Note: The transcript indicates the meeting occurred on Wednesday, December 3, 2025, but the provided metadata states the date as December 5, 2025. This summary uses the metadata date per instructions.
The Bloomington Common Council held a regular session on December 5, 2025, at 6:30 PM. The meeting covered several major legislative items including a voluntary annexation fiscal plan, a year-end appropriation ordinance, a septic hauler rate adjustment, and updates to towing rates. The council also received a climate action plan update from the Economic and Sustainable Development Department. Public comment was heard on multiple items, and several votes were taken.
Seeing as at 6 30 and we have a quorum, I would like to call this regular session of the Bloomington Common Council to order here on Wednesday, December 3rd. Will the clerk please call the roll? Councilman Fair Council Member Falardi. Here. Rough? Here. Rallow? Here. Pete Montsmith. Here. Salzburg. Here. Daily. Here. Sorry. Here. Great. Thank you. There's a lot of people in the room here tonight. That's exciting for one of the last meetings of the year. I've been starting meetings with a little kind of general note of interest, either historical or something related to justice and that category of thing. And for the third time, I think this year I'm going to talk about gerrymandering. The first time I talked about it, it was about the origin of the word gerrymandering, and then it was, you know, the different states are gerrymandering. And today I'm going back to it because our Indiana State legislatures legislators have reconvened in special session to redistrict our congressional maps. And for those of you who don't know, redistricting usually happens around the census, so once every 10 years, and this mid-decade redistricting is not normal. It is not the normal course of business. And the Republican contingent, the sponsor of this bill has been open about declaring that the maps that they are proposing are politically gerrymandered, breaking apart areas with high numbers of Democrats, so those democratic leaning voters are diluted with Republican numbers in hopes that all nine of the congressional seats will go to Republican candidates. And in order to do that, one of the things that they've done is separated the Indianapolis Airport, excuse me, Indianapolis area into four different districts. And that results in the same person representing sections of urban Indianapolis as rural Jackson County or rural Rush County or rural Union County. And that's interesting, I'll say, because I try to stay neutral during these moments. So both the process of calling a special session mid-century and proposing deliberately gerrymandered maps is meaningful for everybody for all who's years, and this will impact the representation representation that all of us have in Washington. And I would encourage everyone to contact your representatives to share your views on this process. And now usually I go on to the agenda summation, but I also have a little note about our agenda before I go on because we have a few pieces of legislation tonight that are just a little bit different than normal. So there is legislation related to voluntary annexation on the agenda this evening. And so it's been a learning curve for everybody involved to figure out exactly how to do it. And so I'm going to talk about it a little bit because there are three pieces of legislation that have to do with the voluntary annexation. One of them is a resolution, okay, and resolutions have one reading. So we're going to talk about that and vote on that as a council this evening. And that resolution has to do with the fiscal plan. That's like the money plan. It's like how does Bloomington plan to fund this new property in terms of the services and that kind of thing that wants to be a part of the city? The second piece of legislation that is the actual voluntary annexation itself. And that has to be an ordinance and ordinances have two readings. Tonight will just be the first reading of that ordinance to actually do the annexation. Council doesn't talk about things at first readings. Mostly, most of the time at first readings, there's not an opportunity for the public to comment. However, with this particular first reading, the state of Indiana for voluntary annexation requires a public hearing. And at public hearings, the public gets to talk. So at our first reading tonight for that is ordinance 2025 43, that will be a public hearing. So even though it is a first reading, the public will have an opportunity to comment about the annexation ordinance itself.