Tag: Jeff Underwood

CIB budget OK’d on split city council vote, answers on land for convention center hoped for by May 8

Link to dynamic version of property map: https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1hSQWt9_PyG1bcqZIXQjTWoj9Rk7E-ow&usp=sharing
CIB meeting from near to far: Joyce Poling, Adam Thies, Jim Silberstein, and Jay Baer. (April 10, 2024)
CIB controller Jeff Underwood shows CIB members a map of properties. (April 10, 2024)
Bloomington councilmember Isak Asare. (April 10, 2024)
From left: CIB president John Whikehart and CIB controller Jeff Underwood. (April 10, 2024)

Wednesday night, the Monroe Convention Center expansion project took another step forward, on what turned out to be a less-than-routine vote by the Bloomington city council.

The vote to approve the Monroe County capital improvement board’s (CIB’s) 2024 budget  was split 6–2. Dissent came from Kate Rosenbarger and Matt Flaherty. Not attending was Andy Ruff.

The CIB is the public body that was created by the Monroe County commissioners to provide the governance of the expansion project, which is supposed to be funded by the food and beverage tax. The extra 1-percent of tax on prepared foods and beverages has been collected since 2018.

Earlier on Wednesday, at the CIB’s regular meeting, the city council’s upcoming vote on the CIB’s $250,000 budget for 2024 was one of the highlights of the briefing from CIB treasurer, Eric Spoonmore.

Spoonmore reviewed for his CIB colleagues that the city council had voted unanimously at its March 27 meeting to ask the food and beverage tax advisory commission (FABTAC) for a recommendation on the use of the $250,000 in food and beverage tax revenue. Spoonmore called that city council vote an “easy process” that took just 10 minutes.

With the FABTAC’s recommendation on the books, the city council was set to vote on the budget later that night, Spoonmore said. He summed up the situation in a way that included a verbal hiccup, which might have foreshadowed what turned out to be nearly two hours of city council deliberations on the topic, with a split vote: “So everything is all good there, assuming that we have a similar unan– or approval from the city council.” Continue reading “CIB budget OK’d on split city council vote, answers on land for convention center hoped for by May 8” →

Convention center capital board picks JS Held as owner’s rep, issues RFQ for hotel

John Whikehart (March 20, 2024)
From left: Eric Spoonmore, John Whikehart (March 20, 2024)
JS Held interview team (March 5, 2024)
From near to far: Joyce Poling, Adam Thies, Jim Silberstein, and Jay Baer (March 20, 2024)

JS Held will be the owner’s representative for the Monroe Convention Center expansion project.

At its regular monthly meeting on Wednesday, the seven-member Monroe County capital improvement board approved a motion for selection of JS Held as owner’s rep, after a three-member board committee interviewed the firm and a second company, The Veridus Group, in the first week of March.

The motion approved by the board authorized CIB president John Whikehart to hammer out the details of the arrangement between the CIB and JS Held.

JS Held will be a familiar name locally as the project manager for the Hopewell redevelopment project and the consultant on the Showers West renovation project, among others.

In order to pay JS Held for its work, the CIB will need approval of a budget from the city council, which last year appropriated $250,000 of food and beverage tax revenue for the 2024 fiscal year.

For the CIB to have access to the money, a request will need to be run through a statutorily-required approval process that includes a request by the city council for consideration by the food and beverage tax advisory commission (FABTAC). Continue reading “Convention center capital board picks JS Held as owner’s rep, issues RFQ for hotel” →

Imminent interlocal accord gives boost to convention center expansion, but project timeline looks longer

From left: CIB member Joyce Poling, controller Jeff Underwood, and CIB member Eric Spoonmore. (Feb. 14, 2024))
CIB legal counsel Jim Whitlach. (Feb. 14, 2024))
From left: CIB members John Whikehart and Doug Bruce. (Feb. 14, 2024))
Foreground: CIB member Adam Thies. Background: CIB member Jim Silberstein. (Feb. 14, 2024))

The likely signing of a key agreement by the end of February has given a little bit of impetus to the plan to expand the Monroe Convention Center at 2nd 3rd Street and College Avenue.

But the aggressive timeline that Monroe County’s capital improvement board (CIB) had hoped to follow looks like it will probably be dialed back a bit. An expanded facility that is ready to host events by the end of 2026 may not be realistic.

The bright spot of news that CIB members got to chew on at their Wednesday meeting was the previous evening’s unanimous ratification of an interlocal agreement by the Monroe County council, which is one of the four parties to the accord.

The other three parties are the Monroe County commissioners, the Bloomington city council, and the mayor. The agreement is expected to appear on the agenda for county commissioner on Feb. 21, followed by a possible adoption by the city council the following week, on Feb. 28.

Bloomington mayor Kerry Thomson told The B Square on Tuesday that if the agreement on the county council’s agenda was the same one that she had seen most recently, she is in support of it.

The current version of the interlocal that is now making the approval rounds has been revised since the city council and the mayor approved it last year. That’s why the city council and the mayor will need to re-approve it.

At their December meeting, CIB members  had been looking at a potential timeline that included opening an expansion for business in late 2026.

But at Wednesday’s meeting, it was apparent that even if the CIB is making progress on selecting a construction manager, owner’s representative, and retaining an architect, it’s not as fast as the timeline draft provided by Schmidt Associates in December. Schmidt is the architectural firm that did the preliminary conceptual design work in 2019 and before. Continue reading “Imminent interlocal accord gives boost to convention center expansion, but project timeline looks longer” →

Board looks to potential fall 2026 opening of Monroe Convention Center expansion

The image links to the slide deck presentation to the CIB by Schmidt Associates on Dec. 13, 2023

The now hoped-for timeline for the opening of an expansion to the Monroe Convention Center is fall or winter of 2026.

That’s a takeaway from the third meeting of the capital improvement board (CIB) that was created by county commissioners in July.

Still pending is the ratification by Monroe County of an interlocal agreement that outlines how county government will work with the city of Bloomington on the Monroe Convention Center expansion.

But Wednesday’s meeting reinforced the impression left by CIB members when they met in October and November: They are not looking to dawdle in getting the convention center project back up and running, after it stalled out in March 2020, just before the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

Invited to give a presentation on Wednesday  was a team from Schmidt Associates, led by Sarah Hempstead, which worked on the project four years ago before political wrangling led to a pause that was made longer by the pandemic.

Some key takeaways from the presentation include a hoped-for timeline that calls for occupancy of an expanded facility the fall or winter of 2026. Continue reading “Board looks to potential fall 2026 opening of Monroe Convention Center expansion” →

Upcoming local income tax negotiations could run deep, wide for Bloomington city council

Based on the Bloomington city council’s discussion at its committee-of-the whole meeting on Wednesday, Monroe County residents will likely see a higher local income tax (LIT) rate than the 1.345 percent they pay now.

But given the way deliberations unfolded at Wednesday’s committee meeting, the higher rate will not reflect the full amount of the 0.855 point increase that Bloomington’s mayor has pitched to them.

Adding the extra 0.855 percent would bring Monroe County’s total local income tax rate to 2.2 percent.

Some councilmembers expressed concerns about the size of the increase. But there seems to be a basic agreement on the city’s legislative body about one thing: The city of Bloomington needs additional revenue.

City controller Jeff Underwood displayed a bar chart comparing existing revenue sources to expenditures over the next four years. The bars show a deficit of around $5 million each year.

One of the needs Underwood has identified is to increase the compensation of city workers in order to stay competitive, even with other local employers, Underwood said. “We’re not losing people to Carmel—we’re losing people to Ellettsville,” he added.

During public commentary, the heads of the city’s firefighter and municipal worker unions confirmed that the city is losing people to other higher-paying jobs that are not with the city of Bloomington.

Several of the remarks from councilmembers on Wednesday seemed to coalesce around the idea of finding some rate of increase that all nine councilmembers could live with.

The LIT increase, along with two $5 million bond issuances appear on the council’s April 20 agenda for a potential vote. Continue reading “Upcoming local income tax negotiations could run deep, wide for Bloomington city council” →