In the inaugural episode of The 812, former Bloomington city councilmember Steve Volan interviews his ex-colleague Isabel Piedmont-Smith, recently reelected to Council as the representative for the newly-drawn District 1. The episode also introduces The Lineup, a segment that briefly describes public meetings to be held that day in City Hall that city residents might be interested to attend. The episode starts with a short essay introducing the show and its goals.
Transcript
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STEVE VOLAN, HOST: This is the Fairview Elementary School World Music Ensemble, directed by Dan Cusayo, performing during the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Birthday Celebration event at the Buskirk-Chumley Theatre in Bloomington, Indiana, on January 15, 2024.
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The kids of Fairview did a great job. Last night in Bloomington, they performed for a new mayor with a new administration and a new city council. They and the returning city clerk, together the 11 elected officials of the city, all started four-year terms a couple of weeks ago.
They make news and deal with complicated issues every day. Now’s the perfect time for a show that explains what they do and how they and all the other people who serve the city do what they do.
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Welcome to The 812. I’m your host, Steve Volan. On today’s inaugural show, an interview with new city council president, Isabel Piedmont-Smith. But first, what is this new show you’re listening to?
Let me tell you a little about myself, and then maybe the point of the show will seem obvious to you. But you need a little background.
As recently as three weeks ago, I was the District 6 representative on Bloomington’s city council. I’d been serving in that capacity for five straight terms since January 1, 2004. In 2020, I authored the ordinance creating an independent commission of citizens who would recommend the new maps that needed to be drawn after the census. The inaugural redistricting committee, in its infinite wisdom, drew a map that zoned me out of District 6. No good deed.
So last year, I ran for a different seat on the council. The outcome? Let’s just say that as of January 1, I’m now the recently retired member from District 6.
Well, after 20 years, it seems that your boy Steve didn’t know how to stop serving the public. Old habits die hard.
One thing I would hear in my time as an elected official was that local government wasn’t transparent enough. There were scandals in my time, sure. An embezzler here, a surprise vehicle purchase there.
But I saw how scrupulously city hall employees follow public notice requirements, how they publish agendas in advance, how minutes summarize the meetings afterwards. It’s not like most people are trying to hide what the city is doing. I would often say that citizens weren’t complaining about transparency. They really meant that it wasn’t apparent how their government worked. It’s legible — it’s just hard to read. Most citizens don’t have time to become scholars of their local government.
I was always having to explain to people how the various entities of city government worked, how meetings are run, how departments relate and interact with each other, what to look for in that big meeting coming up that everyone’s talking about. But as an elected, I bore the burden of having to make the final decisions on lots of issues. I was always too busy to explain council’s function and actions the way I thought would be best.
Once I was relieved of duty, though, I would have time to focus on making sense of government. Thus was born The 812, an explainer podcast for city government.
The primary segment on each show, which I’m hoping will come out every weekday, most weeks of the year, will be a half-hour interview with a mover or a shaker. I’ll interview elected officials, including council members I just worked with, appointed officials like current and former city department heads, members of some of the city’s numerous boards and commissions, and even representatives of local not-for-profit organizations which interact with or provide services on behalf of the city. I’m not ruling out the possibility that some of the interviews we do might be relevant to other Indiana cities or even other cities across the country, but The 812 is focused on the city of Bloomington, where I live and which I know best.
It’s been a couple of months in the making, but at last, there are shows for you to listen to. I hope you find The 812 to be worth listening to.
If there’s one segment we’re going to try to do every day, it’s just a listing of the public meetings coming up that you might have an interest in or might want to attend. It’s a little calendar item we like to call “The Lineup.”
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Today, the Board of Housing Quality Appeals will hear no fewer than eight petitions for property owners who want an extension of time to complete repairs required by the city. It meets at 4 p.m. in the Hooker Room, Room 245 of City Hall.
The Utilities Service Board will meet at 5 p.m. in their very own boardroom at the city’s Utilities Service Center, 600 East Miller Drive. On their agenda is a slew of requests to approve contracts, most of them, as you might guess, for supplies of chemicals needed to clean the water at the city of Bloomington Utilities’ water cleaning facilities. But the board’s Property and Planning Committee will meet a half hour beforehand. They’re going to get an update on the Winston-Thomas Demolition Project, where CBU will be building its new headquarters.
At 530, the Board of Public Works will meet at City Hall in Council Chambers. They’ve got a few items, including a couple regarding renovations for the Engineering Department and Fire Station Number 2.
Also at 530, the Commission on the Status of Children and Youth will meet in the Hooker Room. And at 6, the Board of Public Safety meets at City Hall in the McCloskey Room. But there’s no agenda posted for either of these latter two. Pickups happen, I guess, when there’s a change of mayoral administrations.
All these meetings are also watchable on Zoom, by the way. As we get the show going, you’ll be able to click through to the packet or the meeting of your choice by visiting our website, the812show.org.
[MUSIC] By the way, there was one more meeting, the 4 p.m. meeting of the city’s Economic Development Commission, but it’s been canceled. Next time they meet, we’ll be better prepared to talk about them.
And that was The Lineup.
[MUSIC] My guest today is Isabel Piedmont-Smith. Until January 1st, she’d served three four-year terms as the representative for Bloomington’s District 5, including once as president and twice, including last year, as council vice president. After decennial redistricting, she now serves the new Bloomington District 1, and she’s just been re-elected president of the new council for 2024.
Isabel Piedmont-Smith, welcome to The 812.
ISABEL PIEDMONT-SMITH: Thank you very much, Steve. Glad to be here.
THE812: So give people who maybe aren’t familiar with how local government works a basic rundown. What are the basic duties of a city council member in Bloomington?
PIEDMONT-SMITH: Well, Bloomington has a strong mayor system. It’s a Class 2 city in the classification of the state of Indiana. So we have nine members of the city council. Six represent districts, and then there are three at-large members that represent everybody in Bloomington.
And then the mayor, of course, is elected separately, and the mayor is the one who can bring the budget before the city council for approval, and he’s the only one, or she, the only position that can bring forward appropriation ordinances.
Legislation can be proposed both by the mayor’s administration and by council members, although in our recent history, it has been more often the case that it’s the mayor’s administration that brings legislative issues rather than council members.
THE812: Well, I mean, can’t anyone really write legislation? It just needs a sponsor of a council member?
Yes, and we’ve seen that in a few cases, especially when you’re talking about resolutions that are not going to be part of our municipal code, rather make a statement or give a position of, on behalf of the residents of Bloomington, we have seen community groups, activist groups, write legislation or borrow resolution language from other cities and bring it to one or more council members for sponsorship. Yeah, that’s true.
So how often does the council meet, and what is the schedule like?
Well, you know, we’re starting a new term, and the schedule may be changing because I know there is some interest among new council members to re-evaluate what is the best way to have meetings, how frequently, in what configuration of council, things like that. Preliminarily, we have adopted a schedule that is the same as 2023, so we will have regular sessions of the Common Council on the first, second, and third Wednesdays of the month, and I just mentioned Common Council.
That’s another way of saying city council.
Right, we just talked about that with Stephen Lucas.
Yeah.
So that’s what we have for now, but we may also look at some less formal meetings that are different from a regular session. I know there’s been a lot of interest among council members to have some kind of sessions where we can actually have back-and-forth conversations with members of the public and members of the administration, so hopefully we’ll figure out a way to do that, perhaps with committees or working groups or things like that.
Well, now, 2023 was an unusual year for the council schedule. Before that, for many years, as long as I can remember, it had a two-regular-session-a-month schedule with the other two weeks being committee meetings. Is that the kind of thing you’re thinking about going back to?
No, not me. I’m not thinking of going back to that. I cannot speak for the other eight colleagues who have just started their terms. I think that the way that it’s been done for most of my tenure on council has been, just like you say, we had regular sessions on the first and third Wednesday of the month, and then the second and fourth Wednesdays were committee-of-the-hole meetings for most of my tenure, which is kind of a strange way of doing things.
It’s not the same as what most other cities do, and according to Robert’s Rules of Order, which is our guidebook for running meetings, committee of the whole is not something that should be kind of a normal course of business. There should be standing committees that are designated for certain things.
So I don’t have a desire to go back to the committee of the whole structure, but we will see what happens. I should mention, and of course you know this very well, Steve, that for two years, well, for 10 months of 2020 and for 2021, we had standing committees.
I know this all too well.
But then a slim majority of council members decided to do away with them.
Well, I should probably fill in the listener that, yes, I was president of council in 2020, and I introduced legislation to create standing committees, and they were very controversial, and they lasted about two years before they were removed. So it’s interesting that the new council is actively thinking about that sort of thing again. I’m looking forward to seeing how you all decide to do it. So that leads me to my next question, which is, how do you make legislation? Like, how do you get an ordinance passed? Why would you make the effort to develop an ordinance?
Well, ordinances are, you know, making law, making local code, or, you know, kind of making procedures or policies that the administration should then follow, and the whole purpose of it is to make life better for people in Bloomington. I mean, that’s the whole purpose of tinkering with the way things are, because we can always improve.
There are always new issues that come up. For example, we had, you know, the electric scooters descend upon us in 2018 without any warning or communication from the —
You’re talking about rental electric scooters that were left by companies all over the streets of Bloomington.
Exactly. It was Bird and Lime were the first two companies that just kind of showed up, and there was a need for regulation of those scooters because it was — well, it was very dangerous the way some people were riding them. It was a use of our public right of way, which normally requires permission of the Board of Public Works, and there were a lot of concerns about the scooters, especially where they were parked and that they were in the way of other users of our streets and sidewalks.
So, I mean, you know, things change, and that can initiate legislation, and that did in 2019 lead to legislation that was passed. Unfortunately, the mayor’s administration didn’t really enforce the legislation that we passed until maybe at the very end of 2023, but that’s another story.
Well, that’s a good question. Like, is that — how do you, as a council member, react? I mean, the legislative body of the city is not the executive body. They don’t have the power to enforce. You know, how do you think about writing legislation in a new council term with a new mayor and making sure that what you legislate comes to be?
Well, I think it’s really important to have conversations with the mayor’s administration early on, and it’s always most productive if there can be agreement between the mayor and the council member or council members who are working on the legislation so that there can be collaboration in drafting that legislation. And, of course, there should be participation from other stakeholders, as well. You know, anybody who is directly impacted by the legislation should be consulted, ideally.
My guest is Isabel Piedmont-Smith, the elected representative for District 5 in the Bloomington City Council. I got it wrong.
Well, you had it right earlier, Steve. I did represent District 5 for three terms, but the districts were changed. -Who is now the District 1 representative.
My apologies. How does the agenda for a meeting get set? You’re somebody who’s been in leadership. Who decides what gets heard in what order and what reasons are used to decide what gets on the agenda?
Well, when I served as vice president, most recently, this past year, and actually, I was thinking about it, and it’s been three times that I’ve been vice president, so I apologize. I told you wrong. But, yes, so there are frequent meetings, either weekly or biweekly meetings, between the president, the vice president, and the deputy mayor, and the staff of the council office and a representative from the clerk’s office, and those are the scheduling meetings.
So there, we look at what legislation is coming up, either initiated through the mayor’s administration or by council members, and we try to, you know, see what’s ready and then put it on the calendar when to try to not overburden any one Wednesday evening meeting.
So sometimes it might be ready, but let’s wait, because we also have three other things ready, and we don’t want to overschedule.
We also kind of look at how much public interest there is in a certain ordinance so that we can kind of parse, “Okay, we don’t want these two things the same night because we know there’s going to be a lot of public comment on both of them, so let’s try to spread it out.” Things like that are considerations, but I can’t remember a time when we actually declined to schedule anything.
I mean, there’s enough respect among the colleagues on council and between the council and the mayor that we generally have scheduled things that are deemed ready to be brought before the council by the sponsors.
Yes, but there have been cases where the council or a significant number of members didn’t want something that was scheduled to be heard, so the agenda can be changed after it’s set by the leadership, and it has been.
You mean during the council meeting?
Right, at the beginning of the meeting when the agenda is read. For example, can’t something be removed from the agenda?
I don’t recall that ever happening. I know we have changed the order of items on an agenda before either because of staff availability to present on a topic or public interest. I can’t recall now that we have ever deleted an item from the agenda.
But there is a way that you — I mean, isn’t it true that you can vote to not hear something? I mean, it’s on the agenda, but then it doesn’t wind up being taken up that night, if at all.
Yes, absolutely, because every item needs to be a motion made to introduce an item, and that motion has to have a second, and then there’s a vote on that motion. So either everybody can decline to move it forward. There can be just silence. Or you can have a motion, and nobody seconds it, then it dies, or you can have a motion, it’s seconded, you vote on it, there’s no majority to introduce it, and then it dies, so, yes, certainly.
My guest is Isabel Piedmont-Smith, three-term member of the Bloomington City Council, now serving her fourth term as representative for District 1. We’ll continue our conversation after a short break. This is “The 812.”
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This is “The 812.” We’re talking today with Isabel Piedmont-Smith, representative for the new Bloomington City Council District 1, talking about the life and work of a city council member. So, what’s it like to be in leadership of council? Do you have stories?
Well, it’s — You get more frequent chances to speak with the mayor, and that may be changing. I don’t know. And when I say it may be changing, I hoped that I mean and that the change will be that there will be more communication with the mayor and all council members going forward. But certainly, in the past two mayoral administrations, there was a focus of the mayor speaking regularly with the council leadership, so the president and the vice president.
And so that’s beneficial in that you get to kind of discuss some political aspects of issues that are coming up and get some questions answered that you or your colleagues might have about policies or proposals as they are being developed. So it’s a good way to touch base with the mayor’s administration.
And I have to say that that’s really one of the most important aspects of being able to serve my constituents well is that communication between the mayor’s administration and council. And that’s also been a source of frustration in my three terms of service. So I always hope for a better tomorrow in that respect.
You’ve served for 12 years as a city council member. What are some of the worst or the best experiences you’ve had, you know, something dramatic or something difficult or something really wonderful? But when you look back on it, what would you say has been — really stood out as being a signal event in your career?
Well, I have to harken back to the March 6, 2021 meeting where we discussed —
March 3.
March 3? Was it March 3?
It was March 3, yeah.
I have the 6 on the brain because of tomorrow. But, yeah, so it was a — what was it? A 9-hour meeting that went on for a very long time on the topic of ordinance 2106 — that’s where the 6 is — which was co-sponsored by myself, Matt Flaherty, and Kate Rosenbarger. And it was about homeless individuals in our community. And basically making it legal for them to sleep in public because we certainly don’t have enough resources for them. And oftentimes, especially as we saw during the pandemic, they don’t feel comfortable making use of the resources that we do have for congregate shelter.
So we carefully drafted an ordinance. And I’d say a good experience was working with my two colleagues, investigating what Indianapolis had done. They had passed a similar ordinance. And just crafting language along with our council attorney to create what we felt was very good legislation that took all of the different aspects of this issue into account. And we also worked with stakeholders in the community, people from the Bloomington Homeless Coalition, from the social service agencies that work with unhoused people. And so we felt good about the legislation. But certainly a low point in my career was that meeting.
There were only eight council members present because one council member, for family reasons, was not able to be there. And we were deadlocked for four, basically.
Well, full disclosure, I was one of the four that — I didn’t sponsor the legislation, but I was on the council, and I voted with the three of you.
Yes, yes, you did. I appreciated that. Well, it was particularly frustrating because we had foreseen that there may not be a majority to support the legislation as written. So we had prepared a few amendments. But every time we tried to put forward an amendment, it was rejected. We tried to ask for more time so that we could work on the legislation to make it more palatable. That was repeatedly rejected.
And it was rejected because there were only eight people, and there was a 4-4 deadlock on many maneuvers.
It’s true.
Right.
And so, of course, you need five votes to pass anything. So it was just extremely frustrating to me, especially because I feel passionately about this topic of unhoused people in our community having a right to just exist. And my colleagues who were against the legislation did not have any alternatives to offer. They were just against what we were doing. So it was extremely frustrating.
And this was during the COVID pandemic, so we were all via Zoom. And, you know, by 3 o’clock in the morning, I was just horizontal lying on the floor of my office at home and, you know, with my video off for a few minutes. And I was just — I was at the end of my rope.
I think everybody was by the end.
Well, if I recall correctly, the meeting began at 6.30, and this issue was taken up at 9.30 after all the other items on the agenda.
What would you say caused the issue to take six hours to be deliberated?
Well, I think that part of it was that we were missing a council member, and so both sides wanted to kind of include that council member in the hopes that that would give them a majority. So there was, especially on our side, which we could, you know, smell in the air that we were on the losing side. We kind of were hoping that we could postpone the matter. And there were, as I said, many attempts to amend, to take up the issue, you know, piece by piece. And there were — I think that there were just maneuvers made to kind of thwart every attempt. You may remember better than I some of the kind of legislative maneuvers that were engaged in that evening.
Well, actually, that’s not what I remember. Two things. First of all, the legislation was very specific. It said that you can’t force people out of a park in winter during a pandemic after 11 p.m. It was very specific to those kind of extreme conditions. That was my understanding of the legislation.
The second thing was we allowed for unlimited public comment. And I think that there was an awful lot of public comment because there were lots of — I mean, I would say it was about equal. It was a very evenly split deliberation, but we didn’t put any limits on public comment. In fact, I think I put forward a proposal to limit public comment to, say, three hours, and that was rejected. I don’t recall. I’ll have to go back and look. –
Well, I do want to correct your memory of the legislation itself. It did not have to do with the time of year or the pandemic, maybe in the “whereas” clauses, which the “whereas” clauses of legislation usually spell out the reasoning that led to the legislation. But it was, you know, regardless of time of year or pandemic situations that a camp could not be cleared unless there was housing available for folks. And then we kind of toned that down and said, “Okay, unless there’s a shelter bed available for folks,” but that was not acceptable either.
And then there was part of the legislation that dealt with if a shelter is closed, what notice needs to be given, who needs to be, you know, involved as far as social service agencies, how do we store people’s belongings, things like that.
Well, I have to agree. It was a bad night. I would say that it was the worst night of my 20-year career, as well. But speaking of which, Bloomington has a reputation for long council meetings. I have to admit that I contributed my share to that reputation, but I emphatically do not think I contributed more than my share.
But anyway, how do you see the issue of the length of council meetings, and what do you think should be done about it?
Well, I think we’ve taken one good step, and I think it was legislation that you brought in 2021 or ’22 to say that a meeting cannot continue past midnight or that a single council member can move to close the meeting. -That was a reaction to March 3rd, 2021.
Right, exactly. But it was changed to be two members. It took two members to close the meeting after midnight. But, yeah, that’s right. I did do that.
So, that’s at least a stopgap. I think that we should, once again, seriously consider time limits for council comment as well as for public comment.
The issue that you raised about that March 2021 meeting where we had a lot of public comment, that came up again when we discussed allowing duplexes and triplexes in certain single-family neighborhoods in that we had legislation, and then we offered amendments to that legislation, and the comments were really the same, the same comments, the same arguments to every amendment and every variation of the legislation.
So, there needs to be some kind of limit on that if there’s legislation where there will be amendments that are very similar on the same topic.
But, yeah, I think we’ve done better as far as limiting public comment than we have limiting our own comments, and that’s something that I think the new council should look into.
Well, I mean, but we do limit public comment.
It’s more the whole period of public comment. I shouldn’t say “we” anymore. I’m no longer a member of the council. But if the council were to say, “We’ll take this many hours of public comment or this many minutes,” like it does with the open comment at the beginning of the meeting, that that might help some, but I think it depends on the issue.
It’s difficult with public comment because we don’t want to discourage our constituents from telling us what they think about an issue.
I think another key to that is to involve people earlier on, and if we can have some kind of meetings that are not regular sessions that are some kind of work session or some kind of discussion session before we write legislation, I think that’ll be beneficial, and that might cut down on public comment when the ordinance is actually on the table. -Isabel Piedmon-Smith, tell us about the area of the city that you represent.
What are the most significant issues in your district?
Well, as you mentioned, I have a new district. I’m now representing District 1. The most easterly part of the district is the Bryan Park neighborhood, but most of my district is west of Walnut Street, South Walnut Street, and south of Second Street. I do have a lot of student apartments in my neighborhood. The actual part of the District 1 goes up to Third Street, which is between Second and Third Street along the interstate, and that’s just one huge student housing development after another. So there are many multifamily units, also family housing, that are apartments. It includes Broadview neighborhood, Bryan Park, as I said, McDole Gardens neighborhood where I live. So it’s a diverse district, a lot of renters.
So I need to still learn more about what the specific issues are, but I know homelessness is a big issue, especially in Broadview and McDole Gardens, which are both along the B-Line Trail. -Isabel Piedmon-Smith, it was a pleasure serving with you for 12 years.
Thank you for being on the show, and thank you for your service to the council and to the community.
Thank you, Steve. I appreciate your invitation.
Isabel Piedmont-Smith is the representative for the newly-drawn District 1 on the Bloomington City Council.
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Well, that’s it for our first episode. Pretty cut and dried, really. If you like it, please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Look for new episodes to drop every morning. Tomorrow on “The 812,” an interview with Bloomington City Clerk Nicole Bolden.
Special thanks to the Fairview Elementary World Music Ensemble for the great performance at yesterday’s Martin Luther King Day celebration. Keep up the good work, players.
And to the rest of you, thanks for giving the listen. I’m Steve Volan, the host and executive producer. “The 812” is a production of Plutilla Media. You can find more information about “The 812” at the812show.org.
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