The Bloomington Common Council held a deliberation session on December 11, 2025 (transcript indicates December 10th start time) to discuss outcome-based budgeting and begin prioritizing outcomes for the 2027 budget. Councilmember Piedmont Smith organized the session, which focused on reviewing outcomes from existing city plans, adding new outcomes, and identifying priorities. The council debated adding an environment category, discussed structural challenges in using existing plans, and began adding outcomes for housing and homelessness, high performing government, and economic development. Public comments were heard, and a prioritization exercise was initiated but not fully completed due to time.
The time gonna go ahead and call this uh deliberation session of the Bloomington Common Council to order here on December 10th at 6:31. Will the clerk please call the roll okay? I'm not doing this in the usual order, so bear with me. Um Councilmember Rosenberger. These are not working here on the minute. Hello. Just one more here. Okay, President Barnes. Here, here. I got here. Daily. Here, Stasberg. Here. Piedmont Smith. Here. Roller. Sorry, Clarity. Here. Okay, thank you. Thank you so much. As I said, tonight we are having a deliberation session. We're going to be discussing outcome-based budgeting, and believe it or not, 2027 priorities because municipal budgeting starts early. So I want to thank uh in advance, Councilmember Piedmont Smith who organized the discussion this evening. We will uh discuss um outcome-based budgeting and the progress so far, um, various outcomes that we already have in city plans, and really kind of the the main goal I think tonight is to try to, as a council prioritize outcomes, which uh didn't really happen last year because you know this this is a process. Um we will have public comment in there and then next steps, and then we will adjourn. So I think at this point I'm turning over to Councilmember Piedmont Smith. Thank you. Um I do want to mention I'm chair of the um fiscal committee, special committee of council, and we did review this uh agenda or the the general ideas uh that uh went into this agenda tonight, so it wasn't totally flying solo here. Um so I just wanted to remind everybody about the context um that uh both the mayor's administration and the council agreed to move towards an outcome-based budgeting process. Um the council passed a resolution in June of 2024 regarding this, and of course, during the budget process for the 2026 budget, um the administration did move towards um outcome-based budgeting, sort of an in-between step, which they call priority-based budgeting. And um really the big difference is that uh compared with what the city budget, how the city budget was created previously, um, is that previously we would basically take um the budget from the the current year and uh just tweak uh things, you know, we need more for this, we need less for that, this costs more now, we need another staff person, etc. Um, with outcome-based budgeting, uh, we look at what outcomes we want to achieve. Then we back up and look at programs that will get us towards those outcomes, and then we back up further and look at what um how the the what those programs cost. Uh and I know that um our deputy mayor Gretchen Knapp, who's here, uh, and our controller Jessica McClellan have been working on um evaluating all the programs and putting them in categories so that we can better track what exactly they cost. But I think one of the the big um questions at this point is uh which programs do we prioritize and to to look at what we prioritize, we really need to go back to look at the outcomes that our city plans have said we are all working towards. And since we can't do everything, we also have need to prioritize those outcomes and kind of decide. Um, given our limited funding, what uh outcomes are most important for the community. So hopefully um my colleagues all got a chance to take a look at um the packet that came with this uh for this meeting. Um are there any questions before we kind of dive into the outcomes? And if yes. I have um I really appreciate that we're doing this. Uh I also had a lot of like structural questions about I'll just like surface a small one without getting into like a lot of detail. A lot of things that need to change to accomplish our outcomes are not in fact expenditures, their policy change, their legislation and policy change. Um how do how should so that's just an example of like a number of structural issues that inform how we might engage in this exercise? And um, I'm just getting into the agenda and getting it pulled up for my file, so apologies if there's like adequate space on the agenda for discussing that. So apologies if there's like adequate space on the agenda for discussing that. But I was curious for the suitability of a topic like that uh at a session like this, um, and just wanted to get your input as um the person running the meeting. Um I think that's a really good point. Um I think that we could probably talk about that through the course of the meeting as we look at the outcomes that I've collated from our city plans, and we can say, okay, you know, if a majority of council members say this outcome is the most important, well, is that do we influence that uh just by budget or by policy as well? And kind of we can we can definitely should consider that once we um prioritize our outcomes.