Deb Hutton to head north, leaves open seat on Bloomington’s redevelopment commission
On Monday, Deb Hutton presided over her final meeting as president of Bloomington’s redevelopment commission (RDC).
At the end of Monday’s regular meeting, Hutton revealed that she will be moving to a suburb of Chicago to be near her grandsons.
Hutton’s announcement was met with immediate congratulations from other RDC members—John West, Deborah Myerson, and Randy Cassady. Sue Sgambelluri was not able to attend Monday’s meeting.
Hutton will serve through the end of June. Her departure date for parts north is July 15. She told her colleagues that just about every day she has to say goodbye to someone, which is hard.
Hutton said she has a stepdaughter who lives in Bloomington and indicated she’d return for the annual Lotus Festival.
At Monday’s meeting, Bloomington’s director of economic and sustainable development Jane Kupersmith told Hutton that she would keep Hutton up to date on the Hopewell neighborhood development and the other projects that she had helped to get started.
Hutton has served on the RDC since March of 2021, when she was appointed by then-mayor John Hamilton, to replace Don Griffin—who resigned after a bit more than five years of RDC service. Griffin resigned in order to accept Hamilton’s appointment as deputy mayor.
For eight years before that, John West served in Griffin’s seat. West returned to the RDC this year, to a different seat, when he was appointed by Bloomington mayor Kerry Thomson.
Before joining the RDC, Hutton served for four years on the city’s historic preservation commission.
Before serving in city government, Hutton was the assistant director of Indiana University’s Center for the Study of Global Change.
The RDC oversees the city’s housing and neighborhood development (HAND) department. HAND director Anna Killion-Hanson told The B Square that Hutton had earlier let Bloomington mayor Kerry Thomson know about her plans to move away, and that Thomson is already working to find a replacement.
Of the five seats on the RDC, three are mayoral appointments (Hutton, West, and Sgambelluri) and two are city council appointments (Myerson and Cassady). There is no partisan balancing requirement for the RDC.
