budget hearing – The B Square

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In 2025, Bloomington’s “living wage” will reach $16.22 an hour.

Of that $16.22, up to $2.43 can be in the form of health insurance offered to a covered employee.

The increase in 2025 will boost Bloomington’s living wage by $0.47 an hour (about 3 percent) from the 2024 level of $15.75.

Enacted in 2005 by Bloomington’s city council, the living wage at the start was set at $10, with a provision that it increase by an amount based on the CPI (consumer price index).

Who has to meet the living wage standard in Bloomington?

Continue reading “Analysis: Bloomington’s living wage to hit $16.22 an hour in 2025, but work like video services is left out” →

Bloomington community farmers market Aug. 22, 2020.

Last Wednesday was the Bloomington city council’s third night in a series of four hearings on the proposed 2021 budget.

Appearing on Wednesday’s agenda was the 2021 budget for the parks and recreation department, which again includes the city’s community farmers market. The origin story for the market dates back to 1975.

The market has been the subject of controversy since early in last year’s season, when a vendor with ties to white supremacist groups was identified by local activists. A lawsuit filed by the vendor and a counterclaim by the city is pending in federal court, with a trial date set for over a year from now.

Based on the opposing views of long-time councilmembers Isabel Piedmont-Smith and Dave Rollo, it would likely take a hard political fight to remove the farmers market from the city’s currently proposed 2021 budget.

A fight over the farmers market could take place behind closed doors—between councilmembers and the mayor—before Sept. 30, when the administration’s final version of budget is presented to the council. A vote to adopt the budget is scheduled for Oct. 14.

Or the debate could take place in public, if a councilmember proposes an amendment to the final 2021 budget that would defund the farmers market.

Also a possibility is that the farmers market remains, as councilmember Kate Rosenbarger put it on Wednesday, “the elephant in the room.”

The farmers market budget is in the ballpark of $150,000, or less than a tenth of one percent of the total city budget, if utilities and public transit are included. Continue reading “Farmers market gets brief mention at Bloomington 2021 budget hearings, still “elephant in room”” →