In a report released late Monday, about seven and a half months into her four-year term, Bloomington mayor Kerry Thomson says about her administration, “We are throwing back the curtains of government…”
That means the report includes some revelations by Thomson about the state of affairs she discovered, after taking over from the city’s previous mayor, John Hamilton, who served for two terms and did not seek re-election. Both Thomson and Hamilton are Democrats.
In the report, Thomson offers some details like the fact that an audit completed in December 2023 found that a significant portion of city funds was being held in a commercial, interest-earning checking account with no fraud protection and outdated signatories.
Some other big themes included in Monday’s report included: employee compensation; basic infrastructure needs; and housing.
On the topic of compensation, one big bit of news in the report is that Thomson intends to re-open the police union contract this year, which was approved by the city council in 2022.
The contract started in 2023 and runs for four years. That means collective bargaining for police will start at least a year earlier than it would have otherwise.
Accounting lapses by former administration
Revelations about lapses in finance and operations reported by Thomson include the fact that the city controller’s office has been under continuous audit by the State Board of Accounts (SBOA) since 2019 due to “previous unresponsiveness.” The audit for 2021 was not completed until December 2023, according to the report.
Thomson’s new controller is former Monroe County treasurer Jessica McClellan. The city controller under Hamilton was Jeff Underwood.
It was in December 2023 when it was discovered that a significant part of city funds was held in a commercial, interest-earning checking account that had no fraud protection and outdated signatories, according to Monday’s report. In addition, the report continues, several dormant accounts needed to be closed.
Controller’s office staff were not provided with “critical logins necessary for optimal federal and state compliance,” according to the report, which hampered operational efficiency. Thomson’s report says her administration has implemented corrective measures.
On top of the problems in the controller’s office, Thomson’s report says the Housing and Neighborhood Development (HAND) department faced significant challenges, including four HUD audits within the last year, which uncovered several errors that delayed projects and increased costs.
Thomson’s report attributes the issues at HAND to “the loss of consistent, long-time leadership.”
Before Hamilton assumed the mayorship in 2016, the director of HAND was Lisa Abbott, who had started the position in early 2006. When he took office, Hamilton moved HR director Doris Sims into the HAND position. Sims retired in early 2021, and was succeeded by John Zody, who served until the end of 2023. Thomson’s HAND director is Anna Killion-Hanson, who was previously deputy director.
Thomson’s report also identifies the botched administration of employee benefits, which is blamed on an overly complicated benefits system, which leads to frequent errors and high administrative costs, according to the report. The report says that in 2023 alone, delays in terminating health insurance for 45 former employees cost the City $269,936.89.
Compensation
Based on a survey of city employees city-wide, poor compensation is a critical issue that impacts morale, retention, and effectiveness. The top three challenges cited by employees who took the survey were: salary, understaffing, and employee retention. Those three categories accounted for more than half of responses, according to the report.
The report notes that the implementation of a salary study done by Crowe LLP study is a big part of the administration’s effort to improve compensation. It focuses on creating job families and classifications, updating pay ranges, and developing a long-term budgeting strategy.
In mid-June, the city council approved the administration’s request for a new salary structure, which increased the number of pay grades from 12 to 14 grades.
Thomson’s report says that the new administration has evaluated benefits programs based on whether they provide an actual benefit. Based on that metric, the administration has discontinued a $100,000 home down-payment program for public safety officers.
According to the report, the down-payment program was discontinued after finding that it would cost $3 million, give a benefit to just 20 people, had not helped with recruitment or retention, had no plan for equitable expansion, and was not supported by police and fire unions.
Infrastructure
Capital projects and buildings get a lot of attention in the report issued on Monday by Thomson.
The report says that the city will work with Reedy Financial, to improve the annual budget process so that it includes long-term strategies for capital projects, to make sure that infrastructure can support growth and essential services for residents.
One of the major infrastructure challenges, according to the report, is the city’s drinking water plant at Lake Monroe. The water plant is $10 million behind in necessary repairs, according to the report. The increased revenues from previous increases to water rates were not set aside as planned, delaying crucial projects, the report says.
To address the lag in repairs to the water plant, the Thomson’s administration has hired Wessler Engineering to do an analysis focusing on three key areas: asset management; capital improvements; taste and odor.
The expense of maintaining roads in current condition is about $3 million a year according to the report.
According to the report, the current facilities for fire logistics and training are outdated. A public safety bond issuance included a “very conservative” estimate of $2.5 million. The 2024 budget included $1 million for construction of a fire training facility.
But the actual estimate received in 2023 was $9.6 million, and even a scaled-back project in 2024 is expected to cost $6.5 million, according to Thomson’s report.
Bloomington’s police department needs a new home, according to the report. Hamilton had planned a move by police from the current 3rd Street headquarters to Showers West. But Thomson nixed that plan in early February.
Thomson’s logic for not following Hamilton’s plan was that the original public safety bond would not have covered all the fire department projects that were needed, if the Showers West project had been pursued. According to Thomson’s report, the fire station projects were already underway or urgent, compared to the need for new space for police officers.
The original Showers West project was supposed to house the fire department’s administrative headquarters as well as the whole police department. Responding to an emailed B Square question, the mayor’s office indicated that the fire administration move to Showers West is still on.
The timing of the fire department’s move to Showers West will be in October, so some work is being done to prepare the space, city communications director Desiree DeMolina wrote.
It was in early 2023, when Bloomington purchased the Showers West portion of the building that also houses city hall. The owner of the office building was CFC Properties.
According to DeMolina’s response to the B Square, the city is not currently marketing the building to new tenants. The proceeds from the public safety bond, which won city council approval in December 2022, is being spent only on public safety uses, according to DeMolina.
Expenditures from the public safety bond issuance included the minor renovations needed for fire administration in Showers West and completion of all of the fire department capital projects, including the new logistics and training center, but no additional decisions have been made beyond that, DeMolina wrote.
One of the most visible fire department capital projects is the renovation and expansion of Fire Station #1, which is currently underway on 4th Street in downtown.
Housing
Housing was another big theme of Thomson’s report released on Monday.
The report describes several individually negotiated agreements with building developers that were made before the city’s Unified Development Ordinance (UDO) was approved. The report says the projects were all completed in the last year, and all have “significant problems.”
One of the problems involves workforce housing. In exchange for assigning a certain percentage of the project’s units to workforce housing, developers were allowed to increase building heights to build additional units and increase building heights.
But according to Thomson’s report, many of the workforce units were in student-centric complexes and targeted area median incomes (AMI) that are too high and do not accurately represent the city’s workforce needs. As a result, these workforce units have not served the people they were intended to help, Thomson’s report says.
Thomson’s report describes her administration’s effort to develop about 114 “truly affordable” rental units, along with seven units of affordable housing through the Group Equity Cooperative Housing model.
The report also describes funding for Habitat for Humanity of Monroe County’s Osage Place Neighborhood to add 39 more lots. Thomson’s report says her administration is planning to support additional housing projects and initiatives through the Bloomington Housing Authority (BHA) and Summit Hill Community Development, to enhance affordable housing options.
The B Square has reached out to the mayor’s office, to address the public interest in nailing down the specific examples, or the documentation of the facts, that underlie some of the descriptions in the report of the problematic situations identified by the Thomson administration.
The intent is to avoid making speculative, piecemeal records requests hoping to get some insight, based on the idea that the administration might have already assembled a relevant set of documents so that they could be requested all in one go.
