By: Diane Benjamin

The meeting is going to take one more story after this one, probably tomorrow.

The majority of the Council has zero business experience but Alderman Sheila Montney did a great job bringing them to reality. More on that later.

First you need to know some history:

I wrote this story on July 23, 2015: https://blnnews.com/2015/07/23/bloomington-developer-gets-freebies/

At that time Snyder Development owed the City $562,194.78 in development fees from Fox Creek. The article states this debt had been due since 1994. I don’t know if this was ever resolved, the Council needs to ask. The article has other details you need to see.

This should also be a warning to the Council before making any deals with developers just to increase housing.

The Bloomington Housing Symposium presentation was obviously rushed with not enough information presented to make any decisions. Something is supposed to be brought to Council next week for a vote but I wouldn’t be surprised if whatever is brought is minor or delayed. City Manager Jurgens stated at the end of the discussion a resolution would likely be “we’re working on it”.

Slides were shown recapping the Symposium. One of them was a “word cloud” which stated the obvious. The biggest obstacle to development is interest rates/financing:

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Also presented were ideas for solving the problem:

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Creating a low or no interest funds would bankrupt the City. Habitat For Humanity already does this. Their work should be encouraged. Does the City own abandoned properties they can build on?

The rest of the list is ripe for abuse as outlined above. Which developers would get incentives and which ones don’t? Tax Assessment freezes would only benefit rental property owners. Details of what that would look like weren’t presented.

The slide below lists some possibly solutions:

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You need to listen to the Council comments and questions, just hit Play below. Molly Ward really hates landlords who don’t live in town. Donna Boelen makes a lot of sense, the book she holds up is Strong Towns. She is followed by Sheila Montney who brought actual data to the discussion instead of policies based on feelings. She is followed by Jenna Kearns and Molly Ward again. Tom Crumpler and Cody Hendricks follows her.

Donna Boelen spoke again about wasting staff time researching what isn’t possible. Low/no interest loans is one of them.

One thing no one mentioned was who created this problem. Inflation and high interest rates didn’t happen by themselves. Get rid of the people who caused it and the problem will eventually work itself out. It could take years, but it will fix itself.