department. He told the committee that he had lived without a car in Bloomington for about three years and described his own difficulty using BT for trips that required transfers or involved infrequent service. He also said fixed-route frequency should take priority over a major expansion of microtransit. After interviewing the three, committee members described all of them as strong candidates, but for different reasons. Rosenbarger summarized McDaniel’s strength as institutional knowledge, Ammerman’s as his ability to work with and present data, and Duncan’s as his community perspective. Maull was out of town during the week when the committee conducted its first three interviews. He is a longtime transit manager who retired in 2019 after more than a decade with Indiana University’s Campus Bus system. Before returning to IU in 2006, Maull held management positions with several Florida transit agencies, including serving as the first transit director for Space Coast Area Transit. The committee planned to try to interview him Wednesday afternoon [(Aug. 19) at 3 p.m.](https://bloomington.in.gov/onboard/meetingFiles/17326/download ) before making its recommendation. The committee had previously identified its Sept. 2 council meeting as the target for having a recommendation ready. ### RATP Dev challenges the procurement; BT rejects protest The document that inspired McDaniel to keep his application alive was a [four-page July 28 letter](https://bloomdocs.org/wp-content/uploads/simple-file-list/2026-07-28-Bloomington-Transit-RATP%5F-Bloomington-Procurement-Concerns-7-28-26.pdf) from RATP Dev chief development officer Steve Sherrer. RATP Dev acknowledged that an incumbent management company has no entitlement to renewal. But it said that Bloomington Transit’s procurement contained enough inconsistencies to create “a reasonable perception” that the competing firms were not evaluated through a fair and uniform process. Among RATP Dev’s complaints was that it had asked before its interview whether BT expected a presentation and understood that the session would primarily be questions and answers focused on the proposed resident general manager. RATP Dev did not prepare a slide presentation. Keolis did. At the July 21 public meeting, board members cited the difference in presentation style among their reasons for preferring Keolis. RATP Dev argued that it should not have been disadvantaged for following the interview format it understood BT had prescribed. RATP Dev also questioned the makeup of the four-member evaluation committee: McLary, Griffin, controller Christa Browning and human resources administrator Brenda Underwood. RATP Dev asked BT to explain statements at the July meeting that appeared to describe more than one way of scoring the firms. The company asked for preservation and disclosure of the procurement record and for a review by someone independent of the evaluation committee. It also raised a question about whether McLary meets the statutory [residency requirement](https://iga.in.gov/laws/2025/ic/titles/36#36-9-4-14), which says he has to live inside the taxing district. BT’s taxing district is Bloomington city limits. RATP Dev stopped short of accusing him of being ineligible. Based on a B Square review of voter registration records from June of this year, McLary is registered to vote at an address inside Bloomington city limits. On Aug. 14, Bloomington Transit contracting officer Zac Huneck [rejected the challenge](https://bloomdocs.org/wp-content/uploads/simple-file-list/2026-08-15-RATP-Dev-Bloomington-Transit-BPTC-Procurement-Response-Letter-8%5F14%5F26.pdf) from RATP Dev. Huneck wrote that the July 28 letter had been treated as a procurement protest under BT’s procurement manual. He found that the firms had received substantially equivalent interview opportunities, that the evaluation committee was properly constituted, and that the committee had used the criteria and weights published in the request for proposals. The response disclosed the underlying scoring in some detail. Even if Browning’s and Underwood’s scores were removed, Huneck wrote, the two board members on the committee (McLary and Griffin) had scored Keolis ahead of RATP Dev by a combined 190–170. Huneck also rejected the request for a separate independent review, saying BT’s procurement rules assign the initial decision to the contracting officer and provide a separate process for appeal or reconsideration. That produced an odd exchange Tuesday. When McDaniel asked for the status of what he called RATP Dev’s protest, McLary said it was a “letter of inquiry,” not a formal protest, and pointed out that the word “protest” did not appear in the July 28 letter. But BT’s own [Aug. 14 response](https://bloomdocs.org/wp-content/uploads/simple-file-list/2026-08-15-RATP-Dev-Bloomington-Transit-BPTC-Procurement-Response-Letter-8%5F14%5F26.pdf) is headed “Decision on Procurement Protest,” says explicitly that BT treated RATP Dev’s letter as a protest, and concludes: “Accordingly, RATP Dev’s protest is denied.” McDaniel reckoned RATP Dev would be surprised that it was not a protest, because they thought they were protesting. ### Union: Most of the workforce was not asked Tuesday’s meeting also added a new voice to the discussion. Bill Hornaday, president of AFSCME Local 613, asked to deliver [prepared remarks](https://bloomdocs.org/wp-content/uploads/simple-file-list/2026-08-18-union-president-public-comment-Bloomington-Transit.pdf) to the board and no one objection. Hornaday told the board that the union represents 67 Bloomington Transit employees. That’s about 78% of the agency’s workforce, he said. That includes fixed-route and paratransit drivers, mechanics and service attendants. Hornaday said neither he nor the union’s other officers had been contacted during the management-company evaluation. As far as union leaders had been able to determine, none of the rank-and-file employees they represent had been consulted either. Hornaday told the board the union had conducted its own limited review of Keolis operations elsewhere in the country and had found labor disputes that it believed warranted more investigation. He was careful to describe the union’s research as cursory and acknowledged when Griffin pressed him that he had not yet determined the final outcome of every dispute he cited. His request was not that the board automatically reject Keolis. Hornaday said Local 613 was prepared to work with the company if it becomes BT’s manager. But he urged the board to take a closer look before the actual vote, especially at the labor-relations record compiled by Keiolis. He called on the board to include rank-and-file workers in major decisions affecting the agency. ### Mayor’s office had pushed for Connell to stay The decision to change management firms also came despite direct pressure from Mayor Kerry Thomson’s administration to maintain the existing leadership. Six days before the July 21 Keolis vote, deputy mayor Gretchen Knapp emailed McLary and Griffin, who are the two mayoral appointees to the five-member BT board. Knapp wrote that she was concerned, based on what she had observed at the previous BT meeting, that perhaps they were “not as much on the same page as I thought.” The meeting that prompted Knapp’s concern, which she attended, took place on June 23\. That’s when the board [approved the $3.6 million purchase property](https://bsquarebulletin.com/bloomington-transit-board-oks-3-6m-land-buy-for-ops-center-after-getting-idem-comfort-letter/) on the corner of Curry Pike and Profile Parkway for the development of a new administration, operations, and maintenance complex. The administration was very much in support of the property purchase, which was approved on a 5–0 vote. “The Mayor’s position is that BT is headed in the right direction, and that is due to John Connell’s leadership,” Knapp wrote. Her email message said that switching leadership would slow progress and defended Connell’s efforts to pursue greater coordination with Indiana University. In her oral remarks to the board at the July 21 meeting, covered most of the same ground as the email message. But the email message included the implied threat that if they did not support RATP Dev and Connell they would be removed from the board. The threat came in the closing, when she wrote to McLary and Griffin: “As you serve at the pleasure of the Mayor, I would hope her opinion would be of high interest to you. We certainly seek appointees who share our values and vision for Bloomington.” The formulation “serve at the pleasure of the mayor” means an appointee may be removed by the mayor at any time, without cause. Even if Knapp believed the mayor has such power, based on separate responses to a B Square emailed question, neither the city’s legal department nor the city council’s interim attorney believe that’s the case. Interim city council attorney Larry Allen wrote that in his brief review of state code “I do not see that any member could be removed prior to the end of their term without cause,” and pointed out that [state law](https://iga.in.gov/laws/2025/ic/titles/36#36-9-4-19) says transit corporation directors can be impeached. And that process requires articles of impeachment alleging “crime, incapacity, or negligence in office” and a hearing. City corporation counsel Margie Rice wrote: “I think removal for cause is the most appropriate way to remove a BPTC board member. I wouldn’t advise removal for any reason, without cause.” The [city’s version of the email](https://bloomdocs.org/wp-content/uploads/simple-file-list/2026-07-15-Gretchen-Knapp-records-request-email-Google-Vault-BT-leadership%5Fpdf-redacted-no-metadata.pdf) released through a formal public records did not show Knapp’s implied threat. That’s because it blacked out the entire message body, and even the recipient lines, citing an discretionary exemption in the state's public records law for intra- or inter-agency deliberative material. The B Square independently obtained a copy of the [unredacted message](https://bloomdocs.org/wp-content/uploads/simple-file-list/2026-07-15-landscape-knapp-email-griffin-mclary-Bloomington-Transit.pdf). ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/20/6f/206f9007-c0a7-47d4-b87b-686c21961f22/content/images/2026/08/2026-07-15-redacted---gretchen-knapp-don-griffin-james-mclary-bloomington-transit-1.png) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/20/6f/206f9007-c0a7-47d4-b87b-686c21961f22/content/images/2026/08/2026-07-15-independent-source--gretchen-knapp-don-griffin-james-mclary-bloomington-transit-2.png) Even after the behind-the-scenes email message, and her in-person remarks at the board’s July 21 meeting, when Knapp publicly made the administration’s case for continuity, McLary and Griffin joined Doug Horn in the [3–2 vote for Keolis](https://bsquarebulletin.com/bloomington-transit-picks-new-management-firm-on-split-vote-ending-connells-tenure/). It’s not the first time that McDaniel and Obermeyer have found themselves as a two-person minority on board votes. In December 2021, the two were the minority in a [3–2 vote that made McLary board chair](https://bsquarebulletin.com/bloomington-transit-board-to-start-2022-with-work-on-strategic-plan-after-contentious-officer-elections-to-end-year/), and again in a 3–2 vote that replaced McDaniel with Horn as BT’s representative on the Bloomington-Monroe County Metropolitan Planning Organization policy committee. That meeting included unusually sharp disagreement about how the board was being led. More recently, McDaniel and Obermeyer were the two dissenters on a June 23 motion requiring a public discussion about BT’s $3.6-million Profile Parkway property purchase after the transaction was completed. The subsequent [vote to buy the property](https://bsquarebulletin.com/bloomington-transit-board-oks-3-6m-land-buy-for-ops-center-after-getting-idem-comfort-letter/) was unanimous. ### Sept. 15: Who gets to cast the vote? RATP Dev’s current Bloomington Transit management contract expires Sept. 30\. If the Keolis ordinance is adopted on Sept. 15 and the contract negotiations are completed, Connell’s tenure as general manager will end with RATP Dev’s contract. But there is now another deadline of sorts running alongside that one. The city council committee hopes to make a recommendation on McDaniel’s seat in time for the council’s Sept. 2 session. Until the council acts, McDaniel can continue serving under the 90-day post-term holdover period. That means the Sept. 15 vote on the Keolis ordinance could still be McDaniel’s to cast. But if the city council acts first, the vote could instead fall to someone else. Absent earlier council action, if McDaniel is able to follow through on his intention to vote no, winds up on the losing side of a 3–2 vote, and then resigns as he has said he would, the council would have to choose a replacement, other than McDaniel.