[1:16] I'm gonna call our council listening session to order. Today is Monday 28 April. Thank you all for coming. We had a number of people call ahead of time then a couple of people were tentative, so I'm gonna throw this out as a potential order of speakers. Joseph Reynolds is Joseph here? [1:34] Okay, so much for my well crafted list here. Elizabeth Campbrone? We can't hear. Can you be louder? I will. Joseph, is Joseph Royald's here? Hello Elizabeth Cambrone. Here is Elizabeth, thank you. [1:51] Gary bigge. We got Gary, David Hogy, David, Sue Weaverg. Oh Sue, you are here, very good. You were one of my tentatives, and then Arnold or Suzanne Arnold Flutzon or Suzanne Gustison, are you here? Alright, why don't we go with the order as I, as I just. [2:11] Yes, we'll start with number two. If Joseph shows up, we'll get Joseph in there as well. But why don't we start with Elizabeth? Once you come on up, what I'm gonna need from everybody, introduce yourself as you start, so we have your name officially on the record. You can sign in after you're done, and we we have a 5 min time limit on our presentations. [2:30] And if I cut you off it's not because I'm mean, it's because we've just gotten to the 5 min and I want to make sure everybody has the same amount of time, ok? Yeah, understood. [2:49] Thank you. Everybody has them. Go ahead. My name is Elizabeth Cambrone. I live at 9825 Newton Avenue. I'm here to represent my family and many residents on both Newton Avenues Health and Morgan Avenue South. [3:09] I'll be speaking on the imminent changes that will be forced upon our neighborhood for the community health and wellness center. Council member Lowman is my district representative and I look forward to him particating for us. In your current design, you have a parking lot that does not meet your own C code for required parking spaces. On peak operating hours. [3:29] This parking will be sparse and overflow parking will inevitably be on West one Hundred Street and Morgan. [3:35] Our quiet clear streets will be crowded. Where will our friends and family park when they come to visit us at our homes? Who will in part, in part excuse me, enforce these parking rules? For years there have been NO parking signs on both sides of Newton yet every sports season there are cars lined on each side. The block. [3:53] They block residents mailboxes, driveways, and fire hydrants. City police have not enforced the parking rules even after residents have complained. Are the police ready, willing and able to enforce these parking rules when the new building is running? In addition to parking concerns, we fear that the traffic flow will be an afterthought. Where are your traffic studies? How much money has. [4:13] And spent drafting plans without taking a bird's eye view of the city in this area. Referred to the map and you'll see that the only entrance in exit from the parking lot is on Newton. Newton is a residential sized road. Is it really equipped to handle 300 400 600 cars entering and exiting a day? [4:31] Now add public transportation and metro mobility. I encourage you to ask the fire department how many times per day a fire truck or ambulance braces down Newton to help residents at the prescueterian homes. Will emergency vehicles get through increased traffic and parked cars in the winter with snowbanks? On the map, you'll see I've marked two places where there are railroad tracks. [4:51] These also happen to be the only two ways out of the area if you want to go east. Only two ways. [4:58] Directly east. Excuse me, how many of the visitors will need to go back to East Bloomington? Organ to 305W The trains come through frequently and passed by slowly. In addition to the train exiting the area from Morgan Avenue onto old Chocopy Road is time consuming, especially if you're trying to cross four lanes of traffic to go eastern russia hour. How do you plan. [5:18] And to mitigate that congestion. I also want to bring a concern for how this will be affecting our quality of life. The parking lot entrance and exit are all facing the front of homes on Newton. This will mean car lights and noise in our windows that extended hours of the day seven days a week, year round. The lights and noise will leave through to resident's windows I'm working as well. This will be NO. [5:38] Noise and light pollution that is detro detrimental to our health and wellness. A rose in front yards where our kids and pets play will be unsafe. There are NO sidewalks for residents on Morgan, the only sidewalk on Newton is on the west side, not the residential side, but the side that will allow parking. Our driveways will be used by public to turn around when the intersection is the intersec. [5:58] Options are clogged and that streets will be dangerously busy. There are NO alternatives for our kids or pets. The soccer and base cell field that Creekside will be paved over and they we have NO park within walking distance. [6:10] We need better options. With increased visitors and very demographic comes an increase in crime, who will be in charge of the security at this new community. Have you worked with the police department and a plan to prevent crime and enforce lawlessness? Our homes values will go down. Right now, our homes are on quiet streets neighbored by elderly living, a soccer. [6:30] Baseball field and a modest community center. When all of that was replaced. With a busy street and parking lot, our market value will decrease. In light of all this, I and many others are asking for a complete and a complete pause in reconsideration in planting this community health and wellness center. As I conclude, some maybe asking why now there have been opportunities to bring this up in the past and to have a voice in early planning stage. [6:54] A lot of us participated in those, but I want to state for this for everyone that maybe listening. From August to tw August 2024 through March of 20 2058 of us homeowners believed that the city intended to purchase our homes and make a big parking lot to accommodate the new community center. Those eight of us weren't worried about the effects on our home, it would be demolished anyway. [7:14] The rest of us thought parking and traffic wouldn't be an issue with the additional parking entrance and exits. We have only known this additional parking was not happening for a little more than a month, so here I am. [7:26] Representing my neighborhood, bringing concerns as soon as we could. Thank you for your consideration and I look forward to your thoughtful response and working with any city staff necessary to find a solution. Well, thank you. Thanks for bringing your concerns forward. We do appreciate it. I'm going to ask staff to respond or at least connect. [7:46] You up with a few folks, Kurt Roberts in our parking and transportation departments to be able to answer some of your questions there in terms of fire and police, I know we can get a response from them as well and I, I know the project itself for all that they've been looking at in terms of ingress and egress and so on and parking. [8:06] I'm assuming I haven't seen, but I'm assuming that the the conversations have taken place in terms of how to handle the crowds that are gonna be coming in and out because yes, we hope it's a very well used facility and it's to be an asset to the community, I sure hope it is, and we'll, we'll connect you with those folks who can answer some of these questions and have these conversations with you. Okay, ok. Yep. Great. [8:29] Mr. Mayor, if I may, I also suggest, I don't know if you've ever gone there, but Harrison Park is literally across the and it's only a 6 min walk from the community center to Harrison Park, so I hope that that feels a little better in terms of access to, you know, a park in an area where your kids can play. Yeah, I should clarify that it's within walking distance. [8:49] Without, without crossing a busy intersection. Sure. I didn't clarify that. Understood. Thank you. Appreciate it. Next up Gary. [9:08] Okay. I certainly appreciate Elizabeth's presentation because I thought maybe with the kids they were gonna be arguing that what we needed is this community health and wellness center long ago and it's past due. I'm arguing that we need to keep. [9:28] Site as a senior center. Bridgefield has a senior center, has a senior center, I don't know how many other suburbs have a senior center. Freek site is ours. [9:38] And as best I know it's very well used, the current plans as I understand we would take the excite offline for two years. Again, these are seniors. In two years, some of those people aren't gonna be around. The other is that I was among the people who. [9:58] Voted for the sales tax increase to fund the three projects, you know, the ice garden, the trail and and creekside. But I didn't see all the details that now are coming out about, you know, it's gonna have. [10:11] Swimming pool and it's gonna have locker rooms and it's gonna have this and that and that and seemingly a lot of those facilities already exist in Bloomington. And rather than spend a hundred million dollars on demolishing creek side and building this new complex and taking a bunch of homes off the property tax. [10:31] We won't be taking any homes we've already made that decision it won't be homes coming up the travel. Okay, good, good. You know, again, it just seems like. [10:41] We could update creekside, for fraction, maybe under a million dollars at least and use the rest of that money to improve the amenities at other facilities within Bloomington so that all these things that we hope would transpire at the community. [11:01] Health and wellness center, but still exists and and so on in Bloomington. But again, we wouldn't have to take Creek site offline for two years. [11:10] Wouldn't have to spend all that money on the thing. I guess that's, that's the gist of what I wanted to say. And and I appreciate your comments Gary, I do, and I I think through the process and it was a, it was a long process. This discussion about a community center, a new health and wellness. [11:30] Center has been on going on for a while now and frankly, I thought our staff and the communications plan did a very good job of laying out the the realities that yes Creekside would be going away and we we talked all on how we would have to find room for senior activities in different places in the interim. We. [11:50] On that, I mean we here at Pacific Plaza. I think there are other locations as well. [11:56] I think 95 % of the current activities are gonna be replicated somewhere else. And so is it the same? No. Are those are those activities still available? Yes, it will be a good, good majority of them would still be available and so it was something that I think as I said, I think we talked about it pretty clearly, pretty frankly, and. [12:16] And quite honestly the the voters of Bloomington thought this was a good plan and a good way to move forward when and yourself included. Yeah, and yet, like I say, I didn't have the details and so I'm guessing most of the other voters didn't have the details to hear what all was planned for. Mr. Manner, thank you. And we were clear from the start. [12:36] I think Creekside was going away. We we've made that clear from the start that that building is long past its useful life to I mean the the notion of putting a million dollars into it, that would be A, it would be lipstick on a gig, but B it would barely start to address a lot of the issues, the deferred maintenance and the issues that. [12:56] Like are with that building. So just a couple more clari a couple more pieces of information. I think 1st off, we didn't spend a lot of money to design the building before the voters voted on it because the last time we did that, we got yelled at by our voters who, because we went through an entire design plan. [13:16] And everything for value and a lot of people didn't like that either. So we said we're not gonna spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to design a building. We're going to see if something this is something that voters want. And then if that's something that voters want, we will design it accordingly. That's why the comp the organizations and the individuals have been involved for the last year in the design and skill. [13:36] Of this building. The other thing I will tell you said, I think a lot of people use it, I can tell you exactly how many people use it. There are 25000, give or take a few seniors in this city. I am one of them by the way, just in case anybody's wondering I'm 55 years old, so I qualify, 1600 unique individuals use that center all of in 20. [13:56] All of 2024. So we need to encourage more people to go to a community center. We want to, we believe strongly that what we're doing there is going to encourage lots more than 1600 people to show up. I hope that helps. Again, I I think if you could get more seniors involved there, that would be great. But I don't see the. [14:16] Need for trying to get teenagers and young people and on and on when there's other facilities in the city. And to spend again a hundred million dollars, it's gonna be a wellness center too. Remember our public health department is, is being used is going to use the facility as well which which serves an entire region of people within a hundred and 80. [14:36] Thousand people across Richfield and Dina in here in Bloomington. Yeah. And they have the existing That facility is also as oldest creek side and should not be used for public health anymore. That's the whole reason it's called Community Health and Wellness Center. We put them together. Yeah. [14:53] You're I'm sorry I'm gonna have to cut you off we're at time here, but thank you for coming in today, greatly appreciate it. David. Good afternoon, the two council members that in my second. Sure, that'd be fine. Thank you. David, please. [15:11] Please go ahead. My name is Dave Holding. My wife has a business on 7837 12th Avenue. And recently we had two cars to it on our private parking lots by the city. [15:31] No, NO, we can't hear. We'll get one next house. Thank you. We'll get one next time. We haven't had a full host in the past. [15:47] So these cars that we had were, were purposely put there on private party in a commercial kind of light industrial zone for it to be used as training vehicles for young people to summer. And, some point during the winter time or the last 45 days I guess, the city was. [16:07] Called, maybe a complaint was filed or something and the process went through to have these cars towed and when I was out of town, they were towed I'd come back and they're gone. [16:19] And I'm looking through the regulations and it looks like we should, you know, we should be able to have vehicles like this because we were running a car service. We have a maintenance facility for these cars and these cards are there for training. So I'm here looking for a little guidance on the. [16:35] Yeah Regulation 8.16 of open storage and I in here they talk about licensing, so I stopped by the offices of licensing, let's see if there's any licensing that we needed and they said there wasn't any. I stopped by Melissa's and Adrian's office. [16:55] And asked her if we could get a little guidance on this because it sure looks like we should be exempt from this and we shouldn't have been told. The city inspector or whatever his title is, Tyce told me that there was an anonymous complaint filed. [17:13] He also told that a snowfall for another business that's in our facility that does plotowing because his tabs were two weeks expired. And this was in March. Along with he's got six other snow pausals in here. [17:33] So the question is. The, you know, according to the according to the thing that says or unless the vehicle is stored on the private property, which it was, in connection with do we licensed business or commercial enterprise operating con conducted pursuant to the state laws, this city and the city code were storing of avantage of down uphold vehicles. [17:54] The essential portion of that powerful business. So there's a whole bunch of things in here that I kind of look at and say well especially those that wasn't abandoned, it wasn't junker it wasn't. [18:06] It just happened to be out of season and he hadn't updated the license on a truck that he's not gonna use for a while. So, you know, both of us kind of in our crapped spot and, and these vehicles that I had were. [18:26] Old, they haven't been licensed for a couple of years. One of them has had the motor pulled in and out a few times. I towed them down from Deluth specifically for this. [18:35] And, and the inspector saying well you don't have new tabs on it so we're gonna don't. And unfortunately, both of the titles for both these tars are titled to residents that are like three houses ago, so the mail didn't get forwarded in time so we didn't see it. [18:54] And they got told. So I'm looking for, some guidance on this and how do we avoid this in the future? I think the guidance that I'd give you and I'm sorry to hear that and and I will tell you, if you, if you need a crummy card, you don't need to go to the loop. You can just come and stop by, I'll be happy to do what you have now. But. [19:14] I, I I will. I'm gonna refer you to our to our city attorney I'm gonna refer you to our our public health folks who do this kind of this kind of thing and and I would like to have you connect with them and see if we can't reach a resolution. I would, I would agree that you know there is the, there is the the the law, but. [19:34] Expired tabs in the inoperable and so on and the toying that does happen. But as you as you've explained if it's in a, if it's in a maintenance facility used for training, that type of thing, we, we can probably do a better job of trying to figure that out. Yeah I tell you, the one thing that kind of. [19:52] I thought was unusual about the situation as one of my guys had said, Hey, there was this guy from from the city here in the parking lot and said he's looking at cars with tabs and I didn't pay anything attention at all. All of our cars are got greater tabs on them, which we've got like twelve of them and we're on top of. [20:12] Not because we were on a car service business. And I didn't think anything of it and at any point he could have just said, hey, do you know who owns those two cars sitting there? No, I can't disagree with him, and so we'll I'm gonna ask our city attorney and our and our folks internally here to reach out and have this conversation and see if we can't come to a resolution because I I do that, that might I would agree that's a bit. [20:35] I'm sorry that had to happen. Where did you say the address was again? 7037 12th avenue. So it's right next to the holiday n. There's a little glariat. [20:48] Office parked there? It's kind of light industrial. Yep. Thank you for coming in. We're in 5 min, I'm gonna alright thank you. Thank you. Make sure you sign in so we can we can find you if we need to. So. [21:04] It's me if I may. I have also contacted the city in regards to that by a week ago. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, can I have you, can I have you flip out of the chair there and and you can sign in, but do it next to it. Thanks a lot. Good enough, thank you. Thank you. [21:22] This is the state my name? Yes, please. Susan Weaver. I'm basically here after reading the article in the Bloomington Sun Current about the community center. I've been a taxpayer for 50 years and I assume assumed that when we got this community center that there was really gonna be a real focus on seniors. I really did our. [21:42] Not only is our Bloomington population getting older, but the world is, there's older people and I, when I saw that article realized that they don't even have, I thought it would. [21:54] All the things that were at Creekside were going to be available at the new community center and to see that they didn't even have room for a botique and then they talked to I'm not a woodworker, so it doesn't affect me, but I heard I mean according to that article, they're asking Bloomington people to go to Eaton Curry to do their woodworking. I don't understand that. [22:14] I think we need to make as much, need to have as many things for seniors as possible. So I, that article really, really upset me that there was such a low emphasis on seniors. And I'd like to ask of the people that are here, how many of you feel that the seniors were kind of have been neglected in in preparing for that. [22:33] And there's not that many people here, but the people that are here, look at the majority of them feel that way. So I think I'd like to see that there's gonna be an emphasis on that there's gonna be some in the design that they're gonna make make room and for the senior needs. [22:49] Thank you, mr. Mayor. Did you read the article that I wrote the week before about the community center? Because I feel like I feel like we pick and choose the things that we want to see and I'm not suggesting you're doing that, but I worked really hard to write an article that would give you all the facts because there are people that have feelings and I appreciate them and I understo. [23:09] Hand them, but I I could go through Pam Palmer's. Article and I could cite contrary of facts about some of the things that were published. So we could do that offline and I'd be very happy to share those with you. But what keeps happening is people keep, keep taking something that is accurate on the merit. [23:31] And distorting it to indicate that we here as a council don't have an appreciation for our seniors. As I just mentioned earlier, two, there are 25000 seniors in the city. If you qualify me as a senior cause I'm 55, ok? That's a quarter of our population. You're absolutely right, it's gonna go up. [23:49] Okay, 1600 individual people went to the senior, the creekside senior center last year. I know that to be a fact, that's nothing if we had a nicer community center more seniors would go. I can't make a hundred million dollar bed online, right? We got to go with the facts. [24:09] Some of the information that we have plus the needs of our entire community, not just that 25 %, of which only 6 % showed up at our community center, which has been there for 30 years. So I have 30 years of data. [24:22] About seniors and how they use the community center. And I have data from other other people and other areas of the bank of the of the city and the and then the region. Plus we have the voters indications plus all the constituent groups that we've done and everything that says this new community center will meet their needs. Those. [24:42] These are the details that we're weighing over time. The the challenge that we have is that we can't build a senior center. [24:49] On that property and and have the staff meet our all our requirements as a city council. We've given them several requirements, one of which is that this this center has to operate 90 % or better cost neutral. What that means is we expected to pay for itself all the. [25:09] Operationally over time. Okay, why? Because we know that otherwise would be putting even additional tax burden on on the community. Now, what we're not gonna do is we're not gonna stop the almost $400000 of yearly investment that we make in senior community center activities. That already happens today at Creekside and. [25:31] That will continue. So there's $400000 of everybody's taxpayer dollars that are gonna go into this communicate this community center every year going forward specifically to serve the senior population of this community. We've not made a single change to that other than to increase the activities. That number will probably also. [25:51] Follow up because to your point we'll need to meet more people there. So I really want us to just operate on some facts and and I it may not be for everybody. I understand. Yes, we are going to offer woodworking. [26:03] At at Eden crairy's school where they have it and we're going to pay to bust people there and back again for the 1st three months to get the Garner interest. We're also talking to the city of the, sorry, the school board in Bloomington to see if we can open up the wood shop in the Bloomington schools, two seniors. But over the course of the last year, only. [26:23] 15 or so people use the woodworking facility. So it's a lot of money that people are asking us to solve for problems that exist for a very small number of people. And we don't have the luxury of saying, well, if we build it, they might come. We just don't have that because, because we have an obligation to all residents of this city to try to do our best fiduciarily. Is there going to be a dedicated place for. [26:46] Is there gonna be a So there's gonna be a bunch of them and we can look at the I know we're gonna be at time so we're gonna look, we can take this offline, we can look at the plans. There are several dozens multi purpose rooms that are gonna be set up and they're going to be programmed for those activities. So yes, dedicated space, meaning every Wednesday. [27:06] Day at 02:00 or whatever, there will be cards for seniors and that'll be true, right? Can I tell you exactly where in the community center that's gonna be just yet? No, because it's not built yet, but yes, is the short answer to that question. And between 09:00 A.M. and 02:00 p.m.. Seniors will probably have the run of the place because most people are either in school or at work. And so we expect. [27:26] That there'll be a lot of activities for seniors and there's actually more being added including arts and crafts and education, even a driving school. So there's a whole lot going on that I think if we, if you just give us a little bit of time, I think I didn't read your article. I would like to do that in the same place as Pamiss just. [27:46] The week before thank you. No I appreciate it. Like I said, let's take this offline and let's get the decision. Yes. I'd like to meet with you and thank you for your input. Absolutely my pleasure. And, thank you for coming this evening. Appreciate it. The other folks, we had Joseph Reynolds? Joseph, are you here yet? [28:06] U. And then the other folks we had tentative were Arnold Flutzon or Suzanne Gustinson, anybody? No. Are you Suzanne or? No, I'd like to speak if NO one else is. We, we can do that, but we're down to 3 min, so I need. Bring it on 3 min, we'll do that. Thank you. [28:28] Like all this fun. So I'm Rob Goodsack Premot Avenue. I'll sign this. I did speak with you guys back in like, what, it was early March? I showed you this card. I said this was how many people were parking on the street. [28:45] We're this side and the other side. Those are all individuals that are parking at that apartment building and obviously I got this petition together and I guess my one question is at this point, if the petition, we got the survey, if we get NO parking on the east side of Freemont, which is what we're talking about, there's NO parking on the. [29:05] West site. I can't get an answer. Can city staff just arbitrarily change that west side without a council meeting? Let's say the petition gets through, assuming that. I think either regardless of a petition gets through, my guess is my my belief is that it has to come to the council for, for open discussion and decision on that primarily because. [29:26] For something like that, when we implement or take away a NO parking zone, we like to have a public hearing. [29:31] We we like to have people come forward and both sides of the issue to be able to talk on this kind of thing. But the fear is that based off this letter that we got the last paragraph and I didn't read it to you, just real quick, the last, and this is what was disheartening is that, you know, the effort to go in and talk to neighbors and get every educated, it says note that the public entry parking policy is current. [29:51] Under reviewing that is there a chance that this may result in changes of the partnerships on the west side of the street in this area in the future? So what we weren't clear was, is this the the idea that the staff are bringing to you guys eventually about changing all of it throughout the city or was it just. [30:06] If you get the east side, NO parking, we could make the west side open. Are you asking because of the petition or because if you make NO parking on the east side, can, can staff just say arbitrarily, we're gonna open up the west side because that was brought to us, I understand and we don't want this to but it's very. [30:26] Heartening when you are like if that could happen and I only say that because after this weekend. [30:32] Yeah, illegally parked on the wrong side of the street. Somebody left the shopping cart in the street. I have photos of that. Somebody parked their pickup truck next to the apartment building on the lawn, just drove it up there. Garbage in the street, and then this morning that shopping cart ended up down the street in the tenant, the building north of them on their property. Got it. So this. [30:52] Instances like that, somebody parking on the on the grasp call, please. And the thing is, and I've talked to this officer I think I witnessed a bandalism on one of the vehicles at three in the morning and somebody flashed a tire, I believe. So being out there at this time, two, three in the morning, it's if there's restrictions on the street right now, I cannot imagine if you open up one side of sheet how much worse it's gonna get. And like I said, this is just. [31:17] Random vehicles that are parking when they can. And and that's a it's a conversation that we would have to have with staff we'd look at a staff recommendation because we're looking at they're trying to look at it in its entirety. I will say, I mean full spring's petitions all the time, but you can bring a petition that says, we want NO property taxes and you know anywhere. Exactly. So I mean it's worth the discussion. What we need to do is have the discussion then as a council based with based on. [31:40] Staff recommendation and conversations that we have. But just so I leave with neighbors because some of them were not happy about that last paragraph and I'm trying to be mindful here. If this petition goes through and it sounds like everybody's happy with it, if we do have to go to a council meeting about the east side of the street, ok? And it passes and now we have NO parking on both sides. [31:58] It has to come to you guys in order to say we're gonna open up the west side, correct? I don't know if that's correct. I like I said I don't know if it's It has to. I think a lot of times we prefer that, we prefer to have the public hearing because we do something like that. Okay, and that's what we need to know and I can't get an answer from anyone. So I really need to. [32:18] If you make sure if you've signed in there we will do that. I will make sure our staff gets back. Thank you so much call you yet? Kirk didn't call you yet? No, ok. I just emailed him yesterday. He said he was gonna reach out to you, so this week you should be received, and there's a lot of anxiety because the surveys are due, they said 5 May, which is next week and it's kind of anxiety ridden people like after this weekend honestly, and I photos I'll show the op. [32:38] Oh sir. If there's if there's NO restrictions over there, It's I'll talk to Kurt. Thank you guys. I appreciate you getting me in here. Thank you for keeping short. I do appreciate it. We're at 616I look for motion to adjourn so we can head down and get to our council meeting. Motion and second to adjourn although he's in favors signified by saying I. [33:00] We are adjourned. Thank you so much.