Bloomington Fiscal Committee Meeting - March 3, 2026: Budget Priority Outcomes and Deliberation Planning
Bloomington Fiscal Committee Meeting - March 3, 2026
The Bloomington Fiscal Committee held a special meeting on March 3, 2026, to review and refine priority outcome data for the upcoming 2027 budget, plan for a full council deliberation session, and hear public comment. The meeting was led by Council President Hopi Stoffsburg (District 3), with Council Member Pete Mark Smith (District 1), City Controller Jeff McKim, and Council Member Lisa Lane present. The discussion focused on grouping similar outcomes, evaluating measurability and budget relevance, and scheduling future committee work.
Consent Calendar
- The agenda was approved unanimously on a motion.
Public Comments & Testimony
- Kevin Keo raised concerns about the intersection of housing affordability, property assessment mechanics, and levy policy. He requested that the committee: (1) request a five-year assessed value growth comparison by property class, (2) review levy growth alongside general fund expenditure and fund balance trends, and (3) schedule a public presentation in 2027 explaining redistribution effects within Indiana's levy-driven system. He emphasized the need for consistent assessment methodology to avoid disproportionate pressure on naturally occurring affordable housing.
Discussion Items
- Outcome Prioritization and Grouping: Staff presented data from the December meeting and a Google Forms survey to identify and rank council priorities. Members discussed combining overlapping outcomes (e.g., "make homelessness brief, rare, and non-repeating" appeared under both housing and public safety; waste reduction and composting were merged). Council Member Lane suggested that outcomes should be evaluated using four criteria: government-driven, measurable, with measurable funding allocation, and important to both council and administration.
- Challenges with Outcome-Based Budgeting: Controller McKim noted that many city plans lack consistent SMART outcomes, making it difficult to translate priorities into budget decisions. He suggested starting with a small number of well-defined, measurable goals. Council Member Smith highlighted the zero-sum nature of staff time and the need to prioritize staff resource allocation. The group agreed that discrete funding allocations (e.g., social services fund) are easier to measure, but policy-driven outcomes relying on staff time are also legitimate.
- Public Safety Planning: Council Member Stoffsburg reported a conversation with the mayor about developing a public safety plan. Members agreed that a deliberation session on public safety should include city staff who work in public safety and use small group discussions modeled after the housing sessions. The goal would be to define specific, measurable public safety outcomes.
- Grouping Downtown-Related Outcomes: The committee discussed whether to nest downtown vitality items under economic development or community health. Controller McKim cautioned against lumping all downtown items under one bucket, as they may have different budget implications. Members decided to keep the outcome list focused on specific outcomes rather than broad categories.
- Calendar and Next Steps: The committee reviewed its meeting schedule (alternating between council-focused and controller-focused meetings every other week). Next meeting is March 13, 2026, focusing on administrative reports. Staff will produce a draft document consolidating grouped outcomes and distributing it by Monday/Tuesday of the following week for member feedback. The document will include guiding questions for the full council deliberation session.
Key Outcomes
- Staff (Ms. Stoffsburg) will produce a draft outcome grouping document by early next week for committee review.
- The full council deliberation session will be a roundtable discussion with all nine council members, the controller, and public comment. It will focus on refining top priority outcomes and linking them to budget implications.
- The committee will schedule a discussion on the elected official salary ordinance before the end of the year; deadlines for budget adoption are November 1 (overall budget) and end of year (elected official salaries). Controller McKim will provide the official DLGF budget calendar at the next meeting.
- No formal votes were taken on priority outcomes; the group reached consensus on the process for further refinement.
Meeting Transcript
All right, we have a quorum right now. Um, I don't know the status of council, but we have three of us here. So I mean I go ahead and call to order this session special fiscal committee um here on February 27th, uh Hopi Stoffsburg District 3. Is about Pete Mark Smith Council Member District 1? Question map, WM calling on this in Deputy Burke. Jeff McKim City controller. Lisa Lane or Council of Junior. Thank you all for coming here early this morning. Um so the agenda um was distributed on Wednesday. Uh so we need approval for that. Uh as we discussed at our last meeting, we're kind of gonna try to have these two shorter meetings a month, one focused on council kind of budget related stuff and one focused on reports from administration um and more controllers office kind of stuff. So this is the council related stuff with the main focus of dealing with our mornings of Mr. Rawlowing Dave. Um only DK. So I haven't drawing any of my this morning either. Um anyway, so uh to look at this prioritization prioritization data uh both from the December meeting and collected from the Google Forums for some analysis and refinement, uh talking about the March deliberation session, honestly my yeah, and then taking public comments about that, uh, and then just any notes about adding anything to the fiscal committee calendar, um, and then adjournment. And so the goal is to keep like two adjourned 9 30. Uh so if somebody was willing to move to approve the agenda. Move to approve. Sorry. I don't know. This is the is when you don't have to. I'm not maybe pretty data. Thank you. Great. So move and seconded. Uh all in favor. Great. Um, so and if somebody was willing, maybe Colleen, could you timekeep me a little bit and let me know when it's 9 15? Okay, so we can make sure to go to public comment by 9.15 uh to still have a few minutes for public comment and then some time for the calendar. Um, so my thought on this data and this um analysis is kind of an overall goal of being able to um have an effective deliberation session where we talk about this with all nine council members because it conversations like that can get kind of crazy. So I thought some of the things we could do was consider whether the suggested outcomes were actually outcomes, and and if they're not, consider figuring out how we can rephrase that concept to encompass an actual outcome that meets the intent of that feedback. Um group like outcomes together, and how we should evaluate what bucket they might go in and how we should consider them in terms of that like uh priority. Um, and then you know, should outcomes be from one bucket to another. So one of the uh so my example of that, for example, actually, this is an easy one. Make homelessness brief rare and non-repeating was under housing and homelessness, and was also under um public safety. Public safety, and and they ranked very highly in it ranked very highly both of them. Obviously, like council is a body um wants to prioritize that, but then like how we do that. And so, like I highlighted like a few of those things that I thought were really similar. Um, but I took about five minutes and pulled out the ones that were easy. So um, and I also kind of figured that since it's just four of us, like literally any what if people have to say about the data, and we can just uh have a more open ended feedback session as opposed to types of feedback, if that makes sense. So what observations people make well, just uh along the same lines as your example, um under environment waste reduction and creating a composting program or the same thing, pretty much. So I think those should be one is a little more specific, but you reduce waste by composting. Yes, and so that brings up another um kind of nesting of outcomes. Um so my goal is to take notes on what you guys said or say um because I don't think that we should think decisions about that in and of ourselves, but if we bring them up as ideas. Let's see, then waste reduction. If you add the two points on composting, it brings it up to one of the top ones perfect. But and that's like the kind of discussion that I think we should have at the council level. Like this is an observation that these go together and then it increases in priority list how you look for that in terms of the overall prioritization. You know, I mean I thought that that was the type of thing we could write.
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