Summary

I attended a community meeting on March 6th, 2023, at 4:00 PM on zoom. It was a meeting where the Plat committee met to go over any items they have on their agenda and to consider any petitions that were filed. At this meeting, first they went over any meeting minutes that needed to be approved. Next, they discussed the petition they had to go over. Finally, they came to a consensus on the petition and presented their conclusion to the petitioner.

Meeting Details

The meeting was held in a hybrid fashion. I joined via zoom with six other people and there were three men who joined the meeting on zoom as well but in the same room. The most people we had at once in the zoom call was seven people. Some people joined as they were needed or joined to make sure the meeting was running smoothly. Overall, the meeting was mostly white men based on those who had their cameras on. The petitioner, Todd Borgman, joined at the end of the call when he was needed. He just needed to join the meeting so that the amendment could be approved in his presence.

Plat Committee

There are many boards, commissions, and committees that oversee different facets of Bloomington that help with making decisions on issues that citizens may have. These groups help the Mayor and City Council by giving their opinions on different issues they are assigned to. [4]

Specifically, the Plat Committee “hears and makes final decisions on preliminary and final plat (subdivision) requests.” [4] This committee is more flexible than the whole Plan Commission so this makes it easier to help with any issues that citizens may have. [4] There are three members of the Plat Committee including a member that represents the Plan Commission, City of Bloomington Utilities, and the Engineering Department. [4]

Here is the link to the Plat Committee website if you would like to learn more about them or join the committee or one of their future meetings: https://bloomington.in.gov/boards/plat

The Meeting

The meeting started with making sure all the necessary people that needed to be there were there by doing roll call. Then the first item on the agenda was to approve some minutes from previous meetings that had minor changes to them.

Everyone of the committee was given the chance to make any changes they wanted. After no one wanted to change anything then it was asked how many people accepted the changes and the meeting minutes were accepted with no conflict. The next item on the agenda was “reports, resolutions, and communications” but there were none to address at this meeting. The last thing on the agenda was to address any petitions filed. There was one petition to talk about.

The Petition

The main idea of the petition is that the petitioner wants to add a second plat amendment to change the name of the street from W Ezekiel Drive to S Breaking A Way. In the very beginning the Plan Commission allowed for a multi-family home building to be constructed. In the first plat amendment there were new drains added, a change in the owner certification, and adjusting a couple other items. Then with the given plot given in the first plat they renamed their private street to S Breaking A Way. Now in the petition presented today, they wanted to rename the public part of the street attached to S Breaking A Way to S Breaking A Way so that it is one cohesive road. By renaming the public street to S Breaking A Way then no buildings would need to change their address since there are no other buildings on the street. The street is in favor of the street name change as it would create a street with the same name. The petitioner would prefer for the whole street to be named S Breaking A Way because the privately owned part of the street is already named this and because the multi-family home building is named Breaking A Way. One conflict arose from the discussion of this addition to the Plat amendment and the committee was worried that the petitioner might take advantage of this change and push for other changes due to the street name being changed. So, the committee decided to word their amendment very precisely and added a condition such that the request is summarized and so that nothing else can be assumed by this amendment. In the end, the motion was approved with no conditions three to zero.

Here is the link to the handout we were given access to so we could follow along as they presented these details in the meeting: https://bloomington.in.gov/onboard/meetingFiles/download?meetingFile_id=11564

At the Meeting

My Thoughts

I really enjoyed going to this community meeting. Without having done this assignment I would probably have never been to one. I enjoyed seeing what a community meeting is like. I did not know what the Plat Committee was before joining this meeting and what they did so I enjoyed getting to learn more about a committee that is making decisions for my local government. One of my favorite parts of the meeting is when all the information was presented on the petition then it was open to the public to ask questions. I think this is a great addition to the meeting because the public may have thoughts on the matter that the committee did not think about previously. Overall, I had a good time at the meeting and learned a lot about my local community and government.

Smart City Technology Opportunities

Here are two smart city technology opportunities I have found that could help with the Plat Committee meetings:

Anonymous voting Platform (Polys)

Polys is an anonymous voting platform. [6] If a board or committee needs to hold a vote this would be a great platform to use because then each vote can be cast anonymously with no peer pressure to follow the group when voting.[6] I think this would be a great technology for the Plat Committee to use because when they did their voting they did it out loud so if you are the last one to cast your vote you may be swayed to follow what the others did instead of casting the vote you actually wanted. Polys or any other anonymous voting platform would be a great way to avoid bias in the voting process. 

Civic Engagement Platform (Citizen Lab)

Citizen Lab is a platform where people can post any questions/concerns they have for their community and then the problems could be sent to the correct people in government. [1] This would be helped for the Plat committee because if a problem concerning them arises then it can be sent straight to them. This would increase community to government interaction and more people may talk about their problems on this platform instead of having to write an application letter and sending it to the Plat Committee. On Citizen Lab you can even post surveys and polls to see if a certain issue they are working on is of interest to the public or if they may need to focus their efforts on more pressing issues to the community. [1]

Works Cited

[1] Citizen Lab, https://www.citizenlab.co/. 

[2] “Monajemi v Monajemi.” UniCourt, https://unicourt.com/case/ca-ora-monajemi-v-monajemi-340679. 

[3] “Petition Time.” Democratic Party of McHenry County, https://www.mchenrydems.org/petition_time. 

[4] “Plat Committee.” City of Bloomington, https://bloomington.in.gov/boards/plat. 

[5] “The Ideal Way to a Great Meeting.” Nordantech, 2 Feb. 2022, https://www.nordantech.com/en/blog/community/the-ideal-way-to-a-great-meeting. 

[6] “Voting for the Nuremberg Youth Council (Germany).” Polys, https://polys.vote/success-stories/voting-for-the-nuremberg-youth-council.